It sure took long enough to bury old Maggie but word is, it’s finally over. She got the military funeral she deserved since militarism was her middle name & destruction her only passion. It’s not hard to be an Iron Lady when you have an army & air force behind you. The real reason for the military send-off is they needed extra soldiers to supplement the 4,000 cops protecting her stinking corpse from English rebels lined up on the side lines of this funeral fiasco. If there were any actual mourners would they have needed the security barricades outside St. Paul’s Cathedral?
Reportedly, 2,300 people from 170 countries got tickets to the event. There wasn’t a miner or Irish Republican among them. But the cathedral was chock full of war criminals & other unsavory creeps that make you shudder: Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, the Windsor clan, & what are described as veterans of the Falklands war (meaning the generals who led it).
In his eulogy, the Bishop of London Richard Chartres outdid himself in sycophancy saying the funeral was no place to debate Maggie’s political legacy or the impact of her disastrous politics. It was instead the place to build mythology about her. When he praised her for personal kindness, it was all downhill from there. By the time he got to Maggie as feminist icon even Kissinger was rolling his eyes.
She’s getting cremated hoping thereby to escape the fires of hell. Satan didn’t set things up that way so Maggie’s granddaughter read this passage from Ephesians to console granny on her trip to hell: “Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” But Ephesians & that iron won’t do granny any good in hell. Good riddance now, Maggie!
(Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
Thousands of ordinary people lined up on the sidelines of the funeral procession to pay their respects to Thatcher. They outnumbered the dissenters by far. We already know you will play fast and loose with facts in service to your ideology, but really, this was a bit much.
ReplyDeletevza
A bit much you say!? I'm just getting started on the old girl. Wait til Satan gets his pitchfork on her ass!
ReplyDeleteYou miss the point, Mary. Your derision of Thatcher is your business. I do not care if you despise Thatcher and write about it every day for the rest of your life. My point is that what you were implying was factually incorrect.
Delete"The real reason for the military send-off is they needed extra soldiers to supplement the 4,000 cops protecting her stinking corpse from English rebels lined up on the side lines of this funeral fiasco. If there were any actual mourners would they have needed the security barricades outside St. Paul’s Cathedral?"
vza
"Thousands of ordinary people lined up ... "
ReplyDeleteMillions didn't. Do you think that people like me who didn't protest vocally and publicly were supporters by default?
Hundreds celebrated the demise of the embodiment of greed and class hatred in Goldthorpe, Yorkshire; hundreds in Easington, Northumberland; hundreds in Liverpool; hundreds in Glasgow. Then there were the protesters along the route, and the unreported street and pub parties throughout the North of England.
Most Thatcher-haters, like me, stayed at home.
In the woman's home town the Thatcher Museum (shudders) set up a viewing room where people could watch the ruling class in mourning on a big screen. Hardly anybody turned up.
Anyone with a spark of decency would deplore what she did to our country in the cause of international capitalism. She began the dismantling of everything that men and women who fought to defeat fascism demanded and obtained from the post-war government.
She was a small-minded bigot, who legislated against homsexuals, against unions, and went on record as sympathising with racists who claimed that British culture was being "swamped" by alien incomers.
Foxed-up Americans admire her. People who experienced the blunt end of thatcherism never will.
"Millions didn't. Do you think that people like me who didn't protest vocally and publicly were supporters by default?"
ReplyDelete(Sigh) Read my response to Mary. I made no blanket, omniscient statements about what all of the British people were doing or thinking with regard to Thatcher's funeral. I merely stated that there were thousands who lined the procession to pay their respects and they outnumbered the haters. You will probably dismiss those thousands as "racists and rednecks" as you did when I asked you how she could win THREE general elections if, as you stated on your blog, the British people loathed her.
I imagine that among those thousands were people who did not entirely agree with all of Thatchers policies, but still found aspects of her life and career to be admirable.
As far as responding to your points about Thatcher. Well really, would you waste your time on this if someone implied that if you do not agree with him, you are lacking in even a spark of decency?
vza
vza,you misquote me. I didn't write that supporters of Thatcher were racists and rednecks. I wrote that the UK has its racists and red baiters. No doubt many of the woman's supporters belonged to those two camps, but there were others.
ReplyDeleteScapegoating and inducing paranoia in a population fed on the lies of the Murdoch propaganda machine, among others, kept the more biddable in line, for a time at least.
She descibed men fighting for their livelihoods as "the enemy within". Her sidekick, Whitelaw, equated the unions with the IRA, at the height of that organisation's bombing campaign. Goebbels would saluted such equals. Some people fell for the lies, long enough for the woman to inflict great damage. The party under her always took power with the backing of a minority, which fell in number with each election.
It's a truism that she divided the country, and the greater part of that divide opposed her and hated all she stood for.
The current bunch of thatcherites knew that if they put on a big show the crowds would turn out, and they did. That was the point of the spectacle, and people like you, vza, fell for it. "Look at all those spectators, they must have loved her."
You know that song "I love a parade".
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ReplyDeleteAnonymous, you're welcome to equivocate or glorify old Maggie all you like. But when you read my posts it would be better if you recognized sarcasm when you see it. If I expressed my real attitude toward people like her, it would be unprintable. I like to run a clean operation.
ReplyDeletevza, maybe you don't lack common decency, but you certainly lack the information and the experience of her vandalism to make a balanced judgement.
ReplyDeleteYou start from the point of hating anything that smacks of communism, socialism, workers' self-determination. Then you recognise an ally in Thatcher. From that position it's difficult to adjust your perception of this individual, particularly (I'd suggest) as your information is filtered through the US media for whom, apparently, the old witch could do no wrong.
Do you know the expression "Distance lends enchantment to the view"?
I've just realised, I wrote a reply to you earlier that hasn't appeared.
"You start from the point of hating anything that smacks of communism, socialism, workers' self-determination."
ReplyDeleteI agree that I cannot make a balanced judgment on the impact of all her policies. My admiration for aspects of Thatcher's career does not mean uncritical acceptance of everything she did. She was dead wrong on some things, in my opinion.
As a woman, I admire her taking on the male bastion of political party power and winning. She had grit and determination. (Calling Thatcher a witch is a very sexist taunt, btw. I also saw signs with "bitch" used! Is it only wrong if we call a woman who is politically Left those names?)
Nixon was a liar and a thug, and did a great deal of damage to our country and yet managed to accomplish some good things, too.
I just do not get this all or nothing mentality, and I sure as hell do not understand a UNION actually organizing an event celebrating her death?! Really dumb in terms of PR.
I am a union member so I really do not hate workers' self-determination. I am grateful for all of the good things the unions have gained for workers, but I have not made them into little gods. Are the workers and their leaders by virtue of their mere existence infallible and all of their demands noble, feasible, and fair? Are union members and leaders incapable of greed, selfishness, and lust for power? There is no way I am going to simply accept union demands if I do not believe they are fair.
There is merit in the expression you cited about distance, but I would suggest the expression: "Can't see the forest for the trees." has some relevance here, too. All of the British people were not union members at the time of Thatcher's elections. Union members were not the only ones who fought and and defeated facism in World War II. Was there any self-awareness on the part of the unions that some of their work actions were seriously pissing off the non-union voters? That the spectacle of dead bodies unburied and garbage not collected, and having to wait weeks to have a simple phone extension plugged in might just be making a large number of people less than willing to give in to union demands? Was there any honest to goodness reflection that perhaps some of the demands were at that time unreasonable considering the state of the country's finances and economy? Or was it just easier to dismiss all those Thatcher voters as greedy capitalists, racists, and loons?
Sometimes we can be so focused on our own narrow interests or those of our tribe, or class, or whatever, that we cannot or will not see the bigger picture.
vza
Btw, I do not "hate" socialism. I have an aversion to socialism that does NOT work. I think we should have a national health care system and I am a big fan of our Social Security program.
I said men and women fought fascism, not unionists.
ReplyDeleteThe unburied bodies was a lie, but it's one that's still repeated. It started with a scaremongering warning that if public service workers went on strike the dead would go unburied, that wasn't enough for the right wing press. They had to say it happened.
The uncollected rubbish in the streets was a fact. But it remained a fact after Thatcher took over. Rubbish collection was no longer a priority, so the streets were still full of uncollected rubbish, but for different reasons that didn't infuriate the right.
Your idea of socialism differs from mine. I regard the NHS as a good thing, but I don't consider it a socialist idea, just common sense. The blueprint for the NHS was drawn up by a liberal. Making the rich pay their fair share of taxes isn't socialism though rich taxdodgers make out that it is.
"Making the rich pay their fair share of taxes isn't socialism though rich taxdodgers make out that it is.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
vza