Netanyahu slammed for spending $127,000 on bed for flight to London
PM’s sleeping requirement for the five-hour flight he and his wife took to Thatcher’s funeral last month prompts complaints from opposition MK, Movement for the Quality of Government
By Times of Israel staff May 11, 2013, 8:50 pm
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced heavy criticism Saturday after it was revealed he spent $127,000 (over 450,000 shekels) of taxpayers’ money having an El Al plane fitted out with a double-bed in an enclosed bedroom for his five-hour flight to London last month to attend the funeral of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
The cost of Netanyahu’s April 16-17 flight to and from London was revealed by Channel 10 News. The prime minister is only permitted to use local airlines for his flights, for security reasons, but the demand for a double bed excluded two of the three Israeli airlines — Israir and Arkia — from the contract to arrange the London flight, because their aircraft are not large enough. Their cost for the flight, in which the Netanyahus would have enjoyed business class or first class seats that recline as beds, would have been $300,000, the TV news said. El Al charged $427,000 for the flight because of the additional cost of installing the requested bed in an enclosed bedroom. Thus the requirement cost the taxpayer an additional $127,000.
Channel 10 noted that President Shimon Peres, who is about to turn 90, did not request a bed even on a recent 11-hour flight to Korea, and never does so on flights to Europe. It said prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon also never asked for a bed to be installed on their flights to and from Europe, and that Sharon sometimes chose not to have a bed installed even on transatlantic flights. …
Netanyahu was personally invited to the funeral by the Thatcher family. Peres was also invited, but it was decided after consultations that only Netanyahu would attend.
Israeli budget allocations to defense are set to reach a record-high NIS 59 billion in 2018: here.
Israeli watchdog group Peace Now accused the government on Thursday of taking steps to legalise four unauthorised settlement outposts in the West Bank, just days before US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives on a peace mission: here.
Contrary to popular myth Margaret Thatcher spent most of her political career supporting the transformation of the then Common Market into today’s European Union: here.
In death, as in life, Margaret Thatcher left Britain divided today as working-class communities gathered for huge parties to celebrate her passing while a rag-bag of royals, political and business leaders arrived in London to mourn her death.
One of the biggest parties marking Thatcher’s death was held at Easington Colliery in County Durham, where former miners held a seven-hour gathering.
Easington Colliery was the last pit to close in the once-mighty Durham coalfield.
A commemoration to mark the 20th anniversary of its closure in April 1993, had been planned for months. Thatcher’s death brought an added incentive for the party in the community’s local club were prices were cut for the celebrations to a pound a pint.
Miners also arrived at Easington from Yorkshire, some wearing the distinctive yellow and black “COAL NOT DOLE” stickers worn in the 1984-85 strike.
Dave Douglass, who worked at Doncaster coalfield for 35 years, said he was there to mourn her birth as “she represented the system that we are all still suffering under.
“I’m also here to commemorate the loss of this pit and every pit in Great Britain,” he said.
“I have been watching so much psychotic drivel on the news this morning talking about the names of each horse in the funeral.
“It’s the kind of stage-managed stuff we see in North Korea.”
Former mining communities in Yorkshire were also at the heart of celebrations.
At one event rockets with images of Thatcher pasted on to them were ignited and soared skywards, exploding in bursts of colour.
At Dodworth outside Doncaster, where the pit once provided more than 1,000 jobs and was the economic bedrock of the community, celebrations lasted all day, culminating in an evening concert.
Former miners at south Elmsall in West Yorkshire booked a local hotel for a party, laying on a free buffet to all who joined in.
And National Union of Mineworkers Yorkshire area chairman Chris Skidmore took part in celebrations at Higham, near Doncaster.
“I worked at Bullcliffe Wood, one of the six pits on the original hit-list before the strike,” he said.
“People remember Cortonwood – but Bullcliffe was one as well.
“The lads always said we’d have a toast with champagne when she went.”
Scottish miners celebrate Thatcher’s funeral with whisky and morbid jokes. Wreaths are laid at memorial to dead pitmen at Monktonhall as one sacked miner says: ‘She destroyed Scotland’: here.
Thatcher’s funeral: Pomp in the service of political reaction: here.
Senior Tory figures attempted to exploit the aftermath of Thatcher’s funeral to urge even more brutal anti-union laws today – but were branded “hypocrites” by leading trade unionists: here.
Attending his first race of the season in China, Ecclestone urged reporters to “tell the truth” about Bahrain as he continued to insist he had no concerns about hosting the event in the strife-torn country this weekend.
The Daily Telegraph does not mention that Bernie Ecclestone is not only an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, but an admirer of Adolf Hitler as well. Which helps to put his ideas about Bahrain into perspective.
Ecclestone is not the only big cheese in the Formula One world with errr … strange ideas.
British racing legend Sir Stirling Moss has provoked outrage by suggesting women are not mentally tough enough to compete in Formula One.
The Daily Telegraph Ecclestone article continues:
Villagers in poorer Shi’ite areas away from the Sakhir circuit are also alleging that King Hamad’s regime is using the money from F1 to enforce further repression. …
His [Ecclestone's] view appeared at odds with an account from Bahrain on Monday reporting tense skirmishes in the village of Al-Ahli. Amani Ali, a 22-year-old female student, was quoted as saying of the grand prix: “Of course we are against it. The race brings money to the regime, which they use to buy weapons and attack us.”
Although Sunday’s race is almost certain to go ahead, two years after it was cancelled at the height of Bahrain’s violently-suppressed revolution, political momentum in Britain is also gathering against the event.
On Tuesday Andy Slaughter MP and Lord Avebury will host a briefing at the House of Lords on behalf of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Bahrain.
The group said that Bahrain had descended “deeper into a political crisis” and “any remaining principles or values of human rights are being trampled upon by Formula One as they prepare to take the sport, yet again, to a country which at present is a controversial and unsuitable location for any competition”.
The group highlighted allegations that in 2011 Bahrainis employed for this leg of the championship experienced torture at the circuit.
They said on Monday: “F1 insisted on holding last year’s grand prix and Bahrainis were killed, tortured and detained when they protested.” And they asked: “Is a country that at present is suppressing the rights of its people, and using sheer brute force to intimidate them, a place for sport of any kind?”
…
Damon Hill, the former world champion, has expressed grave worry about F1 being “hijacked” by Bahraini authorities and implicitly endorsing ruthless police tactics by travelling there. Extra barbed wire and security fencing have been introduced this year around the Sakhir track.
Bahrain Is Becoming Even More Repressive Because of the F1 Race
Reports that police are arresting and intimidating those living closest to the race tracks add to the kingdom’s already worrying situation.
Bahrain: New move to crush dissent ahead of Grand Prix: here.
Bahrain on fire but race goes ahead – No grand prix on our blood, protestors tell Ecclestone: here.
Jean Todt, the head of motor sport‘s world governing body who has condemned hundreds of Formula One personnel to a potentially hazardous and harrowing week in Bahrain, will not be attending this Sunday’s race himself: here.
A group of British MPs have called for the Bahrain Grand Prix to be cancelled amid unrest in the Gulf state: here.
Bahrain: Police ‘fire tear gas’ at boys’ school: here. And here.
Bahrain Grand Prix: calls to cancel F1 race amid threats to jail anyone who ‘insults the king’: here.
The irony of the campaign is that the original song – despite its seemingly praiseworthy lyrics – is actually believed to be a sarcastic dig at the former prime minister by the punk band from Burnley, Lancashire.
band member Steven Hartley commented that it had been written as a satirical swipe at her. … singer Michael “Haggis” Hargreaves …said: “I find it hilarious that Tories have adopted it.”
Maybe Thatcher fans have adopted a punk rock satire as a song of praise because no-one able to write music has ever written a real pro-Thatcher song.
The Conservative politicians failed in their aim to get I’m in Love with Margaret Thatcher higher up the charts than Ding Dong! The witch is dead. Maybe because there are fewer Thatcher supporters than Thatcher opponents in Britain. And maybe because Conservatives, even if unable to distinguish between satire and tribute, hate punk rock, or any music which is not a military march, so much that they will not buy it, even with supposedly Thatcherite lyrics.
This is not the first time that British Tories don’t understand the meaning of a song.
Now I’m a union man
Amazed at what I am
I say what I think
That the company stinks
Yes I’m a union man.
When we meet in the local hall
I’ll be voting with them all
With a hell of a shout
It’s out brothers out
And the rise of the factory’s fall.
Oh you don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.
As a union man I’m wise
To the lies of the company spies
And I don’t get fooled
By the factory rules
‘Cause I always read between the lines.
And I always get my way
If I strike for higher pay
When I show my card
To the Scotland Yard
This what I say.
Oh you don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.
Before the union did appear
My life was half as clear
Now I’ve got the power
To the working hour
And every other day of the year.
So though I’m a working man
I can ruin the government’s plan
Though I’m not too hard
The sight of my card
Makes me some kind of superman.
Oh you don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
You don’t get me I’m part of the union
Till the day I die, till the day I die.
The rousing sing-along “Part Of The Union” was embraced by unions but was vilified by the Conservative Party, which assembled Parliament to vote for banning the song. In spite of, or because of, the controversy, the song rose to #2.
However, other Tories thought the song was a satire of trade unionism; no matter how often Strawbs band members denied that.
Apartheid’s victims will shed no tears about Thatcher: here.
The Anglican bishop of Baroness Thatcher‘s home town has described the scale and cost of her funeral as a “mistake” which may play into the hands of extremists.
The Bishop of Grantham, The Rt Revd Dr Tim Ellis, said the ceremonial event, costing up to ten million pounds, was “asking for trouble” amid divisions about the late prime minister’s legacy.
“I think that in a context where there is manifestly great ill-feeling about her tenure and about her legacy, to then actually have a situation where we seem to be expecting the nation to glorify that with a £10 million funeral, I think any sensible person would say that that is asking for trouble.
“It plays into the hands of those more extreme people who will use the funeral as an opportunity to promote certain political views.”
The Anglican bishop of Baroness Thatcher‘s home town has described the scale and cost of her funeral as a “mistake” that may play into the hands of extremists.
The Bishop of Grantham, the Rt Revd Dr Tim Ellis, said the ceremonial event, costing up to £10 million, was “asking for trouble” amid divisions about the late prime minister’s legacy.
Lady Thatcher’s funeral, on Wednesday, will be the most lavish for any Prime Minister since Winston Churchill was accorded a state funeral in 1965, and the first since then that the Queen will attend.
The former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, who is expected to be among the mourners, also questioned whether it needed to be so lavish.
He told Sky News: “I have to say something a little more simple – just as solemn but a little more simple – might be better. But look, this is chosen by the Conservative Party to celebrate their great leader; it’s chosen by her family – even if I might feel a bit uncomfortable about some aspects of it, I’m perfectly prepared to accept that.”
Mrs Thatcher is to be buried with military honours. Though it is not formally classed as a state funeral, many of the public see it as such. A Downing Street petition opposing it has received more than 37,000 signatures, and a poll for The Independent on Sunday showed that 60 per cent thought that her funeral should not be paid for from public funds, as against 25 per cent who thought it should.
So, PM can find money for funeral but not life-saving services: here.
Margaret Thatcher made Britain a “nastier, more brutal and less equal country,” TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady declared in a devastating attack just days before the ex-PM’s funeral.
Ms O’Grady received a rousing reception when she spoke at the Northern TUC conference on Saturday in Newcastle.
She said the economic and social disasters facing the people of Britain today could all be traced back to Thatcher’s rule, and that the coalition government was hell-bent on completing what she started.
“Under her leadership, Britain became a nastier, more brutal and less equal country,” she said.
“Her policies brought destruction, devastation and despair to millions of working people, turning vibrant communities into economic wastelands.
“She demonised unions because we were the last line of defence against a cheap labour economy and because we stood up for a decent society.
“Many of the chronic problems we now face as a country – the destruction of our manufacturing, ship building and mining industries, the deregulation of finance capital, the housing crisis, rip-off privatisation, the gulf between north and south, growing inequality and falling wages – are direct consequences of Mrs Thatcher’s policies.”
Ms O’Grady said the current government seems “hell-bent” on finishing the job started by Thatcher.
“This is the nastiest, most ideological, most right-wing administration Britain has ever had,” she continued.
“It is a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich whose failed austerity policies are holding back economic growth, depressing living standards and denying a generation of school-leavers hope for the future.
“Public services that have taken generations to build face privatisation and the benefits of ordinary families, low-paid workers and the unemployed are under attack.”
As more details of Thatcher’s funeral were released today a ComRes poll showed that 60 per cent of people across Britain are opposed to £10 million of public money being splashed out on the ceremony.
Labour’s former deputy prime minister John Prescott also condemned plans for taxpayers to foot the bill for Wednesday’s funeral, calling it a “political propaganda exercise.
“This country paid enough thanks to that woman so why the hell should we continue to pay now she’s dead?”
Mr Prescott suggested the 13,000 millionaires who had each received a £100,000 tax cut as a result of the government’s cut in the top rate of tax should instead each contribute £770 each to pay for it.
An online campaign has driven sales of Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, and the latest placings released by the Official Charts Company show it had sold 20,000 copies up to last night and is now at number four.
The late former prime minister divided opinion and while many have mourned, some have seen her death as a cause for celebration, prompting a download surge for the song.
The chart position includes sales of all the versions of the song from the 1939 film recording, while a separate cover version by Ella Fitzgerald from 1961 is currently outside the top 75.
This music video is called Ella Fitzgerald – Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead.
The song is also on course to become the shortest top 10 single ever, with the most popular version running to 51 seconds.
The BBC said it would decide whether to play the track during Radio 1′s top 40 countdown when places are finalised at the weekend.
It said: “The Official Chart Show on Sunday is a historical and factual account of what the British public has been buying and we will make a decision about playing it when the final chart positions are clear.”
‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ On Course For Number One After Margaret Thatcher Dies: here.
Well, today the chart positions are clear. And the BBC does not talk anymore about their Top 40 show being “a historical and factual account of what the British public has been buying”. They have decided to censor a 74-year-old musical song out of sycophantic loyalty to Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative party. The BBC says playing the song in the show, like they play all other hit songs, would be “tasteless.” So, they censor the song Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead. All but five seconds of it.
“Tasteless”? How about middle of the road songs in the charts, which maybe fans of punk rock think are tasteless? How about heavy metal, which classical music lovers may dislike? Etc. etc. etc. No-one is forcing Thatcher admirers to buy this 74-year-old Judy Garland song.
Associated Press writes:
Fri April 12 2013 13:19:00
Ding-dong over Thatcher song is latest censorship controversy for BBC
LONDON – A 70-year-old song is giving the BBC a headache.
The radio and television broadcaster has agonized over whether to play Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead, a tune from The Wizard of Oz that is being driven up the charts by opponents of Margaret Thatcher as a mocking memorial to the late British prime minister.
A compromise announced Friday — the BBC will play part of Ding Dong!
a part of five seconds
but not the whole song on its chart-countdown radio show — is unlikely to end the recriminations.
This is not the first time Britain’s national broadcaster, which is nicknamed “Auntie” for its “we-know-what’s-good-for-you” attitude, has been caught in a bind about whether to ban a song on grounds of language, politics or taste.
Here’s a look at some previous censorship scandals:
SEX, DRUGS AND DOUBLE ENTENDRES
The 1960s and ’70s saw several songs barred from airplay for sex or drug references, including The Beatles’ A Day in the Life, for a fleeting and implicit reference to smoking marijuana.
…
The BBC frequently has been targeted by self-appointed moral guardians, most famously the late anti-smut activist Mary Whitehouse, who campaigned for decades against what she saw as pornography and permissiveness.
In 1972, Whitehouse got the BBC to ban the video for Alice Cooper’s School’s Out for allegedly being a bad influence on children. The controversy helped the song reach No. 1 in the charts, and Cooper sent Whitehouse flowers. He later said she had given his band “publicity we couldn’t buy.”
But Whitehouse’s campaign to get Chuck Berry’s My Ding-a-Ling banned on grounds of indecency was unsuccessful. The BBC’s chief at the time told Whitehouse that, while the song’s title could be seen as a double entendre, “we believe that the innuendo is, at worst, on the level of seaside postcards or music hall humour.”
POLITICAL PITFALLS
Paul McCartney may now be the cuddly elder statesman of pop, but his first single with the band Wings, Give Ireland Back to the Irish, caused a storm.
The Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen — with its opening refrain “God save the queen, the fascist regime” — was released in 1977, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee.
The BBC banned it on the grounds of “gross bad taste,” and some stores refused to stock it, to the delight of the punk band, whose anti-establishment credentials were cemented by the controversy.
It remains one of the most famous songs never to reach No. 1 on the charts. It hit No. 2, but was kept from the top spot by Rod Stewart’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It.
Punk fans sensed a conspiracy, and debate still rages over whether the Pistols’ song really did reach No. 1.
BUOYED BY A BAN
God Save the Queen and School’s Out aren’t the only examples of how an airplay ban can boost a song.
In 1984, BBC DJ Mike Read pulled the plug on Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood midway through its first broadcast, calling the thumping, lyrically suggestive song obscene.
Though it wasn’t officially banned, the BBC did not play it. The controversy helped push the song by a then-unknown band up the charts, where it stayed in the No. 1 spot for five weeks.
CENSORS AND SENSIBILITIES
While the moral panics of past eras can seem ridiculous, this week’s Thatcher controversy shows that the central issue — which is worse, censorship or causing offence? — is both complex and unresolved.
Police fear ‘death parties’ will disrupt Margaret Thatcher’s funeral procession. But officers rule out the use of rubber bullets and water cannon in the event of any trouble: here.
RMT calls for union revival to mark death of Thatcher: here.
Where Thatcher’s memory is tied to war. Wounds of 1982 Falklands war, ordered by late UK PM and which cost many Argentinian lives, still linger: here.
Since large numbers of people are in this category, time is being spent on compiling a list of the ‘most dangerous’.
These are to be got out of the way for a number of days by house arrests, or illegal jailings, in fact kidnappings.
Troops from the SAS and Special Boat Service will be in the vanguard of the security operation, that signifies that the gloves are coming off in the struggle to smash the NHS and the Welfare State.
Special targets of the operation are Irish Republican and left-wing groups.
Detectives are monitoring social media, internet forums and Blackberry messaging networks in the expectation that attempts will be made to halt the funeral.
Yesterday afternoon, PM Cameron put himself forward as the heir of Thatcher and her chief mourner.
Minute’s silence for Margaret Thatcher: Hillsborough group says tribute would be ‘insult to fans’; former sports minister warns silence would backfire: here.
Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers says the silence ahead of their game at Reading on Saturday is for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster and not for the former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher.
Reading chairman Sir John Madejski has called for football to mark the death of Baroness Thatcher with a one-minute silence but the Premier League and Football League will not be asking clubs to organise tributes.
Rodgers says remembering the people who died at Hillsborough is “the only remembrance there should be” and it will give Reading an opportunity “to show their support for the families and the 96 supporters who are no longer here”.
April 2013 – A contrast of London’s historic funerals between those evoking love and admiration and those provoking mass hatred and disquiet.
The City of London is no stranger to large scale funerals for persons who have impacted greatly upon the Country’s historic events.
Back in the latter part of 1648, thousands of people marched on foot whilst others rode on horseback as they followed the funeral cortege of the great leveller leader Thomas Rainsborough. He had been assassinated a week before (30th October) at Doncaster, many levellers believing that Cromwell was implicated. They followed the procession going via Islington, St Pauls, Cheapside and through the East End to Wapping where he was interred. He had been the leader of the physical force New Model Army levellers, the Parliamentary naval Vice Admiral and had been a great Civil War commander. The followers wore ribbons of sea green (his own regimental colours) and black. From that time, sea green has been associated as the colour of incorruptibility. Indeed, French Revolutionary leader Robespierre was called the ‘sea green incorruptible’. There was nothing but affection for the deceased shown at this historic event.
Moving on in history, another great funeral took place in January 1806. The naval hero Admiral Lord Nelson had been killed at the battle of Trafalgar on October 21st 1805. Fatal casualties would normally have been buried at sea but in this case, his comrades decided to preserve his body in a barrel of brandy. His ship, the Victory arrived at Portsmouth on December 4th. The preparations for a state funeral were by then underway and the proceedings reached their peak over the days of 5th to the 9th of January 1806. The body was taken up the Thames on one of Charles the Second’s state barges and was eventually interred in St Paul’s Cathedral. Thousands of admirers flocked to the events. A monument to the hero, Nelson’s Column was constructed between 1840 and 1843 and is, of course, sited in Trafalgar Square.
We can compare these two outpourings of natural grief with the imminent event in London next week. Here, the forces and police are being deployed in huge numbers in the Capital and along the route in order to prevent hostilities aimed at the cortege. Already, the secret services are drawing up lists of those to be arrested and prevented from getting anywhere near this exclusive ‘Establishment’ function. Because there are so many hostile parties from throughout the World to the historical memory of the deceased, this is going to prove a very complicated operation. The cost of all the surveillance, logistics and event is going to be huge. The great insult to the British working class is that they are being asked to fund most of this (at a time of supposed austerity). Rarely in World history can we say that military might has been used to prevent a County’s inhabitants from venting their fury at a leader who left office such a long time ago! The irony is that some of this fury will be on public display in Trafalgar Square!
Easington Labour MP Grahame Morris told today why he would join an emotional ceremony next Wednesday to mark the destruction of 1,400 local miners’ jobs under vicious Thatcherite policies.
Mr Morris was among a large group of around 100 Labour members who disobeyed party whips and refused to attend today’s gruesome hours-long Commons session to pay tribute to Margaret Thatcher.
While the Establishment will bring London to a halt next Wednesday with an obscene Thatcher funeral spectacular, Mr Morris will be preparing for a special event to mark the 20th anniversary of the closure of his local Easington pit.
The event in Easington Colliery Working Men’s Club is expected to be a moving occasion, with sad memories of the pit jobs massacre mixed with emotional highs as Thatcher’s victims enthusiastically toast her demise.
Closure of the pit with the loss of 1,400 jobs under the post-Thatcher Tory government in 1993 devastated the local community.
Mr Morris said that the effects of coalfield and industrial closures in East Durham were “absolutely dire.”
He declared that it would have been “hypocritical” for him to attend the Commons today in view of the disastrous consequences of Thatcher’s policies for people in his area, including his own family.
Durham Miners chairman Alan Cummings, who will be hosting next Wednesday’s event, told the Star today: “I hated the woman. I think she was evil.”
The special recall parliamentary session today turned into a ghoulish ruling-class theatre of the absurd, in which the venomous and destructive Thatcher was portrayed as a great national figure.
Yawning gaps on the Labour benches took the shine off the event as Prime Minister David Cameron declared that “she made this country great again.”
Labour leader Ed Miliband jumped up on cue to describe Thatcher as “a great and towering figure” even though he “disagreed with much of what she did.”
One of the few dissenting voices was Labour MP David Winnick, who recalled that Thatcher’s “highly damaging” policies “caused immense pain and suffering to ordinary people.”
He accused the Prime Minister of hijacking Thatcher’s death for political gain.
Mr Cameron was using the parliamentary session as “a platform for his party’s ideology, not just eulogy,” complained Mr Healey.
Miners’ MP Ian Lavery also stayed away, declaring: “I feel very personally about what Thatcher did to my family, my friends and my colleagues, not to mention the people I represent in Parliament.”
Another deliberate absentee was left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn, who declared that the coverage of Thatcher’s death by most of the media was “beyond absurd.”
Parliamentary authorities announced that MPs returning from overseas visits for the Commons tribute to Thatcher would be able to claim up to £3,750 in travel expenses.
Next Wednesday’s costly ceremonial funeral for Thatcher in St Paul’s will be backed by a huge mobilisation of police and armed forces.
The processional route to the cathedral will be lined by personnel from army, navy and air force, with various military bands performing.
The coffin will be draped in a Union Jack and borne on a gun carriage drawn by six horses, while guns will be fired at one-minute intervals from beside the Tower of London.
After a full year, the miners were defeated but Thatcher did not have long to savour her victory as Prime Minister. Her pigheaded imposition of the poll tax moved a people weary of the politics of greed to revolt. She became an embarrassment to her party and they brutally cast her aside.
When we say we celebrate her death, we are reflecting the deep and lasting bitterness of our mining communities – and felt across the entire working class – at the ravages of her brutal policies which destroyed the lives and prospects of so many people.
Even today, we see the legacy of her policies in the continued vandalism of the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition, this time aimed at dismantling the Welfare State.
Thatcher infamously said, “There is no such thing as society”. She was the person who did her best to wreck it. We are the people who will rebuild it.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013)
The former UK Prime Minister who held office from 4 May 1979 until 28 November 1990 died 8 April 2013. To her family our condolences.
The legacy of what the Conservative Government did to British Industry under Thatcher is not one to be proud of if you really did want the best for the people.
Of course Thatcher was the symbol of “free enterprise” and set out to serve those whose interests were profit for the few.
The coal mining industry is not on its own in suffering the decimation of a world class industry in the name of the “free market”.
Thatcher lived long enough to see her beliefs demolished when the “free market” collapsed and came running to the State for support.
Unlike the Banks who gambled, cheated and were bailed out – Coal mines were closed and communities were left to suffer.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher is gone but the damage caused by her fatally flawed politics sadly lingers on.
Billy Elliot audience gives go-ahead to Thatcher song
Tuesday 09 April 2013
Theatre-goers at a West End production of Billy Elliot voted overwhelmingly to keep in a song celebrating Margaret Thatcher’s death hours after she died.
Lingering resentment felt by mining communities towards Baroness Thatcher.
Street parties break out as some of those who were most opposed to her policies seek to counter those paying tribute.The death of Baroness Thatcher has been welcomed by critics of the former prime minister – who labelled her “heartless” and claimed she “destroyed” parts of the country.
Street parties broke out in several locations as those who resented her policies and their consequences celebrated the leader who was more devisive than almost any other in recent history.
As tributes to the 87-year-old flooded in from across the globe, widespread condemnation of her legacy – particularly on social media – showed her ability to polarise opinion remained.
Margaret Thatcher milk snatcher? Iron lady still divides in death
by FP Staff Apr 9, 2013
… But while US President Barack Obama spoke for many in the wider world in praising the grocer’s daughter with the eyes as steely as her resolve, the scars of bitter struggles left Britain itself as deeply divided now as under her leadership.
Tuesday’s newspapers told the story: “The Woman Who Saved Britain”, declared the Daily Mail from the right; “The Woman Who Divided A Nation”, headlined the left’s Daily Mirror, which questioned the grand, ceremonial funeral planned for next week. …
“Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world. Margaret was such a leader. Her global impact was vast,” said Tony Blair, whose term as Labour prime minister from 1997-2007 he acknowledged owed a debt to the former leader of his Conservative opponents. …
Obama led an outpouring of tributes from the United States: “America has lost a true friend,” he said.
Mourners laid roses, tulips and lilies on the doorstep of her house in Belgravia, one of London’s most exclusive areas. One note said: “The greatest British leader” while another said to “The Iron Lady”, a soubriquet bestowed by a Soviet army newspaper in the 1970s and which Thatcher loved.
Mrs Thatcher’s death was a “great day” for coal miners, David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association said. The ex-miner, who turned 70 today, spent all of his working life at Wearmouth Colliery. He said: “It looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had. “There’s no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people.”
The abiding domestic images of her premiership will remain those of conflict: huge police confrontations with mass ranks of coalminers whose year-long strike failed to save their pits and communities; Thatcher riding a tank in a white headscarf; and flames rising above Trafalgar Square in the riots over the deeply unpopular “poll tax” which contributed to her downfall.
“I found her to be confrontational, dogmatic, abrasive, she attacked people in her own country and didn’t listen to people in her own party,” recalled Caspar Joseph, 51, a history teacher in Manchester. “She was destructive, nihilistic.
“I will be raising a glass. I have some 1992 Dom Perignon which I have been saving for either the birth of my first grandchild or the death of Margaret Thatcher … but actually I might drink some Argentinian wine – her attitude was contemptible over the Falklands.”
Some opponents said on social media that they would hold a party to celebrate her death while a website set up to ask if Thatcher was dead had received 180,000 likes by midday and was updated with a large block-capital “Yes.
To those who opposed her she was blunt to a degree.
“The lady’s not for turning”, she once informed members of her own Conservative Party who were urging her to moderate her policies. In power, she faced plotting inside her party from those who thought she was unreasonably divisive.
Margaret Thatcher’s death greeted with street parties in Brixton and Glasgow: here.
Hundreds gather in Glasgow, Liverpool and Brixton to ‘celebrate’ death of Margaret Thatcher: here.
Some responses by artists and performers to Margaret Thatcher, who died yesterday. here.
The dictate that one ‘not speak ill of the dead’ is (at best) appropriate for private individuals, not influential public figures: here.
MARGARET Thatcher was ignored by the bourgeoisie for 23 years after she was put out of office by the Tory leadership in 1990. This was when her disastrous attempt to bring in a Poll Tax started a revolt on the scale of the original 1381 insurrection. She has now been rediscovered after her death by the same ruling class that dumped her: here.
Left MPs will boycott an emergency parliamentary session for Margaret Thatcher tomorrow, branding it a “waste of taxpayers’ money”: here.
