I was out of the country when the Queen Mother died, but I have the impression that her passing did not get anything like the wall-to-wall coverage of rhetoric that Margaret Thatcher's is at the moment, and we still have the funeral with full military honours to look forward to.
Britain is a truly strange place and I love being here because of that, but I can equally see why a lot of people want nothing better than to get well away from it by emigrating to Australia, or anywhere else which has at least a bit of decent, predictable weather.
Nobody - nobody - could have predicted the epidemic of irrational grief which followed the death of Princess Diana, from a nation better known for it's almost autistic lack of compassion toward strangers. Remember how her funeral cortege had to keep stopping every few hundred yards to clear the flowers from the windscreens, all the way to Althorpe?
I (and a lot of other people) suspect that the drivers of Maggie's hearse may have to stop many times to clear the windscreen of a 50-50 mixture of flowers and dog-shit. I really hope not, but you never know how people are going to behave these days.
Just as foretold in those Rupert Bear annuals of the 1950s, the seasons have reversed.
Respect should. Be shown here ...the woman is dead.
ReplyDeleteAll these odd celebrations that have carried on in the wake of her passing shows poor breeding, rudeness and immaturity
If you don't like someone you keep your council and keep away from the funeral
I agree, John, but one half of the society which she said din't exist doesn't.
DeleteAnyone still not sure of her world importance should probably listen to the tributes next Wednesday. It's an obvious thing to say, but there is nothing the hard-left hate more than a successful right wing politician.
ReplyDeleteWe have been listening to tributes all week all ready Cro. The only person who ever got the better of her before she was knifed in the back by her own Tory colleagues, was that woman who questioned - live on air - which direction the Belgrano was heading when it was sunk by a torpedo. She died a few weeks ago too - just before Maggie.
DeleteI rather like this quote from the music star Morrissey who correctly states:
ReplyDelete"Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership”
Thatcher is remembered as The Iron Lady only because she possessed completely negative traits such as persistent stubbornness and a determined refusal to listen to others.
"Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish freedom fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the Ivory Trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own Cabinet booted her out."
Hang on a minute - 'Irish Freedom Fighters'? Was Morrissey talking about the gangsters of the North who hi-jacked a perfectly reasonable request for independence by turning the political arena into a disgusting bomb-site? The Brighton bombing was the only time I first felt any compassion for Norman Tebbit and his wife.
DeleteI don't like Greenpeace either - they are a bunch of self-serving adventurists splashing about in inflatables and having a whale of a time. I know an ex Greenpeace director, and she told me this herself.
Are you saying that you go along with Morrissey's silly opinions, Heron? If so, you are a dimmer Druid than I thought you were.
Sorry about the insult, but adulation of the IRA makes me lose my sense of humour - not that Morrissey ever had one in the first place.
DeleteI know where you are coming from Tom and I forgive you :)
DeleteI am dismayed by the 'celebrations' of Thatcher's death...but why the blazes she gets a 'ceremonial' funeral with the Queen in attendance is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteMe too.
DeleteSo you are a Rupert Bear fan too Tom - I knew we must have some major thing in our minds in common! Am ignoring the whole Thatcher thing in the hopes thatit all goes away.
ReplyDeleteIt will in time - unlike her legacy, which cannot be ignored and won't go away until both you and I are long dead.
DeleteI am reading "Letters From a Fainthearted Feminist" again (first published 1982) - hilariously Jill Tweedy describes that political area.
ReplyDeleteAn info about the Bahlsen-cookie I put at your former post.
I will go and look now!
DeleteA German Robin Hood!
DeleteIt makes you wonder why the world's most important decision makers held her in such high regard. They must all be wrong!
ReplyDeleteNo they were all right, and are currently enjoying their retirements on the estimated 13 to 20 TRILLION pounds which she made possible for them to salt away in off-shore bank accounts. If only a fraction of that money were to be put back into the US and UK banking systems, we would be reaping the benefits of her legacy right now. Britain should not be broke.
DeleteThese must be the people who she referred to as the 'wealth creators', but she must have thought that they had the same, high principals as she undoubtedly did.
DeleteI'm a bit of a 'newshound' so this article from the Scotsman gives good account of the 'divisive' nature of what is happening in the country as that woman dominates everywhere at the moment. Butterflies and chaos always come to mind when one thinks of how history unfolds itself, she was no butterfly but brought a change for the worse; How she did it has left a bitter legacy......
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/opinion/comment/joyce-mcmillan-thatcher-rejoicing-part-of-legacy-1-2891321
Butterfly? I will look it up, thanks Thelma.
ReplyDelete