Maggie is Dead.

[Talkinpeace]

at last.

No, probablynot. Then s/he'll never know what s/he's missing ...

To not4turning,

If there was not such outpouring of her brilliance and "girl power" people would not have protested so loudly. It is the over-complimenting of this lady that has caused such a backlash - she stands for things many find distasteful and do not want the tories to feel they can use her memory as a way of diminsiing the state too much further: local council - 2,500 jobs left , have to be cut to 250 by next year. Our services are not just down-sizing but diminishing - why let tories feel we all want this a Thatcherite policy.

I will be wearing red on Wednesday (see twitter #WearRedOnWed) as a mark of respect to all the people whose lives were made worse as a result of Thatcherism, because of all the hypocritical tripe that has been spouted by the media almost constantly about Thatcher all day and every day since she died, and because of tax payers money being used for her funeral.

Solo, yes the article about what has changed in the Guardian is a good one, and more pits were closed under Wilson in the 1960s than Thatcher in the 1970s.

I listened to Any Questions on Friday and Labour's Alan Johnson said an interesting thing - that the right to buy of council houses was first suggested by the Labour Party in its 1959 manifesto.

This is from wikipedia

'Individual local authorities have always had the ability to sell council houses to their tenants, but until the early 1970s such sales were extremely rare.

The Labour Party initially proposed the idea of the right of tenants to own the house they live in, in its manifesto for the 1959 General Election which it subsequently lost.[1] Later, the Conservative-controlled Greater London Council of the late 1960s was persuaded by Horace Cutler, its Chairman of Housing, to create a general sales scheme. Cutler disagreed with the concept of local authorities as providers of housing and supported a free market approach. GLC housing sales were not allowed during the Labour administration of the mid-1970s but picked up again once Cutler became Leader in 1977. They proved extremely popular, and Cutler was close to Margaret Thatcher (a London MP) who made the right to buy council housing a Conservative Party policy nationally.

In the meantime, council house sales to tenants began to increase. Some 7,000 were sold to their tenants during 1970, but in two short years that figure soared to more than 45,000 in 1972.[2]

After Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in May 1979, the legislation to implement the Right to Buy was passed in the Housing Act 1980. The sale price of a council house was based on its market valuation but also included a discount to reflect the rents paid by tenants and also to encourage take-up. The legislation gave council tenants the right to buy their council house at a discounted value, depending on how long they had been living in the house, with the proviso that if they sold their house before a minimum period had expired they would have to pay back a proportion of the discount.'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Buy

There is an interesting article by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Siunday today where he argues that Thatcher was a failure i.e. she was too soft and did not go far enough. He has a point and I agree with some of the areas where she was not Conservative enough, but Hitchens often says that the Tories are not very good because they don't go far enough, but I think he fails to take account of political realities and the fact that you can only change things fairly slowly. But he is right in saying that most of teh current Tories tried to distance themselves from Thatcher and tried to be like New Labour. That is the reason they are now losing many Tory voters to UKIP.

hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/04/lets-remember-maggie-for-what-she-really-was-a-tragic-failure.html

A very good article in the Mail that corrects some of the misleading Marxist mythology about Thatcherism and clarifies some facts.

"It has also become fashionable to blame one of her greatest triumphs ? the sale of council homes to tenants ? for today?s horrendous housing crisis and long waiting lists.

Britain?s social housing sector was almost Soviet in size before Thatcher?s right-to-buy scheme was introduced, accounting for a third of all homes. Yet today, even after the sell-offs, it is a little-known fact that it remains much larger than in most other countries ? worth up to a fifth of the total. That?s more than Denmark, Sweden, France, Finland, Ireland, Belgium, Slovenia, Germany and Italy.

Yet these countries clearly do not all suffer from the same problems that we do. There is no reason why the State should own the homes in which it houses the poor. The UK?s insufficient supply of homes is directly attributable to the fact that the Thatcherite revolution sadly left untouched the post-1945 planning system, one of Britain?s last bastions of socialist thinking.

We need the private sector to build more homes to make sure there are enough for everybody, at affordable prices, not hark back to a dystopian vision of the government as a super-landlord."

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308755/Which-PMs-sacked-miners--Clue-It-wasnt-Lady-Thatcher---The-amazing-facts-make-mockery-rabble-want-wreck-funeral.html

I abhorred her politics and had nothing good to say about her in life But I think all those 'celebrating' and 'dancing on her grave' are ridiculous. She has not suffered some ill fate like an accident or something which although still tasteless I could see true haters rejoicing in her misfortune. She was an 87 yr old woman who was unwell and died Everyone dies how can you celebrate something natural and which was in all honesty probably a kindness to her considering her health?

But I think all those 'celebrating' and 'dancing on her grave' are ridiculous.

I'm uncomfortable with the overt celebrations. The thing is that those who are objecting quite reasonably to the amount of public money being spent and who want to speak out against her to redress the balance of all the glorification going on are being tarred with the same brush.

Dancing and singing about the witch being dead isn't right but nor is spending millions in public money on her funeral. One is being encouraged by outrage as a result of the other.

I think the spending on her funeral is morally wrong considering the state of the country and how the poorest are being expected to bear the brunt,she was the queen of bloody austerity The irony!

Another irony is, that Thatcher was all about taking things away from public ownership and selling them to the private sector, but yet she's getting a publicly funded funeral.

With her political stance, surely she'd have preferred a privately funded/sponsored funeral?!

As for the funeral protests, I think providing they're peaceful, I don't think anyone has the right to complain about them. When public funds are being spent on something people disagree with, those people have the right to protest, as all of us pay into the public purse. (Even those who don't work, pay into the public purse other ways).

And of course, the news that it appears the Thatcher "family" home is owned by companies in tax havens, which means her family will avoid shelling out almost £2.5m in inheritance tax just adds fuel to the fire when she's getting a £10m funeral.

noddyholder - William Hague said we've got the £10m to pay for her funeral.

Funny that they couldn't find that £10m to save a few libraries or hospitals isn't it?!

How many hospitals would £10m save?

The funeral will be great publicity for Britain. It will be shown all over the world.

How many hospitals would £10m save?

None. We are spending £109 billion this year, £4 billion more than last year.

In that context £10m is just a rounding error

Zamantha

I have never voted Tory. But I find the vile and abhorrent comments distasteful.

Armchair warriors if you like. As Ms Holden says; none of you really live in the world. Bunch of women who make quilts, cupcakes and arrange bitch knits.....you would do well to really get out and find out what people really think in real life.

In that context £10m is just a rounding error

That 'rounding error' could be TAs in a lot more classrooms for a year or meaningful respite for a lot of families with children with disabilities.

I dont dispute that Goldmandra. But where do you draw the line with that line of thought? Should the government pay for nothing except welfare, health & education?

Furthermore, if you want to use that argument with the £10m, think of how many TA's you could get or meaningful respite for children with disabilities you could get with the £48 BILLION pounds we're spending on debt interest alone. That's just the interest! We're not even close to paying back the actual debt.

And what of the £3billion spent on Dept culture, media & sports? Surely having more nurses is more important than that dept yes?

My point is that sort of logic is rather flawed and whilst £10million on it's own is a lot of money, in the scale of government budgets, it's a drop in the ocean.

I'm not saying we should pay for her funeral. Frankly it really doesn't bother me either way. But people are getting all het up over peanuts. Let's put it another way, £10million is about 6p per person.

£10M 'a rounding error' - it'd pay for thousands of nurse posts that are currently under threat or being closed or not filled when a vacancy comes up, or replaced by badly-paid, unregulated HCAs. (Individual HCAs may be very good indeed but they are not qualified professionals.)

There are millions of people who would not willingly contribute a ha'penny towards her funeral. I'm sure my Mother would like the money Maggie cost her paid back, thank you very much, rather than having to pay even more.

Well there's lots of things I personally don't want to see my tax money 'wasted' on either. Unfortunately our tax money isn't a pick & mix.

And my point which you are ignoring is that there are MUCH bigger fish to fry.

Moan about it all you want but frankly it's amazing how much hatred towards Thatcher is based upon lies, myths and frankly misunderstanding. She wasn't perfect. Far from it. But I'm positive if she was a bloke the same level of hatred wouldn't have been levelled at her.

For the record, I hate Blair and Cameron just as much as I hate her.

Although i don't agree with the things being said about an old lady on fb, and find it somewhat disrespectful talking of the dead in such a way, she ruined the lifes of many and bought many changes in we are still suffering from today.

I find it somewhat disgusting on the same day they are rolling out benefits cuts and caps that they can spend such a ridiculous amount of money on a funeral.
Yes i understand the reasons behind her having a decent funeral, but 10million!!!! WHY and in a time the nhs could do with that money as could many other sectors.
How can they justify such a large chunk of money on the funeral of anyone when others get a pretty meagre send off???

Couldn't Mark spend some of the money he was saving up for his next coup attempt on his mother's funeral instead?

Apparently Maggie's estate is contributing to the funeral. Always have been planning to. Their contribution will be published after the funeral.

Plus, of course, it was Gordon Brown who first started the talk about a state funeral for Maggie. He consulted the queen about it when Maggie was in her early 80s (I think she was diagnosed with dementia then or had had her first stroke) and he went to the Queen to get her blessing for a State funeral. At that point they were also proposing a fly past! Maggie vetoed that and a state funeral - though she did agree to a ceremonial one (so would I if someone suggests it for mine!)

£10 million is an out and out insult to anyone who is suffering under this government and being told "We're all in this together."

They clearly think people are stupid.

Freedom For the record, I hate Blair and Cameron just as much as I hate her.
Me too. And I can't stand the way people respond with 'well Labour did this, Blair did that...' whenever you express an anti-Tory sentiment. Being anti-Tory doesn't necessarily make you 'pro' the opposition FFS.

London maybe, in view of the protests, it would be prudent for the Thatcher estate to let us know what their contribution will be before the funeral. It might just nip some of the protests in the bud.

Hester I completely agree with you.