Ex-Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher dies

[Donny B.]

Interesting piece of speaking ill of the dead....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -etiquette

[artaneboy]

Interesting piece of speaking ill of the dead....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -etiquette

It's only interesting in being a typical example of people (usually journalists and so-called commentators) trying to differentiate between 'ordinary poeople' and 'celebrities'. I doesn't stand up to any sort of rational analysis, other than they want to comment (read: abuse) but also want to say "don't worry, we won't go after you" to the ordinary Joes. Well that worked pefectly for Madeline McCann parents- didn't it?

Would the Gruniad carry such a piece if it was Nelson Mandela under the cosh? I doubt it. But there are plenty of right wing equivalents to the 'Party for her Death' who will make the same arguments here. The trouble with this type of agrument is that people are using their opinions of individuals to set the agenda on the general standards of public behaviour.

[Sauvignon Blank]

Interesting piece of speaking ill of the dead....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -etiquette

That's an excellent piece, cheers for posting.

[Sauvignon Blank]

Thatcher was different things to different people.

As was correctly pointed out earlier, respect is very much earned in this life.
She was the architect of some horrible deeds and a bedfellow of some repugnant b$&%@#ds.

To Tories,right wingers and Harry Enfield Loadsamoney types she was a hero.

To myself(and millions of others), I wholly despised the rancid aul bitch. I took great pleasure in her demise and truly hope she suffered in her final days.

Good riddance to a stain on humanity.

Many, many people on this island are the bedfellows of some repugnant b$&%@#ds. I won't shed a tear when any of them die either. I know plenty of people who will though.

As Ole Blue Eyes would croon....Thats Life.

[ronk]

Interesting piece of speaking ill of the dead....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -etiquette

There are a few elements there. She can't defend herself anymore so it can be see as cowardice. More importantly there's the rugby analogy of shaking hands after the final whistle. On the field we were bitter enemies, but the game is over, move on. There's a balance between rewriting history to say she was perfect and to tarnish her legacy. It's fair to be critical, but there are ways to do that and limits.

She fought well in her career against many opponents who considered themselves more formidable. One of the tactics against her was a level of abuse that was unprecedented. But the battle is long over.

[artaneboy]

Interesting piece of speaking ill of the dead....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -etiquette

There are a few elements there. She can't defend herself anymore so it can be see as cowardice. More importantly there's the rugby analogy of shaking hands after the final whistle. On the field we were bitter enemies, but the game is over, move on. There's a balance between rewriting history to say she was perfect and to tarnish her legacy. It's fair to be critical, but there are ways to do that and limits.

She fought well in her career against many opponents who considered themselves more formidable. One of the tactics against her was a level of abuse that was unprecedented. But the battle is long over.

Good points. My final word. She was a fairly unlovable individual to a lot of us and had a almost autistic range of interests and disinterests. She knew little or nothing about the value of culture and sport but quite a lot about politics, administration and economics. Part of the rage against her was her lack of guile in baldly stating her positions. She has to be given that- surely!

I also have to say that another large part (in Britain anyway) was class and gender based. "That bloody woman" was an expletive that covered her relatively humble (for the Tories) middle-class background- often uttered by fellow Conservatives of an upper-class background. But equally just because there was that prejudice doesn't mean she was right in her often unbelievaby narrow views either. She was partly by chance of history (the first woman) and partly by force of her character- a genuine one off. For better or worse- we really won't see her like again. RIP.

[Hornet]

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/i ... is_buried/

As a 20 something in Thatchers Britain, I clearly remember her lack of compassion, her mean, vindictive spirit, her determination to destroy not only the far left in politic's, but all levels of socialism. Anyone with any form of social compassion was an anathema to her. She rarely saw anything, other than in black and white. Even as I type this, I think of the communities I saw being destroyed by her policies, and it angers me. I would suggest most contributors on this thread were either too young or not born where she was in power. I had a work colleague who came from Easington, a proud, tight knit working community. He moved away as he didn't want to work down the mine, but he went home regulary. People there were worried about their future's, their job's, their pension's.(Miner's Pensions and what would happen to them if the NCB was privatised, was one of the primary reason's for the 1984 Miner's Strike). Thatcher had no time for those sort's of communities. She used mass unemployment as part of here plan to bring the free market economy into peoples lives. She engineered massive social change, without thinking or caring of the consequences those changes bought. Some people on here say that we should respectful of her and her family. I remember seeing the look in my workmate's eye's shortly after the end of the Miner's strike. They were as he had lost his family. Friends and families laid waste. Thrown on the scrapheap. Not only was those down the mine that suffered but the shops, schools, small companies that depended on the income. A community destroyed. Like thousands of Mining, Shipbuilding, Steelworks and Railway communities. Thousands thrown out of work when the utilities were privatised to the highest bidders. Respect, you have to earn that. I feel as much hatred for her now as I did when speaking to my workmate that day. I'm glad she's dead, as are many of my age bracket or older are. I hope Easington's Former Miners have a great day. I hope my old workmate is up there remembering the good times, when the place was a community. As for Thatcher's funeral, shame on you Britian for affording that vindictive, evil woman a ceremonial funeral. Shame on you.

[fourthirtythree]

I agree with Glenn Greenwald's piece. The notion that she isn't here to defend herself and we should just shake hands and say she was great is nonsense. We're not arguing with her. We're arguing with those that would choose to defend her legacy and take control of what she means. It's not cowardice as those people are very much alive and in positions of power.

The reason he wrote that piece is because it didn't happen when Reagan died and an unchallenged narrative that he was a great, popular president, who united the nation and brought a sense of pride and greatness to America was allowed to take hold and wreak havoc in US politics. He was actually as divisive as Thatcher and was among the more unpopular presidents the US has had.

As for the idea that it is a journalist arguing to be allowed to be mean but "we won't do it to ordinary folks" and then mention say Madeleine McCann. The extreme libertarian civil rights activist Glenn Greenwald could not care less about writing about individuals like that, he's a political activist on civil liberties and free speech issues.They actually are very different cases, and the reason is public interest, public lives, and politics. That said his position is in general very extreme on free speech so he would probably be against banning it. The hilarious part of this is of course that Pierse Morgan tweeted about respect and the dead and leaving her family alone. A man in charge of hacking a dead girls phone for prurient gossip.

There is a difference, and it is appropriate and indeed important to speak ill of the dead be they MT, Mother Theresa, Hugo Chavez (where were all the people worrying about his family in the media) or Nelson Mandela when he dies (and indeed in the comments sections of the English press, before he dies. He's a public figure. A politician. Dispute is the air he breathed).

As for her being some kind of class warrior patronised from above: she was middle class and university educated. Ramsay MacDonald was the son of a farm labourer and a maid. A much greater impediment then as now seeing as the more recent PMs have been uniformly private school boys.

[FLIP]

Funny, I thought people here would be glad to see the back of the unions who kept undesirables such as blacks and Irish out of their work forces.

[ronk]

A lot of this is due to the can of worms that got opened after Jimmy Saville died. Many people who had heard the allegations were silent, even to the point of the BBC killing an expose of him.

He was given a free pass (at first) and that was a mistake. Automatic immunity is gone and there's a vacuum. She's the most hated character in British domestic politics, but she's also someone who was reelected AFTER her most controversial acts, so the British electorate gave her a mandate to do what she did.

In Ireland, we have a reasonably good example of why respect for the recently deceased can be a good way to go: Liam Lawlor. He was a crook and I have nothing good to say about him, but it was a disgrace to say that he was seeing a prostitute just because there was a woman in the car. The paper in question couldn't be sued for the damage to his reputation (though they were for her) and for the hurt caused to his family. It's easy to go too far. Free speech fundamentalists aren't the problem there, they stick to the issues, but the sensational press don't work that way. They'll attack someone for the fun of it/to sell papers.

It's a cultural thing, when you die your enemies should hold their tongues.

[CiaranIrl]

Saracens will be having a minute's silence for her. If I had to guess at one club that would do that...

[paddyor]

Saracens will be having a minute's silence for her. If I had to guess at one club that would do that...

I heard Exeter have jumped on that bandwagon as well. It's a bad idea. If you have no respect for her or were one of here many victims you're not likely to want to participate. She was a really divisive figure and it's not like she was a servant of the sport. I can see this backfiring spectacularly.

[Vamos los azules]

Saracens will be having a minute's silence for her. If I had to guess at one club that would do that...

Thatcher's constituency was Finchley so Saracens' territory. They're actually the logical ones to do it if anyone does because she would have been the local politician back in the day.

So saying I actually laughed out loud at Nigel Wray's comments about it being a case of respect after the loudspeaker trying to drown out the Munster fans and the fat lady singing in the league incidents.

[Fireworks]

A large amount of the negative reaction has been in very bad taste and says more about the individuals handing it out than about their target. Whether you liked her or hated her she was elected by a majority of the British people. She has also been retired for quite a considerable time and has suffered from alzheimer's.

I feel sorry for her family and friends who want to mourn and bury the person they knew not the politician the public knew. Was anything achieved by all the bile that has been poured out. Could it not have waited and let history judge her.

I feel sorry for the people that feel they need to make themselves feel bigger and better by attacking a dead old lady. There must be something lacking in their own lives.

[Donny B.]

A large amount of the negative reaction has been in very bad taste and says more about the individuals handing it out than about their target. Whether you liked her or hated her she was elected by a majority of the British people. She has also been retired for quite a considerable time and has suffered from alzheimer's.

I feel sorry for her family and friends who want to mourn and bury the person they knew not the politician the public knew. Was anything achieved by all the bile that has been poured out. Could it not have waited and let history judge her.

I feel sorry for the people that feel they need to make themselves feel bigger and better by attacking a dead old lady. There must be something lacking in their own lives.

She's wasn't just "a dead old lady". She was someone who destroyed many, many lives, whole communities in fact with a callousness that bordered on the psychopathic. In Liverpool, she and Geoffrey Howe effectively abandoned the city to poverty and decay and blamed the people for their own fate in a policy chillingly called "managed decline". Her brutalisation of Britain's working-class is still being felt to this day and he policies set in place the massive social inequality that's still there today.

While celebration of her death may be tasteless, it's still indicative of how much damage she done in her time that people will come out on the streets to do this. Do you think anyone will dance in the streets when John Major dies? No, they'll just shrug and move on.

As for her family and friends, they're the ones in the public eye trying to set the agenda that she was some sort of a saint and a hero in a massive cavalcade of
tributes and this obscene and massively expensive funeral. As 443 pointed out earlier, they're trying to "Reaganise" her, making her an untouchable saint for the right. They're using her death to set a political agenda and it's incumbent on everyone who sees through this nonsense to fight back and not meekly go along like sheep like Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg.

Yes she had Alzheimer's but she also lived out her days in the best of care, unless many other old ladies with Alzheimer's of poorer backgrounds who wasted away in filthy wards and decrepit care homes as part of her policies of running down the health service.

If you want to cry for someone, cry for them.

[fourthirtythree]

A lot of this is due to the can of worms that got opened after Jimmy Saville died. Many people who had heard the allegations were silent, even to the point of the BBC killing an expose of him.

He was given a free pass (at first) and that was a mistake. Automatic immunity is gone and there's a vacuum. She's the most hated character in British domestic politics, but she's also someone who was reelected AFTER her most controversial acts, so the British electorate gave her a mandate to do what she did.

In Ireland, we have a reasonably good example of why respect for the recently deceased can be a good way to go: Liam Lawlor. He was a crook and I have nothing good to say about him, but it was a disgrace to say that he was seeing a prostitute just because there was a woman in the car. The paper in question couldn't be sued for the damage to his reputation (though they were for her) and for the hurt caused to his family. It's easy to go too far. Free speech fundamentalists aren't the problem there, they stick to the issues, but the sensational press don't work that way. They'll attack someone for the fun of it/to sell papers.

It's a cultural thing, when you die your enemies should hold their tongues.

The source for that story about Lawlor was Harry Browne the Observer / Guardian NI correspondent. He's been the source for quite a few erroneous stories e.g. Irish people detained in Israel being "known" members of the Real IRA. Were they simple mistakes? I doubt it. We can criticise the sensationalist press alright, but sometimes it's just agenda setting.

If people want others to remain silent and respectful they should not brashly trumpet. Thatcher appears to have been lavishly, foolishly fond of her idiotic nazi son. If they restricted their hagiography to her private life it would behoove all other commentators to leave her alone. They don't.

I'm not a fan of triumphalism when a person dies, and I have more dislike currently of Blair than her.

[mfjoc]

This idea that Maggie Thatcher was responsible personally for closing down the mines and all the rest of Britain's industrial base is a myth perpetuated by the unions.
Coal as a fuel was replaced by North Sea gas for a reason.
Gas was cleaner, cheaper, more efficient, better for the environment and not run by dinosaur trade unions.
The idea of digging coal out from miles underground to burn for fuel is just plain stupid. The mines would have closed down anyway.
The British car industry closed down because nobody would buy a British car, not even the brits themselves. There is a reason why GM called even their British built Vauxhalls’ Opel in Ireland.
The manufacturing industries closed down because British Engineering wasn’t good enough, manufacturing companies were over manned, inefficient and produced products that nobody wanted. It had nothing to do with Maggie Thatcher.
The good British manufacturing and engineering companies survived, but they are few and far between. I would think of JCB or Dyson as being examples of excellent British companies in their markets.

[fourthirtythree]

Those are all reasonable point. I would dispute the detail of all of them though.

The notion that Thatcher went for gas because it was cleaner or "more efficient" doesn't withstand scrutiny. She "believed" in man made global warming up until she shut the mines down, and then promptly became a fossil fuel advocate along with her cabinet. It wasn't cheaper either. The privatised power companies bought construction subsidiaries and paid themselves top dollar to build expensive gas powered stations running on expensive fuel and Britain went from having around the cheapest electricity in the EU to around the most expensive.
The notion that it is plain stupid to dig coal out from miles underground: how "clever" is it to go out into the middle of the sea and drill many KM down to get out bottled farts? How clever was it to install a system across Europe dependent on Russia and Libya?

No great fan of British engineering.

[mfjoc]

Those are all reasonable point. I would dispute the detail of all of them though.

The notion that Thatcher went for gas because it was cleaner or "more efficient" doesn't withstand scrutiny. She "believed" in man made global warming up until she shut the mines down, and then promptly became a fossil fuel advocate along with her cabinet. It wasn't cheaper either. The privatised power companies bought construction subsidiaries and paid themselves top dollar to build expensive gas powered stations running on expensive fuel and Britain went from having around the cheapest electricity in the EU to around the most expensive.
The notion that it is plain stupid to dig coal out from miles underground: how "clever" is it to go out into the middle of the sea and drill many KM down to get out bottled farts? How clever was it to install a system across Europe dependent on Russia and Libya?

No great fan of British engineering.

The commodity price of coal is only cheaper if it is strip mined or dug out underground using third world labour and safety standards.
Gas power generation has the lowest capital cost by far. Electricity prices have been artificially raised to pay for all the stupid windmills and associated standby gas powered plants that are required on standby to run when the wind doesn't blow.
Cheapest power is nuclear- look at the french, but Ireland is too small to even consider
Once you find the gas and drill a well the gas flows, running costs are low.
Agree totally about dependence on Russia or the various Arab dictators.
This is why we need to find our own oil and gas.
Fracking is actually a good news story which has massive potential and yet we are afraid to go ahead because of some spurious claims about water contamination.
We do need to change the law so that the Irish people get more of the profits but shale gas could transform this country as it has done for many parts of rural America.
You don't dispute all my points, you agree with me about British engineering.

[rooster]

Those are all reasonable point. I would dispute the detail of all of them though.

The notion that Thatcher went for gas because it was cleaner or "more efficient" doesn't withstand scrutiny. She "believed" in man made global warming up until she shut the mines down, and then promptly became a fossil fuel advocate along with her cabinet. It wasn't cheaper either. The privatised power companies bought construction subsidiaries and paid themselves top dollar to build expensive gas powered stations running on expensive fuel and Britain went from having around the cheapest electricity in the EU to around the most expensive.
The notion that it is plain stupid to dig coal out from miles underground: how "clever" is it to go out into the middle of the sea and drill many KM down to get out bottled farts? How clever was it to install a system across Europe dependent on Russia and Libya?

No great fan of British engineering.

The commodity price of coal is only cheaper if it is strip mined or dug out underground using third world labour and safety standards.
Gas power generation has the lowest capital cost by far. Electricity prices have been artificially raised to pay for all the stupid windmills and associated standby gas powered plants that are required on standby to run when the wind doesn't blow.
Cheapest power is nuclear- look at the french, but Ireland is too small to even consider
Once you find the gas and drill a well the gas flows, running costs are low.
Agree totally about dependence on Russia or the various Arab dictators.
This is why we need to find our own oil and gas.
Fracking is actually a good news story which has massive potential and yet we are afraid to go ahead because of some spurious claims about water contamination.
We do need to change the law so that the Irish people get more of the profits but shale gas could transform this country as it has done for many parts of rural America.
You don't dispute all my points, you agree with me about British engineering.

Gas was actually the cheapest at the time though not much below coal. I was involved in Blairs time in office with a major consultation on alternatives to fossil fuels, ie coal, gas and oil, this was to meet EU guidelines and promises, the result was bio fuels were ok but not really feasible on the scale needed, tidal power, very efficient and always going but technology was not far enough advanced, nuclear, efficient but slightly more expensive than gas etc but its major problem was it didn't fit in with Labours love of the green veggie brigade and then there were solar and wind, both of which the power generators placed last and didn't want as they are not reliable enough to cut generation capacity by even a single power plant.
Result first choice by industry was nuclear, followed by tidal and hydro, bio fuels then finally solar and wind which they emphasised in the current forms were no benefit, so Tony and his cabinet shredded the report and went wind and solar.