howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
gary
i am ready to be corrected but i believe that none of our governments have ever reached 40% of the vote let alone 48%. the first past the post system guarantees that people will never be equally represented in parliament.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
Howard.
I am sure your right, I just vote and wait to see who is declared the winner, the rest goes over my head.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
#..118...#119....#120....spot on...............
#...117....typical red herring.................
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
#113,never mind howard,have 3 shreded wheet tomorrow and read from #108.
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Margaret Thatcher: I Vow to Thee, My Country.........this should be our national anthem......
.when time permits
Lady Thatcher planned her own funeral, right down to the hymns,
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Courtesy Sunday Times...............
Speaker's wife snubs Thatcher funeral
Sally Bercow believes Thatcher ushered in a 'very greedy and selfish society'
SALLY BERCOW, the wife of the Commons Speaker, has rejected an invitation
to the funeral of Baroness Thatcher, a leader whom she believes ushered in
a "very greedy and selfish society".
Her decision will be perceived as a serious snub to the former prime minister
and comes as her legal battle with Lord McAlpine, the Tory grandee, over an
allegedly libellous Twitter message reaches the High Court.
Bercow's husband, John, will attend Wednesday's funeral service at St Paul's
Cathedral with a member of his staff.
Details of Bercow's rejection emerged as ministers and Thatcher's family and
friends backed proposals for her achievements to be recognised with a statue
, possibly alongside that of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
error of judgement.....?
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
firstly i dont blame her,i wouldnt go my self.
error of judgement,no not at all.
as 60% of the population say that its not public intrest to pay for her funaral.
Guest 667- Registered: 6 Apr 2008
- Posts: 919
Well if they turn the statue the opposite way round the Tories can all kiss her back side on the way in just as tehy have done in life and death and also like new members rub Churchill's hand on the way in.. Seriously another statue and who will pay for that? I wonder if Labour had been in Government now would we have been spending ten million pounds on a funeral and had all this hype.
She deserves a respectful funeral as a past Leader of this Country sorry she was no Churchill, he had his critics but he did not divide the Nation like she did..
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
Let's remember Maggie for what she really was... a tragic failure . by peter Hitchings
She knew perfectly well that nothing can be achieved in politics without making enemies, though it is important to make the right ones.
I am not myself a worshipper at the Thatcher Shrine,
The only thing that would have annoyed her would have been the lazy ignorance of most of her critics (and quite a few of her admirers too). They have not done their homework, as she always did.
Alas, if they did, the spittle-flecked Left would probably dislike her a good deal less than they do. For her 11 years in office were a tragic failure, if you are a patriotic conservative. She was an active liberal in economic policy, refusing to protect jobs and industries that held communities together.
Was privatisation so wonderful? Personally, I think British Telecom is just as bad - in a different way - as the old Post Office Telephones. The privatisation of electricity, and the resulting dissipation of our nuclear skills, is one of the reasons we will soon be having power cuts. The hurried and mistaken closure of the coal mines is another. Lady Thatcher's early embrace of Green dogma (repudiated too late) is another.
And this country still has the biggest nationalised industry in the world, the great, over-rated NHS. It also has huge armies of public-sector workers in quangos and town halls - only these days they are condom outreach workers or climate change awareness officers.
At least the old nationalised industries actually dug coal, forged steel and built ships. And at least the old industries provided proper jobs for men, and allowed them to support their families. Young mothers didn't need to go out to work.
Income tax has certainly fallen. But indirect tax is a cruel burden, and energy costs are oppressive. The 'Loony Left' ideas she tried clumsily to fight in local government have now become the enthusiastically held policies of the Tory Party.
As for council house sales, that policy was in the end a huge tax-funded subsidy to the private housing industry, a vast release of money into the housing market that pushed prices up permanently and - once again - broke up settled communities. What's conservative about that? And why, come to that, didn't she reward the brave Nottingham and Derby miners, who defied Arthur Scargill, by saving their pits?
She was a passive, defeatist liberal when it came to education, morality and the family. In 11 years she - who owed everything to a grammar education - didn't reopen a single one of the grammar schools she had allowed to be closed as Ted Heath's Education Secretary.
She did nothing significant to reverse or slow the advance of the permissive society - especially the State attack on marriage through absurdly easy divorce, and the deliberate subsidies to fatherless households.
She loaded paperwork on to the police, and brought the curse of ambulance-chasing lawyers (and so 'health and safety') to this country. She introduced the catastrophic GCSE exam into schools.
In foreign policy, she made a lot of noise, but did little good. It was her diplomacy, and her determination to slash the Royal Navy, that made the Argentinians think they could grab the Falklands. True, she won them back, or rather the fighting services did. But they should never have been lost in the first place
Brave as she was at Brighton, she still began the surrender to the IRA that was completed by Anthony Blair. It was all very well standing firm against the Soviet menace, safely contained behind the Iron Curtain by American tanks and nuclear missiles. It was another thing fighting off the incessant threats to our liberty and independence coming from the EU.
She realised, a few months before she was deposed, how great the European danger was. That, I think, was why she was overthrown by the 'Conservative' Party. But for most of her time in office she allowed the EU to seize more and more power over this country and its laws. Had she been as great as she is held to be, we would not be in the terrible mess we are now in, deindustrialised, drugged en masse by dope and antidepressants, demoralised, de-Christianised, bankrupted by deregulated spivs, our criminal justice system an even bigger joke than our State schools and 80 per cent of our laws made abroad.
I will always like her for her deep, proud Englishness, her fighting spirit and her refusal to follow the bleating flock. I despise the snobs and woman-haters who sneered at her and sometimes made me ashamed of my class and my sex. I am proud to be able to say that I actually met her and spoke to her.
But I advise both her enemies and her worshippers to remember that she was human - deserving in the hour of her death to be decently respected, but to be neither despised nor idolised. May she rest in peace.
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Bishop of Grantham says £10m Thatcher send-off is asking for trouble
The Bishop of Grantham, the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday
that the scale and cost of her funeral was "asking for trouble".
Dr Tim Ellis said that the scale of the event was a "mistake" that could play into
the hands of extremists.
``I think that in context where there is manifestly great ill-feeling about her tenure
and about her legacy to then actually have a situation here we seem to be expecting
the nation to glorify that with a £ 10 million funeral....I think any sensible person would
say that is asking for trouble,he said``
Guest 715- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 2,438
Austerity and this Funeral are both ends of the social scale, she would love that!
Audere est facere.
Guest 667- Registered: 6 Apr 2008
- Posts: 919
Post 129 by Keith wrote "But I advise both her enemies and her worshipers to remember that she was human - deserving in the hour of her death to be decently respected, but to be neither despised nor idolised. May she rest in peace".
I would agree but certainly not at the cost of ten million pounds as that does exactly what she did in life it divides the Nation. There are even Conservatives saying she would have loved all this controversy, which surly means she glorified in a divided Nation, well David Cameron has made sure there is one now.
Could not stand her in life but I hope the funeral goes off without any trouble and that as a past Leader of this Country it is respectful but I have an awful feeling our Police are going to have a tough job on their hands again and the cost of that could take it well beyond ten million... Hope not.
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Protests over planned use of 'draconian' Public Order Act by police on day of Thatcher funeral
Campaigners reacted angrily last night after Scotland Yard suggested protesters should consider
avoiding Baroness Thatcher's cortège - because they face arrest under a controversial public order law.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman told The Independent yesterday that demonstrators were more
likely than usual to be held under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, because mourners are
considered particularly vulnerable to suffering distress.
The law allows police to detain those who cause "alarm, harass or distress", and officers will
be given discretion about how they interpret the law. A Scotland Yard spokesman urged
protesters to consider "staying away" and that, because of the vulnerable state of those in
attendance, arrests under Section 5 could be "higher up the agenda" than usual.
The advice was met angrily by protesters who described it as "draconian" warning that
the deployment of arrests under the Public Order Act that was testament to an
"era of compulsory mourning".....................
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i agree with the police on this one, a funeral is not the place for public demonstrations and disorder.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
What is this planned funeral if not a public demonstration?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
Poll ratings ?
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
I hope this outpouring of Tory grief doesn't spark the London rioting again.
Thatcher whished for a low key funeral these whish's should have been respected
And public money saved.
Guest 667- Registered: 6 Apr 2008
- Posts: 919
I hope the funeral all goes off without trouble for as already said it is just that a funeral and should be respected as such. If people must protest then the best way is to stand and turn your back and say nothing which hurts no one.
However if there is trouble (which I hope not) who will be to blame the protesters, the police for being heavy handed or this Government for putting on such a divided public spectacle l in the first place?..
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
I have tried to distance myself from this post but some things have to be said.
I have made comment, on her passing but have declined all requests for comments on her funeral.
Keith's 129# sums her up very well for me, even the last paragraph.
What I do have to state though, is that we are all different. She did not respect me or my family and I will never forgive her for that but I will not join in on Wednesday for my own reasons and out of respect to her family.
Some might not be able to do that and I can truly understand why.
Keith mentioned "And why, come to that, didn't she reward the brave Nottingham and Derby miners, who defied Arthur Scargill, by saving their pits?"
Perhaps a better question would have been "why did she close All of their pits, after they had showed such loyalty to her and her tory Government?"
BarryW mentioned
"Scargill was out to bring down the government and you know it GaryC.
He used the miners as useful pawns in his political ambitions. Thankfully a significant proportion refused to be used by him and carried on working. Those brave working miners defied the violent thugs on the picket line day after day and it is they on whom the wartime spirit of the miners rested, not the strikers. I am sure that many more would have defied Scargill if it had not been for the bullying and intimidation."
Kent Miners got the chance to try and defend and stop their collieries from closing.
BarryW's heroes, got no chance at all to do that and I fear that many will not show her family the same respect as me.
Because of what she did to them, which was twice as bad as what she did to us, wishing for a trouble free day on Wednesday is like wishing our pits were still open.
I hate to say this but Wednesday will be a bad day for everyone and this could have been avoided.
Her wishes and her family wishes should have been followed.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 715- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 2,438
I wonder if the police will be at the Dartford Tunnel turning away potential protesters?
Audere est facere.