Margaret Thatcher dies of a stroke.

[StefanAVFC]

As I said earlier, I'm glad this is coming out of the public purse purely because of how angry her haters are getting over it.

 

 

Its not so much that I'm not happy at having my hard earned tax going towards burying her its more the fact they waited until she was dead

 

Out of interest, what does her death change?

[Xann]

Because Thatcher was on the same scale as a rapist or a paedophile. Always find it funny when people use paedophiles as well, in an argument. Most people don't even know what one is.

 

She was evil on a much greater scale than any paedophile I can think of (Oh hang on, what was the Roman emperor before Caligula again?), but perhaps not to the same degree.

[Mantis]

It's pretty sad that some people can't seem to criticise Thatcher without going into ridiculous territory and calling her evil, comparing her to rapists, pedophiles and Hitler etc.

Edited April 10, 2013 by Mantis

[StefanAVFC]

Because Thatcher was on the same scale as a rapist or a paedophile. Always find it funny when people use paedophiles as well, in an argument. Most people don't even know what one is.

 

She was evil on a much greater scale than any paedophile I can think of (Oh hang on, what was the Roman emperor before Caligula again?), but perhaps not to the same degree.

 

Again with this word paedophile. Do you even know what that means?

[tonyh29]

In answer to both Peters posts just because someone who has lower expense claims than the vast majority doesn't somehow mean they still don't take the proverbial  Its been going on so long now and under no real censure that it seems there has become an acceptable level and its 'ok.' But none of us know the exact relation to each claim ie stationary or other costs or communication costs, its all so very generalised.

 

But do you not see that if you say that someone's claiming over the odds, refuse invitations to say in what respect they are doing so, and retreat into saying that even if there's nothing obvious they're still taking the piss, that is simply a smear?

 

For comparison, stating that Cameron's claim for trimming wisteria from his Oxfordshire residence, Duncan Smith's claim for wages for his wife for "keeping his diary", Letwin's claim for repairs to his tennis court, and that arse whose name I even forget for a duck house, are specific and evidenced criticisms, not a vague smear.

I suppose one could start with the £8k Glenda felt obliged to pay back to the taxpayer :-)

[snowychap]

I suppose one could start with the £8k Glenda felt obliged to pay back to the taxpayer :-)

What was that for?

[markavfc40]

 

In answer to both Peters posts just because someone who has lower expense claims than the vast majority doesn't somehow mean they still don't take the proverbial  Its been going on so long now and under no real censure that it seems there has become an acceptable level and its 'ok.' But none of us know the exact relation to each claim ie stationary or other costs or communication costs, its all so very generalised.

 

But do you not see that if you say that someone's claiming over the odds, refuse invitations to say in what respect they are doing so, and retreat into saying that even if there's nothing obvious they're still taking the piss, that is simply a smear?

 

For comparison, stating that Cameron's claim for trimming wisteria from his Oxfordshire residence, Duncan Smith's claim for wages for his wife for "keeping his diary", Letwin's claim for repairs to his tennis court, and that arse whose name I even forget for a duck house, are specific and evidenced criticisms, not a vague smear.

I suppose one could start with the £8k Glenda felt obliged to pay back to the taxpayer :-)

 

 

He did here:

 

Peter, she's had to pay expenses back in the past. I understand your point but I feel you're missing mine. Enjoy the last word.

 

...for funding a canvassing exercise, not for a second home, backhanders to family, gardening costs or other things of direct personal benefit.  You seem determined to be vaguer than you might, and that feels like you're trying to create an impression, a bad smell, without actually evidencing it.

[snowychap]

You can say "but you're only saying that because you supported her" , its implied in your post and others anyway. Well to be honest if someone who I have not supported in life were to die then I would feel equally disturbed and offended.

Have you demonstrated the universality of this position about the abhorrence of celebration of the demise (or wished for demise) of another?

[leviramsey]

Coming back for my second, and probably last (this time!) post, just to link to a G+ post that came my way

Though I disagree strongly with Prof. Quiggin on the merits of social democracy and Thatcherism, I think he makes a compelling parallel here. The Western world today, like Seventies Britain, is economically repressed in large part through the influence of a corrupted and corrupting special interest, deeply embedded in both political institutions and received opinion, which has freed itself almost completely from market discipline and which maintains its hold by credibly threatening to bring ordinary economic activity to a screeching halt if not appeased. The problem of breaking the power of too-big-to-fail financial conglomerates feels like the problem of breaking the power of British unions.

Now Thatcher, as I understand it, solved that latter problem largely by building up alternative provision mechanisms to make union threats no longer credible-- by stockpiling coal, for example, so that coal miners' strikes would not cause energy shortages. Could an analogous strategy work for finance? There's a broad menu of plausible approaches: +Arnold Kling's bank breakup rules and "easy to fix, not hard to break" resolution mechanisms; Garett Jones's related idea of speed bankruptcy; heterodox central banking proposals like Miles Kimball's Federal Lines of Credit or Steve Waldman's countercyclical helicopter drops. There's a decent chance that some combination of these would get us to a world where we could lose any several financial firms overnight and not suffer a credit freeze, an inability of depositors to withdraw money, etc.

I think there are a couple of differences which make the present task harder, though. First, Thatcher could count on the passionate support of the traditional Conservative base for a straightforward, effective program of sticking it to the unions. There is certainly a stick-it-to-the-banks sentiment on the Left, as we saw in the days of Occupy, but it has no particularly coherent or sensible program for doing the sticking, and is unlikely to be rallied around the subtle heterodox-market-liberal approach that might actually work. "Easy to fix, not hard to break" is never going to make a popular placard.

Second, the unions were a well-defined group whose members and opponents were both conscious of the extent of its membership. I don't think that's true of the beneficiaries of financial-sector influence, who extend well beyond the actual workers in that sector. The easy sloganeering approach is to identify those beneficiaries with "the 1%" but that's really not a good approximation: the 1% is disproportionately represented, to be sure, but a big swath of upper-middle-class-but-not-1% gerontocracy is in there and a big swath of the 1% is not. There is a lot of confusion about who would actually be better or worse off with less political power for finance, and that confusion makes it much harder to set up the sort of coalitional confrontation that Thatcher did.

Will this be the only post in the thread +1'd by Awol and peterms?

The world needs another Thatcher, and it looks unlikely... that said, would anyone in the early 70s have bet money on her?

[chrisp65]

 

As I said earlier, I'm glad this is coming out of the public purse purely because of how angry her haters are getting over it.

 

 

Its not so much that I'm not happy at having my hard earned tax going towards burying her its more the fact they waited until she was dead

 

Out of interest, what does her death change?

 

well, I suppose on average the country will be £2,000 a week better off

 

that's about 142 households a week, every week, that wouldn't need to lose the bedroom tax

[snowychap]

Will this be the only post in the thread +1'd by Awol and peterms?

He he.

The world needs another Thatcher, and it looks unlikely... that said, would anyone in the early 70s have bet money on her?

You mean a 'Thatcher-type' don't you? I don't agree anyway but I wanted to clarify what you meant.

[chrisp65]

I think I'm about done now, it was all quite cathartic.

 

 

Funny of the day? Radio 4 replayed the Blair clip from 15 years ago that went along the lines of:

'this is no time for glib sound bites.......I feel the hand of history on our shoulder'

 

Comedy gold you suspect the Thick Of It team wrote for him.

[snowychap]

Margaret Thatcher: parliament recall sets John Bercow and No 10 at odds

Margaret Thatcher's death has dealt a further blow to already strained relations between Downing Street and the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, after the prime minister ditched both past precedent and a long-agreed plan to demand Wednesday's recall of parliament.

The seven-and-a-half-hour session of Commons tributes – led by David Cameron and Ed Miliband – had earlier been the subject of tense exchanges between Number 10 and Bercow's office, the Guardian has learned. The Speaker was said to be "taken aback" by the initial request that parliament be recalled, since that move had previously been reserved only for matters of national emergency.

Officials at Westminster had assumed tributes would come when parliament returned next Monday. That had been the past precedent – followed most recently for the last prime minister to die during a recess, James Callaghan – and had also been the understanding of the set of parliamentary officials charged with planning for Thatcher's death, including representatives of the Tory whips office, the so-called "Blue Tomorrow" group.

But to Blue Tomorrow's surprise, Downing Street officials urged that MPs be summoned right away for Wednesday's marathon session – much longer than any previous one. Starting at 2.30pm and expected to run far into the evening, it dwarfed the 45 minutes the Commons set aside to praise Winston Churchill, the 73 minutes allocated to Edward Heath and the 50-odd minutes in which MPs remembered Labour leaders Callaghan and Harold Wilson.

The Speaker's team were said to be surprised that a request for such an unprecedented departure from past practice came in a phone call from a mid-ranking Number 10 staffer rather in writing. Bercow asked that protocol be followed and Cameron duly wrote directly to the Speaker formalising his request.

Bercow then sought the opposition's reaction. Labour sources said they pointed out that this was a departure from the agreed plan, but concluded it was "pretty much a fait accompli," believing it all but impossible to obstruct a prime minister set on recalling parliament. One party official conceded that Labour also made the political decision not to cause "a huge row", in which they were bound to be cast as failing to show Thatcher due respect.

Nevertheless, the Guardian understands that had Miliband asked the Speaker for a ruling on whether MPs should be summoned, Bercow was "minded" to follow precedent and refuse Cameron's request.

A Downing Street spokesman said "Only government ministers can request the recall of the House, which the Speaker then decides on. The PM felt given the strength of feeling following Lady Thatcher's death it was appropriate to give the House an early opportunity to pay its respects." He dismissed the idea that a pre-agreed plan had been disregarded. "Of course there are guidelines, but when the situation happens you deal with it." He added that there was "nothing unusual" in an initial phone call to discuss such a request before making it formally.

Further tension between Number 10 and the Speaker's office came over the format of the proceedings. Tory chief whip Sir George Young is said to have passed on a Downing Street request for the Speaker to advise MPs to suspend their custom and not make "interventions" during other MPs' speeches, thereby minimising the risk the session would descend into partisan argument. Bercow refused, insisting that since the proceeding was technically a debate – another first for a tribute session — the rules of debate would apply.

The two sides are locked in more procedural wrangling over the arrangements for next week, arguing over how best to ensure parliament does not sit at the same time as Lady Thatcher's funeral. Downing Street's preferred method would preclude the need for a formal Commons motion to be passed, allowing next Wednesday's regular morning business – including prime minister's questions – to be skipped.

Bercow is currently sticking to the rulebook, which could require MPs to agree a delayed Wednesday start in a debate, which would have to be held on Tuesday, a move that would risk the airing of more dissenting views.

Tension between the Speaker and the Tory front bench is long established: when he was elected Speaker in 2009 Bercow was the preferred candidate of many Labour MPs, but not of the Tory leadership.

[StefanAVFC]

 

 

As I said earlier, I'm glad this is coming out of the public purse purely because of how angry her haters are getting over it.

 

 

Its not so much that I'm not happy at having my hard earned tax going towards burying her its more the fact they waited until she was dead

 

Out of interest, what does her death change?

 

well, I suppose on average the country will be £2,000 a week better off

 

that's about 142 households a week, every week, that wouldn't need to lose the bedroom tax

 

Not really worth celebrating a death though is it

[maqroll]

Morrissey Has a Go

[Mantis]

Forget Thatcher, Morrissey is a massive word removed. I honestly don't know why he doesn't **** off to Argentina.

Edited April 11, 2013 by Mantis

[MrDuck]

Forget Thatcher, Morrissey is a massive word removed. I honestly don't know why he doesn't **** off to Argentina.

 

 

Yeah, all those lives Morrissey ruined eh? What a tosser.

[villaajax]

Forget Thatcher, Morrissey is a massive word removed. I honestly don't know why he doesn't **** off to Argentina.

 

I call a truce to agree with this completely.

[leemond2008]

+1

[villaajax]

I see the cartoon buffoon wants to put up a statue of Thatcher on the site of the Poll Tax riots.

 

How long would that last before it gets toppled like the statue of Saddam Hussein?