Is it true or not?
She's dead
- Thread starter jexykrodic
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Is it true or not?
They commissioned it under presure Peter. Then she basically dismised the findings
It was commissioned two days after the disaster. That doesn't sound like enough time for pressure to build and break a resistance. Dismissed the findings? Weren't they implemented?
Margaret Thatcher never liked her country
Thatcher may have draped herself in the flag, but she didn't understand what really made Britain great
One Sunday during the Thatcher era, I was on my way up the aisle to communion. My little son was toddling along in front of me. In the reverent silence that falls after the hymn has finished, he put back his head and yelled: "Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Out! Out! Out!" My three-year-old thought a great cosmic war was being fought between Jesus and Maggie. That moment shows how much she dominated our lives and thoughts.
It was the same at work. I was writing for the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside at the time. "A searing indictment of Thatcher's Britain" became a set phrase if you were suggesting a story at the monthly writers' conference. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if the whole of popular culture had been galvanised by its opposition to her. Pop songs (Ghost Town), TV dramas (Boys from the Blackstuff), comedy shows (Spitting Image) children's books (The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman) were ranged against her.
Real dictators have to pay artists to mythologise them. Maggie simply sucked them into her orbit. She may not have provided the arts with cash, but she certainly gave them plenty of material. Why didn't this work? Why wasn't she mocked out of power in the way that, to some extent, John Major was? Maybe by talking about her so much, by letting her fill so much of the cultural space, her enemies only made it harder to imagine life without her. Like the IRA's failed assassination attempt, it just made her look stronger. They made her out to be the devil and forgot that the devil has the best tunes. If Ben Elton was against her, who wouldn't be for her?
Now she's gone and there are firework celebrations, a classic graffito in Belfast ("Iron Lady – Rust in Peace") and Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! is rocketing up the download charts. None of this is surprising – but it is the same mistake all over again. It adds to the legend ("See how they still hate her!") and what adds to the legend obscures the truth. Dramas that raged, mocked, satirised and exposed won Baftas and Bookers, but did nothing to harm her.
So what should an artist do? A few years ago I was interviewing a young woman who had been a victim of ethnic cleansing. Abducted as a child, she'd been raised inside a cold, regulated, racially defined institution. But she'd grown up to be an articulate, engaging advocate for refugees. At the end of our meeting, I asked her how she had known – growing up in such an unloving environment – that life could be more. "I read a book," she said. What book? A searing indictment of Thatcher's Britain? "Heidi."
There is nothing more subversive than a definition of happiness, a vision of how things could be better. Thatcher, of course, dismissed the very idea that politics could make things better. We would not build Jerusalem; we would deregulate our green and pleasant land and hope the markets would build it for us. This diminished view of politics is the most potent part of her legacy. We are facing a housing crisis. Are we going to build houses? No, we're going to stimulate the market, even though we now know the market is run by skanks and jackasses. This distrust of the state is something which she imported from America. It's not British.
The British have many happy memories of state intervention. It was the state that won the war, the state that founded the NHS and gave us free milk when we were little. We have always believed in the possibility of Jerusalem. It's there in Milton, Blake, GK Chesterton and Oliver Postgate. There's a thread of purpose that runs through our finest moments – the abolition of the slave trade, the winning of votes for women, the defeat of Hitler – a desire to be not just more prosperous but better, to be more equal, more sharing, more accepting of difference, to have fun. It's in all the temporary Utopias we build for ourselves – the well-run caravan site, the Notting Hill carnival, the village fete and Glastonbury.
Margaret Thatcher under pressure from Nationwide viewer Diana Gould.
We are not Sid. We are William Wilberforce and Aneurin Bevin. We are Rosalind Franklin not caring about not getting her share of the credit for discovering the structure of DNA. We are Tim Berners Lee not doing it for the money. Thatcher never understood this. Although she draped herself in the union flag, Thatcher never seemed really to like or understand this country. If you look again at the famous Nationwide incident when Diana Gould caught her out with an awkward question about the Belgrano, you'll see her chanting "only in Britain ... only in Britain ... [could the public be so unappreciative of me]" and thumping the table. I remember thinking: "Oh! She hates us."
In the 1930s, Orwell rightly took the left to task for transferring its patriotism to the Soviet Union. She transferred hers to a kind of imaginary America (hence the contradiction of fighting against European domination while being an absolute doormat to the Pentagon). This is still a very strong thread in conservatism. There are conservatives on both front benches who simply don't get this country. They've retreated from it into fortified Cotswold Trumptons and they pass laws designed to make us more like the United States. They call us "broken Britain" or talk about "making Britain great again". We are great – just not in the way they want us to be. My friends and neighbours think that Ed Miliband should have been angrier about Thatcher during the debate about her in the House of Commons. But we tried that and it didn't work.
It is time to stop going on about the witch being dead and start imagining what might lie over the rainbow.
Frank Cottrell Boyce is a screenwriter and novelist. He was the writer of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.
Thatcher may have draped herself in the flag, but she didn't understand what really made Britain great
- Frank Cottrell Boyce
- The Observer,Sunday 14 April 2013
One Sunday during the Thatcher era, I was on my way up the aisle to communion. My little son was toddling along in front of me. In the reverent silence that falls after the hymn has finished, he put back his head and yelled: "Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! Out! Out! Out!" My three-year-old thought a great cosmic war was being fought between Jesus and Maggie. That moment shows how much she dominated our lives and thoughts.
It was the same at work. I was writing for the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside at the time. "A searing indictment of Thatcher's Britain" became a set phrase if you were suggesting a story at the monthly writers' conference. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if the whole of popular culture had been galvanised by its opposition to her. Pop songs (Ghost Town), TV dramas (Boys from the Blackstuff), comedy shows (Spitting Image) children's books (The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman) were ranged against her.
Real dictators have to pay artists to mythologise them. Maggie simply sucked them into her orbit. She may not have provided the arts with cash, but she certainly gave them plenty of material. Why didn't this work? Why wasn't she mocked out of power in the way that, to some extent, John Major was? Maybe by talking about her so much, by letting her fill so much of the cultural space, her enemies only made it harder to imagine life without her. Like the IRA's failed assassination attempt, it just made her look stronger. They made her out to be the devil and forgot that the devil has the best tunes. If Ben Elton was against her, who wouldn't be for her?
Now she's gone and there are firework celebrations, a classic graffito in Belfast ("Iron Lady – Rust in Peace") and Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! is rocketing up the download charts. None of this is surprising – but it is the same mistake all over again. It adds to the legend ("See how they still hate her!") and what adds to the legend obscures the truth. Dramas that raged, mocked, satirised and exposed won Baftas and Bookers, but did nothing to harm her.
So what should an artist do? A few years ago I was interviewing a young woman who had been a victim of ethnic cleansing. Abducted as a child, she'd been raised inside a cold, regulated, racially defined institution. But she'd grown up to be an articulate, engaging advocate for refugees. At the end of our meeting, I asked her how she had known – growing up in such an unloving environment – that life could be more. "I read a book," she said. What book? A searing indictment of Thatcher's Britain? "Heidi."
There is nothing more subversive than a definition of happiness, a vision of how things could be better. Thatcher, of course, dismissed the very idea that politics could make things better. We would not build Jerusalem; we would deregulate our green and pleasant land and hope the markets would build it for us. This diminished view of politics is the most potent part of her legacy. We are facing a housing crisis. Are we going to build houses? No, we're going to stimulate the market, even though we now know the market is run by skanks and jackasses. This distrust of the state is something which she imported from America. It's not British.
The British have many happy memories of state intervention. It was the state that won the war, the state that founded the NHS and gave us free milk when we were little. We have always believed in the possibility of Jerusalem. It's there in Milton, Blake, GK Chesterton and Oliver Postgate. There's a thread of purpose that runs through our finest moments – the abolition of the slave trade, the winning of votes for women, the defeat of Hitler – a desire to be not just more prosperous but better, to be more equal, more sharing, more accepting of difference, to have fun. It's in all the temporary Utopias we build for ourselves – the well-run caravan site, the Notting Hill carnival, the village fete and Glastonbury.
Margaret Thatcher under pressure from Nationwide viewer Diana Gould.
We are not Sid. We are William Wilberforce and Aneurin Bevin. We are Rosalind Franklin not caring about not getting her share of the credit for discovering the structure of DNA. We are Tim Berners Lee not doing it for the money. Thatcher never understood this. Although she draped herself in the union flag, Thatcher never seemed really to like or understand this country. If you look again at the famous Nationwide incident when Diana Gould caught her out with an awkward question about the Belgrano, you'll see her chanting "only in Britain ... only in Britain ... [could the public be so unappreciative of me]" and thumping the table. I remember thinking: "Oh! She hates us."
In the 1930s, Orwell rightly took the left to task for transferring its patriotism to the Soviet Union. She transferred hers to a kind of imaginary America (hence the contradiction of fighting against European domination while being an absolute doormat to the Pentagon). This is still a very strong thread in conservatism. There are conservatives on both front benches who simply don't get this country. They've retreated from it into fortified Cotswold Trumptons and they pass laws designed to make us more like the United States. They call us "broken Britain" or talk about "making Britain great again". We are great – just not in the way they want us to be. My friends and neighbours think that Ed Miliband should have been angrier about Thatcher during the debate about her in the House of Commons. But we tried that and it didn't work.
It is time to stop going on about the witch being dead and start imagining what might lie over the rainbow.
Frank Cottrell Boyce is a screenwriter and novelist. He was the writer of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.
Seriously, are you really trying to construct an argument that Thatcher & her government had nothing to do with the Hillsborough cover up? Beggars belief, if so
I'm simply asking questions that seem to be relevant. As far as I'm concerned the Taylor report uncovered the great majority of the truth. I've certainly always known the truth: I don't remember anything that the HIP report uncovered being particularly new or shocking to me, other than some of the finer details of the mismanagement by the authorities and the police cover up. But the essential point is that the Taylor report established that the fans weren't to blame and that the police were: surely at that point any cover up had failed? Of course, some individuals responsible were still left protected, but I don't see how their protection was in the interests of the government but not that of the SYP in general.
Well, then it should be easy to argue the point.
Thatcherism is no museum piece – it’s alive and kicking
Britain could benefit hugely from the astral guidance of its heroic former prime minister
By Boris Johnson
9:59PM BST 14 Apr 2013
Ding dong, the Soviet Union is dead! Ding dong, communism is dead! And so is the British disease. They are all dead as doornails – the myth of this country’s inevitable decline, the habit of capitulating to the unions, the belief in state control of everything from motor manufacturers to removals firms, taxation rates at 98 per cent: all the Lefty nostrums of the post-war epoch.
Ding dong! Old Labour’s dead! The Labour Party has given up its ridiculous belief in the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange – the slogan that used to be printed on the back of every party membership card. Ding dong, Clause Four is dead as a dodo.
But I tell you what, my little Left-wing friends, and all you who think it amusing to break out the champagne at the death of an 87-year-old woman. There is one thing that is alive and well – and that is Thatcherism. Thatcherism lives; and will live as long as there are people in this country, and on this planet, who see how economic freedom can be the servant not just of the rich, but of our whole society.
There is something astonishing about our collective reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death. It was sad, but hardly unexpected. Why has the controversy been so frenzied? Why can the papers seemingly think and talk of nothing else? Because we have been suddenly reminded of the clarity and urgency of what she had to say – and we have a guilty feeling that her lessons are being forgotten.
I love museums, and am of course thrilled to read in The Sunday Telegraph that we are going to have a Thatcher foundation and museum in London, world capital of culture. I expect that it will embrace the spirit of this country’s greatest post-war prime minister, and have touches that are both traditional and up-to-date. There will be plenty of old-fashioned
glass-case displays of memorabilia. You know: Scargill’s sweat-stained baseball cap; a Soviet tank of the kind she helped to send scuttling from Eastern Europe; the very milk bottles she snatched from the kiddies. I expect there will be the handbags and the gladrags and the deep cerulean-blue ballgowns, all of them tastefully displayed.
But this must be a technologically brilliant place as well, a museum for the PlayStation generation. So I hope that consultants will be brought in to devise the most sophisticated interactive computer games – in which you not only get to gawp at her clothes, but put yourself in her shoes. What we need is YouThatch, the game that tests whether you have the reflexes and the sheer cojones of the Dama de hierro.
It is no use just asking people to take the decisions that she took, though they were difficult enough. Do you take the hellish risk of fighting Galtieri and the repulsive Argentine junta? Do you continue to subsidise uneconomic coalmines? Do you side with Ronald Reagan and face down the Russkies? In all these dilemmas, her choice has been vindicated by history, and young people will (or so we must hope) know the right answer.
No, what we need is a computer program so cunning that it can work out – from her principles – what Maggie would do in situations she never faced. What, in other words, would Maggie do now? I can already see our budding Sir Politic
Would-bes queuing to get their hands on the console, and then mouthing silently as they try to channel her breathy contralto, like Luke Skywalker receiving the astral guidance of the late Obi-Wan Kenobi.
How could we devise a piece of software that would correctly identify the Thatcherian course? It’s easy – you just have to recognise that Thatcherism wasn’t about exalting the rich and grinding the faces of the poor. It was the exact opposite. It was about unleashing talent, and bursting open cosy cartels, and helping people to make the most of their talents and their opportunities. So anyone wanting to work out what Maggie would do today should do whatever it is that helps people make their way in the world – and whatever helps Britain to make its way in the world, too.
As it happens, I think her record on education was far from perfect: she was so heavily engaged in hand-to-hand economic warfare that she did not focus as closely as she did on other dossiers – and if she closed fewer mines than Harold Wilson, it is also true that she closed more grammar schools than Shirley Williams.
But what would she do today? It is obvious. She would do anything to smash down the barriers that prevent talented young people from rising on sheer academic merit; and if the teaching unions had said that they were against narrative history – as they are – I think she would have made sure they became history themselves.
What would she do with the economy? She would do anything to help the small businesses that are the backbone of the nation, and to make it easier for them to take on new workers.
She would swing that iron handbag at ’elf and safety and the deranged compensation culture. She would cut business rates, and she would tell the banks that they should either lend to British business or get broken up.
She would naturally keep good and strong relations with America, but she would build links way beyond Europe and the Atlantic – with the Brics, with the African countries that are now showing such amazing growth (many of them Commonwealth members) and with the Middle East. She would be more friendly with Germany these days, but in renegotiating the EU treaty she would make the basic point that sovereignty lies with Parliament, not with Berlin or Brussels.
And yes, as the builder of the last truly transformative piece of transport infrastructure – the Chunnel – I think she would use her fantastic will to cut the cackle and get this country the aviation capacity it needs. We wouldn’t even need to name the airport after her, because 23 years after she stepped down, and after her death, her ideas are still being exported to democracies around the world. Thatcherism lives! Ding dong!
Britain could benefit hugely from the astral guidance of its heroic former prime minister
By Boris Johnson
9:59PM BST 14 Apr 2013
Ding dong, the Soviet Union is dead! Ding dong, communism is dead! And so is the British disease. They are all dead as doornails – the myth of this country’s inevitable decline, the habit of capitulating to the unions, the belief in state control of everything from motor manufacturers to removals firms, taxation rates at 98 per cent: all the Lefty nostrums of the post-war epoch.
Ding dong! Old Labour’s dead! The Labour Party has given up its ridiculous belief in the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange – the slogan that used to be printed on the back of every party membership card. Ding dong, Clause Four is dead as a dodo.
But I tell you what, my little Left-wing friends, and all you who think it amusing to break out the champagne at the death of an 87-year-old woman. There is one thing that is alive and well – and that is Thatcherism. Thatcherism lives; and will live as long as there are people in this country, and on this planet, who see how economic freedom can be the servant not just of the rich, but of our whole society.
There is something astonishing about our collective reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death. It was sad, but hardly unexpected. Why has the controversy been so frenzied? Why can the papers seemingly think and talk of nothing else? Because we have been suddenly reminded of the clarity and urgency of what she had to say – and we have a guilty feeling that her lessons are being forgotten.
I love museums, and am of course thrilled to read in The Sunday Telegraph that we are going to have a Thatcher foundation and museum in London, world capital of culture. I expect that it will embrace the spirit of this country’s greatest post-war prime minister, and have touches that are both traditional and up-to-date. There will be plenty of old-fashioned
glass-case displays of memorabilia. You know: Scargill’s sweat-stained baseball cap; a Soviet tank of the kind she helped to send scuttling from Eastern Europe; the very milk bottles she snatched from the kiddies. I expect there will be the handbags and the gladrags and the deep cerulean-blue ballgowns, all of them tastefully displayed.
But this must be a technologically brilliant place as well, a museum for the PlayStation generation. So I hope that consultants will be brought in to devise the most sophisticated interactive computer games – in which you not only get to gawp at her clothes, but put yourself in her shoes. What we need is YouThatch, the game that tests whether you have the reflexes and the sheer cojones of the Dama de hierro.
It is no use just asking people to take the decisions that she took, though they were difficult enough. Do you take the hellish risk of fighting Galtieri and the repulsive Argentine junta? Do you continue to subsidise uneconomic coalmines? Do you side with Ronald Reagan and face down the Russkies? In all these dilemmas, her choice has been vindicated by history, and young people will (or so we must hope) know the right answer.
No, what we need is a computer program so cunning that it can work out – from her principles – what Maggie would do in situations she never faced. What, in other words, would Maggie do now? I can already see our budding Sir Politic
Would-bes queuing to get their hands on the console, and then mouthing silently as they try to channel her breathy contralto, like Luke Skywalker receiving the astral guidance of the late Obi-Wan Kenobi.
How could we devise a piece of software that would correctly identify the Thatcherian course? It’s easy – you just have to recognise that Thatcherism wasn’t about exalting the rich and grinding the faces of the poor. It was the exact opposite. It was about unleashing talent, and bursting open cosy cartels, and helping people to make the most of their talents and their opportunities. So anyone wanting to work out what Maggie would do today should do whatever it is that helps people make their way in the world – and whatever helps Britain to make its way in the world, too.
As it happens, I think her record on education was far from perfect: she was so heavily engaged in hand-to-hand economic warfare that she did not focus as closely as she did on other dossiers – and if she closed fewer mines than Harold Wilson, it is also true that she closed more grammar schools than Shirley Williams.
But what would she do today? It is obvious. She would do anything to smash down the barriers that prevent talented young people from rising on sheer academic merit; and if the teaching unions had said that they were against narrative history – as they are – I think she would have made sure they became history themselves.
What would she do with the economy? She would do anything to help the small businesses that are the backbone of the nation, and to make it easier for them to take on new workers.
She would swing that iron handbag at ’elf and safety and the deranged compensation culture. She would cut business rates, and she would tell the banks that they should either lend to British business or get broken up.
She would naturally keep good and strong relations with America, but she would build links way beyond Europe and the Atlantic – with the Brics, with the African countries that are now showing such amazing growth (many of them Commonwealth members) and with the Middle East. She would be more friendly with Germany these days, but in renegotiating the EU treaty she would make the basic point that sovereignty lies with Parliament, not with Berlin or Brussels.
And yes, as the builder of the last truly transformative piece of transport infrastructure – the Chunnel – I think she would use her fantastic will to cut the cackle and get this country the aviation capacity it needs. We wouldn’t even need to name the airport after her, because 23 years after she stepped down, and after her death, her ideas are still being exported to democracies around the world. Thatcherism lives! Ding dong!
Sorry that's pants. If she had a funeral in her local church with family only some idiots would still turn up and protest. They want to get on the TV.
Yes, Thatcherism is alive and well Boris and look how well it's doing.
I actually think this thread should be locked for today lest a few people lose it. Today should be a day that we remember 96 Liverpool fans who went to a football game and tragically died and were blamed for it afterwards even though the blame lay elsewhere and was covered up as has been proven without a doubt now. And that disgusting and immoral system of cover-ups was a network of snakes headed up by the person some on here seek to honour.
It makes me fucking sick thinking that. Anyway, I'm out of this thread.
I actually think this thread should be locked for today lest a few people lose it. Today should be a day that we remember 96 Liverpool fans who went to a football game and tragically died and were blamed for it afterwards even though the blame lay elsewhere and was covered up as has been proven without a doubt now. And that disgusting and immoral system of cover-ups was a network of snakes headed up by the person some on here seek to honour.
It makes me fucking sick thinking that. Anyway, I'm out of this thread.
Amazing that the Government and authorities managed to brush Hillsborough under the carpet for the best part of a quarter of a century, while in the meantime dimwit's like (the real) Boris had the gall to stand there telling the people of Liverpool to stop "wallowing in our victim status" over the '50' people who died at Hillsborough and the brutal murder of Ken Bigley, which was all part of our "deeply unattractive psyche".
Mr Johnson adds the city made a scapegoat of police in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, refusing to acknowledge the part played "by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground".
Typical ignorant Tory twat.
Mr Johnson adds the city made a scapegoat of police in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, refusing to acknowledge the part played "by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground".
Typical ignorant Tory twat.
Really? He came out and apologised for "his words"
"I will be going as soon as I can next week to apologise in person for the offence I have caused, and to listen in a spirit of complete humility to local people."
Fair enough, strong ignorant words anyway, particularly about the police. People forget the amount of bollocks that's been written over the years to tarnish the name of the City and the clubs fans.
It's a sensitive day, and I think it's best people STOP posting in this thread if they know they're about to insult people. Return to it tomorrow.
Here us a picture if a cute kitten to calm everyone down
I hate cats!!! GRRRR!!!! Now I'm really mad.
Locked for today.
Ok, enjoy yourselves people. Play nice.
There are masses of security measures going in place for this by my office (i work a few hundred metres from St Pauls). I have also been told that my rowing club is having access restricted as the cremation ceremony is happening in the cemetary next door to my club. Total nightmare. It will be interesting to see the reaction as the herse goes past tomorrow.
Yuck - imagine if your favourite row boat (or whatever fancy name you call them) gets damaged by Thatch's funeral flames, or your outboard motor gets clogged up with her ashes that have spilled out onto the river.
I'd resign my membership now if I were you
I'd resign my membership now if I were you
I don't know if we can be bothered to carry it on Wiz
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