They’re watching us now. Forget the petty definitions about Old Labour or New Labour, Blairite diehard or Miliband revolutionary.
Everyone on the Left is being scrutinised today. Does the compassion we claim to be our driving force extend to the passing of a frail 87-year-old woman?
Does the Labour movement’s dignity and discipline enable us to mark with appropriate solemnity the death of a former Prime Minister who successfully secured three independent mandates from the people?
Do we have the basic good grace and wisdom to set aside – for a short time – our political differences and acknowledge, however hard it may be, the achievements of the first women to hold the highest office in our land?
For all our sakes, I hope we do.
That was Dan Hodges in the Telegraph.
Baroness Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher, died yesterday. Many announcements of her death were followed by the sentiment ‘R.I.P’.
Rest In Peace.
It seems many though, including the BBC, couldn’t allow her at least one day of dignity and grace.
In fact it took only minutes before BBC political commentators were performing the political autopsy…or ‘Tramping down the soil’ as George Galloway puts it so nicely….telling us Mrs Thatcher was divisive, highly polarising, highly controversial…..that her death will be celebrated…because she is so detested.
Tony Livesey ran a phone in…it began with the announcement that people in Brighton and Glasgow gathered to party and celebrate Mrs Thatcher’s death ..he wanted to know what our own views were of Mrs Thatcher…phone in, let him know, he said. He knew full well that along with the tributes there would be many calls full of bile and hate….why stage a cheap, lurid, drama seeking phone-in on the actual day of Mrs Thatcher’s death? It was a shabby stunt by the BBC to exploit any controversy and create interest in their programmes.
The BBC is of course so much better than those lurid Redtops and the Daily Mail which seek sensation from people’s personal tragedy and miseries..isn’t it?
Some people do have feelings that run very high about Mrs Thatcher. But we didn’t need to be told that on the day of her death.
One reason many feel like that is of course because the BBC has fed the legend itself….after 13 years of Labour we hear hardly a word about their disastrous time in Office….have you heard ‘Labour’ mentioned by the BBC in relation to HBOS when it has been frontpage news recently? No, despite Gordon Brown engineering the ruinous merger of Lloyds and HBOS designed to ‘save’ HBOS.
Blair is only blamed for the Iraq War…indeed he was held up today as the equal of Mrs Thatcher. Gordon Brown doesn’t merit a mention at all on the BBC, or it might just as well be so. Which says a lot in itself.
However the name Mrs Thatcher is hardly off their lips…..she has been blamed again and again on the BBC for everything from ‘depression’ suffered now by the unemployed to the banking crash itself…despite the economy in 2000 being in credit with no deficit due to Tory policies….a legacy squandered by Gordon Brown with the usual profligacy of a Labour tax and spend government with the usual results….’B’ for Bust.
The genuinely ‘detestable’ Ken Livingstone is allowed a say on Mrs Thatcher….and comes up with something many in the BBC could have written themsleves:
‘Her legacy was all the great problems we face today. Her strategy was wrong. She destroyed the trade unions by allowing our manufacturing to collapse.’
Livingstone may be ungracious and politically opportunistic but is not quite as shameful and shameless as George Galloway:
‘Margaret Thatcher described Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist”. I was there. I saw her lips move. May she burn in the hellfires.’
They have every right to their views but I believe the BBC, of all News organisations, should have allowed a decent period of respect to have passed before airing such decidedly unpleasant opinions…all the more unpleasant for being based purely on political malice rather than a genuine analysis of her actions and legacy.
This of course is only the beginning. The BBC now have endless years to pick away at Mrs Thatcher’s reputation and legacy. By the time the BBC have finished Mrs Thatcher will be cast as the worst Prime Minister of the Century…standing alongside the likes of Robert Mugabe or Saddam Hussein.
They come not to praise her but to bury her.
Dan Hodges knew he was onto a losing run with his plea.
He knows what we all know…the Left is a decidedly ‘Nasty piece of work.’
Socialism, the groupthink for people who hate and envy.
“..he wanted to know what our own views were ”
Given such views have to pass through a filter that serves the BBC editorial ‘one degree of separation’ technique, where a very small bunch of people select what a slightly larger bunch of people say that they happen to like, and then serve this up as ‘speaking for the nation’, renders its objective value questionable.
But any not feeling spoken for get charged a compelled £145.50pa on top.
It’s eye-opening to see the sexism from the left especially the Socialist Workers Party. Not only do they give no credit to Thatcher as the first female to become Prime Minister but then they wave banners saying ‘The Bitch is Dead’ revealing their loathing of women let alone women getting to the top.
Condemned out of their own grotesque ideology where inter-comrade rape is supposed to be ignored.
I expect the beeb will manage to find the handful of gleeful trots amongst the vast swathes of solemn mourners and give them due prominence on every bulletin, just for balance you know.
Like they did last night and at the jubilee with the “massed ranks” (pmsl) of republic supporters.
Maggie Thatcher’s greatness may be judged by the people who hate her and defined by her acheivements and love of country. There is one thing that the evil people she defeated can never take away from her now, now matter how much hatred they spew: Her immortality. She now belongs to the ages. In a thousand years she will still be spoken of, while the memory of her enemies will be forgotten soon after their passing.
She once said in interview that if there was one thing she wanted to be remembered for it was for telling the truth to the British people. I think all people who care about the truth and love their country will have this memory of her seared in their consciousness till the day they die.
Upon the sacking of Alasdair Milne as Director General of the BBC in 1987:-
“I have fought three elections against the BBC and don’t want to fight another against it.”
Margaret Thatcher
http://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2012/11/playing-politics-2461216.html
I meant at the funeral, sorry
Noted that Womans Hour wasn`t set fair to trash Thatch this morning-so we got a load of guff about Ulster abortion clinics and what have you instead.
Let`s hope that Jenni Murrays Hags in Sacks bitchfest tomorrow does NOT include Gerri Halliwell( despite her being a UN Ambassador for Yoof!…and met Nelson Mandela PBUH!).
I say this because she made a passing note of sadness over the death of “girlpower icon” Margaret Thatcher…and then pulled it pronto when some Twittershits abused her.
Her tweet?…”sorry if I offended anyone lol”?
Spoken very much as Margaret Thatchers epitaph if the BBC has its way!
Trading Margaret Thatcher for Gerri Halliwell eh?…very much the BBC zeitgeist, and the BBC will never cease to strive until Halliwells version of history is accepted-and Thatchers is binned.
Fair enough-but if Halliwell ever dares to speak again of Thatcher as being an original Spice Girl, just send her to Winnie Mandela will you?
“Sorry if I offended anyone”…how Gerri…and how BBC!
“Baroness Thatcher’s funeral will be held next Wednesday and the Queen WILL attend: Preparations begin for former PM’s final journey.
“Downing Street reveals service at St Paul’s will be on Wednesday April 17.
“Palace confirms that The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh will attend.
“First political funeral the Monarch has attended since Winston Churchill’s.
“Former Prime Minister’s body taken from Ritz this morning.
“She died in the bed of her hotel suite at 11.28am yesterday, while reading .
“Funeral procession will be from Parliament to St Paul’s Cathedral.”
By HUGO GYE and MARTIN ROBINSON
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306155/Margaret-Thatcher-funeral-date-plans-Wednesday-April-17-St-Pauls-Queen-WILL-attend.html#ixzz2PxymE2t6
“Lest we forget how terrible things were:
The woman who saved Britain – the verdict of three historians .”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306092/Margaret-Thatcher-dies-The-woman-saved-Britain–verdict-3-historians.html#ixzz2Py0ZW6V5
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1. First woman PM
2. Survived an IRA death attempt
3. Was one of the western stalwarts that helped bring down Soviet Russia and its Communist Empire
4. Dealt with Galtieri, yet ensured a safe transition for Hong Kong as far as was possible.
5. Predicted the EU catastrophe of ever-close political union, whose effects are seen daily on the news.
6. First Western Leader to go on about environmental troubles ahead( which…like her gender would , by now; have made her untouchable to the Left Liberal elite of the BBC…why not in Thatchers case?)
7. Saved the British economy.
8. Dealt with the Marxist enemy within via their union and local/national socialist nests.
9. Won three elections fairly.
10 Bequeathed us a free press that was not in the grip of nepotistic gangland creeps from docklands.
11. Supported gay rights back in the 60s before Tatchell had even been thought of.
12. Wife, mother and granny as well
13. A true friend of Israel, the USA, Lech and Vaclav…whose names would surely cause sighs around any Islington dinner table.
And yet- hated, despised and demonised by the so-called compassionate and wealth sharing chattering classes.
Truly nasty types , so it turns out.
If that is the class of enemy that Thatcher recognised and shines her light on by with every passing day…then we have been witness to a truly historic great lady.
God Bless and keep you Mrs T…we`ve learned-we`ll not be forgetting the lessons any time soon either.
Excellent, and to add another that the left won’t like if they even know about it:
Actively intervened to prevent Ted Heath’s government from closing down the (then embryonic) Open University.
Not exactly a bastion of right-wing thought, I know, but talk about equal opportunities…