According to The Mail on Sunday (OK 'niff said) the Westminster government has agreed to meet the full cost of a state funeral for Mrs Thatcher.
The paper announced that it will take place at St Paul’s Cathedral, at her own request. (Imagine being so self important as to ASK for a state funeral). Apparently it has not yet been decided if she will lie in state in Westminster Hall.
This means that a woman who destroyed the fabric of our society by encouraging greed and denying the existence of that very society (presumably because she had no part in it), tearing communities apart, wrecking the industrial base of the country, concentrating all the UK’s talents in the finance and insurance industry (great idea with hindsight, eh Maggie?) and setting the path for the rich getting obscenely more rich, and the poor getting third world poorer, will be honoured in the same way as Winston Churchill (whom she liked to pretend she knew), Nelson, Wellington, Palmerston and Gladstone.
Even the Queen Mother was not accorded a state funeral.
What a joke!
Plans are well afoot, it would seem, as Thatcher is getting more and more frail. Organization is in the hands of Malcolm Ross, former Master of the Royal Household (as opposed to mistress of it, which was the job of Mrs Parker-Bowles). He apparently organized the funerals of Margaret and the Queen Mother so he's good at it.
According to the paper the reason that Thatcher is to have money we don't have lavished upon her is that she reversed Britain’s post war decline (really?); she was a woman (really?) and she won three elections (against Neil Kinnock? I could ahve done that), and that she won the Falklands War (although it was only a conflict at the time, despite the fact that she thought it put her on the same level as Winston)
So... given the situation we are currently in, and were in during most of her premiership, I’m disinclined to think much of the first reason; the fact she’s a woman is a bit loose, allowing another 30 million or so people to apply; winning three elections also puts Blair in the frame, and as far as the war is concerned, I don’t remember seeing her in the Falklands until it was all over, so I’m wondering how she managed to win it. I do remember that she claimed full credit for sinking the Belgrano ... and the taking of 323 young lives. Well done Mrs T, you must be proud.
I hope that the government has considered the security threat that this funeral will pose; and the fact that it will give people all over the country the opportunity to demonstrate...unless of course, like at the Royal wedding, the police decide in conjunction with the palace, that peaceful demonstration will be illegal.
One thing I'm glad about. Clearly if we can afford another extravaganza like the wedding, we must have more of less paid off the deficit, so hopefully VAT and petrol duty will come down in the next few weeks.
