My god she was an awful human. The Eulogising over on BBC is vomit-inducing.
Cameron flying back from Spain where he was to hold a meeting with other EU leaders. Why? It's not the blinking Queen.
I can imagine Merrion Street is finding difficulty with a press release, maybe the prto-Unionist Hayes can announce his sadness at her death.
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
Seamus Mallon's interview on RTE news was great. They were clearly looking for some empty platitudes, but the best he could muster was "she was a remarkable person" before listing all of the horrible things she did.
Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin
Upon which he remarked... I crossed into Clady yesterday and I couldn't help but notice how bloody similar to Finchley it was. She was onto something.
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
This real Unionist isn't sad, at least not for her even more Thatcherite followers. Both have done enormous damage to our country even if Maggie's was 25 years ago.
Some coverage and comments (not necessarily Bonnie's) seem to assume almost total Ulster unionist support because she claimed to stand up to terrorism. Not so, and not just because there are other issues beyond the partition of Ireland. Her party was in charge for three-quarters of the Troubles, yet for all the security initiatives and infiltration of paramilitarism failed to end them; she allowed one of the most active such paramilitary groups to remain banned for 20 years, and so on.
Last edited by Gather round; 08/04/2013 at 2:42 PM.
Do you recall who asked this salient question of Mrs Thatcher in The House Of Commons in 1985, GR - a day before she visited Hillsborough Castle?
"Does the Right Hon. Lady understand—if she does not yet understand she soon will—that the penalty for treachery is to fall into public contempt?"
The Englishmen came over in the year 2005
But little did they know that we'd planned a wee surprise
Sir David scored the winner, and Windsor Park went wild
And this is what we sang...
Wasn't that the Wolverhampton Wanderer, Enoch Powell? But just to clarify, I'm not suggesting she treated NI treacherously, just incompetently and hypocritically.
A Czech girl I know posted up on FB earlier that she thinks it's sick that people are contemplating parties and celebration of her death.
She actually called her a "little old lady"; but it seems the generational difference is at work here.
I tried to point out the destruction of lives and livelihoods she meted out either directly or indirectly to the North of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and not to mention her support for her dear friend Augusto, all to no avail.
I would never assume she had total support amongst Ireland's unionist community. We all remember the reactions to the AI Agreement?
But the eulogising for her on display on BBC (I haven't bothered with Sky today) is nothing short of breathtaking.
Would I wager black armbands and minutes silence in Manchester tonight?
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
It sure was Enoch.
I agree with you.
Many Unionists see her handling of the Hunger Strikes, for example, to be something to celebrate - I think that's taking a very limited view of The Lady's handling of Northern Ireland issues.
The Englishmen came over in the year 2005
But little did they know that we'd planned a wee surprise
Sir David scored the winner, and Windsor Park went wild
And this is what we sang...
Aye, fair dos I diddn't explain that properly. While some Unionists slammed her because the AIA was seen as giving in to Nationalists, I did so then and now because she failed to address Unionist paramilitarism.
I had absolutely no time for "The Lady" whatsoever and will not be mourning her loss, but I also find little appeal in the celebration of another human being's death, no matter how dislikable a figure they might have been in life. To be honest, I find the notion to be more sociopathic - barbaric even - than iconoclastic. I found the gloating from the right after the recent death of Hugo Chavez to be equally unsettling and distasteful. And that's not merely because I held a certain level of admiration for his humility, vigour, passion and ideals; I just don't think it very mature or sophisticated to gloat in the death of another human being. Remember these scenes in the US upon the death of Osama bin Laden?:
That hullabaloo struck me as not only weird, but also cheap and crass. You'd nearly have felt sorry for Bin Laden!
I think it would be hypocritical then for me to apply a double standard here and proceed to revel in the death of Thatcher. I don't want to be a sanctimonious party-pooper either, mind, so do party on if that's where you feel your energies would be best applied.It would just sit uneasily with me personally for some reason.
Are people actually out getting the pints into them, by the way, or is it all just a bit of gloating and excitement around Facebook and Twitter? Isn't it all a bit futile anyway? Does her death really change anything? Does celebrating it make any difference? Thatcherism is still very much alive and well, after all. These are worth a read: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...n-8143089.html and http://thequietus.com/articles/11886...tcher-obituary
In saying all of the above, criticism of her should most certainly not be suppressed out of "respect for a family in mourning" either. A good article by the learned and ever-impressive Glenn Greenwald on that here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...tte?CMP=twt_gu
Last edited by DannyInvincible; 08/04/2013 at 5:54 PM.
I'd been aware that Edward Heath considered the notion of ethnically-cleansing the north of its Catholic population, but only finding out that Thatcher also suggested the same years later: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/ju...nd.catholicism
In light of recent discussion in the eligibility thread, interesting that she also supported a re-drawing of the border, but not out of any consideration for the notion of self-determination or those living there...:Margaret Thatcher horrified her advisers when she recommended that the government should revive the memory of Oliver Cromwell - dubbed the butcher of Ireland - and encourage tens of thousands of Catholics to leave Ulster for the south.
A year after she was nearly killed in the IRA's 1984 Brighton bomb, the then prime minister expressed dismay at Catholic opposition to British rule when they could follow the example of ancestors who were evicted from Ulster at the barrel of a Cromwellian gun in the 17th century.
Lady Thatcher's extraordinary solution to the Troubles has been disclosed by her advisers at the time of the negotiations on the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement.
Sir David Goodall, then a diplomat who was one of the most senior British officials negotiating with the Irish government, told a BBC four-part documentary, Endgame in Ireland, that Lady Thatcher made the "outrageous" proposal during a late night conversation at Chequers.
"She said, if the northern [Catholic] population want to be in the south, well why don't they move over there? After all, there was a big movement of population in Ireland, wasn't there?
"Nobody could think what it was. So finally I said, are you talking about Cromwell, prime minister? She said, that's right, Cromwell."
Her interest in him is likely to turn her into an even greater hate figure among nationalists, who have never forgiven her for mishandling the 1981 republican hunger strikes. Catholics were slaughtered in their tens of thousands in the 1640s and 1650s by Cromwell's forces. Virtually all Catholic landowners were hounded out of Ulster.
Lady Thatcher's "outrageous" plan did not stop at reviving the memory of Cromwell.
Sir Charles Powell, then her private secretary, told the programme that she also called for Northern Ireland's border with the republic to be redrawn.
"She thought that if we had a straight line border, not one with all those kinks and wiggles in it, it would be easier to defend," he said.
The zigzag border is notoriously difficult to patrol. But Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, then cabinet secretary, told Lady Thatcher of the folly of her idea.
"It wasn't as simple as that because the nationalist communities were not all in one place, not all in Fermanagh and Tyrone and South Armagh and so on," he told the programme.
"There were many in Belfast, and the idea of partition in Belfast or moving large numbers of population didn't seem to be very attractive."
However, she would not abandon her idea and called for a "security zone" on both sides of the border to help the British army and the RUC to chase IRA terrorists who used to slip over the border after attacks in the north. This was rejected out of hand by the Irish government.
The BBC's coverage is all a bit nauseating. Heard David Cameron's statement a while ago there too. Did I hear him correctly when he referred to Thatcher as having been "a great statesman"?
Ah yes indeed.
The hypocrisy you speak of is rarely spoken off by a lot of Irish unionists like yourself.
Remember having that out with a citizen of Portadown in Australia, she failed to see my side. Think Daddy or Grandaddy was a UDR man.
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
The revisionism has begun with vigour on Sky News.
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
I'd expect it from Sky News, but from the "neutral" BBC?!... Then again, their coverage of the London Olympics was pretty soppy too.
BBC isn't neutral, it gladly jumped on the anti-Assad bandwagon, conveniently ignoring the horrific mob who were "fighting for democracy", if democracy means butchering anyone who doesn't believe completely in what some criminally insane islamic fundies preach! BBC is a joke of a service (though they do good comedies and I liked Casualty).
Heh heh
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
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