From the Guardian: It's time to bury not just Thatcher - but Thatcherism

[dflprincess]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/16/bury-not-just-thatcher-but-thatcherism

[div class = "excerpt"]
They have only themselves to blame. Protests were always likely at any official sendoff for the most socially destructive prime minister in modern British history. But by turning Margaret Thatcher's funeral into a state-funded Tory jamboree, puffed up with pomp and bombast, David Cameron and his acolytes have made them a certainty – and fuelled a political backlash into the bargain.

As the bishop of Grantham, Thatcher's home town, put it, spending £10m of public money to "glorify" her legacy in the month benefits are slashed and tax cuts handed to the rich is "asking for trouble". What's planned today isn't a national commemoration, but a military-backed party spectacle.

It's a state funeral in all but name, laid on for none of the last seven prime ministers. Nothing of the kind has been seen since the death of Winston Churchill, who really did unite the country for a time against the mortal threat from Nazi Germany. Thatcher did the opposite, of course, though every effort will be made today to milk her short but bloody colonial conflict in the south Atlantic for all its jingoistic worth....

...From the moment the former prime minister died there has been a determined drive by the Tories and their media allies to rewrite history and rehabilitate a deeply damaged brand. For a few days of fawning wall-to-wall coverage it seemed like that might be working, as happened in the US after Ronald Reagan's death in 2004.

But a week on, it's clear the revisionists have overplayed their hand. Anger and revulsion keep bursting into the open. Simply raising her record reminds people of the price paid for unrelenting deregulation, privatisation and tax handouts to the rich; why she was so unpopular across Britain when she was in power; and the striking similarity with what's being done by today's Tory-led coalition.


(Much more at link).

[DonCoquixote]

1. hear hear

and let's throw both Reaganism, and yes, Clintonism into the same damn grave! All of these ideas have kept the world from doing things that need to be done, like admit that yes, nations DO have an obligation to feed, clothe, heal and nurture their people!

[Rozlee]

2. What you said.

K&R.

[raccoon]

3. K&R. They definitely should've PRIVATIZES her funeral the way she and Raygun wanted to privatize

everything.

[LeftishBrit]

4. +1000

She may be dead, but her policies are sadly very much alive.

As I posted in the UK forum, with many apologies to Alfred Hayes and the subject of his song, Joe Hill, neither of whom would have cared for Thatcher!:


I dreamt that Thatcher stood right here,
Alive as you and me.
I said, ‘I heard that you were dead!’
‘I never died’, said she.

‘As Osborne cuts the welfare state
And cuts rich people’s tax.
As Hunt sells off the NHS,
You see me with my axe!

Whenever you reward success
By punishing the poor;
When Duncan-Smith strikes at the sick,
You see me even more!

In Cyprus, Greece and Portugal,
In Europe far and wide,
Poor people groan beneath the cuts.
You see I haven’t died!

Obama once had liberal plans.
The Congress told him, ‘No!’
So old age pensions must go down!;
You see – I’ll never go!

From Blair and Bush to Cameron;
From London to D.C.;
Where governments still crush the poor,
You’ll there find Maggie T.!’

[dflprincess]

5. +1000