By chance I knew Margaret Thatcher rather better than a junior civil servant might have been expected to, not least from giving her some maritime briefings during the First Gulf War. On another occasion Denis and I once got absolutely blind drunk in Lagos – I had been given him to look after for the day, and the itinerary started with the Guinness brewery and went on to the United Distillers bottling plant, before lunch at the golf club. I had to reunite him with his spouse for the State Banquet and quite literally fell out of the car. Happy days.
I can say I was on first name terms with her – she always called me by my first name. Except unfortunately she thought that was Peter. I recall she came out to Poland when I was in the Embassy there and I was embarrassed because she knew me, and thus greeted me more warmly than my Embassy superiors. The problem was lessened by her continuing to call me Peter very loudly, even after I corrected her twice.
In person she was frightfully sharp, she really was. If you gave her a briefing, she had an uncanny ability to seize on the one point where you did not have sufficient information. She also had that indescribable charisma – you really could feel when she entered a room in a way I have never experienced with anybody else, not Mandela or Walesa, for example. You may be surprised to hear that in person I found her quite likeable.
Yet she was a terrible, terrible disaster to this country. The utter devastation of heavy industry, the writing off of countless billions worth of tooling and equipment, the near total loss of the world’s greatest concentrated manufacturing skills base, the horrible political division of society and tearing of the bonds within our community. She was a complete, utter disaster.
Let me give one anecdote to which I can personally attest. In leaving office she became a “consultant” to US tobacco giant Phillip Morris. She immediately used her influence on behalf of Phillip Morris to persuade the FCO to lobby the Polish government to reduce the size of health warnings on Polish cigarette packets. Poland was applying to join the EU, and the Polish health warnings were larger than the EU stipulated size.
I was the official on whose desk the instruction landed to lobby for lower health warnings. I refused to do it. My then Ambassador, Michael Llewellyn Smith (for whom I had and have great respect) came up with the brilliant diplomatic solution of throwing the instruction in the bin, but telling London we had done it.
So as you drown in a sea of praise for Thatcher, remember this. She was prepared to promote lung cancer, for cash.
@ Doug Scorgie :
Seeing your excellenht and substantive post of 19h58 reminded me that I have to seek your advice on something.
I’ve affectionately referred to you in the past as “The Scourge”, but have now come to realise that your comments have nothing of the scourge – being slapped by a damp duster would be a more accurate description.
So I’m thinking of replacing that affectionate nickname by either “Son of Mary” or “The ventriloquist’s dummy”.
Please do tell me which of the two you’d be happier with. Thanks!
***************$
La vita è bella, life is good! (is Scorgie really Archie?)
@ Craig : have you heard that Michael Jenkins has died?
Watch out Habbabkuk:
“Margaret Thatcher funeral: police scan social media for protesters”
http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Margaret-Thatcher-funeral-police-scan-social/story-18664185-detail/story.html#axzz2Q5mIsUAC
Not hiding but laughing having just read your last entry. I think I may have hit a nerve. You should not allow your invective to flow so freely.
Anyway I hope that you and the Resident Interrogator are happy together.
btw I am called old by some here. Not middle aged.
PS I suppose the Easter Bunny has run off by now. What was it? ‘He will hear your prayers’ or somesuch. Deranged.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)
10 Apr, 2013 – 8:58 pm
Pissed again Habbabkuk you stretch-mouthed rascal, you swollen parcel of dropsies.
You have not so much brain as ear wax and have a misshapen dick.
Sorry I’ve been reading Shakespeare again.
“Sorry I’ve been reading Shakespeare again.”
No need to apologize. Francis Bacon wouldn’t.
Can we all just not répondez s’il vous plaît?
Well I will not be joining in the celebration of a deluded woman’s death – whether she was old or not is neither here nor there.
But that isn’t to say there should be any scrap of respect, acknowledgement of “service” or deference allowed to this person, who was after all, only a tool. The myth of a strong handbagging woman and ruler of weak men suits the purposes of those busy configuring “our island story” at this very moment.
The family and community hatred generated by the policies she was a mouthpiece for was both aweful and awful. Kids fought in playgrounds and, on one occasion as I witnessed, in a classroom; people who had never been inside a courtroom before were hauled up and branded as criminals; it was a bitter, bitter time.
And to think the whole rotten stinking era was kicked off by the words of St Francis : “Lord make me an instrument of your peace” delivered in that cut-glass voice and with that simpering smile. God it’s enough to make you turn Non-conformist or bush baptist!
The Margaret Thatcher you knew personally died a long time ago. The woman selling lung cancer was already demented. I am not sure kicking a patient is any better than kicking a corpse.
If they want to really honour their adored heroine of “the free market” they should make the funeral be paid for by private donations from the capitalist profiteers who benefited hugely from her policies. Why should ordinary taxpayers pay since she said there was no such thing as society?
Glen Sorry for your Loss…Aye, a worthy son.
Mary.. That you don’t care, hard not to respond, but fuck em.
what i greatly resent is how politics has the direct ability to ( almost ) STRAIN even families
Since my Kid ( step son ) joined the army, he has become so brainwashed…First it was his iraqi hair dresser ” Iraq wonderful place now “, then Libya ( MSM mantras ) and now thatcher… complaning about Galloway and others on facebook
The media job to completion, but its hard to watch, A Clyde child should Know better,
Having said that, the cause for celebration in Scotland, is pretty much solid for Tinfoil’s passing, even though Very few of them Know even a fraction of what truths are written on this thread
Jemand – that barrage sent to mary seemed passionately abandoned. I couldnt recognise it for anything but upset.
Below Craigs Blogs, there is this noise – Discussions, arguments , outlooks, messages.
Often times with arguments on immigration, truth topics, religion and over personal thoughts.. there has been little for non-involved to follow.
Its a single threaded listing, that has to diverge and recall previous topics (and latest events) as it goes on. so to take an interest in a theme, we always have to skip past irrelevant contentions.
Commenters could ramble on, occasionaly drunk at their keyboard for pages of postmodern prose, japes and grumbles accompanied. Interesting people including but not limited to doctors, authors and activists wrote over it, it was and still is quite a menagerie.
Mary used to just post news from a Left perspective with little comment, but organic distaste of the state of world politics. Until hbk arrived in an odd flurry of commentless criticisms, without having proffered any positions or opinions to go on, teasing when they might divulge -began by criticising spelling and grammar and chickens! And did that for dozens if not hundreds of comments, certainly generating hundreds or thousands of comments of “commentless upset”.
Commentspace of political blogs is a space for people to represent their outlooks, but its noisy. The worst racket is when people mostly want to present only there outlook on the commenters and commenting.
Mary ment to say…Grab yourself the cd of Rabbit Proof Fence….its called Long Walk Home..Great Driving Music.
http://www.last.fm/music/Peter+Gabriel/Long+Walk+Home
[Caution – might contain traces of hurtful observations. Reader discretion advised.]
Hi Doug Scorgie,
You and Mary obviously didn’t finish high school, let alone proceed to and complete a university education, did you? I can sense the lack of education and related emotional disturbances that interfere with your ability to think through your comments to their logical conclusions. As a very common person of low birth, intellectual development and social station, who mouths out what he thinks before contemplating the validity and consequences of his comments, you embarrass yourself with attempts at being witty, funny or poignant. But practice makes perfect, so keep trying.
No, Dougie, my country is not the artificial geopolitical construct and elaborate longterm conspiracy to steal land from Palestinians, otherwise known as the State of Israel. But you already knew that. My country is the one that spends billions of dollars on remote health, welfare, education, radio and tv stations, employment subsidies and anti-white propaganda for aboriginal people. I’m terribly sorry that I could not personally reign in the murderous, cruel and thieving behaviour of a minority of white Australians who targetted aborigines in the past – they also targetted everyone else who was vulnerable, and they still do. That’s what arseholes do – you know that. But then, their DNA was typically British, like yours, and it was your people, not mine, who introduced colonies of hardened and embittered criminals to this land that started the problem. We Australians now have to clean up your mess, including the radioactive contamination of Maralinga that prevents aborigines from returning to their old stomping grounds in the middle of South Australia. When are you going to chip in to the cost of the multi-million dollar cleanup?
*sound of crickets*
As for Mary and her myopic racist views against Australians, I offer her the following links. They make uncomfortable reading for poseurs on human rights. I doubt she will even bother to read them, but if she does, will probably just post another anti-Australian link without addressing the issues posed in these links. (Yes, Mary, you hit a nerve. Good for you, you sweet old thing)
Violence against aboriginal women and children –
http://www.plutoaustralia.com/p1/default.asp?pageId=383
Aboriginal women, silent victims of violence –
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/aboriginal-bodies-ignored-violence-against-women/story-fn59niix-1226513325545
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but clumsy as always –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Territory_National_Emergency_Response
. . . .
@Crab, thank you for the gesture, not lost, subject to further contemplation.
We did, Jemand. Damn us if you will,it probably wasn’t enough, but we did.
http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/koorimail/issues/pdf/054.pdf
And your then government did the job on the cheap. That waste should have been vitrified, and wasn’t.
@Komodo, I stand corrected. The UK, after twisting her arm, coughed up some of the cost. I’ll cross that one off the list. Thanks for the link confirming this.
Jemand – The Truth Hurts
11 Apr, 2013 – 8:12 am
“My country is the one that spends billions of dollars on remote health, welfare, education, radio and tv stations, employment subsidies and anti-white propaganda for aboriginal people.”
Sounds to me that it is you that is the racist judging by the above sentence.
“But then, their DNA was typically British, like yours, and it was your people, not mine, who introduced colonies of hardened and embittered criminals to this land that started the problem. We Australians now have to clean up your mess…”
And what DNA is yours Jemand?
The Northern Territory National Emergency Response:
“The use of sexual abuse as the catalyst for the intervention has been subject to debate. One view is that sexual abuse is a ‘trojan horse’ for other purposes such as regaining government control over disputed land.”
(Altman, Jon (2010). Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia. UNSW Press.)
“In 2010, James Anaya, a United Nations Special Rapporteur, found the Emergency Response to be racially discriminating and infringe on the human rights of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory”
(Anaya, James (February 2010). “Observations On The Northern Territory Emergency Response In Australia)
The United Nations expressed concern over the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, writing to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in March 2009 following a complaint made to the UN by a collective of Aboriginal communities.
You say:
“We Australians now have to clean up your mess, including the radioactive contamination of Maralinga that prevents aborigines from returning to their old stomping grounds in the middle of South Australia. When are you going to chip in to the cost of the multi-million dollar cleanup?”
But:
“Maralinga was developed and co-funded as a test facility between the British and Australian governments.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_tests_at_Maralinga
I get the impression you don’t like Aborigines Jemand
Just don’t see why this site continues to allow Jemand, in various guises, to disrupt any meaningful discussion of who Margaret Thatcher really is, and what she has done, just dismissing almost anything negative as rumor, antipathy, and crack-pot conspiracy theory.
First he attacked me in this way, resulting in foul put-downs which the site apparently has taken down. Now he is attacking Mary in much longer but less foul gibberish.
Jemand is just driving posters with something to say way.
That’s rich coming from the earthquake weapon specialist :p
Ol’ Dougie, that last post of yours reads a little too try-hard. I’m quite sure I have more aboriginal and other non-white friends than you. Feel good about that, actually. Your cherry-picking and out of context quotations reveal you as just another phoney that you know yourself to be. Feel free to waffle on more about my imaginery racial hatred for people who are more like brothers to me than the lower class dregs of British society like you. Maybe you ought to think about finishing your education. It shows, you know.
Trowbridge, your reputation as a conspiracy theorist and crackpot precedes you on other blogs. You have never offered any evidence of your kooky claims let alone evidence that you are who you claim to be. Of course there is no real T.H.F. You’re a fictitious character.
With obnoxious creeps like Dougie, paranoid schizophrenics like Trowbridge and neurotic women like RSS Mary dominating this blog’s followup commentary, why would anyone want to read past the main post?
You said:
“My country is the one that spends billions of dollars on remote health, welfare, education, radio and tv stations, employment subsidies and anti-white propaganda for aboriginal people.”
That is a racist statement in my view.
If you don’t think so please respond and back it up.
You also said:
“But then, their DNA was typically British, like yours, and it was your people, not mine, who introduced colonies of hardened and embittered criminals to this land that started the problem. We Australians now have to clean up your mess…”
And I asked:
And what DNA is yours Jemand?
Why did you not answer that question?
You say:
“I’m quite sure I have more aboriginal and other non-white friends than you.”
So you are white then?
By the way I dropped out of university but I did get a Diploma of Higher Education for my trouble.
Above post to Jermand
A good summary here. The details within are not revealed on the mainstream corporate media.
Margaret Thatcher’s Criminal Legacy
by Finian Cunningham / April 11th, 2013
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/04/margaret-thatchers-criminal-legacy/
What it means, Dougie, since I have to spell it out for you because you are too thick to comprehend simple, factual statements is –
1. In contrast to the crimes committed by various private people and mistakes committed by governments, the Australian government (Fed + State) spend literally billions of dollars to raise the well-being of Aboriginal people, EVEN to the point of funding exclusive radio and tv stations AND broadcasting of anti-white propaganda that uses the old tricks of sarcasm, exaggeration, omission and disdain. A minority of Aborigines, self-loathing white people and shabby journalists produce these shows as part of their far-left agenda. You are probably too stupid to understand, but there are quite a few Aborigines who hate white people. I’ve been spat on, harrassed and my one-time wife was called a “fucking Chinese cunt”. Does Australia really compare to Israel?
2. The first crimes committed against Aborigines were by YOUR people, the British. YOUR government sent YOUR people to this land and the problems that followed are well known. Just because my ancestors were British, doesn’t make me one. No fucking way. I’m Australian and I have to deal with the legacies of YOUR people – is that clear enough?
3. Yes, I am creamy white, and male – the most hated demographic in the world today. But that’s my fault for being born that way and for all the bad things I did over the last few hundred years to other people all around the world. Pardon me all over the place for being born.
4. Dropped out of uni? Well that explains the missing jigsaw piece. Good for you.
I answered your cocky questions, unlike Mary with mine, so what clever insights or witty insults would you like to follow this up with? More of the same? Fire away.
@ Jemand :
“With obnoxious creeps like Dougie, paranoid schizophrenics like Trowbridge and neurotic women like RSS Mary dominating this blog’s followup commentary, why would anyone want to read past the main post?”
Indeed. But as Craig himself has written, it appears that very few people do in fact read past the main post.
Perhaps you’ve identified the main reason.
@ Doug (Son of Mary) Scorgie :
I’ve noticed that you’ve been doing a lot of asking people to “indicate sources”, to “explain” and to “back up” comments.
A bit cheeky of you really, bearing in mind that you recently insisted that I should provide thread, name and time references to back up something I’d written….and then admitted, after some prodding, that you “couldn’t be arsed” to follow up what you’d asked for.
Rather clownish, I’d say.
**********
La vita è bella, life is good!
@Habbabkuk – “Indeed. But as Craig himself has written, it appears that very few people do in fact read past the main post.”
. . . .
It’s probably a good thing then, that they don’t.
Jemand – The Truth Hurts
11 Apr, 2013 – 6:01 pm
Thank you for confirming that you are a right-wing racist, nay white supremacist.
Go and play with your platypus.
Dougie, I previously thought you were a stupid old man. Now I realise you’re an ignorant, hate-filled little boy. The worst racists are those who pose as anti-racist. Thank you, Dougie, for confirming that you’re a left-wing, inverted racist and self-loathing white trash failure. Good luck with making non-white friends who will see you for the fraud that you are.
@ Jemand :
“@Habbabkuk – “Indeed. But as Craig himself has written, it appears that very few people do in fact read past the main post.”
. . . .
It’s probably a good thing then, that they don’t.”
*************
To be more precise : I suspect a lot of people might once have read past the main post but then stopped bothering when they saw the drivel that the main posts tend to attract.
It’s simply off-putting and divorced from all rationality. And, in the end, entirely counter-productive. Most normal people just switch off and the committed commenters are just left talking to each other in a kind of vacuum. That phenomenon would in part explain, for example, why the Socialist Worker Party and kindred goups have never managed to make any headway in the real world.
*********
La vita è bella, life is good! (keep lunacy in the asylum)
From the university drop-out (Doug Son of Mary Scorgie) :
“Thank you for confirming that you are a right-wing racist, nay white supremacist.
Go and play with your platypus.”.
********
See what I mean, Jemand (and others)? Reasoned argument, politely phrased as always.