11-04-2013, 11:45 AM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2013, 12:03 PM by David Guyatt.)
The BBC is in difficulties, it seems, according to the Daily Mail. The below song is trending heavily in the UK charts, reaching number 10 (synchronicity or what!). Do you Beeb play it in their top 40 countdown. Stay tuned See article HERE.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Thatchcula's funeral is becoming a political congratulations-didn't-she-do-well event. In imo, the right-wing are influencing police decisions behind the scenes to use the Public Order Act to inhibit protests, even though, there is a public right to express one's political views in protest.
What is effectively a state funeral, i.e., a tax-payer funded media event, is not to be allowed to have opposing public participation.
Campaigners reacted angrily last night after Scotland Yard suggested protesters should consider avoiding Baroness Thatcher's cortège because they face arrest under a controversial public order law.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman told The Independent yesterday that demonstrators were more likely than usual to be held under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, because mourners are considered particularly vulnerable to suffering distress.
The law allows police to detain those who cause "alarm, harass or distress", and officers will be given discretion about how they interpret the law. A Scotland Yard spokesman urged protesters to consider "staying away" and that, because of the vulnerable state of those in attendance, arrests under Section 5 could be "higher up the agenda" than usual.
The advice was met angrily by protesters who described it as "draconian" warning that the deployment of arrests under the Public Order Act that was testament to an "era of compulsory mourning".
Val Swain, of the police monitoring campaign group Netpol, said: "This is a public state occasion not a private family funeral. The power is so wide-ranging that it gives police huge discretion over who they can arrest. It is tantamount to arresting people that are not supportive of Thatcher's ideology."
The Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans MP defended the cost of the funeral, adding that he does not know where the much-cited £10m figure has come from.
Speaking on ITV's Daybreak show this morning, he said the Bishop of Grantham, the Rt Rev Dr Tim Ellis, had "got it wrong" over his description of the scale and the cost of the funeral as a "mistake" which may play into the hands of extremists.
"He has got it wrong," he said.
"I do not know where the £10 million figure has come from. It is going to be substantial sums but when you have got the Queen and other world leaders coming in for this funeral, then you are always going to have substantial security costs.
"So we are where we are."
He added: "We have just had an amazing Olympics which cost billions, we have had an amazing Diamond Jubilee which cost well in excess of £10 million - the world was looking at London, we do pomp and ceremony incredibly well. We are talking about marking the passing of the first woman prime minister in this country and indeed of the western world.
"Yes, I think it is going to be done in the right way but pomp and ceremony is something we do awfully well."
Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the funeral on Wednesday as Lady Thatcher's coffin travels through London to St Paul's Cathedral.
A full military rehearsal for the funeral took place in the early hours of this morning, with organisers saying the run-through went "very well". (Click here or view gallery above for a gallery of this morning's preparations)
Scotland Yard has worked closely with Downing Street and the Home Office to finalise security arrangements and last night appeared to soften its stance by granting permission to those planning to turn their back on the funeral carriage.
Alongside the funeral, simultaneous demonstrations are expected to be held around the country, including Yorkshire, where miners will mark the anniversaries of the closures of their pits.
Nine demonstrators arrested during a "death party" in Trafalgar Square were charged by police yesterday. Police had arrested a total of 16 people for a range of offences assaulting police, affray and drunk and disorderly.
David Lawley-Wakelin, who was charged under Section 5 last year for heckling Tony Blair at the Leveson Inquiry, told The Independent: "This law has become used at the whim of judges and applied spuriously as it was in my case. It is eroding free speech and taking us closer towards countries [where] we are trying to stop this from happening."
The present law allows police to detain those who cause 'alarm or distress'
Mustn't alarm or distress all those Thatcherites and other Neo-liberal, Mont Pelerin enthusiasts attending the funeral at London-Pyongyang don't you know.
The police, in their magnanimity have announced that they will take no action if demonstrators present along the funeral route "turn their backs silently", which is thoughtful of them, because they could simply have insisted that anyone present must stand at attention, face front and weep to order.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Today, all news channels are broadcasting wall to wall coverage of the de facto state funeral. To get ordinary news I'm having to watch Euronews and US stations.
Whether I want it or not (I like millions of others don't) I'm opted in.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
My deepest condolences David. My thoughts are with you all in the UK having to endure this massive public insult to your dignity, your intelligence, your memory and bank account.....it must be bleak indeed to turn to US media for a break.
Can't wait till there is a statue of her and pigeons can shit all over her.
David Guyatt Wrote:Today, all news channels are broadcasting wall to wall coverage of the de facto state funeral. To get ordinary news I'm having to watch Euronews and US stations.
Whether I want it or not (I like millions of others don't) I'm opted in.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Magda Hassan Wrote:My deepest condolences David. My thoughts are with you all in the UK having to endure this massive public insult to your dignity, your intelligence, your memory and bank account.....it must be bleak indeed to turn to US media for a break.
Can't wait till there is a statue of her and pigeons can shit all over her.
David Guyatt Wrote:Today, all news channels are broadcasting wall to wall coverage of the de facto state funeral. To get ordinary news I'm having to watch Euronews and US stations.
Whether I want it or not (I like millions of others don't) I'm opted in.
:pointlaugh::pointlaugh::drink:
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
It's Time to Bury Not Just Thatcher but Thatcherism
She didn't save Britain or turn the economy round. We need to break with her failed model to escape its baleful consequences
By Seumas Milne
April 17, 2013 "The Guardian" - 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.
It's hardly a surprise that 60% of the population oppose the public subsidy, or that Buckingham Palace is alarmed at the funeral's regal dimensions. Now the decision to silence Big Ben has tipped the whole saga into the realm of offensive absurdity.
There's been much talk about a need for dignity and respect. But the prospect of the leader of a class war government being treated like a respected head of state is itself an insult to the half of Britain that recoils from her memory and the millions of people whose communities were devastated by her policies.
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.
So there's been no polling bounce for Cameron, even as he claimed that Thatcher "saved our country". And while people recognise her strength, polls show clear opposition to many of her flagship policies, including privatisation (only a quarter think it's delivered a better service). Most don't believe she "put the 'Great' back into Great Britain" at all, her economic policies are seen to have done "more harm than good", and her legacy is regarded as one of division and inequality.
Which is what the facts show. Far from saving Britain, Thatcher's government delivered rampant inequality, social breakdown, disastrous financial deregulation, pulverising deindustrialisation and mass unemployment. A North Sea oil bonanza was frittered away on tax cuts for the wealthy and a swollen benefits bill as public services were run down, child poverty escalated and social mobility ground to a halt.
But for all that, her apologists insist, Thatcher did what was necessary to turn Britain's economy round. But she didn't. Growth during the 1980s, at 2.4%, was exactly the same as during the turbulent 1970s and lower again in the post-Thatcher 1990s, at 2.2% while in the corporatist 1960s it averaged over 3%.
And despite claims of a Thatcher "productivity miracle", productivity growth was also higher in the 60s (and it's gone into reverse under Cameron). What her government did do was redistribute growth from the poor to the rich, driving up profits and slashing employees' share of national income through her assault on trade unions. That's why it felt like a boom in better-off Britain, as the top rate of tax was more than halved, while real incomes fell for the poorest 40% in her first decade in power.
You only have to rehearse what Thatcher's government unleashed a generation ago to recognise the continuity with what's been happening ever since: first under John Major, then under New Labour, and now under Cameron: privatisation, liberalisation, low taxes for the wealthy and rising inequality. Thatcher was Britain's first woman prime minister, but her policies hit women hardest, just as Cameron's are doing today, while Tony Blair says he saw his job as "to build on some of the things she had done rather than reverse them".
But Thatcherism was only an early variant (following her friend General Pinochet, the Chilean dictator) of what became the neoliberal capitalism adopted or imposed across the world for the next generation. And it's that model which imploded in the crash of 2008. As even the free-market Economist conceded last week, while demanding "more Thatcherism, not less", her reforms could be said to have "sowed the seeds" of the current crisis.
Like other true believers, the magazine's editors fret that the pendulum is now swinging away from the neoliberal model. So does Blair, who remains locked in the politics of the boom years and whose comfort zone remains attacking his own party. So he's launched a coded assault on Labour's leader, Ed Miliband,for supposedly thinking a crisis caused by under-regulated markets will lead to a shift to the left.
There's certainly no automatic basis for such a shift. As history shows, the right can also take advantage of economic breakdowns and often has. But more than 20 years after Thatcher was forced out of office, the evidence is that most British people remain stubbornly resistant to her individualistic small-state philosophy, believing for example that it's the government's job to redistribute income across the spectrum and guarantee a decent minimum income for all.
And crucially, the economic model that underpinned the policies of Thatcher and her successors is broken. As the Labour frontbencher Jon Trickett argued this week, we need a "rupture" with the "existing economic settlement" the Thatcher settlement. That's the challenge of the politics of our time, not only in Britain. As we remember blighted lives and communities today, it's time not just to bury Thatcher, but Thatcherism itself.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
