[Closed] Not all privatisation is bad............

😀
Signed.

😆

be rude not to sign.

This is a tough one, it goes against everything I believe in... except granting the dead their final wishes.

It's what she would have wanted before she went gaga.

Signed.
Shared on Facebook.

signed 😀

slag her off all you want, she was the first female prime minister, thats a huge achivement. The mines were out of date and loss makeing get over it, it was a shit job any way.

slag her off all you want

Nobody has, thanks though.

Done

This might provide a dilemma for Elfin, not sure he'll be happy having to pay an admission charge to hit the dancefloor on her grave.

This might provide a dilemma for Elfin, not sure he'll be happy having to pay an admission charge to hit the dancefloor on her grave.

I don't see why my taxes should go towards his entertainment.

where is Elfin? i thought hed be all over this like a hungry graboid

Signed. Absolute quality.

Signed and shared.

As for her being the first female prime minister, yes it's a tremendous achievement, however gender equality still had a long way too go when she left office.

The policies of privatisation seem to have been a very mixed blessing in hindsight, there's a lot of hype about Thatcher that seems to have gained momentum thanks to the mediocrity of most of her successors. I resent being asked to help fund her funeral arrangements at a time when the economic climate dictates that I will have to fork out an extra 6% on a rail season ticket.

Genius. Signed with pleasure. 🙂

Just burn her in a Wheelie bin
Or just dump her outside with the rest of the shit

Lovely, signed. Now which private bodies might wish to stump up the cash? Any suggestions?...

jumpupanddown - Member

slag her off all you want, she was the first female prime minister, thats a huge achivement. The mines were out of date and loss makeing get over it, it was a shit job any way.

So what do you reckon jumpupanddown - good idea or not ? Did you sign it ?

.

The problem with the petition, as I can see, is that for it to remain a "state funeral" any privatisation would have to be on the basis of a private finance initiative. And as we all know, the taxpayer ends up footing the bill whilst private companies make a nice fat profit.

[url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/19/private-finance-initiative-costly-drug ]Treasury select committee urges George Osborne to wean off PFIs as report shows them 1.7 times costlier than public purse[/url]

I've signed the petition anyway. Although I would much prefer a public event which in these austere times involved shoving her in a cardboard box and dropping it down a disused coal mine.

Or as Frankie Boyle once suggested - give everyone in Scotland a shovel and they'll dig a hole so deep that they'll be able to hand her over to Satan personally.

Wow. When I signed up last night, there was less than 5,000 signatories, it's already over 10,000.

Here I am! 😀

This is one e-Petition I have no problem signing. Brilliant idea. In fact I've forwarded the link to all my friends. If we all do the same, then there's every chance it'll be discussed in Parliament. If that were to happen before she'd even died, even better. 😆

Tick-tock....

This might provide a dilemma for Elfin, not sure he'll be happy having to pay an admission charge to hit the dancefloor on her grave.

With Elf's all round skills, I would expect him to be hired as the choreographer/dance leader, so he would earn a fee.

Signed, forwarded, and bumped.
Its what she would have wanted.

Signed.

JUMP UP JUMP UP AND GET DOWN.

Signed, 10636 so far, so still a way off the 100,000 needed to discuss it in parliament, spread the word.

well it was only at 7000 (i think) when i signed yesterday so at this rate should make 100,000 before she croaks

with luck the mail/torrygraph will pickup the story and get all outraged about it

that should give it the publicity it needs to break through

With Elf's all round skills, I would expect him to be hired as the choreographer/dance leader

Ooh I dunno if I'd be able to manage that if it happened soon, what with me gammy hip an ting. 😐

But ittud be along the lines of something like this:

Where there's a will....

[img] ?w=584&h=320[/img]

I think Thatcher was a great PM. She doesn't deserve a state funeral though as she was too divisive. A good case against it made by Peter Oborne.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100125535/lady-thatcher-deserves-every-honour-%E2%80%93-apart-from-this-one/

Given that she sold most of Britain on the cheap I think the privatised companies should pick up the bill, but can you see French owned utility companies doing that

I often wonder where we would be now if Foot, kinnock or any of the other Labour hopefuls had got back in post 83`

Would BT have been privatised ?

Would the IT Boom have happened when it did ?

I think it's safe to say we wouldn't have had Billy Elliott.

or the full monty?

Would the IT Boom have happened when it did ?

No. If Foot or Kinnock had won then Britain would have missed the IT Boom.

Thatcher was such a visionary that she made her Labour Party Conference "burning with the white heat of technology" speech back in 1963.

I don't buy it that we'd have missed the IT boom had Kinnock or Foot been in No 10. Lots of countries experienced an IT boom in the early 1980s, we weren't unique. Right now, the only ongoing fruits of those labours seem to be ARM, the descendants of the RISC CPUs live in most mobile phones today. I can't think of any other British IT players who are still big today.

Don't forget that the lauded government IT contracts haven't necessarily gone to UK vendors either.

Anyway, aside from the grit shown during the Falklands conflict, I cannot think of anything that Thatcher did that was good for the country but I can think of a lot that she did that wasn't.

I don't buy it that we'd have missed the IT boom had Kinnock or Foot been in No 10. Lots of countries experienced an IT boom in the early 1980s, we weren't unique. Right now, the only ongoing fruits of those labours seem to be ARM, the descendants of the RISC CPUs live in most mobile phones today. I can't think of any other British IT players who are still big today.

I am thinking about the privatisation of BT, the de-regulation of the uk telecoms industry, the birth of the mobile telecoms which complemented the UK IT boom, the growth of companies like Vodafone etc.
BT under state ownership was very heavily unionised, would they really have moved quick enough to keep up ? I doubt this very much, historical speculation I know.

I like Peter Oborne's summary of the relevance of State Funerals
> http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100125535/lady-thatcher-deserves-every-honour-%E2%80%93-apart-from-this-one/
/p>

The problem is that talk of a state funeral for Lady Thatcher reflects a troubling failure to understand what such events are about. They are so very rarely awarded because they have been designed for a category of great men and women who have come to represent the nation as a whole, rather than a particular sect or faction.
The first of these are monarchs. It is they who represent the British state in all its pomp and glory, while their heads of government (prime ministers) fulfil a much more workmanlike function. So all monarchs receive a state funeral: that is because they are above politics.
The second class are warriors. Horatio Nelson was given a state funeral after his heroic death at Trafalgar in 1805, and so was the Duke of Wellington in 1852 (acknowledgment of his superb role in the defeat of Napoleon, not for his undistinguished premiership later). Earl Haig, Britain’s leading First World War general, viewed by some historians as an unimaginative butcher, was awarded a state funeral in 1928.
The third class are brilliant men: Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin both got state funerals. Finally, we come to politicians. Only four prime ministers have been awarded the honour in the past 200 years – Wellington, Palmerston, Gladstone and Churchill. Of these, Churchill was the symbol of our lonely resistance to Hitler in 1940; Palmerston (probably lucky to get his) and Gladstone both stepped down in ripe old age, by which time they had almost completely transcended party politics.

Britain would have missed the IT Boom.

And what a God send that would have been. You lot would have to get real jobs. 😆

Anyway, aside from the grit shown during the Falklands conflict, I cannot think of anything that Thatcher did that was good for the country but I can think of a lot that she did that wasn't.

What! that's a hell of a rewriting of history, the Falklands basically saved her premiership as she and the Conservatives were due to get a kicking at the election, right upto the point she scrapped our aircraft carriers and pulled our troops out of the Falklands, giving the Argentina Junta the impression we didn't want them anymore.

The Falklands were very important to Thatcher but only because it got her re-elected, at the bargain price of 255 British lives .....

This book is well worth reading, if you want to get some more insight into her premiership, and understand why there will be street parties when she shuffles off.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maggie-Fatal-Legacy-John-Sergeant/dp/0330411853

the Falklands basically saved her premiership as she and the Conservatives were due to get a kicking at the election

But I think it's only fair to point out that according to another former Tory Prime Minister, Thatcher's "warrior characteristics" were "profoundly un-Conservative".

[url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/463873.stm ]Major attacks 'warrior' Thatcher[/url]

[i]Former Prime Minister John Major has launched an attack on the behaviour of his predecessor Margaret Thatcher.

In the first extract of his memoirs, serialised in the Sunday Times, Mr Major criticises her for possessing "warrior characteristics" that were "profoundly un-Conservative".[/i]

[img] [/img]

"Profoundly un-Conservative" ......... right.

Weel, I don't recall her doing much "Conserving" when it came to industry, the stock market and public services...

You also have to bear in mind that John Major despises Thatcher with every fibre of his being, as she basically did everything in her power to screw his premiership, and kept meddling in Govt business when she was out of power. That and her uncanny ability to say one thing and do the opposite especially over Europe. She was a master of spin, and started this whole PR ran political mess we are in now.

Thatcher backed him hoping he was going to be a puppet, and do her bidding when in power, and when he didn't the notorious Thatcher malice and bitterness was brought to bear.

Read the book I posted a link to, its a dry but very informative potted history, of her political career.