JOEY BARTON: The
footballer posted: ‘I'd say RIP Maggie but it wouldn't be true. If heaven
exists that old witch won't be there.’
Barton is not known for being the sharpest blade in the box and apart from his
football has become known for beating people up.
FRANKIE BOYLE: The
comedian tweeted: ‘All that Thatcher achieved was to ensure that people living
in Garbage Camps a hundred years from now will think that Hitler was a woman.’ Boyle has been
criticised for making fun of a Down’s Syndrome child and other forms of
disability.
MARK STEEL: The comedian wrote: 'What a terrible shame – that it wasn't 87 years earlier.' For sheer, brilliant wit I doubt that can be bettered.
ROSS NOBLE: The comedian tweeted: 'Bloody typical that Thatcher dies when I am in Australia. I hate to miss a good street party.' Noble was four years old when Thatcher was first elected.
DEREK HATTON: The former Liverpool councillor said: 'The issue isn't about whether she
is dead. I regret for the sake of millions of people that she was ever born. She
promoted a form of greed in business that we've never known before and it's
continued ever since. She actually changed the whole face of this country in a
way, that you know, people wouldn't have even anticipated. Even her successors
got away with murder, literally, for example Blair in Iraq, that they wouldn't
have got away with had it not been for what she did. Hatton is now a property developer with interests
in Cyprus.
I have never thought of myself as a ‘Thatcher
supporter’ as in some ways I find such broadbrush descriptions (‘he admitted that he
supported toothpaste’) to be almost meaningless. I have previously outlined why
I think as Prime Minister the women undertook what were undoubtedly necessary
reforms that, I suspect, would not have been undertaken by any other political
leader of the time. Certainly you can disagree with her policies, but any
discussion of them deserves to be intelligent, informed and rational. Likening
the woman to Hitler as Boyle does is not intelligent, informed or rational.
Perhaps most disturbing is this from an Alex
Callinicos, who (I read) is Professor of European Studies at King's College,
London, and member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He
says: ‘Murder was Thatcher's business. Sometimes the murder was metaphorical –
of industries and communities. It still destroyed people's lives. Sometimes the
murder was real. Thatcher over-saw the ongoing dirty war in Ireland.’
His comments invite, off the top of my head,
these questions: what would he say about those who promoted the motor car in
the early years of the 2oth century and murdered the livery stable and horse
trading industries? What would he say about Apple, Microsoft and the rest of
have murdered the typewriter and word processor manufacturing industries? How
does he feel about the various Asian countries who modernised their economies
and began producing steel and other consumer goods more efficiently and cheaper
than Britain which led to the demise – OK, if you insist ‘murder’ if you insist
– of Britain’s steel and white goods industries?
As for the ‘real murder’, what does the professor have to say about the IRA bombings
in Ireland and England, in London,
Manchester and Armagh, for example? Arguably the bomb attack in Brighton when
Thatcher herself was the target – arguably – was ‘legitimate’, but blowing to
pieces ordinary folk who were guilty of nothing else but walking past the spot
where a bomb was detonated would seem just a tad infra-dig.
These outbursts, I think, have their roots in
Britain’s chronic and bizarre ‘them and us’ mentality, which is not just a mere
disagreement about how the country should be run but incorporates real,
visceral hatred. And as someone who dislikes a great deal, not least hypocrisy,
Mr Hatton, but can honestly say he ‘hates’ nothing, I find it incomprehensible.
Here are a few pictures of how some in
Britain ‘celebrated’ Thatcher’s death.
Astute political judgment from four young
women who were not yet born by the time Thatcher resigned. But to be young is very heaven. Things are always quite simple, rather like political judgment
More intelligent discourse here in the free world.
