Showing posts with label Maggie Thatcher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maggie Thatcher. Show all posts

Saturday 17 June 2017

Sunny Sat


I spent some fifteen or so minutes sitting in the park watching the clouds above change shape and twist and turn as they passed by.  Clouds, as you know, fascinate me.  They are such huge great monstrosities that we take for granted.  Some reach thousands of feet into the air, other cover whole continents, many are dark and foreboding while today most were of the large fluffy type.  This was the nearest to a rain cloud we saw today.  
I was led to wondering what is actually in them?  Water vapour we know but what else fills these Goliaths in the sky?  Reading today about a man visiting Antarctica and learning of the huge icebergs that contain pockets, if that is the right word, of the air, the atmosphere from five to fifteen thousand years ago.  An air breathed by the Sumerians before they learnt to write, an air early man knew as he spread out about the earth.  How different it is today.  How long will we be able to breathe such air as daily it changes content and each change brings more pollution.  Maybe we will require workers to open the old icebergs and release fresh air!

    
With the weather reaching 80% today and nothing in the news bar the Tower aftermath we run out of things to say.  My tired mind has spent much time looking through the village census for 1911 seeking any link to men I cannot trace.  The facts noted are however interesting.  People in their 70's and 80's still claim to be 'Agricultural labourers' a few being pensioners, the over 70's were granted five shillings by Lloyd George in 1909 and this caused Margaret Thatchers father to leave Lloyd Georges Liberal Party and join the Conservatives.  He did not agree with dole to the unemployed nor pensions to the old, this tells us something.  One poor woman had been married twelve years, had given birth to nine children and only two were surviving.  I noted that neither child was listed at home, only an adult Boarder, and wondered about her state of health and mind and where would the children be living?  I never found my lost men but did get an insight into village living in 1911.

      

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Thatcher Departs



The daffodils enhance a rather dreich morning.  Few other signs of Spring, let alone Summer, have been seen around here.  I blame global warming!  In spite of my intense suffering I, who happen to be one who rarely complains, continued on with my duties with no complaints whatsoever.  What?....oh!

The morning was spent with the BBC coverage of Maggies funeral in the background.  Now usually funerals force people to face up to the issues of life and death, let alone the personal grief of family and close friends.  However the somewhat overblown pomp and ceremony took away much from the funeral itself.  The arrangements for this were begun after talks between Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, and Margaret herself.  It appears, rightly or wrongly, David Cameron has added to this somewhat, like PMs do, for political reasons.  Not only does he wish to be associated with her he wishes her fans, the voters in the southern counties, to see him as a natural follower of her ideas.  They will not do this I'm afraid!  4000 police involved, and such pomp, including the Queen, calls for much security, several hundred from the armed forces, their employment criticised by many, and a somewhat strange ceremonial service overall.  The cost, not yet released as it ought to be, around £10 million! 

I found the ceremonial somewhat strange. (That's three times I've said 'somewhat!')  Why was she taken to the RAF church for a service with no-one in attendance?  What was the point of that with St Paul's filling up?  One thing is for sure, these events showed the difference between real Christianity and the church of England!  No wonder they fuss about irrelevant issues.  An event like this is not time to discuss the failings of the deceased but to concentrate on the better side.  This certainly surprised many!  One after another spoke of how nice she had been to them, and spoke sincerely at that.  Quite what you would expect.  As indeed where the words from the Bishop of London, a man who knows how to keep in with the best I think.  

This occasion brings together many heads of state and their representatives from all over the world.  What a headache ensuring the man from Iran does not sit next to the man from Iraq.  By placing the leader of Israel beside the man from Palestine an interesting event may have taken place.  The Argentinians helpfully did not appear.  I was interested in how they coped with sitting there for so long, waiting for the queen, waiting for the body, waiting for the service.  To hear David Cameron read a passage from the bible with little understanding of what he was saying was a treat!  I wonder how they all regard such times?  Does the pomp bore them?  Do they like to be important actors at this time?  The Queen mother I suspect would have been worrying about her racehorse at such moments.

This went on all morning, with more in the late afternoon as the coffin went to the crematoria for a private cremation.  Quite right too!  That is the moment the family can be themselves at last.  Was Thatcher worthy of such a funeral?  Clement Atlee changed the world in a more positive manner after the war yet when he died nothing like this occurred.  He would have opposed that anyway.  Thatcher brought much division, partly through changing many things that required change, partly through the hardness of heart that blamed those that suffered for suffering!  Especially while many lost jobs and her friends lined their pockets, just ask a banker or someone in a privatised utility!  All premiers deserve a respectful end, with no-one 'booing' as a handful did today.  How can anyone 'boo' a funeral?  Disgraceful!  This was indeed overblown and not required, and greatly over the top cost wise.  However it has been done now, life returns to normal, and we are left with this motley lot, none of them with her ability however warped, running the show.  We ought to mourn for us today, not her! 
  
.

Monday 8 April 2013

Eternal Judgement Awaits us All.



Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. 
Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?

 Ezekiel 18:23  NIV



Sunday 14 October 2012

Political Thoughts




Happy Birthday Maggie!
Happy Birthday from the millions you threw out of work.
Happy Birthday from the folk who lost their jobs as your friends pocketed fat profits.
Happy Birthday from the mental who died on the streets under 'Community Care.'
Happy Birthday from the needless dead in the Falklands.
Happy Birthday from the disabled who had benefits cut.
Happy Birthday from those who lost their houses under your policies.

Have a nice day won't you.  

The Conservative Party, the Party that does not change its spots, whatever they say!  
Note how that nice Mr Romney considers this woman a roll model! 
Be afrain America, be very afraid!


.