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An unexpected pleasure, leftists chocking at the sight of people celebrating Margaret Thatcher, has just got even better.
The Daily Mail informs us that the “Thatcher haircut” is the rage in central London, with one salon claiming to be overwhelmed by demand.
Italian-born Christina Bellucci, 37, a digital consultant, said she felt the look reflected a modern attitude.
‘This is a strong style and gives me authority,’ she said.
‘When I walk out the door I feel a few inches taller, it gives me power without sacrificing any of my femininity.’
When I read this…
A supermarket chain has withdrawn bags of nuts – after failing to declare they may contain peanuts. The Food Standards Agency issued an allergy alert saying the presence of peanuts was not declared on Booths’ own brand packets of monkey nuts. […] Booths technical manager Waheed Hassan said: “It is our responsibility as retailers to accurately record allergy advice. […] In a statement, the supermarket said it had identified the labelling error and issued a warning to customers.
“If you have an allergy to peanuts, please do not consume this product and return it to your local store for a full refund. No other products are affected by this issue and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
So the packets of nuts labelled as… nuts… are being recalled for not telling people allergic to nuts not to eat the nuts.
I would have much preferred if Mr. Waheed Hassan had instead issued the following statement:
“If you are allergic to nuts, do not buy anything labelled as… nuts. And if you do, then either you are illiterate or cannot read English, in which case an additional label telling you not to eat the nuts that you are allergic to from this packet labelled as… nuts… would not help.
But then again, anyone suffering from a nut allergy eating from a packet labelled… nuts… and which, when you open them and see them prior to stuffing them into your gaping maw, look exactly like the… nuts… that you are allergic to, well, such a person is so stupid that we feel that we are providing a public service assisting with their choice to remove themselves from the gene pool. No need to thank us and remember to always shop at Booths! Kthxby.”
But sadly, he did not say that.
Dave is going to wake up one morning and find that the Conservative Party website, and any other right-of-centre source of information, is going to be shut away behind an “Over-18” “hate-and-porn” firewall and he will be too stupid to work out what happened.
– Samizdata commenter Rob
Say it ain’t so! Accountancy firms ‘use knowledge of Treasury to help rich avoid tax’ – MPs
Margaret Hodge, the PAC’s chair, said the actions of the accountancy firms were tantamount to a scam and represented a “ridiculous conflict of interest” which must be stopped. “The large accountancy firms are in a powerful position in the tax world and have an unhealthily cosy relationship with government,” she said, calling for the Treasury to stop accepting their staff to draw up new tax laws.
In other news, Margaret Hodge called for tighter regulation of the consumer credit industry… civil service procurement… welfare to work schemes… academies… and tax avoidance… and Guardian commenters demanded tighter regulation of the press.
Remember citizens, Get real – get regulated.
“Yesterday the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced that they think the economy is growing again – by 0.3% in the first quarter of this year. You should take these statistics – good or bad – with a pinch of salt. But the breakdown of growth by sector does undermine lazy claims that the economy is in trouble because of cuts in government spending. Whereas the ONS data shows that manufacturing has shrunk by nearly 7% since 2008 and construction has shrunk by more than 15%, “Government” has grown by 6.9%. The real austerity has been in the more efficient private sector, not a still bloated public sector. Is it any wonder that the economy isn’t growing?”
– Matt Sinclair, chief executive, Taxpayers’ Alliance.
The dismal David Cameron wants to block people from accessing ‘porn’ from WiFi in public places and ‘semi-public’ places. Which presumably means all WiFi as almost every WiFi in the world is capable of being picked up in a ‘public’ place, such as the side walk in front of your house.
And the usual coercion addicted statists will smile and nod that ‘the children’ are being protected. And once the slope has been created, these are the people who will be working to make it as slippery as possible.
So of course once the notion that protecting ‘the children’ from stumbling across porn is accepted, next will be protecting them from seeing ‘hate speech’… and then from anything that is held not to be in ‘the public interest’. Held by who? Why by people like them, of course.
It is not about porn, it is about control. It always is.
Today, at 1.54pm in the early afternoon, a friend of mine took this photograph at Oxford Circus, in London W1. We were talking on the phone and she mentioned that there was this important looking hearse driving by. I said can you take a photo of it? She managed just the one, and this was it:
Not having paid much attention yesterday to the Thatcher Funeral, and being a very inept Googler for information about such things, I am unsure about just what this is a photo of. The internet is full of news about what happened yesterday, but seems (to me) to be silent about any Thatcher related activity happening in London today.
Thatcher was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium yesterday afternoon:
Baroness Thatcher was this afternoon cremated at Mortlake Crematorium in South-West London.
After a reception for the guests at her ceremonial funeral, the body of the former Prime Minister was driven from St Paul’s Cathedral to the suburban district.
Her ashes are due to be interred next to those of her beloved husband Denis, who died in 2003, at the Royal Hospital Chelsea.
The hearse in the photo that my friend took certainly looks like the hearse on duty yesterday, as featured in the pictures at the far end of the link above. And who else, besides Thatcher, would merit a Union Jack?
So I’m guessing that this was indeed the Thatcher ashes, on their way to Royal Hospital Chelsea. If so, by a somewhat circuitous route, back through the middle of London.
But am I right about what this was? Or is egg is even now assembling itself on my face?
“As we mourn the passing of a remarkable Prime Minister, we should reflect on the lessons we can learn from Lady Thatcher. She showed courage, conviction, determination and placed great faith in the wisdom of ordinary men and women. We should celebrate her legacy, but also consider how to emulate her today.”
– Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs. That think tank has played a legendary role in developing some of the ideas that influenced Margaret Thatcher, whose funeral was held today. RIP, Maggie.
I wonder how many of those on what is broadly “the left”, who are crying crocodile tears over the fate of coalminers who lost their jobs from unprofitable, subsidised mines in the 1980s, are the same people who want, in the name of global warming alarmism, to shut down profitable mines today? It would be good to ask the current crop of Labour MPs, LibDems and Cameroonian Tories as to whether they think it right to repeal the UK’s various climate change measures that have, among other things, led to the recent closure of UK coal-fired power stations.
Of course, such a question reminds me, when thinking of the nonsense about that has been spouted since the death of Margaret Thatcher, of how illogical and hypocritical people, both politicians, and voters, are on such matters. Not a comforting thought. But I guess it is hardly something that is confined to the UK.
There is a well known military adage to the effect of “never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake”.
So I am pleased to see that I am not the only to see that the noisome celebrations of Margaret Thatcher’ death are in fact rather… useful.
The left-wing commentariat seems to be using the argumentum ad nauseam against the Thatcher record. This consists of repeating an allegation, no matter how much evidence is produced against it, or how many times it has been shown to be false.
– Madsen Pirie
Every time I read of drunken noisy celebrations from assorted people following Margaret Thatcher’s death… every time I read of someone spewing vitriol and spitting on her memory… every time I read “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead“… my smile grows ever so slightly wider.
Why? Well I think I may have given a clue why I was likely to think this way a few days ago when I wrote this:
I would not have described myself as a libertarian back then even though I more or less was (and indeed I was only vaguely aware of the term, preferring ‘Classical Liberal’ in the non-debased non-US sense). And I still do not call myself one really, even though I more or less am. But for more than a decade I did indeed take delight in calling myself a Thatcherite (even though I only ‘kinda’ was), primarily because it was a wonderful shortcut for discovering all I needed to know about whoever I was speaking to at that time, just by watching their reactions.
Maggie Thatcher pissed off all the right people and I swung her name around like a handbag with a brick in it.
Before Margaret Thatcher took power, we had a Tory party lead by Edward Health… a man who was frankly so indistinguishable from the people he purported to oppose that his ‘conservative’ government nationalised several businesses. The broad statist political consensus amongst the Great and the Good (try not to spit when you read those words) was that the only thing to argue about was the rate at which the state took over, well, everything.
The Flat Caps and Beer Party and the Champagne and Barbour Party carried on a wonderful pantomime show of how they disdained each other and how they were like chalk and cheese, much as they do now, but in truth, it disguised just how much they had in common. Free(er) Markets were a talking point amongst some Tories but in truth they loved to intervene “before breakfast, dinner and tea”.
And then Maggie T started talking about free(er) markets and actually meaning it.
She polarised the Party and the country and that was exactly what was needed. She smashed the cosy consensus, over and over and over again… and many people hated her for it, which means it actually did some good.
And now, the late Margaret Hilda Thatcher is doing it again.
What we have at the moment is a toxic political consensus. We are all the same, we are all in agreement and (whispered aside) don’t worry, those ‘cuts’ in state spending are really just cuts in the rate of increase. You can trust David Cameron with the regulatory welfare state. And indeed you can.
Ok long suffering Middle England, just watch those people on the news and in the papers. And then look at that pallid ‘Conservative’ toad in Number 10 who has de facto nationalised Britain’s leading banks. Does he remind you of someone?
There are still neo-Thatcherites in the Tory party (David Davies most prominently) and then there is always the Joker in the deck of British politics, Nigel Farage, whose admiration for Maggie T has always been obvious even if she dropped the ball on Europe (as did many of us).
But there are few things better at flipping that switch in people’s heads than seeing unedifying hatred from people who reek of naked greed for the state extracted money of others.
And so every time I see people pouring out their bile for Thatcher, I smile and hope there is a TV camera around or a journalist happy to write down what they say. By their own words, they shall be revealed.
Oh Margaret, you really were the gift that just keeps on giving.
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