Today, I Am Ashamed To Be British

From The Mail & Guardian, South Africa

By now, everyone knows that Margaret Thatcher died on Monday.  It has been headline news everywhere.

The BBC managed a Freudian typo – accidentally, I hope:  

Margaret Thatcher dies after a strike.

I wonder if the British reaction has been headline news around the world?  I hope not.

In Britain, many mourn; many…rejoice.  Champagne was sprayed; happy chants thought up; in Glasgow, people who are too young to remember her time in office threw a street party to celebrate.  It was not the only ‘death party’.   Signs appeared saying, Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead!  Facebookers – people I know – spewed vitriol.  

While I don’t deny that her policies caused hurt to many, I have been appalled and saddened at the awfulness of the public reaction in some quarters.  The weltschmerz I feel is compounded with shame.  Margaret Thatcher wasn’t a mass-murderer, a torturer, a genocidal maniac who kept heads in the refrigerator.  She was a strong woman, convinced she was right, and unafraid to act on her beliefs.  She was our first and, so far, only, female Prime Minister; for three terms.  No small achievement.  She was respected and sometimes feared on the world stage.

But all of that happened more than twenty years ago.  When she died, she was just a frail old lady.

former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in October 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is wrong with a country in which people can show such scant respect for the dead?  In which it is okay to dance on the grave of a pensioner?

All politics aside, today, I am ashamed to be British.

Related articles

• Who is Margaret Thatcher? Confusion reigns online (guardian.co.uk)
• Stop Speaking Ill of Margaret Thatcher. (mypresentself.wordpress.com)

 

Joke 748

More from flyingjokes.

Kulula airplane funny at Lanseria Airport (Photo credit: Meraj Chhaya)

Female Radar Controller: “Can I turn you on at 7 miles?”
Airline Captain: “Madam, you can try.”

*

Tower: “Airline XXX, it looks like one of your baggage doors is open.”
Captain (after quickly scanning the FE panel): “Ah, thanks tower, but you must be looking at our APU door.”
Tower: “Okay, Airline XXX, cleared for takeoff.”
Captain: “Cleared for takeoff, Airline XXX.”
Tower, during the takeoff roll: “Airline XXX, ahh … it appears that your APU is leaking luggage…”

*

The crew of a US airliner made a wrong turn during taxi and came nose to nose with another aircraft.  The furious ground controller screamed: “[Callsign] where are you going? I told you to turn right on ‘Charlie’ taxiway; you turned right on ‘Delta’. Stop right there!”  Continuing her verbal lashing of the embarrassed crew, she shouted: “You’ve screwed everything up. It’ll take forever to sort this out. You stay right there and don’t move until I tell you to. You can expect progressive taxi instructions in about a half hour and I want you to go exactly where I tell you, when I tell you, and how I tell you. You got that?”
The frequency went very quiet until an unknown pilot broke the silence and asked: “Wasn’t I married to you once?”

*

A DC-10 had an exceedingly long roll out after landing with his approach speed just a little too high.

San Jose Tower: “American 751 heavy, turn right at the end, if able. If not able, take the Guadeloupe exit off of Highway 101 and make a right at the light to return to the airport.”

Tower: “Eastern 702, contact  Departure on 124.7.”

Eastern 702: “Tower, Eastern 702 switching to Departure…by the way, after we lifted off, we saw some kind of  dead animal on the far end of the runway.”

Tower: “Continental  635, cleared for take-off; did you copy the report from Eastern?”

Continental 635: “Continental 635, cleared for takeoff roger; and roger, we copied Eastern and we’ve already notified our caterers.”

*

O’Hare Approach Control: “United 329 Heavy, your traffic is a Fokker F-27, one o’clock, 3 miles, eastbound.”

United 329: “Approach, I’ve always wanted to say  this… I’ve got that Fokker in sight.”