Vastly different accounts of the numbers lining the streets from the BBC and other media.

Seems like that big screen and square have moved


Troublemakers didn't turn out after all. The most daring thing was turning their backs on the procession

Somebody rang J H-B and had worked out that if the costs are £10m (and the figure has not been confirmed), when divided amongst the working population it is equivalent to a pint of beer or half a packet of cigarettes per person!

I have spent too long Google searching for your benefit. There were pictures of both city centres and I have accidentally posted the same centre twice. Liverpool and Swansea city centre screens weren't even switched on!

Why not use the money to pay for some more nurses then and let the family pay for a quiet family funeral. It's not as if they haven't got any money is it?

Go to bed chin
and don't forget to take your pills.............

I don't think the equivalent of a pint of beer or half a packet of cigarettes will pay for a nurse!

The family are contributing to the funeral costs.

The over £10 M will pay for more than one nurse as you well know.

Night all. :yawn:

I suspect the television coverage deliberately avoided any images that might appear controversial. The peaceful protest at Ludgate Circus where the crowd turned there back on her coffin as it passed was not shown with the TV cameras cutting to scenes inside St Paul's as the funeral cortege approached the area. Iain Dale, who attended the funeral, said Thatcher supporters booed Gordon Brown when he arrived to pay his respects and that wasn't shown either. I've heard and read too many reports of parts of the route being almost empty to doubt that they are accurate.

How many times do you have to be told this? The family are paying for at least half the cost of the funeral, whatever it costs. I'm not a Thatcher fan, but if you're going to criticize, please at least get your facts right.

Source of your information?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...st-row-1836360

From the Guardian: Margaret Thatcher's funeral will cost around £10m, although we won't know the exact figure - and how much of it is being spent by the state - until afterwards.

And I presume all those who complained about the cost of Lady Thatcher's funeral also complained as vociferously about the cost of the ludicrous AV referendum foisted upon us by the Lib Dems.

As you quite rightly say the family are paying at least half the cost most of which I suspect was for security.
And good on them for doing so.

They didn't show it on the big screen in Swansea either.

http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/Sw...#axzz2QozYbtXN

Really? All I've heard is that the Thatcher family is making a "contribution" to the cost of the funeral but as far as I've been able to establish it has never been revealed what is the actual figure or percentage of the costs that they have agreed to cover. Even when Cameron was challenged about the cost he never said the family were paying half which would have gone some way to defusing the anger regarding the extravagance of the funeral. I suspect the reality is the Thatcher family only made a nominal contribution when compared with the overall cost of the event.

Well, after days of the police forewarning that any trouble-making would lead to not just arrests, but pre-emptive arrests, and actually quoting the Act that the pre-emptive arrests would relate to, what do you expect?

I thought it was all very strange. I think some people wanted vocal demonstrations to take place simply because they could be faux-raged but also didn't want them to take place because it would 'prove' some misplaced belief about Thatcher's detractors or maybe even 'left wing' politics in general.


And yet, when the same logic is extended to benefits, day care centres, libraries and the like, apparently - according to Hartley-Brewer and other right-wing ideologues - it's a principle issue.

Even Churchill was despised in parts of this and other countries. South Wales for one and Kenya for another.

Link on mythbusting for you - maybe the LBC presenters should take this on board

http://www.neweconomics.org/mythbust...m_medium=email

I literally laughed out loud the other morning when Ferrari got on his high horse about 'facts' pertaining to who was paying for the Thatcher funeral. When have facts ever mattered to Ferrari when tabloid journalese and right wing scape-goating would do?

Facts run counter to much of right wing - and, by extension, LBC - narrative these days. See any topic involving jobs, benefits or social housing; which must account for 60-70% of all LBC discussion these days, surely?

Ferrari did a good one the other day when he was moaning about the jobless and saying 'there's plenty of jobs to go round'.
He then quoted a "van driver" job he'd seen advertised in his local area. He said no more, but I suspect if he delved a little deeper, the 'van driver' job probably required you to actually have your own van, rather than one being supplied for you to drive.

I see many drivers jobs advertised these days with a small print of "must have own vehicle". So, you'll also need your own road tax, vehicle insurance (at the business rate) fuel and servicing. You'll probably be a 'contractor', so there'll be no sick pay, holiday and the like.

You're a self employed courier in all but name.

The trouble is, surely, that economy with the truth is no longer a Left/Right issue - if it ever really was. It's all 'spin', which has become quite adept when it comes to domestic policy, but, arguably, even more adept when it comes to foreign policy - many aspects of which are not generally discussed in the Media, and therefore the general populace remains blissfully ignorant.

The second point I would like to make is that there is no Left anymore. Mainstream Politics seems to be firmly wedged in the Centre/Right of Centre - and certainly has been (in the UK at least) since the mid-to-late '90's, and probably before that.

I know someone who had never learned to drive because of a physical disability which meant the car couldn't be adapted for them to drive. Despite repeated explanations, the JobCentre badgered her to driving lessons and framed the whole thing as 'unwillingness' on her part.

My better-half has an Eastern European name but was born here and doesn't speak the language of the country her parents came from. Yet the JobCentre used to send her for jobs in Polish firms who wanted Polish speakers, despite her repeatedly pointing out she wasn't Polish, she didn't speak Polish and her surname wasn't Polish.

Over last few years, I've taken to asking 'are there any jobs at your place?' to anyone who claims there's jobs available. Invariably, the answer's 'no'. Universal JobSearch is making this myth look even more true/ridiculous depending on how you look at it. Some of the examples I'm seeing with this, only months in, are astonishing.

Listened to Balls' Calls on LBC this morning and he was spouting this foolish and erroneous concept that if the government were to employ loads of people it would be good because they would all be paying tax.

This is a good illustration of how lefty-wefty statists are deluded. The wages have to come out of taxation in the first place and the tax taken in can only ever be a portion of (and therefore less than) the tax paid out. In fiscal terms it is always a net loss or a net cost.

I certainly agree with this.


I'm not so sure on this though. New Labour certainly represented a shift to the right; I've said on this forum and elsewhere that the idea that New Labour ushered in a socialist dystopia - which seems to be a meme with many LBC callers - is laughable. By extension, if New Labour did ruin the country, as is often claimed, they didn't do it with left wing or socialist policies. Light touch regulation, PFI and dodgy wars (to nurture a 'special relationship' with an especially right wing country) typify much of New Labour and they certainly weren't left wing policies.

However, I think we're actually seeing some fairly right wing (way beyond right of centre) politics in action now. The dismantling of the NHS and the extent of welfare 'reform' (ha!) and so on aren't 'centrist' politics. They might be sold as that, under the idea of 'being popular' but they're not 'centrist'. The 'popular' argument is a slight of hand based on many people basing their opinions on misconceptions, as studies have shown (proportion of out work benefits to total welfare bill, amount people actually receive and so on) and ties in to the first point about 'spin'.

And the welfare bill comes out of the taxation too. Some parts of the country have waited decades for the Private Sector to don its white armour and mount a white horse and charge in to save the day. It hasn't and it doesn't. I'd argue that public sector expansion happened, for a large part, because of that reason.

I'm not sure what people on the right want or expect. They want people off benefits, but at the same time don't want them in public sector jobs (despite the fact that many in the private sector rely on contracts &c from the public sector). Yet where are the private sector jobs people are meant to work in? And by jobs, I mean actual jobs, not this fantasy that the Coalition keep parading about the amount of jobs they've created (which includes workfare, zero hours and the 'jobs' which factor in low hours/low pay and require welfare subsidy and ignores general rise in population).

Yes, when I wrote 'mid to late '90's' I probably should have written 'mid to late '70's', although one would always have expected a Conservative government to be right-of-centre, but not, initially, 'New Labour'.

By the way, I see the latter have taken to calling themselves 'Labour' now. I saw that coming a mile off. It's all relative, isn't it?

I agree with what you say about opinions and misconceptions - this is precisely what I was trying to convey. It's the general perception of what is the 'norm' that troubles me, too.

'How is this related to LBC?' I hear. I would answer that by saying that generally speaking, and with few exceptions, these opinions and perceptions are constantly underpinned and promulgated by the station's editorial policy.

I think, between 2010 and 2011, the need to reposition themselves bordered on farcical. No longer able to use 'New' as a descriptor, and 'Old' was a non-starter, we saw the appearance of Black Labour, Blue Labour, Purple Labour and Red Labour. Although, to be fair, there's probably as many divisions within the Conservatives it's just that, 1922 aside, they tend not to actually formalise themselves with names. See also Orange and Yellow Book LibDems.


Everyone should be troubled by this. I'd suggest those that aren't are those who lean towards politics that this currently favours. See also U-turns on personal privacy/ID cards, pre-emptive arrests, holding without charge &c.


This was the argument to support much of what I posted in the other thread. This kind of stuff is now writ through the station's programming like a stick of Blackpool rock. It's relevant to 90% of the what is broadcast.