Posted on 04/02/2013 12:35:19 PM PDT by ScaniaBoy
While the familiar caricature was in many ways apt, Margaret Thatcher also had a softer side, discovers Michael Deacon, reviewing Gillian Shephard's The Real Iron Lady.
Margaret Thatcher, writes Sir John Major, has been “buried under myths”. And the myths heap higher with every passing year. So overpowering are the myths that today she divides opinion at least as strongly as she did in power. By both Right and Left she has been warped into caricature, the embodiment either of all political good, or of all political evil. To those who worship her, she was a tax-slashing Boadicea; to those who despise her, Satan in pearls.
The aim of The Real Iron Lady is to drill through the layers of myth and reveal the “real” Mrs Thatcher. To that end, Gillian Shephard – a junior government figure at the time of her subject’s fall – has sought the recollections of three dozen people who worked with or for Mrs Thatcher, or who covered her premiership for the media. Along with Major, there are Douglas Hurd, Virginia Bottomley, Geoffrey Howe and ITN’s Michael Brunson. Baroness Shephard quotes her contributors at length, while filling in the biographical gaps.
SNIP
To her press secretary Bernard Ingham she once proudly remarked, “The thing about you and me, Bernard, is that neither of us are smooth people.”
Today, we’re once again governed by a smooth man. This book will, no doubt, make many nostalgic for the tough woman.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
About the UK, but is just as true for the US:
To her press secretary Bernard Ingham she [Margaret Thatcher] once proudly remarked, “The thing about you and me, Bernard, is that neither of us are smooth people.”
Today, we’re once again governed by a smooth man. This book will, no doubt, make many nostalgic for the tough woman.
Nathan Wurzel, PDS:er
John Avlon, PDS:er
And just to spread some info:
SarahPAC donations 2012:
House
Adams, Kirk (R-AZ) $5,000
Adams, Sandy (R-FL) $5,000
Barletta, Lou (R-PA) $5,000
Black, Diane (R-TN) $5,000
Blackburn, Marsha (R-TN) $5,000
Bucshon, Larry (R-IN) $5,000
Buerkle, Ann Marie (R-NY) $10,000
Canseco, Francisco (R-TX) $7,500
Coffman, Mike (R-CO) $5,000
Duffy, Sean P (R-WI) $8,500
Ellmers, Renee (R-NC) $5,000
Farenthold, Blake (R-TX) $5,000
Fincher, Steve (R-TN) $3,500
Fitzpatrick, Michael G (R-PA) $10,000
Flores, Bill (R-TX) $3,500
Gardner, Cory (R-CO) $3,500
Gosar, Paul (R-AZ) $10,000
Griffin, Tim (R-AR) $2,500
Hartzler, Vicky (R-MO) $10,000
Hultgren, Randy (R-IL) $2,500
Hurt, Robert (R-VA) $2,500
Johnson, Jeffrey D (D-OH) $2,500
Kelly, Mike (R-PA) $2,500
Kinzinger, Adam (R-IL) $5,000
Koster, John (R-WA) $5,000
Love, Mia (R-UT) $5,000
McKinley, David (R-WV) $2,500
McMorris Rodgers, Cathy (R-WA) $5,000
Mulvaney, Mick (R-SC) $2,500
Nunnelee, Alan (R-MS) $2,500
Pearce, Steve (R-NM) $5,000
Renacci, Jim (R-OH) $3,500
Roby, Martha (R-AL) $10,000
Schweikert, David (R-AZ) $5,000
Scott, Tim (R-SC) $2,500
Southerland, Steve (R-FL) $2,500
Tipton, Scott (R-CO) $3,500
Walorski, Jackie (R-IN) $5,000
West, Allen (R-FL) $10,000
Yoho, Ted (R-FL) $5,000
Young, Todd (R-IN) $2,500
Zoller, Martha (R-GA) $7,500
Senate
Berg, Rick (R-ND) $5,000
Bongino, Daniel (R-MD) $5,000
Corker, Bob (R-TN) $5,000
Cruz, Ted (R-TX) $15,000
Fischer, Deb (R-NE) $10,000
Flake, Jeff (R-AZ) $10,000
Mandel, Josh (R-OH) $5,000
Mourdock, Richard E (R-IN) $10,000
Smith, Tom (R-PA) $5,000
Wicker, Roger (R-MS) $10,000
Presidential
Romney, Mitt (R) $5,000
Compare and contrast: Marco Rubio’s “Reclaim America PAC,” donations for 2012:
Senate
Brown, Scott (R-MA) $2,500
Fischer, Deb (R-NE) $2,500
Heller, Dean (R-NV) $2,500
Mandel, Josh (R-OH) $2,500
and that's it according to Stacy Drake
PS: Just to clarify - from Ms Drake
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Marco Rubio is the real con artist or anything like that. What I’m saying is that SarahPAC does not deserve the treatment it is receiving from these hacks over at Redstate and Mediaite. These are the numbers.....
Then they won't question their own manhood so much.
Real British Men didn't have any qualms about working with Lady Thatcher.
:-)
The Washington meeting on 6 August 1990 saw the beginning of a long-running difference of opionion between MT and the Admininstration (and particulary with the Secretary of State, Jim Baker) as to how far UN authority was required for measures against Saddam. Generally US opinion prevailed within the coalition. But it is notable that Britain was the first state to begin enforcing the UN embargo on trade with Iraq and Kuwait, the Royal Navy intercepting and boarding ships ahead of all other coalition states, the US included.
MT's view was that nothing more was needed from the UN than its initial resolution condemining the invasion, alongside the right of self-defence guaranteed under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Her experience of UN diplomacy during the Falklands War left her strongly aware of the danger that by seeking further resolutions the coalition against Saddam might find itself forced to make concessions, and thereby undercut rather than confirm its power to act. And she stressed always that the right of self-defence was inherent in sovereign states and did not require specific UN authority to be exercised. One can detect her wariness here of notions of a "new world order" in which the UN would play the part denied it during the Cold War by the crippling conflict between veto wielding powers within the Security Council.
Tensions on this subject came to a head on 18 August when five heavily-laden tankers bound for Yemen refused to be boarded. Should force be used to stop them or should a new UN resolution be sought to give explicit powers to enforce earlier ones? On his own account President Bush was sympathetic to MT's view that no new resolution was needed and that the tankers should be stopped. However, in the end he bowed to Jim Baker's strongly held view that without a new resolution the Soviets would abandon their general posture of support for the US line.
A UN Security Council Resolution giving the necessary authority (UNSCR 665) was successfully secured on the morning of Saturday 25 August. It was on the following day that MT - in phone conversation with George Bush - offered her famous advice to the President: "This is no time to go wobbly, George". The President loved the phrase, according to Scowcroft, and the White House staff found a lot of use for it during the crisis.
And if not for the traitors in the Tory government, Mrs T would have stayed on and made sure Saddam had been gone already 1991.
Thanks for the ping, save for later read.
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