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Wings Over Scotland


Always at war with Eastasia

Posted on March 08, 2013 by

This is a thing that really just happened.

“Former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will have a statue erected in her honour in her home town of Grantham in Lincolnshire.

A plan to raise more than £200,000 for a statue and renovation project at the Grantham Museum has been unveiled.

Labour councillors had called for a town centre statue after the Conservative-majority authority voted against the move last week.

Emphasis ours, because otherwise you’ll probably think you read it wrong.

36 to “Always at war with Eastasia”

  1. annie says:

    Why would anyone be surprised.

    Reply
  2. Matt says:

    Margaret Thatcher is Labour’s new hero, don’t you know? (or should that be “New Labour’s hero”?)

    The Tories aren’t happy, because she was too far to the left for their liking.

    Reply
  3. Doug Daniel says:

    I had to read it to check that the statue wasn’t a least-worst-case option and this was just being spun negatively. But no, Labour councillors ACTUALLY voting for a statue of Thatcher to boost tourism.
     
    Orwell predicted this at the end of Animal Farm I think.
     
    I loved this bit of the article, incidentally. Hopefully this statue will meet a similar fate:
     
    “In 2002, a white marble statue – unveiled by the former prime minister – was decapitated at Guildhall Art Gallery”

    Reply
  4. BillDunblane says:

    The whirring noise you hear is of course Keir Hardie spinning in his grave…
    OK oft used, but can ‘real’ Labour supporters let this pass?
    A sign of the total loss of all values.
     
    Sic transit gloria…

    Reply
  5. FreddieThreepwood says:

    Taught that nice young Mr Blair all he knows. She’s up there with Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan.

    Reply
  6. Iain says:

    ‘Late in 2002 Lady Thatcher came to Hampshire to speak at a dinner for me. Taking her round at the reception one of the guests asked her what was her greatest achievement. She replied, “Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds.” ‘
     
    link to tinyurl.com

    Reply
  7. Yesitis says:

    Och, well.
    Every time you see Johann Lamont and Ruth Davidson pointing their stubby, wee fingers in the general direction of Alex Salmond at First Minister`s Questions, you know they are cut from the same cloth.
     
    Does toilet roll count?
    🙂
     

    Reply
  8. alasdair says:

    You just couldn’t make it up!  I’m shocked!

    Reply
  9. mato21 says:

    A link to the report of the tories voting down the proposal
    link to huffingtonpost.co.uk
     

    Reply
  10. The Man in the Jar says:

    The Grantham Tories probably got this right. I am sure that their Labour colleges have not costed for the daily clean up of the surrounding area as coach-parties from Scotland, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and many other places descend on Grantham just for the privilege of pishing on the statue.

    Reply
  11. Chic McGregor says:

    If they have any sense, the statue will be surrounded by an ornamental latrine.

    Reply
  12. Chic McGregor says:

    TMITJ beat me to it, just, kind of.

    Reply
  13. Vronsky says:

    I’m arty-farty.  I’m always at the Citz, always at the Glasgow Concert Hall, sometimes down the Candleriggs.  But at the Concert Hall I’m obliged to walk past a statue of a rich cunt who made his cash out of fucking us over, and here’s me having to walk past it to hear Murray Periah playing Bach. That’s an unresolved dissonance, impermissable in the baroque idiom.  The plinth of Mr Dewar’s statue had to be raised to protect it from the dirty fingers of the hoi polloi, the effigy as protected as the man was in life.  I’d like to get into some sort of incremental thing – how high can they raise that plinth?  I don’t want to see it there every time I go to hear Bach.

    Reply
  14. JLT says:

    Unbelievable!!
     
    The stench of politics that emanates out of Westminster must, by now, be reaching high heaven, that even the Angels must be retching in disgust.
     
    The Labour Party – What deal did it make with the devil in the past? It must have sold its soul for something that it actually endorses a statue of Margaret Thatcher to be setup. When are the Unions finally going to dump these b*****ds ???

    Reply
  15. Chic McGregor says:

    V
    Don’t worry, they’ll probably replace it with one of Lamont if there is a no vote. 🙁

    Reply
  16. Chic McGregor says:

    I remember there was talk of erecting a statue to Blair at the Scottish Parliament around about the time they pulled Sadam’s down in Iraq, I did a cartoon at the time will see if I still have it somewhere.

    Reply
  17. Chic McGregor says:

    Aye here it is:
    Seemed to be a wee ‘guru’ glich there.  Now I found it I remember GG, the late Robin Cooke and Claire Short feature as well since they were Blair’s most vociferous opponents.
     
    link to i51.photobucket.com
     
     

    Reply
  18. Vronsky says:

    “The Labour Party – What deal did it make with the devil in the past?”

    Buy a ticket and find out!

    Reply
  19. Chic McGregor says:

    Ouch! and I bet he didn’t even use his own blood to sign up.
     
    I just realised something in my cartoon, Claire’s thought balloon was intended to convey the fact she had just resigned and denounced Blair, but 10 years on I can now for the first time see that it might be referring to her weight, still funny I suppose but not at all intended.

    Reply
  20. Chic McGregor says:

    Last opera I saw live was La Boheme years ago by Scottish Opera. 
    Last theater I went to was a Queen tribute show at The Kings a few weeks ago.  The guy playing Freddie looked like him and did a great job, but they made the mistake of ‘Freddie’ wearing a crown and singing GStQ for a finale, needless to say the applause stopped and most folk stood up and left as soon as they heard it.  I was a bit surprised, it being Glasgow, I thought ‘Oh no! we might have to push our way past some loyalists’, but not in our row anyway.

    Reply
  21. Vronsky says:

    Poster over at Craig Murray suggesting this link.  Do it!
     
    link to epetitions.direct.gov.uk

    Reply
  22. Albert Herring says:

    @Vronsky
    Stick to Candleriggs, then you won’t need to go near the treasonous bastard. The BBCSSO’s programming is far more interesting than the RSNO’s anyway, and their outreach programme is brilliant. I was actually playing Beethoven 5 with them in their “side-by-side” event the other week – fantastic! The BBC isn’t all bad.
    ps tip for Royal Concert Hall – it’s got a back door.

    Reply
  23. My take on it Cartoon

    Reply
  24. Vronsky says:

    Thanks Albert, all noted. 

    Reply
  25. ianbrotherhood says:

    @Vronsky –
    Come on man, put us out of our misery – who’s the statue of?

    Reply
  26. Vronsky says:

    @ianbrotherhood
     
    I like Butler’s idea (Erewhon) that nobody should have a statue erected to them until they’ve been dead for two hundred years.  Would make for a lot fewer statues.  We should lobby to have that in the constitution.
     
    “Indeed, this has already come about to the satisfaction of every one, as regards the statues of public men—not more than three of which can be found in the whole capital.  I expressed my surprise at this, and was told that some five hundred years before my visit, the city had been so overrun with these pests, that there was no getting about, and people were worried beyond endurance by having their attention called at every touch and turn to something, which, when they had attended to it, they found not to concern them.  Most of these statues were mere attempts to do for some man or woman what an animal-stuffer does more successfully for a dog, or bird, or pike.  They were generally foisted on the public by some côterie that was trying to exalt itself in exalting some one else, and not unfrequently they had no other inception than desire on the part of some member of the côterie to find a job for a young sculptor to whom his daughter was engaged.  Statues so begotten could never be anything but deformities, and this is the way in which they are sure to be begotten, as soon as the art of making them at all has become widely practised.”
     

    Reply
  27. Chic McGregor says:

    Vronsky – signed that one a while back.

    Reply
  28. Jiggsbro says:

    Dear God,
     
    Can I please be resurrected as a Grantham pigeon?
     
    Thanks in anticipation,
     
    Jiggsbro

    Reply
  29. Adrian B says:

     
    “Labour councillors had called for a town centre statue after the Conservative-majority authority voted against the move last week.”

    Labour cosying up to the Tory voters then? 

    Reply
  30. Triskellion says:

    No…..what??…no…wait…this…what????

    Reply
  31. Clancheif says:

    Shows just how tory labour are
    A hud tae read this a couple o times tae make sure i got it right

    Reply
  32. Appleby says:

    The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

    Reply
  33. Thomas Dunlop says:

    Once upon a time there was a party called, Labour
    It was set up the workers in unions , who paid for
    Until, along came a woman called Thatcher
    And Labour decided to snatch her
    Cause they had forgotten what they were there for

    Reply
  34. MajorBloodnok says:

    @Norman Stewart
     
    Interesting set of cartoons you’ve got there Norman!

    Reply
  35. Jen says:

    Not suprised, as it comes down to people, right wingers with a different colour.  What surprises me is the Unions fund the British Labour Party.  If they wanted they could start another party.  Wonfer why they don’t.  

    Reply
  36. Mosstrooper says:

    O/T or perhaps not.
    While sitting in the barber shop earlier this afternoon I picked up a copy of the Sun 
    (yes I know, MY EYES, MY EYES) and swiftly perusing same I came across this nugget by one Robin Galloway “£25 million on Gaelic is massive fail” He apparently thinks that it is nonsense to spend money on what he calls a “defunct language” At one point oor Robin goes as far to say “now call me a Philistine (probably no Gaelic equivalent)”

    Well dipstick, as you gave this word a capital P and it is therefore a noun denoting a member of the ancient people of Philistia in South Western Palistine the word is exactly the same. If you meant to use a lower case “p” denoting boorish or uncultured then the Gaelic word is Mi-mhodhail. Which sums him up nicely.
     
    Further on he says that the Saltire branded railway signs should be got rid of because they are patronising parochial nonsense. Perhaps some one should explain to him that the saltire is the NATIONAL flag of a NATION and has nothing to do with a parish. I think this is more of the -Talk Scotland down attack.

    As I am not a twitterer maybe someone could connect with this brain fart.( gaelic 
    Braim an Eanchainn) if a Gaelic scholar can correct me please feel free so to do.

    There is no e-mail address. Twitter@djrobingalloway

    Now away for a glass of wine and a kick at the neighbour’s cat.

    Reply


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