Petition for the Thatcher state funeral to be privatised

Dec 12 2011 By Torcuil Crichton

MARGARET THATCHER is said to have approved a blueprint for an eye-wateringly expensive state funeral.

The former Tory Prime Minister's plans are said to include similar arrangements to those given to Winston Churchill, including a send-off at St Paul's Cathedral and a concert orchestra playing Land Of Hope And Glory.

But the 86-year-old has said that she does not want the public to see her lying in state and does not want a military fly-over at her funeral.

The price for a state funeral is likely to run into millions of pounds, with policing such an event costing s2million alone.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/12/12/margaret-thatcher-approves-plan-for-state-funeral-costing-at-least-2m-86908-23628665/

Margaret Thatcher deserves every honour – apart from a state funeral

The problem is that talk of a state funeral for Lady Thatcher reflects a troubling failure to understand what such events are about. They are so very rarely awarded because they have been designed for a category of great men and women who have come to represent the nation as a whole, rather than a particular sect or faction.
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Yet her greatness as a prime minister is not enough. State ceremonies can be very damaging unless (as with the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton) the whole nation can come together.

This will not happen after Lady Thatcher’s death. There are too many people – for example, shipyard workers from Glasgow, miners from Yorkshire and the Welsh valleys – whose livelihoods were destroyed during her premiership. They struggled against her government passionately at the time, and many still abhor her memory.
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As it happens, I reluctantly take the view that Mrs Thatcher was right to take on the trade unions as she did, even though the human consequences were dire. But Mr Farham – who accurately states in his letter that there are “hundreds of thousands like me” – has every right to believe what he does. He is a British citizen just as much as the most ardent of Thatcher fans, with the proviso that, as a miner, he probably worked harder and risked more for his country than they did.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100125535/lady-thatcher-deserves-every-honour-%E2%80%93-apart-from-this-one/