Despatch Dispatch

A Despatch Dispatch.

 Several years before the death of my parents they were the victims of theft by an intruder in their home. A nasty experience and one shared, unfortunately, by many. The intruder was however apprehended and the goods and money stolen returned to them by the police. In the aftermath of this incident I became aware that most of the money returned had been taken from a drawer in their bedroom and amounted to some thousands of pounds. I insisted that my mother place this money in the bank and asked her why and how she came to have this amount. Her reply, which still brings tears to my eyes, was that it was to pay for their funeral and that she had been saving a little every week for a number of years. Neither she nor my father wanted to burden their children with such an expense.

This is an extremely painful memory to share in public and I do so for one reason; namely to underline and reinforce my rage about the publicly funded Thatcher funeral.

Thatcher was a rich woman with well off children who died, in old age, in her bed. This is something we would wish for everyone. Alas, since the world is not fair and unfortunately the meek do not inherit the earth, it is not the fate of many. During the Thatcher years many of her victims died prematurely and without dignity in shop doorways, cardboard boxes, under bridges and on hospital trolleys.

You would think however that even the latest inheritors of her Chicago boys, shock doctrine school of economics would not be so crass and unthinking as to (in these times of austerity) place the burden of this woman’s funeral on the hard pressed public. It seems that they are.

Mr Cameron thinks it is a fitting tribute to the woman who “saved Britain”. She may have saved it for him and his rich friends, but she turned it into a wasteland for the rest of us.  The most divisive political figure of our lifetime, reviled by about 80% of the Scottish population is given a state funded funeral; my parents who were decent, good, compassionate, hard working people went without in order to save a pittance from their state pension in order not to place any financial burden on their children.

This, Mr Cameron, sums up the difference between you and your kind and the rest of us.