We don’t. She pays us!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1411000/1411781.stm
Well, not exactly glee. In a forum devoted to humble opinions, I mention what is accepted as common currency in the coyly named ‘Westminster Village’. There is no documented factual evidence, nor will there ever be. Of course Thatcher denies all knowledge. The last interviews I saw on the subject had three diplomats interposed with snippets of Thatcher, all of whom contradicted her every recollection.
Thatcher remembers what Thatcher wants to remember. Ain’t it always been so.
Below is an extract from an interview PBS had with one former Times editor (Simon Jenkins) in which a former editor of the Sunday Times (Andrew Neil) is mentioned:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/royals/interviews/jenkins.html
Q: Your piece is cited as part of what Andrew Neil is convinced was a concerted but very low-key attempt to distance the Royal Family from the policies of the Thatcher Government during the late 1980’s.
A: Well I think he made an awful lot out of very little. In the first place there was no conspiracy or determined effort in the case of the interview I had with the Prince of Wales to try and sell me a line that he was the SDP Prince. That was entirely my spin put on what he was saying about a wide range of things. The same applied to the great Thatcher against the Queen story. The, you have here a very, very tough Prime Minister adopting a very strident and specific partisan position. You have a Monarch who quite rightly wants to be seen to be above the political debate and I think that the, the Palace spent a lot of time at that time not distancing itself from the Government but actually making quite sure that no one could say that it was partisan and this seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing for the Palace to have done at the time.
This is not new. Queenie and Thatcher had a long and uncomfortable relationship based on both personality differences and policy issues. It also didn’t help that Thatcher occasionally referred to herself as Head of State.
Blair believes he is head of state, head of the church, saintly and infallible. If he was prime minister of Lichtenstein instead of the 4th or 5th richest and most influential country in the world, it would be laughable. But he isn’t and it’s scary.
Actually, London_Calling, Jenkins is dismissing ‘the great Thatcher against the Queen story’. As such, his comments seem astute, balanced and probably pretty near the truth. One mustn’t believe everything one reads in the Sunday Times (which ran the original story) or hears on the ‘Westminster Village’ grapevine.
I understand what Jenkins was doing, APB. He was disagreeing with Andrew Neil’s version. FWIW, I suspect I don’t ‘believe’ the Sunday Time anymore than you believe The Times of Simon Jenkins…thank goodness both publications have such an earnest owner.
We shouldn’t use the Aboriginal flag, for two reasons.
Firstly, the guy who created it, Harold Thomas, doesn’t want it used as a replacement (see his reasons here).
Secondly, our flag should unite ALL peoples, white, black, yellow, red, green…
Personally, I like this, or this. The Eureka flag doesn’t do much for me.
The notion of removing the Union Flag from the top left corner of the Australian one, and replacing it with the Aboriginal flag, has a certain appeal.
Trouble is, as has been said those who know about these things, the result looks like a dog’s breakfast. Black, yellow, red, white, and blue. Yech.
I don’t like any of the new alternative designs. I do like the Eureka flag, but it seems to have been appropriated by the extreme right, so that one’s out. We need something striking and stylish, like the Canadians managed to come up with.
I definitely would like to see the Southern Cross as a key part of any new flag.
A maple leaf is stylish?
I found the flag to be aesthetically pleasing.