£10 MILLION publically funded funeral for Thatcher?!?!!??!

You misunderstood my point; your ability to comprehend English is poor.

Giving several workers a salary means they will go out and spend such money. You cannot know how they will spend it, it could ultimately go to paying off debt. It could be spend on goods and help the economy, and some will likely go back to the Government through taxation.

Holding an event in which thousands attend, and visit businesses for food and drink, buying souvenirs etc. will contribute directly to the economy. Since there are more people, the effect is greater than even all of those employed public service workers spending their money on goods.

Does that make sense? More people spending money = more money contributing to the economy.

You're right that it would have increased public spending, but I don't see how you can't see that paying people more money would also increase public spending, and increase it in the long term. You hold a public funeral, people travel town spending money on trains and petrol, they stay in a hotel maybe, they buy some food, buy some souvenirs then they go back home to their normal lives.

If you increase peoples pay then they have more disposable income, so they are spending more money throughout the year.

Yes, so businesses get money and the government gets tax money to spend on further lovely things. The total value is much greater than £10m.

Only up to the value of that £10m. They can't magic money they don't have outside their salary.

Wrong again, lack of economic knowledge is showing, stick to medicine. It's called the fiscal multiplier, you get a pay increase and you spend that money in a shop, that shop reinvests and so on and so forth.

When so many lives and livelihoods have been reduced to nothing as a result of her politics, I'm afraid it's difficult to respond in anything other than kind.

Margaret Thatcher is being afforded a publicly-funded funeral because she was a politician with far-reaching influence. The proceedings and content are neither here nor there. I'm a man with a family and a personal life and I also have a job.

I can't say I feel much admiration for anyone on the Left attending her funeral; they are the very people who claimed to represent those whose lives she ruined. There comes a point where the influence of a person becomes so devastating that it is hard to put differences aside.

And that doesn't happen for events like this where people give their money to a shop and the shop reinvests it? Am I missing some magical multiplying money that only exists if it's given by the government in the form of a salary as opposed to private sector spending?

So we reduce it to a celebration of soft scoop icecream and psychopathy?

Not only is that a completely cockend way of summing up the welfare reforms, I find the logic against the funeral costs rather dubious. Basically your saying that unless the government spends an extortionate sum of money on welfare, then it shouldn't spend anything at all?



Well Osborne tried finding £100 billion down the back of his couch, but the search was fruitless.



How'd he work out £100 k?
I also like how he forgets to mention it's still higher now than it was for most of Labour's 13 years in power

No, you were the one trying to create this difference when you were saying that public sector pay increases don't put money into the economy and a spectacle like this does.

Without wanting to go into any argument, you forget that she also benefited the lives of many people - I think that is demonstrated by the fact that the crowd was made up of an overwhelming majority of supporters.

Yes, the funeral was publicly funded but that doesn't stop it being a funeral after all. As such, the proceedings and content are of upmost importance, I think.

All prime ministers divide people and I imagine many of the left, middle and even some of the right who disagreed with some of her policies, accept that that is the nature of politics. Perhaps I can't blame those who feel they would be too hypocritical to attend, but neither can I blame those who are willing to accept that being a politician was only any aspect of her life, and admire her not for her politics and ideology, but for the many other aspects of her life in which she was successful. It's an entirely personal decision on the part of those invited and I don't think we have any right to criticise them for either attending or not attending.

My summarised point on active politicians attending is the following: it's all very well if you're apolitical or a supporter. But if you, an active politician, claiming to represent those that Margaret Thatcher persecuted and their descendants, you cannot disassociate yourself and say 'I'm coming to pay my respects to Thatcher the human and not the politician', because you're attending as a fellow politician; you would not be there if you were not in your current capacity. Plus, the whole issue of not only her supporters but her 'adversaries' claiming public money to be there..

£10 of TAXPAYERS' money? Well, assuming you're a student you don't pay any tax anyway? That is, bar a little NI if you've got a job on the side of your studies.

Was referring more to PAYE. I wouldn't class buying a pack of fags contributing tax to society...

I assume you also think it's inappropriate that Clement Attlee attended Churchill's funeral? After all, he fought against and beat Churchill to become PM. He clearly had hugely contrasting political views. Is it impossible that despite his differing political views, he respected Churchill for his character and for the achievements that he agreed with?

The same applies to Thatcher.