End comes to Thatcher amid controversies

The “grand” funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, planned to be held in London later today, comes amid a hail of controversies.

The huge £10 million cost of the funeral, comparable to the send-off of another former PM, Winston Churchill, in 1965 and the most pretentious state memorial service ever since, is being paid out of the taxpayer’s money, while taxpayers are suffering her legacy in the form of scathing austerity measures.

London’s tower clock Bin Ben is also to fall silent during the service for the first time since Churchill’s death while the funeral procession will feature more than 700 former soldiers who took part in the Thatcher-led attack on the South Atlantic Malvinas Islands (Falklands) in 1982.

However, amid such pomp and circumstance, there are major spoilers to the event, too.

Opponents of Thatcher have already got the police permission to line the streets where the procession will pass and turn their backs to her coffin.

Others have pledged to pelt her casket with eggs, milk or coal, as a reminder of her repression of coal miners’ strikes in the 1980’s and devastating of thousands of families by forcing them out of their jobs.

The funeral has also political downsides, as the list of guests who will be attending has raised talks of diplomatic snubbing, especially by the US government that was Thatcher’s closest foreign ally in the 1980’s.

The government of the US president Barrack Obama has sent none of its serving members to the funeral with Washington being represented only by a former secretary of state for former US President Ronald Reagan.

Even, Nancy Reagan, whose husband boasted of a special relationship with Thatcher government, will not “be able” to attend as well as no former American presidents.

The same goes for France and Germany with the former refusing to send any serving minister and the latter only sending its foreign minister, not Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Argentine envoy in London has also rejected an invitation to take part in the event.

Thatcher’s funeral procession is planned to begin at 10:00 AM local time.

The “Iron Lady” is finally bidding farewell, but it seems set to be bleak probably because it comes at a badly wrong time amid hugely unpopular austerity measures, which remind Britons of their suffering during her 11 years in office