Guess who! It ain’t Woody Woodpecker, that’s for sure! These are two old snaps of two OCA figures, now, very well-known. Do YOU know who they are? I’m not tellin’ yet… I’ll let ya guess for a while… I’ll give ya a hint… it’s an “angel” and a “devil”… OK?
BMD
Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was a fierce critic of Mrs Thatcher when she was in power. The British media gave him the moniker “Red Ken” for his socialist beliefs during her tenure. Thatcher viewed the Greater London Council, of which Livingstone was leader, as a political threat and a waste of money. In 1986, Thatcher’s government abolished the GLC, putting Livingstone out of a job.
There are two things to say about Mrs Thatcher. Unlike most politicians, who’re spineless, who never want to actually lead, and who wait to see where public opinion’s going, she had beliefs that almost no one in her cabinet actually shared at the time she became the leader of the Tory Conservative Party. However, she ignored them, she drove ahead, and she made the changes that she believed that Britain needed… you have to respect that. I can’t think of any other modern Prime Minister with that degree of self-confidence and courage in their beliefs.
The tragedy for Britain is that almost everything she believed in was wrong, and almost all the problems that assail us today are the legacy of her neoliberal economics… the high unemployment, the collapse of our manufacturing industry. She inherited a nation that had some problems, but she made them infinitely worse… she deregulated the banking industry, she decided to write off our industry, she wouldn’t build good homes for ordinary people to rent, and she’s left a terrible legacy that’ll take a generation to clear up.
She did terrible things, such as abolishing the Greater London Council because she didn’t agree with it; it was the first real rolling back of democracy in a hundred years of British history. It’s very hard to think of anyone in a modern democracy who’d do something like that. The US President always has state governors and mayors critical of their policy, it’d never occur to them to do away with them. That meant terrible problems for London; we had a decade-and-a-half with no leadership. We actually proposed that we should stop discriminating against black people and against homosexuals; we recognised that women had equal rights… hardly insane, but just a bit ahead of its time.
Clearly, [the state funeral] isn’t right. The only politician of my lifetime that had a state funeral was Winston Churchill, who was a decisive force in the defeat of Adolf Hitler. If we’re to think about anyone today, it should be those whose lives she destroyed. We used to have a sound manufacturing industry; she wiped it out. Look at people’s lives… our suicide rates have gone up since the financial crisis; the bankers abused all the freedom that she gave them. We had a country used to virtually full employment before she got in… ever since, we’ve had people and whole communities just written off.
Overwhelmingly, it’s a tragedy Mrs Thatcher ever came to power. I respect the courage of her convictions and the way she led; the tragedy is she led us in the wrong direction.
9 April 2013
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_09/Its-a-tragedy-Mrs-Thatcher-ever-came-to-power-Ken-Livingstone-211/
Cathedral of the Assumption in Vitebsk, completed 1777, destroyed 1936, rebuilding completed 2011
On 7 April, Metropolitan Filaret Vakhromeyev of Minsk and Slustsk, Exarch of all Belarus, on the feast of the Annunciation, blessed a monument to Patriarch Aleksei Ridiger on the square before the Cathedral of the Assumption in Vitebsk. Metropolitan Filaret spoke at the ceremony, saying, “Now, as we stand before the walls of this church, we should remember how, in September 1998, His Holiness Patriarch Aleksei laid a capsule in the cornerstone of this cathedral and blessed the first stone for its restoration. Indeed, the deep faith and unwavering love of this great cleric remains imprinted in our hearts; he embodied a whole era… a time that saw the renaissance of faith and of the Church of Christ in our Motherland”. The MP official website reported that Metropolitan Filaret said that the monument wasn’t only a token in memory of Patriarch Aleksei, it symbolised the “spiritual unity of the Slavic peoples“. Believers, clergy, and government officials, including Governor Aleksandr Kosinets of Vitebsk, attended the ceremony. The erection of the monument was under the sponsorship of the Diocese of Vitebsk and with the support of the Ss Constantine and Helen Foundation. Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias blessed the concept, design, and layout of the memorial.
8 April 2013
Interfax-Religion
Voices from Russia 
Russia Won’t Send an Official Delegation to Margaret Thatcher’s Funeral
Tags: Britain, Dmitri Peskov, England, EU, European Union, Funeral, Great Britain, history, Jens Stoltenberg, Margaret Thatcher, Parliament, political commentary, politics, Prime minister, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Russia, Russian, UK, United Kingdom, Vladimir Putin
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On Tuesday, Presidential Press Secretary Dmitri Peskov stated that Russia wouldn’t send an official delegation to the funeral of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died at the age of 87.
9 April 2013
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_04_09/Russia-won-t-be-officially-presented-at-Margaret-Thatcher-s-funeral-official/
Editor’s Note:
Do you need proof that Russia’s turning leftward? Look at the above. VVP is 180 degrees removed from the antics of rightwing bozos such as Potapov, Paffhausen, Dreher, Mattingly, and Trenham. There are unsubstantiated rumours that VVP wants to institute a “Red Monarchy”… don’t laugh… that’s what the Scandinavian monarchies are. After all, Jens Stoltenberg is a leftist Socialist Prime Minister who knelt before his king to receive his office. This shows VVP’s wisdom… he’s the Great Restorer… of Tsarist Russia and the USSR… both at the same time! He’s taking the best of both and tossing out the bad… what’s not to like in that?
The New Russia rising will be both Red AND White… that’s why the extremists on the Far Right fringe of the ROCOR better get with the programme… or leave us. That would leave the decent ordinary folks… that can’t come too soon for me (and for many others, too)…
BMD