I HAVE been so immersed in Thatcherism lately that when I heard the PM read “I go to prepare a place for you” I thought he was quoting the Iron Lady's last words.

Trying to make sense of Thatcher-land is like trying to reconcile the views of two rival street gangs.

The truth is not midway between two extremes. It is somewhere else. The procession of victims is impressive and disquieting, but shouldn't there be a hero or two? Scargill, Howe, Blair? Not a mention of them. More an awkward silence.

When the Cavaliers dug up Cromwell they took care to destroy his political legacy too. New Labour policy, on the other hand, looks uncommonly like an accommodation, shiftily embracing, rather than reversing Thatcherism.

“Death closes all”, as the poet optimistically put it. I guess the warrior-lady earned her gun carriage. As for the rest, we must leave it to historians to puzzle out why we prefer squabbling over past differences to providing present solutions.

William Dixon Smith, Welland Rise, Acomb, York.


• CONGRATULATIONS to the indomitable Cynthia Glasby (The Press Letters April, 15) for putting the death of Lady Margaret Thatcher into context.

Without doubt she had her critics, and some of her decisions caused problems for many people, especially in the industrial areas of the north.

But to respond to the death of this greatest of British Prime Ministers by declaring “the bitch is dead” is unfair and disrespectful.

Have these people stopped to realise the distress this has caused her daughter and son and grandchildren? As a father of five with 13 grandchildren, I can only sympathise.

She was a tower of strength not only in the UK, but in the rest of the world, and if readers were watching Question Time last week they will have heard a Russian girl say the Russian people revered her.

I find it so disrespectful that people crawl out from under their stones and run down the dead after they have gone.

Bryan R Lawson, Fields Road, Stamford Bridge, York.


• IN REPLY to Mr Usherwood's letter (April 16), I was only one of thousands who was not happy about the amount of money spent on Margaret Thatcher's funeral.

But as far as the cost of police crowd control at football matches is concerned, if clubs did not pay obscene amounts of money to buy players and then pay these same players more money in one week than lots of people see in a year, the same clubs could pay for their own crowd controllers.

To be honest, football does not interest me at all, but to each his own, as they say.

Mrs M Robinson, Broadway, York.