Yesterday marked the funeral of Baroness Thatcher, Britain’s first female Prime Minister and one of the most divisive figures in modern politics.
There have therefore been mixed feelings about Thatcher’s death, with thousands turning out to line the route of her funeral procession while many others held parties and protests to mark the passing of a figure many on the left despise.
With many people asking ‘Haven’t we paid enough?’ from Thatcher’s premiership, the Guardian’s Datablog has compiled a list of 23 things you could pay for with GB pound 10 million — the estimated cost of Lady Thatcher’s ceremonial funeral with full military honours.
Among the items was ‘320 fire officers’, based on a median annual salary of GB pound 31,258.
A nice little comparison and one that would have those who are critical of public service cuts pointing to needless redundancies in the fire service. But the usually precise Datablog has let itself down slightly on this one, leaving its tagline (‘Facts are sacred’) looking a little redundant itself.
The headline-grabbing figures totally ignore the cost of training, facilities, pension contributions, and equipment — not to mention the fact that you’d have to pay those 320 fire officers another GB pound 10 million the following year and every subsequent year thereafter.
One thing we do know about Lady Thatcher’s funeral is that it will only happen once.
The maths and the reasons behind job losses in the fire service are decidedly more complex than the Guardian’s Datablog would have you think. There are areas of disagreement, but, as we’ve reported recently, the number of fires in the UK is coming down, with half the fires in London as there were 10 years ago. The picture in the US is similar, with fire rates coming down, although this is countered by an upward trend in wildfires.
Although there are some lovely tongue-in-cheek references to Thatcher’s time in power in the blog — GB pound 10 million would also pay for flights for everyone in the Falklands to the UK and back and a trip up the Shard each, three times over — the more serious references to the amount of public services that could be paid for with this money is a direct reference to today’s coalition government and its austerity measures.
And it’s continuing a discontent that is lingering from Thatcher’s time in power and has been reignited under David Cameron. A dangerous discontent for the Guardian to be casually playing with. But in the age of the Internet, everyone loves a list, don’t they?
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