text:
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, , n e Roberts (born 13 October 1925) is a British politician and the longest-serving (1979 1990) British prime minister of the 20th century, and the only woman ever to have held the post. A Soviet journalist nicknamed her the "Iron Lady", which later became associated with her uncompromising policies. As prime minister, she implemented conservative policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Originally a chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition, as well as the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became prime minister after winning the 1979 general election.
After entering , Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives to reverse what she perceived as Britain's precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge (popularly referred to as "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.
Thatcher holds a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitles her to sit in the House of Lords.
Early political career
Member of Parliament (1959 1970)
Education Secretary (1970 1974)
Leader of the Opposition (1975 1979)
Prime Minister (1979 1990)
Economy and taxation
Challenges to leadership and resignation
Post-Commons
Media depictions
Styles and titles
Margaret Thatcher's birthplace, in Grantham Commemorative plaque on the building in which Margaret Thatcher was born Margaret Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (n e Stephenson) from Lincolnshire.[1] She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops.[2] She and her older sister Muriel were raised in the flat above the larger of the two, located near the railway line.[2] Her father was active in local politics and the Christian church, serving as an alderman and a Methodist local preacher,[3] and brought up his daughter as a strict Methodist.[4] He came from a Liberal family but stood as was then customary in local government as an Independent. He was Mayor of Grantham in 1945 46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.[3]
Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School.[5] Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking.[6][7] She was head girl in 1942 43.[8] In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford but was initially rejected, and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew.[9][10] She arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree; in her final year she specialised in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin.[11][12]
Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946.[13][14] She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944),[15] which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.[16]
After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.[17] She joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association.[18] One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates.[18] Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the Conservative party's approved list: she was selected in January 1951 and added to the approved list post ante.[19] At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who drove her to her Essex train.[18][19] In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream.[18][20]
In the 1950 and 1951 general elections she was the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Dartford, where she attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate.[21][22] She lost both times to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000.[21] (By an odd coincidence, Edward Heath was elected for the first time in the neighbouring constituency in 1950.) During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951.[21][23] Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar;[24] she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation.[25] That same year her twins, Carol and Mark, were born.[26]
Thatcher was not a candidate in the 1955 general election as it came fairly soon after the birth of her children, although she was narrowly defeated as the candidate for the Orpington by-election, 1955.[26] Afterwards, she began looking for a safe Conservative seat, and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating Ian Montagu Fraser). She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election.[27] Her maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public. In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching.[28] She regarded Finchley's Jewish residents as "her people" and became a founding member of the Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley as well as a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.[29] But she nevertheless believed that Israel had to trade land for peace, and condemned Israel's bombing of Osirak as "a grave breach of international law".[29]
In October 1961 Thatcher was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration.[30] After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses.[31] She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966, and as Treasury spokeswoman opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects contrary to those intended and distort the economy.[31]
At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism".[31] She argued that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work.[31] Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality[32] and voted in favour of David Steel's bill to legalise abortion,[33][34] as well as a ban on hare coursing.[35][36] She supported the retention of capital punishment[37] and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.[38][39]
In 1967 she was selected by the United States Embassy in London to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.[40] Thatcher joined the Shadow Cabinet later that year as Fuel spokesman. Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokesman and later to Education.[41]
The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science. During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools,[42] and imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven.[43] She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but she agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes.[43] Her decision provoked a storm of protest from the Labour party and the press,[44] leading to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher".[43] Thatcher wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson [from the experience]. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."[44][45]
Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered secondary modern-grammar school system of education, and determined to preserve grammar schools,[42] during her tenure as Education Secretary she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensive schools consequently rose from 32 per cent to 62 per cent.[46]
Leader of the Opposition]], 18 September 1975
The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, and lost the February 1974 general election.[44] Labour formed a minority government, and went on to win a narrow majority in the October 1974 general election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher was not initially the obvious replacement, but she eventually became the main challenger, promising a fresh start.[47] Her main support came from the Conservative 1922 Committee.[47] She defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership.[48] In the second ballot she defeated Heath's preferred successor, William Whitelaw, and became party leader on 11 February 1975;[49] she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath remained disenchanted with Thatcher to the end of his life, for what he and many of his supporters perceived as her disloyalty in standing against him.[50]
Thatcher began to attend lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich von Hayek; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the welfare state Keynesian economics they believed was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.[51]
The television critic Clive James, writing in The Observer during the voting for the leadership, compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard. Thatcher had already begun to work on her presentation on the advice of Gordon Reece, a former television producer. By chance Reece met the actor Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the National Theatre's voice coach.[52][53][54] Thatcher succeeded in completely suppressing her Lincolnshire dialect except when under stress, notably after provocation from Denis Healey in the House of Commons in April 1983, when she accused the Labour front bench of being frit.[55]
On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union; in response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) called her the "Iron Lady":[56]
In mid-1978, the economy began to improve and opinion polls showed Labour in the lead, with a general election being expected later that year and a Labour win a serious possibility. Prime Minister James Callaghan surprised many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no general election that year and he would wait until 1979 before going to the polls. Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour government as "chickens", and Liberal Party leader David Steel joined in, criticising Labour for "running scared".[57]
The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978 79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising with the slogan Labour Isn't Working. A general election was called after James Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime Minister.
Thatcher's Ministry meets with Reagan's Cabinet at the White House, 1981
Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of the "Prayer of Saint Francis":
Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister at a time of increased racial tension in Britain. Commenting on the local elections of May 1977, The Economist noted "The Tory tide swamped the smaller parties. That specifically includes the National Front, which suffered a clear decline from last year".[58][59] Her standing in the polls rose by 11 percent after a January 1978 interview for World in Action in which she said "the British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in."; and "in many ways [minorities] add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened."[60][61] In the 1979 General Election, the Conservatives attracted voters from the National Front, whose support almost collapsed.[62][63] In a meeting in July 1979 with Lord Carrington (the Foreign Secretary) and William Whitelaw (Home Secretary) she objected to the number of Asian immigrants,[64] in the context of limiting the number of Vietnamese boat people allowed to settle in the UK to fewer than 10,000.
As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under close scrutiny.[65][66] In July 1986 the Sunday Times reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues".[67][68] The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis.[68] After Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as "nonsense" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies.[69] Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up."[70]
During her time in office Thatcher practised great frugality in her official residence, including insisting on paying for her own ironing-board.[71]
Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman.[72] Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes.[73] She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation,[72] introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing.[73] Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition.[74] Her new centrally-funded City Technology Colleges did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for Schools was set up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the Social Market Foundation, a right-wing think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial powers".[75]
GDP and public spending
by functional classification
% change in real terms
1979/80 to 1989/90[76]
Total government spending
Trade and industry
3.3[77]
Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies.[78] The 1981 riots in England resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar[79] that included the lines: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!"[78]
Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister.[80] As the recession of the early 1980s deepened she increased taxes,[81] despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists issued towards the end of March 1981.[82]
By 1982 the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery;[83] inflation was down to 8.6% from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s.[84] By 1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970, although manufacturing output had dropped by 30% since 1978[85] and unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.[86]
By 1987, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable and strong, and inflation was low. Opinion polls showed a comfortable Conservative lead, and local council election results had also been successful, prompting Thatcher to call a general election for 11 June that year, despite the deadline for an election still being 12 months away. The election saw Thatcher re-elected for a third successive term.[87]
Throughout the 1980s revenue from the 90% tax on North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.[88]
Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing domestic rates a tax based on the nominal rental value of a home with the Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same amount was charged to each adult resident.[89] The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year,[90] and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership.[89] Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000-strong demonstration in London on 31 March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into the Poll Tax Riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest.[91] The Community Charge was abolished by her successor, John Major.[91]
Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action.[92] Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed.[93] Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election.[94] According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".[95]
The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.[96][97][98] Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest.[96][99][100] Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."[101] After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least 1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar.[102] The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been closed;[98] those that remained were privatised in 1994.[103] The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities.[98][104] Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.[105]
The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4583 in 1979, when more than 29 million working days were lost. In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1221, resulting in the loss of more than 27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990 there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter.[106] Trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million by the time Thatcher left office in 1990.[107]
Thatcher on a visit to the University of Salford, 1982 The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism".[108] After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated;[109] more than 29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another 18 billion from the sale of council houses.[110]
The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity.[111] Some of the privatised industries including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement often did so while still under state ownership. British Steel, for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and reduce the workforce by half.[112] Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies like Ofgas, Oftel and the National Rivers Authority.[113] There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries;[111] in most cases privatisation benefitted consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed".[114]
Thatcher always resisted rail privatisation, and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation, she accepted the arguments for privatising British Rail, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994.[115] The Economist later considered the move to have been "a disaster".[114]
The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation in an attempt to fuel economic growth. Geoffrey Howe abolished Britain's exchange controls in 1979, allowing more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the London Stock Exchange. The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service sectors to compensate for Britain's ailing manufacturing industry.
In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 under the preceding Labour government.[116] Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions.[116] Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political",[116] but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end.[117] After the deaths of Sands and nine others, some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of their political status.[118] Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982 Sinn F in politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".[119]
Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in a IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984.[120] Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day.[120] She delivered her speech as planned,[121] a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public.[122]
On 6 November 1981 Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments.[118] On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. In protest the Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast,[123] Ian Gow resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury,[124][125] and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent by-elections on 23 January 1986.[126]
The Thatchers with the Reagans standing at the North Portico of the White House before a state dinner, 16 November 1988
Thatcher took office in the penultimate decade of the Cold War and became closely aligned with the policies of United States President Ronald Reagan, based on their shared distrust of Communism,[93] although she strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983 invasion of Grenada.[127] During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe,[93] and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.[93] She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces[128] at an eventual cost of more than 12 billion (at 1996 97 prices).[129] Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.[130]
On 2 April 1982 the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British-controlled Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War.[131] The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her [Thatcher's] premiership".[132] At the suggestion of Harold Macmillan and Robert Armstrong,[132] she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war,[133] which by 5 6 April had authorised and dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands.[134] Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear-powered submarine torpedoed and sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano on 2 May.[135] Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and notably by Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the General Belgrano, but overall she was considered a highly capable and committed war leader.[136] The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided Labour opposition contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.[137] Thatcher often referred after the war to the "Falklands Spirit"; Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peace-time cabinet government.[138]
Although saying that she was against apartheid, Thatcher stood against the sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the EC.[139] She attempted to preserve trade with South Africa while persuading the regime there to abandon apartheid. This included "[c]asting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in June 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his regime.[140] Thatcher, on the other hand, was no friend of the African National Congress (ANC), which Geoffrey Howe recalls her dismissing as late as October 1987 as "a typical terrorist organization".[141]
The Thatcher government supported the Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the UN after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by the Cambodian Vietnamese War. Although denying it at the time they also sent the SAS to train the Khmer Rouge alliance to fight against the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government.[142][143][144]
Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision making.[145] Thatcher and her party had supported British membership of the EC in the 1975 national referendum,[146] but she believed that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulation;[147] in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels".[147] Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy,[148] despite the urging of her Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe,[149] but she was persuaded by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.[150]
Raisa]], at the Soviet Embassy in London, 1 April 1989 In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discoth que,[151] citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.[152] Polls suggested that less than one in three British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision.[153] She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990.[154] During her talks with US President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention,[154] and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.[155] Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!"[156] Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.
Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was".[157] She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984, and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers.[158] Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.[159] In contrast she was an advocate of Croatian and Slovenian independence.[160] In a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked.[161]
Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer in the 1989 leadership election.[162] Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer.[162] Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success, and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.[162]
During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40 percent, of any post-war Prime Minister. Polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party.[163] A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings, pointing instead to her unbeaten election record.[164] Thatcher in 1990 Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives,[165] and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months.[163] These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent within the Conservative party.[166]
On 1 November 1990 Geoffrey Howe, the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a timetable for Britain to join the European single currency.[165][167] In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's European stance: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are bowled that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."[168] His resignation was fatal to Thatcher's premiership.[169]
The next day, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party.[170] Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour.[171] Although Thatcher won the first ballot, Heseltine attracted sufficient support (152 votes) to force a second ballot.[172] Thatcher initially stated that she intended to "fight on and fight to win" the second ballot, but consultation with her Cabinet persuaded her to withdraw.[166][172][173] After seeing the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech, she left Downing Street in tears. She regarded her ousting as a betrayal.[174]
Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her Chancellor John Major, who oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading up to the 1992 general election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992.[175] Thatcher favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in later years.[176]
Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership.[177] She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.[178]
After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation; it closed down in 2005 because of financial difficulties.[179] She wrote two volumes of memoirs, The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995).
In July 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation.[180] She also earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered.[181]
In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Gora de and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a "holocaust".[182] She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty,[178] describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty".[183] She cited A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of revisiting the treaty, the people should have their say.[184]
Thatcher with Mikhail Gorbachev (left) and Brian Mulroney (centre) at Reagan's funeral.
Thatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (1993 2000)[185] and also of the University of Buckingham (1992 1999), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975.[186]
After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved."[187]
In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations, citing the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War.[188] In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London.[189] Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw, without facing trial.[190]
In the 2001 general election Thatcher supported the Conservative general election campaign, but did not endorse Iain Duncan Smith as she had done for John Major and William Hague. In the Conservative leadership election shortly after, she supported Smith over Kenneth Clarke.[191]
In March 2002, Thatcher's book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, dedicated to Ronald Reagan, was released. In it, she claimed there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein was toppled, that Israel must trade land for peace, and that the European Union (EU) was "fundamentally unreformable", "a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure". She argued that Britain should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area. The book was serialised in The Times on 18 March.
Thatcher suffered several small strokes in 2002 and was advised by her doctors not to engage in any more public speaking.[192] On 23 March she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.[193]
Sir Denis Thatcher died on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July.[194] She had paid tribute to him in The Downing Street Years, writing "Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend".[195]
On 11 June 2004, Thatcher attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.[196] She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier.[197] Thatcher then flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.[198]
Thatcher attends the Washington memorial service marking the 5th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks, pictured with Dick Cheney and his wife Thatcher surrounded by young Conservatives at a dinner in London, June 2008 Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London, on 13 October 2005; guests included the Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair.[199] Geoffrey Howe, by then Lord Howe of Aberavon, was also present, and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."[200]
In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit.[201]
In February 2007, Thatcher became the first living UK Prime Minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill,[202] and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she made a rare and brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron but bronze will do ... It won't rust."[202] The statue shows her addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.[203]
She is a public supporter of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the resulting Prague Process, and sent a public letter of support to its preceding conference.[204]
After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests.[205] Her daughter Carol has recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when she muddled the Falklands conflict with the Yugoslav wars; she has also recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that Denis Thatcher was dead.[206][207]
Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by the artist Richard Stone,[208] an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister.[209] Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.[208]
At the Conservative Party conference in 2010, the new Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would invite Thatcher back to 10 Downing Street on her 85th birthday for a party to be attended by past and present ministers. She pulled out of the celebration because of flu.[210][211] She was invited to the Royal Wedding on 29 April 2011 but did not attend, reportedly due to ill health.[212]
On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a 10-foot statue to former American President Ronald Reagan, outside the American Embassy but was unable to attend due to frail health.[213] On 31 July 2011 it was announced that the former prime minister's office in the House of Lords had been closed down.[214] Earlier in July 2011, Thatcher had been named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos MORI poll.[215]
Thatcher defined her own political philosophy, in a major and controversial break with One Nation Conservatives like her predecessor Edward Heath,[216] in her statement to Douglas Keay, published in Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:
To her supporters, Margaret Thatcher remains a figure who revitalised Britain's economy, curbed the trade unions, and re-established the nation as a world power.[217] She oversaw an increase from 7% to 25% of adults owning shares, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55% to 67% in owner-occupiers. Total personal wealth rose by 80%.[218]
Thatcher's premiership was also marked by high unemployment and social unrest,[217] and many critics fault her economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected by high unemployment as a result of her monetarist economic policies have still not fully recovered and are blighted by social problems such as drug abuse and family breakdown.[219] Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax, and to withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain".[220] Political economist Susan Strange called the new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy than industry.[221]
Critics have regretted Thatcher's influence in the abandonment of full employment, poverty reduction and a consensual civility as bedrock policy objectives. She has been criticised as being divisive[222] and for promoting greed and selfishness.[217] Many recent biographers have been critical of aspects of the Thatcher years and Michael White, writing in New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit.[223] Despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, some critics contend Thatcher did "little to advance the political cause of women",[224] either within her party or the government, and some British feminists regarded her as "an enemy".[225] Her stance on immigration was perceived as part of a rising racist public discourse, which Professor Martin Barker has called "new racism".[226]
Influenced at the outset by Keith Joseph,[227] the term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals. The nickname "Iron Lady", originally given to her by the Soviets, became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.[228][229][230]
In 2011, Labour leader Ed Miliband praised some of Thatcher's key policies, stating: "Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80 per cent. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on strikes before ballots. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time."[231]
Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since Lord Salisbury (13 years and 252 days in three spells starting in 1885), and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool (14 years and 305 days starting in 1812).[232][233][234]
US President George H. W. Bush awards Thatcher the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1991 Thatcher became a Privy Councillor (PC) upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970.[235] She was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) (an order within the personal gift of the Queen) within two weeks of leaving office. Denis Thatcher was made a Baronet at the same time.[236] She became a peer in the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.[178][237] She was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter, the UK's highest order of chivalry, in 1995.[238]
She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983,[20] and was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton Club on becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.[239]
In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992,[240] commemorating her visit in 1983.[241][242] Thatcher Drive in Stanley is named for her, as is Thatcher Peninsula in South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.[240]
Thatcher has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour awarded by the US.[243] She is a patron of the Heritage Foundation,[244] which established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005.[245] Speaking of Heritage president Ed Feulner, at the first Clare Booth Luce lecture in September 1993, Thatcher said: "You didn't just advise President Reagan on what he should do; you told him how he could do it. And as a practising politician I can testify that that is the only advice worth having."[246] Other awards include Dame Grand Cross of the Croatian Grand Order of King Dmitar Zvonimir.[247]
Margaret Thatcher by Brian Pike, 1985 Margaret Thatcher has been depicted in many television programmes, documentaries, films and plays. She was played by Patricia Hodge in Ian Curteis's long unproduced The Falklands Play (2002) and by Andrea Riseborough in the TV film The Long Walk to Finchley (2008). She is the titular character in two films, portrayed by Lindsay Duncan in Margaret (2009) and by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (2011),[248] in which she is depicted as having Alzheimer's disease.[249]
Thatcher was lampooned by satirist John Wells in several media. Wells collaborated with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in Private Eye magazine, were published in book form, and were then adapted into a West End stage revue as Anyone for Denis?, starring Wells as Denis Thatcher. The stage show was followed by a 1982 TV special directed by Dick Clement.[250] In 1979, Wells was commissioned by comedy producer Martin Lewis to write and perform on a comedy record album titled Iron Lady: The Coming Of The Leader on which Thatcher was portrayed by comedienne and noted Thatcher impersonator Janet Brown. The album consisted of skits and songs satirising Thatcher's rise to power.
In Spitting Image, Thatcher was portrayed as a bullying tyrant, wearing trousers, and ridiculing her own ministers.[251]
Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for several protest songs. Paul Weller was a founding member of Red Wedge collective, which unsuccessfully sought to oust Thatcher with the help of music. In 1987, they organised a comedy tour with British comedians Lenny Henry, Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane, Harry Enfield and others.[252]
Miss Margaret Roberts (1925 1951)
Mrs. Margaret Thatcher (1951 1959)
Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, MP (1959 1970)
The Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher, MP (1970 1990)
The Rt Hon. Lady Thatcher, OM, MP (1990 1992)
The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, OM, PC (1992 1995)
The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC (1995 present)
Books by Thatcher
Ministerial autobiographies
Margaret Thatcher Foundation
Margaret Thatcher and the Privatization Movement from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
Margaret Thatcher on the Downing Street website.
Records of the Prime Minister's Office, digitised files from the Prime Minister's Office, covering from the 1979 general election to December 1979.
''Booknotes'' interview with Thatcher on ''The Downing Street Years'', 5 December 1993.
Actresses (and actors) who have portrayed Thatcher, The Telegraph (London), 8 February 2011. Retrieved 28 May 2011
|- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |-
af:Margaret Thatcher am: ar: az:Marqaret Tet er bn: zh-min-nan:Margaret Thatcher be: bg: bar:Margaret Thatcher bo: bs:Margaret Thatcher br:Margaret Thatcher ca:Margaret Thatcher cv: cs:Margaret Thatcherov cy:Margaret Thatcher da:Margaret Thatcher de:Margaret Thatcher et:Margaret Thatcher el: es:Margaret Thatcher eo:Margaret Thatcher eu:Margaret Thatcher fa: fo:Margaret Thatcher fr:Margaret Thatcher fy:Margaret Thatcher ga:Margaret Thatcher gv:Margaret Thatcher gd:Margaret Thatcher gl:Margaret Thatcher ko: ha:Margaret Thatcher hy: hi: hr:Margaret Thatcher io:Margaret Thatcher id:Margaret Thatcher is:Margr t Thatcher it:Margaret Thatcher he: ' jv:Margaret Thatcher ka: kk: sw:Margaret Thatcher la:Margarita Thatcher lv:Margareta Te ere lt:Margaret Thatcher hu:Margaret Thatcher mk: ml: mr: arz: ms:Margaret Thatcher mn: my: nl:Margaret Thatcher ja: no:Margaret Thatcher nn:Margaret Thatcher nov:Margaret Thatcher oc:Margaret Thatcher pnb: pl:Margaret Thatcher pt:Margaret Thatcher ro:Margaret Thatcher rm:Margaret Thatcher qu:Margaret Thatcher ru: , sa: scn:Margaret Thatcher simple:Margaret Thatcher sk:Margaret Thatcherov sl:Margaret Thatcher szl:Margaret Thatcher sr: sh:Margaret Thatcher fi:Margaret Thatcher sv:Margaret Thatcher tl:Margaret Thatcher ta: tt: th: tg: tr:Margaret Thatcher uk: ur: vi:Margaret Thatcher war:Margaret Thatcher yi: yo:Margaret Thatcher zh-yue: bat-smg:Margareta Te er zh:
Source: Wikipedia | The above article is available under the GNU FDL. | Edit this article
Search for Margaret Thatcher in Tutorials
Search for Margaret Thatcher in Encyclopedia
Search for Margaret Thatcher in Videos
Search for Margaret Thatcher in Books
Search for Margaret Thatcher in Software
Search for Margaret Thatcher in DVDs
Search for Margaret Thatcher in Store
Margaret Thatcher in Encyclopedia
©2011-2013 TutorGig.com. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement


An agreement to jointly construct a new 'Traders Market' at DP World's flagship Jebel Ali Port and Free Zone in Dubai on a total build up area of three million square metres has been signed between the global trade enabler and the Zhejiang China Commodities City Group, providing further impetus to China's Belt and Road Initiative.DP World will be building the 'Traders Market' within the Jebel Ali Free Zone Area located in Jafza South next to the Dubai Expo 2020 site.The market will include clusters of traders from all over the world, offering a wide range of products at one site.
The Maersk liner vessel Maersk Honam, which was hit by a serious fire on 6 March, will reach anchorage outside the Jebel Ali Port (UAE) on Tuesday 24 April 2018. The fire broke out around 900 nautical miles southeast of Salalah, Oman, and remains under control. Firefighting activities were initiated by the Indian Coast Guard until vessels with special firefighting capabilities arrived at the scene. Salvage operations are led by Smit Salvage and Ardent – two best-in-class companies within maritime salvage.
Dubai-based ports operator DP World has inked an agreement with the Suez Canal Authority and the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) to launch the first phase of an integrated industrial and residential zone in Sokhna. The framework agreement, which establishes a clear timetable of actions required to execute the first phase of the project spanning 30 square kilometres, was signed by Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO of DP World and Admiral Mohab Mamish, Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority and the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone).
Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO, DP World and Admiral Mohab Mamish, Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority and Chairman of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone), presented details of the recent agreement to develop an integrated industrial and residential zone at Sokhna in Egypt to investors and businesses in Dubai. The opportunities to invest and launch operations in the project were outlined to company representatives, many of whom already have existing outlets in Dubai's Jebel Ali Freezone (Jafza).
Global trade enabler DP World has been signed on as a founding partner of Area 2071, an innovative ecosystem initiative designed to shape the future of the UAE and position it as the best nation in the world, which is central to achieving the UAE Centennial 2071 Plan. In the presence of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, at a signing ceremony at Emirates Towers, DP World Group Chairman and CEO, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, committed the company's support to the future-focused initiative.
DP World Group Chairman and CEO, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, met with the President of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, last week to discuss a trade and logistics master plan to unlock the resource rich country's economic potential. The plan includes a transportation and logistics strategy with electronic customs processes, replicating DP World's successful model with Dubai Trade at its flagship Jebel Ali Port and Freezone in Dubai. Regional trade in West Africa connects through ports such as DP World Dakar in Senegal to international markets.
Qatar Navigation (Milaha) , a top Doha-based shipping and logistics group, said on Wednesday it had launched a new container service to Kuwait amid a diplomatic crisis that has seen it lose access to regional trans-shipment hub, Dubai. Milaha will operate the weekly, direct service between Kuwait and Qatar using a vessel capable of handling the equivalent of 515 20-foot containers, the company said in a statement. Milaha said the service between Qatar's Hamad Port and Shuwaikh Port in Kuwait would have a transit time of one day and be ideal for transporting perishable products and food.
Qatar Navigation (Milaha), a top Doha-based shipping and logistics group, said it was shifting its regional trans-shipment hub from Dubai to the Omani port of Sohar after a diplomatic crisis in the region disrupted Qatar's trade. Milaha is setting up a warehousing and logistics operation at Sohar, on Oman's northern coast, and is exploring other opportunities to expand in that country, the company said on Monday. The plan suggests Qatar is making long-term preparations to cope with sanctions imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, which cut diplomatic and transport ties on June 5, accusing Doha of backing terrorism.
DP World Limited handled 63.7 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) across its global portfolio of container terminals in the full year of 2016, with gross container volumes growing by 3.2% year-on-year on a reported basis, and 2.2% on a like-for-like basis, which compares favourably to the industry estimated growth of 1.3% for 2016 . In the fourth quarter, gross reported volumes grew by 6.0% year-on-year driven by strong growth in Asia Pacific and Europe. UAE handled 3.7 million TEU in 4Q2016 down marginally by 0.7% year-on-year.
Kalmar, part of Cargotec, has been awarded an order to supply DP World's flagship terminal, Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, with the new generation empty container handlers. The order for 13 units has been booked into Cargotec's 2016 fourth quarter order intake. The deliveries will begin in the second quarter of 2017 and they are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017. Commenting on the order, Suresh Ananthanarayan, Kalmar's Key Account Manager for DP World, said: "This is the first order of Kalmar's new range of empty container handlers for the Middle East & Africa region.
DP World London Gateway Port has announced a new shipping service to Australia, the Mediterranean and other key markets. CMA-CGM's NEMO (North European Mediterranean Oceania) and Hapag Lloyd's EAX (Europe, Australia Express) combined service will begin calling at DP World London Gateway Port in early January 2017, with CMA CGM's Rossini as the first to call on the service. The new business will mean DP World London Gateway is handling all of the UK's direct services to Australia.
Dubai ports operator DP World is working with customers to minimise disruption following the collapse of Hanjin Shipping, reports National. About ten ships operated by the Korean company are currently in Dubai's Jebel Ali Port according to Hanjin data. Two other ships have arrived in Abu Dhabi's Khalifa Port Container Terminal. "While we don't publish data on client receivables, following Hanjin Shipping's decision to file for court protection, we have been working with our customers and partners to minimise impact on world trade," The National quoted a DP World spokesman as saying.


333 East Fourth Building D #4 Frankfort, KY. | MLS# 1214861 | Welcome to Century 21 Simpson & Associates. We've been actively involved with the buying and selling of homes in Central Kentucky and adjacent areas for over 30 years. We have offices in Frankfort and Lexington. How can we help you?
Condo/Townhouse 333 East Fourth Building D #4 Tastefully decorated, right out of a decorator magazine - you have to see this great Condo. Completely remodeled, building is secure with combo lock to enter building plus it comes with its own carport and a front loading washer/dryer. Storage unit in basement. Condo fee covers water, sewer, snow removal, outside maintenance. Close to State Capitol. Great Kitchen with appliances - you will love this cozy condo! This one can be shown on short notice - call today!!!!


text:
Scott Draves - Software Artist
Portfolio - Events - For Sale - Press - Shows - About
About Contact CV Statement
About Scott Draves
Scott Draves is a pioneering software artist best known for creating the Electric Sheep, a collective intelligence consisting of 450,000 computers and people that uses mathematics and genetic algorithms to create an infinite abstract animation.
His work has been shown at LACMA, MoMA.org, Prix Ars Electronica, ZKM, Art Futura, Emoção Art.ficial Bienial and is in collections world-wide including the 21c Museum Hotel, MQS Capital, Google, the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, and MEIAC. His clients range from Skrillex to the Adler Planetarium. Electric Sheep apps are available for iPad and Android.
Draves Bomb was one of the first interactive software artworks (1994) and also the first Open Source artwork, and the first interactive reaction-diffusion. His Fuse algorithm (1991) was also extremly influential.
In 1990 he received a BS in Mathematics from Brown University and in 1997 a PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University for a thesis on metaprogramming for interactive media.
He is currently Director of Engineering at CTRL-labs, developing neural interfaces (now part of Facebook Reality Labs).
Learn more by reading these interviews of him: in the book Colliding Worlds by Arthur I Miller, The Creators Project, Triangulation Blog, and Art in Odd Places.
Read Scott's entry on the Wikipedia, or dig into his archived old home page.
© 2008 Spotworks LLC

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Jacques Lusseyran, né le  à Paris et mort le  à Saint-Géréon (Loire-Atlantique), aveugle depuis l'âge de 8 ans, est un résistant français, responsable au sein des mouvements Volontaires de la Liberté puis Défense de la France, déporté à Buchenwald en 1944-1945, par la suite professeur de littérature et de philosophie aux États-Unis.

Biographie

Origines familiales
Il est issu d'une famille de haut niveau intellectuel : son père, Pierre Lusseyran, est ingénieur chimiste, ancien élève de l'ESPCI ; sa mère, d'une famille de Juvardeil en Maine-et-Loire, a fait des études supérieures de sciences.

Handicap et études
En , il perd la vue à la suite d'un accident. Ses parents décident de ne pas le confier à une école spécialisée (qui aurait été l'Institut national des jeunes aveugles) et d'essayer de lui faire poursuivre les études dans le cadre habituel. Sa mère et son père lui apprennent le braille en quelques mois, et le , il revient en CM1 dans son école communale (rue Cler), utilisant une machine à écrire le braille. Malgré son handicap, c'est un brillant élève ; il est admis en sixième en 1934 au lycée Montaigne.

Il passe généralement ses vacances à Juvardeil, chez ses grands-parents, ou sur la côte atlantique, mais en 1937, la famille fait un voyage en Suisse, à Dornach, résidence jusqu'en 1925 de Rudolf Steiner, dont Pierre Lusseyran est un disciple, puis en Autriche. En 1938, l'Anschluss l'amène à intensifier son apprentissage de l'allemand, sa seule langue vivante au lycée. En , son père l'emmène à Stuttgart rendre visite à un ami menacé par le régime nazi.

À la déclaration de guerre, son père est mobilisé dans une usine de Toulouse et il fait donc son année de Première dans cette ville, obtenant la première partie de baccalauréat en 1940, les épreuves ayant été retardées par les événements militaires. La famille rentre à Paris durant l'été. Il entre alors en terminale, en série Philosophie, au lycée Louis-le-Grand, passe la deuxième partie de baccalauréat en 1941 et continue à Louis-le-Grand dans la classe préparatoire à l'École normale supérieure.

Un décret de Vichy ayant exclu les handicapés de la fonction publique, il obtient une dérogation du directeur de l'enseignement supérieur en  ; mais, le , alors qu'il a déjà subi deux épreuves écrites, on lui transmet une lettre du ministre Abel Bonnard annulant cette dérogation.

Les Volontaires de la Liberté
En 1940-1941, il se rapproche d'autres élèves refusant comme lui d'accepter l'occupation allemande. Au mois de , âgé de seulement , il participe avec une cinquantaine d'élèves des lycées Louis-le-Grand et Henri-IV et des étudiants de la Sorbonne, à la mise en place d'un mouvement de résistance, les Volontaires de la Liberté, dont le but initial est d'informer la population. Un Bulletin est publié à partir de . Au début de 1942, le mouvement compte environ , 600 à la fin de l'année.

Durant toute cette période, Jacques Lusseyran mène de front ses études et les activités de résistance, secondé par un des premiers participants, « Georges », qui, lui, est passé dans la clandestinité. Malgré son handicap, il joue rapidement un rôle important dans le mouvement. Pendant les premiers mois, il est chargé de contrôler le recrutement de nouveaux membres, utilisant un sens intérieur, développé depuis qu'il est devenu aveugle, qui lui permet de détecter les faux-semblants chez des interlocuteurs inconnus.

Défense de la France
En , a lieu sa rencontre importante avec Philippe Viannay dit « Philippe », à la tête du mouvement Défense de la France, qui publie un journal imprimé clandestin du même nom qui à ce moment tire à . Défense de la France est beaucoup mieux organisé que les Volontaires, mais a très peu de militants de base. Jacques Lusseyran prend alors la décision de mettre les Volontaires au service de la diffusion de Défense de la France.

Il s'ensuit une scission des Volontaires de la Liberté, un certain nombre d'entre eux (autour de Pierre Cochery) maintiennent un groupe autonome, par la suite lié au mouvement socialisant Libération-Nord. Jacques Lusseyran indique que la quasi-totalité des Volontaires le suit à Défense de la France, où lui et Georges entrent au Comité directeur et au Comité de rédaction, chargés de la diffusion du journal. Le tirage augmente progressivement mais de façon très importante. Le numéro du  est tiré à  (c'est aussi lui qui en rédige l'éditorial). La diffusion passe du système de la distribution en porte à porte à la diffusion ouverte, à la sortie des églises, voire dans le métro, pour le numéro du .

La déportation
Il est arrêté le  et incarcéré à Fresnes ; il subit plusieurs interrogatoires, mais sans violences ; un interrogateur ayant fait lire devant lui le dossier fourni par l'agent double à l'origine des arrestations, il réussit même à déterminer qui est cet agent.

En , il est transféré au camp de Compiègne et déporté au camp de Buchenwald (), près de Weimar. Après le séjour dans la section de quarantaine, il est placé dans le block des invalides.

Sa survie tient, d'une part, au fait qu'il a été engagé comme interprète par l'administration nazie du camp, n'ayant ainsi pas à subir les terribles travaux forcés des « kommandos » de travail, mais aussi à ce qu'il a été aidé au quotidien par d'autres prisonniers du fait de sa cécité. Enfin, selon ce qu'il rapporte dans ses livres Et la lumière fut, Le monde commence aujourd'hui et La lumière dans les ténèbres, il a été porté par une force spirituelle qu'il affirme être présente en chacun.

Sa connaissance de l'allemand lui permet de comprendre et de décrypter les informations transmises par les SS sur les haut-parleurs du camp. Le , il a la certitude que Paris a été libéré, bien que cela n'ait évidemment pas été explicite.

Le , l'armée américaine du général Patton atteint la région de Weimar. Le 10, lorsque les SS lui donnent le choix entre rester au camp ou partir avec eux, il décide de rester ; après une journée d'incertitude, le camp est libéré le 11.

Le , il est rapatrié, ainsi que deux autres déportés de Défense de la France, par Philippe Viannay venu personnellement (sans autorisation formelle) au camp de Buchenwald.

L'après-guerre
Il passe les licences de lettres et de philosophie et est reçu à l'agrégation.

Il épouse Jacqueline Pardon (1921-2009), secrétaire de Philippe Viannay à Défense de la France, dont il divorcera le .

Le , il rencontre Georges Saint-Bonnet, dont il sera très proche jusqu'à sa mort en 1963. Il raconte sa fascination pour ce personnage, qui fut son ami, son médecin et son , dans un livre paru en 1964, Georges Saint-Bonnet, maître de joie.

Les aveugles restant exclus de l'enseignement public secondaire en France (jusqu'en 1955), il enseigne à la Mission laïque de Salonique en Grèce, puis à l'Alliance française à Paris, tout en faisant des cours pour étrangers à l'ENS de Saint-Cloud et à la Sorbonne.

Vers 1955, on lui propose un poste en Virginie, à l'université privée américaine Hollins College. De là, il passe à la Western Reserve University de Cleveland ; enfin, en 1969, il devient titulaire de la chaire de littérature française à l'université de Hawaï.

Il trouve la mort avec sa troisième épouse dans un accident de la route, au début d'un séjour d'été en France le , à l'âge de .

Distinctions
 Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
 Médaille de la Résistance avec rosette
 Croix de guerre 1939-1945 avec palme
 Prix Louis Barthou 1954 de l'Académie française

Ouvrages
Jacques Lusseyran est l'auteur de plusieurs ouvrages autobiographiques :
 Et la lumière fut, La Table Ronde, 1953
 Et la lumière fut, Le Félin, coll. « Résistance », 2005  (réédition : Folio, 2012 )
Cette deuxième édition, préfacée par Jacqueline Pardon, et datée « Hollin's College, Virginie, ,  », n'est pas une simple réédition. C'est la traduction de And there was light, un livre  écrit pour le public américain. Selon Jérôme Garcin, les deux versions n'ont rien à voir. Premières pages de l'ouvrage
 Silence des hommes, La Table Ronde, 1954.
 Le monde commence aujourd'hui, La Table Ronde, 1959 (réédition : Silène, 2012  ; Folio, 2016 )
 Georges Saint-Bonnet, maître de joie, A.G.I, Paris, 1964
 Douce trop douce Amérique, Gallimard, 1968
 Ce que l'on voit sans les yeux suivi de La Cécité : un regard nouveau sur le monde, avec les commentaires de Georges Saint-Bonnet, A. G. I., Paris, 1977.
 Conversation amoureuse, Les Trois Arches, 1990 (réédition : Triades, 2006 )
 La Lumière dans les ténèbres, Triades, 2002

En anglais
 Against the Pollution of the I : selected writings of Jacques Lusseyran, New York, Parabola Books, 1999 .
 And there was light, New World Library, 2014 .

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Bibliographie
 Jacqueline Pardon, « Préface » à l'édition 2005 de Et la lumière fut, .
 Jérôme Garcin, « Un aveugle à Buchenwald », dans Le Nouvel Observateur,  () (photographie de Jacques Lusseyran avec Albert Camus en 1953).
 Jérôme Garcin, Le Voyant, Gallimard, 2014 . Réédité en poche avec une postface de l'auteur, Folio, 2016
 Marion Chottin, Céline Roussel, Zina Weygand (dir.), Jacques Lusseyran, entre cécité et lumière, Paris, Éditions Rue d'Ulm, Presses de l'École normale supérieure, 2019, 232 p. .

Liens externes

 Biographie et photo de Jacques Lusseyran sur le site du Musée de la Résistance de Champigny
 « Une lumière au sein de la Résistance », de Laurent Lejard
 Spectacle de Théâtre de la Compagnie Peu Importe. Adaptation libre de "Le Monde Commence Aujourd'hui" 2007.

Déporté résistant
Survivant de Buchenwald
Résistant français
Autobiographe français
Aveugle français
Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur
Naissance en septembre 1924
Naissance à Paris
Décès en juillet 1971
Décès dans la Loire-Atlantique
Décès à 46 ans
Mort dans un accident de la route en France
Scientifique mort dans un accident de la route
Écrivain français du XXe siècle
Élève du lycée Louis-le-Grand
Titulaire de la médaille de la Résistance française avec rosette

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
AccountAbility Releases Latest Guidance on Sustainability Assurance
Introducing the AA1000AS v3 – a next generation standard for sustainability leaders seeking assurance of sustainability management, performance, and reporting
NEW YORK/LONDON, September 9, 2020 / 3BL Media/
AccountAbility is pleased to introduce the next version of its AA1000 Assurance Standard – v3– as the solution of choice for sustainability leaders seeking assurance of their sustainability management, performance, and reporting.
The AA1000 Assurance Standard (AA1000AS v3) is an internationally recognized, freely available standard that provides the requirements for AccountAbility-licensed assurance providers to conduct high-quality sustainability assurance on the application of the AA1000 AccountAbility Principles (AA1000AP, 2018) by reporting organizations.
Celebrating the standard's release, Mr. Robert H. Herz, Board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Foundation, former Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and member of the AccountAbility Advisory Board, stated, "As more and more organizations around the world focus and report on their sustainability issues, activities, and performance, external assurance using the new AA1000 Assurance Standard can enhance stakeholder trust and confidence in this information."
Mr. Sunil A. Misser, CEO of AccountAbility, emphasized Mr. Herz's sentiments, expressing, "This latest version of the AA1000 Assurance Standard advances AccountAbility's legacy (over 25 years) of delivering universally-applied sustainability guidance to organizations small and large, spanning industry sectors and geographies."
Mr. Misser further commented, "The AA1000AS v3 is unique in its 'principles-based guidance' approach, rooted in the AA1000 Accountability Principles (2018) of Inclusivity, Materiality, Responsiveness, and Impact. Its wide-angle, integrated, and forward-looking view of sustainability management, performance, and reporting assists companies in anticipating and managing future business risks and opportunities."
Ms. Amy Springsteel, Principal, Corporate Social Responsibility at BNY Mellon and Chair of the AccountAbility Standards Board, further elaborated on the value this standard brings to the sustainability assurance process, sharing, "With the increased scrutiny on CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reports, external assurance of non-financial information is becoming paramount for responsible businesses. The AA1000AS v3 is a holistic and universally applicable solution for assurance providers and companies alike seeking a robust and relevant sustainability assurance process."
Guided by a core AccountAbility team, the AA1000AS v3 was developed using a broad-based, global, and multi-stakeholder process overseen by a dedicated Steering Committee chaired by AccountAbility Standards Board member, Mr. Dongsoo Kim, Director of the Sustainability Management Center at the Korea Productivity Center.
Reflecting on the launch of this new version of the standard, Mr. Kim remarked, "The AA1000AS v3 prioritizes clarity, consistency, uniformity, and ease-of-use. It applies various ESG standards and sustainability practices to comply with sustainability disclosures such as the GRI, SASB, and TCFD, as well as responding to capital market demands from rating agencies and institutional investors. It is a privilege to have been involved in the development process of such an important solution to advance the sustainability assurance agenda."
This revision process was also guided by a Working Group of international industry thought leaders chaired by Mr. Murray Sayce, Principal, Corporate Sustainability, ERM CVS. Mr. Sayce stated, "I speak on behalf of the Working Group in saying that we are delighted to see the timely release of the AA1000AS v3, which features key changes in upholding a rigorous and credible assurance approach in line with the AA1000 Accountability Principles (2018). I wholeheartedly thank those who have generously contributed their time, insights, and experience throughout the revision of this important framework."
For enhanced quality and monitoring of assurance statements, the AA1000AS v3 will be administered through an innovative e-licensing system for AccountAbility-licensed assurance providers, which will be introduced later in the year. Beginning January 1, 2021 when it fully replaces the AA1000AS (2008), the AA1000AS v3 will become the only recognized AA1000 Assurance Standard.
The AA1000AS v3 may be downloaded for free at the link below, or at: https://www.accountability.org/standards/aa1000-assurance-standard


text:
Jason Aldean Grants Big Wish for Little Boy Battling Brain Cancer
Brittany Joy Cooper
Tyson Zimmer, a 7-year-old boy in Nebraska who is dying of brain cancer, is a huge Jason Aldean fan. The little boy with the sweet smile told Nebraska's KOLN-TV, "I sing 'Big Green Tractor' because that's my favorite." As family and friends have watched Zimmer battle the horrible disease, they rallied around him, joining in a Twitter campaign to request that Aldean send the young boy a message.
"If Jason Aldean even just sent a video message, that would make his day big time," Zimmer's mom, Liz Duering, told the news station. As it turns out, Aldean would do that and even more. In a video on the social networking site WhoSay, Aldean — a father of two — sent Zimmer a message of hope and encouragement and also invited him out to a show. The star even sent autographed posters, CDs and four backstage passes to meet him when the family comes out.
The family is headed to Disney World next week as a part of their trip from the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and when they return, they're planning on seeing Aldean live in concert in Illinois May 11 or 12. Now they're just trying to raise money for the airfare to get to the show.
To help the family with the expense, supporters can buy $5 a "Say~Fight~Cure" Tyson wristband by sending an emailing tysonsfightagainstcancer@gmail.com. The idea was the brainchild of local radio station Froggy 98, who met with the Zimmers and vowed to help Tyson by gaining re-tweets on Twitter, which eventually caught Aldean's eye.
In his video to Tyson, Aldean invited the Zimmers out to his concert and also said, "Hey, what's up Tyson? It's Jason Aldean. I heard your story, man. I heard you're going through a little bit of a rough time there in Omaha. I just want you to know that I appreciate you being a fan of my music … glad you like it man … Just wanted to let you know that I'm thinking about you man."
Watch Jason Aldean's Video Message to Tyson Zimmer
Read Original: Jason Aldean Grants Big Wish for Little Boy Battling Brain Cancer


Collecting a debt in Jordan can seem impossible. Language and cultural barriers, foreign laws and customs, and sheer distance all impose serious challenges.
Debt recovery is simpler when you use a collection agency fluent in the laws and customs of the country where the debtor resides. Cedar Financial offers on-the-ground representatives in Jordan who understand the debt collection practices that work to support full recovery of your funds.
With offices in over 150 countries, including Jordan, working with Cedar Financial provides you access to a global network of nationally licensed debt collectors. Our in-depth understanding of local laws, customs and cultures guarantees the best possible debt mediation results.
Why should we ask you to collect our debts in Jordan?
Our Company is one of the leading law firms, based in the heart of Amman the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. We are distinguished with the depth and scope of our legal advisory services; we offer proficiencies in almost all areas of legal practice, and our commitment in providing the highest level of services to our clients while maintaining the credibility and maintain confidentiality of data information.
Absolutely nothing, "we collect, we get paid".
We will deliver effective and affirmative solutions to your debt recovery problem on a No Win No Fee basis. This means that there is no financial risk to you because there are no hidden charges; therefore, you can claim debts without worrying about upfront legal fees.
We have no minimum placement value or volume for client.
On average, our debt collection process will take at least 3 months, sometimes longer.
Through a highly-qualified team and by using the best data sources, we start looking for the debtor location and contact number. Each debtor is contacted through SMSs, Phone Calls and Emails. If we obtain payment commitment, we work to ensure the payment(s) materialize through reminder messages. If debtor fails to cooperate in resolving the debt, we make final pre-legal collection attempt. We send our updates and recommendations to Client, including details on forwarding claim to affiliated attorney. If Client authorizes us forwarding the claim, we send it to our affiliated attorney, and instruct them to work and investigate the claim.
The statute of limitation is up to 15 years for debt collection, however it varies depending on the foundation of the debt.
Yes, to facilitate the debt collection process we need supporting documents.
Legal action can be taken when the direct peaceful negotiations and amicable collections failed. Legal fees are billed separately.
Yes, it is legal to add collection fees to the balance owed for both consumer and commercial debt.


The fun and whimsical designs of the Cheers collection set a festive mood at any gathering. Each glass in the set of 4 is precision-etched with a different yet coordinating design. The dots, lines, and swirls are also distinctive, so each of your guests can easily identify their glass without the need for wine charms. The extra-large bowl of these glasses is designed to allow subtle wines, such as point noir, to gather their aromas. Dishwasher safe, top rack but hand wash recommended. Set of 8 balloon glasses, each holds 24-1/2 ounces.


Before going to sleep I glance yet again at the star filled sky: thousands upon thousands of stars are visible in the thin atmosphere at 4,200 metres. However, the world´s highest summit at 8,850 metres above sea level – the Tibetans call it the "goddess of the earth" has still not let itself be glimpsed. Snow covered mountains form a dark, impenetrable wall as if this mountain"s secret should remain hidden as long as possible... Working desperately hard, I "flail" between huge stones and boulders. The gravel track resembles a dry streambed that rises steeply. It zigzags over an emormous area of scree. The small number of jeeps, which pass, can still be seen for some time over a long distance. Their engines screaming, they crawl up the mountainside bend after bend.
At 5,000 metres above sea level, breathing becomes difficult; my bike often threatens to tip over. A short break, my strength is fading rapidly. But giving up is simply not an option. The desire to reach my dream of goal is too great, the longing too strong. 80 kilometres and 2,000 metres` altitude are still ahead of me, however. They will be the toughest kilometres` cycling of my life! A national park, which extends round the Tibetan part of Mount Everest, lies at 4,300 metres a few kilometres from Friendship Highway, which links the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, with Nepal. For me the long climb to Pang La, which is 5,120 metres high now begins. The Tibetan word "La" means pass and for a cyclist that means many hours` pedalling up into the breathtaking mountain landscape of the Himalayas. Not until several kilometres have passed is it clear that one opportunity for obtaining supplies that I had reckoned on is not going to arise again. Turning back is no longer feasible because of the distance. My supplies are almost exhausted. 30 kilometres and 1,100 metres` altitude to the next village. And this has happened after almost three months on the road in Tibet. Irritating! I pump stream water through my ceramic filter, plunder my last supplies. They will not fill me up. This will make the ride up to the pass even more difficult than I had expected without this problem. The thin air, my heavy luggage and the bumpy track cause me a lot of difficulty.
However, having reached the top, I can scarcely describe either my mood or the view: a sea of colourful, waving prayer flags and a fascinating view of the boundless Himalayas quickly make me forget all my hard work. If the weather is clear, there is a glorious view of the chain of 8,000 metres high mountains. Cho Oyu, Lhotse, Gyachung, and Everest. I do not reach the next village far down in the valley until evening. It´s not much faster going downhill; I keep the bike at walking pace until the wheel rims glow and my hands ache from constantly braking. Before going to sleep, I glance yet again at the star filled sky: thousand upon thousands of stars are visible in the thin atmosphere at 4,200 metres. However, the world´s highest summit at 8,850 metres above sea level has still not let itself be glimpsed. Snow covered mountains form a dark, impenetrable wall as if this mountain´s secret should remain hidden as long as possible. Next day, I carry on under a blue sky and in a dazzling sunshine. The path crosses fields of scree and sandy wastes and is cut again and again by streames and watercourses. Behind every hairpin bend, higher and more precipitous mountains are visible. It cannot be much further now. A final break. A shepherd tending yak assuresme that my destination is to be found just behind the mountain, the Rongbuk monastery, apparently the worlds´s highest monastery at the foot of the Qomolangma "the goddess of the earth" as the Tibetans reverently call the world´s highest mountain.
Impatiently I set off. I am afraid of only seeing Everest swathed in clouds, as many travellers have already had to experience it. The route seems endless. The state of the road gets worse and worse and I feel my strenght ebbing more and more. I catch sight of a summit, that must be it, the mountain of my dreams! I push against the pedals yet more impatiently. A crowd of monks accompanies me for a little while. Despite the heavy load that they are bringing to the monastery, they help me to push my bike. Their cheerful singing seems to distract them from their efforts. Following two hours of agony, I finally stand before the gates of the monastery at 5,100 metres above sea level. Overwhelmed I stand before the world´s mightiest mountain. The glacier, the imposing north face, the ice-covered summit are revealed in all their glory. My dream has become a reality; I´ve managed it through my own efforts. An unbelievable feeiling of happiness seizes me, a feeling that no money in the world can buy. The next morning, my tent and bike are covered with film of ice. The valley where the monastery is situated is still entirely dark but the world´s highest mountain is already gleaming in the sun´s first rays. The low-lying sun shows marked contours on the north side of the mountainous mass. As the light increases, the whiteness of the everlasting ice becomes more and more dazzling and the blue sky behind it more and more intense. At midday, I reach the Everest Base Camp, a few kilometres above the monastery, with a colourful, highly mixed group of hikers. The base camp consists of a permanent mountain rescue building, of campsites and a stone slab with the simple inscription "Mt. Qomolangma Base Camp 5,200 metres". One can scarcely believe that many major expeditions started here. We meet a group of Spanish mountaineers, who are just preparing to climb Cho Oyu (8,153 m). Their equipment was transported to the base camp by lorry. Following a few days´acclimatisation, they will start their arduous climb to the summit.
I then carry on for a while on foot, to the Rongbuk glacier: a wide, gigantic ribbon of ice runs for kilometres into the valley. While walking, I become even more clearly aware of the immense dimensions of this mountainous world. I walk for several hours but get scarcely any closer to the mountain. In the only "pub" for miles around, the few travellers sit together in the cosy bar and tell each other of their experiences and adventures on their travels. It´s wonderful after many lonely kilometres` pedalling. Momos (pastry envelopes with various fillings), egg rice and chapattis (thin, flat bread) are consumed. Calories and carbohydrate are important. Finally I will go back over the same route for the next two days. At night, I crawl out of the tent once more. The north face of Everest lies in the gentle light of an infinite number of stars. The "goddess of earth" has cast her spell over me.


Ziegler, a specialty investment bank, is pleased to announce the successful closing of the $34,935,000 Series 2016, tax-exempt, fixed-rate financing for Canterbury Health Care, Inc., a new client to Ziegler.
Canterbury Health Care, Inc. (the Corporation) was incorporated in 1991 as a Michigan not-for-profit corporation for the purpose of providing healthcare, housing and related services to the elderly. The Corporation currently owns and operates a 255-unit rental continuing care retirement community in Waterford, Michigan (which is approximately 40 miles from Detroit), known as Canterbury-on-the-Lake (COTL). Since 1995, COTL's day-to-day operations have been managed by LCS. Currently, COTL is comprised of 75 independent living apartments, 40 assisted living units and 140 skilled nursing beds.
In 2015, COTL's Board authorized implementation of a Repositioning Plan that was conceived and will be implemented by Greenbrier Development. The Repositioning Plan consists of plans to construct and equip a new 24,500 square foot, single-story, 32-bed licensed assisted living memory care facility, construct a new enclosed two-story corridor structure connecting the new assisted living memory care building to the existing community center building, as well as renovate and resize the existing skilled-nursing facility to convert 24 semi-private beds into 12 private bed units, which results in a reduction of nursing beds (the Project).
To avoid paying prevailing wage labor for construction costs resulting in more than $1 million in savings, COTL elected to issue the Series 2016 Bonds in three different series: (1) Michigan Strategic Fund in the amount of $14,700,000 (tax-exempt) for which proceeds will pay project costs, fund a debt service reserve fund and pay the cost of issuance; (2) Waterford Township Economic Development Corporation in the amount of $19,075,000 (tax-exempt) for which proceeds will refund outstanding bank loan, fund a debt service reserve fund and pay costs of issuance and; (3) Waterford Township Economic Development Corporation in the amount of $1,160,000 (federally taxable) for which proceeds will pay a portion of the costs to terminate the swap, fund a debt service reserve fund and pay costs of issuance.
The new money and refunding components are amortized together to form level debt service. The MSF Series 2016 Bonds and the EDC Series 2016A Bonds amortize over 35 years until 2051. The EDC Series 2016B Taxable Bonds have a final maturity in 2020. The arbitrage yield on The Series 2016 Bonds is 5.008%.


The sun rose early in Kuching. It was just 5.50 am and I could see the sun already rising, telling the people to start the day. I did not know what to expect. It was supposed to be a long day today. The frog race would start later tonight. Today is the day.
I went to a stall at the back of Tune Hotel after cleaning myself up to try the Laksa Sarawak. Ever since I arrived here, the dish has become my personal favourite, more than my likeness towards mee kolok.
"A laksa for breakfast?" some might asked.
No need to raise the eyebrows as eating laksa for breakfast is nothing as compared to drinking stout early in the morning, which I found some locals happily indulged glasses of them at the same stall.
After breakfast, we were all taken into a van to Bau, a gold mining town some 46 km away from Kuching. The van was driven on a normal dual lane carriageway, since expressways like the ones in the Peninsula are almost non-existence here. Along the journey, we were greeted by lines after lines of greenery, thick jungles surrounding the road. Once in a while, villages and small residential areas greeted us but most of the time it was just jungles and thick vegetation.
After a while, we stopped by a local market. I found the market amusing as the seafood and vegetables were fresh, not to mention the odd species of fish that I swear I have never seen before throughout my whole life. The way they sell the vegetables and the poultry was different too. For example, fish were put in small plates and they sell them by plates instead of by the number of fish wanted.
I took some time walking around the market and chit chatted with the sellers, all of them were happy with their life and had nothing to complaint about. I took some time thinking about how hard their work is but they still manage to draw a smile. Something that us city dwellers should do instead of being zombies going to and return from work everyday without living the life to the fullest.
Our journey then continued to the actual place that we planned to visit, the LAN E Tuyang Homestay. This homestay is so unique as it provides learning opportunity to the visitors, to learn how to live, eat like a local. The homestay is situated besides the main road but is not visible from the main road.
The longhouses were built by bamboos and when I arrived, I was amazed to see the longhouses which I had only seen in school textbook before. We were greeted by the chief and was entertained with a dance by the local teens. We walked around to see all the handicrafts made by the locals and to see how living in longhouses system works before being treated for lunch.
"Masak manok dalam buluh!" said one of the cooks, referring to chicken as manok in local language to tell us that even the chickens are cooked inside a bamboo. The taste? Simply amazing! I could not resist the temptation of adding another plate of rice and dishes since everything were cooked by using a bamboo on charcoals which consequently produced great taste.
After spending some time at the homestay, we were told to get ready for our next destination. Our guide told us that what we were going to see would be something unique to the locals here. Something superstitious yet practiced among the native tribes. And it would be done at a clearing near a jungle. What would it be?
Nice! I'm actually interested to visit Kuching for a short trip.
For Kuching per se, 3 days are enough because most interesting places are confined within the city area.
elok je dahan pokok tu melingkar lingkar kat badan dia!!