Miners’ legacy

I read of the grotesque “celebrations” in Danderhall Miners’ Welfare and Social Club and elsewhere at the death of Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister, lawfully elected to the post on three occasions and absent from office these 20-odd years (your report, 18 April).

I also read the statement by one worthy who claimed to have purchased a bottle of 30-year-old malt whisky, intending to keep it for the occasion, a claim echoed recently by a currently serving elected member of Fife Council.

I wonder if it occurred to any of those celebrating to pause, even briefly, and to look beyond their antics, in contemplation of the memory of David Wilkie, 
the taxi driver from south Wales, killed by some members of the National Union of Mineworkers’ pickets for the legal act of driving to work. These were mineworkers who chose not to join the strike there, by dropping a concrete block from a motorway bridge on to his ­vehicle?

John McNab

Balgeddie Court

Glenrothes

Joyce McMillan (Perspective, 19 April) is correct in saying that Thatcher, in many ways, was not a Conservative; she had at least one foot in the camp of 19th-century classical liberalism. She could be very radical. 

Using the word as an adjective, the real conservatives are the people like Ms McMillan: people who seem to see the 1970s as some kind of social democratic nirvana – subsidies for loss-making, 
state-owned industry, high 
taxation for everyone, universal welfare – which ended with the International Monetary Fund bailing us out.

To others, the 1970s was a time when honest people, who worked hard, were clobbered by taxation – to pay for the above.

William Ballantine

Dean Road

Bo’ness

For the past week or so I have exercised restraint and suppressed my natural tendencies from dancing on the grave of Baroness Thatcher. I have ignored the cost of the quasi-state funeral and the virtual canonisation of the lady.

However, every man has a breaking point and I reached mine when I discovered that the cryptic crossword had been moved to page eight to allow for excessive coverage of a former politician’s funeral.

Does the editorial team not understand the natural order of events for their readers?

Surely everyone reads the sports pages and then jumps to page two for the cryptic crossword. Several pages into your esteemed journal is no place for our daily workout. This reader is not for turning.

Donald Cameron

Riverside Park

Fort William