back to article 'Fake Carla Bruni' Twitter account spreads Thatcher death rumour

A fake celebrity Twitter account posing as that of outgoing French first lady Carla Bruni has been used to spread false rumours that former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher had died. An update from the fake @CBruniOfficial Twitter account was retweeted without scrutiny by French news outlet @LesNews on Wednesday …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ah, the Iron Lady

    May she Rust in Peace

  2. Christoph
    Alien

    Dead, no

    Undead - has been for years

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't see why everyone is so obsessed with her death anyway. You can say what you like about privatisation, but imagine if we were all accessing the Internet via a government controlled ISP, it would be a lot easier to censor and tap.

    1. dogged
      Mushroom

      Nah, the mandarins responsible for it would defend it savagely because their jobs would be secure and they couldn't be blackmailed with tax threats and legislation changes.

      Renationalize BT and bring back the GPO.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Hah -what did the GPO ever do for us?

        (Apart from Colossus, time-division multiplexing, solid-state and digital telephone exchanges, etc, etc)

        I'm sure BT also does research (eg into how thin you can stretch broadband coverage before customers burn you in effigy)

    2. cocknee
      WTF?

      WTF?

      What's that got to do with the price of milk?

      Utter bollocks too.

      Don't forget Thatch was instrumental in preventing BT wiring up the nation with fibre to every household, at their expense! Think how different the landscape would look now for services.

      All those people that still get a shite service over copper must thank her so much for that.

    3. JohnG

      "...if we were all accessing the Internet via a government controlled ISP, it would be a lot easier to censor and tap."

      ...and it would cost 100 quid a month or 150 quid a month if you want to use your own router that wasn't designed a decade before.

      For those who never had to deal with the GPO, they used to charge you an extra 75 pounds every quarter if you used your own phone with buttons, instead of one of theirs with a rotary dial - but one of their engineers had to check your phone first. This what at a time when you could buy a new car for less than 1000 pounds.

      1. Test Man
        Thumb Up

        Oh God, yeah wasn't that the days when you had to rent the phone as well as the phone line from them? And it was hardwired to their crummy box?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          + 8 weeks to get a new line installed, and that was if you were one of the lucky ones.

          I still remember my old man getting a new style box (as used today) from a bloke in the pub* and wiring it in himself from some instructions on the back of a beer mat. I was a small child at the time but even I knew that you weren't really supposed to be doing that.

          * Suspect it was a GPO/BT engineer making a few quid on the side

      2. AndrueC Silver badge
        Megaphone

        It's pretty obvious that most of those who want to see BT replaced by the GPO are too young to remember what it was like before BT. Waiting for your neighbour to finish with the party line. Making a call and getting 'engaged' after you dial the area code. Once you actually got through you had to be brief because:

        a)It'd probably drop the line half way through.

        b)You were paying an arm and a leg.

        I'll forgive anyone old enough to have worked in the GPO R&D department. They did do some very good stuff there. Unfortunately 'cool stuff' in some lab isn't much use to me when I'm trying to call my girlfriend who's just gone to University and now lives 20 miles away.

        And as for the basic idea that the government could run something as complicated and vital to the national interest as a telephone/computer network..wow. I hope no-one of voting age really has that much faith in the government. Any government.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Headmaster

          Downside of the modern age

          People today will never experience the magic of the "crossed line".

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Deeply offensive

    It was a deeply offensive and sick thing to do. Shame on them for such a hoax. It caused terrible distress.........

    Can you imagine how humiliated I was after I had spent 5 minutes singing "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" at the top of my voice in the office?

  5. AndrueC Silver badge
    Meh

    "Thatcher, Thatcher Milk Snatcher"

    And they thought that was the worst thing she could do :)

    Ah well. I still think she was just what the country needed to wake up and sort itself out but in terms of 'the best medicine tastes bad' I think we'd have to put her on a par with chemotherapy. Better than disease itself but oh, did we suffer and her legacy hasn't been all good.

    1. LPF

      And yet again the edcuation system strikes again, your too young, otherwise you would know she voted against withdrawing the milk, but hey ay least it means you can run with the herd

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        3/10 must try harder.

        Spelling errors: "education", "you're", "at".

        Grammar errors: superfluous repetition of "again" in first clause; should be a semicolon or even full stop rather than a comma between "strikes again" and "you're too young"; overall an unwieldy and awkwardly-constructed run-on sentence that probably should have been a two or three sentence paragraph.

        Factual errors: She did no such thing. She was Education Secretary at the time and the decision to withdraw milk was hers, as was the "Education (Milk) Bill 1971" which she introduced into and shepherded through the commons. Are you really claiming she voted against her own bill? Don't be silly. Here she is, giving a speech moving it for its second reading. She quite clearly avows the whole thing.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    WHO THE HELL IS THATCHER

    THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BALNK

    1. GarethJones
      Headmaster

      Re: WHO THE HELL IS THATCHER

      Just follow this link

      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=margaret+thatcher

    2. Anonymous C0ward

      Re: WHO THE HELL IS THATCHER

      s/thatcher/alice/

  7. Mr Young
    Coat

    Thatcher - pfft

    Standard ahead of time politician judging by todays standards. If people are on the streets then ye do have a problem I'd say

  8. Brezhnev's Shadow
    Mushroom

    Thats Harsh

    They called her "fake"? But she can sing and all!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    First Saturday evening after she does die,

    Trafalagar Square, 6pm onwards: massive public celebration and party. PBAB.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: PBAB

      Of milk, obviously.

      Actually, it would be deeply wrong to celebrate the death of anybody, even such a contentious figure as Thatcher.

      Wrong, wrong, wrong - deeply, deliciously, luxuriantly, spine-tinglingly wrong.

      Oh, that felt good.

      1. dogged
        Thumb Up

        @FatsBrannigan

        See you there, then?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @FatsBrannigan

          Yep. I'll be wearing my best coat

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    The whole incident illustrates ...

    just how poorly journalistic professionalism resists to the modern media, as well as proving in one fell swoop how modern-day "journalists" are a far cry from anything that could bring down a Nixon.

    Once upon a time, a journalist was a feared figure who could track down political miscreants and expose their misdeed after careful detective work and with the weight of their paper behind them.

    Nowadays, a "journalist" is a moron who copy/pasts from anything that can sell page views and doesn't know the meaning of the word "integrity" any more than a politician does. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are exceptions, not the norm.

    1. Tom 13

      Re: The whole incident illustrates ...

      The "journalists" of the 1970s were no better than the thugs of today. Only difference is back then they were going after the people YOU wanted out of office. It's been documented that the systems Nixon used were installed by Kennedy, and that unlike Kennedy, he had the tapes archived, planning for them to be released after he was dead so historians could review them. Then came Watergate and the need to protect himself. Even then he didn't do what any politico today would: burn all the tapes.

      Assuming the story as told is true (a big IF given some of the other matters swirling around at the time), I still don't see what the big deal is about having stolen campaign strategy documents. Someone playing at that level of politics ought to be able to protect sensitive information. And even if they can't protect it, if it was a good strategy for winning the election, it should have worked even with Nixon knowing it.

  11. John A Blackley

    I wonder

    I wonder how many of the anti-Thatcher commentards here were actually of voting age when she was Prime Minister. I also wonder how many of them would rather the NUM ruled the country (again).

    1. dogged

      Re: I wonder

      I was, for the end of her evil reign. Then there was wee Johnny Major, who amazingly turned out to be far less awful than Blair was. Since I'd helped to vote him out and Blair in, some admission of guilt is required.

      Anyway, Thatcher. The unions as a whole were a problem although monolithic and retarded management of the old nationalized industries were a much bigger issue. Had she addressed those rather than just flogging them off the country might even still have a manufacturing industry and, y'know, be in the position Germany is in rather than the deep shit we currently inhabit.

      1. Tom 13

        Re: I wonder

        yeah, yeah. That always the communist/fascist rejoinder: real communism/fascism hasn't been tried yet, when it is everything will work!

    2. Nuke
      Holmes

      Re: I wonder

      I was too, and I voted against the bitch. I also saw the long protest march of miners along Fleet Street and the Stand during the miners' strike, led by some London corporate dignitaries with Red Ken walking alone a few paces behind them - and I would vote against that blighter too.

      Thatcher/NUM was not a binary choice. The miners lost their excessive power anyway due to increasing coal imports, because it was cheaper; there could have been a middle way. Meanwhile Thatcher (and her Thatcherite successors) effectively axed all sorts of technical industries (including ones I worked in, Railway Engineering, shipbuilding), which she hated with an obsession, with the aim of the UK becoming a "Sevice Industry" nation. With the Internet however it has since become even easier to outsource service jobs than manufacturing jobs.

      One day we will have to go back to that coal and those industries. We will need to make our own stuff again from our coal, ore and scrap - because no-one else will sell it to a bankrupt nation.

  12. Robert Ramsay
    Happy

    Or as Ted Heath put it...

    Interviewer: "Is it true you said 'Rejoice, rejoice' when you heard she had resigned?"

    Ted Heath: "Actually, I think I said it three times"

  13. Spudbynight
    Thumb Up

    Best PM...

    ......we ever had.

    1. Jeebus

      Re: Best PM...

      Like a discussion about which fatal, inoperable cancer is better.

      They're all still cancer.

  14. Nuke
    Pint

    Adam Gale looks happy

    ... on that Twitter page, looks like he's cracked the champagne open.

    https://twitter.com/#!/CBruniOfficial/status/200283282896723969

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Like she said when some other people died ...

    Rejoice!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mad Cow Disease Thatcher

    Evil old bat.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Those whom the gods would destroy....

    I hope Thatch doesn't die for a long time yet. Death's too good for her. Let the nazi bitch suffer her ongoing descent into drooling, twisted senility for as long as possible.

    [Having said that, I've got a nice celebratory 12 year old whiskey set aside –just in case!]

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Those whom the gods would destroy....

      When in power, she divided the country.

      I'd like to return the favour

  18. Winkypop Silver badge
    Pirate

    Shame

    That is all.

  19. KitN

    Regarding the 'benefits' of privatization (& therefore Thatcher's program) to IT versus the horrors of publicly owned BT, GPO, etc...

    Many improvements, like faster service, not having to share lines, massive choice of phones, less dropped calls - as well as cheaper prices - are due to advances in technology, not privatization.

    High prices, long waiting times, and arrogant attitudes (like demanding £140 deposits) were the result of monopoly, not state ownership. And it was state capitalism, not socialism.

    Private companies behave just as badly when they have a monopoly. Remember when the iPhone first came out? In UK it was exclusive to O2 for a couple of years, so they could charge upfront fees *and* you paid more for fewer minutes.

    Originally the iPhone distribution monopoly was meant to last till 2011! That would have held back the iPhone's spread, and therefore put less pressure on rivals to develop iPhone killers. Smart phones would be far less common today.

    Even with competition, it's taken years for mobile phone prices to come down, and there's still a long way to go, especially for overseas calls/texts & roaming.

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