Arrogant Thatcher burns the fingers that snapped for chilled white wine

[emad]

Times
From Jonathan Clayton in Cape Town, South Africa



AT BEST a fool. At worst a crook. That was the verdict on Sir Mark Thatcher after he pleaded guilty yesterday to helping to bankroll an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea.
The key question was whether he did or did not know that a helicopter he had partly financed was to be used in the foiled coup attempt. Documents released by the Cape Town High Court that chart his meetings with the coup plotters state: “The accused began to suspect that the helicopter might be intended for use in such mercenary activity. Despite his misgivings the accused decided to invest money in the charter of the helicopter.” .....................

Political forces have also been at play. Many people in the South African Government have not forgotten that Baroness Thatcher opposed Commonwealth sanctions against the last apartheid governments. Some security sources even suggest the South Africans allowed Mann’s mercenaries to leave the country to give President Mugabe of Zimbabwe a chance to embarrass Britain, which was attacking him over the seizure of white-owned farms.

Thatcher has looked increasingly isolated. Gone was the finger-clicking extrovert who told waiters to “put wings on that bottle” and quickly serve his favoured white wine.

He told Vanity Fair magazine last November: “Who will want to deal with me after this . . . Thank God my father is not alive to see this.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-1439416,00.html

[whistle]

1. How about as a minimum 20 years in prison....

[gratuitous]

2. He'll be snapping for his wine in . . .

Jail? No, Texas. Good to see that America still welcomes the tempest-toss'd, holding her shining lamp to guide the way to the golden door.

[ThorsHammer]

3. Why did "Sir" Mark want a coup there anyway?

[emad]

4. Maybe it's in the blood....Or is the smell leading all the way to

the Riggs Bank too heady to ignore?

[htuttle]

5. Black gold

Texas tea.

[emad]

6. From The Independent:

It is unclear whether, with a felony conviction, Thatcher will be allowed into America. The US embassy in London said last night that British citizens with such a conviction have to apply for a visa, and "each application would be decided on a case-by-case basis".

Time and again, Thatcher has been accused of shady business practices and shamelessly milking his mother's name to clinch lucrative commissions on arms and construction contracts in the Middle East. Each time he denied the claims, and Baroness Thatcher stood by her son. Their closeness was evident when she broke down in public after he got lost in the Sahara while taking part in the Paris-Dakar car rally in the 1980s.

Now Thatcher has pleaded guilty in court, abandoning his pretence that he knew nothing about the conspiracy to take over the government of Equatorial Guinea, and has admitted contravening the country's Foreign Military Assistance Act by acting "recklessly".

Yet again, Mummy has saved him. According to South African police sources, Baroness Thatcher, who was in Cape Town over Christmas and New Year, played a key role in getting the administration to accept the deal and her son's plea of dolus eventualis.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=600658

[AP]

7. "And thank god my mother is too senile to understand what is...

...happening to me."

[SmokingJacket]

8. It's such a rare, delightful thing when a prick like this gets

what's coming to him.

Snapping your fingers at waiters and being an arrogant fool are one thing... but plotting a coup just goes over the line! Didn't Mom teach him anything??

[ThorsHammer]

9. I agree completely

[corksean]

10. Anything that causes his mother pain is fine with me...

She was the closest thing to pure evil I've ever come across