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Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister from 1979 to 1990, died aged 87. She had suffered a stroke while reading in her room at the Ritz hotel, where she had been staying since being discharged from hospital at the end of 2012 after a minor operation. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, cancelled talks in Paris with President François Hollande and returned to Britain. News broadcasts and newspapers were dominated by coverage of her political career. Seven policemen were injured when perhaps 200 people gathered at Easton, in Bristol, celebrating the death and setting fire to dustbins after dark. Both Houses of Parliament were recalled for a day in tribute to Lady Thatcher, a life peeress since 1992. On 17 April she is to be accorded, not a state funeral, but one with military honours, of the kind given to Diana, Princes of Wales, with a procession from St Clement Danes to St Paul’s cathedral, to be followed by a private cremation. The Queen is to attend the service at St Paul’s.
Sir James Crosby, the former chief executive of HBOS, asked for his knighthood to be removed in light of the Banking Standards Commission report’s description of him as the ‘architect’ of the strategy that led to the bank’s downfall. The British Library was given legal power by a statutory instrument to store every British website and exchanges on Facebook and Twitter. Paris Brown, aged 17, resigned as a so-called youth police and crime commissioner a week after being appointed by Ann Barnes, the real police and crime commissioner of Kent, when tweets surfaced from the past, such as: ‘Everyone on Made In Chelsea looks like a f—ing fag.’ Kent police investigated whether any offence had been committed.
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