Margaret Thatcher Refused To Take A Panda With Her On Her Plane Back To England
London (CNN) Margaret Thatcher was apparently not one for panda diplomacy.
The former British Prime Minister once refused to share a flight to Washington with a giant panda on an official visit, according to official documents declassified on Friday .
In 1981 the president of the London Zoological Society, Lord Zuckerman, asked officials if Thatcher would take a male panda named Chia-Chia to the United States on her Concorde flight.
The Smithsonian Institute in Washington had requested the panda to be loaned from London Zoo so that it could mate with its resident female panda.
Thatcher was not impressed. "I am not taking a panda with me," she wrote in blue felt-tip pen on the document containing the request. For emphasis, she double-underlined the words "not" and "me."
Full story here.
Tough to take a firm stance on this one. On one hand, of course you wouldn’t want to bring a bear on a plane. Why the fuck would you put a bear on a plane? Have you guys seen the movie”Snakes On A Plane”? The plot’s pretty self explanatory, and a whoooooole lot of people die. Well, “Bear On A Plane” is the sequel, and again, a whoooooooole lot of people die. If I had to choose between the two, I’d obviously go bear (this is the old fighting one horse-sized duck vs. a hundred duck-sized horses argument, for full analysis in a later blog)- but I’ll take the one opponent I can see over the hundred opponents that can crawl through people’s luggage/eye sockets and surprise me. That being said, if I could choose between snakes, bears, or none of the above on my plane- I would obviously choose none of the above.
On the other hand, Margaret Thatcher, you had a chance to be a fucking legend. This isn’t even that scary of a bear. This is a panda bear! Not a polar or a grizzly bear! A panda bear! Everybody knows panda bears are the cutest bears! I also assume this thing is going to be in a cage of some sort, it’s not like they’re going to just buckle it in next to Prime Minister Thatcher and hope for the best. Also, couldn’t these Concorde jets make it across the Atlantic in 45 minutes or some absurd amount of time like that? You’re telling me that all you had to do was ignore the panda bear for 45 minutes and you couldn’t! Fuck that! I’ll say it, this is a cowardly move.
It was also for a noble cause. This bear wasn’t going site seeing, the bear was going to meet his mate. I don’t imagine bears get many opportunities for conjugal visits, and so this was a big deal. This bear was in search of his mate, god damnit! You’ve got to appreciate the severity of the situation, Margaret Thatcher! You’ve got to be better than this. Either you become the legendary prime minister who helped a panda bear have sex by letting it ride in your airplane with you, or you become the legendary prime minister who got eaten by a sex-deprived panda bear in your plane. Either way: you’re a legend. I had no opinion on Margaret Thatcher unit now, she’s not only a coward but a terrible wing woman. I see you for what you are, Margaret.
