The Dean

......... of the death of Princess Diana.

Does anyone remember her? I heard she was quite famous. What was she like?

Boomhauer

I remember that Mother Teresa died shortly after Diana.

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Oh and , Holy S$%T, time flys! Where the @#$% has all the years gone?

auzdafluff

Brilliant observations on the UK papers – including the Express' obsession with Diana – by Russell Howard on Mock the Week.

flares

what were the guys with the body bags in the Parisian morgue singing that night?

zip-a-dee-dodi, zip-a-dee-di

-

Elton's song for Mother Teresa 'Sandles in the Bin'

ah they're all coming back to me now

Norm_uk

Mother Theresa, the friend of poverty not the poor - who said abortion is the enemy of peace in the world and happily accepted donations from dictators and murderers to build accommodation for the clergy.

Neither will be missed by anyone who is remotely literate and observant. I feel sorry for Diana's children though - there's a life where choice is severely curtailed.

N.

Boomhauer

What dictators did she take money from?
She did some good, she mixed with persons most people would run away from.
It is easy to donate money but actually donating your life is another thing.

My only peeve of Mother Teresa is that she should have vociferously denounced the Indian government and elites. But I suppose she thought that doing so will limit her ability to help the poor; still she could have written down her opinions and have them released after death or when she was close to it. She was famous emough many years before her death that she could have publickly shamed the Indian establishment and was relatively safe from Indian retribution because action taken against her would cause worldwide publicity.

Norm_uk

She accepted money from people like Jean-Claude Duvalier for starters (when not accepting awards from him as he bled his country dry). Accepting money from Charles Keating to the tune of $1.25 million, who was then found out to have stolen US$252 million in the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s was one of her high points. When invited to return it by the prosecuting attorney of Keating she declined, perhaps due to some superior morality we have yet to understand. She also accepted money from Robert Maxwell - we know he had a hand in ruining thousands of people's pensions in Britain. None of that was returned either.

Most troubling is this money was spent mostly on missionary work, settling Mission of Charity homes around the world, of which few even have residents beyond clergy engaged in missionary work.

On the Indian government, she praised Indira Ghandhi when Civil Liberties where suspended in 1975. That was even condemned in Catholic circles outside India.

She would never had said anything against the Indian establishment - she had a good thing going. A friend of poverty not of the poor. The quality of medical care her homes provided has also been called into question, but Mother Theresa herself sought medical treatment at renowned medical clinics in the United States, Europe, and India.

There are a number of excellent works that detail her highly questionable life, and more shockingly the lack of investigation into her because she is "holy". I suggest starting with The Missionary Position by Christopher Hitchens. Aroup Chatterjee's Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict is also an eye opener from someone who worked alongside her in India.

Like the 14th Dalai Lama and possibly Gandhi she ranks highly in overrated and under-questioned heroes of the public eye (at least in the West) of the last 100 years).

N.

LaLaLayla

I don't believe Mother Theresa was a particularly nice person. I remember how she said that AIDS victims should not be offered palliative care, as they needed to 'suffer' for their self-inflicted condition.

I loved Diana, however.

commander

Did you know her? Or did you love the public perception of her?

She might have been a right horrible bitch behind close doors and that drove Charles away. Then she went on a spree of shagging rugby players, army blokes and the final straw and her downfall was getting knocked up my a muslim...

For all above, I loved her too

The Dean

My wife looks like her.

Well, not how Diana looks today of course, but how she looked back then..... same age, same hairstyle, same height............ in Tokyo back in the late 1980s, she got mistaken for her, and got photographed by everyone.

Creepy.

britexpat76

It was a week after my 1st big relationship breakdown. It was a friday or saturday night and I went round to my old house and got a 'Friendly' off the Ex Fiancee. Was the last time I saw her and Diana.........