"I understood her pain at losing office better than she knew. I saw it etched on her face, and in her uneasy posture when she sat on the backbenches. It was evident in her body language when we met: she was uncertain how to react to someone who now held what she regarded as her job Politics had dominated all her life, and, no longer prime minister, she felt dispossessed, cheated and betrayed by those she had led. Cut loose from the Downing Street support mechanism, lesser men than those who had once advised her now poured poison in her ear perhaps with the intention of cheering her up. The target was, inevitably who else could it be? her successor." - John Major on Margaret Thatcher.

Not many people expected the former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to fall out with his successor so soon. In his tributes to the late Ghafar Baba last week, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi praised the deceased Umno veteran as someone who "dijemput datang, disuruh pergi". There was no mistake whom the PM was referring to.