Bedroom

How I Won The War.

In side news, awbdy's been obsessed by the Iron Tory's passing.

I won't dance on her grave, can't be fucked. And, in the end, she's human (just) like the rest of us and has a family.

However, the following from Piers Morgan on Twitter made me pish myself:

Piers Morgan: "To all those spewing bile and vitriol at Margaret Thatcher today - she's dead, what more do you want? Show some respect."
And, in response...
Minnie McGee: @piersmorgan 'she's dead, what more do you want? Show some respect.'
...Aren't you the one that hacked a dead girl's voicemail for a story?

And another thing, I loved this measured summation of the feelings and issues re Thatcher & her government:

"...I won't be celebrating. On a purely personal level I find the notion of actually enjoying someone's passing pretty ghoulish, even Thatcher's. I concede that others don't and who am I to spoil the fun. And let's be honest, enjoying the moment is surely just as valid a political response as any of any of equally politicised and utterly ludicrous hagiographies and alternative histories we have read and heard over the last day from her many apologists and fellow travellers.

It exasperates me that Thatcher even in death still impacts on my life. I would rather have no response. I would much rather all of us were observing the moment with the same kind of indifference we gave Heath's death or Callaghan's. But much as I would rather forget she ever lived I can't pretend she wasn't a major figure in our recent history and indeed her nails in the form of the policies pursued by her acolytes in successive governments, both Conservative and Labour, continue to scratch and tear at the fabric of British society.

Dancing on her grave seems a bit hollow, like wildly celebrating a goal scored in injury time when you're six-nil down. The damage is done. And although I acknowledge that rejoicing (remember that word) at her death is a valid political response I trust once the party hats and hooters are put away we won't miss the opportunity to challenge the rabid right's version of events face on.

Thatcher was no political genius. She got, in spades, what all successful politicians need - luck. She cashed in on a weak and divided opposition. The sick, old Labour Party was ambushed down the alley, booted in the balls by the militant left and kicked while it was down by the right who ran off into the night to form the SDLP. A divided vote ensured successive election wins for Thatcher. And then she had the press on her side. And for any youngsters looking in, if you think the press are bad nowadays they are like little lambkins compared to what they were then. The press loved her. Not only did she sell papers, she also said and did everything they believed in. And when, with the help of the newly pay-rised police, she gave them the unions on a platter at Wopping they never had eyes for anyone else.

Thatcher was a disaster on so many levels. She was not only divisive, but also destructive. That we don't now actually make anything in Britain anymore except two things -- debt and the rich richer -- is her lasting legacy. Congratulations. And look at what we've lost: a manufacturing base, primary industry, economic independence, social cohesion, a broad sense of community, a true democratic prospect (if someone can tell me the difference between Cameron and Blair I would like to hear it), accountability of our elite and powerful, just decent honest fairness, the contempt we once had for the greedy, a morality that doesn't just look the other way when someone trips a person up so they can get on the gravy train first.

It would be nonsense to suggest that Britain was perfect in the 1970s. It certainly wasn't. Successive governments had failed to deal with Britain's post-war industrial decline and there were any number of instances of corruption and immorality in both politics and society as a whole. But as other countries proved it would be an equal nonsense to suggest that Thatcher's steely grip on the balls of British society was the only way to pull us out of the shit. Those other countries invested and rebuilt successfully without the strife and grief that her ideology created here. And now they are better placed to deal with the cataclysmic recession that is such an inevitable consequence of the type of policies she pursued.

My lasting sense of the 80s? Strife. Riots, destruction, mounted police beating up young men, Scargill ranting and threatening at miners nowhere else to turn to, strikes, picket lines, scabs, anger and carnage, everywhere senseless waste, IRA bombs, hunger strikers dying slowly and painfully, gross perversions of justice in the courts, cockney cheerleader journalists like Kelvin MacKenzie and Derek Jamieson, brainless women obscenely waving their knickers at squadies returning from the Falklands, and barrow boys equally obscenely wrestling each other in the clamour for denationalised industry shares with greed and desperation in their eyes, and, above it all, Thatcher constantly haranguing, scolding, screeching across the Commons floor, always insincere, always slightly insane, and always wrangling and rowing, always looking for the next battle.

Battles she always won. Britain was a battlefield, of her making but still a battlefield. And we now live in an occupied country. Occupied by the values she inculcated into her successors. And it's for that reason that I won't be celebrating her death.

Sorry for the rant. And now that I'm finished it occurs to me that TS Eliot put it better.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men..."