A bit late but I'm sorry
4th May 1979, one of "those" days. I was already well over 18 and was about to participate in history. I shot off on my extremely rural paper round at 6.30am (so? I had a burgeoning beer and fag habit to sustain. £2.40 a week off Norman saw to that) and on the way back, at just gone 7, I stopped in at the polling station, a pair of wooden booths erected on Des' farm shop front lawn to exercise my democratic right for the very first time. I was one of the first voters on that pleasant Thursday morning. I'm sorry, I did all I could.
My constituency was Ashford, Kent. Solidly Conservative, with one of the biggest majorities in the country so, with the best will in the world, my efforts were going to be completely in vain. The incumbent MP was Keith Speed, his predecessor Bill Deeds(h); "Dear" Bill. How apt. (The current representative - and I wonder why it never gets mentioned in the national press because he's hardly been out of it for the past 6 months - is Damian Green. Watch that space, it could be interesting as Ashford's largest minority by a long way, is Gurkha and Damian Green is the Tory immigration spokesman and Ashford, on the whole, loves the Gurkhas).
I'm digressing. You will of course have guessed by now that I'm referring to the darkest day in the recent history of this fair land; the day Margaret Hilda Thatcher began ruining it. There was, of course, a certain frisson of excitement about that day: we were almost certainly going to get a woman Prime Minister. We weren't going to be the first, Mrs Bandaranaika, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, among others, had already been there and done it so the only novelty factor was that she was British - a "Superpower" leader. Blimey, what fun.
I heard some woman on Friday's Jezza Vine show on Radio 2 say that she was a hero, that she encouraged a work ethic so people could better themselves. No. You brain dead harpie, you must have been living on a different planet. She encouraged lazy bastards to make money by giving them shares in things they already owned, which they then flogged ASAP. No work involved except putting something in an envelope. The hardest work some people have had to do as a result of that bitch being in power is to decide which champagne bar they were going to visit and then call the wrecker out after they'd smashed the Porsche up running into a group of proles waiting for a bus along the A13. Somebody else on the programme even had the audacity to say that greed really was good, that it drove the economy forward. No. It produces a society of selfish creeps for whom the pursuit of wealth is the be all and end all. It glorifies peer pressure among children. God help your kids if you haven't got plenty of money. Her legacy is vile and this pathetic government has just carried it on. The sooner the evil woman is 6 foot under the better. I will be the first to dance on her grave.
Coda.
When folk mention what they mistakenly think are positive things to say about Thatcher they ought perhaps to bear the following in mind: incredibly stupid people who really shouldn't be allowed out to breathe the same air as thinking people invariably say the following about Hitler: "Say what you like about him, he built the motorways and made the trains run on time." The reason he did those things was in order to move the army and SS around more efficiently so he could indulge his hobbies; death, weapons production and genocide, those kind of things. Think PFI. Plenty of material there to be going with I think.
My constituency was Ashford, Kent. Solidly Conservative, with one of the biggest majorities in the country so, with the best will in the world, my efforts were going to be completely in vain. The incumbent MP was Keith Speed, his predecessor Bill Deeds(h); "Dear" Bill. How apt. (The current representative - and I wonder why it never gets mentioned in the national press because he's hardly been out of it for the past 6 months - is Damian Green. Watch that space, it could be interesting as Ashford's largest minority by a long way, is Gurkha and Damian Green is the Tory immigration spokesman and Ashford, on the whole, loves the Gurkhas).
I'm digressing. You will of course have guessed by now that I'm referring to the darkest day in the recent history of this fair land; the day Margaret Hilda Thatcher began ruining it. There was, of course, a certain frisson of excitement about that day: we were almost certainly going to get a woman Prime Minister. We weren't going to be the first, Mrs Bandaranaika, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, among others, had already been there and done it so the only novelty factor was that she was British - a "Superpower" leader. Blimey, what fun.
I heard some woman on Friday's Jezza Vine show on Radio 2 say that she was a hero, that she encouraged a work ethic so people could better themselves. No. You brain dead harpie, you must have been living on a different planet. She encouraged lazy bastards to make money by giving them shares in things they already owned, which they then flogged ASAP. No work involved except putting something in an envelope. The hardest work some people have had to do as a result of that bitch being in power is to decide which champagne bar they were going to visit and then call the wrecker out after they'd smashed the Porsche up running into a group of proles waiting for a bus along the A13. Somebody else on the programme even had the audacity to say that greed really was good, that it drove the economy forward. No. It produces a society of selfish creeps for whom the pursuit of wealth is the be all and end all. It glorifies peer pressure among children. God help your kids if you haven't got plenty of money. Her legacy is vile and this pathetic government has just carried it on. The sooner the evil woman is 6 foot under the better. I will be the first to dance on her grave.
Coda.
When folk mention what they mistakenly think are positive things to say about Thatcher they ought perhaps to bear the following in mind: incredibly stupid people who really shouldn't be allowed out to breathe the same air as thinking people invariably say the following about Hitler: "Say what you like about him, he built the motorways and made the trains run on time." The reason he did those things was in order to move the army and SS around more efficiently so he could indulge his hobbies; death, weapons production and genocide, those kind of things. Think PFI. Plenty of material there to be going with I think.
posted by Richard at 1:00 am
3 Vegetable peelings:
Hear Hear Richard - people think I'm daft whwn I bang on that the state of the country is directly attributable to that barking old dog. I want to go one stage further than you and be arrested for pissing on her grave - that's if my prostate will allow it!
I think that I love you.
Well said. I hate that witch with a passion. She put women in politics back a million years. We are still paying the price of her 'rob from the poor to make the rich richer' policies. As long as I remember her I will NEVER vote conservative and was mightily shocked when they took Crewe I can tell you!!
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