A bit more Easter

Anyway, to conclude my round up of the Easter week, I should mention that we entertained smokingboot and larians at the Gin Palace on Saturday evening. For one reason and another, it was the first time we’d all met up for close on 18 months, unbelievably.

I think – I hope – the evening went well; certainly Furtle and I enjoyed ourselves playing host and hostess and I got to try out my own recipe onion and red wine gravy, which comes out an agreeable pink colour instead of the customary brown. Goes nicely with roast potatoes.

During our chat, we somehow managed to get on to the subject of French psychics saving dolphins from Japanese trawler men, by sending thought waves through the aether to navigate the said dolphins away from harm and to safety. I’m not sure how, but this led with a horrible inevitability to the concept of angry Scottish (presumably Glaswegian) dolphins appearing in Paris and complaining about having their pod interfered with, as it were.

You probably had to be there, but it made us laugh.

We will NOT leave it another eighteen months before meeting up again. IT’S TOO MUCH FUN!

Thoughts on the Iron Lady

I suppose, mainly for my own benefit, that I should write a short note about yesterday’s passing of Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s first and as yet only, female Prime Minister.

I think what surprised me the most, was not the fact that so many people disliked her, but that they actively celebrated her death, and with gleeful spite, too. Having been surprised by that, I was rather saddened by the observation that such was their mindless and slavering hatred, that even a call for moderation and circumspection was enough to have the mob at your doorstep spilling venom in your lap for the simple offense of not taking pleasure in someone’s death. I was asked quite in a quite straight-faced manner, precisely who I thought I was for objecting to someone enjoying the death of the former Prime Minister. I couldn’t explain, because it never occurred to me before then that anyone should have to.

My own views on Margaret Thatcher are rather more mixed. I voted for her – or rather the Conservatives - in 1979 and again in 1983.

The first time it was simply because the country was in an absolute mess. Labour had failed miserably, the unions were holding the country to ransom and unemployment was high and rising (though it got somewhat higher). It was clear that something had to be done and more of Lucky Jim was never going to be the answer.

Second time around, I’m not so sure. I think there was a strong thread of concern over the Labour Party lurching leftwards under Michael Foot, plus, on reflection, a certain sense of jingoism following the Falklands. I’m not sure I’d let that influence me now, but I think that back then, my 24 year old self (also, it has to be said, relieved at not having had to be called up) got swamped in the groundswell.

Whatever the reason, it was the last time I voted Conservative in a General Election for many years. Very soon after the 1983 election I found myself very uneasy with the way things were going and felt that it was time for another change (though I found Kinnock’s Labour barely more palatable than Foot’s). I think it was the very size of the majorities in every election from 1983 until the Coalition happened in 2010 that led successive governments to get too big for their boots, starting with Maggie’s second Parliament. We are told that Mrs T was not a consensus politician. Frankly, after 1983 she didn’t really need to be and I think that is one of the reasons it all went wrong. There is room for conviction certainly, but conviction works best when it needs to look over its shoulder. For a long time after 1983, it didn’t.

When the Tories panicked in 1990 and ousted her, I walked around with as big a grin as anyone else, though I confess that her famously defiant speech in the Commons (“I’m enjoying this!”) and the news sequence of a tearful Maggie leaving Number 10 for the last time brought lumps to my throat. Briefly.

The point is, I think, that many of the changes that date back to Thatcher would probably have happened anyway. The UK car industry would still have died – on the occasional day when it produced anything between strikes, it (by which I mean the Leyland Group, or Rover, or whatever it rebranded itself as) produced shoddy, inferior goods that despite huge public subsidy, could not compete and which no-one wanted to buy. It is instructive to see photographs of workers’ cars parked outside the factory and note how few were cars they themselves had made. They might have wanted you to buy the crap they were producing, but they certainly weren’t going to. I suspect the unions would have been tamed too. It might have taken longer and been done more stealthily, but there are only so many times a party of any persuasion elected to government will allow a minority to hold them hostage. They don’t really like it at the ballot box, they won’t long stand for it outside.

As to the utilities that were privatised? Well, I don’t know. But something needed to be done. They were expensive inefficient and entirely backward. If you are too young to remember yourself, ask your Mum and Dad. If you wanted a telephone line you’d probably have to wait. Then you’d have to share and there would be almost no choice in model of handset.

But what do I know? As usual I have managed to ramble around the subject without quite getting to the point. Maggie Thatcher, the country’s first and only (to date) female Prime Minister. Deserving of neither the hagiography nor the vitriol that is coming her way in death; the UK has not served itself well on either side of the spectrum in the way it has marked her passing.