Ok, to be fair, that's a pretty tasteless title, but it may just be one of the more moderate reactions of the day.
In case you haven't heard (you know, if you've been on Mars all morning or similar) Maggie "let's put the working man in his place" Thatcher died this morning. As a proud northern lad, I had nothing but resentment for the prime minister who ripped the heart out of anything north of the Watford gap but I'm not going to go celebrating. Today will be pretty much the same as yesterday was and tomorrow will represent a startling lack of difference. The woman may be gone but her legacy will live on in the politics of our nation quite possibly for ever. Some good things wrre done by the milk snatcher but then again a lot of harm was caused too, some necessary evils were enacted - with far too much relish for my liking - but some entirely unnecessary ones were entertained also.
Others will document, in great detail, the political life of democracy's greatest failure (she never lost a popular vote, you know) and despite all the wrongdoings, reports will most likely remain positive, partly because that's the ettiquette of death but mostly beacuse to badmouth Thatcher these days is to be, in the eyes of many, a millitant leftist bent on anarchy and the destruction of civilisation. Britain took a lurch to the right from which it may never recover when Maggie was elected and the rhetoric will all be of tough decisions that were unpopular but needed making, rather than the gutting of Britains industial northern cities. Neither leaving political office nor death can change the effect she had on us all, which was to turn us all to the dark side.
But whatever the past held now is the time to let her rest, if not in peace then at least in the ground, where we all go in the end, hopefully to reflect upon our sins, whether they be acts of political evil or dancing on the grave of a fellow human being.
