I used to detest the woman – still detest her memory and legacy… but as others have said, that was the Thatch of 10 Downing St., not the senile old woman of today.
Cant say I’d be bothered to “celebrate” her passing any more. A younger, less mature, darker, self always planned to get p!ssed to celebrate her descent to hell (and i’m an atheist 😉 ) – but today I wouldn’t give her the credit.
I read an article on the BBC website the other day that neatly summed up Thatcher’s premiership, although ironically, it was about USA today. But the American author’s outsider’s insight into our deeply polarised views on Thatch’s Government was clearer than our own clouded worship / hate views…
linky to BBC
When I returned in the mid-1980s for what has turned out to be forever, I saw that my old friends’ attitudes had metastasized.
Decline had been managed – badly. The culture wasn’t so great and more than half the country seemed to be excluded from the government’s concerns. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s loyalty question, “Is he one of us?” had been applied across the country.
Actually, Margaret Thatcher was a very pragmatic politician, but she cultivated that Iron Lady public persona – the one that said those who aren’t with us, are agin’ us.
Thatcher’s approach foreshadowed the Bush Administration’s approach to governance from 9/11 onwards. The effect in both the US and Britain was the same – a sense among almost half the population that the country was no longer theirs.
If you take away a person’s sense of being part of the team they are bound to think of the time when they were part of it as being better. The team is no longer what it was. Without them it is in decline