Thatcher’s buried Now, Alongside Thatcherism. Now Let’s All Move On.

Thatcherism died the day the banks crashed. That was the day the scales dropped from the eyes of the British Public and they realised the financiers, bankers, hedge fund managers and asset strippers, so loved and lauded by The Establishment, were just a bunch of grasping, self interested snake oil salesmen. Of course, there were a few of us who had known this for many a year. You wouldn't listen, would you! 

Now that the state funded Tory party political broadcast/funeral can be consigned to those dark recesses of your mind, alongside that time you threw up, in front of everybody, at a party when you were sixteen, and Thatcher has been cremated alongside her legacy, I thought she said “the Lady’s not for burning” (to soon?), perhaps we can start forming a tripartite agreement of mutuality, between employers, employees and politicians, that benefits the many rather than the few.

The ‘trickle down ‘theory has failed miserably. The gap between rich and poor has increased dramatically over the last thirty years. Thatcher’s dream of creating a share owning, property owning democracy lies crushed and shattered in a dirty puddle of tears. Stamped on and smashed by the pension funds and large corporations that have harvested all the shares and the ‘ buy to let ‘ landlords that own multiple ‘right to buy’ council houses, making small share holders powerless and dreams of owning your own home futile and pointless.

We need to create a society where employers pay a ‘living wage’, corporations pay taxes on the revenues they earn in this country, rather than funneling them through a bank in Luxembourg and rents are controlled, which would enable people to save for deposits as well as keeping house prices reasonable.

On the day of the funeral, Cameron said it wasn't a day for political point scoring before going on to attempt to political point score by saying we were all Thatcherite’s now and how she had ‘saved the country’. The first bit I’m not bothered with. I care as much about Cameron calling me a Thatcherite as he does when I call him a doughnut faced, aristocratic inbred. What I do object to is his claim that Thatcher saved the country. I think if he studies his history books he’ll find that it was actually the pilots flying the spitfires, The Royal Navy and the participants of Operation Overlord that saved the country. Oh, and the Armed Forces of Canada, Australia, Poland, Russia, New Zealand, America etc. Anyway if Labour had won the Election in ’79 does he think that Callaghan, when asked what he was going to do about the rubbish and the unburied, would have replied “I think we’ll leave them, I’m not really bothered” rather than addressing the situation.

What Thatcher delivered for this country was rampant inequality, social breakdown, mass unemployment, financial deregulation, a massive increase in child poverty, dilapidated public services and schools  and a bloated welfare bill while handing over large amounts of North Sea oil revenues to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts.

One of the main planks to the Tory’s election campaign will be an attempt to smear Milliband as a socialist and they will claim he wants to return Britain to a pre-Thatcher era that was run by the Trade Unions. I, for one, am happy to return to a time when growth was greater, when inequality and poverty decreasing,  wages were increasing, productivity was booming and when women benefited far more in society than during the time of Thatcher and beyond.

 Thatcher was often claimed as a feminist icon, regardless of the fact she despised feminism and when she took office she pulled up the ladder behind her. Her cabinets were 99.9% male, giving the impression she did not rate other women or she felt threatened by them, although I think she enjoyed playing the role of Queen Bee and bossing around the male drones that she surrounded herself with.

The reasons that her reforms have not been reversed are down to simple economics. To renationalise the utilities services and the railways, at the moment, is not economically viable. Her privatisation drive produced mass unemployment, a price she was happy to pay because it produced a compliant workforce, fearful of losing their jobs, that has enabled employers to suppress rights and wages, leaving the State to subsidise low earners while the corporate elite rake in thousands in profits and bonuses.

 A radical enlightened government would take measures to achieve full employment and ensure a Living Wage was paid. This would provide higher tax revenues that could be spent on improving services as well as reducing crime, social disorder and poverty.

Thatcherism was a thin cloak used to cover a political ideologue that was nothing more than a class war, a war still being waged, sadly, as Cameron and Osborne  attempt to maintain the Them/Us divide with their ‘strivers versus skivers’ hate speeches. Its purpose was to destroy the working class and any aspirations that may have had and place the nation’s wealth into the greasy, grasping, sweaty hands of a small wealthy elite who were happy to misappropriate and redirect it into foreign off-shore banks accounts.

 Point the facts out to the man/woman on the Clapham omnibus and then ask him/her if they consider themselves to be a Thatcherite. I think the answer would be a resounding NO!

Over the past two weeks the right, assisted by the press and media, have attempted to suppress dissent and whitewash Thatcher’s crimes from history, while using a taxpayer funded funeral of an old woman for propaganda purposes, in a manner previously only seen in totalitarian states.

You can smell the desperation from here.

Crocodile Tears, Methinks.

Seeing a picture of Chancellor Of The Exchequer, George Osborne, crying at the funeral of a woman he had ,apparently, met only a couple of times, was perhaps one of the most repulsive, as well as a craven attempt at manipulation, I have seen for many a year.

Fat Boy and Slim.

Seeing pictures of Boris Johnson's brother. Jo, in the papers made me wonder what deep seated esteem issues made Boris Johnson turn into such a lard arse.

Tory Minimum Wage Disgrace.

It’s a shame the Tory’s haven’t rushed to demonise the companies that are willfully breaking the Minimum Wage Law as quickly as they have rushed to stigmatise people who legally claim benefits they are entitled to. Even more scandalously, the Government refuses to name the law breakers concerned, and instead, gives them shelter in anonymity. A classic case of Tories looking after their own.

Measles.

As the measles epidemic in Swansea considers to rage, I think the time has come to introduce compulsory vaccinations. Parents have a social responsibility to ensure their children are vaccinated. This not only ensures the children’s welfare but also creates herd immunity, which in turn would benefit children who, due to illnesses such as leukaemia, are unable to be vaccinated.

 

School daze.

Education Secretary Gove wants shorter school holidays and longer school days. It’s his current ruse to wind the teachers up. One I presume he came up with on his recent 20 day Easter break, of which he probably spent at his second home. The home he spent £7000  pounds of taxpayers money on, in furnishings, and was ordered to pay back. Gove’s an MP, right? Parliament sits for, how many weeks a year? How long is Parliament in recess for over the summer?

Pot, kettle, kettle, pot. Pot, kettle, kettle, pot.

P.S.

Now Thatcher’s buried, can we talk about something else, please?

Poem

The Hopeful daffodil

I think I’ll just pop out and see,

And hope the sun will shine on me,

And if it doesn’t, I’ll pop back in

And in a week I’ll try ag’in.

And when I do and just find snow,

I’ll look around and then I’ll go,

Back in the ground, I’ll hang around,

And wait and wait, without a sound,

But the time will come, there is no doubt,

When winter departs and spring will out,

And when it does, I’ll proudly parade,

In the sun and in the shade,

Through the spring, and summer to,

I’ll wave and sway, to cheer up you,

And as the summer fades and wanes,

And autumn taps on window panes,

Do not sadden, do not fear,

I’m hopeful I’ll be back next year.

                                                                                   Anon.