Today I will remember an uncle who didn’t make it.  I’ll remember him telling of being on a picket line and being goaded by the police, who every week without fail, laughed and mocked by waving their overtime packets at striking miners.  This was the “fuck you loadsamoney” culture she engendered – I’ll remember him saying with a shake of the head how workers were being set against each other (sound familiar?)  Of the police being employed as a blunt instrument of the state, essentially as Thatcher‘s own private army.  Of how hard working citizens were demonised, dehumanised, and called ‘the enemy within.’  He and his family never really recovered and became victims of yet more of her pernicious policies throughout their lives.

The sale of council houses did them no favours, nor did the sell off of public utilities…And at the end, at least we still had an NHS (something we may not have at all in the future ) which cared for him, broken, with no fight left.  So yes, respect for the dead, for him total respect- but for her?  No – NEVER for her.  I will not be told by ivory towered liberals how I should react to her passing, that I should show some respect, that not to do so demonstrates some sort of intellectual deficit and makes me look vindictive and mean spirited. Respect is something that’s earned not DEMANDED ….And the fight continues…she’s gone but her ideologies are still a blight on every decent right-minded person in this country. Fuck her and her acolytes, revisionists and apologists.

Wear red on the 17th April as a protest against the obscene cost of Thatcher’s funeral.

https://www.facebook.com/WearRedOnThe17thApril

And to stop ideologically driven policies targeting the poor the vulnerable and those without a voice to pay for the mistakes made by the rich.

The BBC keep on saying that some found her controversial. That’s not true…we hated her. Still do. Always will.

— Martin Rossiter (@MartinRossiter) April 8, 2013

Even the Pope, allegedly

But not the Daily Mail who of course will seek to reinvent and detoxify  Margaret Thatcher’s pernicious ideology and poisonous legacy… Let the Disneyfication begin

And of the funeral…something fitting ……

Ken Loach -  Mass Unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed – this is her legacy. She was a fighter and her enemy was the British working class. Her victories were aided by the politically corrupt leaders of the Labour Party and of many Trades Unions. It is because of policies begun by her that we are in this mess today.

Other prime ministers have followed her path, notably Tony Blair. She was the organ grinder, he was the monkey.

Remember she called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer Pinochet.

How should we honour her? Let’s privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It’s what she would have wanted.

No State funeral for ….

This is not a time for celebration. The death of Margaret Thatcher is nothing more than a salient reminder of how Britain got into the mess that we are in today. Of why ordinary working people are no longer able to earn enough from one job to support a family; of why there is a shortage of decent affordable housing; of why domestic growth is driven by credit, not by real incomes; of why tax-payers are forced to top up wages; of why a spiteful government seeks to penalise the poor for having an extra bedroom; of why Rupert Murdoch became so powerful; of why cynicism and greed became the hallmarks of our society.

Raising a glass to the death of an infirm old lady changes none of this. The only real antidote to cynicism is activism. Don’t celebrate – organise!

Billy Bragg

“She’s not been gone more than a few hours, and already the national media have cranked into gear and begun the blandly respectful eulogies – at their most critical they seem to be only able to say: ‘She polarised opinion … what’s certain is how much of an impact she made on Britain … etc etc’

Twitter set off at a pace with a thousand ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ messages only to be followed by a slew of bleeding heart liberals bemoaning the fact that people were daring to celebrate someone’s death.

Pah! Let’s make it clear: This is a cause to celebrate, to party, to stamp the dirt down. Tomorrow we can carry on shouting and writing and working and singing and striking against the successive governments that have so clearly followed Thatcher’s Slash & Burn policies, none more so than the present lot. But for now, we can have a drink and a dance and propose a toast to the demise of someone who blighted so many people’s lives for so long.

If we must show a little reverence and decorum at this time, then so be it. Our deepest sympathies go out to the families of all Margaret Thatcher’s victims.

Chumbawamba, 8th April 2013″

And Essential Reading From David Stubbs In The Quietus

Margaret Thatcher: Still More Alive Than She Herself Dared To Dream

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Dexter cuts the deficit

DEXTER – HARRY’S CODE

There’s no escaping Ms Beeny, she’s back on the box with Beeny’s Restoration Nightmare AND Sarah Beeny’s Selling Houses.  To celebrate this double SB whammy here’s something we wrote for the “Orkney Bugle”  about her last show Double Your House for Half the Money

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There was a time when property development/interior design shows were feted as the new rock n’ roll.  Designers such as Primark dandy Laurence Llewellyn Bowen and interior designer come mariners’ navigational device, Yorkshire foghorn Linda Barker were inescapable.  They happily fuelled the aspirational and thoroughly deluded notion that we could all become rich beyond the dreams of avarice by transforming ourselves into property tycoons.  At the same time, we were also encouraged to express our individuality via the medium of interior design.  This inevitably led to Joe and Josephine Public boldly experimenting with the sort of psychedelic colour schemes that Ken Kesey‘s Merry Pranksters would have rejected out of hand on the grounds of being too mind-bendingly garish!

However, the recession, caused in no small part by the specious view that the property bubble would continue to expand ad infinitum meant that the property development/interior design TV show format needed to have a major rethink and review just how they could reconnect with viewers.

Nowadays such shows are not about buying and selling per se, but instead they have refocused with the emphasis being on how to improve our homes and in doing so, save money.  This brings us onto Channel 4′s “Double Your House for Half the Price,” a brand new property series fronted by the property developer’s answer to Mariella Frostrup, Sarah Beeny.  The showsraison d’être reads thus “We really wanted to show people that they can turn their existing home into their ‘forever home’ for a lot less than it would cost them to move-the challenge is to increase the size of their property by up to 100%, and so create their perfect home at a fraction of the cost.”  –

The show’s strength is of course Ms. Beeny who brings an authoritative yet calming presence to proceedings.  She comes across as empathetic, knowledgeable, and in times of the inevitable crises that develop during the show, almost as reassuring as Morgan Freeman in “The Shawshank Redemption.”  Remarkably after the first series of  “Property Ladder“, the show that gave Beeny her big  TV break, Channel 4 were prepared to let her go, due to the fact that the shows aspiring property magnates, blinded by cupidity rarely paid heed to her tips.  And her tips are hard to ignore, for as in her previous TV outings she is almost upstaged by … her ever-prominent nipples!  These are nipples so impressive and imbued with such power that even a thick leather jacket fails to mask their unerring ability to remain permanently erect.  One can’t help but feel that even the slightest drop in temperature could result in an internal wall being completely demolished.  Essentially this show is “Property Ladder” meets “Grand Designs” albeit on a smaller recession friendly scale.  However, the projects chosen avoid being overtly ostentatious but still manage to retain a certain “wow factor” as the final “reveal” is shared with the viewers.  After all watching somebody construct a new electricity cupboard in a terraced house in Birkenhead, no matter how enthusiastically, would not exactly result in great TV.

Despite the property crash this style of show, which has become something of a Channel 4 staple, remains strangely compelling even if they do induce a vague sense of dissatisfaction with your own home.  However you can seek solace in the fact that whilst the housing market has flattened and the yield curve has inverted, Sarah’s redoubtable nipples remain as impressively perky as ever.

As BBC Commission New Xmas Special

Aftermath

But spare a thought for ….

Geppetto stated he was looking forward to getting home to his “family” consisting of a goldfish (“Cleo”) and a cat (“Figaro”) ” there will be much music and dancing ” He also spoke emotionally about a cricket named “Jiminy”, who it transpires wears a top hat and is allegedly Pinocchio’s Jeremy’s official conscience, and also of an island where little boys turn into asses (the house of commons?)

“Mister Geppetto” is currently being detained in a secure unit for his own safety pending an assessment of his mental health, Jeremy Hunt remains in government and thus his chances of growing up to be a “real boy” are considered remote.

“Roll Up, Roll Up , we’re all riding this together”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17898029

And a static version

What would the first edition look like ?

*Click pic for large version*

But it’s not good news for everybody

And

an apple a day …….

Click pictures for large versions .

I would very much recommend the two following articles  for further reading.

http://nathanieltapley.com/2011/08/10/an-open-letter-to-david-camerons-parents/

http://theefaction.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/londons-burning-the-answer-lies-in-the-people/

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Buy, buy ?  Nope it’s bye, bye Rupert.