To my Country, a letter
Today, an elderly woman died.
From Glasgow City Council (Twitter): Street party applications are now open for groups wanting to host a “So long, Milk-Snatcher Thatcher” party. Please form an orderly queue.
She died from a stroke, a common cause of death among many people’s grandparents.
(Twitter): You mustn’t be beastly about an old woman dying. She was someone’s mother.” Yes. Have you seen the fucking state of her kids?
Revered by some, loathed by many more, this lady was the bearer of capitalism and the credit cards so many people max out these days, who even now are verbally dancing on her grave. Armchair socialists rejoice, because Margaret Thatcher, our Tory PM of the 80’s, is now finally gone. Out of your hair. Her milk-snatching, mine-closing days are done.
Oh wait. They’ve been done for the past thirty-odd years. Yet somehow, kids in the National Union of Students (NUS) couldn’t contain their cheering when the news broke of their hated foes’ demise, despite the fact they’d all been born during/after the main events of her regime. But a Che Guevara poster on the wall and a few Manics’ albums, gives everyone the freedom of speech to gloat, right?
City-slickers and Southerners, Northern families of the old coal-mining towns, Unionists and fashionistas – everyone’s had their say. Twitter and Facebook are creaking under the weight of tasteless, tacky jokes at the expense of a woman who, though undeniably harsh in her time, was elderly and frail on her day of death. The tweets and retweets have swamped all regular news / posts, and if I see one more petition for a street party or to undermine her funeral with egg-throwing, I will puke.
I am grossly ashamed of my country today. The lack of dignity displayed, has thrown mawkish new light on the sheer power of social networking, and if any champagne is to be popped, I hope the cork takes out someone’s eye, as this woman’s death is poached like an egg.
I personally raise a solemn salute to that woman, a worthy foe, whose politics, ideals and regime I didn’t care for one bit – but a fiercely proud woman none the less, who in a time of men and power-suits, knew when not to be turned.
RIP Margaret Thatcher.
celenagaia 