Death of a Former Tyrant

  Impromptu street-poetry at Brixton Fridge (love that dangling A), spotted by my brother in the context of a sizeable street-party on Monday night to celebrate the demise of the most hated and hateful politician of recent times.
    I caught the news in Spain while having lunch in a restaurant in Cartagena, just made out the words 'Margaret Thatcher esta muerte' on the overhead TV. None of the Spaniards showed the slightest interest, so I resisted the urge to punch the air and buy everyone a double brandy.
   On returning from our holiday yesterday, my disappointment at being back in London (still cold, grey and remarkably unspringlike) was compounded by seeing The Daily Mail's Thatcher-mourning headline 'The Saviour of Our Nation'.
   Far from saving Britain, she brought it to its knees, causing misery and poverty to millions: do the Tories want to airbrush from history over 3 million unemployed, the Poll Tax Riots, the Miners' Strike, the Falklands War began by Thatcher to bolster her massive unpopularity?In many ways she's the primary reason we're in such a calamitously parlous state now. Her agenda of ruthless privatisation, of valorising avaricious free-market economics at the expense of the Welfare State and of engendering a divisive, corrosive ethos of "There is no such thing as society" has given the license for the outrages Cameron and Osborne are getting away with so damagingly today.
   An 87-year old grandmother has passed away and of course any death has its sad impact. But no wonder people are dancing in the street to see her gone.