Memory lane

The headline that the Prime Minister wants to give fifteen million quid of our money to a proposed Margaret Thatcher museum, has been playing on my mind.
As for now, I am very aware of how the Health Service has been underfunded for years. I am in the middle of a lengthy wait for diagnosis, where the contract tender was bungled, on top of the issue of underfunding. Where are the Government's priorities?
Now to other matters. I have spent my entire life dealing with issues I now know to be autism. I left home at seventeen, both glad and relieved to have escaped at last. I was, however, completely unprepared for the world. I was confused by it and afraid of it. I was afraid of people, and didn't understand them. I'd been to hell and back as a teenager, because of my sexuality. I have always found it difficult to express how I feel. At that time it was totally impossible. I suppose I didn't really know how I felt, and believed it didn't really matter anyway.
I did try going out  to clubs. I hated the loudness and all the people, and would usually slope off into a corner and not speak to anyone. The music used to make me feel ill, but I wanted to try and fit in.
At about this time we had a change of government. It's leader started off by quoting St Francis of Assissi's prayer on the telly. Then she embarked on a 'divide and rule' strategy, bit by bit. First of all it was the unions. Yes they had become too powerful, but that was their reaction over the years, to the barbaric working conditions that people had once had to endure. Then she started shutting down those parts of the country that hadn't voted for her. Then we had the Poll Tax, one of the unfairest systems of taxation ever inflicted on the population.
In general, she then brought in 'Care in the Community', where mental institutions were shut down. The inmates were released unsupervised, and then the murders started.
She wanted to re-introduce the Death Penalty, but was mercifully defeated by a few votes. A few votes is a sad reflection on our system.
She opposed the equalisation of the age of consent, and enacted the repressive 'clause 28'. She marginalised and vilified AIDS patients. Press coverage was shameful. The age of consent was sorted out by the next administration. It is not them we have to thank, though, but the EEC. It was part of their equality package, and it would have been enforced at some point if it wasn't already in law. Later on we had 'Back to Basics', where Victorian moral values were promoted. Shortly afterwards a number of her politicians were caught with their knickers round their ankles. Glass houses? Stones?
She fostered the attitude that if people were poor, then it was their own fault. It was because they were morally deficient. She marginalised the poor. Some people remember her for her monetary policies. I cannot comment on this, as I don't have a head for finance. I don't remember being any better off during her tenure, though.
I remember the upbeat, jingoistic media coverage at the time, pandering to the lowest common denominator. Certain newspapers whipped the mob up into a frenzy. It was horrible.
Those were very dark times for me, and I thought they would never end. This is the person whose museum is to benefit from taxpayers' money. May those responsible be forgiven.