A prize bitch

I am not going to introduce the person whose portrait is shown above. The pub landlord idolises her. Well I don't. The pub landlord has different recollections of her administration than I do. I'm afraid we had a heated discussion yesterday. Yes she may have had sound economic policies, but I cannot overlook the following.

1) She shut down industry in the North-East, the Midlands and elsewhere, causing great hardship and suffering to millions. The truth is that she hated the Trades Unions, so she stripped them of their power bases out of spite.
2) Her administration encouraged greed. Get what you can, never mind how. I'm alright Jack so sod you. Her administration sold off social housing. Social housing was originally intended for those who could not afford to buy. This caused a chronic shortage of social housing. Of course some people made a quick profit on the ludicrously low prices they had paid for their properties. Of course many more people lost their homes as a result of the subsequent stock market crash.
3) Her administration introduced the Community Charge aka Poll Tax, probably the most unfair tax ever introduced in this country. She inflicted it first on Scotland as an experiment, and then on the rest of the country. The person whose portrait is shown above is still universally despised in Scotland, and her political party is still without a constituency in Scotland.
4) Her administration vilified and demonised gay people. I am not gay; I am attracted to other blokes. However I remember all this nasty propaganda about AIDS. I remember clause 28. I remember taking part in demonstrations to have an equal age of consent. I remember the poisonous leaflets written by our MP, that were shoved through our letter box. I wrote to the said gentleman asking him to refrain from any further written communication with myself. His minion replied that they would not comply with my request.
5) Her administration shut down the old 'Lunatic Asylums' and replaced institutional care with 'Care in the Community'. That was an instant money saver. However some schizophrenic patients weren't well enough to take their medication, and degenerated into homelessness. Of course the fact they were not being supervised had  nothing to do with it. Some patients became so unwell that that they went on to murder innocent passers-by. What a result.

I do not remember that era with unbridled nostalgia. It was a horrible, greedy, hateful time, where the strong trampled on the weak in order to take whatever they could. There was no compassion. There was pretentious piety when that person liked to be filmed, reading the lesson in a church service. I remember how that person elevated herself to the royalty; 'We have become a grandmother...'

The death of the person whose portrait is shown above was widely celebrated in this country. I had a nice meal at by biological brother's. I am glad, though, that her administration is dead. The very memory of it fills me with shame and revulsion now, just as it did back then.