Rust In Peace

Well, Margaret Hilda Thatcher has finally succumbed, and from the clamour on both sides, you'd think it was a current serving prime minister who had popped her clogs in office.

I look at the right and I see beatification of someone who ultimately believed that the state had a purpose, even if it was a different purpose than what Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband would expect. From the left, it's like Adolf Hitler had been toppled by people beating him to death with rolled-up copies of the Socialist Worker.

Her policies broke the mould of a nation that was still, 35 years after the event, shaped by the attitudes and experiences of a war that everyone else in the world had left behind.

Today, Britain is still largely defined by what she did. For all the talk that I hear from "the left", the only way Labour came to power was to embrace Thatcherism and evolve it very slightly.

I think Thatcher's real legacy is not her considerable achievements for both good and bad as a politician, her immense climb to power at a time when sexism was still rampant and she was not of the Eton / Bullingdon elite or the strength of the mutual bond that she forged with the US that no subsequent PM matched, or indeed anything else that she did.

Her real legacy was to show the poverty of British politics, where leaders who are not merely mediocre dross, leaders with actual ideas and the will to take them forward come along only once in a lifetime.

Before Thatcher, everyone was still living based on the war, weak, tired and stultified while the rest of the world surged past. Thatcher may have broken the old, comfortable, "clubby" Britain, where your club was either the Bullingdon or the local working man's club, but she also opened Britain up to the rest of the world again.

How depressing that people on the left and the right have got nothing better to offer than evolutions of, or rebuttals to, Thatcherism. It was nearly a quarter of a century ago that she was in power, more than a quarter of the average person's life, and still politicians have nothing more to offer us than what she had.

Ultimately, by dishing up increasingly hair-splitting variations on what Thatcher left behind, British politics is starting a massive race to the bottom.

The empire is over. Britain's first world status is severely at risk and old ways and reversion to some golden era are just not going to happen. Stop dwelling on what's been and start looking to the future, or another 35 years will have gone by and Britain will become an irrelevant museum again, this time the museum of Thatcherism.

#mehgate (for @jackofkent )

Well known campaigner Jerk Off Cunt has once again got his panties in a wedge. This time it's about possible collusion between the Met Police and the News of the Screws.

I'm baffled as to how someone who is actually in the legal profession can be surprised to hear of potential collusion by the police and the media, especially the fucking Screws, for fuck's sake. I'm sure there's been mutual back scratching going on there since forever.

And I also have no doubt at all that the Screws has had dirt on senior people in all walks of life (including rozzers) since forever as well.

As much as I have called for the police to be disbanded and started up again on Peelian principles (if we must have a state-controlled police force at all, obviously), I find it hard to get excited by new evidence or potential evidence of police corruption. The police have strayed so far from the idea of consensual policing that they are almost entirely unfit for purpose.

Why was Jerk Off Cunt not incensed and calling for heads to roll when the police was blatantly colluding with the government in the (Ian) Blair years? Why was he not hosting smug attack posts from blatantly biased Tory attack dogs then? Could it possibly be because he believes that government is good and it's not a problem that a politicised police force colludes with the government of the day?

Why is he not moaning about the fact that a private company called ACPO has increasing influence in our political process, a private company that is completely opaque and unaccountable?

Really, when faced with accusations that there would be collusion between powerful individuals in the media and other powerful individuals in the police, or collusions between power individuals in the government or powerful individuals in the police, my only surprise is that you're surprised. Large, powerful, largely unaccountable organisations performing shady deals in dark, non-smoking rooms is hardly a bloody surprise, now is it?

And let's face it, you are doing Labour a huge favour in hosting sanctimonious blog posts from political attack dogs who have a huge interest in attacking the people alleged to be involved. The Graun is obviously delighted to have a means to self-righteously attack their competition and they don't really care if it's true. In reality, they were probably just as happy to "share a narrative" with a lefty tosser like Ian Blair, even assuming they weren't actively colluding.

I'm not defending Coulson, when the allegations surfaced last time around, I thought that if Cameron didn't sack him there and then, he would turn into a major liability. But then iDave is clearly blessed with the same amount of nous as his predecessor, which is why I'll be shedding exactly no tears at all if this takes down the coalition.

So yeah, I'd be astonished if the allegations weren't true and if this hadn't been going on since before I was born. What I can't understand is why you're getting all uppity about this now and why you can't see the obvious self-interest of the people you have arrayed on your side in this case.

I have a Peroni here with your name on it if this doesn't wind up with, at best, a couple of low-ranking heads rolling, maybe a whitewash inquiry. And Tom Watson and the piemuncher forgetting your name as soon as the next attack vehicle comes along. Unless they can use you as a platform for that, of course.

A more honest liberal would be calling for major reform of the police because of their increasing influence in the political process, which is far more worrying than the fact that the papers know where some of the bodies are buried.

In essence, all I can say to this hullabaloo is: "Meh."

New blog-tag

Just because of cunts like Kingbingo accusing me of reneging on anarchism just because I appreciate the occasional bit of non-anarchist thinking as it applies to the "here and now" rather than the way I'd like to live, I'm going to try and tag such posts with "non-anarchist thinking" so that I don't confuse obvious dimbulbs by approving of some non-anarchist thinking.