• Privatisation at cut rates brought in money for now, but left the country held at ransom by private companies who could charge and charge.

• NHS reforms killed and maimed people, imposing costs in the future. And more complexly, undermined the pathways of care, saving money in the short term, but storing up long term problems.

She made it possible to unleash the torrent of selfishness that we are all enduring now.

I only have very little memories of the times before her of course (my first datable memory is of the first week of September 1978), but from what I read and hear, the current set of values was certainly not mainstream in the 60s and 70s. Selfishness has gone to such extremes that I struggle to find words to describe it.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

An already-posted memory.

    Here richly, with ridiculous display,
    The Politician's corpse was laid away.
    While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
    I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

    Hilaire Belloc


_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

A very good essay actually

Guardian - Russel Brand - 'I always felt sorry for her children'

One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. It's kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you.

My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. "What's going on there, mate?" John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. "Comes here every week to water them flowers." The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn't until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Cancer in human form ... this is what happens when it metastasizes. Never good for the host.

They tried to assimilate me. They failed.

I remember that - sharing textbooks. And then tatty photocopies. And then sharing photocopies because photocopying was restricted. Things just being generally broken.