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Steven Foster's Hard Times is the soundtrack to so many of Life's eternal tribulations that to connect it to the grimy doings of the ThatcherFilth may be to coarsen it; this, however, is a sublime version and as we have seen recently - despite the jaw-dropping bias of skymadeupnewsandfilth - many ordinary people, my age, older, younger are hardhurt, still; they became the Enemy within and fought, unarmed, what was actually a Civil War against a brutal, mercenary police cavalry, mediafilth did then what it is doing now, sandpapering reality, abrading the truth, smoothing grotesque , propaganda lies and distortions into axioms of patriotic scoundrel righteousness, God damn their filthy souls. When I see formerly hard-working men in their seventies embittered, still, their whole lives having sung a jaded, furious requiem for their own devaluation I need something like this, to help me cry, a little.
11 comments:
Civil War? Class War, Mr. Ishmael, with the haves ruthlessly suppressing the have nots in order to maintain their own power, privilege and income. Twas ever thus. The coverage of Russia Today and Al Jazeera of Maggie's Reign was a refreshing counter blast to the Beeb's sycophancy. The footage of hulking armoured police attacking unarmed, unarmoured citizen miners or men and women protesting against the Poll Tax could have been lifted from an episode of Sharpe. Fashions and accents change, but the revenge of the ruling class on those with the temerity to question their position - that doesn't change. You'd never guess it from watching the Beeb's sanitised propaganda, though but.
A State Funeral! What! How bloody dare they! Grind our faces in it, why don't you? Glorifying that dreadful smug monster will further alienate Scotland - where they really haven't forgotten and where Thatcher remains the Unforgiven. For those of us who were adults during Thatcher's Regime, this is all lived reality, which can't be spun or glossed away - and there's the film footage to prove it for those who might be swayed by a rhetoric setting up Thatcher as a national Hero. We know that history is written by the victors, and the spin machine is busy on creating the Thatcher legend. Just look around at the state of the nation, though, to see the hollowness of the victory.
....national hero.... is apposite, ms agatha, hero rather than heroine.
I heard career feminist,Beatrix Campbell, on Whisky Maggie the other day, and even Bea, normally forthright, whispered it, that Margaret Hilda hadn't actually done anything for women, merely - and I paraphrase - clawed her way into power and thereafter sought only to outman the men, if you can call Tebbit and Parkinson and Heseltine men, that is.
I was always bemused by the late Alan Clarke's description of Maggie's sexy ankles or beguiling ways, not, I felt, the snaggle-toothed, mis-shapen, ill-clad, screeching harridan whom I saw daily on the box, as feminine as a Gatling gun.
Tim, now Lord Bell and one or both of the ghastly Lord Saaaaaatchi brothers are credited with "feminising" the bilious, embittered old crow. If it was me, I'd want my money back, as fucked-up and unfeminine a woman as I have seen in my whole life. Nothing wrong with that of course, we are what we are, it's just, as you say, the spinning of all things Thatcher; she was an ugly woman, with an ugly, mean-spirited soul; from an early age, she was a mad old bat. Feminine, my arse.
That great tune, Mr I, and done very well. Taylor seems to have grown into a magisterial something. I 'll play it again in a mo.
Anyone who stands for political office is unfit to hold same. So they are all swine. And as we have lately seen, they are at least all thieves and so that is that.
Let us let go of dead Maggie. And having come from a gutted industrial powerhouse become a ghost town, I think that I am qualified to speak (if not necessarily to be right), she is IMO levels above the worst of the worst. At least she believed what she said. I would rather live under a tough old bird of a truth-teller such as Mad Margaret than under the vile lunatic McDoom or the craven Balls, Cameron or Clegg. Or Milliwho, dear God, or fucking Ted Heath. Jesus, some of those are still alive and fucking with us yet. Cast your eye over Helmut Kohl's long hidden confession for what Ted was about. Democracy? My fat arse!
It is, of course, easy for me to say. Barely touched as I was as a kid. Not forty-five in a S Yorks mining village and three kids and now no job ever again. I understand that. But maybe those mining jobs weren't real either and hadn't been for some time. Just dole with coal, and the risk of dying alone, slowly, and in the deep.
And what do we say, in the dark of the night when nobody can hear us, to the fact that Wilson closed more pits and sacked more miners than Thatcher? What do we say, Mr I? When we have to tell the truth, that is, even to ourselves. Except that he and she were cut from the same cloth - but one red and one blue. It is dogma and emotion - life affirmed by the latter but undermined by the former. A twat on a street in Nouveau Brixton cracking open a bottle of Bolly to the death of some old broad is a ludicrously effete disgrace to the memory of real people who lived, and live, real lives with hard times at their door. If I had just one bullet, Maggie would escape the day.
I think also, as an aside, that the euro madness is now very much a paedo-Saville, PLU exercise and that she was so very not PLU. Her strident EU difficulties are now part of our scripted socio-liberal, speak-no-evil (BBC) legend. So put not your faith in princes nor the BBC, Miss Agatha, you will find no comfort there. But that is a long argument for a longer day.
Sniffer Clarke could always find a virtue in the feminine form but, surely, sexy ankles is perhaps the last refuge of despair.
My mum said last night, with full Catholic piety, that to celebrate the death of someone is bad form and that to do so appeared rude. To countenance my jokes such as 'my friend had his first swimming lesson today and the instructor asked 'what his favourite stroke was', to which he replied 'Thatcher's' with the, perhaps truism, that Thatcher did what she said she'd do - no reneging on an EU referendum, no NHS reform, no gay marriage thing plucked from the glossy pages of Attitude magazine.
Whilst a craven, conceited and ultimately vain glorious mock monarch, there was a certain type of integrity there. All policy was transparent, all intention stated beforehand. Random wars for fucked up reasons were prevented, mass immigration whilst shouting 'look, over there, it's Molly Malone' were dismissed.
I guess we've walked so far into deceit, spin, blatant gerrymandering and fuck you politics that those in the trade need not wonder what the fuck we think, merely, what they can get away with, what their paymasters will allow. I dunno - celebrate her death? It's what she wudda wanted etc etc.
Your mother is right, mr dtp, it is bad form to scold the dead, usually. But Thatcher was bad form personified and anyway: as all the grown-ups know and all the children learn, those to whom Evil is done, do Evil in return; one of our scholars, mr verge or mrs woar, will know the ownership of that thought.
As for the Falklands, 'twas her meddling in defence matters which caused the withdrawal of naval protection for the shitblasted islands and hence the Fray Bentos invasion, only Carrington resigning when in fact it was Maggie's fault.
A passing thought: those whining, inbred Bennies are as bad as the Ulster Undertakers Party, insisting that we pay trillions of pounds to maintain their ridiculous position. Don't tell me about selfish islanders, I live amongst them.
So I feel it was a random war and one which she shamelessly exploited as well as conducting in a questionable manner, both tactically and in your mock monarch posturing. I enjoyed your post, mr dtp, but I think hers was the integrity of the mental patient. I think it was mr tdg who criply observed that if one is clearly a patient, like Gordon Snot, then they csannot be seen also as an agent.
Mr mongoose, too, is elegant and persuasive; no-one, however, so scandalously misinforms public opinion about the hysterical, hen-pecked little rotter, Wilson, as many have so done and continue to do.
with Whisky Maggie; it is against this onslaught of lies that so many push, jostle and rant, handbagging, as it were, the mythologists and the sleek, bloated admen.
As for the malcelebrants, cracking the bubbly, didn't she herself instigate that very public trashing of human values? You must remember her celebration of the questionable sinking of the Belgrano and all those hapless boys drowning, she and Kelvin McFilth -ie Murdoch, Gotcha-ing the drowned. They weren't the SS or anything.
Nah, you are too kind, mr m, and long enough in the tooth to know better, she was a monster and we are well shut of her. If people want to behave badly then I am sure that that is exactly what she would have encouraged; you or I deploring it, this cruel bad taste, should look to its author.
ps, mr mongoose, as you may recall, I have always valued and promoted the Kate and Anna and Rufus McGariglep-Wainwright version of Hard Times, those vocal harmonies which only families can render making it a proper tear-jerker; Taylor's version, however, with YoYo and the other strings does make it something more profound, final and, as you infer, judgemental.
Mr Ishmael: Alan Clarke was the sort of bloke who`d shag a table if the urge came upon him and Tim ' Flasher ' Bell was had up back in the 70`s for indecent exposure; caught banging one out in his bathroom window. He was probably counting his money at the time.
I`d care about a politician`s death if any of the fuckers ever cared about our lives.
Loved that.
So glad you have come back, mr ishmael.
Yes, thanks, mrs n.
Sweet Baby James; thought I'd better post something to alleviate the motorbike-engines-in-the-bath tribulation of your life with mr n, a man whom, I am sorry to say, I often emulate, though not with Zen and motorcycle maintainance, but certainly with big, planky, boardy, varnishy renovation projects.
Never knew that, thanks, mr yardarm, about Bell, but I am not surprised.
I read the Clark Diaries and wanted to kill the obnoxious little shit; he single-handedly made the case against inherited wealth.
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