Eighties music has been making somewhat of a comeback on my chosen radio station.
It may have something to do with the event of Monday 8 April 2013, when Margaret Thatcher died from a stoke in her suite at the Ritz. The decision to play more music from the decade that compassion forgot was perhaps a subliminal one; it may not even have been taken – I mean I could have imagined that fact.
One thing is for sure, her death has had a divisive impact upon the people of Britain, much like her premiership did in fact. I have no love for the lady, her politics or her policies. I found some of the things which happened, the things that she said and did as Prime Minister of the UK deeply unpalatable. But what I also find unpalatable is the joyous reaction that her death had amongst many people.
It could be argued, it was her choice to behave in the way that she did whilst alive, and consequentially it is their choice to behave in the way that they are now that she is dead. This tooth for a tooth mentality would not sit well with someone like Nelson Mandela, a man about whom more than one person has stated that she made less than charitable remarks.
Now I’m not attempting to compare myself with Mandela here, but it doesn’t sit well with me either. Not for the namby pamby “well she was someone’s mother / grandmother / auntie reason”, but instead because I am at last coming round to the fact that we should behave towards people, all people, in the way that we would like to be treated ourselves. If we don’t get it back, then too bad, but ultimately we can’t claim to be hard done to when we have acted the c*nt in the first place. And let’s face it, if we feel the need to respond to such treatment by behaving in exactly the same way it doesn’t really leave us basking in the best light does it?