Anything but that..

I am quite old.

Yes. It’s true *makes mental note to book Botox appointment*

In fact I remember when Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister. I was a small girl and everyone in my family and step-family was appalled except my step-grandfather who, it emerged, had voted for her – a fact which he has never been allowed to forget and his wife has still not forgiven him for despite the fact that he is now ninety.

Even I hated her although my reasons were more personal. I knew her as “Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher’ because she had introduced a bill to ban free milk at school for children over seven years old, but to my deep chagrin our local council had managed to find the funds to keep on giving it to us so I was subjected to a small, sickly bottle of slightly sour, lukewarm milk every morning at eleven o’clock.
I was deeply resentful that she had not managed to spare me the morning torture and thus my antagonism towards her was sealed.

By the time my family left the UK for the USA she’d been in power for over a year and over in the USA her counterpart, good ol’ Ronnie Ray-Gun was gearing up for a similarly aggressive fiscal overhaul in favour of public spending cuts, the trickle down economy and lower taxation.

I came back to the UK again just in time to watch John Major topple the Iron Lady and carry on her good works. By then she and her compadres had taken us into a war on questionable grounds, stomped all over our education system, released all kinds of desperate and needy people into ‘care in the community’ to wander homeless in the streets, vilified single mothers while saying nothing about the absconding fathers and quietly made the rich richer than ever before.

Then we had a nice recession to celebrate.

Oh, it was fun being young, then! I loved going down the DHSS right after college – so invigorating, and it gave me that ‘whole world view’.

During the election campaign in 1997 there was one Labour poster of a child being held up above a crowd – he looked like he was literally soaring through the air. My friend Donna and I were ecstatic. We were going to vote for FLYING KIDS!

And they won! You can’t imagine how happy I was that day. I was sure it was going to be different. And it was. A lot has changed for the better.

Unfortunately, quite a bit has been overshadowed by that asinine war (um, did you think we would forget about that?) and the giant bank FAIL (um, yes, Gordon, you made a boo boo) and the fact that ol’ toothy Tony stuck around way longer than he should have (go AWAY you annoying little man).

Still. I can’t quite bear the thought that we’re going to go back to the same old Tory backslapping crap. Where more public spending will be cut.That’s our schools, hospitals, police force, services for the people who need them most.

This is what happened in Hammersmith recently

I used to be a staunch Labour supporter. Not so much anymore. I wanted to vote Green because I really believe in them, but of course they haven’t a hope. Clegg? I dunno.

But please. Anything. Anything but Cameron.

If anything’s going to break Britain, it will be him.