From AFP News Wire: A bronze statue of Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister known as the “Iron Lady,” was unveiled Wednesday in her presence. The seven foot, four inch (2.24 metre) statue has been set up facing World War II leader Sir…

None taken, Gray. One of the achievements of Thatcher is that by spreading wealth she helped put a nail in the coffin of the endemic poverty of the 20s/30s that Orwell describes in books like “The Road to Wigan Pier” (credit where credit is due, the post-war Labour govt. certainly made great strides there).

I referenced the past only because that irony – that I was happiest when I had least – has been on my mind recently.

Today I live in a North American city – my partner is American (and a Bush-hating lifelong Democrat (another irony there – but having nothing does change you. I always notice the homeless and the poor – not as figures of fear or loathing as seems common here – but as people deserving of dignity with their own stories.

Calling George Sorwell, attention pls! Marlowe has been ‘down and out in London’ (and maybe Paris?), too!

“I might have preferred iron, but bronze will do.�

Hahahahahaha….

Of the movies, you’ll probably find “Mona Lisa” easiest. Hoskins got his first Oscar nomination for it, and its out on a lovely Criterion edition DVD. I have always had a soft spot for the film as the young Black actress reminds me of an old girlfriend.

You know, I have not had to worry about money in years, but I was thinking the other day how strange it is that the time of my life when I had nothing…jesus, when a beggar in Tottenham Crt Road took pity on me and directed me to a place where they gave out food in the West End…was also the period when life seemed fullest.

Arrgh…this thread has got me all sentimental and nostalgic. God, what an idiot.

I’ll look, although I’m not sure my local library will have either the bio or the movies–though it usually is a good source for the kinds of movies you won’t find at Blockbuster.

And it’ll widen my view a bit. My present impressions of England come from “The Vicar of Dibley”, which I suspect is less than accurate.

I recall him describing one Cabinet meeting where she reamed her Foreign Secretary. When her Cabinet was cowering in silence and fear, she reached across the table and patted her Foreign Secretary’s hand, saying: “That’s all right, dear. You just have to argue better next time.�

Ha! That’s Thatcher for ya! Briliant.

In my opinion, Thatcher succeeded in a male dominated party, in a male dominated country, because she tapped into a British nanny syndrome a la Mary Poppins.

I’m not joking. Whose picture did Winston Churchill have on his bedside table when he died in 1964? His wife? His mother?
No…the picture was of his nanny, who died in the 1890s!

Brits have always responded to powerful women. The two Elizabeths. Victoria. Thatcher.

Good point again.

“Sammy and Rosie Get Laid” or “My Beautiful Lauderette” by Frears (who is up for Oscars with “The Queen” this year). Maybe “Mona Lisa”.

These are all critical views of Thatcher’s England…racism… homelessness etc. But they capture something of life in Thatcher’s Britain that you can’t get from a book. The nouveau riche of Thatcher’s business class colliding with the “authenticity” of the British working class.

Bob Hoskins in “Mona Lisa” somehow captures this perfectly…in a sad, moving way…as the minder to a call girl.

I had no money. I would walk the streets of London for eight or ten hours a day — beginning in the west around Notting Hill, and then wandering the streets until I ended up in the east end in the evening — looking into chip shops and fantasizing about food. Yet, somehow, it was also a magical sort of period in my memory.

Odd that. Sometimes one never knows when one is happy, does one?

btw, alan: this is my way of encouraging you all to learn Dutch.

Alan: she surely didn’t do everything right, but she was a great leader, I’d say the right leader at the right time. I have a lot of respect for her. With today’s problems, Britain could use another Thatcher.

Of course I’m not objective, I’m somewhat of a fan.

Gray and Alan G…pick up a copy of Alan Clark’s “Diaries” at your library.

Clark was Thatcher’s Defense Minister for a while. He’s the son of the famous art historian Sir Kenneth Clark.

His Diaries are a hilarious view of the Thatcher Cabinet from the inside. Clark was, btw, a nortorious and unrepentant seducer of women. Quite the rogue…I say this as he claimed that Thatcher’s control over her Cabinet and government was very sexual.

I recall him describing one Cabinet meeting where she reamed her Foreign Secretary. When her Cabinet was cowering in silence and fear, she reached across the table and patted her Foreign Secretary’s hand, saying: “That’s all right, dear. You just have to argue better next time.”

In my opinion, Thatcher succeeded in a male dominated party, in a male dominated country, because she tapped into a British nanny syndrome a la Mary Poppins.

I’m not joking. Whose picture did Winston Churchill have on his bedside table when he died in 1964? His wife? His mother?
No…the picture was of his nanny, who died in the 1890s!

Brits have always responded to powerful women. The two Elizabeths. Victoria. Thatcher.

Don’t read Thatcher’s ghostwritten autobio…boring…. But Clark is great fun.

I’ll have to do some research on the Iron Lady, I guess. I’ve heard some negative things about her, but they’re from the Left so I’ll wait before I pass judgement.

Which means I need a good Thatcher biography,something akin to William Pemberton’s Reagan biography–fairly thorough, not too bogged down in details, and mostly neutral towards its subject.

On the walk I was looking for a payphone to make a call. I went into fourteen (14!) British Telecom phonebooths. Not a single phone was working.

That walk has remained in my memory as a sign of the breakdown in Great Britain that Thatcher repaired. Even in 1985, after years of Thatcher, you could find public telephones in London that dated from the 1920s and 30s.

I worked for British Rail at Euston Station that summer. The staff were surly, unionized, and untouchable (one woman was even insane, we believed, as she refused to speak to anyone in a recognizable language. But she had been at Euston for years, and the union protected her. God, I remember her wandering around on the roof of the station talking to pigeons one day, and we had no bloody clue what to do as no one could talk to her).

By 1990 Great Britain was transformed. Any of you recall the joke Helen Mirren gave at the BAFTAs recently about maybe winning a big O (Oscar), comparing it to an orgasm:
“How do you know when an Essex girl has an orgasm?
She drops her chips.”

That is a joke that has its roots in the greater wealth the Thatcher revolution brought to the working classes who suddenly had a bit more money, and were sneered at by the liberal elite.

Essex girl jokes are the UK equivalent of dumb blonde jokes.

“Why is an Essex girl like a washing machine?” (I’ll let you imagine the answer to that one…TMV is a family-friendly site

IMHO Margaret Thatcher saved Britain. The phones work. Almost the entire population is wealthier. There are still lager louts and football hooligans…but then she was Margaret Thatcher, not Mary Poppins.

I’ve heard mixed reviews of the Iron Lady, but I’ll leave that commentary to others.

And you should have warned us that the news on that link is in Dutch…I can’t make sense of it.