While strolling in a local park over the weekend I passed a World War One memorial, statue of a soldier, head bowed, leaning on his rifle. On the plinth, above the names of the men from that town who died were the words Lest We Forget.
As more and more people start to talk of another Conservative government in the foreseeable future perhaps in local parks around the nation we should erect another statue, a group sculpture. On their knees and blindfold an old person and a young mother and next to them, also blindfold and in a wheelchair a disabled person. And behind them, eyes staring maniacally as she raises an executioners axe, Margaret Thatcher.
Lest We Forget it was she who launched the attack by the state on public services, created the culture of selfishness, made vindictiveness a virtue and marginalised the weak and vulnerable.
Lest We Forget it was she who determinedly undermined the print unions, handing control of the media to a fascist bully boy. (Sue me Rupe; youve got the lawyers, bring em on.) and then spread the attract to organised labour in general because for reasons well known she resented the workers claiming their right to a decent wage.
Lest We Forget it was she who boasted of the way her father cheated his own staff, paying them not in currency but in goods to the value at marked prices of their earnings, having bought those goods wholesale himself. In a speech ~I was unfortunate enough to have to sit through she praised old man Roberts Christian values, saying that he had done his staff a favour because had they been given money they would have only wasted it. Yet she had no problem giving tax cuts to the affluent on the grounds that people should be allowed to do as they please with their own money.
Lest We Forget it was Margaret Thatcher, the hero of the Conservatives, who made hypocrisy and dishonest respectable, even virtuous.
Remember these things when you decide to whom you will give your vote next month.
