What's life without a little controversy?

 

You lucky, lucky people. Twice in two days? Blimey. You should feel especially privileged, because (and I don't want to alarm anybody) but I have just had quite a few cups of Lemsip and fought my way through my own Berlin Wall of tissues. I am ill. I like to imagine that you're all there now like 'oh, that poor girl', but I know that you’re probably not and instead are thinking 'why can't we even get rid of her when she's ill?'. In fact, as I write this article I am wrapped up in my fluffy pink dressing gown and struggling to keep my eyes open. But I’ll soldier on, don't you worry about me...In fact, the whole plan was to come home and sleep for eternity, but the pull of history proved just too much for me and I had to have a little read of my history book. And then one thing just led to another... and well. Here I am. So my apologies if this article is a jumble of gibberish and letters unrecognisable as words, but hey. At least I tried.   So, as you have hopefully noticed, underneath the ridiculous ramblings about my life, there is usually some kind of point to my posts.
You just have to really dig for them to find them. But I was reading my book a few minutes ago, and it made a pretty interesting point about Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Now, (as with most things) I know very little about either of them, but I don't really think that this time, it's my fault. You see, I’ve have the extreme misfortune to have been born in that time period where I’m close enough to the whole 'Thatcher' thing, and even closer to the 'Blair' thing, but I’m far enough away from that period to know absolutely nothing about it. The topics are still a bit too controversial for people to bother breaching it with my generation, and frankly, the majority of us couldn’t care less. The result is that I know nothing. At all. I know more about the exact function of a rubber duck than I do about Thatcher and Blair. And, to be honest with you, I'm a little miffed about that. I've always loved controversial leaders, I really can't be doing with wet-blankets. I like my prime ministers to ruffle loads of feathers, even if what they do goes completely against my emerging political values. Maybe its slightly childish of me, but if they're not fiery, I simply don't care. It's the same kind of feeling I used to get from gathering round two boys fighting in the playground and chanting, slightly madly, the word 'Fight'. Just in case they weren't aware of exactly what they were doing. So although there are many things I don't like about Blair, and many things I’m not too keen on with Thatcher, I still have a kind of admiration for them.

You see, both changed their party for good, which sometimes proves more difficult than changing the country itself. Blair moved the party slightly more towards the right, and Thatcher did the one thing that pre-Thatcher conservatism hated: reform. She shook things up big time, whether for the good or the bad, and that’s what I think makes them both pretty cool in my eyes. They weren't afraid to make a bit of a difference.
 So take a leaf out of 'Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher', of 'Tony Bliar's book. And I’m not suggesting that you run your country and make changes that will make half the country hate you with a burning passion that they can't quite understand themselves. But don't be afraid to shake things up, even if you worry that you'll be laughed from the room. Because you may just be the one to change things...

E.C