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
