The Counter Sermon

Lying in bed this morning (Well what has turned out to be the whole day). I considered the idea of many people leaping out of bed to attend church. Once a very long time ago that would have been a regular practice for me, admittedly it was as a child and had no choice. Every so often I wake on Sundays and experience that lack and wonder at it's loss.

I think Sunday's are for sleeping, staying in your pyjamas until some essential food item has to be bought, in which case you make your way to the nearest pub for a roast. It has to be stated that my Scottish and Cornish experiences of Sunday's are quite different but then it could be my early twenties and late twenties/early thirties are quite different experiences. What I mean by that is that in my early twenties when I lived in Scotland, my Sundays were prescribed to me as an arena in which to find a hangover cure which would be the All Day Breakfast. In my late twenties/early thirties my Sundays were a day to find a nutritious food source without having to cook it, i.e. a Sunday Roast. However I hasten to add that in addition to the Sunday Roast being available in a large assortment of Cornish pubs, the Sunday Roast was something that you would hear an inordinate amount of English persons banging on about with such statements as “I love a good roast”, so there it is. Meanwhile a Scots person's response to a fry up, would simply be the acknowledgment of the reduction of nausea. Also English people tend to feel the need to 'experience the day', go for a walk to 'take in the outdoors'. Whilst the Scots would bungle their ways home and to bed via a route that was compliant with their hangover needs. The Cornish I can't really comment on except to say a pasty fixes everything, though the chances of finding a freshly baked one on a Sunday are remote. Maybe the Cornish are keeping the home baked pasty sacred and who could argue with that? However stating that I did spend some time with a Cornish boy who used to get a plated-up roast with tin foil cover for pick-up from his mothers every Sunday.

Now I'm in South Africa, where everything is a little devout well except of course for murder and rape. (Why isn't' Thy shalt not rape' part of the ten commandments? (That could well be part of the problem you know) ). Anyways so you can't buy take-out alcohol after 8pm on any night of the week and finding an off-license open at eight is a bit of a challenge in itself, buying take-out alcohol on a Sunday is almost forbidden. I live in the suburbs where greasy spoons and the idea of a local are a distant dreamy memory. My community hub gone, with no one to take my money and offer the comfort of a velvety padded seat and a sympathetic look. My need for a lovingly prepared sugary cup of tea all but gone.

So what's in it's place? In short, church. That's what everyones up to and it worries me. This does not mean to say that I am anti-religious, probably quite the opposite in terms of spiritual engagement, I support all forms of spiritual development, though sometimes I wonder about the role of religious dogma in all of this. Not just Christian but Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim too. Equally well I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the religions I particularly like the Muslim instruction of praying five times a day, the Buddhists for their meditation and yoga practises; that also relate to 'Moksa' Hindu liberation. The Jews I applaud for their survival instincts and yet feel that some serious psychotherapy may be required for their nation state Israel.

Why does church worry me? Well is doesn't worry me per say it's more that it worries me in the geographic location, South Africa. If you drive around Pretoria long enough you get know some of the landmarks. Mainly identikit malls, then you drive past some gigantic construction site and wonder relentless capitalist ideology in a third world country. Then you are informed it's a church. Saying church seems to underplay it slightly. When I say church what I mean is that I've been to cathedrals that look like they came out of a kinder eggs in comparison. They are huge and they scare. I've been to one South African sermon and I singularly I can say it was the most ungracious sermon I've ever heard. The minister spent most of it's time slating another minister and church in Pretoria. Why would a minister do that? Insecurity?

Churches are big business. Many of you will rock back in your chairs and say 'You've only just figured that out?'. The answer is no and simultaneously yes. We only have to look as the Vatican to know that the Catholic church has raked it in for what is now millennia, when they should be solving or have solved the worlds problems by providing both fund and spiritual nurture to the poor. When instead the Vatican hoards wealth and sits as quite possibly the best decorated city-state in the world. 1.2 billion people are members of the Catholic church which probably includes myself having been baptised as one.

However there is something even more unnerving in the construction of these megalith churches when you think they don't have any global credentials or are even part of a greater christian doctrine. What do they stand for? Are they Methodist, Evangelists or just some strange collection of righteous individual attempting to do their bit for themselves, there community and society. I'm sceptical to say the least. Why such a big church? And who quite literally 'in God's name' is following you and what are they gaining other than a bloody great church, for use on Sundays. It scares the sweet bejesus out of me to the point where something very sinister must be afoot. When I think that it is possible that fifteen hundred people flood through those doors and out again, in the name of faith or more importantly hope.

So is it just an abusive relationship? Offering hope in one breath and degradation in another? I can't help but wonder when I listen to people hark on about rewards in heaven, and deriding people who believe that heaven doesn't exist. Heaven is not a known, much like everlasting life or even transmutation. It's a wonder the Protestant population didn't remain Catholic and somehow I worry about the greater denominations of the Christian church. They are a new religion driven by work ethic that seems to run parallel to the ideals of the industrial revolution. Work for redemption in some menial job and you will get your reward in heaven doesn't sound much different to the seventy virgins offered to suicide bomber. So I'm frightened for them, all of God's children being railroaded into a future that doesn't exist. Bare in mind that 86% of the population are literate and possibly bilingual. So what's going on? Dogma, Doctrine or the conservative backbone that held apartheid in place all those years? When you go to the townships, it's the same phenomenon. Churches instead of community centres and schools. Then one has to wonder what's the pull? When most western populations are pulling away from organised religion why are South Africans embarrassing it with such vigour? I don't know the answer but I do know that once again what I've encountered in Pretoria is a closed religious stand point were magazine such as 'Joy' consider meditation to be nothing more than a direct invitation to the devil and lesser demons to occupy your soul. I didn't think such literature existed much past the 1930's.

Lets face it overall South Africa is not a rich country. Which is a contradiction because in fact South Africa has some of the greatest mineral wealth in the world and yet at almost every street corner in this affluent city you will find a cluster of homeless people (clearly this does not apply to the very rich suburbs as they are all gated off by private security firms). When I say that Pretoria is affluent I mean, nice cars, swimming pools and a service industry that most British citizens would balk at, it's pretty uncomfortable to have to allow someone to pump your petrol for you. In fact you'd be amazed they even have training schools to become a petrol pump service agent, they check your oil, clean your windows and check your tires. Yet you are not even obligated to tip them, petrol pumping is a good deal at the equivalent of 50p and hour. Many may be left with the belief pumping oil is the best way to service God. Doesn't take much to see how fucked up it is.

Yet paradise is right here on earth. We forget sometimes and we when we glimpse it we are awe struck and mesmerised by something so indescribable it must come from beyond ourselves and yet it is within us. And as I sat in my car yesterday getting my petrol pumped by some guy who I was going to have give a measly tip to, as I didn't have any change. I was gazing at a beautiful giant tree in full bloom the same colour of cherry blossom. There was a time when I would look at such trees and feel sad for them to have found such an awkward place in the human landscape to grow. Now I look at them and are grateful of the contrast they bring to what would other wise be an unremarkable concrete spot and in that, that they only reveal there secret beauty once a year and you've got to wide awake to notice it. In the meantime the religious are stuck in churches with their noses in books trying not to be heard singing out of key or praying unrythimcally and basically avoiding life unaware of the open oceans and the true beauty that is that can be experienced and grasped.

News Flash: Today I'm British

Today I'm British I never thought that I would hear me mumbling those words, never mind proclaiming them on the internet. I've always left it for the legalities of a passport define me as that. I wish all four of nation had a little option next to British nationality statement for 'signed under duress'. I've never been British, Scottish and proud waiting for the day of the purple passport and the proud statement of Scottish. If My driving license can have a soltaire on it, why can't my passport.? External propaganda I suppose. It's cause me more than a few problems over the years at some of Europe's lesser know borders. When I've been asked why I don't sound English. They get very confused, yes I have a British passport, So you are English? No I am Scottish. “You don't sound English?” Why have you got a British passport if you are not English? And on it goes.

But today I'm British, Why? Maggie's DEAD, that's why and not only dead but about to be burned in fiery furness, which is a bit of shame because I was hoping to rave on her grave. That's what i've been envisaging but then I found out she was getting cremated pah.

So there you all were proudly turning you back on the Iron Lady's coffin. It was great, there it was that look of quite a few people collectively remembering there suffering. And none of this suffering over a ideological cause or enemy, like the one provided by war. No suffering of having a pointless existence and extensive black hole of a life. They weren't Scotsmen, Geordies or even Yorkshiremen these were most likely Londoners. Doing there bit so the national voice was heard. Maybe they were born up North maybe they just had socialism in there bones, maybe they've been on the dole thirty years all the same there they were being reflectfully defiant. They weren't there because they had an overwhelming desire to desecrate someone's memory they were there to highlight the actions of her tyranny. Of those out of work, the decimated communities, the hungry milk she stole milk from, all the broken families and the suicides.

Thank fuck it went off well, it could have been a bloody disaster had it kicked off, with the protesters pinned down and kettled by a supposedly biased police force. Even at that there were shouts of Tory Scum and it's amazing to think, they got away with it. Their were not mass riots and nobody manage to blow up the coffin. That would have been funny, if a bit disturbing. So I'd just like to say thanks you've made me feel more Britishness than I thought I could. It's shame I'm voting for Scottish independence though. I'll pray for you guys south of the border.

Maggie Maggie Maggie, DEAD DEAD DEAD (revised)

I'm not sure where my vitriol for Margaret comes from and actually given that I was so young during the Thatcher years it's hard to imagine that I formed very much information about the ongoing debate around me. My most vivid memory of Maggie was the day she left Downing Street, my whole primary school class got rounded up and taken into the audio visual room to watch this historic moment. Born in 1980 we had never known another Prime Minister. When I look back on that I can only think that the teachers that surrounded us were watching with some level of relief and jubilation. Though we were to young to know it.

I grew up in a small village on the west coast of Scotland. My family were poor. My Dad spent years on and off the dole. Mum went back to work, luckily she was a qualified Occupation Therapist, I dread to think what would have happened to us had she not been previously qualified in something. To be honest I remember being poor. I remember eating Beanfeast for what seemed like weeks on end. My Dad scrabbling around on the floor pulling up the carpet at the edges searching for pennies in the hope that he might be able to go to the pub for a pint and standing with him in very very long queues at the dole office with what seemed like hundreds of other men. I also remember looking at those boards with the jobs cards popped into position with a subtle bend. There was a never more than a few jobs on display and they were mainly for things that my Dad couldn't do. But they were tens of guys crowded round half a dozen measly jobs. Now looking back at that and having the context and knowing how the job centre works it is possible that hundreds of men viewed those jobs day after day and further more hundreds probably applied for them. I don't remember seeing any other kids there, that's probably because they were at home with a mother who too wasn't working. The price those families paid was high my aunt and uncle had their house repossessed and were maid homeless with two young children.

My mother is one of six, three boys three girls and at one point not one of the brothers or the brother-in-laws were in work. For this reason I've actually always had an issue with Feminism because in the world I grew up in the women went to work and raised the children, not the men. Women were the dominant sex, through all of my childhood lenses. The men were invisible and in the end the brothers all immigrated to Canada in search of a better life, along with thousands of others. The women stayed.

My family were the lucky ones no doubt about it and still scrabbling around on the floor for pennies. With each season depending on our monetary situation we would shop accordingly. We went to Tesco if we were rich. It was Farmfoods and Kwick Save for us if we were poor. You could tell Mum tried to save money every way that she could going from shop to shop in her lunch hour, to try and get the best deal. Which probably goes to prove that nobody shops in these places unless they absolutely have to.

The Poll Tax was the final straw. The Poll Tax was introduced in Scotland 18 months before it was introduced in England and Wales. It was per head of population rather than per household whether those members of the household were financially contributing or not. Children and the elderly were all taxed. When it was introduced I was surrounded by a lot of live debate, a lot of people refused to pay it, including members of my family. Mum had no choice if she didn't pay it it would be deducted from her salary regardless as she was employed by the state. I remember watching her write the checks with a look of pure contempt and making some statement about what we couldn't afford or the food would have to go on the credit card. The legacy of that credit card lived on for years never mind Thatcher.

And then there was the fear the fear that if you stepped out of line you would be publicly humiliated with brut force if necessary; for expressing an opinion, like the miners, travellers and ravers. That's what I remember being scared, scared of the milk man coming cause we couldn't pay the bill. Scared of Dad loosing his job, scared of having no money, scared of stepping out of line. For a lot of years I think that fear curtailed everyone. My parents weren't the kind to go out on public protest they were kind that venomously complained in front of the T.V., which is no good for anybody.

I don't think it was what Thatcher did to the children that grew up under her rule that was so terrible. We didn't know any better, if you were poor you were poor. I don't remember crying because they took my milk away I remember being annoyed we couldn't afford the flavoured stuff, they brought in to expand choice. You didn't expect holidays abroad as we were continually bombarded with the expectation of being disappointed.

I think the adults faired far worst, they had known something better. They had known employment, holidays and ice-cream at the weekends. Now it was all gone washed down the drain with any hope they had for their future and the guilt of their own kids childhoods being worse than there own. I think that is what destroyed people most. Not only that these were people doing there bit they weren't idle or unskilled they were made redundant. My Grandparents hadn't sat on the dole their whole life, they had fought in a war that defeated fascism and had voted to create a new state that would off set the damage of that war via the NHS and free tertiary eduction. The world was getting better.

Then from nowhere half of Britain was derelict. Any adult that lived through the eighties tells me that and Glenda certainly touched on it, in her speech to the commons. That's what I grew up with and high school was certainly an endurance test with indoor water features, smashed windows and desks that gave you splinters. Now just about every High School in Inverclyde of that era has been knocked down and rebuilt with New Labour money.

One day driving past the docks in Greenock (There are about six miles of docks in Greenock). Dad told when the shipyards finished up for the night you could watch twenty-five thousand men pour out of the shipyard gates and across the road. Up until that point it never occurred to me that these buildings had been alive bustling places that employed thousands of people and supported families. Being a child that didn't understand such things I asked where did they all go? “They're still here they just don't have jobs”. That's what a dead town is a town with no jobs. This was a town that had protected the atlantic convoys during the war suffered the blitz and had managed to build the QE2 in the 50's with some of the finest trades men in the world. However there it was miles and miles of derelict shipyards.

Then there was IBM, National Semi-conductors and Mimtec (better known as Grimtec), that demonstrated exactly what the beginnings of Neo-Liberalism was about unsecured contracts and waves and waves of temporary jobs. Everyone laid off after three months and rehired a fortnight later, in order for the corporates to avoid the consequences of employment law. That's what kept Greenock going for nearly ten years until the arrival of the call centre. You wouldn't be surprised to hear of it's qualification as a Tesco town either, I'm sure.

I have no over arching memory of that lady other than that of being marched in the audio visual room to watch her demise and a varying array of images of her in blue suits and that highly unnatural blonde hair. I don't think I've ever met anybody with hair like it. She does not inspire me as a woman she has none of the attribute that I would attribute to being a woman. Not even a good stylist. I have not read a history of her life but I don't credit her with much intelligence at all, because surely for any woman the human cost of her policies should have been to much to bear. Not for Maggie. And surely for the simple reason she wasn't curious enough to find out about 'her peoples' suffering. So the dogma she had been fed by the Tory party was used to 'nurture' the nation much like nestle milk formula promoted in Africa with out the considerations of a posinous water supply. In my mind she didn't do much better than sleep her way to the top, she just happened to marry the person who would get her there.

Another thought was the Falklands if nothing else how frequently this tiny little dot in the middle of the south Atlantic pops up on the BBC. Never mind that poor guy that got his face melted off there and seemed to be banded about daytime television for years.

From as early as I can remember I have defined myself as a socialist. Mainly because I've always believed in the benefits of the dole and as I get older the NHS. In my teenage years signing on the dole was delivered to me as a god given right and the first step to independence as well as putting your name down on the housing list. For years I believed that claiming benefits was a way of counterbalancing all that avariciousness or maybe for many it became a way of retaining their dignity “I'll take the money thank you very much” rather than admit defeat. I say this because if you haven't figured out by your early twenties that you are working to make somebody else rich you are a fool.

Now having been exposed to more radical ideas. I probably consider myself more of an anarchist because I realise that state funded handouts or broad blanket social prescription aren't necessarily the answer. However I believe more services and support systems are needed especially for the disabled, mentally ill and those who care for them. I say this as someone who has claimed benefits for years.

Nobody wants to spend their life on the dole. Though who wants to spend there life stacking shelfs in ASDA under green glowing light that makes most people feel nauseas in less than half and hour? That's what I believe is the problem that people aren't encouraged to aspire to there own values of what they want. Instead it is prescribed, I mean seriously who wants to spend their days working a 45 hour week in order whizz round the supermarket to be home in time for some awful television and watch their kids being raised by someone else. It's not much of a life and yet it is the one prescribed to us intermitted by travel programmes to offer some escape. Yet at the same time what is it that the Tories want us to aspire too, a bigger house? More money, it's not much in the scheme of things? When we could be watching the sun rise and set over the homes and families we were born into without much need for work, with modern technologies it's certainly possible and yet the world at large would prefer us to be wage slaves.

And that's it most people would rather move than contribute to society they are trying to buy themselves a better school for their children or buy a house in a better area, when they could actually do the hard graft and contribute to their community by demanding better schools, public parks and housing or actually building them themselves through mutual co-operation.

People of my parents generation say “You're to young to remember Thatcher”. I'll say it again “I grew up under Thatcher”. I stood in the same dole queues as my Dad because of Thatcher.

I was once pally with a Welsh guy who'd been a Trade Unionist and was a steel worker and would regularly say “I lived in the valleys when all there was for sale was a piece of rope and you were lucky if you could afford it”. He moved to a small village in Cornwall and had a disagreement with a Thatcherite in the village pub. He didn't go back in that pub for ten years. It was the only pub in the village and this guy didn't drive. There is a strange look that people who suffered under Thatcher get when they talk about it, they summon up all the inner strength available to them to remain human while the withheld tears remain visible. A big deep collective darkness strung together by individual stories.

I take great relish in these comrades who I meet along the way, who share exactly the same sentiments I do. Yes you can work your way out of poverty but at what cost? I think the one thing that has stayed with me if not from Margaret Thatcher but from my parents 'You should never have to step on someone else to get ahead in life' (I think that applies to crushing peoples and movements too). Maggie did not care for society she battered it with the loyalty of better paid policemen.

Her greatest legacy to me will be my friends who are mostly united in hating her, hating her for taking away all hope. How can we celebrate someone's death? That's the only thing we had left to celebrate; that the certainty of her death was the only thing that might end the living nightmare. We were wrong her rule was just the first flickerings of how bad we thought it could be. So at the end of the evening we all empty our pockets of the money that we have on us, put it together and split it equally and buy each other a half pint to keep the exchange of free ideas flowing.

I'm cheered by the prospect of Scottish independence. The idea that a nation of disenfranchised voters, can find a voice of their own.

Maggie Maggie Maggie, DEAD DEAD DEAD.

I'm not sure where my vitriol for Margaret comes from and actually given that I was so young during the Thatcher years it's hard to imagine that I formed very much information about the ongoing debate around me. My most vivid memory of Maggie was the day she left Downing Street, my whole primary school class got rounded up and taken into the audio visual room to watch this historic moment. Born in 1980 we had never known another Prime Minister. When I look back on that I can only think that the teachers that surrounded us were watching with some level of relief and jubilation. Though we were to young to know it.

I grew up in a small village on the west coast of Scotland. My family were poor. My Dad spent years on and off the dole. Mum went back to work, luckily she was a qualified Occupation Therapist, I dread to think what would have happened to us had she not been previously qualified in something. To be honest I remember being poor. I remember eating Beanfeast for what seemed like weeks on end. My Dad scrabbling around on the floor pulling up the carpet at the edges searching for pennies in the hope that he might be able to go to the pub for a pint and standing with him in very very long queues at the dole office with what seemed like hundreds of other men. I also remember looking at those boards with the jobs cards popped into position with a subtle bend. There was a never more than a few jobs on display and they were mainly for things that my Dad couldn't do. But they were tens of guys crowded round half a dozen measly jobs. Now looking back at that and having the context and knowing how the job centre works it is possible that hundreds of men viewed those jobs day after day and further more hundreds probably applied for them. I don't remember seeing any other kids there, that's probably because they were at home with a mother who too wasn't working. We were the lucky ones no doubt about it and still scrabbling around on the floor for pennies. And with each season depending on our monetary situation we would shop accordingly. We went to Tesco if we were rich. It was Farmfoods and Kwick Save for us if we were poor. You could tell Mum tried to save money every way that she could going from shop to shop in her lunch hour, to try and get the best deal. Which probably goes to prove that nobody shops in these places unless they absolutely have to.

The Poll Tax was the final straw. The Poll Tax was introduced in Scotland 18 months before it was introduced in England and Wales. It was per head of population rather than per household whether those members of the household were financially contributing or not. Children and the elderly were all taxed. When it was introduced I was surrounded by a lot of live debate, a lot of people refused to pay it, including members of my family. Mum had no choice if she didn't pay it it would be deducted from her salary regardless as she was employed by the state. I remember watching her write the checks with a look of pure contempt and making some statement about what we couldn't afford or the food would have to go on the credit card. The legacy of that credit card lived on for years never mind Thatcher.

And then there was the fear the fear that if you stepped out of line you would be publicly humiliated with brut force if necessary; for expressing an opinion, like the miners, travellers and ravers. That's what I remember being scared, scared of the milk man coming cause we couldn't pay the bill. Scared of Dad loosing his job, scared of having no money, scared of stepping out of line. For a lot of years I think that fear curtailed everyone. My parents weren't the kind to go out on public protest they were kind that venomously complained in front of the T.V, which is no good for anybody.

I don't think it was what Thatcher did to the children that grew up under her rule because we didn't know any better, if you were poor you were poor. I don't remember crying because they took my milk away I remember being annoyed we couldn't afford the flavoured stuff, they brought in to expand choice. You didn't expect holidays abroad as we were continually bombarded with the expectation of being disappointed.

I think the adults faired far worst, they had known something better. They had known employment, holidays and ice-cream at the weekends. Now it was all gone washed down the drain with any hope they had for their future and the guilt of their own kids childhoods being worse than there own. I think that is what destroyed people most. Not only that these were people doing there bit they weren't idle or unskilled they were made redundant. My Grandparents hadn't sat on the dole their whole life, they had fought in a war that defeated fascism and had voted to create a new state that would off set the damage of that war via the NHS and free tertiary eduction. The world was getting better.

Then from nowhere half of Britain was derelict. Any adult that lived through the eighties tells me that and Gelnda certainly touched on it, in her speech to the commons. That's what I grew up with and high school was certainly and endurance test with indoor water features, smashed windows and desks that gave you splinters. One day driving past the docks in Greenock (There are about six miles of docks in Greenock). Dad told when the shipyards finished up for the night you could see twenty-five thousand men pour out of the shipyard gates and across the road. Up until that point it never occurred to me that these buildings had been alive bustling places that employed thousands of people and supported families. Being a child that didn't understand such things I asked where did they all go? “They're still here they just don't have jobs”. That's what a dead town is a town with no jobs. This was a town that had protected the atlantic convoys during the war suffered the blitz and had managed to build the QE2 in the 50's with some of the finest trades men in the world. However there it was miles and miles of derelict shipyards.

Then there was IBM, National Semi-conductors and Mimtec (better known as Grimtec), that demonstrated exactly what the beginnings of Neo-Liberalism was about unsecured contracts and waves and waves of temporary jobs. Everyone laid off after three months and rehired a fortnight later, in order for the corporates to avoid the consequences of employment law. That's what kept Greenock going for nearly ten years until the arrival of the call centre.

I have no over arching memory of that lady other than that of being marched in the audio visual room to watch her demise and a varying array of her in blue suits and that highly unnatural blonde hair. I don't think I've ever met anybody with hair like it. Another though was the falkland if nothing else how frequently this tiny little dot in the middle of the south Atlantic pops up on the BBC. Nevermind that poor guy that got is face melted off there and seemed to be banded about daytime television for years.

From as early as I can remember I have defined myself as a socialist. Mainly because I've always believed in the benefits of the dole and much more importantly the NHS. In my teenage years signing on the dole was delivered to me as a god given right and the first step to independence as well as putting your name down on the housing list. For years I believed that claiming benefits was a way of counterbalancing all that avariciousness or maybe for many it became a way of retaining their dignity “I'll take the money thank you very much” rather than admit defeat. I say this because if you haven't figured out by your early twenties that you are working to make somebody else rich you are a fool.

Now having been exposed to more radical ideas. I probably consider myself more of an anarchist because I realise that state funded handout or broad blanket social prescription aren't necessarily the answer. However I believe more services and support systems are needed especially for the disabled, mentally ill and those who care for them.

Nobody wants to spend their life on the dole. Though who wants to spend there life stacking shelfs in ASDA under green glowing light that makes most people feel nauseas in less than half and hour? That's what I believe is the problem that people aren't encouraged to aspire to there own values of what they want. Instead it is prescribed, I mean seriously who wants to spend their days working a 45 hour week in order whizz round the supermarket to be home in time for some awful television and watched their kids being raised by someone else. It's not much of a life and yet it is the one prescribed to us intermitted by travel programmes to offer some escape. Yet at the same time what is it that the Tories want us to aspire too, a bigger house? More money, it's not much in the scheme of things? When we could be watching the sun rise and set over the homes and families we were born into without much need for work, with modern technologies it's certainly possible and yet the world at large would prefer us to be wage slaves.

And that's it most people would rather move than contribute to society they are trying to buy themselves a better school for their children or buy a house in a better area, when they could actually do the hard graft and contribute to their community by demanding better schools, public parks and housing or actually building them themselves through mutual co-operation.

People of may parents generation say “Your to young to remember Thatcher”. I'll say it again “I grew up under Thatcher”. I stood in dole the same dole queues as my Dad because of Thatcher.

However the thing that gives me great relish are the comrades I meet along the way, who share exactly the same sentiments. Yes you can work your way out of poverty but at what cost? I think the one thing that has stayed with me if not from Margaret Thatcher but from my parents you should never have to step on someone else to get ahead in life (I think that applies to crushing peoples and movements too). Maggie did not care for society she battered it with the loyalty of a better paid policemen.

Her greatest legacy to me will be my friends who are mostly united in hating her, hating her for taking away all hope. How can we celebrate someone's death? That's the only thing we had left to celebrate, that the certainty of her death was the only thing that might end the living nightmare. We were wrong her rule was just the first flickerings of how bad we thought it could be. So at the end of the evening we all empty our pockets of the money that we have on us, put it together and split it equally and buy each other a half pint to keep the exchange of free ideas flowing.

I'm cheered by the prospect of Scottish independence. The ideas of a nation people of disenfranchised voters, can find a voice of their own.