Know Your Enemy

A special bumper edition dedicated to you know who...

"Thatcher was not a strong or formidable leader. She simply did not give a shit about people."

Of late Morrissey's pronouncements have increasingly been those of an irrelevant and raving loon losing what loose grip on reality he already had, but his comments on Maggie (and on the obsequious reactions of the media and political classes to her death) are remarkably lucid. Shame he has to go and spoil it all at the end by dropping in wholly ludicrous comparisons between the UK and Syria...

"Prepare for a counter-wave of nauseously grovelling and skewed official tributes, for the BBC to behave at its reverential, establishmentarian worst, and, God help us, a ceremonial funeral with military honours. I don't blame anyone for feeling euphoric at Mrs Thatcher's death. I feel it myself. I vowed I'd be restrained the day she died but instead tapped out an instinctive Facebook update expressing the wish that, if anything, she'd clung onto life longer if only to prolong her suffering. For a great many, this is a merry, cathartic day, a day for bad taste jokes and dancing jigs on the grave of the she-grinch who stole Britain - and let no one be in any doubt about the anger and depth of feeling from which this springs."

David Stubbs writing for the Quietus, before going on to stress that the feelings of jubilation and catharsis are somewhat hollow given that Thatcherism endures to this day, passed down the Tory bloodline and now pumping through the veins of George Osbourne and Iain Duncan Smith.

"All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate."

A brilliant response from Russell Brand in the Guardian, writing from the perspective of a child of Thatcher's time. His rubbishing of the notion that she was in some way a feminist or pioneer for women is spot on, too.

So then - Maggie: adored by many, despised by many, and unknown to many...