She was right though about there being no such thing as ‘society’. But she meant it somewhat differently to the position expounded by Advaita Vedanta so it can stay in the negative column.

Meanwhile, the police have been instructed to shoot people outside the security cordon, who are walking in the opposite direction with their hands in their pockets.

Well, you can’t be too careful.

Because our political systems are specifically designed to exclude such freaks of nature from high office.

Just as the USA could have elected an African-American president who didn’t order drone strikes. That America is now a nation inclusive enough to elect a black president is a great thing. Doesn’t stop the man being a mass murderer though.

I know that’s not what you were saying. I’m agreeing with you. I just think it’s an opportunity missed. Instead of setting precedents by electing women or non-whites, why not set a precedent and elect a competent, compassionate human being with a genuine commitment to social justice and equality?

I quite like Mr. Whippy icecream, Phil, so I can’t begrudge her that one. Although, it too raises an issue… when she quit working in an icecream lab and entered Westminster, not only did she herald the onset of one of the most socially destructive eras in modern politics, she also denied the world potentially wondrous new icecream recipes.

All-day opening though… yeah, that would make it onto the positive list. I would amend the blogpost but it would undercut the humour, so I’ll just acknowledge it here in the comments.

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* There’s a common misconception that viewing the Argentines as naked aggressors in that war is somehow arguing that Britain has a “rightful claim” to the islands. As far as I can tell, no nation has a convincing claim. Which means the decision is down to the local population and there’s absolutely no question about how they feel.

Some good stuff this evening from Ken Loach, the Flying Rodent and, er, Tony Blair (the one who lived in 1988).

I’d say that “contempt for a whole swathe of the workforce” doesn’t go nearly far enough. It was contempt for workers generally – with the telling exception of the armed forces and police – and, I’d argue, for work. There was no dignity of labour for the Thatcherites; there was business and there was profit, and if a business made a profit by screwing its employees, selling junk and generally doing a shoddy job badly, who cared?

I can’t stand Mr Whippy icecream, either so that’s a minus AFAIC. But on the plus side, all-day opening… and, er, that’s it.

But “there is a woman from a working class background who is the PM” is more important than nothing given the context of the UK in the late 1970s. The fact that we’d dismiss that as irrelevant now cos she’s white and went to Oxford and married a rich dude is the thing she achieved despite being completely inegalitarian in her own beliefs.

The sheer fact that there was a generation of British kids who grew up where our default pronoun for PM is “she” means something that’s fairly new in society. Even if the default adjective is “awful”.