PAUL Burgin, he of the Mars Hill blog, has tagged me in the latest meme about the historic events of precisely 30 years ago. Always willing to oblige, so here goes:
How old were you?
Fifteen.
What are your personal political memories, if you have any?
I vividly remember the announcement that Jim Callaghan’s government had lost the vote of confidence. I wrote just recently about my memories of polling night itself here:
“I do remember going to Beith cinema on the evening of polling (I can’t remember what was showing) and popping into my regular sweet shop afterwards and the owner, with whom my friends and I were quite friendly, telling us he was hoping for a Conservative victory. This was quite a shock, since we had assumed that everyone we knew was a Labour supporter.
That night, I stayed up to keep my mum company as she watched the results come in. She was a Labour supporter all her life, but she never hated any one person more than she hated Margaret Thatcher. I vividly remember the one cheerful moment for her — when the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Teddy Taylor, unexpectedly lost his seat to Labour’s John Maxton. It was Labour’s only gain from the Tories at that election. It still tickles me — and I know it delighted mum when she thought about it years later — to know that John Maxton’s successor as Cathcart MP was sitting a few feet from her that evening.”
Political views held?
None to speak of. I was certainly less distressed by Thatcher’s victory than my mum was.
Where did you live?
Beith, Ayrshire.
School/College/Workplace?
Garnock Academy, Kilbirnie
Favourite TV Programmes?
Do I need to say? Doctor Who and Blake’s 7.
Favourite Band/Music/etc..?
Anything by ELO, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds and Art Garfunkel’s Bright Eyes.
Tagging: David McCarthy, Dizzy Thinks, Hopi Sen, Kerry McCarthy, and Alastair Campbell.
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Monday 4 May 2009 at 10:56 pm
Harriet has pulled out…..are you (Tom Harris), under any circumstances, prepared to ride the stalking donkey?
Monday 4 May 2009 at 11:17 pm
This meme needs jazzed up…
Which was your favourite Womble?
What would YOU most liked to have achieved if appointed PM? (Still possible for some, Tom.)
With the benefit of hindsight, what is the biggest political misjudgement of the past thirty years?
Monday 4 May 2009 at 11:27 pm
Stewart:
1. Orinoco (obviously)
2. An end to mass benefit dependency
3. Encouraging millions of unemployed workers to move onto invalidity benefits in the early 1980s
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 12:50 am
Tom:
1. “Orinoco (obviously)”
Ditto and ditto obviously. If you’d said Wellington then quite frankly, I’d have worried.
2. “An end to mass benefit dependency.”
It’s not been possible under Blairism or Brownism because their globalist puppetmasters want the masses to be dependent on state intervention of one sort or another. Maybe Harrisism would be an improvement?
3. “Encouraging millions of unemployed workers to move onto invalidity benefits in the early 1980s.”
Good answer, but then there are literally thousands to choose from. I thought you might have said the decision to allow Brown to become PM. You probably just thought it.
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 6:27 am
[...] Labour wing is also in retrospective mood. Paul Burgin and Tom Harris get their teeth into a 1979 meme, Don Paskini wonders how the Tories got their reputation for [...]
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 8:33 am
Thatcher 30 years on
when she and the torys came to power
I had a Job(I liked) a future
and house and home.
a few years later i had nothing
it was all gone.
Thats my memories of the Thatcher years
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 8:50 am
I’m a Great Uncle Bulgaria man meself. But then I am older than you two.
Which means, which means, I was an ‘adult’ when I was watching The Wombles!
Damn.
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 8:55 am
Actually, I suppose I have rather come to resemble him. Remember you’re a womble? How could I possibly forget?
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 10:06 am
I had just moved house, and as I walked to the local school/polling station to vote, there was a flurry of snow.
Snow in May, an omen if ever there was one, that a cold wind was blowing for the ordinary people of Britain.
That the generator of that wind was a shrill, intellectually dismissable, morally incompetent incarnation of Daily Mail woman makes it all the more painful.
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 11:30 am
No true oficionado would ever dream of putting an apostrophe in Blakes Seven.
(at least I don’t think they would. Actually I can really only remember Glynis Barber)
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 11:52 am
Dave H – Sorry, but you’re wrong, and if Terry Nation wrote “Blakes 7″ then he’s wrong too!
The 7 in the title referred to the freedom fighters (including Orac and the Liberator itself) associated with or belonging to Blake, ergo Blake’s 7.
Mind you, the logo used in the first three series was suspiciously missing the apostrophe, but I’m guessing that was for graphic design, rather than punctuation, reasons.
Tuesday 5 May 2009 at 4:18 pm
I wouldn’t put it as strongly as ‘wrong’. My reply in that case would be: do you similarly bridle on seeing Kings Cross rather than King’s Cross? Are all those signs saying The Queens Head wrong?
In semiotic terms it’s called the ‘implicit possessive diacritic’ (well, at least it might be something like that, although I’ve forgotten what semiotics means).
What I’m trying to say is we would normally allow some latitude with the accuracy of a title. Anyone who’s seen the series will understand the meaning. Even the ‘correct’ version could be the adventures of a kid called Blake on his seventh birthday.
Anyway, I’m not quite sure there was ever seven of them and Blake himself went missing* pretty quickly, so if we’re being pedantic about such things the name is a pig’s breakfast regardless.
*I remember the same thing happened to Greg in Survivor -what a novel plot device: the central character and hero promptly goes missing, and remains absent for the rest of the series. I reckon that Nation bloke was overrated.
(this is all ‘angels on a pinhead’ and that last bit was conscious trolling. Enough for today.)
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