You know, I kind of had a feeling that a big event was due: before yesterday lunchtime, it had been some time since anything big was in the news – the type of story that grabs all the headlines and dominates internet chat. My money was on north Korea: I thought that any moment Kim Jong Un will finally go crazy and seven shades of shit would hit the fan in the far east. It still might, of course, but the british headlines are now preoccupied with maggie thatcher and preparations for her funeral.

I feel as if I should write a fairly long entry about her. After all, she is a very significant figure in british politics. But I don’t feel I can, really. She was the PM when I was growing up, and as child I think I was hazily aware of her presence of her as an authority figure. In that limited sense I think I liked her. Of course as I matured and became politically aware, I realised the damage she did and the harm she caused. She saw the rise of neolibealim and nurtured greed and selfishness: despite tory attempts to rewrite history and try to somehow blame everything on Blair and brown, it was the rise of this -everyman-for-himself attitude which lead to the current financial mess. I get very angry when I see them trying to make thatcher out to be some kind of saint ho saved the country, when in fact she ruined it.

What I find interesting right now when I watch the news, then, is how people are reacting. In 1997, for example, when Diana died, we saw an almost universal outpouring of hysterical grief. I’m struck by how that contrasts with today, with half the country mourning, while in parts of the country people are actively celebrating. Amusingly, I read earlier that the song Ding Dong The Witch is dead is now heading for the top of the chart. I must say that really surprises me – I never expected to see british people revel in anyone’s death. I suppose it just goes to show how loathed she was, and the damage she did; but I also think it might be a reaction to what is currently happening too, with the Tories so deeply unpopular. Indeed, with CaMoron seen by many as a reincarnation of thatcher, might we read these celebrations of her death not merely as a dark, somewhat juvenile reaction to the passing of an elderly woman, but as an outpouring of opposition to her legacy and a rejection of the self-centred philosophy she gave rise to, under which so many are currently suffering?