inbhirnis | Entries tagged with milestones/birthdays/anniversaries

(and there didn't seem to be many who had an opinion in between those two poles)..Margaret Thatcher's rise to Prime Minister with the Conservative election victory, 30 years ago next month (wow), changed the UK forever and with Reagan being elected 18 months later, set the stage for an era of conservatism that we may just now be leaving. Ironically, it now seems that the US and the UK may be about to diverge politically, with a tired Labour government in power since 1997 almost certainly about to be replaced by a Conservative one by 2010. Mind you, UK Conservatives are rather different from their US counterparts; not beholden to a religious right, and actually pretty gay-friendly, at least at the leadership level. The Conservative candidate for Thatcher's hometown is openly gay, and nobody appears to be freaked out by it.

All this is preamble to a rather long but fascinating article from the Guardian that reads a little bit like an obituary for her (she's not in good health). The reporter goes back to Thatcher's hometown, and finds there the same absence of interest in her place in history that appears to exist in the country as a whole. It's almost as if she were a Stalinesque figure whose statues have been pulled down, and most references to her removed from the public square. Yet she is still alive, a shadow of her former glory. The article has some delicious little phrases that may resonate best with Brits of a certain age (reference to loss of society; the 'handbag thieves' sign). The psycho-analysis section is quite amusing, since the Freudian analysis of Thatcher is so at odds with her image of lack of sexuality, her non-feminism. So ironic that the first female PM was utterly inimical to women's issues and positively placed hurdles in the way of other women in her party trying to climb the ladder.

When she does finally shuffle off, it will be interesting to see how she is remembered, and what kind of send-off she gets. I think I can guarantee that there will be no push to name something in every part of the UK for her, a la Reagan.

Their Supreme Court just ruled in favor of same sex marriage.

Now - I wonder if Iowa is also hampered by a political system where a popular vote of 50%+1 vote can strip these newly won rights away?

Best wishes to an LJ user I've been lucky enough to meet "IRL", and who loves goofy Bravo and Logo reality shows just like me... :-)

With the time diff, it may already be April 1 out there, so I guess I've missed it in a way... Hope you had a good one. Your fair land, plus your big neighbor, are on my list of must-sees that I really want to do something about in the next couple of years.

I'm SO ready for a little break from the rat race tomorrow, when I'll be flying up to Seattle, the "Emerald City" for a long weekend. It will be fun to see a bunch of LJ friends, such as

bear_left,

shirtlifterbear,

wrascalbc, and

quirkstreet, to name a few. First up will be a BSG-athon on Friday night at a friend of

shirtlifterbear's place (sadly, my hotel doesn't have SciFi), then, I imagine there will some toursity things to be done in downtown Seattle, and a trip out to Snoqualmie Falls. No doubt there will be other things on the agenda

But - it looks like Seattle will live up to its reputation of being, shall we say, a little 'moist' - oh, well. But, it's going to be hard to leave our lovely San Diego weather:

Here -

There -

In other news, yesterday I took my staff to lunch at the lovely Bertrand at Mr. A's, which has beautiful views of downtown San Diego as well as terrific food and service. One of my staff is about a week away from giving birth, so this was a great way to celebrate.

Here's my dessert - I was a bad boy...

The BBC is just going out of its way to make me feel like an old fart... Interesting that they picked all black and white pics, making it look as if this all happened a VERY long time ago.

Here's a fascinating montage of images and music of a very tense time in the UK. Time for a trip to iTunes to get some of those songs, I think..

Plans by Mrs. Thatcher's Conservative government to close large numbers of pits resulted in clashes between miners' unions, those who were recruited to cross picket lines, and the police, which lasted for a year.

It was a brutal clash. With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, it's easy to see that with coal reserves declining, the industry in Britain needed drastic reorganization, but as usual, Thatcher used a mallet when a scalpel and some empathy would have been better. A decent plan for retraining and promotion of new industries for these areas that were utterly dependent on coal would at least have shown the government was not ignoring their plight. But, trimming union power was also part of the agenda, so the mood for compromise was slight. And, Arthur Scargill, leader of the miners' union, was no angel - he used this as a way to gain national prominence and an attempt to push the Labour Party further into the control of labour unions.

The losers, of course, were the workers and those communities that depended on the industry. Well-paying jobs gone, unemployment through the roof - it would be good if the Beeb followed this up with a trip to some of the villages and towns to show what has happened in the last 25 years.

(at a rate of 365.2425 days a year, that is).

Thanks to all for your birthday wishes! Unfortunately, it's not much of a day for me - since Sunday, I've been fighting a scratchy throat, which yesterday graduated to shivery flu-y ickiness. So, I took today off work, and I'm sitting at home with a nice warm cocoa. Woohoo! I'm really living it up!

It's your birthday!

Many happy returns!

NPR today has a good bit on the commemorations of Darwin's 200th birthday in the UK. Lots of documentaries on the telly, special coins minted, etc. Apart from NPR joining in with a series of pieces over the last few weeks, not a peep from the rest of the media. And I think this quote from NPR's piece today says it all: (you can listen to or read it here)

"In other words, Darwin is not the controversial figure in the United Kingdom that he continues to be in the United States. Bloomfield says the reason for this is science has proved Darwin right."

Pretty sad. Why are so many US folk freaked out by this? 'All' Darwin opined about was how things evolved, but (as far as I know) didn't tackle creation. So, it seems to me that religious folk can still hold to their creation myths at the same time as accepting that there is a hell of a lot of evidence that evolution has occurred. I guess that's too nuanced a position for the fundies, plus the inescapable conclusion is that we too have evolved, and that will never be accepted by them.

...Actor James Whitmore dies at 87 today.

Why's that spooky? Well, just last night, I'd mentioned somewhere on LJ that I'd enjoyed the lesbionic movie 'Desert Hearts' and for some reason I went to imdb to check out something about it. I noticed that the 'ranch matriarch' was played by Audra Lindley, who is probably best known as Mrs. Roper in the US version of "Three's Company". I clicked on her bio and found that she had been married to..... James Whitmore. When I looked at his bio - last night - and saw that he was still alive, I was quite surprised. Oh, well - off by 24 hours.

Weird how those internet search spirals can lead you to surprising connections.

Hope you had a good one, and that you can round up some of your friends to make NC swing - come Nov 4.... :-)

VERY tentative steps here....

Hello out there in LJLand!

I've been lurking for a little while since my former boss,

joebehrsandiego, let me know he was keeping a LiveJournal. Just before Joe left us for the Denver area, he also let another work colleague know so he could read an article about Portland, OR. While I knew that there might be raunchy goings-on on Joe's journal, I don't know if our colleague Charles knew what he'd be seeing! Maybe it's just as well Joe left then - although he never said a word, I always wondered if Charles had read any of Joe's posts on such things as Hairrison, and what he thought. Charles is a cool guy, so I don't think he would have been too shocked or surprised.

Anyway... I've had Joe's old job now for about 3 weeks, and it's been a crazy busy time. And, in a mad way, I'm enjoying it.

I need to learn some of the bells and whistles in LJ - such as how you hyperlink a LJ name, and weblinks - but I'll get the hang of it eventually. I'll also start adding 'likes & interests', quite a few of which I share with Joe (!). Can someone point me to where you find out how to use tags and things?

I'm a 42 year old guy of Scottish origin who's been out here since 1986 (citizen as of March 16, 2000). I enjoy travel, scifi, movies and theatre (I'm a big fan of and subscriber to our Diversionary Theatre here in San Diego, which does Gay and Lesbian themed plays - and not just 'Men in Underwear' things - they did "Beautiful Thing" last month, very well, even if some of the London accents were a bit shaky), hanging around in coffee shops (particularly enjoy Diedrich's in Hillcrest), trying to keep fit (Powerhouse membership, atrocious attendance), good food & true friends.

OK - think that's enough for the moment. Hi, Mark!