‘Back to Reality’ — 14 Days Without Twitter (the Search for Self-Knowledge)

How a family holiday, a cult comedy and sexism led to a fortnight without Twitter.

There’s a cult sci-fi comedy show which used to air on the BBC called Red Dwarf. The title’s taken from the name given to a mining vessel marooned in deep space, its rag tag crew of obsessive compulsive android, vain mutant feline, cowardly hologram and lone remaining human, bumble their way from one alien encounter to another, discovering new species, new dimensions and futuristic technologies. It’s like Star Trek but for idiots!

Except that in its finer moments the show isn’t really for idiots at all. It can, in fact, be quite profound. I was recently brought to mind of perhaps its most loved episode, ‘Back to Reality’, in which all crew members hallucinate that, rather than being stranded in an over-sized tin can in the far reaches of the cosmos, they’ve been playing an extremely elaborate form of virtual reality computer game back home on Earth. Not only that but they’ve been playing it badly!

When confronted with what they believe to be reality, they don’t feel relieved nor delighted to have finally returned to Earth — that which they’ve been endlessly striving for —rather they become so depressed and disillusioned with each of their own personal realities that they decide to commit collective suicide. Thankfully, of course, the effects of the hallucinogen wear off just before they manage to do so.

Before journeying on family holiday to the rural wilderness of Dartmoor in the UK county of Devon, I’d been struck by two unrelated tweets which, together with the trolling of female journalists following Caroline Criado-Perez’s successful campaign to install the image of a woman — author Jane Austen — on the Bank of England’s ten pound note, pricked my, until then, unbridled belief in Twitter as a universally good thing.

The first missive — the exact 140 characters of which escape me now — suggested a futility in filling your Twitter feed with the musings of those who share your outlook on life. ‘Does it not somewhat narrow your horizons?’ the tweet suggested. ‘Does it not render Twitter nothing more than an enormous echo chamber?’

The second tweet opined that perhaps for most of us Twitter is tantamount to screaming into an empty pint glass, not only for those sexists venting their fury at successful, unobtainable women but also for those attempting to be creative, share knowledge or add to humanity’s collective understanding (this is a lot to cram into two tweets I grant you but the implication was clear).

After all, the intellectual rigour and wit of Oscar Wilde at his pithiest could easily be lost to the ether were he followed solely by Jedward. More tragically, were he to forget to append the #justsaying hashtag.

These tweets and the cacophony of horrific abuse re-tweeted by the female journalists and writers I follow triggered in me a long unconscious thought: ‘Am I really making any contribution to universal understanding through my tweets or merely adding to the incessant din? Am I just subconsciously patting myself on the back from within my own tiny cyber-clique? Am I, like the worst of the trolls, attempting in vain to dissuade the fear of my own infinite insignificance?’

What a wonderful feeling it was to spend a prolonged period of time without tweeting. Living life, loving my wife, playing with my child, joking with family friends and experiencing the simple pleasures of the countryside in the summertime.

A trip to the zoo, hopping over stepping stones in the river Dart, making sandcastles for the boys, cooking pancakes for breakfast, cricket in the garden and talking. Talking to real, live people…in a room…in a cottage…in the middle of nowhere.

For a while, I thought I’d had an epiphany. I could just forget about writing anything ever again, forget reading, never post another puerile tweet for the rest of my days. Live! Live in tactile reality apart from the digital dissonance of the online community. I could do it. Of course I could do it! I’d gone 14 days, why not 140? Why not forever!?

Those first few tweets on my return from holiday were painful. I detested myself even as I tapped the areas of my phone screen designed to look like keys on a keyboard. In the halcyon Neverland of a summer holiday it was easy to resist the caterwauling. In the monotonous mangle of the daily commute it was impossible to ignore.

I’m unable to quit Twitter, I realise this now. Not only do I have an inherent need to express my opinions, hopefully in a creative and informative way, but I also feel it’s a duty to do so as a human being. To somehow, in some small way at least, attempt to add value, even if it blurs the lines between my ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ reality; even if, ultimately, my thoughts (hopefully not screamed) travel no further than the bottom of the empty pint glass.

The alternative is to leave Twitter to the ignorant — not an option based on the abhorrent sexism currently evident across the site — and therefore admit a total defeat. I suppose, in a manner of speaking, to be a Twitter quitter is to turn ones back on society itself and I, for one, am not ready to indulge in so morose an act as that very nearly undertaken by the crew of Red Dwarf.

Twitter, like Red Dwarf, is for idiots! Except,in its finer moments, it isn’t really for idiots at all.

"A Republican walks into a pub..." - Humour and the new Royal arrival

Should we first turn to humour in the fight against public outpourings of emotion?

Throughout the surreal build up to the birth of Prince George of Cambridge I posted a series of silly tweets imagining the new heir to the British throne’s imminent arrival as that of a hotly anticipated studio album from a popular recording artist.

How we laughed… @jockyblue82 twitter feed 19th July 2013

I was trying to be funny but also highlight how the global media’s sinister clamour for any titbit of news turned a yet to be born human being into some sort of marketable product, the way a major record company will leak information in dribs and drabs, exploiting art to the point of undermining it in the hope of maximising the ‘buzz’.

It was my way of coping with the frustration at Britain’s ongoing adoration for the institution of monarchy, so totally and completely at odds to my own ideals that I want to scream defiantly into my cup of tea. As those around me debated appropriate names for the privileged sprog, it took great resolve to prevent myself from snapping like Michael Douglas’ character in the film ‘Falling Down’.

Those tweets were a puerile way of dealing with my own anger I’ll admit but then better than the alternative. For nothing has left me more moribund this week than the cawing Republicans, as equally and effortlessly dull as the servile ‘cootchy, cootchy cooing’ Royalists.

Sometimes a point of disagreement is so fundamental that it’s hopeless debating it. Like negotiating with terrorists or arguing the finer points of immigration law with a member of the English Defence League, you simply risk adding fuel to the fire.

Thankfully, however, there is refuge from the maelstrom and it can be found in that other defining British character trait: when all else fails and the tide of public emotion seems to have unequivocally burst over the sea wall of sanity, we at least have our sense of humour to fall back on.

By way of example, The Guardian newspaper’s temporary “Republican?” setting — hiding all coverage of the Royal baby from its website — was an excellently tongue-in-cheek admission of opposition, yet perhaps this sheltering in the darkly comic was best displayed by BBC reporter Simon McCoy, whose evident frustration at being forced to report relentlessly on nothing at all manifested itself in this wonderfully self-sacrificial piece from outside the Lindo Wing of London’s St Mary’s Hospital.

As McCoy dead pans his “none of it news” quip he is at once part of, and in on, the joke, with an acceptance of absurdity that borders on the epiphanic. Yet it’s true, isn’t it, that when we laugh — and McCoy’s report was certainly very funny — our minds are far more open to new possibilities, responsive to new ideas?

I’m not suggesting this was the reporter’s attempt to douse a burning desire for regicide, thus installing a new British Republic in the process, but it did have a certain power in emanating from the ‘belly of the beast’ as it were.

Of course, there was plenty more straightforward anti-royalist rhetoric published in the run up to the birth, yet, when in the eye of the storm, I wonder if it’s productive to stand quite so affronted, quoting the total figure of babies born into poverty in a desperate attempt to arrest attention from the main event?

We need to be more cunning than that, more Machiavellian perhaps? For in Machiavelli’s most famous work we learn how, to retain power, we must carefully maintain the sociopolitical institutions to which the people are accustomed. Or at least appear to.

It’s time we naysayers used humour as a tool to challenge and subvert the dominant contemporary norms. Perhaps if you can appear to be ploughing the same furrow of popular opinion whilst occasionally sowing the odd seed of doubt, you’re far more likely to make people think twice.

Humour is adept at conveying a subtlety otherwise out of reach. It is a means to an end as well as an end in and of itself.

For Republican’s seeking to undermine the sycophancy currently surrounding them, it is important not to forget the solace to be found in a laugh. And about that I am deadly serious.

"It isn't hard to do..."

Fransico Goya's "Witches Sabbath"

What if there really was no religion? Would we gain a new level of understanding or all go to hell in a handcart?

‘Imagine’ by John Lennon is one of the 'go-to' songs for those wishing to convey a message of world peace. You can hear it as the backdrop to ceremonial occasions the world over, it’s ever present, becoming almost as ubiquitous as the releasing of a white dove.

It's a little strange given that it asks us to imagine a world with no religion. How many heads of state and other notable dignitaries have unconsciously endorsed the striking of religion from our lives?

But what if we did live in a religion free world? Many would think us destined to descend into an irreversible chaos.

One of the most influential books I read whilst at school was "Introducing Marxism: A Graphic Guide". It was probably my first step towards political awareness (ably assisted by cartoon illustrations).

I remember an early chapter on the symbiotic relationship of the ruling class and religious belief. How Marx believed religion, particularly the fear of God, was a bourgeois tool with which to control the populous and maintain a stranglehold on power.

By instilling the belief that reward would come only in death, and only to those who had lived by the ethical code of a religious doctrine, the elite could quash the desire for rebellion in the working class, rendering the populous placid, docile and compliant to the whims of the bourgeoisie.

As Marx himself put it, "Religion is the opium of the people".

Nothing I have read before or since has been so damaging to my personal belief in the divine and although I can appreciate the many merits of religious community, the premise on which they are founded has long been beyond my acceptance.

On the contrary, the French philosopher of the Enlightenment period, Voltaire, argues that if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him, that people need to believe in a higher power for comfort, to give their lives meaning, to rationalise or form a narrative of why things are.

But wouldn't it be nice to think that humans could make do without? Could accept this finite lifetime for all its natural beauty and absurdity, to be moral, ethical and just without the dangling carrot of a heavenly reward or the looming stick of a hellish comeuppance?

Biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal certainly thinks so, suggesting most of northern Europe, where the vast majority of people are now non-religious, is currently undergoing a form of organic social experiment to see whether a society in which religion isn't the dominant force can still remain a moral one.

de Waal refutes what, he suggests, is the oft held belief that religion was the birth of moral behaviour, claiming that religious morality was somewhat 'tacked on' to pre-existing moral codes, perhaps to "sway morality in a direction that we might prefer".

It does seem to chime with Marx's idea of religion as a primary means to control, and certainly the proliferation of secular societies and charities aiming to better humanity's plight suggests the desire to 'do good' doesn't solely rely on a religious belief.

Morality covered then, but what of the other great pillar of religious purpose - meaning?

Whilst at university in 2001, I remember sitting down with a friend and watching the Sam Mendes film American Beauty on VHS, borrowed from the campus library. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle aged, middle class man fed up with modern life.

By quitting his insufferable job, taking up a strict fitness regime, smoking marijuana, buying a fast car and listening to loud rock music, he begins to free himself from the prison of his own disillusionment. A mid-life crisis it may be but by the end of the film his pursuit of happiness seems, almost by happenstance, to have reached an end. In fact, the point is, it wasn't really a 'pursuit' at all. More accurately, he has come to an acceptance of his own existence...

It's a sentiment easy to mock, yet another article, again from the endlessly excellent BigThink website, takes up this idea in the context of the Samuel Beckett play 'Waiting for Godot'...

"Like most postmodern literature it’s unclear what, exactly, Waiting for Godot is about. But that’s the point. You create meaning for yourself ... In other words, we’re spending our lives searching for meaning – waiting for our Godot – and failing. The problem, paradoxically, is just that: we’re searching....we know that the search for happiness and meaning is self-defeating: if you’re looking for either, you’ve already failed."

Perhaps one day we'll live in a global society where morality and meaning are intrinsically woven into the very fabric of our existence, hardwired into the minutiae of our everyday lives without us having to seek the approval of a higher being or the validation of a higher reason.

It may seem twee, but there is surely enough beauty and wonder in even the most seemingly insignificant aspect of existence to make us grateful for every single moment of our "stupid, little" lives.

At the end of American Beauty, Lester is somewhat flippantly asked "How are you?". Perhaps we too will be able to pause for a moment, consider the reality of the question and answer, truthfully, "I feel great".

"The folkish summer romance" - Or how Andy Murray conquered the All England Club

yvettemn via flickr

This year's Wimbledon was a heady festival of tennis in which Andy Murray not only conquered his opponents but also the quintessential Englishness of the All England Club.

Of all the sports writing I've devoured since Andy Murray's triumph at Wimbledon, Barney Ronay's article in The Guardian has perhaps best encapsulated the giddy height of his accomplishment...

"It is a genuinely gold-standard achievement for the man from Dunblane, given weight not just by the burden of history and the folkish annual summer romance of Wimbledon itself, but by the fact he is competing in one of the great periods of elite men's tennis."

Indeed, Murray has won the most coveted prize in tennis at a time when, as Billie Jean King recently put it, the sport boasts possibly the four greatest players ever to grace the game - Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray himself.

Yet, despite this undoubtedly remarkable feat of sporting excellence, it is the reference to a 'folkish summer romance' I find particularly interesting.

For isn't it true that the annual fortnight of lawn tennis at the All England Club brings with it a very peculiar strain of English behaviour? It cultivates a quasi-religious fervour in those who have barely a passing interest in tennis for the remaining 50 weeks of the year. 

On the eve of the final they find themselves inexplicably queuing overnight, not for tickets, but for the chance to perch on a proximitous patch of grass, officially called the Aorangi Terrace but also taking on the mythical monikers of Henman Hill or Murray Mound (I prefer to call it Bates' Barrow, a tongue in cheek reminder of the desperate era when Jeremy Bates was our great British white hope - Bates never progressed passed round 4).

So why this bizarre form of mass hysteria?

In clement weather the All England Club takes on a guise of the ultimate garden party, with those lucky enough to attend initiated into an intimate other-world, replete with sporting colossi and celebrity glamour but also stamped with Royal approval. It symbolises a very English sense of propriety and privilege, the grounds dressed in politely disarming whites and greens but also purple - the colour of Royalty.

For so many in the middle class majority, it seems Wimbledon allows them to transcend the divide between their own social status and that of the elite.

As much as I love the BBC, it portrays and fuels this same self-aggrandisement delivering a relentlessly gushing celebrity sycophancy, punctuating the pauses in play with shots of the rich and famous.

It's part of a somewhat callous mystique that surrounds Wimbledon, pervading the general discourse continually. You can hear it when your mother calls the evening after the final, conversation momentarily happening upon the sporting prowess on display before quickly turning to an in-depth sartorial analysis of those in the Royal Box.

It makes its voice heard again when 'Beeb' presenter John Inverdale remarks on ladies champion Marion Bartoli not being the best 'looker'!

It veritably screams at you when, following Murray's final victory, the headline on the front cover of the Daily Mail reads not "Champion" nor "He's done it!" nor even a histrionic "Our hero" but instead opts for the following... "Now it'll be arise Sir Andy". How galling that potentially being bestowed a Queen's Honour is given more import than the skillful artistry of the sporting achievement itself?

Yet, even though I suspect he would accept such an honour gracefully and is certainly happy to channel the heady energy of the Centre Court crowd to his own advantage in a match, what makes Andy Murray such a fascinating character is that he always appears one step removed from the madness around him.

Of course, the clambering English public disliked this fact initially, they want to submerge him in all that Wimbledon represents to them, they want him to get recklessly caught up in the hazy summer vibe, to ultimately validate their own sense of occasion.

Indeed Murray's tears after last year's final loss to Federer temporarily gave them the chink in the armour they craved. Suddenly the relationship between player and public thawed. However, that outpouring of emotion was momentary, no longer relevant after the claiming of the US Open confirmed that Murray's career need not be defined by Wimbledon alone.

To Murray's credit he seems aware of the ongoing circus surrounding him, batting away the wild interview questions with a disregarding pragmatism. Some still choose to interpret this as a stereotypical dourness but it's nothing of the sort. He simply won't play their games nor pander to their pandemonium.

It is that feature of his personality which allows him to shed the burden and, despite overwhelming pressure and expectation, find a way to win.

For Murray is, undoubtedly, a winner, and though in many ways the English love him for ending 77 year wait for a British male champion, there's a small but significantly dark corner of their collective psyche that resents him a little too. It suggests that he'll always be somewhat of an outsider. After all, winning just isn't English is it? Then again, neither is Andy Murray.

Empathy, empathy! They've all got it empathy

I'd champion an ability to empathise over most human traits but in some circumstances can it actually hinder the progress of humanity?

Previously, I've waxed lyrical on the readiness of celebrities to associate with charity but on reading this article last week, I've finally been able to put my finger on a different aspect of prime-time fundraising television that has always disconcerted me...

"The concept of empathy—putting yourself into another's shoes—has fuelled political and moral thinking of late, inspiring presidents and academics to hail the feeling of another's pain as necessary to curing the world's ills. Crucial to empathy is "victim identification", by which we come to know the human face of tragedy. As a result, we are far more likely to give donations to a person whose picture we see on the news than seek solutions for systemic problems, such as underfunded hospitals, that affect the lives of far more individuals. In other words, empathy can result in the sacrificing of the many for the one." - The Case Against Empathy - bigthink.com

Children In Need and Comic Relief clearly fall into this trap because of their desire to show the "human face of tragedy" so forcefully. In doing so they miss a key facet of what should be the overarching question i.e. 'why have the political powers responsible not addressed the issues that led to this suffering?'

I always suspect the organisers (and the public for that matter) are far more concerned with which BBC newsreaders will be wheeled out for the annual dance routine. At least Bob Geldof physically and metaphorically loomed over Thatcher in the run up to Live Aid. He wasn't just looking on dutifully as an African child showed him round their woefully inadequate home. He wasn't just yelling "Give us yer money!"

It's this lack of focus on the 'systemic problems' that I can't abide. After all, isn't prevention always better than cure?

Children in Need alone raised over £26million in 2012. A fantastic sum. However, put into context (and this is where I wave the red flag), UK bankers bonuses alone totalled £13billion in 2012. That's more than the total GDP of Equitorial Guinea; a country, lest we forget, crippled by the cost of its debts to us in the developed world.

"Even though Africa has only 5 percent of the developing world's income, it carries about two thirds of the debt - over $300 billion. Because of this, the average African country spends three times more of its scarce resources on repaying debt than it does on providing basic services" - allAfrica.com

The funds and awareness that charities raise for their cause are extremely important; the good will and kindness of those that work for a charity is to be commended, yet, however good the intention, when we ourselves donate, I wonder whether we aren't just letting our politicians off the hook? Whether we aren't just perpetuating the status quo (and I don't just mean prolonging the careers of Francis Rossi and Rick Parfit. I've moved on from Live Aid now)?

Contrary to the article I quote here, I don't really think that empathy is the problem - you can't have enough of that in society to my mind - rather it's the action this "victim identification" catalyses.

It's an objective and politically engaged response we need rather than a guilt relieving, emotive knee-jerk reaction. After all, however much we raise financially, we won't cure the problem. 12 months later we'll see the same upsetting images on our TV screens again.

Next year I suggest that, instead of Bill Turnbull and Charlie Stayt performing Abba for our amusement, we should demand David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the rest of the House of Commons take their place. We might suddenly find there's a permanent change for the better. A change that money can't buy.

"We Know What We Are..."

I love football. I've always loved it and I always will. Despite wrangling with my conscience in the very pages of this blog, it's a fact I've come to accept.

In my adult years, as I've begun to embrace the anti-masculinity of cultural icons such as Bowie and The Smiths and developed a fulsome affinity with the politics of the left, I've found my infatuation with football - synonymous with male bravado and extreme financial speculation - somewhat troublesome.

My fandom for Chelsea, a club dependent on the oil-money of an enigmatic Russian Oligarch, only adds to the love/hate dichotomy battling away in the midfield engine room of my conscience.

And yet, from out of this dizzying nausea, I now find myself reaching a formative 'age of reason'. Somewhat unexpectedly, Chelsea's Europa League triumph has provided the keystone bridging the turbulent sea of uncertainty.

As the trophy was jointly raised by Frank Lampard and John Terry, I came to recognise them as yin and yang respectively - Lampard the consummate professional, who in a difficult season, has proved his talent and dignity amidst the furore over his lapsing contract, and John Terry, the self important, delusional captain, declining further in skill and self-awareness the longer his influence within the walls of Stamford Bridge remains.

Terry and Lampard, once peas from the same pod, now as polar opposites.

Yet, it's not just watching my football club that inspires this conflicting thought process. To return to The Smiths, Morrissey himself recently posed for a picture with Mel Gibson (and Tom Jones somewhat bizarrely) which was published on an authoritative fan site. That it was Gibson, a man recently lambasted for controversial statements of an anti-Semitic nature, only lends more weight to the critical voices chastening Morrissey's own plethora of concerning comments on race and immigration.

Can the same man who showed such empathy towards the oppressed in his art really turn out to be a racist? With those spectacles!? With that quiff!? Or is this a man who's made opposition to established ideals such a lifelong mission that he can't help but be contrary in all matters? More significantly, if we air on the side of the former, does it mark as null and void all the positive traits he represented during his mid-eighties alliance with Johnny Marr?

Perhaps a question for another day but this moral quandary emphasises the fact we don't enter this world fully formed, physically, emotionally or intellectually. One of the great joy's of life is seeking a greater knowledge of the world and oneself through experience, learning and education. As a result our lives are messy; a hotch-potch of sometimes counter-intuitive beliefs, our whole concept of right and wrong balancing on a knife's edge.

An admittedly trite example: I'd never think of myself as inherently conservative, yet - as inversion of the strict rules on dress enforced by the All England Lawn Tennis Club - I could never bring myself to play football in anything other than a predominantly black coloured boot. Ridiculous I know but my father's no-nonsense approach to sporting apparel has scorched itself into my psyche more indelibly than the image of the sun on my retina were I to aim my vision directly at its rays.

Similarly, my undying affiliation for the footballing totem of south London establishment will always grate against the more latterly formed facets of my personality. Yet, you know what? I think that's probably okay isn't it? After all, supporting Chelsea isn't a vote for the Tories and it isn't an endorsement of super-capitalism either.

If I was to support a football club based on political ideals, I suppose it might be Liverpool, borne of the north-western socialism embodied by the figurehead of Bill Shankly, their fans victimised by establishment cover ups in the wake of this country's greatest footballing tragedy. Yet they, as with that other great sporting working-class signifier Manchester United, are also now owned by multi-millionaire businessmen.

Regardless, I couldn't possibly support a team that isn't borne of my south London roots, that would quite obviously be absurd, as my dear old Dad would no doubt attest.

Perhaps I should form an allegiance to AFC Wimbledon, owned by their fans, who take an equal financial responsibility for the state of their club and are impassioned by the betrayal of their former team upping sticks to Milton Keynes? 

Yet, could I really bring myself to do that?! It would undermine all my history with the club I've supported since I was a boy. My first game a 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace in 1991, the FA Cup triumph in 1997 when I was 15 years old and all the ups and downs that followed would be as good as erased from existence? No.

I realise that chasing these arguments round and round in my head is as pointless as were I that character in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', attempting to choose between joining the 'People's Front of Judea' or the 'Judean People's Front' (as it happens, I'd probably plump for the 'Popular People's Front' - I've never liked crowds). In fact, the important thing is I haven't chosen at all! Couldn't choose. No more than I could choose my parents or the place I was born.

As the traditional po-going of the victorious team begun in the Amsterdam Arena on Wednesday night and the blue and white ticker tape fell from the skies to collect at the bottom of that inverted traffic cone of a cup, I put an end to these futile attempts to square all the circles.

As with any human being, group of individuals, sector of society, rock band, pop icon etc.; a football club - indeed a sport - is never perfect; they/it will always let you down. In essence, in the forming of your own identity you can only ever pick up on the good stuff and run with it...

In that case I suppose I am a proud Chelsea fan and, perhaps, for the first time in my living memory, there is a suggested positive identity forming around the boys in blue - one of dogged determination and willpower residing despite the obscene monetary and moral maze in which Chelsea perennially find themselves lost.

It pleases me as much as Super Frank's record breaking 203 goal haul and I'll squeeze every ounce of pleasure I can from the claiming of another trophy in that image. That the winning goal in the final came from Ivanovic, a shy, retiring, unsung hero of the team is a bonus. John Terry's costume changes will be left to evaporate in the mists of my mind.

Don't let the debate leave you feeling MT

Frankly, I'm not writing this for you, I'm writing this for me. I have to write it; a final cathartic, unburdening, underlining and, hopefully, ending of the obsession I have been indulging since the news of her passing.

Like you, I've read just about enough commentary on the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to last a lifetime. I completely understand if you turn away from this blog and head back to your facebook profiles, twitter feeds and instagram filters.

Yet those complaining of the blanket coverage, or youngsters understandably bewildered by the fuss, perhaps don't realise that Thatcherism is still the pivotal political ideal around which British society revolves today.

Even Tony Blair, the man who could have been our hero, was in thrall to many elements of Thatcherism, and Cameron, although careful to initially portray himself as a new kind of 'compassionate' Conservative, has come to demonstrate that, on the contrary, he holds dear to his heart (stony and cold) many of the harshest tropes of the Thatcher government. The current battle over history's perception of her legacy therefore feels utterly vital to our future.

I can't rejoice at Thatcher's death, I couldn't rejoice at anyone's death. That would display the kind of reactionary behaviour I so often criticise of those on the right. I was only a child when she was in power and my view of her time at the sharp end of politics is appropriated from all I have read since I left school not through any personal experience.

As rightly pointed out to me, my reaction to Margaret Thatcher's death can therefore only be cerebral, never visceral. My family and I, nor the community we lived in, were affected by the closure of the mines, we lived in the environs of London, the one place in the UK that didn't suffer from Thatcher's iron will. Perhaps I, like many of those damning the revellers, have no right to do so from this detached position?

And yet, her passing, and the following struggle to define her time as leader, feels like an opportunity for the left to rise above the caterwauling and demonstrate to those on the right a compassion they so often lack. To lead by example. The idea excites me because this feels like an opportunity to reassess what we as Britons want from our government, what we want the country we live in to really be like.

After the Olympics and, more pointedly, the Paralympics, I hoped that the wonderful compassion and inclusivity of those summer months, ripe with a public booing of George Osborne, may have sown a seed in the conscience of the majority of Britons, that they might see the possibility of another way - the current debate feels like the possibility is being tested.

Of course, in reality, the real test will only come at the General Election in 2015 but it's now that the seas of change have to swell. It may well be that Thatcherism has indeed indelibly inked itself into the tapestry of British society never to be erased, yet the notable dissenting voice this past week - however distasteful - suggests that Thatcher's legacy will remain a divisive one.

Perhaps the traits I cling to most - compassion, empathy, care for the most vulnerable in our society, the repulsion of greed and the fostering of equal opportunity haven't, in fact, died along with the leader who's actions so fiercely sought to eradicate them?

I hope those who voted for Thatcher - elected her three times no less - did so because they were somehow blinded to the alternative, that they felt they had no choice. As a socialist I choose to believe this is true. In fact I have to. The death of Margaret Thatcher is a chance to raise the spectre of that choice once more.