The first, and possibly last, of a regular round up of some of the interesting articles I’ve read today. At the moment, I seem to be reading a lot of these opinion pages things on the Independent/Guardian websites, and as I want to write more now, I may as well pass judgement on them.

Thatcher unsurprisingly still dominates. I wonder if Charlie Brooker’s blogs are worth regular reading, the latest being a more than amusing, satirical take on the Thatcher death fallout, including one of the lamest/funniest jokes you’ll see today, in reference to Harry Styles tweet about her:

“Incidentally, Maggie herself was a huge One Direction fan – by which I mean she wasn’t for turning!!!!”

But in amongst the hilarity, there is a serious point, namely the irony of people voicing their outrage at the ‘Ding Dong’ campaign actually brought it to mass attention.

Meanwhile, this article attempts to restrain the criticism by pointing out that, although the major player, a lot of the bad things from the 1980s aren’t all at the feet of Thatcher, touching upon a point I made in a unpublished article last week - simply, would any other Tory have done things any differently?

“Thatcherism was a perfectly plausible – and yes, disastrous – consequence of a crisis that had to be resolved on somebody’s terms. It was not the personal crusade of a doggedly determined woman.”

Essentially, the argument is against the classical ‘great man(/woman)’ school of thought. It makes me feel like I’m in uni again!

I won’t go into any detail on this final one, but I also read an article about the direction the Hungarian Prime Minster Viktor Orbán is taking his country, which is quite interesting, and probably quite worrying too. Also had a little look on some of the background on it too - I may write something more on this at the some. A couple of years ago I did a blog on Eastern European news, and this sort of stuff was very interesting at the time, just after finishing uni. That interest, at least for the moment, is back.

And finally, whilst I’ve been writing this blog, the news from Boston has been coming through. Horrid. Absolutely horrid. My thoughts are obviously with everyone there. But I can’t help but think that the London Marathon is next weekend, and so naturally I’m anxious for all the runners there, especially giving my work at Against Breast Cancer - I might even be there with them on Sunday.

I see I’ve been neglecting this blog again recently. Feeling the journalistic spark light up again in the last few days, so it won’t be long before I fix that, hopefully.