What would Mrs T make of area now?

IT’S been quite a week in politics, with the death of Baroness Thatcher filling newspapers and TV schedules across the globe for days on end.

Most fascinating of all for us was Lady T’s close links to Worcester and Malvern because of her extraordinary friendship with confidante and personal assistant Cynthia Crawford, who is based in the city.

As the hours passed following the Iron Lady’s passing on Monday, one revelation followed another, from the shopping trips in Worcester to her love of the cathedral, visits to New Road and relaxing days out at the Royal Worcester Porcelain site.

Whatever your view on this incredible figure, nobody can deny the fascination with one of the world’s most influential leaders in the western world over the last century.

But with her close links to Worcestershire, one wonders what Lady Thatcher would make of the county today – and what she’d have changed, given the chance?

•  A privatised Hive, floated on the stock market, with none of this wishy-washy public sector dealing, and it would definitely be royal blue rather than a liberal yellow.
•  The Tory Party conference would take place in Malvern every year, on a green field next to the Cottage in the Wood hotel, so she can get a good view of the ‘wets’ who have taken over her party from her favourite window.
•  ‘A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure’. Remember the famous apocryphal quote often attributed to her?Why not demolish Worcester’s bland bus station and build a whopping big enterprise zone there.
•  Every hairdressing salon in Worcester would get new hand mirrors, including Classic Cuts, in Friar Street, her favourite haunt for a trim, because after all, the lady is not for turning.

•  LABOUR councillors in Worcester sealed a deal to invite shadow environment minister Mary Creagh to the city on Monday to launch their local election campaign.

Under the grand idea, she’d turn up in a ‘battle bus’ by Worcester Cathedral to highlight cuts Tory controlled County Hall has made to public transport in Worcestershire.

But after the former premier’s passing the lefties (those sensible ones who didn’t perversely gloat about it anyway) at Labour HQ in London scrapped the entire thing around an hour before it was due to get under way as a sign of respect.

Even after death, Lady T managed to royally screw up the Labour Party.

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