Post Thatcher life and caramel sea salt sauce

Yesterday Margret Thatcher died.

This seems to have brought up a mixture of emotions in people and has shown a distinct divide in peoples ages, for it seems the younger generation don't know who she was. An article in a national news paper posted by an old friend on face book demonstrated this. People know that as a life has been lost, that a family is greiving, that they should feel the empathy of loss but when it comes to a woman who effected so many lives in this country in a non-to brilliant way, people are conflicted.

Margret Thatcher came to power in May 1979 now as i was only 1 years old at the time i can't begin to start spouting various different views on that particular moment in History because i quite understandably don't remember it.

However she remained in post until 1990 which means i have very real memories of life with her as Prime Minister in the mid to late 80's.

In the early 80's i was quite lucky my father was a policeman and my mother was a nurse, we lived in police owned housing amongst other policing families and i was very happy. I knew we were by no means well off but i also understood we weren't poor either. Having a policeman and a nurse as parents i never experienced the unemployment many families went through when Margret Thatcher sold off or shut down most of the British industries. I lived in a nice Surrey Village which was predominantly white and as such had no experience of the racial tensions in the larger cities. The only memories of unrest and riots i have, are of images i saw on T.V. and I was to little to understand the Falklands war etc.

However by 1987 my idyllic little life (as i saw it aged 9) was turned on it's head, no longer having working parents, no longer living in my comfortable 3 bed police estate house surrounded by like minded children in Surrey, I was living in the North of England and suddenly the realities of life were becoming apparent. Whether it was the move to a new area, the things I was now experiencing or the fact that i was getting older and just understood more I'm not sure, but i was defiantly aware that the things the government were doing were not there to help families like mine.

I can remember my Parents struggling to find the money for the day to day things and the anguish and arguments the implimention of the pole tax had on them, to this day one of biggest arguments i remember my parents having was over finding the money to pay the pole tax an argument that continued right up to the moment i watched my father hand over the cash.

But by 1990 even to a now 12 year old Girl it looked like she was on her way out, the Iraqi war loomed Sadam Hussein was the enemy. When she was replaced by John Major as far as i was was concerned nothing really changed, life was still difficult for any family who wasn't already very wealthy and the class divide seemed massive.

By 1994 when the Labour Party and Tony Blair came to power i was back living in the South of England i was in my year 11 at school and the future at last seemed bright, my mother was back in nursing and father having recovered from a Heart attack was back working too. The pole tax had been axed by John Major to the only just slightly better community charge which was per household not per adult and i like many people my age thought we could make a go of life.

So where are we now? did we learn from the experiences of earlier years? no I don't think we did, aged 34 i seem to have time travelled back to the 80's, we have a government who is out to look after like minded people, if you are already well off-you're fine, the government is making sure you keep your huge house, your massive incomes with your bonuses, your children can continue to go to their private schools with the opportunities you've come to expect when you fork out £1000's. They will enter the job market with ease because as my much missed dad used to say it's not what you know it's who you know. They will be able to afford a house as a first time buyer because mummy and daddy can lend them the cash to buy it, but what about normal people who's there to help us right now?

I have well educated friends, people who were told if they went to university they'd guarantee themselves good jobs-yet they're either unemployed due to redundancies and downsizing, have jobs well below what they are qualified for as it's the only work they can get or for the lucky few who do have a job in their chosen field -are crippled by student loan repayments.

You can't afford to buy a house any more but there is no available social housing, the benefit system which is suppose to look after us when we most need it isn't doing it's job, the whole establishment seems bias to one section of society and who are we told to blame for all of this? the government themselves oh god No, we are told to blame the poor!

I dread to think what is ahead for those leaving school this year, I hope they still have that cocky level of optimism that you have aged 17-18 where you think you can make a difference, that it will be different for you, because as of yet the reality of life hasn't come and kicked the shit out of you! I hope they do go on to make a difference, I hope they do have better opportunities, I hope that in history lessons they are taught about Margret Thatcher and that against all odds she became the first and so far only female Prime Minister. Most of all I hope they are  success for our sake-as this is the  generation that will be running the nursing home we end up in!

These are the things that I think about as I attempt to make salted caramel sauce, to go in the chocolate cupcakes i have made while my children are out exhausting their grandparents. I wonder or maybe that is worry about what our current government is doing, what will my sons be leaving school to do? how best can i help them be prepared for a world where greed and immorality is rewarded, but compassion and dedication to helping others is not (don't get me started on how under paid and mistreated i think nurses are, and my rant on the NHS is for another time)
How will i help my sons buy a home when i have no chance of buying one myself? i can only blindly soldier on working hard, giving my sons a work ethic and hope that one day this will pay off for them.

In the mean time-you may not be able to buy happiness but you can buy cupcakes and that is kind of the same thing (actualy i think that's bollocks beacause buying stuff would sure as hell mke me happier right now) unfortunately while doing all this thinking I've made toffee not caramel sauce so will have to start again.