So farewell then Margaret Thatcher.

On the morning of 8 April the former Conservative leader, who gave her name to an ideology of self-serving individualism, passed away peacefully in the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly.

Where was I when Thatcher threw a seven? Well, I was at work writing for a newswire when the story broke; rather more concerned with the movements of the dollar and the yen than the passing of the left’s great Bête noire. I got a call from a friend who was leaving work to get drunk and never have I felt more like cheerfully throwing myself off the wagon than when he told me the news.

The media reaction was predictable. Sombre respectful tones tempered with some footage of the poll tax riots or Brixton.

Earlier this month and for the last time, I trained at the Lord Clyde Boxing Gym in Deptford. When it closed, I lost one of my favourite places in all of London.

The gym at the ‘Clyde shut its doors after a protracted legal battle that had initially seen the plucky little boozer successfully challenge the developers’ plans. Landlord Rory McInally brought together a wide coalition to oppose the move.

Deptford High Street. Is there anywhere like it? Well, no but it would be disingenuous not to mention that each of the many real gems of the city will try to lay boastful claim to quintessential London authenticity and good luck to them.

I’ve worked in suits and workclothes all over the length and breadth of this fine city and nowhere I’ve lived; from Hammersmith to Hackney nor Finsbury Park to Forest Hill, has that London particularity of Deptford.

The decision on whether or not Lewisham A & E and maternity units will be kept open will be made by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt on 1 February.

Next weekend (26 January), the people of Lewisham will march again in protest at threats to essential services in their community.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to many readers of this website that vehement opposition to the  closure of local A & E and maternity units would be the preferred editorial line.

This article was written for Sabotage Times

The first issue on any IRA agenda, according to the playwright Brendan Behan, will always be 'the split'.

Behan was in a better position than most to comment on the shortcomings of that organisation; he'd served three years in a Borstal for his part in a botched IRA bomb plot to sabotage Liverpool docks in 1939.

The 'split' remains a defining feature in the ongoing evolution of the Irish Republican movement.

Identity: powerful word that.

Put 'cultural' in front of it or 'crisis' after it and you open up a whole dashboard of hot-button issues.

It's ineffable, elastic and slippery as a tickled trout the minute you start trying to define it.

It's also one of those things about which people are irrationally filled with pride.

So farewell then 2012.

It was -- yet again (and rather disappointingly it must be said) -- the year when the world didn't end.  As doomsday scenarios go, the Mayan calendar couldn't match the Millennium Bug for sheer hysteria but it still had that 'trap 6' kind of likely long-shot feel about it; like it could come up the inside track and blindside us all with a virtuoso display in apocalypse. But sadly for the Mayan Cassandras, it was not to be. Never mind, it's not the end of the....

Gaol, Jail, prison, nick, chokey, the stripey hole...call it what it you want but its over-use in Britain detracts hugely from the nation's traditional self-image as a land of tolerance and forebearance.

It's one of those hot-button issues which seems to unite the foaming-at-the-mouth, hang'em and flog'em types with apparently liberal minded folk who feel they've got something (usually property) to protect.

Earlier today, the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, said he would dissolve the Diet (lower house of Japanese Parliament) this Friday;  paving the way for a general election as early as 16 December.

This election could potentially lead to Japan's 7th change of Prime Minister since 2000 and the foreign exchange markets didn't like it one little bit so traders from Boston, Mass to Boston, Lincs.  dumped the yen in serious numbers.

It's been two years since the Rusty Wire Service first posted. In that time, there have been reports from riots and protests; prison life has been chronicled and police station procedure has come under scrutiny and for good measure I have tried -- whenever I could -- to draw a bead on the venality of the dead-eyed consumer society in which we live and to ponder identity and social justice refracted through the often unreliable lenses of race and culture.
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