MAGGIE THATCHER – EPIC WIN!

(She'll be greeted at the Rearden metal gates by Airey, Augusto, Milton, and Ayn.)

She may have left her physical body but her gaseous essence still permeates this world as an omnipresent ideal, a rancid idea, the awful and only way of doing things (T.I.N.A. - There Is No Alternative). She is not dead and those celebrating the decommissioning of her corporeal form still live with the consequences of her spirit. To be honest, most of you dancing on her grave are probably possessed by her. You espouse her values, talking of the cure-all of complete privatisation and complaining about welfare scroungers. It's like being glad the Devil is dead while possessed by that very same Devil.

The Baroness' dark spell has you all enchanted. You can rejoice in the expiration of the source of that spell but that doesn't mean you are lifting the spell. Thatcher placed a black curse on all your heads and then she died peacefully in her sleep. Put simply, in terms we can all understand these days: Maggie Thatcher - Epic Win!

ROBO-RIDES

I preferred it back in the old days. You'd see some wonky lad and help him up a few steps, pretend you understood what he was saying and told him 'you're some character all together' and then you'd get the fuck out of there before he tried to make more conversation. You might raise some money for a Blue Peter appeal too, y'know, or buy a copy of Under the Eye of the Clock and put it on a prominent position on the bookshelf. You did your bit and that was all grand. I was comfortable with that but it's different now.

Have you seen the disabled recently? I was watching the Paralympics and they're all hydraulics and laser vision. They're like a bunch of superheroes. Terminators even. I think we've been helping this lot out a bit too much. I mean, why should we provide bus passes to people that can run faster than the bus? Enough is enough eh? Did you see Hawking at the opening ceremony? I was thinking, what if he teams up with the rest of the disabled and they invent a load of stuff that helps them teleport and communicate telepathically and shoot fireballs out their mouths and all that? Now, I'm not saying this is going to happen but just imagine if it did. Imagine if they used their powers to bully benefits out of the government. It's already started. Take that dodgy bunch that were parked outside the Dail during the week. It was like the Daleks. There'll be no money left for the rest of us if we let this continue.

As it is, the disabled are surpassing us. Soon it'll be them doling out the allowances and rounding us up and taking us to enjoy special activities. 'Oh you unfortunate creature, were you only born with normal fleshy boney legs and not bionic shiny chrome ones. Ah, here, get into the van and we'll take you to the zoo.' Soon it'll be us that'll be having trouble getting into the cinema and around the shops. They'll be leaping up and grabbing stuff off the top of super high shelves and we'll be left having to apply for special ladders.

Ayn Rand was right, it all started with the kneeling bus. Unlike in the good old days of 2000, the Sunday Independent was negligent in not having a pop at the disabled (a.k.a. the cyborgs of death) during the chilling display of power at the recent games. Whereas many look at the Paralympics and see humanity's triumph over adversity, what I see is a bunch of semi-human death-bots leaping high into the sky and zooming around tracks, saying, implicitly, by way of their actions, 'we're coming to get you norms!'

There is only one way to fight back against this impending subjugation and that is cutbacks. It's time for the government to stop capitulating. Let's cutback on the benefits awarded to these would be semi-prosthetic tyrants and put things back in our favour. If the disabled want something from us they can get it the old fashioned way, by getting on telly and making us feel awkward until we cough up whatever it is they need in the hopes they'll go away. That's the way it always was and the way it should be. Believe me, it's infinitely preferable to the threat of fireball blast from the gob.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't really mind all that much but have you noticed how some of them are a bit on the sexy side these days? That just makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't like being made uncomfortable. That's just wrong. Let's see how sexy they are after a few austere cutbacks eh? That'll show them. Fuckin Robo-rides.

Daphne

We used to keep a big cow in our yard called Daphne. I liked that cow a lot and used talk to her until the sun went down. My relationship with my father was difficult. He was ...distant. He'd just kind of stare at you and when you looked back at him he'd turn his eyes away with something you might mistake for disdain.

Anyway, one day I was in the yard talking to Daphne about Star Wars and my father appears at the kitchen window. "Get to bed, you're going to need your energy for your birthday tomorrow" he says, so I hop to it. "Oh boy, my birthday." The next day I get home from school to find my dad making a big old barbecue. The biggest barbecue I ever saw. Everyone was there, my cousins and uncles and aunts, and everyone from the co-op, all wearing huge dirty napkins around their necks and eating up. "Keep eatin' you guys, plenty to go 'round" my father roared as he deposited great racks of meaty rib and greasy hamburger onto everyone's plate. We ate everything. We ate everything right up and then, belly full, I scampered off to talk to Daphne about Tron but she wasn't in her part of the yard. "Where's Daphne papa?" I ask my old man and he looked at me, with something that might've been a sneer, ...but it was hard to tell, it always was hard to tell with him. "That cow?" he says, "oh, ...she got hit by a train."

It was a few years later that I moved to the city and discovered The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.