A Very British Revolution

I have been enjoying very much the re-runs of Thatcher: A Very British Revolution each night on BBC2 this week (the last one is tonight). I missed it when shown the first time last year.

Having lived through the period, and perhaps not always taken full notice of what was happening, it has been fascinating to watch this open-minded account of her rise and fall, to see the archive news footage and to hear the reflections of the likes of Michael Heseltine, Norman Tebbit, Nigel Lawson, and especially her press secretary Bernard Ingham, personal assistant Cynthia Crawford and speech writer Michael Dobbs (who later wrote House of Cards). It is very even-handed, and all from the supposedly lefty-ridden BBC!

At the time, a lot of people in the circles I moved hated her apparent impassiveness over the communities her policies destroyed, but the series gives you a sneaking admiration for the woman in giving leadership and having some kind of vision of how the country should be run. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have something more like that now! I think she was undoubtedly right that the coal mines and the unions could not continue as they were, but I still think the privatisations a step too far (despite having profited from them).

Anyway, I’m not going to say more. If you want a review, I like Lucy Mangan’s in The Guardian. My own position is perhaps a little to the right of this, but not much.

Even better, the five-episode series is available for the next 11 months on iPlayer. It’s brilliant.

 

More from the IR Night Camera

A further compilation of video clips from the infra-red night camera (6 minutes)

Only one hedgehog this time: they seem to have abandoned us after the dry weather last month. However, the one that did appear put in a sterling performance trying to find biscuits it could smell but not reach.

Instead, we have been thinking up jumping and climbing and tricks for the field mice that live under the shed. I am fairly sure they are field mice and not house mice because they are lighter coloured underneath. We placed hedgehog biscuits on top of bricks and upturned plant pots so they had to climb, jump or run along a wooden ruler to pick up biscuits in their mouths and carry them away to safety.

This compilation is 6 minutes long. Some of the things in it (with timings):

• 0.00: mice climb and jump up to increasingly high bricks and plant pots; eventually they are too high for some mice to jump up.
• 1:20 the hedgehog appears and seems to be able to smell the hedgehog biscuits on the stool, but cannot reach them.
• 2:02: mouse cannot climb the stool.
• 2.35: “Black Kitty” shows interest but does not eat any biscuits.
• 3.00: mouse does not try to climb knotted string.
• 3.34: mouse picks up one biscuit and accidently kicks the other off the bricks.
• 3.38: robin.
• 4.51: mouse tries to jump across to bricks and misses.
• 5.40: mouse climbs bricks, walks along ruler and steals biscuit from snail (this is the clip used in the previous post “Snail Bogeys”).