Is the worm turning?

I've always thought that the UK has been a puppet/client state of the US, since 1945. However, according to Seymour Hersh, David Miliband and the head of MI6 visited Syria without permission from the Americans. This really is a shocker. Reagan of course invaded the former British territory of Grenada without mentioning it to his friend Thatcher, but the British haven't done anything without clearing it with Uncle Sam since Suez, which was a disaster.

The way Hersh tells it, Cheney was furious. How dare the Brits use their initiative?

Tory Tory Tory

I was going to rant about Thatcher today, after watching last night's BBC2 dramatisation of her last days in power. All the old boiling, screaming hatred came back like an old friend, to which was added the impotent fury caused by the fact that even the party that's meant to be on our side was comprehensively captured by her manichaean attitudes towards race, diplomacy, foreigners, the poor, the weak etc. etc. etc.

But I won't. Cynical Ben's already done it beautifully.

There was one distracting thing about this adaptation - I was sometimes so captivated by the quality of the actors and their uncanny accuracy (Ken Clarke!) that I forgot to enjoy the misery suffered by the actual politicians. Lindsey Duncan was brilliant but couldn't bring herself to be quite as evil and unsympathetic as Thatcher really was. I'm not a vindictive man, but if there's any justice, Thatcher will spend her declining years at the back of a queue for bread, unable to complain because she's lost the power of speech. For starters.