As the 40th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s first election looms, we met Gordon Ottershaw (49) of Wetherby who maintains Thatcher stole his ability to be on the right side of the class struggle.
Gordon runs a business consultancy and earns over £100,000 a year, a figure he reckons to be close to what his father earned in a decade.
“It’s not right” he said gesturing at his stone built 14 bedroom house and one of his Audis. “This shouldn’t be my beautiful house and my large automobile. This isn’t stuff my poor old Grandad had to sweat to buy me. By rights I should be living in a back to back in Greaseborough with a sturdy three speed bike to get to and from the pit. My Dad died of emphysema at 47 and my grandad coughed up his last bit of soot-blackened lung at 45.”
“I’m 49 and there’s nowt wrong with me. Except for a slightly knackered septum from the cocaine binges of the mid 1990s. It’s Thatcher’s fault. She closed the mines and took away my chance to watch a canary die.”
“If I go down my Dad’s old local the Eric Olthwaite in Mexborough, the drinkers all shun me, especially if I ask if they’ve got a decent raspberry wit beer. That evil hatchet face cow robbed me of my own culture.”
“I’ll never forgive Thatcher for reducing me to delivering seminars like my top selling ‘How to get the most out of your little cogs of big business- a guide to Human Resources’ for 1500 quid a day.”
“Still, I like to do a bit of honest graft myself when I can. Two and a half acres of lawn doesn’t mow itself.” Gordon said, taking the cover off a medium sized tractor mower.
“Bloody Thatcher. Still hate her.”
