I was going to make this [Margaret Thatcher] quote the motto of this blog, but it’s a good thing I didn’t, because a cursory bit of research reveals that the Iron Lady, for all of her cutlass-like wit and blithe willingness to offend liberal pieties, apparently never said any such thing.
No less than the ultra-liberal Guardian has been forced to conclude that it was, at best, apocryphal, though they make a point of speculating that it was the sort of thing that she “might well have blurted out.” So there.
Much like the veracity of the quote’s source, I don’t think it’s necessarily true, though I’ve long lost track of the days when, trapped at a bus stop or jammed into a crowded streetcar, I’ve heard Thatcher’s voice in my head, reminding me that it didn’t have to be like this...
