So the news this week, Margret Thatcher has passed away, our first and only female PM so far, and she has been (dis)honoured by the meteoric rise through the top 40 of the song 'ding dong the witch is dead' from The Wizard of Oz. Once again showing the power facebook groups can exert over the British music chart, previously groups on the social networking site have been formed to prevent another mediocre x-factor christmas number one for example.
Speaking very generally... everyone knows of the yellowbrick road, the ruby slippers, cowardly lion and that 'there's no place like home' in a similar way that everyone knows the name Margret Thatcher. Both the former and the latter are cultural monoliths, a part of our social and popular history, and it could be said that both have had positive and negative effects (I still have nightmares about flying monkeys).
The Wizard of Oz will be forever remastered from book to film to musical (wicked) spin off to film again (Oz the Great and Powerful), i'm sure i've skipped a couple of incarnations in there already, I can see it remaining relevant, popular and current for a long time to come, it is a good story after all. In a similar way that the politics and actions of Mrs Thatcher's government will resonate through modern politics for many many decades to come, the good and bad aspects of her achievements serving both as cautionary tales; the issue of poll tax for example, and as a role-model to follow as she showed women that the sky really is the limit.
