BC Pires

The Iron La­dy, Mar­garet Thatch­er, was buried on Wednes­day and may she rust in firetruck­ing peace, and may we hear no more about her. The first fe­male prime min­is­ter of Great Britain earned her place in his­to­ry by a com­bi­na­tion of of­fice and gen­der but, if she hasn't tak­en up too much of the world's at­ten­tion since croak­ing, she's cer­tain­ly had enough of mine. The last four "They Said What????" quotes on my Web site, www.BCRaw.com, have arisen from her grave, so to speak.

And now she's lit­er­al­ly–and lit­er­ar­i­ly–hi­jack­ing my thoughts: this morn­ing's col­umn was meant to be all about the man David Rud­der so fit­ting­ly rechris­tened on Face­book as "Jack Slide," the for­mer Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent and still Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but, right at the fi­nal whis­tle, Mrs Thatch­er man­aged to slide een un­der­neath Jack from be­hind, bring­ing him down, as a top­ic, and, in typ­i­cal milk-snatch­er fash­ion, some­how avoid be­ing red-card­ed her­self.

Not that Austin "Jack Slide" Warn­er needs help in his col­lapse. His "progress" of rate re­minds me of snakes and lad­ders, the first board game small chil­dren of my time played.

The mod­ern com­put­er ver­sion graph­ics would be amaz­ing but the old game board was as ba­sic as they came: a card­board square di­vid­ed in­to 100 small­er num­bered squares, along which you moved your counter fol­low­ing the roll of a dice, be­gin­ning at one and win­ning when you got to 100, oc­ca­sion­al­ly mov­ing ran­dom­ly up lad­ders from, say, square 12 to square 32, and slid­ing down snakes.

It was a game of pure blind luck and, un­til re­cent­ly, Jack's pub­lic life seemed to be that of the snakes-and-lad­der kid who throws noth­ing but six­es and lands on noth­ing but lad­ders.

Every time you looked around, Jack Warn­er had shot up even high­er, in even less time, with ap­par­ent­ly even less ef­fort; at his pin­na­cle, he was be­ing tak­en to lunch by princes of Wind­sor and court­ed by prime min­is­ters of West­min­ster (and bitch-slap­ping them pub­licly for their at­ten­tions); he had the world's most suc­cess­ful foot­ballers at his Beck­ham and call.

But, in snakes and lad­ders, chil­dren knew your luck had to hold all the way to the top: on square 98 lay the mouth of the longest snake on the board, and one which could take you all the way back down to sin­gle dig­its.And it seems Jack keeps land­ing on 98.

He was two steps away from the Fi­fa pres­i­den­cy, his ap­par­ent­ly for the tak­ing, when he land­ed on a snake called Chuck Blaz­er (or, per­haps, Mo­hammed Bin Ham­mam) and slid all the way to the bot­tom. Again, on­ly a cou­ple o' par­lia­men­tary terms ago, he was a space or two away from the prime min­is­ter's chair (or at least ce­ment­ed in that of the Min­istry of Works) when he land­ed on a snake (called Anand?) and slid all the way down to the bot­tom of the Cab­i­net, land­ing in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (as­sum­ing the adage ap­plies that, "Whom the Gods wish to de­stroy..."; of course, that may ac­tu­al­ly have been a lad­der, even if it was a num­ber 98 snake for the then Cana­di­an com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and his deputy).

A year or so ago, when what should short­ly prove to be the ter­mi­nal Jack Slide be­gan, he at least seemed to be slip­ping safe­ly out of sight and in­to a qui­et and very rich re­tire­ment, when he land­ed him­self, in quick suc­ces­sion, on a cou­ple of spaces marked "the Guardian" and "Daryan." This pa­per broke sto­ries about Daryan Warn­er and the own­er­ship of the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lent Blurred Own­er­ships which marked the be­gin­ning of Jack land­ing on snakes alone.

(Al­though some snakes are al­so lad­ders: the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter might be the best placed per­son in Trinidad, eg, to dis­cov­er what pros­e­cu­tions ex­act­ly lie un­der sealed in­dict­ment in the US courts.)

And, in the last week or so, my "batch" Cami­ni Mara­jh (which would make her, I sup­pose, a "vet­er­an jour­nal­ist") has il­lus­trat­ed (us­ing, some­times, al­ready known facts) a mon­e­tary arrange­ment around the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter that re­minds you of an­oth­er chil­dren's pre-com­put­ers game: pick up sticks; shake the right stick and the en­tire struc­ture will col­lapse.The Jack Slide to the very bot­tom, and right out of the game–and per­haps in­to oth­er places–seems in­evitable now.

Ex­cept that Jack seems able to re­ly on a per­ma­nent lad­der called "Kam­la." The la­dy, it seems, is not for turn­ing (her back on Jack).And so we come, again, to Mrs Thatch­er.

The im­age the Eng­lish pa­pers car­ried of her grand­daugh­ter, the pret­ty Aman­da, gaz­ing out at read­ers from un­der her veil of mourn­ing, did more to hu­man­ise Mrs Thatch­er than the Iron La­dy her­self did in half-a-cen­tu­ry of pub­lic life. When Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was first elect­ed, the Bush chil­dren told the Oba­ma girls that, no mat­ter who said what of him, the Pres­i­dent came home to the White House every night as "Dad."

But even prime min­is­ters are re­mem­bered the way they were, not the way they want­ed to be. By her­self, Mrs Thatch­er changed Eng­land from a place where the in­stinct was to put a hand out to the less for­tu­nate to a place where you put the boot in them. Her ef­fect on the world was even greater.

In­hu­man greed had a face; and a coif­fure; and evil men from Pinochet to Mur­doch hid be­hind it. But a fate be­fell just two peo­ple on the plan­et that could have even been worse than be­ing a sub­ject or pawn of the Iron La­dy.

You could have been her child.

�2 BC Pires is play­ing a game of cha­rades with his chil­dren. E-mail your XBox­es to him at bc@carib­surf.com