An indignant reader:

I am vaguely appalled that here it is, day almost done in the UK, and the resident Britishers refuse to acknowledge the last remaining Lion of the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, on the occasion of her 84th birthday. Is this a reflection of the emotional reserve so common amongst the British? Or has the umma decreed that infidel birthdays not be mentioned?

I couldn’t say, sir, being too emotionally reserved to venture an opinion. I have paid my own modest tributes to the great lady in the past, though. Here is one from eight years ago, when it was still possible to believe that the Anglosphere might, if we were patient, bring forth more like her in the new century. Alas, I can no longer believe that. This century belongs to trimmers, dwarfs, and preening ineffectual windbags. We are doomed, doomed.

Happy birthday, ma’am.