Trainspotting and Binary Oppositions

How useful has an ideological critical approach been in understanding the binary oppositionsof Trainspotting ?  


Transporting is set during the late 80's and filmed in the 90's, with an underlying theme of change and evolution in society. You can see Renton is ahead of his friends in the way he thinks and reacts to the things going on at the time. We can see this in the club scene where 90's music is being played and he is dressed much more modern than everyone else and seems to be more comfortable with the changes in the era. 
We also see him as almost alienated when he chooses to move to London in hope of success whilst everyone around him stays in Scotland with no dreams or future. This symbolises that in the 90's the only hope of success  is if you move to a big, busy city. 
There is a strong lack of employment in Scotland at the time, we can also see this as we never see the group working we just see one of them applying to a job in hope to get benefits, and not actually to get the job. The viewers may assume that Tommy is working as he seems to have a stable life unlike his friends, but we never actually see him working or get told if he does. 
During this time most people are just doing heroin and getting AIDS as it is a time of decline in industry so most people wouldn't even think of getting a job, especially in Scotland.  This shows lack of hope and future beyond the grimy apartment they live in.
New Labour is the only thing we see going on at the time which made people feel optimistic or at least a bit upbeat as a lot of changes were happening. 
Margaret Thatcher in the film portrays the message of selfishness as when Renton moves to London the only job he can get is as a estate agent as it is the only job which you could thrive from. A quote to describe Thatcherism would be "greed is good" which ties in to the end of the film where Renton becomes a very selfish character when he stole all the money and fled. 
Throughout the film we see the binary opposite of past vs future as there is so much change between the 80's and 90's, yet we only see much of the 90's changes during the London scenes. 
We also see friendship vs betrayal, where Renton gets Tommy hooked on heroin and causes him to catch AIDS. This states that Renton is a bad friend for getting him hooked on it as a good friend wouldn't do that. This is almost a betrayal as he doesn't get AIDS even if he has been doing it for much longer. Furthermore, even when Tommy is dying he still gives him money to get more heroin which hints feelings of regret and pity.