All the good for who exactly? Not me or my family, nor the ordinary man on the street or his family. A lot like todays lot.

Only to a simpleton

She wasn't just "unpopular in some quarters", she couldn't find an ally even in her own political party and still she tried to hang onto power - thats what power does to a person when you have no opposition, it corrupts.

So wrapped up in her self esteem was she that those tears outside Downing St were actually real, she really could not believe that her own party had just fired her, as far as she was concerned she was doing a great job and leading us down a road towards her utopian vista - it was just everyone else, EVERYONE else who didn't want to go there.

You need to go back to your books and read up on what a right wing dictatorship could look like in the early 90s, I keep mentioning Pinochet because he was an absolute hero of hers and a definite role model, you could do worse than to read up on that regime in order to realise where we were heading as a country while you were still pre-school, and then (and I never thought I'd say this) thank Heseltine for growing some balls and standing up to her.

Thatcher should also thank Heseltine for letting her slip out of Downing St in a car with Dennis, her best friend Pinochet would have had her shot.

On the other hand, it does seem that Ajw71 is proof of the dumbing down of the education system and the success of the promotion of the 'greed is good' ethos.

Please explain how the results of the general election in 79 can be a yardstick to measure how great Thatcher was? She hadn't even served a term in office yet.

In 1945, more people wanted someone else as PM instead of Clement Attlee. Was he not a great prime minister either?

To think you tried to discredit my polls. Talk about clutching at straws.

please explain



she single handedly managed to destroy the infrastructure of a nation which is now struggling because of it

Halifax don't have any call centres in India. All UK based.

However.

Some are based in Leeds, and have a mix of people, some of whom are of Indian origin. These guys always got confused for being in India.

I speak as someone who's been on that side of the phone. With Halifax. And as they still pay my rent and bills every month, I'll say no more.

Most people agree that Thatcher had many faults, the a point of debate is what would have happened if Labour had remained in power?

Manufacturing would have slowed down regardless of who was in government, emerging economies in the Asia had already started to eat away at our large scale manufacturing base. Like it or not our inefficiency was not helped by the unions. Ineffective management didn't help either.

On the sell off most of the huge nationalised industries were union-dominated, under funded, inefficient and massive loss makers. It would have cost billions to drag them into the modern era - so to sell seems like a prudent cause of action.

With regards to mining - it could not compete with coal from other countries, it importance was massively overstated due to the high profile that Arthur maintained due to regular threats of strike. The numbers of miners had declined significantly over the previous twenty years.

...because of heavy investment in automation (just like lots of other industries that were labour intensive in the 1950s and 60s).

Just to give you an idea of the investment my brother-in-law worked underground at Bates Pit in Blyth Northumberland until the 84/85 strike, in the year before the strike the pit, which mined coal several miles out under the North Sea, had invested £1million in "intelligent" roof supports which were basically self adjusting, and massive pumping equipment - it was descibed as "state of the art" in the mining industry, anywhere in the world.

In the first month of the strike the pit was closed as maintenance was not completed as scheduled, it flooded and all of that equipment was lost underground.

As has been pointed out before, W Germany managed to continue with a strong manufacturing base, despite most industries being heavily unionised.



The cheap, brown coal that we imported from Australia and India may have cost less per tonne than British coal but it was of such poor calorific value that the price difference was negligible when costed on an energy-produced basis and helped push up the cost of producing British steel. Further factor in the extra welfare payments required and it had a negative impact on our economy.

Wasn't there an outcry at some point because we were importing coal mined by children?

Hey, it was "cheap" who cares?

As has also been pointed out before the relationship between the unions and the employers is significantly different to that of what existed and still exists in the UK. This relationship changed significantly at the time of the last major recession in Germany and the balance of power shifted to the employers, the unions in Germany have a very limited power base i.e. they seen the light whereby unrealistic pay and condition demands lead to loss of jobs. It helps when the bosses are also realistic about their own worth.