Or, that conservatism is an ideology he fundamentally disagrees with.

If anything, the fact you think blair and brown were ‘typical labour’ shows it is your view that is jaundiced by bias.

Anything to say defending her from sending the SAS to train Pol Pots Khmer Rouge in Guerrila combat?
Her protection of Pinochet?

Her relationship with Jimmy Saville?

Her relationship with the corrupt House of Saud and involvement in dealing arms to them?

The poll tax?

Cant disagree with any of that, its why I voted for her in 79 (???) and the next time around, there was no viable alternative - its also amazing how many of those celebrating in various cities are obviously under 30 years of age and possibly wouldn't even have been born when she was ousted by her own people.

I always remember an old boss of mine at her first election saying that the country (at that time) needed to change the party in government at every election simply because we needed four years of low spending and low taxes followed by four years of high taxes but high public spending, and in the context of those times he was right and in the main thats what happened.

It doesn't happen now of course because as a political commentator mentioned yesterday the Labour Party is currently somewhere to the right of what MacMillan's Tory government was - we now have three main party's singing off the same Oxford University PPE designed songsheet rather than MP's who represented an ethos and/or their social environment and background.

That’s her pretty much in a nutshell

OK, un-cherry pick it and show us all she did

Well that's OK then.

Likewise, and I was young, self employed and invincible, and made a very good living thank you, so I understand the attitude of young Tory voters these days who believe that they don't need a support structure or that they should support others.

I've matured since then of course.

Yeah, I only stopped "cherry-picking" because I thought the list was already long enough to make the point.
It's an awful lot of cherries isn't it?

She campaigned with a poster showing a huge dole queue, with the slogan "Labour's Not Working" ... and, when in office, proceeded to treble unemployment.
She defeated Scargill (and, in my opinion, he was as bad as she was) but the collateral damage was absolutely immense, quite apart from that inflicted on the mining industry and the support industries around it.

Did she care?
Did she hell, as long as the City was happy, she was happy.
No plan for the aftermath, no plan at all, just happy to slash and burn and let people suffer, just like the current crop in Downing Street.

One of my most cherished possessions is an inscribed miniature brass miner's lamp presented to me by the Notts NUM as a thank you for the work I and a few friends did during the strike. We would collect groceries donated by people in supermarket car parks and run them down to miner's clubs to be shared out amongst the striker's families. I made that trip three times a week for over six months and was glad to do it. There was real hardship among the mining communities and it just seemed like the right thing to do. You could safely say that I was no fan of Thatcher then and my opinion hasn't changed that much since. She was dismissive of all opposition and altogether too strident for my taste.

But she was an elected leader of a democratic country who kept on being elected and so must have had the support of a sizeable proportion of the electorate. Comparisons to Pinochet and other dictators are childish and unworthy of those who make them, and diminish the experience of those who suffered under real dictatorships.

And now she is dead. Whilst I cannot say that I will mourn her, the reaction of many on this thread is shameful. I have rarely seen such mean spirited bile masquerading as legitimate comment.

Number 6 in the iTunes chart now.

Supporting apartheid

Her handling of Northern Ireland

Her reaction to Hillsborough

Her attitude to Liverpool during and after the 1981 riots

etc etc etc

No problem with that but to have The Sun criticising peoples reaction reeks of double standards and whilst on subject of Thatcher the "Gotcha" headline was hardly tactful and respectful of the dead. Add in how they handled recent deaths of Saddam, Gaddafi, Bin Ladden and others and closer to home their edition after Hillsborough means that however vile peoples reactions might be they will never sink as low as our biggest selling national paper has done.

This is interesting. Coincidentally the man who wrote the song (ding dong the witch is dead) - Oscar Award-winning Yip Harburg - was born on 8 April, the same day that Thatcher died. Its an intresting world