I guess one reason that some people have remained quiet on this thread is out of a general sense of respect - you should not speak ill of the dead, and that evidently covers the very old too, so many anti-Thatcherite are understandably keeping their powder dry. I lived in Coventry during the Thatcher years and boy, it was grim. The place was known as Giro City. The car industry was devastated and the heart was thus ripped out of a formerly proud place. A few McJobs were created. What hurt was the sense of being kicked when you were down. Sad middle aged men with no future, twiddling their thumbs as they awandered aimlessly round the city in their shell suits. Relentless pontifications about how folk ought to get on their bike to find work even as they were squeezed to buggary by successive policies that felt like they were implimented to rub salt in the wounds. If it was bad in the Midlands I can't begin to think what it was like in places like Liverpool. Maybe British Industry needed a root and branch transformation. Perhaps the Unions needed to be challenged. But hindsight is a wonderous thing and thaough it appears that it "worked" perhaps it didn't need to be done with quite so much vitriol. It was the "one-of-us or one-of-them" language that irked so much. And the quote that MM mentioned, that "no such thing as society" one, which is so patently inaccurate. If Britain changed direction under Thatcher, European Politics were changing too, with its focus on human rights. I, for one, am glad that regulation from Europe on social and other issues is around to counter the excesses of the Thatcherite Free Market model. I would argue that Blair did more for Britain than Thatcher though certainly Thatcher had a harder job as she had to change things and Blair merely had to steady things. Conversely, Thatcher had the easier War to fight, and came up smelling of political roses, whereas Blair had the impossible Iraq/War against Terror conflict and be-spattered by the fallout.