Yes Maggie kept some doubtful company at hand. Not too many European(non iron curtain) friends though.

Labour governments before and after her kept the same, or similar, company

Yes, very well said. It's called personal responsibility - the lack of which produces the dysfunctional offspring that Rajj is suggesting are Thatchers children. I bet they vote Labour

I guess that's a matter of opinion. So I'll adjust my original post to "in my opinion, the celebrations of her death have done the UK no favours at all"

Her rule went a long way in wrecking Manchester, my home city, for a generation... but I still wouldn't dance on her grave. What the Hell ever happened to common decency?

Some call it realpolitik. Either way it is not a support of democracy as previously claimed. The one that grated for a lot was her support of apartheid.

There were bigger cold war fish to fry at that time and toppling apartheid in favour of a soviet-sponsored organisation, would have given control of the strategic Cape of Good Hope sea route to the Soviet Union. Plus risking triggering off white flight in a country that had well over a million people entitled to live and work in the UK and at a time when Britain was still struggling to pull itself up by it's bootstraps would have been unwise. Note how as soon as the cold war ended, efforts immediately were set into motion to peacefully resolve South Africa's problems.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfre...doxical-legacy

A suprisingly balanced opinion piece from the Guardian. It articulates the need for industry to change but the failure to provide an alternative gave way to welfare dependence.

Exactly.

Charles Moore put it very well a couple of days ago: there is an unwritten code of decency that one doesn't speak ill of the (recently) dead for respect of the friends and family.

Heath, Blair, Brown: they all took the UK to places I despaired of. They probably did what they did believing they were doing things in the best interests of the country, I think their policies were totally mistaken but I would never write the things I have seen in the news and on this forum in the immediate aftermath of their deaths.

Quite apart from the lack of common decency, many people are making the all too common mistake of comparing what actually happened after 1979 with what, in an ideal world with a following wind, MIGHT have happened if MT had been defeated. They forget, or didn't experience, just how low the UK had gone. The Scanlons, Jones, Hattons and the like, the 3 day week, the prolonged electricity cuts, the £50 foreign travel allowance (not a lot even then!) and so on. The Chancellor having to cancel a flight at Heathrow to plead with the IMF. Another ten years of Wilson, Callaghan, Heath, and the UK would have been a complete basket case.

.

As others have pointed out:
a) you don't do this for someone the tories would like to whitewash as a shining light (they are certainly not being restrained in their praise of her, given how hated she is - imagine what a silent public would result in).
b) her family are as bad, or worse. Their feelings can afford to get hurt - I'd guess they have very thick hides (as well as heads)
c) she shed no tears for the families who's lives she ruined on an ideology, without a thought for building rather than destruction.

I'm actually of the opinion that she could have rescued her 'legacy' by apologising for her crass, destructive, actions. People are generally more warm hearted than her, and would have put those crimes aside. She never did.

I challenge you to watch this and then tell me you still hate her...

The irony of it, BLAMING (in your words) the parents!!!

Blaming just one person is perhaps simplistic....a bit like Adolf was not responsible ALONE and should not take responsibility for the extremists in Rostock as it was 60years ago (FFS you cannot be serious!!). In the context of the article its not stupid at all - you reject it fine, but its not stupid.

I bet they dont vote Labour....BNP, UKIP, Tories & then Labour in that order (It used to be Labour before thatcher came on the scene granted!).

Careful with criticizing Mark T buddy...hes a convicted gun runner & may shoot you down

No can do paulry...not viewable in Oz (unless I find a way to hide my URL).

Not surprisingly I agree, but have to say that within minutes of her death, my reaction was to post my 'real' thoughts and fury and not hold back and I knew there and then the consequences that were coming. I know some people (including non thatcher fans) are disgusted but I would not have been able to keep my head up had I not let this 'fury' be vented. Fortunately (tho not surprisingly) millions in the UK feel the same as me.