Not a drooling admirer, Peter. Just a fair minded human being who believes in blaming the right person when things go wrong.

Maggie Thatcher did a lot of pretty dreadful things, and I don't have a problem with castigating her for THOSE.

I won't, however, sit back and say nothing when people like you blame her for the actions of predecessors such as Labour's James Callaghan, and Harold Wilson.

I lived through those times, and there is nothing wrong with MY memory of daily strikes as our industry died because the unions wouldn't allow the same man to insert both screws and bolts, or my memory of trying to get by when the value of the pound was suddenly down twenty percent, and inflation ensured that the devaluation continued at over twenty percent until 1979.

As to your comment about creating jobs, don't confuse job creation with the removal from the unemployment figures of thousands by the simple expedient of reclassification.

Job seekers, trainees, kickstart, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Don T.