It would have been better had she never led any political party - at the VERY least.

No chance of that. MI6 had chosen her - as the Spycatcher book showed. They exploited the country's difficulty in the wake of OPEC countries starting to screw us all, and engineered a right wing putsch. No wonder she wanted to supress the book.

As an ex teacher MGM - I cannot for the life of me understand how you can defend here. I was a supply teacher at the start of the national curriculum and visited many schools - I saw the whole horror story unfold.

Every subject teacher issued with a folder about how their subjects were to be taught - cost £18 to the school. Every junior school teacher had to have all ten folders each costing the school £18 each. All total right wing bollocks = courtesy of Sheila Lawlor and Keith Joseph.

Then there were the teachers driven to a nervous breakdown and death by OFSET inspectors. One school I worked in - the Head of English's blood pressure ratchetedup so high that he woke up blinded in one eye with the stress.

One school I taught in had an entire stockroom full to the ceiling with unread memo about the SATs tests, which that year they decided were so flawed that they never took place.

All of this in schools where the teachers were struggling along with twenty and thirty year old textbooks.

Which stock cupboard were you hiding in? I thought no one could be a worse Seretaty of Education than Shirley Williams till Thatcher's gang came in.

The only voice raised in protest against the madness was John Macregor in his short tenure of the post. To punish him - he was sent to Northern Ireland - where his work would be unnoticed against the backdrop of the Thatcher and Tebbit yahboo line in diplomacy.