' I wonder how many people in her position would have done exactly the same'

I think very few. When I worked at British Leyland in the late 1960's, the workmen complained that they were having to work with 60 year old plant.

There was a choice - what to do with with once in a millenium bonanza money from North sea oil.

We have yet to really to get to grips with Thatcher's legacy. Instead of updating British manufacturing industry with all its archaic practices and attitudes - she had the idea of discarding it totally.

Now whether this works in the long term - we have a long time to find out. No use casting Blair and Brown as disciples of Thatcher - they are just living in her shadow. - living with what she destroyed and created.

A friend of mine is a buyer and deals with the Chines and Indonesian and New Zealand factories all the time. Could such high tech, high skilled jobs have been created in England - the sad truth is that we never even tried.

Those old attitudes beat us from every direction. Thatcher was part of that. But a revolutionary thinker of the process.