no future in looking back. Even the tories have abandoned the wild excesses of the Thatcher era.

I agree in some ways she was the originator of that sort of toryism where evryone who wasn't on fifty grand a year was a workshy loser who refused to get on their bike and look for work - having skillfully removed all the manufacturing industry , so there was no work for many folk.

However her legacy is everywhere. look at the number of people saying the cuts have nothing to do with the riots - when they aren't living in the strata of society affected by the cuts most directly. Prior to Thatcher there were virtually no hard drugs, beggars on the street, and the culture of gangs, and the feeling that life in England was a chasm of poverty you can fall into and keep falling. Those are the wounds that she and her army of Daily Mail readers inflicted on England. I could see no patriotism in that. no love of country.

We can't undo the past. What we can do is try to protect our children from gang culture. Legalise drugs to cut the ground from under the feet of the gangsters and their culture. Medicalise the addict, rather than have them on the street needing to steal to score.

I can't help thinking we should call to account some of the artists who glorified the gangster drug dealers - as well as Thatcher's crew.

I know Backwoodsman you disagree with me. I respect your reasons.