From hero to zero!

I thought it might be fun to explore further a heated political debate – left unfinished on Saturday with my 'lover/boyfriend/partner' about Maggie Thatcher...

On 4 May some 30 years ago , she was the first female PM to take the reins of power. It was a great historical coup for women with so much potential to do good, but did she use it or abuse it and what legacy has she left in her wake?

• She destroyed our manufacturing industry 
  
• She brought unemployment to the highest rate we'd had since the pre-war years
  
• She began to dismantle the welfare state
  
• She deprived the health service of the resources that it needed 
  
• She deprived education, schools, and so on
  
• She did enormous damage to the fabric of society 
  
• She embodied and created a need for greed and killer ruthlessness  
• She switched from policies of looking after people to looking after big corporations and look what happened when they abused that power

In the end, her own party threw her out. They didn't want her anymore. They 

introduced the poll tax, and that finished her off. So I think Mrs. Thatcher will not be 

remembered as a great figure, but she was a passionate advocate of money running 

the world instead of the people running their own society. That was her great 

contribution to a debate that I think she has lost. And my argument is...that's the damage that she caused - the very breakdown of society. After all she famously said - "there is no society." And that very statement proved incredibly destructive when you consider that today we're living in an era where worshipping at the alter of money has destroyed our society. 

Funny then that when she came into power she quoted St Francis of Assisi..."Where there is discord, let us bring harmony..." Women thought she'd champion their cause, but the words were full of empty promise. And in trying to be twice as good as any man, she betrayed the very values of her gender. 

So all things considered, creating a more equal society with an even spread of wealth and strong welfare system is surely the way forward - don't you think? 

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