Margaret Thatcher: 7 Things I'll Remember her For.

Anybody's passing, no matter who they are is a time for reflection and thoughts for family and friends.  I wont be doing any celebrating or dancing on any graves.  But since today seems to be the day that the great and good of the political world had their say about their memories of Margaret Thatcher, I felt obliged to get mine off my chest.  This is what I think is her legacy:

1. Economic policies that put neo-con theory before employment, devastating our manufacturing base and creating unemployment that tore the heart out of whole communities.

2. A right to buy but not to build that destroyed social housing capacity and led directly to the high private sector rents that have driven up the housing benefit budget.

3. Using government power, the police, hunger and evictions to break the miners’ strike, driven by an anti union ideology rather than the long term economic interests of our country. Our expensive coal comes from Poland now.

4. Financial services de-regulation that created the structures and culture in banking that led directly to the 2008 crash, bailing out the banks and the need to slash public spending to pay for it.

5. Demonising trade unions, creating an “enemy within” culture that’s meant UK businesses and trade unions struggle to work together productively as they do so successfully in Germany and many other social democracies.

6. Wasting North Sea Oil revenues on benefits for the mass unemployment her economic policies created and in the process planting the roots of the "benefit culture" her own party now attacks.

7. Changing our country's culture for the worse: greed is good whilst community doesn't matter.

We WERE watching you!