Thatcherism is a force for good

To begin, Margaret Thatcher stopped free school milk for children when she was Minister for Education, before she was Prime Minister and even before she was leader of the opposition. She did so because it was better to stop wasting money on milk no one drank anyway (even my parents who vote Labour admit that) than compromise children's education by sacking teachers or cutting resources at a time when cuts were necessary. May I point out that it is Labour who began to scrap the milk in 1968, but no one seems to remember that. Secondly, Thatcher didn't 'eviscerate' the unions, she put them back in their place. The militant, self-admittedly communist leaders of the trade unions were calling strikes without a single ballot. They were threatening democracy, and stopping those who wanted to do the right thing and get to work. Our country was on its knees in the late seventies. Socialism was failing. Inflation was up and competitiveness was down. We had a three day week because resources were so scarce and unaffordable. There were frequent power cuts because there was no coal for the power stations as the miners were on strike. The streets were filled with rubbish as bin men were on strike. We even had corpses littering our nation as, surprise surprise, the grave diggers were on strike too! The trade union's job is to look after it's members, but bringing the country to its knees helped nobody. The result of their actions was the end of many traditional industries as decades of socialism and trade unionism meant the industries were so uncompetitive that even British people wouldn't buy British products. In addition to this, I'd like it if you would listen to the video on the homeless you linked carefully. Mrs. Thatcher said that SOME of the homeless were 'mentally retarded' because they WERE. She then goes on to say what she had done to help the homeless, which included spending millions on solving this problem. Despite this, I do not recognise the problem is that bad when the number of homeless people in a city is less than the number of empty council homes. My final point of rebuttal is that one of your facts is WRONG. The website 'leftfootforward.com' has deceived you. Child Poverty didn't go up 121%, rather the RATE of Child Poverty went up by 121%. In actual fact, child poverty went up by 14% (according to the same site). This still seems a high number, but please remember that in a developed country like ours, the poverty rate isn't measured by absolute poverty, but relative poverty. Thanks to our Welfare State, no one in Britain has to live in absolute poverty. The fact is that ALL levels of income rose under Thatcher. Yes, the gap between rich and poor grew however I would argue that 'The Gap' is irrelevant, as long as all levels of income are rising above the inflation rate. People at all levels of income became richer under Thatcher, it's just that the gap between rich and poor widened which makes the relative poverty rate look high even though the actual, real life, children never felt they were worse of in 1990 than they would have been in 1979. It seems that the left would rather have the gap were smaller, even if it meant the average Brit ended up worse off. Mrs. Thatcher said so herself in the video: 'Margaret Thatcher Bows Out With Style!' Uploaded to YouTube by thatcheritescot at 3:13. The rudimental point of Thatcherism are this: All people should be free to do as wish to help them, their family and their nation prosper in a sustainable fashion. She implemented this in many ways, including the Right to Buy scheme, lowering tax, spending sustainably, controlling inflation and standing up for her nation in all arenas, from the Falklands the the European Community as it was then known. Thatcher brought liberation to Britain. After her eleven years as Prime Minister, we were no longer a nation in decline but a prosperous nation ready to face the 21st century.