The post you are reporting:
Glad to see some belated respect for Germany's economic performance. Germany has steered more of a middle ground than we have in the UK, not buying into the widespread 80s view that industry could safely be allowed to go to the wall in a modern economy and has a fundamentally stronger economy with a larger industrial sector. While industrial decline has happened, it has been slower, and better and more humanely managed. There was Real Alternative.
Can you imagine if they had had the windfall of North Sea Oil, instead of us, and the relative positions as financial centres of London and Frankfurt ha been reversed? It does not bear thinking about.
The western world is now feeling the effect of our folly in allowing so much of our industrial base to go to the wall while indulging in a sugar rush of credit to soften the blow.
Back to Mrs Thatcher, whatever your views, she probably shaped our current society, economy and politics more than any individual in the last 50 years. Personally, I will neither weep nor rejoice.
Edit: PhilipP, what are you credentials for dissing the science of global warming, and what is your reasoning?