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  Vic and Keith - you do like to stir, pity you don't put as much thought into making constructive posts. Look at Mark as an example.
  
  Mark -
  I do understand where you are coming from but do bear in mind that Mrs T, while deregulating in a lot of areas such as currency controls and lending probably set up more regulatory processes than any other PM in other respects. She also had plenty of time to do what Brown did and, indeed there were voices urging her to do so in her time but she stood firm against it. Her views and attitudes are often misrepresented and misunderstood and knowing her as I do I am convinced that she certainly would not have gone down the same road as Brown. Remember she had an old fashioned attitude to sound money and finance and certainly disapproved of excessive spending 'on tick'.
  
  As for what you are saying about business. We have to remember that ultimately it is businesses that generate all the wealth thats sustains public spending and public services. All other spending by government including that on the 'secondary' public sector, in other words businesses that derive all or a large part of their revenue from taxes, is totally dependant upon private sector businesses being successful. It is right that the needs of business takes the priority over most things but the problem is that this has simply not been the case in reality over the last 13 years. Businesses have been loaded with more and more red tape, rules and regulations and are much more highly taxed than most competitors. This impacts on profitability and their ability to compete and succeed in worldwide markets. Even small businesses found that they were being dragged into regulations from which prevuious governmetns would have excused them from. This is why increasingly we have seen major British businesses being bought up by foreigners while in the 80's there was a boom of British businesses expanding overseas.
  
  Odd though - the one area of business that was chosen by Brown to be given the green light to really take risks and had the regulations reduced was the banks....The one area in which Mrs T and John Major kept the tightest regulation. As I have said before, regulation is not all bad but it has to be the right regulation. Brown misjudged that as he did with so much more in his time, including levels of public spending, the PFI, gold sales etc... That man was truly a one man disaster zone for this country
  
  I will end it there - I have to get up at 4am and have a long day tomorrow!

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