I got a full scholarship to go to university. If I hadn't got the scholarship I'd be a builder now like my brothers. My year was the last in the country where you got the chance to win full scholarships. If I'd been a year younger I would have been fucked. Guess who it was who scrapped the scholarships programme?

My Uncle Pat worked in the coal mines till Maggie shut them. Except it wasn't Maggie that shut them, it was the fact that we could import Polish coal for half the price and Maggie just decided to stop subsidising the industry.

My Uncle John used to work in the shipyards until Maggie closed them, except it was the fact you could buy the same ship for half the money from Korea and other places.

What she should have done was try and set up some kind of new manufacturing infrastructure but instead Britain became a services/tertiary industry economy. This worked great for me when I came out of university and started work in a deregulated City, but Maggie deregulating the financial industry just means a nice time for the people at the top of that tree and soes nothing for the Uncle Johns and Pats who are too old to get one of the shit McJobs that another 200 people are going for.

Privatising the gas, telecom and trains wasn't too smart either. Now everybody can get robbed at will by the people who own those industries.

My family is a good microcosm of what happened to Britain under Maggie. Worked out great for the minority but everybody else got fucked at the drive-in.