Jolly gosh HTG, rather vindictive. My favourite Thatcher memory is the protest song that went to the tune of Led Zeps rock and roll "been a long time since I was on the dole" and they changed into Maggie Maggie Maggie (out out out)" and lots of good memories of spitting image, including a sketch of a fly she was training, well to do what flies to (in this case on Scargill's sandwich, after which she said that he be eating plenty more of that. She opened the curtains to "Maggie Maggie Maggie" and said to Dennis, "ah the dawn corus". And finally the last episode of the second series was one long episode, where it finished with the real and good Thatcher, replacing the evil robot Thatcher and the world becoming a most wonderful place (an episode of Family Guy, based loosely on Back to the future, had the dad coming back to a wonderful world after he had messed with 1984, and in the new future Al Gore was president).

Not that anyone is probably bothered with these stories. And I did not even mention the vegetables sketch.

Back to the point in question. Surprisingly, despite all indications, I am old enough to remember the three day week and the 1974 strike. The reason we can't get trades men and women (thank you for correcting me) is surely more to do with the mid 90s recession, which was probably as much due to Major as Thatcher, off the back of you have never had it so good, go mortgage yourself to your eyeballs as property will never go down in price, and spend all your virtual wealth on expensive consumer products made in the far East as it is good to be greedy. Whoops, please take the keys of me building society as I cannot afford the repayments. Builders went bust as there was no work. A generation of handymen and women died out and there was no one to replace them as there was no guarantee of work. At the same time we had an IT explosion. Don't think this was directly linked to the miners' strike.

Should the silly sausage have had a vote, and bought Notts out with him, then perhaps the story would have been different.

And as for power, the case was based on coal and nuclear in the 80s, oil had been too expensive for generation since the early 70s. Mrs T was a great supporter of nuclear as this had helped to defeat the minors, in 87 was going to build one new PWR a year, but then found out is was easier to burn our crown jewells (North Sea Gas) instead. Major continued with the market argument, and that is where we are today with no energy policy and now playing catch up with nuclear 20 years later.

Oh and we aren't dependent on the Russians, apart from the impact they have on gas and oil prices. We are connected to Norway and they have shed loads of gas and oil, and we have the refineries and pipelines

BD - informing the nation