Two websites from the BBC that may add further
perspectives:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22076886

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22080553

Lexi,

As your links mention, Hawke and Keating were Thatcher fans through copying her policies,

<From floating the Australian dollar to selling off the state-owned Commonwealth Bank, from financial deregulation to liberalising trade policy, Hawke and Keating pursued free market reforms that resembled Thatcherism>

What is going on here is that two sides of partisans throwing the proverbial at one another.

Better to let this remarkable woman be buried with full ceremony, respecting the woman, the Office she occupied for so long and the bereavement of family and nation. Later, calmer minds might prevail with some economic and social analysis based on that period of history.

No-one can dispute that she was a commitment politician and a world class political leader, who shook the tree in more ways than one.

Dear onthebeach,

I fully agree.

All this talk about whether the Belgrano was sailing to or from the Exclusion Zone, about whether the closing of the mines was good bad or indifferent entirely misses the point. Thatcher's legacy is much greater than these mere details.

Thatcher will be remembered for two things:

1 She was part of a team of conviction politicians and leaders who were instrumental in causing the final collapse of the Soviet Union and western communism. Not only did this free the west from the threat of that expansionist ideology but it gave millions of people in the captive nations of eastern Europe their freedom back.

2. She breathed new life into the decaying carcass that was the British state. In 1979 Britain and its welfare state were in such a mess that most politicians saw their job as merely finding ways to manage the inevitable decline. Thatcher didn't buy that and, almost single-handedly, salvaged hope and prosperity from despair.

For these reasons alone she deserves all the accolades in death that Britain and the world can muster. We will not see her like again, I fear.

Sure there are the naysayers but these are mere hyenas yapping around the lioness.

Shadow Minister,

In the 31 years before Thatcher came to office their economy grew by about 150%. In the 31 years since, it's grown by little more than 100%.

Inflation was 10% when she came in and still 10% when she left.

Despite the political turnaround of the Falklands, Thatcher's plunging popularity was mainly due to economic reasons. Her destruction of industry, combined with financial deregulation and the "Big Bang", began a decline of saving and accumulation of private- and public-sector debt and the economy was only sustained by luck - an oil bonanza just as she took office. The “Big Bang” deregulation was one of the factors behind the GFC.

During her time in office, government oil receipts amounted to 16% of GDP, but instead of using this windfall to boost investment for longer-term prosperity, it was used for tax cuts. (Sounds familiar and was twice as much as our own mining boom).

Her economic legacy was really an investment slump plus the destruction of manufacturing and jobs (3 million unemployed) where production was replaced by Banking .

Somehow she is given credit for things that happened years after she left and after some of her policies had been reversed. (Something else that sounds familiar).

She wasn’t a Tory Conservative in the pure sense – she was the first true Neo-Conservative that embraced the Chicago School of Economics theory that had just been road tested in Chile and then adopted by Reagan and whose policies also ultimately led to the GFC. (That's why she was so fond of Pinochet).

The only real Tory part of her was the belief that the end justifies the means, just as Stalin turned Russia from a backward vulnerable economy into a Superpower within a few decades, but at a considerable social cost.

I have no problem with acknowledging achievements but they should be tempered with some sense of perspective.

Dear spindoc (actually a wildly appropriate name),

I asked you the following;

“My understanding is the decision to use conventional torpedoes instead of the Tiger fish was because of doubt about its reliability. You are attempting to claim it was done to give a chance for the crew to escape. What evidence do you have to support this?”

You proceed to flap around like a headless chook.

From here it looks like you are dodging the question.

If you have nothing then just say so or as the adage goes; put up or put a sock in it.