Plum job never materialised

Isn’t it time that Ray Wootten and the Maggie builders brigade added a touch of reality to their statuesque Thatcher project?

Whatever Ray believes about our first female prime minster’s political prowess, I beg to differ.

There is no sitting on the fence with the ‘fair’ Margaret. You either loved or hated her, or atleast the short term self-satisfying monetarist policies she and her government forced upon us.

Those policies did ruin peoples lives and my family and I were among the unfortunate victims.

After four and a half years commuting to London on a daily basis as a contract worker for Shell International and the Inner London Educational Authority (ILEA), I was offered and accepted a plum job full-time by the latter.

This meant that we could plan a move to Huntington and a much better life than we could have imagined.

The salary and prospects of becoming editor of several ILEA publications guaranteed that much, or so I believed.

By the very day after I formerly accepted the position , the Thatcher gang (sorry government) crushed our hopes of such a bright future.

My ILEA manager called me in and informed me that ‘that woman’ had destroyed the whole organisation as part of her monetarist strategy.

Just like the miners, not only had my job disappeared but everyone else’s at ILEA as well. Fool that I was, I had actually voted for her.

So you see, Ray, she wasn’t the wonderful leader you describe to everyone.

However, I do believe that if she had been a force for good, this country would not have been in the current mess it is in.

The crisis in all things monetary that her misguided ideology led to.

As I’ve said before, if you must have a statue, stick it on top of St Wulfram’s Church, where no one can get at it and she can survey the awful results of her efforts as the first woman prime minister.

Peter Clawson

(former journalist and

current NHS sufferer)