Must admit having been to Widnes last weekend, there and Warrington look like boom towns compared with most parts of the UK - still building houses everywhere. Car parks full of flash cars. Certainly a far cry from the 60s and 70s.

Nobody needs to demonise Thatcher. Her own evil deeds unveiled her as the devil incarnate.

Whose lives did SHE ruin?

This is a brilliant read: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305790/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-Mail-Online-readers-pay-tribute-Baroness-thousands.html

This is a brilliant read: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305790/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-Mail-Online-readers-pay-tribute-Baroness-thousands.html

And compare that dignity with this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305760/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-George-Galloway-leads-chorus-celebration-left.html?ICO=most_read_module Nuff said.

And compare that dignity with this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305760/Margaret-Thatcher-dead-George-Galloway-leads-chorus-celebration-left.html?ICO=most_read_module Nuff said.

Make it 51 now.

Great way to spend 79p folks. Well worth it.

I worked at Garlands Hospital in the early 1990s. ECT was in use then (I think it is still used today is it not?) and there were instances of restricting patient movement. The drug therapies were of course pretty strong, particularly for manic depression (as it was then known) which often left the patient with severe twitches. But no, they didn't lobotomise patients anymore or chain them to walls or anything gruesome like that. However, the secure wards were pretty grim places to be sure.

A lot of the focus within mental health during the time I was involved was upon the language used to describe both illness and those suffering, as well as approaches to individual patients/clients. While I was working for Garlands I also helped at a newly opened day centre (that nobody wanted in their locality) which offered a place of social interaction for those individuals who were relocated into the new community homes.

I did get to know one patient who was 70 years old and had been in the asylum since she was a teenager. Her only mental health problem was getting pregnant 'out of wedlock'. She was thoroughly institutionalised and unable to be 'released' under the care in the community policy. Reading some of the back copies of the record books was a fascinating but deeply disturbing exercise. I particularly remember reading the case of a young girl locked away in the asylum for stealing a cabbage. Unless desperation was classed as a mental illness, I couldn't envisage a justification for that behaviour. Undoubtedly the system had moved on from the one which equated mental health 'care' with a prison system.

The massive risk associated with care in the community was brought home big style when a paranoid schizophrenic was released from Garlands and shortly after committed murder in broad daylight in the town centre. Needless to say the consultant who signed the release form didn't work for the unit for much longer after that.


I don't actually understand what you are referring to here. Which assets are you referring to specifically? Staff? Buildings?

Music star Morrissey, a long-time critic of Baroness Thatcher, today berated her as 'barbaric' and 'without an atom of humanity'.
He claimed she was 'charged by negativity' and said she 'closed' rather than opened the doors for women as the first female PM.


R

You're a religious person?

Don't judge someone by what they don't say. I was well into my 40's when she came to power and am fully aware of what went on. To say the problems in this country are down to the actions of one person is the most myopic view I have ever come across. Just ask yourself why such actions were taken. I didn't want to live in a country which was getting as close to anarchy as it was at that time. You may fool the young people on here but there are those of us who know better. Nobody is trying to muzzle those people who feel it necessary to rejoice in the death of someone but nor should they be applauded. Shall we celebrate in a similar manner when new Labour Tony finally pops his clogs. No, why would we, he's been Mr. Moderate and squeaky clean hasn't he, or perhaps not.