I do wish poeple would check their facts. Margaret Thatcher did NOT say ‘there is no such thing as society.’ She was saying that ‘there is no such thing as SOCIETY, only people, their families, their communities’. SOCIETY as a monolithic entity. She went on to elaborate her point; that what matters is people and civic life, not systems or bureaucracies or faceless structures. Gordon Brown, with best of intentions no doubt, talks about Big Government – but in practice this means the ‘Nannny State’, remote organisations making us do what they ‘know’ is good for us – like ‘amalgamating’ our local schools, ‘rationalising’ our local hospitals. But government is there to serve the people, not to tell them what’s good for them – please, lets have no more ‘sound bites. Give us the complete quote and lets have intelligent discussions. Neither Labour nor Consrevatives (or anyone else in Parliament) are ‘mad’ – we may not agree always with what politicians say but lets afford them the same courtesy we’d expect oursleves in any disucssion. If democracy is to work, it requires politeness not bile.
