Not only was Margaret Thatcher less than forthright in her testimony to the Franks committee, it now seems she intended to dismantle the welfare state. She apparently claims in her memoirs that she was only horrified at the proposal by the thought it might be leaked, but it was all of a piece with her known predilections.

Well, contrary to her dictum, I think that there is such a thing as society. I only wish it were more cohesive.

The country I knew and grew up in was devastated by her policies. The United Kingdom is a harsher, less compassionate, more squalid place as a result.

Her heirs and successors in the present Government are well on the way to completing the demolition project.

You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

After all that money spent, all the hoo-hah, all the ferment, all the hyped up blatherings of the TV news types – don’t they just love all this? I think they think it makes them important – all the discussion of change, it turns out that Scotland returned exactly the same balance of representation to the UK Parliament as it did five years ago.

It kind of makes you wonder why we bothered.

But of course what Scotland overwhelmingly voted for it didn’t get.*

Does that remind anybody of anything?

I noticed David Mundell (the only Tory MP in Scotland and so the only candidate for Secretary of State in a Tory minority government, God help us) claiming that since it was a UK election the Tories would have a mandate to rule Scotland.

I hope we hear nothing from him then about MPs for Scottish constituencies not being able to vote on matters that come before them that pertain only to England, as that would rather undermine his argument, would it not?

*Neither, of course, did England. (At least, not yet.)