I have taken time to ponder the death of Lady Thatcher on Monday. It is clear from comments on the social networks and many web pages that she is still clearly a person that divides opinion across social and political landscape.

My own view is that Margaret Thatcher whilst Prime Minister drove me to want to be involved politics from a very early age. I saw first hand when i was growing up in Towcester the direct and devastating effect many of her, and her Governments, policies and actions had on my family and the community i grew up in.

I know this will not be a view shared by everyone in South Northamptonshire but i still meet far too many people her baulk at the statements being made about Lady Thatchers greatness whilst Prime Minister.

But in saying that she done several things I feel she should be applauded for. For instance she was one of the first world leaders to raise serious concerns about climate change and call for action to be taken, for all her anti European views she made Britain’s case in Europe, even though many of those views i disagreed with then and still do today, she was certainly taken seriously by the other country around Europe.

Of course the reclaiming of the Falkland Islands from the Argentinian forces that occupied them in 1982 showed her tenacity and sheer bloody mindedness in the face of opposing views from across Europe and the United States.

I remember the pictures being beamed back when i was at school of troops marching across the cold bleak landscape, the loss of life and of course the victory.

All this I see as the better side of her time as Prime Minister.

But you cant just see the good things, as many have tried to do this week, without accepting some the effect of many of her policies in devastating many key industries that were deemed to be better off in private hands or worse still abandoned, the huge levels of unemployment, the endorsement of the ‘politics of self’ a belief that pushed an idea that there is no such thing as community and that the individual was more important than the collective of community.

This in turn led to the brash self interest and excess of city brokers and bankers which still seems to pervade many of those industries today.

Her determination to bring the unions to heal almost became an obsession that drove her in her battles with the miners and other heavy industries. The level of venom and aggression with scenes of violence that any democratic country should be ashamed of.

I know there will be arguments on both sides as to who done what and who is more responsible than the other but that really isn’t the main point. The fact that the situation was allowed to reach such a fever pitch is a failure on the part of the Government and also the unions.

So in closing there is no doubt that Lady Thatcher was an extraordinary woman who broke many boundaries as our first female Prime Minister, a person who affected every part of our nations life (not always for he better) and whose legacy we still see today in the denationalised and deregulated industries such as electricity, gas, telecoms and transport.

She made politics a subject to be talked about in every situation no matter where you were and will always be a character that divides opinion. But as long as this week both cases, both for her as a great leader and strident politician but also against her as a leader whose policies scarred communities and industries for which many still, rightly, feel aggrieved, upset and angry about, then that’s fine.

I hope such a balance will be achieved in coverage over the next couple of weeks and no doubt the ensuing biographical programmes which appear in the near.