So Thatcher had a lot more evil in her than the infamous poll tax...

[freefair]

Thatcher in autobiography
 "I was horrified when I saw this paper. … It was all a total nonsense,"
Guardian Runs...
"Margaret Thatcher's role in plan to dismantle welfare state revealed"
Bears sh**t in woods, Pope Catholic, Guardian reporting on Thatcher woefully disingenuous...
Yep, it's just another day! Honestly, these Thatcher declassifications tell us nothing remotely controversial. So the fact that she commissioned a report, which recommended x, which she then dismissed, implies she supported x and secretly desired to bring it about does it?
Then we have the Guardian bleating about the fact that Thatcher even considered a diplomatic solution in the Falklands. What? So now the Guardian is against considering diplomatic options? War is good? Huh?!
She remains roughly as popular as Reagan, give or take a few percentage points. I guess that about 33% of people hate her of which 15% of people want her dead, but Its those 15% or so most folks don't want to make friends with. In most "Greatest PM" Polls she usually comes 1st or 2nd to Clement Atlee  (British FDR) anyway.

[freefair]

So in return all those people that hate Obama and want him to die (Note: I'm not one of them, but I'm sure someone will still think so) are perfectly justified in that respect? My guess is they'd be viewed as horrible people while these people are within their rights.

IMO, any grown person who wishes early death on a politician operating within a free, civilised, democratic system is an inherently cruel and vile person, it doesn't matter if it's Maggie Thatcher or Barry Obama or Olof Palm or anyone.
It's only acceptable to hate politicians in totalitarian regimes, in my view (before anyone says, It's acceptable to hate Segregationist Southern Governors as they were actively abusing/ignoring the constitutional system of government and denying people their right to vote even though they hadn't shirked any of their responsibillities as a citizen by being imprisoned or committing electoral fraud) .

[freefair]

When I was younger (and a hard right sociocon xenophobe, for context), I sometimes used to wish , in my head, death upon Tony Blair- Once I wished for him to have a terminal Illness, another time to literally burn in hell, and even once for his kids to be tortured and killed.
Then I grew right the hell up, and now I feel awful for ever having had these evil and amoral thoughts in my head. If I met him I'd have the urge to break down at his knees and beg sycopantically for forgiveness, and rightly so.

[freefair]

...and when she buddies upto said dictators - especially one so murderous as Pinochet? Which ever way you look at it, she was a vile woman and like most of my town I just wish her death was much sooner.

If Olaf Palme's support and covert funding of terror groups and support for "anti-Imperialists" such as Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Pol Pot was acceptable, then so is dealing with people like Pinochet and Botha.

[freefair]

That's like saying "If Stalin's Gulags and Great Purges were acceptable, then so was the Holocaust." It's not just a logical fallacy the initial premise is rather absurd to begin with.

I agree it would be double standards not to see either as being acceptable or unacceptable. That's my point. If both are unnacceptable, that makes Palme just as bad.
And yes, it's true that to defend the Gulags you have to defend the Holocaust.

[freefair]

What I find sinister is that people even younger than I am learn to hate her or like her and roll off 'things wot she dun' as if it had anything to do with them.

I think there should be a Modern British History GCSE . It should contain a section on the Thatcher/Major era that should provide a genuinely balanced set of arguments and policy details. People should be  given an opportunity to make their own minds up.
My Ideal structure should be
1914 Britain and Empire, WW1, Interwar, WW2, Postwar, 60s and 70s, 80s and 90s, 21st century.
It does raise a question among these people- If all she did was so evil, why won't anyone try reversing it??
Peter Hitchens, and I know he'd not popular here, he made the point that much collectivist disdain for the 80's has an underlying root cause of the UK becoming a colder and selfish nation during the 80's, which he feels was a delayed consequence of late 60s social liberalism rather than economic neoliberalism.
As to the point, I'm fairly sure Thatcher may have, in the very  very long term, wished for some of this paper to come true, however in the short term she saw it as excessive, impractical and too extreme.

[freefair]

Oh, come on.  Thatcher was a great PM, and even if that's true, that's extreme even for me as a conservative.  I have no problem with welfare as long as it makes people independent rather than dependent.

If you don't want people to be dependent on charity or government to survive, create jobs instead of lower taxes for the highest earners.

Lower taxes for the highest earners is the best thing to create jobs because they are then more likely to hire and invest.

Obviously not too low though, then you'd fall off the peak laffer curve point... but yeah, TOO high tax rates do as much to destroy economic wealth as to redistribute it...
Personally I don't have too much of a problem with 35 to 55% top tax rates, above or below that you've gone too far either way.