IT WAS 70s BRITAIN, THERE WAS MUCH TO BE FURIOUS ABOUT:

Papers released under 30 year rule reveal full force of Thatcher's fury (Alan Travis and Owen Bowcott, 12/30/09, The Guardian)

Again and again her furious handwritten notes in the margins of the files reveal her impatience at the cautious approach of Whitehall and some of the "wets" in her own cabinet. "This will not do" makes regular appearances, as does "too small" whenever public spending cuts are being discussed. She just as often responded with her blue felt-tip pen with the single word "no", heavily underlined.

Her early struggles to reduce an £8bn public spending borrowing requirement through spending cuts and increases in indirect taxes while cutting the basic rate of income tax to 30p are an object lesson for any incoming prime minister next year faced with a deficit of £176bn.

The files show that at her first meeting with the Soviet premier, Alexey Kosygin, the woman they had dubbed the "iron lady" lectured him on the plight of the hundreds of thousands of boat people risking their lives fleeing communist Vietnam after he suggested that they were all drug-takers or criminals. "The prime minister told Mr Kosygin that the refugees who were being picked up by British ships were … hardworking people, not drug addicts, and a high proportion of them were children."