Tweet Many Americans are bewildered by the mixed reception that Baroness Thatcher’s death has received in the United Kingdom. Having lived in England for a year or so during her time as Prime Minister, Eli will refrain from commenting on her political career, but there was something he wrote over at the Curry Shack that is worth repeating .  Curry posted remarks from Michael Kelly of the Oxburgh panel During Mrs Thatcher’s period as Prime Minister, UK science was squeezed hard, and I would argue came out of it better, leaner and fitter. Like dieting, it is not a healthy permanent state, but its absence is definitely unhealthy. In times of plenty, one ‘lets a thousand flowers bloom’ and in tough times, one redoubles the effort to exploit the stock of recently acquired new knowledge, rather than generate more new knowledge and leave it unexploited.