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		Letter to the Editor Leicester Mercury - Friday, 6th October 2006 Dear Sir, In his intemperate attack on Margaret Thatcher, Eddie Sentence makes great play of the suffering of the miners during her premiership. I very much regret the plight of the miners. I myself have been made redundant more than once in my career, so I know how it feels. But the fact is that no one has a right to a job for life. Times change. Technology changes. The labour market changes. Innumerable jobs that existed forty years ago no longer exist -- but many new jobs exist that no one could have imagined years ago, and British unemployment is still far below that on the continent. If we set out to maintain jobs in sunset industries at any cost, we will damage the economy as a whole, and we will do no favours to the workers in those industries who need re-training and help with transition, not false promises that they can stay forever in uneconomic jobs. Tony Blair talks about the need for tough choices. Maggie actually made those tough choices, and changed Britain from the sick man of Europe into one of Europe's most successful and prosperous economies. We all owe her a huge debt of gratitude. Mr. Sentence then goes on to the Falklands War, and says that the Argentine battleship Belgrano was "no threat to us". Maybe not, but it was a huge threat to our forces in the South Atlantic. The Falklands campaign was a close-run thing, and the idea that the proximity of a major enemy battleship was "no threat" is ridiculous. Roger Helmer Conservative MEP for Leicestershire