From the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/07/children-social-exclusion-sure-start

If any left-winger is asked what they would save from a building called 'The State', after a round of Thatcherite slashing and burning, they would run out with the NHS, then quickly run back in and grab the BBC.

Thatcher could never privatise these two institutions. Sure, she tinkered with it. But the Conservatives wouldn't have survived if she had listened to Milton Friedman's demands to privatise the two. 

Other countries, even in social democratic Europe aren't phased by partial private financing of healthcare and public broadcasting. But these two institutions have survived, because they're not just a tv station or a hospital. They're organisations which every Briton feels that they own a part of.

We all recognise their faults, on the left. We know that we must sort out dentistry, or that the Beeb can't descend into the populist programming of other stations. But we can be astounded by the achievements. That in 1948, poorer people were made healthier, and that today we have rock bottom waiting lists, or that in the sixties we had nation changing programming like Cathy Come Home and Up the Junction, and quality comedies like Monty Python, and we now have the styles of Ricky Gervais, as well as pluralist radio programming.

 

Some say that there is no difference between the parties. I spend most of my time on these blogs pointing out why this is not true