Anthony Waterman wrote:  
> The background to my hasty intervention (which I am already beginning to  
> regret) is, of course, Margaret Thatcher's famous aphorism: 'There's no  
> such thing as society'; one of those self-evident propositions like  
> Milton Friedman's (was it he?) 'There's no free lunch'.  
  
  
A point of clarification, and hopefully more than mere pedantry. Thatcher's   
'no such thing as society' was widely cited out of context. In her own   
words, 'The error to which I was objecting was the confusion of society   
with the state as the helper of first resort'; that 'society was not an   
abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living   
structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations'   
(Thatcher The Downing Street Years, p. 626).  
  
  
Roger Middleton