Danish & Turkish (sounds like a coffee shop!), here's the thing that bothers me. It's very fashionable to hate Tony Blair in the way you guys obviously do. However, our government is not some sort of presidency with executive orders issued by one man. Whatever decisions Blair took were arrived at after consultation with multiple agencies and, most importantly, after discussions with the Cabinet. The system has evolved over hundreds of years to have built in checks and balances to ensure that Government makes good decisions in as far as that is possible. My key point is that your disdain for Blair is based on what you know, or think you know (or both) but how much is there that you don't know that might alter your view if you were able to look at matters objectively with the full information that the various agencies fed to Blair and his Cabinet at key times? Where is your spleen against the secret service? Where is your vehemence against the military advisors? Where is your passionate anger at the Cabinet members? It's easy and fashionable to hate Blair. I'm just not convinced it is quite as simple as that. For the record, I never voted for Blair, I don't know him and have no connection with him. Turkish, I'm assuming you must be a man with good family values. What would you do if someone called your wife the names you've called Cherie? Not a pleasant thought, eh? Let me be clear once again. By all means hold politicians to account but not by personal and derogatory slurs that are just plain abusive (for example, calling his children '******ed' - a word that should not be used in any context). Finally, I do agree with the OP in that it was very strange to name Blair as philanthropist of the year. I'm sure we could all think of hundreds of people who should have come before him for that title.
Very fair, reasoned and eloquent points RTID. Stan, surprised at you invoking Godwin. Why the strong feeling against Blair? Because he fooled a generation that's why. He came in on the wave of blind optimism that Politics and Values could be seated at the same table with common aims. Mr. Blair then only went on to prove himself as even worse than his predecessors by presiding over a period where inequality went through the roof, the strangest of values seemed to be at the head where it was definitely not a rule by consensus or even trying to achieve it. The ultimate checks and balances are the people, I regret having gone to a home Div 1 match instead of the match against war, but surely that belief amongst people of all walks of life would have tugged at his newly found compassionate Catholic heartstrings? I have had the misfortune due to work of having to have listened through one of his serenades in Texas, to be blunt and as polite as possible, he was an embarrassment to my intelligence and to his own. He could have achieved so much with the mandate, the goodwill and the opportunity, but he chose to almost immediately sell out. No, he is no Stalin, Mao or the other one - that doesn't mean he deserves any more than our wrath - he let us down, the others were pure evil, Blair simply chose to not follow his truest instincts. Call me a Romanticist, to to blow it.naïve, whatever you like - Blair had the Golden Age (just like Sven) and chose to blow it.
Good post. No truck with any of that. It will be interesting to see what the historians are saying about him in a 100 years but that will be an issue for my great, great, great grandchildren. I don't think I'll be around then!
I feel very similarly about Blair, the creation of a Thatcher - lite Labour Party, and horrible religiosity, the cringe-making obsequiousness etc etc. But I have to reserve something for the next level or two up of vileness, the genuine psychopaths. Sorry about Godwin!
Okay, have to confess, I was not aware of Godwin's Law but it makes sense because when people feel passionately about something - in this instance a dislike for Tony Blair - they are then likely to invoke an extreme analogy. However Aristotle informs us that 'The law is reason free from passion' (yes, I've seen 'Legally Blonde' too!) and it was that reason I was seeking to provoke and to which Danish graciously and sensibly responded. So in conclusion: I'm a bit better informed, we don't like TB and we agree as to the reasons why that might be.
Absolute agreement on all written above. I think I feel personally let down as I bought into it, I remember the period leading up to the 1st election and seeing Labour posters in the strangest of places, staunch Tory wards, and you just fely, well I did, that this was the dawn of something special. Was just joking about Godwin, I'm the worst at it.
Snap. We were mugged mate. And it's embarrassing. Should have known as soon as their drinking habits became known. Chardonnay tasted of nothing but oak in those days.
Blair wasn't a psychopath? Most politicians are corrupt bastards but Blair and Thatcher were in a league of their own, only bit players like Redwood and Tebbit approached their madness. So many died for that bastard's decisions, then there were Robin Cook and David Kelly, the D notices on his daughter's attempted suicide and now the despicable attempt to parachute his son in as next MP for Bootle. The whole "New Labour" bollocks was rotten to the core from the outset, I remember a Rangers fan I know who worked for the party's "Media Monitoring Unit" walking around with his bleeper like a t**t checking that nothing nasty was was written about his Dear Leader. Total shower of c**ts, as rotten as the Tories which is saying something. Only good thing come of it is that he can never freely walk the streets of this country for the rest of his life without being physically attacked.
Blair was a puppet to ANY incumbent US President. Oleaginous butt-muncher. His way of solving the NI issue was to concede. W A N K E R.
I had to collect a client in Connaught Square last week, two doors away from Blair's house, complete with two coppers with machine guns on his doorstep and another at the exit of the Square. It's a measure of his family's socialist principles that his son is a football agent...
RTID, did you see that film I linked up last night? Blair will always be fondly remembered in my part of the World. He did sterling work in bringing peace to the north so credit where its due. I still can't fathom why he followed that Texas village idiot into that disaster, especially when thousands of his own people were on the streets imploring him not to do it. Maybe he was a bit of a Christian freak like Bush and heard God talking to him? I know he converted to Catholicism when he left Downing St so perhaps he is a bit loopy in that regard. If I'm honest, I am surprised at the vitriol toward him from the British people. Apart from Iraq, why is he hated so much? Is it because he turned Labour into a Tory-Lite party? Did he squander all the money you had during the good times? Brown isn't loathed to the same extent is he? EDIT: I've just read the rest of the page and my questions are pretty much answered
He continued a process of negotiation, started by Major, which has resulted in the relative accord which now prevails. I'm no Blair fan, but this is not the policy to hang him on.
Thanks but I'm overseas and only on mobile. With that and the site doing weird things, I'm struggling with links. Will check out when home. You're brave speaking up for Blair! Great point re Brown. He was Chancellor of Exchequer for years and then PM for a bit while the financial world was falling apart. He should have seen it coming. Blair may have cost iives (and what price can be put on even one life?) Brown's legacy is causing misery to millions in the UK on a daily basis.
Brown was not responsible for the financial meltdown. It was the result of the deregulation of the banks here and in the US promoted by Thatcher and Reagan. All Blair and Brown should be criticised for is their failure to reverse disastrous Tory policies.
I don't think I said Brown was responsible? I do think he should have seen it coming and, if possible, take steps to minimise the damage to the UK economy. However, I am no financial whiz so would not argue this case too strongly.
Brown was awarded 'World Statesman Of the Year' for his decisive reaction to the banking crisis. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/sep/23/gordon-brown-world-statesman
Brown destroyed our pension system, which was one of the best in the world, when he became Chancellor by his tax raid on the funds which never recovered. It all went downhill from there. He also mortgaged our futures with his PFI funded schools and hospitals which will carry massive debts at extortionate rates for decades, some of the schools have closed down and will still have to be paid for by the local authorities and the facilities management contracts are so over-the-top they make payday loan firms look good. Balfour Beatty and many other big building firms must have been pinching themselves to believe they could get away with such contracts but it was all part of the New Labour scam of 'jam today' which we'll all be paying for generations to come. Blair was happy to secure three election victories thanks to lies, smoke and mirrors. Iraq turned him into a despised pariah and Brown didn't have the balls to go for an election as soon as he took over to secure his mandate and the rest is history. Both Blair and Brown bear huge responsibility for the mess we're in and much of the ISIS crisis is the result of Bush and Blair destabilising the middle east and encouraging the 'Arab Spring' which has produced nothing but grief across the region...
Psychopath? Narcissist more like. Policy in every area driven by vanity and 'legacy'. I saw Keith Joseph speak once, in Durham must have been 80/81 just when they were closing the nearby Consett steelworks. Rather hostile crowd, which he seemed to be completely unaware of. He was genuinely scary, an idealogue of nothing, head full of ideas from the Rand Corporation about self interest of individuals being the only relevant motivator, which lead to the charming cult of 'game theory'. Or as John Nash expressed it, before he realised he was schizophrenic '**** you, buddy'.
