[Closed] Is there no depth to which Bliar won't sink?

he made a lot of promises

He didn't actually, he's far too smart for that.

Unless you can provide a list of broken promises ?

Blair's strategy was deeply rooted in the triumph of waffle over substance. And it was an extremely successful strategy.

That 'man' is a Machiavellian, cynical shit of the worst kind. Utterly self-serving and venal. Imagining him and Mandelson in the same room frankly makes my skin crawl. He was/is not a labour politician, nor a Tory, nor a lib-dem, he was not in it for anyone or anything other than his own self-aggrandisement.

The fact that he shackled this country to an outright nutcase in George W Bush just because he wanted some kind of foreign policy legacy for himself just shows how dangerous he is. One of the great political actors.

I don't know what the forum equivalent of spitting on the ground and turning on my heel is, but consider it done!

Still take Blair over these Tory **** any day.

It's like being asked to choose between a poke in the eye and a kick in the nuts.

Except the poke in the eye managed to kill 100,000 Iraqis.

It's like being asked to choose between a poke in the eye and a kick in the nuts.

Except the poke in the eye managed to kill 100,000 Iraqis.

Quite a good point. For all the damage the Tories are doing to society, they'll never kill as many people as Bliar.

Gordon Brown
EU referendum
Veto on EU immigration
WMD
WMD or regime change
Halve child poverty
Better education
Ditto health
Right to roam
Income inequality
Aid to Africa (Gleneagles agreement)

A man of his word....

Like I said, Boo Hoo. There's some spilt milk needs mopping up over there. It's not down to anyone but those who voted for him.

andymc06 - Member
Like I said, Boo Hoo. There's some spilt milk needs mopping up over there. It's not down to anyone but those who voted for him.

Blair gives advice to [s]crooks[/s] Brooks,doesn't she know he has been arrested 5 times! The only surprising thing is he has been found out.

Lets not forget Cameron is also deeply embroiled in this whole twisted web... if anything, it is just further proof that party politics is an outdated relic of times gone by; the whole system is fed on corruption, from party funding, to MPs nest eggs from their corporate ties.

All we have the choice to vote on is which gimp we can blame for skimming all the cream for their own ends.

Now, I'm not saying there is an overriding and perfect plan of conspiracy, however, the networks in which they all mingle will doubtless lead to some fairly heinous conflicts of interest.

He is on the bus.

It must be wonderful to have perfect foresight, Andy. We salute your intelligence in always being able to select the best.

I find Blair particularly difficult to deal with as I admit I was a fervent supporter in 1997, because he wasn't thatcher. I suspect that's the case for many of my generation. I made the mistake of not seeing what he really was until Iraq, which was utterly unforgivable and could not be ignored. Horrible man, for whom i now hold a particular loathing.. As above, I turned my back on politics as i now think that they're all the same. Very disillusioned, which is not healthy in an electorate.

I keep reading that he has been arrested 5 times. Who is protecting him?

I was a fervent supporter in 1997, because he wasn't thatcher

A poor reason to support Blair as not only had he expressed admiration for Thatcher even before he won the 1997 general election, but Thatcher made it clear that admiration was mutual, going as far as to describe Blair's New Labour Project as her greatest achievement.

[url= http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=437&dat=19970315&id=gaZNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=s0MDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6603,5897694 ]Thatcher seen closer to Blair than Major[/url]

[url= http://www.independent.co.uk/news/thatcher-praises-formidable-blair-1621354.html ]Thatcher praises 'formidable' Blair[/url]

[img] [/img]

BTW in 1997 John Major was also not Thatcher, so you could have voted for him.

Ernie, perhaps in the enthusiasm of the times for getting rid of her you can forgive a number of people for overlooking that fact, myself included. Major in my mind was a continuation of her obnoxious policies.. I now believe that thatcher, major and Bliar did more to wreck democracy in this country than any other succession of "leaders" in modern history.

Its not like people weren't warned about Bliar:

[img] [/img]

I've been thinking about that poster. I still can't reconcile how Tory propaganda can end up being right!

Anyhow I'll stop rambling now and go back to sulking and nursing my grievances about his duplicity on my own.

Wreck democracy? Blair, for all his faults, introduced devolution for Scotland, Wales and NI and recreated the GLA with its own mayor. Not exactly anti-democratic moves. And did so after a landslide election win.

I've been thinking about that poster. I still can't reconcile how Tory propaganda can end up being right!

😉

Maybe societies simply get the politicians they deserve.

Maybe societies simply get the politicians they deserve.

We have obviously been very very naughty!

More that often the politicians people think they're voting for are not the politicians they get. It's a bit weird, if you were a company that sold a product with a pack of lies, then supplied something that bore no resemblance, you'd get in a sack of trouble but if you're a politician that does the same that's just how it's done.

Say what you like about the tories, at least you know what you're getting.

The man really is below contempt. But for all his many, many sins (pretty much covered above), his greatest one is the truly toxic and corrosive legacy he's left….

He's become the blueprint for the generation of politicians who've followed him. Hence Cameron actually stating he wanted to be the heir to Blair, which he truly is. They're all trying to duplicate his electoral success*, so as to instigate government by self-serving cabal, with the merest veneer of democratic accountability, and communication through spin- doctors endlessly disseminating misinformation through a complicit, and equally as self-serving media machine

How do you even start to repair the damage that man has done to our democracy, when the political establishment he has bequeathed is still so pathetically in thrall to the man, and his methods

Truly depressing 😥

* not that difficult really given the woeful, incompetent and pretty bloody unsavoury available alternatives

Say what you like about the tories, at least you know what you're getting.

yep, Blair-lite!

Vile man who utterly betrayed the values he was supposed to represent.

No-one who votes Tory can really criticise him though as the current government are doing their best to match him for cynicism and vindictiveness.

And they would blatantly have been at least as gung-ho about Iraq.

Would we have been better off with more John major?

Once you realise that no one gets to the top in politics without being a dishonest shit, the choices are between two bad options.

Is there no depth to which Bliar won't sink?

Depends how much he's paid.

still working out ok for brooks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26272727

I did like Paxmans description of his activities since losing office, on Newsnight last night.

"…. this all took place after Blair had embarked on his post-deposement career of getting very very rich"

Ernie, perhaps in the enthusiasm of the times for getting rid of her you can forgive a number of people for overlooking that fact, myself included.

Well yeah, people often support politicians for wholly negative reasons without caring too much what they're actually supporting - as long as it isn't what they previously supported.

We're seeing pretty much that sort of attitude towards UKIP. Most UKIP supporters haven't got a clue what UKIP's policies, other than the obvious 'EU withdrawal', are. In fact even UKIP members, including its leader, don't know what UKIP policies are :

[url= http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/23/nigel-farage-ukip-2010-election-manifesto ]Nigel Farage disowns Ukip's entire 2010 election manifesto[/url]

As far as I can figure out UKIP policies appear to be whatever Nigel Farage can dream up at any one time whilst being interviewed.

Nor do UKIP supporters, of which there are millions, care what UKIP's policies are, in fact they'd probably rather not know. All that matters to them is that UKIP aren't Labour or Tory and Nigel seems a great guy that they would like to have a pint with and which they trust more than other politicians.

.

And btw we don't get the politicians that we deserve - we get the politicians that we vote for. And the electorate has repeatedly proved that they are perfectly prepared to vote for corrupt liars if they believe that it serves their own personal interests.

For example, Blair comfortably winning elections even after it was proved that he had lied to the British people and the rest of the world about the reasons for going to war. And Westminster Council went from being a marginal Tory/Labour council to a solid Tory council straight after it had been exposed that the ruling Tory administration had been conspiring to engage in political corruption and gerrymandering.

[url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3867387.stm ]Porter pays £12m to Westminster[/url]

Too many voters simply don't care whether the politicians they vote for are corrupt liars. So don't blame the corrupt liars for winning elections. If you want to point a finger of blame then point at those who vote for them.

So, who voted him in?

Not me, and I certainly wouldn't have voted for his (then) mate, Gordon!

I don't know why people are surprised, Murdoch and Brooks helped him get elected. IMO people despise Blair because he "out Tories the Tories", the right hate him because of it and the left foolishly though they were getting some socialist idealog.

Blair sucked up to the press and is still doing so and the coalition have fudged the implementation of the Levinson report, nothing is new and nothing much has changed

and I certainly wouldn't have voted for his (then) mate, Gordon!

To be fair no one voted for Gordon, not even the Labour Party.

The whole thing was a stitch-up by right-wingers in the Labour Party who then presume to lecture trade unions about "democracy".

"Is there no depth to which Bliar won't sink?"

A question that really requires an answer based on experimentation.

I am willing to give it a go, i can supply some rope and concrete if someone else can get a boat and Blair.

As I have said before, the death of John Smith was not only a tragedy in a human way, it was also an event that had far-reaching consequences. Labour were a shoe-in in 97 after the Thatcher years had ended in recession and Major's government was mired in sleaze. Labour didn't need rebranding to the cult of king tony to win that election, it just needed to get away from the loony left image that Michael Foot engendered. John Smith was well on the way to achieving that without selling the party's ideals down the river. So Tony got in and look what happened. Another Tory government in all but name. Yes, he oversaw a lot of good things on child poverty and the like, but he was massively lucky to be governing at a time of economic upswing, and so could dish out the sweeties left, right and centre.

The main thing you have to remember about Blair is that he did not see himself as leader of a political party. He saw himself as a leader full stop. He would rather have been a monarch, or perhaps a messiah. As such, he had no deep-seated ideals, he was capable of the most astonishing about turns because what he craved was adulation and being in charge. In hindsight now it all looks (and is) so puke provokingly tacky. The guitar going into number ten 'because I'm a cool guy'. The 'accidental' hungover Cherie being snapped hanging out of the door the morning after. Vomit. And it was all cynically staged, all intentional faux naturalness. Above all it was clinically applied cynical PR.

But don't worry all you labour voters. When the recovery has bedded in and we fancy spunking it all away again, a labour government will duly be elected and the cycle will start again. We can enjoy our unsustainable summers in the sun for a few years, then reality will strike again in some form or another.

But one thing will not change, Labour or Tory. The rich will get richer. The poor will get poorer. The middle will swing between the two, and the middle will decide (as it usually does).

. In hindsight now it all looks (and is) so puke provokingly tacky.

No, you didn't need hindsight. I always thought he was a slimy little toad long before he was elected. Just that most were blind to this, and now don't admit to voting for him.

No, you didn't need hindsight. I always thought he was a slimy little toad long before he was elected. Just that most were blind to this, and now don't admit to voting for him.

Only people in his constituency voted for him, strictly speaking.

In 199[s]6[/s]7 (doh!) I voted for Jim Marshall (labour, leicester south, whip in the 70's but quite the rebel mp by the 90's, opposed the iraq invasion and did supply teaching/ran a market stall when he lost his seat by 7 votes in the 80's!) but less for all that stuff and more because he was my tiny way of making a difference to getting the conservative party out of government. I might have felt more aligned to green party at the time but what good would that have done and what difference would that have made under the circumstances? And nowadays living in a seat so safe that a three toed sloth with a blue ribbon on would get in, I might as well draw another three toed sloth on my ballot paper for all the difference it will make.

Amazes me that so many of the same voices blaming voters being reactionary sheep who are bamboozled by thin 'policy' and vote people out not in, are so often the same voices who oppose electoral reform. You get more choice, and your individual vote makes more difference to the outcome in the x-factor ffs.

Boo hoo. You voted for him and made him what he is. Deal with it.

Excellent points particularly Ernie and dannyh, and I would proffer that whilst the 'corrupt liar's' continue to enjoy the fruits of their cynical realities, the system will not change.

The system needs to change to reflect the disenchantment, the turn out's are reducing because we, the voter's, the populous, the masses are given only the option to vote for them. Ballot slips need to have the additional option of ' None of the above'. I would like to see how many of the voting public turned out if that were the case, many more I feel.

And yet, the masses are reluctant to disturb the status quo. Why is this? Is it fear? Fear that if we make a fuss we might have to do something about it and leave the relative security of our relatively safe existences? Do we feel so constrained by the state administration, the regulatory society that seeks to control the masses, through divide and conquer? It's been going on since humankind got itself a society ( with one or two exceptions ).

As for Bliar and the media [b]and[/b] the police. They are all at it. All of them corrupt at various levels to various extremes, but they were and still are thick as thieves, as bad and yet as good as they need to be to maintain their power, influence and personal wealth. So typified by the knee jerk reaction to bail out the banks that hold their assets, at the expense of the masses. Extracting more control, creating more division and securing their own 'security'.

Remarkably, I regard this not as conspiracy on a national or global level. Just many like-minded, self serving people who work the system to their own gains. Maybe the internet can provide a voice for the masses? I hoped it would. However, it seems that much of that is either monitored or used to fuel certain situations.

People need to vote with their feet and walk away from the polling stations, en masse. Is there anything in our constitution that makes an election void with a less than x% turnout?

Slackalice, I quite often spoil my card. They have to count them.

Slack Alice, interesting points but I lose the argument with the penultimate sentance. How does walking away en masse help? Don't people need to engage more, actively contact their MPs, be demanding, ask them questions, make them be part of the political process. How can we complain, if we don't participate? It's like arguing that the coalition should not be able to do XYZ because they don't have a mandate. Well oK, they do not have the support of the majority of the voters, but they still have a job to do. They cannot do nothing, The more that voters get involved, the more active their engagement with their MPs, the more likely that they will behave in the way that we expect and deserve (IMO). We are too passive, time to engage and make these people remember that they are there to serve us not themselves.

nick1962 - Member

Boo hoo. You voted for him and made him what he is. Deal with it.

Or a bankrupt politcal system did morelike.
Setting aside almost 40% of the electorate who didn't vote in either of the general elections he won, the majority who did vote, voted against Tony Blair, twice.

Three times not twice 😳

Yes thm, I concur, to a point. My reluctance to fully embrace your point is that I'm not sure how we actively participate and engage and challenge the incumbents, given their very nature and personal interests?

I'm of no doubt that many politicians enter the fray with all the good altruistic intent. I wonder how many of them are able to realise their initial goals once they themselves get caught up in a system that is not quite so altruistic.

My thought of not going to the polls doesn't feed their ego's. I would like to think the message from the voting populous becomes a more forceful one, without the use of force.

And zippykona, if spoilt ballots are counted, are their numbers revealed in the same way as the candidate's are? If so, spoil away!

The more that voters get involved, the more active their engagement with their MPs, the more likely that they will behave in the way that we expect and deserve (IMO).

I would love it to be like this.

But risk of being 'whipped', deselected and plain old "I got my seat on my party's policies, not my own reputation" apathy seems to paralyse most into trotting out (or getting their interns to cut and paste!) party memo's and approved 'lines' in response to requests over and above intervening for individual consituents. [url= http://www.drsarah.org.uk/ ]Sarah Woolaston being a local exception to this; though she will be a fun one to watch closer to election time![/url]

The amount of my very educated colleagues who have never written to an mp about something is a real shame. 🙁

[edit] Moreso if the transparency of lobbying act is actually enforced in the way the charities are fearing it will be.

If you cannot be bothered with your MP consider the following told to me by a friend who does a lot of work with local government "if you think the prime minister is a bit clueless just imagine what a rank and file mo is like and then think about quite how incompetant and corrupt are those in local government"

Blair doesn't do much for me but I'm not sure that integrity is the sole quality required of a leader; if you put you hands up, admit your mistakes and resign at the slightest misjudgement, then you'd have a change in government every two weeks (think of Carter resigning after the Tehran fiasco where half a dozen American service personnel died)
New Labour was created to be media proof after their nice, decent and honest leaders during the '80s were systematically ripped apart by the media for being lefty socialists. The fact is that it is not poor people who vote and for all us nice middle class people complaining about looking after the less well off, when it comes to the crunch of voting in a government that will take some of our wealth from us and give it to the (potentially) undeserving poor, we haven't shown much enthusiasm for this in the past!
labour were elected in 97 on the strength of what we, the public said we wanted: Better healthcare, better schools and more money for the less well off in society. We also said we didn't want to pay more taxes for these improvements. Labour more or less delivered on these pledges and brought in the right to roam; there would certainly be no trail centres for us lot to mosey round without Blair's government's attitude to public use of publicly owned land.
bankrupting the country and the Iraq war are of course a massive legacy that have wiped out in people's minds the good things that were achieved.
I'd still rather have a Blair than a Cameron.

crankboy - Member
"Is there no depth to which Bliar won't sink?"

A question that really requires an answer based on experimentation.

I am willing to give it a go, i can supply some rope and concrete if someone else can get a boat and Blair.

ChubbyBlokeInLycra - Member
My ideal afternoon: Blair's Balls, and me with a hickory baseball bat. Or pickaxe handle, not fussed which.