Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 89 total)
  • Is there no depth to which Bliar won't sink?
  • CountZero
    Full Member

    andymc06 – Member
    Boo hoo. You voted for him and made him what he is. Deal with it.

    No. People voted for the image that Bliar carefully crafted and projected. That gave him the platform that he craved, but what he became was always there, just hidden behind the mask.
    A great actor, utterly reprehensible human being.
    Even you ought to realise that.

    scaredypants
    Full Member

    ooooh, hi ernie !

    agreed, he/they bought us off.

    I was really optimistic when they got in first time round, mostly because I assumed they were some sort of left-wing organisation. More fool me.

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    Had he not given voters what they wanted he would not have won three elections so convincingly.

    He gave me nothing I wanted, but he made a lot of promises. I disagree somewhat with the view that Blair seduced the electorate – a great many of us had been stung by the Tories to the extent that they were utterly unelectable (and should have remained so, IMHO) and Blair realised that all he needed to do was have better PR…a lesson he’s not swayed from since.

    The very worst thing that could happen to him is for history to judge him harshly – Blair smacks of a narcissist with pretensions of greatness, I suspect his self image is stronger than his own mortality.

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    loddrik
    Free Member

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

    Northwind
    Full Member

    My dad’s explanation for absolutely everything that’s wrong with the country: “John Smith died and Tony Blair didn’t”

    I voted for him the first time, or for his party, I have to admit- we were dangerously close to being the only tory seat in Scotland and I’d have had to move, so tactically voted labour.

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    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.

    dannyh
    Free Member

    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!

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    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.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    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.

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    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….

    andymc06
    Free 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.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    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.

    🙄

    gordimhor
    Full Member

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

    jivehoneyjive
    Free Member

    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.

    scandalous
    Free Member

    He is on the bus.

    ononeorange
    Full Member

    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.

    zippykona
    Full Member

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

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    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.

    Thatcher seen closer to Blair than Major

    Thatcher praises ‘formidable’ Blair

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

    ononeorange
    Full Member

    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.

    cranberry
    Free Member

    Its not like people weren’t warned about Bliar:

    ononeorange
    Full Member

    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.

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    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.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    Maybe societies simply get the politicians they deserve.

    We have obviously been very very naughty!

    Northwind
    Full Member

    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.

    binners
    Full Member

    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

    footflaps
    Full Member

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

    yep, Blair-lite!

    grum
    Free Member

    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.

    ac282
    Full Member

    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.

    MrWoppit
    Free Member

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

    Depends how much he’s paid.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    still working out ok for brooks

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

    binners
    Full Member

    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_lynch
    Free Member

    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 :

    Nigel Farage disowns Ukip’s entire 2010 election manifesto

    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.

    Porter pays £12m to Westminster

    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.

    oldboy
    Free Member

    So, who voted him in?

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

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    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

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    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”.

    crankboy
    Free 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.

    dannyh
    Free Member

    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).

    richmars
    Full Member

    . 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.

    julianwilson
    Free Member

    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 19967 (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.

    nick1962
    Free 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.

Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 89 total)

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