Blair's legacy - a personal view
David Cordingley
Ukpopdems – Popular Democrats
I know Tony Blair well. I feel I know him well, anyway: such a strange mix of brilliance and incompetence; so Jekyll and Hyde. How we wept with him and loved him over his care and concern on Diana’s death; how we wept at him and hated him over his uncaring of 100,000 innocent Iraqi deaths. He risked his premiership to successfully bring ancient enemies together in peace, yet trampled over the body of one good servant to save his own political career. A creator of a Labour machine that won three great victories, but at bottom a naïve idealist who genuinely thought all he had to do was tick a box, mix in some spin and ape the immortal words of his real master in Washington – ‘job done’.
The master of spin, he spun at the end that his unique legacy of success was to lead the greatest government since 1945. Let’s have a look at it.
He believed if he could only persuade Brown to pour enough of our money into public services, they would automatically improve without any of the real hard work of restructuring being necessary on his part. But that money was soaked up by bureaucrats, management consultants and disastrously failing IT systems. The British people paid for a French National Health System and ended up with a baffling Balkan bureaucracy where nurses are sacked and managers are hired. They paid public school prices for fabulous state school exam results that turned out hundreds of thousands of illiterate, innumerate and virtually unemployable A-star school leavers, never having had to string a sentence together before their first college thesis. And where the socially disadvantaged are forgotten and lost.
A tough on crime government that thought politically incorrect criminals were more dangerous than violent criminals. The result is that murderers and dangerous paedophiles walk the street; violent gangs are in control of many inner cities and millions are afraid to walk the streets of their communities at night. Because the money has run out, rather than build more prisons the spin machine gets into gear and the cry goes up that ‘prisons don’t work’. Ask the victims; they know one thing, that prison takes their tormentors off the street and out of their lives and the lives of other potential victims.
This was a man who personally played his part in fanning the flames of world terrorism and destroyed Britain’s role as potential world peacemaker through the tragedy of Iraq. Worse, he betrayed our beloved young men and women of the forces by equipping them badly, paying them badly and looking after them badly when they needed help. Ipods are no substitute for cover, armour and the ability to defend yourself. Blair’s terrible mistake means that his people at home are losing their freedoms – where a pensioner who heckles a Labour meeting or a protester with a placard outside parliament is counted as dangerous a terrorist as a man with a bomb.
And yet the immigrants flood in uncontrolled. Every town is swamped and the social services we pay for are breaking. Are they honest workers or the most heinous criminal gangs? Who knows, no-one in government seems concerned. They say the British are good at understanding irony; it’s a fine irony indeed when up to three million British unemployed and ‘inactive’ are matched by up to three million new immigrants taking their jobs.
Yet, in ten years, Blair has not been able to totally destroy Britain’s social structure and if he set out to do this, it is only the innate strength, good humour, commonsense and the caring nature of ordinary Britons that has thwarted him. In his farewell speech, Blair was right in one thing, that despite all he has done Britain is still the best country in the world.
And so good-bye Blair and hello Brown.
Brown is virtually unknown as a real person. He has been missing when the bad news had to be given out. He has hidden behind the spun figures of his double and triple funding announcements. What do we know?
Well, we know from the people who know him that he is a control freak. Someone who feels he is always right and others always wrong. It will be spun as ‘strong principles’ to the media. We know he is a man prepared to shake hands with celebrities and ruffle the little heads of the poor children in Africa to win an election, then forget all about them afterwards.
We know he is old left-wing Presbytarian Labour. He has taxed and taxed and spent and spent. He doesn’t care that handing over almost half your money to him hurts you and forces both adults in every family to work, rather than one being able to stay home to look after the children. He doesn’t care that most of that tax is wasted on weird back-line non jobs out of The Guardian, and fraud, and quangos and form-filling and peoples’ art and vast bureaucracies.
He doesn’t care that thousands of private sector pensions have been destroyed and stolen, and that those same victims are paying for nice, cosy and safe public sector pensions like his own. He doesn’t care that petrol, utility bills and Council Tax have doubled while state pensions have declined in real terms. He doesn’t care that homes are unaffordable; manufacturing in Britain has been destroyed; balance of payments is £55billion in the red; and business red tape is forcing productivity down faster than a fireman down a pole.
If his control freakery fails to find a way of forcing the British people to elect him through constitutional and electoral tinkering, then perhaps he will start caring in 2009.
Ukpopdems – Popular Democrats
I know Tony Blair well. I feel I know him well, anyway: such a strange mix of brilliance and incompetence; so Jekyll and Hyde. How we wept with him and loved him over his care and concern on Diana’s death; how we wept at him and hated him over his uncaring of 100,000 innocent Iraqi deaths. He risked his premiership to successfully bring ancient enemies together in peace, yet trampled over the body of one good servant to save his own political career. A creator of a Labour machine that won three great victories, but at bottom a naïve idealist who genuinely thought all he had to do was tick a box, mix in some spin and ape the immortal words of his real master in Washington – ‘job done’.
The master of spin, he spun at the end that his unique legacy of success was to lead the greatest government since 1945. Let’s have a look at it.
He believed if he could only persuade Brown to pour enough of our money into public services, they would automatically improve without any of the real hard work of restructuring being necessary on his part. But that money was soaked up by bureaucrats, management consultants and disastrously failing IT systems. The British people paid for a French National Health System and ended up with a baffling Balkan bureaucracy where nurses are sacked and managers are hired. They paid public school prices for fabulous state school exam results that turned out hundreds of thousands of illiterate, innumerate and virtually unemployable A-star school leavers, never having had to string a sentence together before their first college thesis. And where the socially disadvantaged are forgotten and lost.
A tough on crime government that thought politically incorrect criminals were more dangerous than violent criminals. The result is that murderers and dangerous paedophiles walk the street; violent gangs are in control of many inner cities and millions are afraid to walk the streets of their communities at night. Because the money has run out, rather than build more prisons the spin machine gets into gear and the cry goes up that ‘prisons don’t work’. Ask the victims; they know one thing, that prison takes their tormentors off the street and out of their lives and the lives of other potential victims.
This was a man who personally played his part in fanning the flames of world terrorism and destroyed Britain’s role as potential world peacemaker through the tragedy of Iraq. Worse, he betrayed our beloved young men and women of the forces by equipping them badly, paying them badly and looking after them badly when they needed help. Ipods are no substitute for cover, armour and the ability to defend yourself. Blair’s terrible mistake means that his people at home are losing their freedoms – where a pensioner who heckles a Labour meeting or a protester with a placard outside parliament is counted as dangerous a terrorist as a man with a bomb.
And yet the immigrants flood in uncontrolled. Every town is swamped and the social services we pay for are breaking. Are they honest workers or the most heinous criminal gangs? Who knows, no-one in government seems concerned. They say the British are good at understanding irony; it’s a fine irony indeed when up to three million British unemployed and ‘inactive’ are matched by up to three million new immigrants taking their jobs.
Yet, in ten years, Blair has not been able to totally destroy Britain’s social structure and if he set out to do this, it is only the innate strength, good humour, commonsense and the caring nature of ordinary Britons that has thwarted him. In his farewell speech, Blair was right in one thing, that despite all he has done Britain is still the best country in the world.
And so good-bye Blair and hello Brown.
Brown is virtually unknown as a real person. He has been missing when the bad news had to be given out. He has hidden behind the spun figures of his double and triple funding announcements. What do we know?
Well, we know from the people who know him that he is a control freak. Someone who feels he is always right and others always wrong. It will be spun as ‘strong principles’ to the media. We know he is a man prepared to shake hands with celebrities and ruffle the little heads of the poor children in Africa to win an election, then forget all about them afterwards.
We know he is old left-wing Presbytarian Labour. He has taxed and taxed and spent and spent. He doesn’t care that handing over almost half your money to him hurts you and forces both adults in every family to work, rather than one being able to stay home to look after the children. He doesn’t care that most of that tax is wasted on weird back-line non jobs out of The Guardian, and fraud, and quangos and form-filling and peoples’ art and vast bureaucracies.
He doesn’t care that thousands of private sector pensions have been destroyed and stolen, and that those same victims are paying for nice, cosy and safe public sector pensions like his own. He doesn’t care that petrol, utility bills and Council Tax have doubled while state pensions have declined in real terms. He doesn’t care that homes are unaffordable; manufacturing in Britain has been destroyed; balance of payments is £55billion in the red; and business red tape is forcing productivity down faster than a fireman down a pole.
If his control freakery fails to find a way of forcing the British people to elect him through constitutional and electoral tinkering, then perhaps he will start caring in 2009.
posted by United Kingdom Popular Democratic Party at 1:43 pm
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