Arrest Tony Blair...

[beutelwolf]

Coincidentally, as I wrote this, a matching story appeared on BBC news.

[number 6]

You can see with the naked eye the difference 13 years of labour made. Travel around the country, its not hard to miss the new houses and buildings. As for education,the stats dont lie,do they? Massively more peopkle going to uni. And only a fool would deny the health service hasn't improved. But hey,5 years of this coalition and all the good work will be undone.

[RoddersUK]

Who were "most" people against the Iraq war?
It wasn't until the truth came out that people turned against it.
I personally was glad that Hussein was deposed and eventually topped. That bastard got exactly what he deserved.
An Iraqi friend is grateful for the US UK intervention in his country but is a tad unhappy at the fall out after the end of the war.
As for Tony B Liar, I would like to see the smarmy bastard locked up for a long time.
As for more people going to Uni, yeh a lot are doing "platting fog" subjects.
Sussex University for example has an excellent engineering section whilst across the road Brighton University teaches the NFU & NFW Degree courses. No Fucking Use and Not Fucking Wanted.
Too many are going to Unias a matter of course and so demean the University system which once upon a time was superb. Now they down grade to grab money and lots of youngsters who in all reality should not be there are.

[beutelwolf]

number 6 wrote:

> You can see with the naked eye the difference 13 years of
> labour made. Travel around the country, its not hard to miss
> the new houses and buildings. As for education,the stats dont
> lie,do they?

What stats? The A-level result stats only reflect an inflation of marks - the actual standards are slipping. More people go to uni, yes, but it's partly a case of people going to uni who should not, and partly one of the universities providing the education the schools do not.

> Massively more peopkle going to uni. And only a
> fool would deny the health service hasn't improved.

But it's been payed for by borrowed money. Achievement by credit card.

[David Johnson]

"Apart from those things, Blair & Brown left school education (and to some extent, the NHS too) with a time bomb future generations will have to pay through their noses for. These are the so-called public-private partnerships. In the short term they provide services on the (seemingly) cheap, in the long term they are a lousy deal for the taxpayer. In that respect New Labour confused credit with income, much in the same way as Thatcher had confused selling assets with income. As a result, the country has been living beyond its (sustainable) means for 30 years or so..."

I agree with part of this. The Labour party did not confuse credit with income. They did underestimate the potential impact of a global recession on long term PFI type deals. But then the majority of major Western economies also understimated the possibility and impact of a global recession.

Thatcher did not confuse selling assets with income. She sold the "family silver" in the words of former Tory PM Harold MacMillan because Thatcherism believed in a smal state where the family was key and private companies were inherently better at running things than the public sector.

One of the problems facing the Labour party is how to get into power when 80-90% of the media is pro Tory. It was clear in 1997 that Blair was pushing the "we are more financially prudent than the Tories" type line to get the support of the Sun and indeed in the first few years of the Labour government, prudent financial policies were followed.

I agree that PFI appears to be a very bad approach to funding capital expenditure. Brown never convincingly explained why an approach created by the Tory party in the late 80's and opposed by Labour at the time became such an important part of the Labour government's strategy. It seems commonsense that a government can borrow money at lower rates than a private company can get it on the money markets. The government then has to pay back the cost of the loans etc. I suspect that Brown and Blair were a bit paranoic about the "prudence " bit and wanted a mechanism for meeting their manifesto commitments on education and the NHS whilst keeping this expenditure off the balance sheet as far as possible.

In short I suspect it was an error. Was it as huge an error as the Tory sale of most of our national assets in terms of infrastructure? I suspect not.

CHeers
D

[max_tranmere]

Tony Blair will have the Iraq issue following him around until the day he dies. This for him is like the Rivers Of Blood speech was for Enoch Powell - everywhere he goes people will remind him of it, and when he dies all the obituries will be dominated by it. I can not think of many former senior politicans that have to be physically protected to the extent Blair often has to be - at this book signing in London in September he will be lynched if it wasn't for the bodyguards he will have with him.

Apparently the only people who will be allowed to queue up and meet him at the signing will be people who have surrendered their cameras, mobiles, and so on, and those who are 'deemed fit' by someone who will vet them upon arrival. I cant think of many other people who demand this of people who are coming to meet them. I am sure one of these Anti War Coalition people will sneak through though and either yell abuse at him or physically attack him.

[RoddersUK]

In my Sunday paper a certain columnists hopes that no one will turn up to buy the tissue of lies the smarmy bastard has had published. Now that would hurt the lying smarmy bastard.
Same paper, apparently Gordon fucking Broon has sold 32 copies of his book. Yeh, 32!

[eroticartist]

Tony Blair is a war criminal and he lied to the people about non existent weapons of mass destruction and the four minute warning. Mike Freeman.

[belfast_birty]

Well,he's drawn his book advance,so he's not too worried if few turn up,for the signing.

[RoddersUK]

Advance yes, but if no one buys the fucking thing lying smarmy bastard won't get any more dosh will he?