Is Britain a better place since 1997?

[Dick Knights Mumm]

As for Iraq - I think he would have been dammed if he hadn't gone to war and dammed that he did.

Tosh. Damned by who ?

Was Chirac damned in France ? Of course some would have criticised him - same goes for any decision. But damned - I don't think so. There was no great stomach in the UK - that is why they had to produce the dodgy dossiers.

 

[csider]

No - we lost the Goldstone..!!

 

[Barrel of Fun]

The question isn't are YOU better off, it's whether Britain is. As you know, seeing as you wrote it

But it is not a better place for me personally.

Relatively speaking, I pay more tax and I am in more debt than I would have been ten years ago, yet the services that I use have not improved and I am locked out of the property market for the timebeing, along with many other people (Graduates or otherwise).

 

[Race]

By TREVOR KAVANAGH
June 27, 2007


I HATE to rain on Tony Blair’s parade.

He leaves office under a halo of praise after the longest orchestrated farewell in political history.

But does he leave behind a truly grateful nation?

It’s hard not to like Mr Blair. Indeed, he admits he tries to please as many people as possible.

And it worked. For most of his Downing Street years, Mr Blair was the most popular PM ever.

At one time, as his ratings nudged 90 per cent, aides joked only Saddam Hussein could command such approval.

In the end, of course, it was Saddam who turned those ratings to ashes.

Without the Iraq war, Mr Blair might have hoped for a record fourth term in power.

Yet for all his political brilliance, he leaves office a disappointed man.

Not over the decision to invade Iraq — he will go to his grave believing that was right — but because he failed to do what was needed at home.

New Labour came to power with the greatest blessings ever bestowed on an incoming government.

It was rich beyond its wildest dreams, with taxpayers’ cash pouring into its coffers.

It enjoyed a huge majority and unrivalled public goodwill.

Anything was possible.

Mr Blair rose to the occasion by swearing to “save the NHS” — only to end up with a system in crisis at colossal cost to the nation.

He promised to make education his top priority.

Yet schools are turning out a generation of “unemployables”, with one in five illiterate and innumerate.

He declared war on crime and the causes of crime — yet street violence is now shockingly high and rising.

He vowed to tackle the hopeless army of unemployed — 5.6million of working age on various forms of benefit. After ten years, the number has been trimmed to just 5.2million.

And he refused to acknowledge the social crisis of unfettered immigration.

Mr Blair’s reluctance to get stuck into tough policy-making was the despair of his allies.





Instead, he spent his whole first term with just one goal — winning a second.

He preferred a quick headline to the sweat of finding lasting solutions.

In a handwritten memo, he famously pleaded: “Bring me eye-catching initiatives with which I can be associated.”

This summed up the Blair years — government by media manipulation.

Even as the PM lashed the media’s “feral beasts” last month for being so nasty to him, he was obliged to make a confession of his own.

“I acknowledge my own complicity,” he said.

“We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging and persuading the media.” Not half. New Labour didn’t “assuage and court” the media. It bullied and threatened. It turned manipulation into a ruthless black art.

For all that, Mr Blair will be missed.

He was a star. And he will remain one on the world stage, perhaps in the unlikely role as Middle East peace-seeker.

But he will surely leave office wishing he’d tackled the important issues at home.

Instead of leaving it all to Gordon Brown.




SUMS IT UP NICELY FOR ME

 

[Bevendean Hillbilly]

Yeah,me too.