Blair Legacy Update

The real legacy begins -

Toady Bliar joins board of big Us-rael investment bank.

Salary half£million plus p.a. for a couple of days a month.

and lots more such posts to come from the grateful chums to fill a little of his spare time.

www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7180306.stm

Well, it's very generous of JP Morgan, I suppose, helping the long-term unemployable like this.  That nasty Mr. Cameron would have had him picking up litter, or something.

What really pisses me off is that now that the Blair Project is good and dead and we have a reasonably non-sociopathic prime minister, the fucking media goes and elects Cameron and we're all back to square one. They're treating the next election like it's a foregone conclusion, and it better not be because that man is our very own answer to George W Bush - a stupid inbred toff who will proceed to completely screw the country if elected.

Tom; what a load of row-locks.

You know as well as the rest of us, Gordy was the financier for Bliars misguided sh*°^. WHere you say he is undoing Bliars policies:

NHS - no great change here; still PFI. Also the latest 'big idea'; prevention is better than cure, but no substance behind the idea

Sucking Up To Bush - no great change here either. Still bogus muslamophobia scares, still troops in Iraq, still meddling in Pakistan and helping the US to break it up

Locking Up People Without trial - gone backwards here. Gone from 28 days to 44. Really unwinding Tone's policies at a fabulous rate?

As this is your first posting for over a month, perhaps you are a bit out of practice? Yes Tone has gone but New Lab shite remains and Blairwatch stll has an important job to do.

No complaints from me.  I didn't support any of those policies so Brown scrapping them is a good thing.  ID cards are surely done for as well, after the loss of personal data last year and all the accompanying headlines.

http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com

DAVID AARONOVITCH - A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMPASSION

If “The wages of sin is death”, the returns must seem altogether less bleak to Tony Blair. In November, Blair was reported to have received £237,000 for a 20-minute speech before an audience of Chinese entrepreneurs. While his salary as prime minister was £186,429 a year, it now takes him two high-profile speeches to earn the same amount. Analysts estimate that he could earn £3m simply by speaking 50 nights a year. Blair will also supplement his income as an adviser to international investment bank JP Morgan - a job that could net him £500,000 a year. This is all in addition to the £4.5m he is being paid for his memoirs.

First post for a month, Christmas and my partner being ill (and currently in hospital) has rather eaten into blogging time.

However, I stick to my guns that Brown's problems are down to the man's clear character weaknesses and a bunch of shit inheritances coming home to roost rather than being an semi-insane clueless megalomaniac.

Examples:

Locking people up - the current proposal is 42 days.  In 2005 Tony was telling us Horrible Things would happen if we didn't go for 90 days, now they can't string two coherent words together in support of less than half that and everyone's opposed to them except Killer of the Yard and the Sun.  I'll be amazed if this gets through.

Sucking up to Bush - I'm going on the US wingnutosphere response to Brown, which is pretty negative - they think he's cowardly and pro-European/UN and they hate the appointment of Mark Malloch-Brown.  Tony got a glowing tribute and since you get a glowing tribute from right-wing US nutters only by agreeing with them in every way, I suggest that Brown isn't as bad as Blair at licking the Presidential rim.  This is like saying gonorrhea is better than syphilis, of course, and Brown's foreign policy is still a mess, just less of one.  It's also clear that no matter what he says about 'overwatch' there's no way on earth Our Boys are going back into Basra even if it descends into civil war.  Iraq is over, no one won but Blair lost big time.  Oh, and the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, they're so easy to forget, don't you think?

One I missed off the list is the apparent abandonment of the phrase 'War on Terror', courtesy of an article by Ken McDonald, who says it's entirely counterproductive and it's best to deal with jihadi terrorists as criminals rather than as soldiers in an Islamic religious army.  This is exactly what we've been saying for years, but Blair, with his eyes on the US Right and the speaking tour market, went along with the Bush-inspired idiocy of bigging up the WOT, much to the delight of his bank manager.

On Islamophobia, watch Hazel Blears.  She's a most excellent canary, since she'll say whatever the boss wants, and her attack on Bishop Nasty-Ali I contend would have been unthinkable under Blair, since he's the neo-con's clergyman.

PFI is still a clusterfuck of outrageous proportions and so clearly a Brown idea that it's a permanent stain on his record.  It's not a Blairite policy, unlike the whole idea of taking business from the NHS and giving it to private treatment centres, which has definitely been reversed, ditto faith schools and some of the worst excesses of Lord Adonis at education.

Given all that, it's worth watching what Blairite ideas he's sticking with, such as ID cards, and going for the jugular, since we know he will eventually fold.  He's conveniently reduced the target list somewhat, too.

'Iraq is over, no one won but Blair lost big time.' Huh?? Blair's lined up a £5 million advance for the sorry story of his life, £1/2 million for a sinecure at JPMorgan (plus a 'small handful' of other sinecures in the offing acc. to TB), Sarko bleating about his friend Tony getting the presidency of the EU - please tell me how Blair lost big time in his parachuting into the corporatocracy - who lost were (dead)  hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, 4,000 US troops and nearing 1,000 British troops, a couple hundred journalists of all nations; as for the wounded, well who counts wounded, except their families and friends; certainly wounded don't show up as statistics on the ever-loyal BBC.

As for 'taking business from the NHS and giving it to private treatment centres', talk to nurses working GPs' surgeries and find out how nurses do the work that gets paid into GPs' coffers - with no 'trickle-down' effect for the nurses - and no, I'm not a nurse. If your granny's housebound, and a district nurse visits and gives her a flu jab, the GP gets points that add to HIS/HER wages - 300 housebound flu jags at £8 a jag - is a healthy boost to a GP's salary - pity he/she didn't actually adminster them - it's okay: the district nurse gets a complimentary bottle of wine at Christmas from her GP boss if she's lucky. That's at the most basic level of health care - never mind the iniquity of private treatment centres. Ask yourself why health staff who are appalled at what is happening to the NHS are banned by contract from speaking to the press or even their MPs about their misgivings - let's hear it for free speech.

Gordon bankrolled these 'initiatives': the war, the health service changes, Trident replacement, PFI.

Tom,

sorry to hear about your partner.

Thanks, she's fine if a bit sore and should be home tomorrow.  It's not anything particularly life-threatening but any time you go under the knife it's a worry, of course.  She's been more or less unwell for a few months, so hopefully this will fix it.

"Iraq is over, no one won but Blair lost big time."

I meant politically - he's dead meat and his 'philosophy' is dead with him.  I don't tend to judge on the 'who dies with most toys wins' principle (it's not the British people voting him £5m quid, after all), but on character and reputation.  In both of those cases, Iraq exposed Blair for what he is and there's no coming back.

On the NHS staff speaking out point, Private Eye has a story exactly along those lines, and it's an absolute disgrace, of course.  Brown certainly doesn't win my vote (probably ever) but at least the avalanche of crap ideas has slowed and some are being reversed, and it's important to note this.

More big time bucks!

Tio and anon forgot to mention Bliars recompense for the 'peace making' ha job in the Middle East. Haven't seen anywhere what the package is but no doubt it will be big.

And of course, there will be his friends in Tel Aviv, no doubt looking after the best asset they have had in the West (Bush aside) for a very long time. Watch for more director appointments soon.