well.... he's announced his departure and leaves at the end of June.

 

I think he did a fantastic job in reforming his once unelectable party. He did a fantastic job in his strive for equality for all after the Nazi Thatcher and Tory years. He gave Wales and Scotland new life - he ploughed money into them both after almost 20 years of Tory neglect. And he did a truly incredible job uniting Ireland.

 

He failed on his disastrous mistakes in siding with a cowboy and in destroying Iraq. He failed to nail immigration and eradicating fundamentalists from our society.

 

I dread the prospect of that slobbering sloth Gordon Brown becoming our leader, but I feel his leadership will be a short one.

 

Here's Blair's resignation speech in full:

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics...ir_resignation2

 

One thing I like is how he calls Britain the greatest nation on earth. We rarely hear someone making such a bold statement - it's almost too American for our British sensibilities, but in the current climate of the Union Jack and St George flag being hijacked by neo-Nazis and us being denied Christmas festivities by right-on do-gooders - good on him for saying this.

I will remember Blair for

 

1) Iraq - mass murder of civilians in Baghdad in shock and awe

 

2) The attempts by Blair to blacken the name and thus cause the suicide of Dr David Kelly

 

3) Ignoring UN resolutions

 

4) Increased lack of privacy and freedom in the name of terrorism

 

5) Taking away ministerial accountability and replacing it with an army of spin doctors

 

6) Bringing back into the cabinet Mandelson and Blunkett after they resigned previously for sleaze only for them to have to resign again for sleaze

 

7) The cost of the millennium dome and olympic stadium

 

8) Illegal immigration

 

9) Attempting to bring in lengthy detention without trial

 

10) Using the police to stifle anti war protests

 

11) Robbing pension funds on a level Maxwell could not even manage

 

12) Post office closures destroying rural communities

 

I WILL give him credit for Northern Ireland and the minimum wage but that is it

 

Even the economic stability is as a result of inheriting a strong economy off Major, no global recessions in his reign and handing over key decisions on the economy to the BOE

 

Good riddance to the murdering bast*rd see you in The Hague with any luck !

This sums up Blair in a fukkin nutshell :manson: :manson: :manson:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6642339.stm

 

Released a month late in an attempt to deliberately bury bad news as the government know it will not get a mention in the papers and media cos of Blair's resignation

 

A real class act Tony :manson: :manson:

Craig, you really do dwell on the bad! Blair has been an excellent PM, imo, way better than John Major, and better than Brown will be. There are many positives, amoungst them sweeping away age old gay prejudice, the way he handled the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, I could go on....!

Craig, you really do dwell on the bad! Blair has been an excellent PM, imo, way better than John Major, and better than Brown will be. There are many positives, amoungst them sweeping away age old gay prejudice, the way he handled the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, I could go on....!

 

I have given him credit for a couple of things Matt but for me some of the bad things he did particularly over Iraq were so bad that they completely wipe out any good things, Iraq will always be Blair's legacy and what most people will remember him for.

 

I watched CNN when those cluster bombs were falling in Baghdad residential areas in 'shock and awe' and I simply cannot forgive Blair for cluster bombing Iraqi civilians and that is before you add lying to the British people, slandering one of Britain's most respected scientists to the point he killed himself, defying UN resolutions and so on, sorry mate but the guy IMHO deserves no respect merely a war crimes trial or an assassins bullet in his skull

Edited May 10, 200718 yr by Vic Vega

I have to say hats off to his coach for today's speech.

 

Rehearsed to perfection, breathe ...1..2..3, look sincere .1 ...2 ....3 look emotional ...2...3. repeat

 

He will leave a legacy of spin and PR, the like of which we have never seen before.

 

(oh but the child tax credit :wub: ........ the biggest unnecessary unheaval in tax - the biggest c**k up - and the most woefully undertrained staff to deal with it ......... so badly handled that the tax ombudsman and I were on first name terms!!! but thanks Tony - I like new friends and I like all the money they can't make me give back :wub:)

10) Using the police to stifle anti war protests

12) Post office closures destroying rural communities

 

 

err... but it's ok to draft in SOLDIERS by helicopter (at OUR expense), then dress them up as policemen and place them at the frontline of miner's pickets, then, is it?

 

As for Post Office closures - this was happening WAY before Blair came into power. A Post Office closure affects a village, yes - but, at least Mr Blair didn't try to close who COUNTRIES down, Vic, like your fascist heroine.....

for a self proclaimed animal lover craig is overlooking what blair acheived.

 

in all we were better off under blair then any other pm of recent times... he might not have fully fulfilled his promises of ten years ago , but he sure did sort out the huge mess the tories left us in. EVERY school ive worked in in the last ten years have had huge spending undertaken, gone are the temporary wooden, leaking, proped up classrooms that thatcher and major left us with. investment in education has been huge.

 

we have had the most stable economy in living years, lowest mortgage rates, and some people who profess to look after themselves first are still moaning! lol, i guess once a mind is made up nothing will change it!

 

iraq was wrong..... but.... the tories would have been the first to criticise IF sadam had used wmd's... and they convieniantly overlook the mass killing that was going on in iraq. ok, theres still murders, but things are on the way to being settled, doing nothing would do nothing but delay the inevitable.

for a self proclaimed animal lover craig is overlooking what blair acheived.

 

in all we were better off under blair then any other pm of recent times... he might not have fully fulfilled his promises of ten years ago , but he sure did sort out the huge mess the tories left us in. EVERY school ive worked in in the last ten years have had huge spending undertaken, gone are the temporary wooden, leaking, proped up classrooms that thatcher and major left us with. investment in education has been huge.

 

we have had the most stable economy in living years, lowest mortgage rates, and some people who profess to look after themselves first are still moaning! lol, i guess once a mind is made up nothing will change it!

 

iraq was wrong..... but.... the tories would have been the first to criticise IF sadam had used wmd's... and they convieniantly overlook the mass killing that was going on in iraq. ok, theres still murders, but things are on the way to being settled, doing nothing would do nothing but delay the inevitable.

 

Blair has done a handful of good things for the country but Adolf Hitler transformed the German economy and almost single handedly created the formidable German car industry by creating Auto Union but the good things he did at home he more than f***ed up abroad, the same principle applies on a lower death scale to Blair, Blair despite a good domestic record had a foreign policy that will set global relations and our image overseas back by a generation, Blair for all his domestic achievements has been a disaster foreign policy wise

I have given him credit for a couple of things Matt but for me some of the bad things he did particularly over Iraq were so bad that they completely wipe out any good things, Iraq will always be Blair's legacy and what most people will remember him for.

 

I watched CNN when those cluster bombs were falling in Baghdad residential areas in 'shock and awe' and I simply cannot forgive Blair for cluster bombing Iraqi civilians and that is before you add lying to the British people, slandering one of Britain's most respected scientists to the point he killed himself, defying UN resolutions and so on, sorry mate but the guy IMHO deserves no respect merely a war crimes trial or an assassins bullet in his skull

 

Still Margaret Thatcher must be smiling today, after all she helped support Saddam Hussein's government in the 1980s.

 

"In 1996, the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair investigated the Thatcher government's record in dealing with Saddam Hussein. It revealed how £1bn of Whitehall money was used in soft loan guarantees for British exporters to Iraq. The judge found that during Baghdad's protracted invasion of Iran in the 1980s, officials destroyed documents relating to the export of Chieftain tank parts to Jordan which ended up in Iraq. Ministers clandestinely relaxed official guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools which were used in munitions factories. The British company Racal exported sophisticated Jaguar V radios to the former Iraqi dictator's army on credit. Members of the Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to Saddam even after he executed a British journalist, Farzad Bazoft, Thatcher’s cabinet minuting that they did not want to damage British industry."

 

Add to it the misery of her "Unionist" policy in Northern Ireland (a bit different to Tony Blair); The utterly homophobic "Clause 28"; the destruction of the UK manufacturing industry & blue collar union movement especially that of the miners; the crass encouragement of fat cats, jobs for the boys, hypocritical morality and the yuppies; the utterly repugnant Poll Tax; the public support of the fallen military dictator of Chile - General Pinochet, unemployment rising from over 1 million to over 3 million; the privatisation of public utilities the Railways, Telephone networks, ITV stations, Water, Gas & Electric utilities all for an obscenely cheap amount of money.

 

But the most despicable thing that she was responsible for was the (cowardly) sinking of the Argentinian naval ship the General Belgrano during The Falklands War when it travelling AWAY from the British navy, when 75 miles OUTSIDE the 200 miles total exclusion zone of the Falklands islands, causing the MURDER of 323 men.

 

Or do you care to forget the famous 1983 Nationwide programme interview?

Funnily enough despite being a hugely popular early evening TV programme it stopped only a year later after the Government put intense pressure on the BBC.

 

And you complain about Blair as a War criminal. In short Tony Blair is a petty thief compared to the evil Thatcher's Robert Maxwell like behaviour.

 

As for Iraq, you seem to forget that (according to Amnesty International) on a daily basis 2.5 times as many people were dying on average under Saddam Hussein's rule as are dying now in Iraq.

 

Not that he has had much competition but Tony Blair has easily been the best UK President Prime Minister of my lifetime. But he has been badly let down by licking the backside of the worst USA President since Richard Nixon.

 

after a post like that - thisispop for PM!

after a post like that - thisispop for PM!

I agree. Superb. :)

Still Margaret Thatcher must be smiling today, after all she helped support Saddam Hussein's government in the 1980s.

 

"In 1996, the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair investigated the Thatcher government's record in dealing with Saddam Hussein. It revealed how £1bn of Whitehall money was used in soft loan guarantees for British exporters to Iraq. The judge found that during Baghdad's protracted invasion of Iran in the 1980s, officials destroyed documents relating to the export of Chieftain tank parts to Jordan which ended up in Iraq. Ministers clandestinely relaxed official guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools which were used in munitions factories. The British company Racal exported sophisticated Jaguar V radios to the former Iraqi dictator's army on credit. Members of the Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to Saddam even after he executed a British journalist, Farzad Bazoft, Thatcher’s cabinet minuting that they did not want to damage British industry."

 

Add to it the misery of her "Unionist" policy in Northern Ireland (a bit different to Tony Blair); The utterly homophobic "Clause 28"; the destruction of the UK manufacturing industry & blue collar union movement especially that of the miners; the crass encouragement of fat cats, jobs for the boys, hypocritical morality and the yuppies; the utterly repugnant Poll Tax; the public support of the fallen military dictator of Chile - General Pinochet, unemployment rising from over 1 million to over 3 million; the privatisation of public utilities the Railways, Telephone networks, ITV stations, Water, Gas & Electric utilities all for an obscenely cheap amount of money.

 

But the most despicable thing that she was responsible for was the (cowardly) sinking of the Argentinian naval ship the General Belgrano during The Falklands War when it travelling AWAY from the British navy, when 75 miles OUTSIDE the 200 miles total exclusion zone of the Falklands islands, causing the MURDER of 323 men.

 

Or do you care to forget the famous 1983 Nationwide programme interview?

Funnily enough despite being a hugely popular early evening TV programme it stopped only a year later after the Government put intense pressure on the BBC.

 

And you complain about Blair as a War criminal. In short Tony Blair is a petty thief compared to the evil Thatcher's Robert Maxwell like behaviour.

 

As for Iraq, you seem to forget that (according to Amnesty International) on a daily basis 2.5 times as many people were dying on average under Saddam Hussein's rule as are dying now in Iraq.

 

Not that he has had much competition but Tony Blair has easily been the best UK President Prime Minister of my lifetime. But he has been badly let down by licking the backside of the worst USA President since Richard Nixon.

 

Saddam Hussein was useful to us as he was fighting against Iran who was the then bogeyman in the Middle East so the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario applied, while the $h!t hit the fan in later years helping Saddam defeat Iran seemed the right thing to do at the time, Saddam was a secular muslim Iran under Ayatolla Khomeini was trying to spread islamic fundamentalism across the middle east, with the available information at the time I am sure any PM would have done the same. Blair has funded some unsavoury regimes too like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and has sold nukes to Israel who are universally despised in the middle east.

 

Pinochet was a great servant to Britain, the intelligence he provided us in the Falklands saved the lives of countless number of our military, as well as providing intelligence he also let our planes refuel at Chilean airbases, without his help the death toll in the Falklands would have been much higher, he was a good man to Britain and to see a man who did so much to save British lives being arrested in a British hospital was in my opinion a disgrace and shamed Britain, ironic Robert Mugabe was on a state visit at the time :rolleyes:

 

Unemployment rose largely because of a GLOBAL recession, the switch also from manufacturing to service industry in this country also did result in a temporary shake up in this country but when Maggie left power more people were in work than were under Callaghan, add to that the 1.4million new businesses that were created by Maggie add to that the record amount of inward investmemnt of companies overseas setting up offices here because of Maggie's tax breaks for enterprise zones

 

Sinking the Belgrano was the right thing to do, yes it was moving away from us but it was still in a situation where it could change course and cause massive destruction to the British fleet, it was a military situation, the British fleet had already been pummelled by exocet missiles, the Belgrano was not a tourist boat it was armed to the teeth with missiles it was utterly the right thing to do given its potential danger

 

Those figures you give of 2.5 times the number include the number who died as a result of UN sanctions so in terms of actual violence and deaths through bombings, shootings etc the average Iraqi is no safer now than they were under Saddam

From Wikipedia RE The Belgrano

 

 

The ship was sailing away from the Falkland Islands when attacked

Though the ship was heading away from the Falkland Islands, it had been moving towards the task force all the previous day, and had only turned around because an air attack on the task force was cancelled due to lack of wind to launch planes from the aircraft carrier operating to the north of the Falklands. Belgrano had in fact been ordered back towards the coast to wait for more favourable conditions for an attack. Her captain, Hector Bonzo, said "We were heading towards the mainland but not going to the mainland; we were going to a position to await further orders".[7]

 

The Belgrano was sunk outside the 200 mile total exclusion zone around the Falklands. However, during war, under international law, the heading of a belligerent naval vessel has no bearing on its status. In addition, the captain of the Belgrano, Hector Bonzo, has testified that the attack was legitimate.[3]

 

 

 

Read 2nd bolded paragraph please Mark and please retract the claim that Maggie is a murderer

Edited May 10, 200718 yr by Vic Vega

Read 2nd bolded paragraph please Mark and please retract the claim that Maggie is a murderer

 

oh please......

oh please......

 

The CAPTAIN of the Belgrano said it was a fair act

 

International law states in war time that it is a fair act

 

What exactly did Maggie do that makes her a murderer when even the captain of the Belgrano and international law agree with her ?

don't take Wikipedia as gospel, Vic... ANYONE can update and alter the statements on there, remember.

 

And Maggie not a murderer? Err... STARVING people to get them back to work, FREEZING pensioners in their own houses, OUTLAWING homosexuals (I've already quoted you the gay suicide rates after her Section 28).... she's a f***ing MASS murderer, Vega - and you have blood on your hands for helping the nasty spiteful cow on her way.

 

You mention the Falklands as if it was a war we should've entered - IT WASN'T!!!! It was a war we fought SOLELY because Thatcher would have LOST the forthcoming general election by a landslide.... we fought and of course, against the Argies, we won - and Britain likes nothing better than a good war and a strong leader which, for al her faults, she was - much akin to Hitler, actually.

don't take Wikipedia as gospel, Vic... ANYONE can update and alter the statements on there, remember.

 

And Maggie not a murderer? Err... STARVING people to get them back to work, FREEZING pensioners in their own houses, OUTLAWING homosexuals (I've already quoted you the gay suicide rates after her Section 28).... she's a f***ing MASS murderer, Vega - and you have blood on your hands for helping the nasty spiteful cow on her way.

 

You mention the Falklands as if it was a war we should've entered - IT WASN'T!!!! It was a war we fought SOLELY because Thatcher would have LOST the forthcoming general election by a landslide.... we fought and of course, against the Argies, we won - and Britain likes nothing better than a good war and a strong leader which, for al her faults, she was - much akin to Hitler, actually.

 

It was British territory, they were British citizens so they were entitled to the same defence as if they lived in London or anywhere else on the British mainland, just because it was not a well known place does not make their lives any less valuable than British citizens living in Britain. Just because they live far away does not mean that they should be shat upon by their sovereign country, diplomacy failed so we had to recover our soil again and Port Stanley is an much British soil as Portsmouth is, yes the timing of it helped with regards election but no one forced Galtieri to go try steal our soil and put our citizens in danger

Tony Blair has been a total disaster for this country and for the Labour Party in general, what happened at the polls last week is the final nail in his coffin, the final damning indictement of the lies, the spin, the broken promises, the betrayal of the ordinary working class people in this country... If the Labour Party does not heed the unbelievable sucker punching it got in Scotland (Scotland effectively telling Nu Labour in no uncertain terms to "Fukk off!!", a disaster when you consider that Scotland has continually supported Labour for over 50 years...), Wales and the South of England last week and radically reform the party, then they are heading for a total humiliation in the next General election... The Blair years has seen a decline in Labour Party membership to the tune of something like over 150,000, absolutely unprecedented....

 

For my mind, it's total semantics as to who is worse - Thatcher or Blair, both were liars, both were mass murdering war criminals, both presided over parties so unbelievably tainted with sleaze and corruption, both emphatically failed the people of this country... It's a bit like arguing over who's a worse serial killer - Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy....

 

Yes, Tony Blair managed to do one or two good things, but I'm sorry, these good things are completely negated by the sleaze, the corruption, the 'cash for honours' scandal, the illegal war in Iraq, the death of David Kelly, the erosion of civil liberties......

 

Good riddance B-Liar, your closing speech was absolutely toe-curling and when you went on about Britain being the "greatest country in the world", well that just made me fukkin' angry.... Angry because we actually could be without w*n**rs like you, Major and Thatcher and all the other pigs with their snouts in the trough fukkin' things up, arse-licking to the fukkin' fascists in Washington and making people be embarrassed or downright ashamed to be British.... <_< <_<

 

And yes, I am ashamed to be British, and it's because of Politicians like Blair.... <_< <_<

Still Margaret Thatcher must be smiling today, after all she helped support Saddam Hussein's government in the 1980s.

 

"In 1996, the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair investigated the Thatcher government's record in dealing with Saddam Hussein. It revealed how £1bn of Whitehall money was used in soft loan guarantees for British exporters to Iraq. The judge found that during Baghdad's protracted invasion of Iran in the 1980s, officials destroyed documents relating to the export of Chieftain tank parts to Jordan which ended up in Iraq. Ministers clandestinely relaxed official guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools which were used in munitions factories. The British company Racal exported sophisticated Jaguar V radios to the former Iraqi dictator's army on credit. Members of the Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to Saddam even after he executed a British journalist, Farzad Bazoft, Thatcher’s cabinet minuting that they did not want to damage British industry."

 

Add to it the misery of her "Unionist" policy in Northern Ireland (a bit different to Tony Blair); The utterly homophobic "Clause 28"; the destruction of the UK manufacturing industry & blue collar union movement especially that of the miners; the crass encouragement of fat cats, jobs for the boys, hypocritical morality and the yuppies; the utterly repugnant Poll Tax; the public support of the fallen military dictator of Chile - General Pinochet, unemployment rising from over 1 million to over 3 million; the privatisation of public utilities the Railways, Telephone networks, ITV stations, Water, Gas & Electric utilities all for an obscenely cheap amount of money.

 

But the most despicable thing that she was responsible for was the (cowardly) sinking of the Argentinian naval ship the General Belgrano during The Falklands War when it travelling AWAY from the British navy, when 75 miles OUTSIDE the 200 miles total exclusion zone of the Falklands islands, causing the MURDER of 323 men.

 

Or do you care to forget the famous 1983 Nationwide programme interview?

Funnily enough despite being a hugely popular early evening TV programme it stopped only a year later after the Government put intense pressure on the BBC.

 

And you complain about Blair as a War criminal. In short Tony Blair is a petty thief compared to the evil Thatcher's Robert Maxwell like behaviour.

 

As for Iraq, you seem to forget that (according to Amnesty International) on a daily basis 2.5 times as many people were dying on average under Saddam Hussein's rule as are dying now in Iraq.

 

Not that he has had much competition but Tony Blair has easily been the best UK President Prime Minister of my lifetime. But he has been badly let down by licking the backside of the worst USA President since Richard Nixon.

 

 

excellant post! 100% agree