h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm surprised nobody's posted about this already.

Well, he's going after ten years. What do all think of his time as PM? Is Britain a better place, or worse? (I don't think I'll post a link)

Too soon to talk about a legacy I think. Let's wait & see if Lord Levy starts singing like a canary

Now that would be a *real* legacy, if this blatant corruption ends up being stamped out. Just a pity the congratulations cards might have to be sent to Blair's prison cell*


*Yeah, I know - it'll never happen to Teflon Tony.

I've really only ever been aware of the Blair government (I think I was about ten when Major got the boot, so I was hardly politically savvy) but compared to some stuff I've heard slightly older people go on about, especially in the pubs of the more council-housey areas I frequent I don't think it's been too bad has it?

I think Britain is a better place now. How much he has to do with that? I don't know. Expect a lot of that has with people getting more money, having easier lives. Also, the tide of opinion against certain exclusivist moralities has made quite an impact I think.

Others have already made the Northern Ireland peace points, and appear to know far more about it than I do.

Oh, but I do hope that people won't forget all that nonsense when Prescott got sacked. They wouldn't stand up for him and say that really they didn't think he deserved to lose his job, so made him a sacrificial scapegoat, yet let him keep his perks and salary. What the hell was that about? Disgraceful.

Well, Prescott's resigned today. The official Parliament pie supplier just topped himself.

Did he? Did he really?

They're talking about it on other boards, so I suppose so.

Not the pie-maker. I made that up.

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/party-politics/labour/prescott-resigns-as-deputy-leader-$473387.htm

I wonder who gets the Jags?

I think my eldest summed it up pretty well, frankly.

"Its about as good *now as it was when there was Thatcher around. Nothing much has changed"

Personally, I don't think it has, either.

Except that there are more government health warnings and a helluva lot more paperwork to get thru.

Why the perisher couldn't have gone *before the no smoking ban came into force is something I won't forgive in a hurry

Who else pays more tax than yer average smoker?

Eh?

I can count on the fingers of one hand the things I think Blair's government has actually achieved and for which I duly give them credit.

The truly sad thing is I don't so much run out of fingers but run out of things to give them credit for.

Beyond that lie the near misses, the policy miss-judgments the catastrophes, spin, the corruption and the lies...

and we've not even mentioned Iraq yet.

No, this has been a pretty miserable decade, for all that was good, it eclipsed twice, perhaps thrice over by all that was bad.

Good riddance, Tone, I never voted for you once.

Neither did I, for all I consider myself to be a socialist

That man smiled far too much to be credible - and I'd never trust a smiling politician.

Ever.

Blair's Legacy is that all those gullible types that believed in him may are now either desperately trying to convince themselves that he really was a force for good or have finally learned a valuable lesson in life.

The old saw that we get the leaders we deserve was never clearer than with Blair.

A decade where the cult of celebrity took over, non-entitities with plastic tits and inane grins dominated the telly, dumbing down of the media....

Education, edukashun, ejook8shun ... what a joke. Educate people to be stupid and you can get away with whatever you want.

Blair took shallow to new heights.

True enough.

What worries me is that no one *did* anything about it.

Surely most people could see what he was doing, but we all winged and didn't do a constructive thing about it.

There are times I despise the English for being so darn polite and self effacing!

And now we have the best part of a generation of semi educated thinkers(with built in "blame clauses") to contend with.

I've emigrated once because of the system, and I don't regret a day of it.

And if I had my youth and health I'd do it again - and not come back, this time!


Just as long as it was somewhere warm...

Overall I reckon Blair's done a good job. What I like about him is that he's always had the balls to make the tough decisions he felt were right for the country, without worrying about the sneers and jibes that were inevitably going to be directed at him from whiners and bleaters.

And of late, anyone who has annoyed Daily Mail readers as much as Tone has, gets the

"Things can only get better..."

>>he's always had the balls to make the tough decisions he felt were right for the country<<

and this is where he and I part company, because I judge so many of this Government's decisions to short-term, reactionary, ill-judged, and poorly thought through. I find myself against a lot of them intellectually, politically and morally. There are exceptions, as I said, and I do give credit to them for those that I believe they deserve but I don't condone the carte blanche 'he took decisions he believed were right' ugh!

That can be used to justify practically anything!

I do remember when Blair came to office he was characterised as being of no firm belief and tied to whatever the latest opinion poll showed. The tragedy and the lament of this has been, that when he did finaly nail his flag to the mast, as it were, I for one hung my head in sorrow and disbelief.

I think Blair's legacy will be dominated by Iraq. And, to a certain extent, by the PFI deals once people realise what a disaster they are. And it remains to be seen what the party funding enquiry will throw up.

However, that aside, he leaves the country in a much better state than he found it. I think people have very short memories. To claim that nothing has changed is nothing of bizzare.

* Northern Ireland (with due credit to John Major too)
* National Minimum Wage
* Human Rights Act
* Improvements to the NHS
* Low interest rates, low inflation- Economic stability
* Reduction in child poverty
* Interest rates passed to the Bank of England
* Devolution - Scotland, Wales, London
* Low unemployment
* Some action on third world debt and poverty
* Some action on global warming
* Military intervention in Sierra Leone

Does anyone seriously think the Tories would have achieved all this, or avoided Blair's mistakes? I shudder to think what kind of mess we would be in had we not get rid of the Tories in 1997, and I dread people letting them back in again.

Blair hasn't done as much as I would have liked to improve opportunity and reduce poverty and inequality. I don't like the wholescale privatisation/PFI deals, and we've stored up massive trouble for ourselves in the future with those.

I'm pretty much with Otto on this, and would add to the list the creation of an independant bank of England. I have no time personally for Blair or the way he has affected *me* but not to recognise that his administration has had a major affect on certain segments of the poulation strikes me as short-sighted, to say the least.

There are some missed oportunities along the way, among them the failure to take public transport back into public ownership, the handling of the *peace* in Iraq, and the failure to create an elected second house, but you can't have everything.

I also regret that he didn't take the opportunity of his massive majorities to raise the level of the debate on health-care and immigration, which he had the time and the power to do.