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

1. Charles Dance *O.B.E* - Désaccord parfait - Nope.
- nope.

2. *Sir* Ian McKellen - "One ring to rule them all?" - Nope.

3. Patrick Stewart - Well he is from Yorkshire so *should* be good with money... Then again somebody was talling me t'other day they voted for Thatcher on the basis she was a housewife... People just... Gah...

4. Gordon Brown. Never heard of him.

None of the above, well where I live it's not worth voting, the town is stuck in the 19th century... It really is like life on a holodeck.

8 hours no more post. Does this mean people are happy to accept Gordon Brown as PM?

Should there be an election now?

I am

To be honest, I have very little idea who any of the others are. I've only heard of Michael Meecher because he was mocked once on The Mark Thomas Product.

I think my antipathy to Saint Tony has been well recorded, and so I've avoided commenting in this thread, where his staunchest supporter is reduced to saying not as bad as the Tories.

Well tosh - utter tosh.

I think people are incorrect to say that Iraq will be Tony Blair's legacy, because I think we would have gone in with the Yanks regardless of who was in power - though of course I don't think any other Prime Minister would have misled the House the way he did.

I think Tony Blair's legacy will be the death of idealism in politics. He has stood up and lied to the populace, and then smiled and said - look I'm a nice chap. He lied about Eccleston, he lied about the Hindustaja Brothers, he lied about tuition fees.

I think he will be remembered for over-seeing the death of British Industry, the break-up of the United Kingdom and the introduction of the surveillance state. He has destroyed more personal freedoms and introduced more legislation than any Prime Minister in history.

With his unelected advisors, his lawyer buddies, and his pension robbing chancellor he has made the whole country worse off. You are ignoring the unemployment figures which have been rising for the last 3 years, despite the blind eye being turned to workers employed on less than the minimum wage, and the plethora of part-time workers, who conveniently disappear off the register, and get their money through various 'tax-credits'

This year alone 20,000 jobs have gone in the NHS - hospitals are neck deep in debt, and people talk about queues being down - once again distracted by statistics.

I think Tony Blair's legacy will be his nick-name - Teflon Tony, and I hope that one day the files on Dr David Kelly will be opened by someone other than Lord Hutton, and that even that nick-name will become a lie.

>once again distracted by statistics<

Well, that and the fact that the vast majority of non-Daily Mail readers have a perfectly satisfactory experience of the system but don't write to the papers about it...

And Wilson was *never* a good PM.

Morning Blues,

Just because people don't write to the papers about their experience, of the system doesn't mean it has been a "perfectly satisfactory" one, just that they can't be bothered.

The Silent Majority perhaps ?

Novo

Your logic is flawed though.

The 'Silent Majority' could be either for or against the NHS, you can't know *because* they are silent. But anecdotal evidence of my own suggests that a lot of people are very happy with the treatetment they have received on the NHS.

Fortunately I don't think Blair can kill off idealism in British politics. He has IMO done a lot of damage to the relatively clean image the Labour Party had (partly as a result of being in opposition for 18 years) but I personally am confident that Brown will be a good PM

I am happy too Blues,

You may recall I had a cataract op in Feb, and that I wrote to the consultant and staff to say how grateful I was.

I wouldn't bother to write to the papers. Who would want a 'good news' story that a 66 year old had a good experience of the NHS? Rather thank the team who did it for me

Novo

Idealism in New Labour politics died with Dr David Kelly.

Good job I'm not New Labour then
TB seemed to me to be aiming to complete the SDP project so that we ended up with something similar to the US situation with a choice between conservative parties

Well I have had, as I have already said, a very, and I mean, very, mixed experience of the NHS. On the whole I would say that they individuals are often (although not always) good professions and pleasant people but that the system they work for is appaling. It has been a series of lost files, misdircted doctors (my wife once went in with Kindey trouble and was seen by a locum gynacolgist????) and slow, slow response times. In any event, anecdotal evidence from a group as small as this counts for little. I want to know how the hell hospitals are allowed to get into debt. Debt to who? They are not businesses and treating them as such is lunacy. I don't really care if the NHS is better now than it was under Maggie, it's still way off good enough.

How does Blair compare to the "Iron Duke"?

Iron Duke is a 2.5 L internal combustion engine used in many 1980s-era General Motors automobiles and pickup trucks.

Tony Blair is not.

isn't he? That's his media savvy getting the better of you.

So we've been run for the past ten years by an internal combustion engine? Does he have a reverse gear?

Sook - squeeze - bang - blaw

Yup, sounds like government to me

Maybe we need more cycle paths.

Lucky I'm not a Daily Mail reader then - that explains my good experience in the NHS.

Its the management of it I'm referring to - the legacy of PFI will be mass closures of local hospitals.

In my area they're talking about providing an 'operating bus' to do day surgery, which will go to outlying towns like a mobile library. If anyone can see a problem with this please write to Patricia Hewitt C/O The Houses of Parliament. Please do not hesitate to state the blindingly obvious.

It can't be long before Russian doctors are coming up the canal in hospital boats, to do cataract operations, like they do in the third world.