tony blair mystery solved

so why is is that uk's so-called leftist tony blair when from clinton's cheerleader to bush's toe-licker despite huge gaps in political philosophy and the huge gaps in popularity at home?

that's always been a mystery to me, but my british friend answered this one nicely - tony blair has political ambitions beyond 10 downing street.

ahaaaa, now that makes sense! i had always thought that blair just wanted to retire to big fat corporate paychecks, but no, he wants to be the leader of the european union! and being able to bring promises of cooperation from america would be just the political clout he needs to win the post.


any thoughts on this take?

But the EU is pretty much on their way to proving us irrelevant.

Cher

opposed the war, and isn't thrilled with the US...this isn't a winning gift on Tony's part.

Since US companies have been ordered out of the UK...Tony can't guarantee anything even to his own country.

He wanted to be leader of the EU before the war...but I think he's blown that.

However, since only Poland likes the US in Europe, being Bush's friend isn't going to help him.

Blair tried to look like he was Bush's special friend because Rupert Murdoch determines public opinion. Blair was heading Murdoch off at the pass in the same way that the Democrats in the senate decided it was less of a risk to be portrayed by the left as being pro-war, than it was to be portrayed by the right as anti-national security, and voted for IWR.

political ambitions, but did he have to sell us to the devil to do it? Why would this be a political "ace"?

I don't buy it. He could have gotten the leadership of the EU anyway, without resorting to this. As a matter of fact, he's kaboshed any such plans. He's lucky he's still in office.

I believe he did it because he bought into the PNAC's plans of world domination. He wanted to be a part of that. I'm sure the PNAC promised him that the UK would get a huge portion of oil contracts, along with reconstruction contracts. Not to mention the opportunity to bring in private companies; like cell phones, hotels, builders, hospitals, etc.

Don't forget: England was once a world power. It had colonies all over the world. The Union Jack flew proudly on the mast of its many merchant ships.

Tony did it for England. He wanted to see his country restored to its former glory.

... but think you forgot the "</sarcasm>" on the last one ...

Blair has not done anything "for England" in his whole scheming,
hypocritical, corrupt life. He has done things for himself, for
Cherie (wannabe Diana II), for his little darlings (who are too
good to go to the state schools he's busy forcing on everyone else)
and for his dear friends (too many to list) but not one single
sodding thing for this country or the people in it.

The first and last thing he will ever do "for England" is die.

Nihil

record high wages for civil servants and the middle class, and a growth in wealth among the bottom two quintiles which is (if I remember correctly) almost as high or higher than the growth in wealth for the top quintile.

The "record high wages" for civil servants were mainly regaining the
losses from the Thatcher years (i.e., for anyone below the top tiers,
the upper levels didn't suffer but they too had the "Blair boost").
This was necessary as those cuts did more harm than good to the system.

The "record high wages" for the middle class were clawed back (with
interest) by a succession of stealth taxes - unless you could afford
a good accountant to take advantage of the same sort of weasel breaks
that the Tory chancellors also excelled in generating. Fairness?

The old "tax the lowest earners" bracket still exists last I looked.
Good Labour principles? Maybe not.

I don't remember the "growth in wealth among the bottom two quintiles"
being more than that for the top ... it might have been but I thought
that it was simply "in line" with the average across the nation.
Even so, this appears to be simply a continuation of the trend that
has been in place since 1981:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285

Maybe not, maybe I'm just not looking at the correct angle.

The rampant cronyism so beloved of the Old School Tories is alive
and well with Tony's Boys - and is set to get even better when they
abolish the House of Lords without actually agreeing upon a democratic
replacement ... damn, just have to nominate people himself then ...
like he's been doing for a few years now ...

As for unemployment, that's an interesting one.
Unemployment in November was only 1.48 million (5% of the workforce,
not bad really) but the government measure it as 926,900 (the lowest
since 1975). Let's just forget that manufacturing jobs fell by 3.3%
or 121,000 (September) and although the overall unemployment trend is
still downwards, the CBI predicted that UK manufacturing will lose
another 36,000 jobs by the end of the year. (Source: BBC)

The "employment rate" for people of working age was actually 74.6%.
Hmmm ... but the "unemployment rate" was 5% ... lies, damn lies and
statistics ... the 5% figure is 1.48 million people but UKplc only
measure that as 926,900 people ... not only do we have a missing 20%
(from the difference between "employment" and "unemployment") but we
have a further shrinkage from 5% to 3% ... (I know some of the missing
ones but am keeping that out for now). (Source: ONS)

Ok, I was being intentionally awkward here: the internationally agreed
"unemployment rate" IS 25.4% but the government only consider the
"claimant rate" - specifically "Jobseeker's allowance" claimants.

Hey, Old Maggie's crew were great with stats, everyone does it, right?

Wrong. The reason Tony was elected was to get rid of the corruption,
to reduce the imbalance between rich and poor, to invest in the country,
to stop hiding behind the bullshit, to act rather than talk.
Unfortunately his actions have been hypocritical, corrupt, totally
spin-doctored and self-serving - hence my original comments.

Here's to Tony boy doing his one act for England ...

Nihil

Average earnings are calculated by dividing the total earnings of a group of employees by the number of people in the group. This average ('mean') value is boosted by a relatively small number of employees with extremely high earnings. Although average earnings in April 2003 were £476 per week, half of all full-time employees earned less than £394. The top 10 per cent of the earnings distribution earned more than £770 per week, while the bottom tenth earned less than £223.

As this paragraph implies, it's significant that Blair has both increased the number of people employed, and increased the average earnings.

It was definitely the case during that Thatcher years that there were a few people making a TON of money, and a lot of people making very little money. I strongly suspect that if you compare Thatcher-year wealth distribution and Blair wealth distribution, you're going to find that Blair is doing better than Thatcher.

As for your comment about manufacturing jobs decreasing while employment is going up, that's like arguing in 1900 that there maybe more jobs, but because there are fewer jobs for gas streetlamp lighters, the economy is in trouble.

If manufacturing jobs ALONG WITH ALL OTHER JOBS were decreasing, then that canary in the coalmine would matter. But if manufacturing jobs are decreasing, but other industries are more than taking up the slack, then that can hardly be seen as a bad thing for the average employee in the UK.

over whether you concentrate wealth in the wealthiest, or spread it among the middle class.

The right is so powerful even when they don't hold the top executive offices, that it's almost impossible to STOP wealth accumulation among the wealthiest (and it's not even clear if you'd want to -- so long as everyone has an equal opportunity to get wealthy, another hallmark of liberal governments, it's OK that you make wealth a pretty big carrot).

However, liberal governments like Clinton's and Blair's DO in fact, succeed in spreading wealth among the middle class. Then comes the next problem: the right finds way to steal that wealth, whether it's things like the S&L crisis, or pension rip offs, or 401k rip offs, or the internet bubble, or insupportable debt in the form of mortgages and credit card debt, or privatized utilities.

No doubt that once the middle class gets some wealth, the RW vultures hover over it trying to figure out ways to legislate guaranteed profits for themselves. Again, you have a battle between left and right, and with the way campaings are financed, and with the conservative media controlling public perceptions, it's very hard for liberals to stand in effective defense of people's pocket books. But even if they can't, that's not reason not to keep trying to build up wealth for the middle class.

:puke: