Tony Blair


The Dumbing of Tony Blair

I think Tony Blair loves Dubya so much he’s trying very hard to emulate the Chimp in Chief by becoming as stupid as possible. A few weeks ago he showed a lack of understanding of efficiency when he said that energy saving wasn’t as important companies’ profits. Then there was the admission that some hypothetical higher being was as important to his decision making as reality. The last couple of days have seen the whole honours for loans scandal. And now he admits that he’s incapable of learning from his mistakes.

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"If you believe in Mr Flibble, it's made by Mr Flibble as well."


Mr Flibble is very angry.

Okay, so Tony didn’t do a Dubya and say that God told him to invade Iraq. But do you really want the country to be run by a man who’s decisions are influenced by what he thinks his invisible friend will make of them?

Michael: But you mention there, I mean the Prime Minister, the commander in chief, has the ultimate say about the nation going to war and that’s the most serious decision you can take in any event. I mean you’ve been called a liar and a warmonger and all that sort of thing, what’s your feeling, your attitude when you read that? And also too when you read of casualties and people blame you for those casualties, I mean that’s a terrible, awful thing to live with and I wondered how you coped with it.

Tony: Because the King of the Potato People won’t let me. I begged him. I got down on my knees and wept.

Michael: Of course.

Tony: I was just doing a little test — a little test to see if you had gone crazy. CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s crazy people.

Michael: And you sent them there.

Tony: You don’t think there’s anything amiss? I’m sitting here wearing a red and white checked gingham dress and army boots and you think that’s un-amiss?

Michael: Sorry, what do you mean by that?

Tony: I mean by other people, by, if you believe in God it’s meant by God as well and that judgement in the end has to be, you know when you are faced with a decision like that and some of those decisions have been very very difficult, as I say most of all because you know there are people’s lives, this is not just a matter of a policy here of a thing there, but their lives and in some cases their death. The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing according to your conscience. And for the rest of it as I say you leave to the judgement that history will make.

Michael: So you pray to God when you make a decision like that?

Tony: You want to fly on a magic carpet to see the King of the Potato People.

(Red Dwarf: Season Five- Quarantine)

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Praise God and pass the Semtex

I may take the piss, but I’m actually really worried by this “Glorification of Terrorism” law. What exactly constitutes glorification?

Basically, I remember enough of the eighties to know that if this law had been around then Maggie would have had hundreds, if not thousands, of people locked up. Blair, Brown, Clarke and any number of the others who championed the bill would likely have been rounded up for their support of the ANC or the Sandinistas or for questioning the shoot- to- kill policy in Northern Ireland.

How long will it be before some documentary about Iraq is pulled because the producers are told their attempt to understand what drives the insurgents is somehow “glorifying” them? How long after that until an author’s career is ruined because they dare to show a freedom fighter in a sympathetic light? What if someone finds that blog post I did about shooting Tony Blair?

I’m not about to change the nature of the stories I’m planning. But I think I should start setting aside some money for a good lawyer for when my time comes. I wonder if I can get Cherie Blair?

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I want to punch George Bush

According to the BBC President Fuckhead stood up at Gleneagles and said “the war on terror goes on”. Guess what? It wouldn’t have to if you and your cronies weren’t such incompetent, arrogant warmongering pricks.

Whilst I’m at it, Blair deserves a slapping as well. His statement is slimy twat for “Oh look, something else I can use to justify identity cards.”

Update Thanks to being linked from some rightwing site or other I’m getting a few visitors who want to lecture me on how wrong I am, so I ought to clarify a little.

I want to punch George Bush on a good day, he just has one of those faces. What drove me to my outburst is two things.

Ever since he started pulling troops out of Afghanistan and lining up the lies about Iraq, Wubble U hasn’t been fighting a war on terror, he’s been conducting one to encourage terrorism. He’s admitted that he wasn’t interested in tracking down Bin Laden. The head of the CIA has said that they know where OBL is, but they’re not going to get him. So standing up and touting the “war on terror” after abandoning it over two years ago is one reason he deserves a slapping.

The other reason is that he’s a callous little fuck. Within hours of a terror attack he was already lining up the dead so he could spit on their graves every time he invokes this bombing to justify another false start in combatting global terror.

So I put down what I felt, as succinctly as possible. Thanks for all the comments. Your presumptions about me, based upon a few sentences, have been amusing.

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If Longsight job centre burns down it wasn't me, okay

The system gets worse. There’s no funding to send me on the course I need- a supported start up in self employment- despite it having a 100% success rate from my local job centre. (I might be able to get some funding if I wanted to do something in the music industry but, well, if you’ve heard me sing…….) So now I have to go into “Intense job search” mode which obviously isn’t what I’ve been doing all this time. (Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe I’ll have to apply for every shit job going, irrespective of whether I can do it or not or whether it’ll do me any good in the long run, just so long as the statistics can make Tony look better.)

But to top it all off- they’re still a bunch of moronic fuckwits when it comes to the part time work I haven’t done for over three months! They’ve decided to put me on half benefits until they see my P45 or a letter from my former employer- neither of which they asked me for when I told them I’d stopped working! And they wonder why people lie to them.

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Back door politics

Tony Blair’s getting jittery. The latest campaign from Labour suggests that voting Lib Dem will somehow get the Tories into power. Which is bollocks, of course.

Mr Kennedy said: “There is no chance whatsoever of the Conservatives getting in by the back, the side or any other door because they have lost this election and people know they have lost.

“After eight years in power with three-figure majorities and a benign economic backdrop, if the best you can turn round to the country and say is, ‘Well, you must not vote for the Liberal Democrats for fear of something worse,’ that just shows you what thin ice Tony Blair is on.”

via Honourable Fiend

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PII

The Guardian has pulled an article from its website that explained why the “Ricin Plot” paranoia surrounding the Bourgass trial was bullshit. All they will say is that it is a legal matter, involving a Public Interest Immunity Certificate issued by the Department of Defence. The Register explains why this is all bollocks and suggests a cover up.

via Honourable Fiend

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The Attorney General, he say No

This leaked document is all over the news today. It’s in horribly painful legalese, but the gist of it seems to be that invading Iraq was of dubious legality/ outright illegal without a second UN resolution (and stop blaming the French for all your troubles you wanker, they’re more in touch with world opinion than you are [I paraphrase]).


Honourable Fiend does a better job of summing it up
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Dear Tony

First draft of a letter to the PM and various other MPs.

No doubt you have seen the adverts telling the unemployed not to commit fraud by not declaring any work they do whilst signing on. Have you considered that one of the main reasons for this fraud is that the system is such that it actually punishes people for being honest?

The greatest con with regard to working part time whilst receiving benefits is the one commited by the benefits system. When I had part time work I had to fill out a form and present payslips When these had been examined I was graciously allowed to keep a whole five pounds of the money I had worked for, whilst the balance of my earnings were deducted from my Jobseeker’s Allowance. I could work ten hours and be no better off than if I’d worked two. In fact, with the cost of getting to work, I was worse off than if I’d stayed at home and done nothing.

The arbitrary figure of five pounds which I was allowed to keep hasn’t changed in over a decade. In a fair system this amount would at least have risen with inflation. If the unemployed are truly to be encouraged to take part time work- for the benefit of their pride, the economy or whatever higher purpose you wish to declare- then they should be allowed to be better off for it. I would suggest they be allowed to keep fifty percent of their income- or the first ten pounds, whichever is higher- and then have the balance deducted from their JSA. Obviously there should be an upper limit to this, and a maximum number of hours worked before they must sign off.

Not only is the system flawed when it does work, it is prone to complete failure. A payslip is required for each and every time wages are received. If the JobCentre doesn’t see a payslip it freezes payments. If JSA payments are frozen, Housing Benefit and other payments are frozen. The hapless part time worker is forced to live on the pay the JobCentre doesn’t believe they are getting, pay that, by the nature of the claimant’s circumstances, is less than the amount the system judges they require to live.

A person in a low paying job is less likely to receive regular payslips. However the system treats them as guilty of fraud until they can present a piece of paper that proves their innocence. How about assuming they’re innocent from the start and going straight to the employer for the proof? The benefits system is supposed to be about helping people in their moment of greatest need, so why abandon them when they start trying to help themselves?

Obviously any reform that would reward the unemployed for doing what is expected of them won’t go down well with a certain class of voter in the run up to a General Election. Frankly if you treat claimants like scum and punish them for doing what you demand of them then you are actually going to encourage benefit fraud rather than reduce it.

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Vote for me, vote for me!

MP Idol, anyone. I wish I’d heard about this sooner, because I have some strong views about reforming benefits at the moment. Specifically, if they want people to stop working the black economy, why am I being punished for being honest with them and telling them I’ve got a part time job?

Because the University is too useless to ensure that I get my payslips, I’ve had all my benefits stopped because I have to present every payslip to the Jobcentre before they’ll decide how much money to deduct from me. Because the JC has put a stop on my money, Housing Benefit has put a stop on their payments and I’m worse off than if I hadn’t tried to make things better for myself. Less honest people would turn around and say “Fuck it, gimme cash in hand”.

I’m waiting for a call about full time work, so this should become a problem of the past soon. But I really ought to write a letter to my MP or my pal Tony asking why the people setting the rules for benefits so obviously don’t have a clue how the real world works.