Petition: Tony Blair to have his "Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter" rescinded

Over at Change.org

Only takes a few seconds to sign, fun for all the family.

Yet another good argument for Land Value Tax.

From The Daily Mail:

Blairs’ £5million office: After buying 38 homes since leaving Downing Street, Tony and Cherie move into commercial property

Compare and contrast

Emailed in by MBK, a good article in The Spectator about the differences of language used to describe the battles in Aleppo and in Mosul. In Aleppo, the occupiers are rebels being besieged by a dictatorial regime; in Mosul, the occupiers are Islamic terrorists and the town is being liberated by government forces. In fact, the occupiers are in both cases exactly the same kind of IS/Al Qaeda nutcases, and so on.
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The stories about George Osborne now being paid out for all the support he gave the banking sector remind me of Tony Blair who did the same thing.

JP Morgan paid him £2 million for services rendered while Prime Minister but apparently he has collected £60 million in total, presumably for services rendered to the armaments industry, Halliburton and the like.

The missing bit is Gordon Brown, who was responsible for the massive bank bail outs. Osborne was only throwing small change at them after that. Does anybody know why the banks aren't now 'hiring him as a consultant' or paying him for 'after dinner speeches'? Or are they, and we just don't know about it?

I can't stand Brown any more than I can stand Blair or Osborne, i.e. not at all, but judged by the standards of the kleptocracy, it still seems a bit incongruous and hence a tad unfair on the Broonster. Or does he have principles?

Fun Online Polls: Tony Blair & Renewing Trident

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which of the following revelations in the Chilcot report were NOT blindingly obvious back in 2002 or 2003?

Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq - 5 votes
There was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam - 5 votes
Blair was Bush's poodle - 4 votes
The British Army was unprepared for a second war - 9 votes
MoD procurement is staggeringly incompetent - 10 votes
Saddam had no WMDs - 16 votes
There would be total chaos in the Middle East afterwards - 10 votes
Blair would mysteriously become very rich after leaving office - 28 votes
None of the above - 68 votes

Total - 114 voters

To me. all of those things were blindingly obvious except the last one - why Blair would mysteriously become so very rich afterwards. I did not see that coming.

Maybe Chilcot should have just followed the money and done a report into who channelled all those millions to Blair and why. That would have been much more interesting. Especially when Chilcot does a "David Kelly" half way through, of course.

What nobody else saw coming is that the Chilcot Report would be delayed for years and years and then 'released' two weeks after the EU Referendum, ensuring it would quickly disappear off the front pages. A coincidence? Was it fuck.
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This week's Fun Online Poll: should we renew Trident or not?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Our next PM & The Chilcot Report

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Please indicate the ones you would definitely NOT like to see as Prime Minister.

Leadsom, Andrea 42 votes
Gove, Michael 61 votes
Fox, Liam 82 votes
Crabb, Stephen 94 votes
Smith, Owen 103 votes
May, Theresa 107 votes
Corbyn, Jeremy 116 votes
Eagle, Angela 122 votes

Total 166 voters

Just goes to show that 'exaggerating' on your CV doesn't do you any harm. And being the most rabid Home-Owner-ist of the lot counts as a plus.
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Chilcot: The Daily Mash and Newsthump responded with satire, Nick Drew responded in rhyme.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

"Which of the following revelations in the Chilcot report were NOT blindingly obvious back in 2002 or 2003?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Beyond satire.

Exhibit One:

Tony Blair has said it would be a “very dangerous experiment” if Jeremy Corbyn or a populist politician like him were to form a government.

In an interview with the BBC, the former Labour prime minister said populist politicians, whether on the left like Corbyn or on the right, were worrying and he spent a lot of time thinking about how people in the centre should respond.

Blair famously said last summer that anyone thinking of voting for Corbyn as Labour leader because it was what their heart told them to do should “get a transplant”, but his latest comment may be his harshest yet.

Exhibit Two

An unfortunate mobile phone salesman was tied up and beaten by an angry crowd in Cixi City, China, after he was mistaken for a baby snatcher.

Exhibit Three

Channel 4 comedy Raised By Wolves is being adapted for American TV by Diablo Cody, the writer of Juno...

Now The Guardian has reported that Moran and Cody have been in contact about reworking the action from Wolverhampton to the US…

The remake is being made by Berlanti Productions, whose credits include the less down-to-earth shows Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow.

Exhibit Four

Lack of unity on the EU, UK government challenges and UKIP all contributed to the Welsh Conservatives losing seats at the assembly elections, leader Andrew RT Davies has said.

But...

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, has declared herself a “John Major”-style Conservative, after leading the party to its best election result in Scotland for almost 60 years.

I saw another good one last week but I've forgotten it.

Tony the Football Hooligan

From the Telegraph

Tony "Tone" Blair has said that Bazzer and Dave should listen, "just *listen*, yeah, because we can farkin' 'ave these boys from the ISIS Crew. I'm telling you, I've got into scuffles with them before, and they ain't as tough as they seem."

The former member of the New Labour Firm said "OK, oh-kay, a load of us got the shit kicked out of us" but added that he "knew how to get 'em this time". 

His comments came as Graeme Lamb, landlord of the Dog and Duck in Peckham and former firm member said that "it ain't worth it, Tone, just leave 'em. "

The former New Labour ringleader said that fisticuffs would not be enough to defeat the crew, and that this time, knuckledusters and baseball bats shouldn't be ruled out.

This comes under the heading of 'WTF?"

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/02/tony-blair-advise-egypt-president-sisi-economic-reform

You really couldn't make it up, could you.

This bit is good:

"The former political associate said that a bargain had been struck and added: "Tony Blair has become Sisi's éminence grise and is working on the economic plan that the UAE is paying for. For him, it combines both an existential battle against Islamism and mouth-watering business opportunities in return for the kind of persuasive advocacy he provided George Bush over Iraq.

But this bit gets better:

"It's a very lucrative business model," [I bet it is] the associate added, "but he shouldn't be doing it. He's putting himself in hock to a regime that imprisons journalists. He's digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself and everyone associated with him."

A field day for armchair psychiatrists

From the BBC:

The 2003 invasion of Iraq is not to blame for the violent insurgency now gripping the country, former UK prime minister Tony Blair has said.

Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr, he said there would still be a "major problem" in the country even without the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. He insisted the current crisis was a "regional" issue that "affects us all".

Critics have rejected the comments as "bizarre" with one accusing Mr Blair of "washing his hands of responsibility".

"Even if you'd left Saddam in place in 2003, then when 2011 happened - and you had the Arab revolutions going through Tunisia and Libya and Yemen and Bahrain and Egypt and Syria - you would have still had a major problem in Iraq," Mr Blair said, "Indeed, you can see what happens when you leave the dictator in place, as has happened with Assad now. The problems don't go away.

"So, one of the things I'm trying to say is - you know, we can rerun the debates about 2003 - and there are perfectly legitimate points on either side - but where we are now in 2014, we have to understand this is a regional problem, but it's a problem that will affect us.

"Where the extremists are fighting, they have to be countered hard, with force."

"George W Bush and I were at root of 21st-century wars, says Tony Blair"

From The Observer:

Tony Blair has reignited debate about the west's response to terrorism with a call on governments to recognise that politicians like himself and George W Bush have become the biggest source of conflict around the world.

Referring to wars and violent confrontations from Syria to Nigeria and the Philippines, Blair, writing in the Observer, argues that "there is one thing self-evidently in common: acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people like me who think they have a divine right to impose their will on others. It is a perversion of faith."

Identifying Bush and more recently Obama as an ever more dangerous phenomenon, the spread of which is easier in a one-party-two-brands system, he says: "The battles of this century are likely to be the product of extreme political ideology, just like those of the 20th century – and they could will be fought around the questions of the cultural or religious difference between the USA and their poodles on one side, and 'everybody else' on the other."

The former prime minister, who led the country into the Iraq conflict in 2003, appears to acknowledge that previous aspirations to export liberal democracy were complete hokum at best.

UPDATE: Newsthump did much the same article a day later, theirs is probably better Religious extremism at root of wars, insists religious extremist at root of wars

Bush, Blair: Sorry, did we say "Iraq"? We meant "Syria".

From the BBC:

Former US President George W Bush has spoken out to justify his 2003 invasion of Iraq, admitting that his poor grasp of written Arabic in intelligence reports led him to confuse the two neighbouring Arab states.

"We knew there were chemical weapons round there somewhere," said Mr Bush, "Our satellites can't actually recognise state borders, so give or take a few hundred miles, there were chemical weapons exactly where we thought they were."

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair interrupted his hectic speech-giving and fund-raising schedule to point out that his claim that the UK was "45 minutes away from mass destruction" was in fact understating the case.

"Syria is closer to Europe than Iraq, so strictly speaking we were only about 41 minutes away from mass destruction. People say I sent in our troops to invade the wrong country? As a Prime Minister with our country's best interests at heart, I feel I did what was right."

Mr Blair also hastened to underline the Iraq invasion's humanitarian credentials: "Assad has shown the terrible death and suffering which WMDs can cause when used on innocent civilians. If our liberation of Iraq helped prevent a single such incident, then it will have been worthwhile."

I think back then it was seen by the party-supporting media as "sensible and efficient party management", Mark ...

"The paper even devoted an editorial to the row, which is something I do not recall happening during the Blair/Brown Labour years, when parliamentary selection panels were routinely gerrymandered and the special selections unit drew up shortlists of centrally approved candidates".

Yes, that's all perfectly true, but why wasn't The Guardian saying this while Labour were in government?

From The Guardian:

But lobbying doesn't begin to cover the extent of corporate influence. More than ever the Tory party is in thrall to the City*, with over half its income from bankers and hedge fund and private equity financiers. Peers who have made six-figure donations have been rewarded with government jobs.

But the real corruption that has eaten into the heart of British public life is the tightening corporate grip on government and public institutions – not just by lobbyists, but by the politicians, civil servants, bankers and corporate advisers who increasingly swap jobs, favours and insider information, and inevitably come to see their interests as mutual and interchangeable.

The doors are no longer just revolving but spinning, and the people charged with protecting the public interest are bought and sold with barely a fig leaf of regulation.

* Ahem, does the name Tony Blair ring any bells?

Hmm - unfortunate juxtaposition of the day, or not ....

"Tony Blair and George W. Bush are reunited at the opening of former President's library"

From The Daily Mail:

Ten years after embarking on the bloody Iraq War with bosom buddy and former American president George W. Bush, ex prime minister Tony Blair cut a lonely figure at a presidential reunion yesterday.

As he sat surrounded by empty chairs the former Labour leader, whose government went to war claiming Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction', Blair looked on as the five living American presidents gathered in Dallas to honor the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

The tanned former prime minister, who George Bush famously called out to as 'Yo, Blair!' at a G8 meeting in 2006, soon cheered up once seats were filled by other past and present world leaders at the ceremony in Texas...

Speaking to the press after the event, the multi-milionaire warmonger Blair revealed that the Bush Library contains the copy of "The Pet Goat" which George Bush was reading to school children on 9/11, as well as the finest and most extensive collecton of Peanuts annuals and colouring books "this side of Alexandria".

Blair: worried about his own funeral

From the BBC:

Tony Blair has criticised people who hold parties to "celebrate" the deaths of former Prime Ministers, saying they were in "pretty poor taste". The former Labour prime minister urged critics of him and his Conservative predecessors to "show some respect".

The comments come after parties took place in several cities to mark the death of a former Prime Minister who was even more divisive than Blair, although Blair himself seems to be in reasonably good health and the likelihood is that people will have more or less forgotten about him by the time he pegs it. Except for the bit about invading several countries for no particular reason.

A Labour source also said that leader Ed Miliband "categorically" condemned such behaviour, although the chances of him ever being a late former Prime Minister are a remote as the chances of him becoming Prime Minister in the first place.

Lady Thatcher is the number one hate figure for many on the left, having privatised several state-run industries and been involved in long run-ins with trade unions, most famously during the miners' strike of 1984-5. Rather ironically, Tony Blair is number two.

[The Heir To Blair] Oh no, here we go again...

6 February 2003:

Tony Blair: The danger is that if we allow Iraq to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons they will threaten their own region, there is no way that we would be able to exclude ourselves from any regional conflict there was there as indeed we had to become involved last time they committed acts of external aggression against Kuwait...

North Korea is a country, its people are starving, that is virtually living on the export of ballistic missile technology. Their nuclear scientists are people who are working for other countries as well as North Korea and I'm simply saying to people, if you allow this stuff to proliferate, if you allow it to be traded in, and there are companies so-called supposedly respectable companies in the world trading in this stuff, the terrorists are trying to get hold of it - they will succeed at some point unless we deal with it.

4 April 2003:

David Cameron provoked surprise today when he claimed that North Korea now possessed the capability to launch a nuclear strike against Britain. The Prime Minister pointed to the escalating threats from the regime in Pyongyang as evidence of the need for the United Kingdom to retain the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Speaking to defence workers in Scotland, he said he was "very concerned" about North Korea as it had "extremely dangerous technologies in terms of nuclear and its weapons". He said: "North Korea does now have missile technology that is able to reach, as they put it, the whole of the United States and if they are able to reach the whole of the United States they can reach Europe too. They can reach us too, so that is a real concern."

Like any sane person, I didn't believe that crap about Saddam being able to launch WMDs within 45 minutes for one second. If that really had been the case, then we wouldn't have given him an ultimatum and several weeks' warning that his country was going to be invaded, would we?

And I find my intelligence further insulted by Cameron's claim that the North Koreans have got a spare couple of very long-range missiles which they intend to fire at the UK. Even if they did (which they don't), the chances of them scoring a direct hit are virtually zero.

Welfare For The Wealthy (2)

The Daily Mail continues tapping into the same rich vein:

Tony Blair is facing fresh questions over his role as a Middle East peace envoy after claims that he has used the position to promote lucrative business deals for clients of an investment bank that pays him £2million a year.

As a representative of the Quartet –the UN, the EU, the U.S. and Russia – the former prime minister is tasked with fostering peace between Israel and Palestine.

But he has also used the post to promote two contracts worth more than £1billion in Palestine with British Gas and mobile phone firm Wataniya – both major clients of J P Morgan, the U.S. investment bank which employs him as a senior adviser.

Nobody asked for my opinion but I'll give it anyway

Tony Blair is still a smug, insufferable shit: shock.

From The Evening Standard:

The former prime minister said that there had been a failure to challenge the "narrative" that Islam was oppressed by the West which was fuelling extremism around the world. He said too many people accepted the extremists' analysis that the military actions taken by the West following the 9/11 attacks were directed at countries because they were Muslim and that it supported Israel because Israelis were Jews while Palestinians were Muslims.

"We should wake up to the absurdity of our surprise at the prevalence of this extremism," he said, "Look at the funds it receives. Examine the education systems that succour it. And then measure, over the years, the paucity of our counter-attack in the name of peaceful co-existence. We have been outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised."

Speaking in New York to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr Blair warned that it was impossible to defeat extremism "without defeating the narrative that nurtures it". Moderate Muslims who believed in co-existence and tolerance were, he said, being undermined by the unwillingness of the West to take on the extremists' arguments.

"We think if we sympathise with the narrative - that essentially this extremism has arisen as a result, partly, of our actions - we meet it halfway, we help the modernisers to be more persuasive," he said, "We don't. We indulge it and we weaken them. Worse, a reaction springs up amongst our people that we are pandering to this narrative and they start to resent Muslims as a whole."

I see little point in fisking this as anybody who has read this far is probably well aware as to who was deliberately provoking an Islamist counter-reaction; while pandering to them and funding them at the same time, and, in a miraculous feat of triangulation, stoking resentment at the favourable treatment of Islam and its imposition on our own country.