Blair and Brown BBC2 now

Fascinating 

It’s about the history of a big chunk of our political history, Dux, however one votes 

 

i am no fan of either of them. But it is good stuff as are progs about Thatcher’s cabinet 

Watched it with a mixture of mournful nostalgia and cautious optimism. Blair and brown were awesome. 

Interesting how they only lightly touched on Clinton and his role and totally ignored the Murdoch shenanigans.

Blair was among the best.

Brown however is responsible for the London subsidising the rest of the country doctrine that led to Brexit.

Others contributed to it (e.g. Thatcher) but by accident rather than design.

Brown was pretty incompetent (e.g. flogging all out gold, but telling everyone about it beforehand) but he wasn't reckless like Bliar. If the latter's real ambition had come to fruition, we would be destroyed as a society. That's what happens when Philistines with no understanding of history or respect for tradition come to power. 

Also, on a personal level, Brown was a fairly decent, if dull, chap, and his wife seemed lovely. The Bliars were awful, awful, awful. 

“That's what happens when Philistines with no understanding of history or respect for tradition come to power.”

 

Could equally be applied as a critique of the last 2-5 years, to be fair. Whatever else the governments in that time might be described as, moderate, conservative, respectful of tradition and constitutional conventions they have not been. And increasingly irrational, incoherent and (especially for the Tories) dogmatic and doctrinaire.

Dux has nailed this as usual. Blair was and remains an intellectual flyweight with little interest in anything beyond attention, power and latterly huge wealth. He didn’t leave any positive legacy of note and didn’t change the UK at all, unless you count exemplifying how to run an election-winning machine. 

I think that’s a little harsh in both cases, GC.

Both can be criticised, definitely; but the legacy has been somewhat undermined by the last 11 years of “austerity” and then the absurd, self-destructive and ludicrously expensive Brexit “project”.

I don’t however see that the pigfooker and Gideon could have managed Britain as well through 2008-10 as Brown and the underappreciated Darling did (esp with a sophomore US President and Merkel not yet as monolithic as she has become); in all probability it would have been much, much worse (and Conservative economic and fiscal plans from. 2001-10 would if anything have been even more reckless judging by the manifestos and policy and tax promises of Hague and then Howard, to say nothing of the IDS sh1tshow). And Christ knows what would have happened if Bozza and Sunak had been in charge.

The Quiet Man was a man with much to be quiet about 15+ years ago; he should certainly shut the fook up now.

Although naturally I disapprove of the 5 tools who apparently physically attacked him yesterday.

Dux has nailed this as usual
 

heh - this made me spit out my coffee!

 

I found the 1st episode a little too uncritical to contributors - the kinnock pre election rally  fiasco was airbrushed out for example

Goethe Cash05 Oct 21 06:19

....Blair was and remains an intellectual flyweight with little interest in anything beyond attention, power and latterly huge wealth. He didn’t leave any positive legacy of note and didn’t change the UK at all...

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even by Rof standards that's a new height of distilled retardation

Blair presided over the biggest decentralisation and transfer of power away from Westminster that the country has ever seen, devolved parliaments and regional assemblies abound. 

The ability for ordinary people to challenge engines of the state to enforce their rights under the human rights convention without having to shlep to the middle of europe for 4 years 

(limited) reform of the house of lords 

doesn't matter if you're ultra conservative and hate all that because "change is bad, I like being a peasant", you cannot make any coherent argument that Blair did not change the UK 

What caused Brexit was every party promising a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and every one reneging on it.

A vote on that would have been cathartic.  And a message regarding further integration.  But that the Lisbon Treaty was snuck in through mendacity was a much stronger message that the EU elites are working to dismantle national democracy.

I despised Thatcher and ended up disliking Blair and many mistakes were made but in retrospect 1979 - 2010 was a golden era of competent government in which post imperial post industrial  Britain had its last afterglow.  

Brexit was caused by politicians abdicating responsibility for a highly complex decision. It was right up there with offering a referendum on "Shall We Bail Out RBS and HBOS, yes or no". Lolercopters at the retired colonels now bemoaning the lack of petrol because employed immigrants that paid taxes have fooked off home, while their pin-ups continue to allow plenty of permitted migration unchecked while bemoaning the handfuls in Lidl boats that Asimov wants exterminated.

What this doc clearly demonstrates is Brown, assisted by moronic (in political power terms) pseudo trots destroyed New Labour for his own ends. The docu suggested to me that he realises that now but refuses to admit it openly. He wanted power, so he bottled an election to nip Cameron in the bud to hang on for as long as possible, which gave Clegg the chance to destroy the Lib Dems' counterweight to the Tories and Labour, and gave Miliband the opportunity to open the door to Momentum, which let in an idiot incapable of beating the worst Tories since IDS days. 

Blair had a vision to fix what was wrong with Britain through improving education and child welfare generally. People like Dux like right on car salesman types who align with their junior common room outlook e.g. Corbyn.

 

 

"That's what happens when Philistines with no understanding of history or respect for tradition come to power. "

I am struggling with the last 8 years of chaos. which has been anything but led by the philistines, so much so that we have had Howard QC leaning on Cameron to announce the referendum - the life long ambition of the euro haters since the 1990s when they kicked thatcher out and lost further more. 

"Blair presided over the biggest decentralisation and transfer of power away from Westminster that the country has ever seen, devolved parliaments and regional assemblies abound. "

This.

And before the imperials on RoF lost their tache over this, the so called levelling up agenda is now being described as more devolved localism. Down to towns and cities perhaps?

Blair transformed health and education (especially primary education) for the better as anyone who experienced school and hospitals in both the 1980s and  00's will attest to.   Unfortunately this work has been largely undone (particularly in respect of health care) slowly but surely in the last decade of Tory misrule.

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Goethe Cash05 Oct 21 06:19

....Blair was and remains an intellectual flyweight with little interest in anything beyond attention, power and latterly huge wealth. He didn’t leave any positive legacy of note and didn’t change the UK at all...

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even by Rof standards that's a new height of distilled retardation

Blair presided over the biggest decentralisation and transfer of power away from Westminster that the country has ever seen, devolved parliaments and regional assemblies abound. 

i don’t reckon these two positions r necessarily irreconcilable

if blair may have been a flyweight, but he was unified world champion in his weight category. in truth, it’s testament to the flyweightisation of politics, which plagues us

blair managed to combine flyweight politics with contradictory (ie semi competent) government. politicians since, lacking the iron grip on their own party and his oily charisma, have been political and governing flyweights, with bodge representing the nadir

Blair was a political heavyweight, ridiculous to suggest otherwise.   He was not a great intellect or policy thinker, but political leaders don't need to be that, indeed those that are are usually less effective as leaders.   A heavy weight politician provides effective leadership communication and vision, Blair did that in spades.

Devolution has changed nothing. Ask Wales and Scotland.

Human Rights Act? How many people do you know who have been affected by that?

LOL @ the idea that Blair improved education or heathcare. Have you had a look at them lately?

Anyone can say improving the UK requires better education for children. That isn’t vision, it’s platitude. 

LOL @ the idea that Blair improved education or heathcare. Have you had a look at them lately?

not a gr7 point given there has been 14 years since he left power…

Blair was undoubtedly a heavyweight: minimum wage, academy schools, Human Rights Act, Devolution, foreign war adventurism (to the US Neocons he was a learned scholar), sure starts etc. Ideologically - he was the answer to Thatcher's (and that moron Osborne's) premise that the only good state was a small state

Brown was a significant chancellor as well - separation of BoE and FSA (doh), vastly increased spending on healthcare, kept the UK out of the Euro. His time as prime minister was pretty eventful as well and though he sowed some of the seeds of his own demise, the UK was lucky to have a PM who understood finance. 

 

"LOL @ the idea that Blair improved education or heathcare. Have you had a look at them lately?"

Er yes, under Blair we spent the european average of gdp on healthcare and waiting lists virtually disappeared.  Under Tory misrule we now spend far less again and healthcare is in the shit again, which covid has of course exposed cruelly. 

Schools are still far better than when they were, I really dont know where the idea that state schools are now rubbish comes from.  There will always be a few poor schools but education is one of the few areas of public services that is not totally dysfunctional (ignoring the covid fiascos)

schools remain palaces compared to my childhood when class sizes were huge, buildings were crumbling, facilties were dire, there was virtually no outside hours organised sports activity and half the teachers were completely useless because there was no effective assessment process.

Also - re. schools, the feckless Tories in 2010 cut capital expenditure on schools like the morons they were. They reinstated some of it years later but the needless delay worsened facilities. See also the decision to stop and then re-start Heathrow (not sure where we are now).

As an intellectual force, Blair-Brown were a 100x Cameron-Osborne (the worst pair that I know of) 

What caused Brexit was every party promising a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and every one reneging on it.

A vote on that would have been cathartic.  And a message regarding further integration.  But that the Lisbon Treaty was snuck in through mendacity was a much stronger message that the EU elites are working to dismantle national democracy.

 

Total bollocks as shown by the numbers of people who listed the EU as something that they considered to be important when deciding on whom to vote for pre-2015.  Brexit was caused by the Tories weaponising bigotry in an unhappy population suffering from the Tories' wreckage of the country through austerity and general Toryism during the preceding six years.

Blair transformed health and education (especially primary education) for the better as anyone who experienced school and hospitals in both the 1980s and  00's will attest to.

I don't think tertiary education has changed for the better.  Calling every poly and college a university because all must have prizes has devalued degree qualifications terribly. 

That had nothing to do with Blair,  but polys have always offered degree courses so not sure how their name change could have devalued a degree.  What has devalued a degree is simply the increase in the number of people doing degrees, but that is of course inevitable - its a question of supply and demand.  150 years ago if you were educated to 16 and could read and write you could boss the labour market but now almost everyone stays in school til 16 and is literate that ability is “devalued” in a sense but that does not mean the expansion of education worthwhile.

I agree to a certain extent bubbles, I do think that all 18 year olds who can benefit (which I think will be at least half) should have the opportunity to have tertiary education but much of this should be targeted and vocational.  The degrees that really strike me as a waste of time are not the ones people laugh at like "golf course management studies" or "surf science" both of which strike me as useful if you want to manage golf courses or go into the surfing business but the number of second rate universities doing highly academic arts and social science courses which for youngsters who are not actually very academic is a waste of time.  For example History and English Literature should not in my view be studied by people who will not excel at them and should not be offered in low tariff universities.

Broon showed up as the second rate leader he could only ever be. Dithering when handed a bounce by his stellar predecessor, letting in the moon faced pig fvcker who really was a spiv and actually did fvck the country. Our rings are still aching and will be for decades.