Posts by WH
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Rich,
This poll attempts to separate support for individual leaders from support for their political parties. This poll indicates that more than half of the people that like the Labour Party also like Tony Blair. (This is also to say that a lot of the people that don't like Tony Blair are conservative voters.)
That said, total Labour support has dropped significantly since Blair took office (ie, the numbers are not truly independent), but this is also true of the New Zealand Labour Party.
Some may have surmised Blair's relative popularity from the fact that he won three elections and served as Labour Prime Minister for a decade...
-
-
their connection with their Marxists roots remains less in a concern for social justice, and more in a desire for power, for control, and for the untrammelled exercise of power for the good of the state.
To the extent to which one can generalise about such things, it seems more likely that the UK Labour Party has in fact retained its concern for social justice and that you and it just disagree about what the concept requires.
Notwithstanding that:
1. Mistakes have clearly been made.
2. This is just my opinion. -
Take That: evil scammers.
-
By dichotomising the issue and caricaturing anything left of Blair you let yourself down.
Fair point. I thought I had noticed that the most vitriolic criticism of Blair seems to comes from the left of the left, but this is by no means universally true. And its prolly a little simplistic/reductionistic.
I would give this argument more weight if voters were breaking for the Lib Dems and the Greens rather than the Conservatives and National though.
-
Hey Stephen,
I accept that Blair's record is far from perfect. I always found his relationship with George Bush... difficult to accept. Despite what I have already said, I understand why Blair's critics feel the way they do.
On the general subject of the media's role in politics, I tend to agree with Blair/Kettle (I couldn't say whether the Independent was an appropriate example for Blair to use). One only has to read the Herald to see the force in this criticism.
-
Supporters of Tony Blair recognise that he has made important mistakes, but believe we should retain a sense of perspective. As Blair recently noted in a slightly different context:
The final consequence of all of this is that it is rare today to find balance in the media. Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white. Life's usual grey is almost entirely absent. "Some good, some bad"; "some things going right,some going wrong": these are concepts alien to today's reporting. It's a triumph or a disaster. A problem is "a crisis". A setback is a policy "in tatters". A criticism, "a savage attack".
This may enrage his more impassioned critics, but Blair was not elected to fulfill the agenda of the far left. The success of the Third Way and New Labour movements lay in the perception that a reformed Labour Party would address the needs and concerns of the wider electorate, not just the faithful. Although much of the left criticises Blair for what might fairly be regarded as missed opportunities, we should not trick ourselves into believing that the public was ever buying what the far left was selling.
-
I enjoyed reading this. I always liked Bill and Tony, and sometimes felt caught in the vice between their left wing critics and their right wing opponents.
Blair just delivered a speech about the British media, which was also interesting.
-
There's an apt Chinese idiom: 死雞撐飯蓋. That's: "dead chicken trying to open the rice-pot lid".
Its probably for the best. If Deborah was the pot she would call the chicken black.
-
BIOMAG UPDATE!!!
Some quick internet research has revealed that while some studies indicate that magnetic therapy is an effective treatment, other studies indicate that it is not. The jury is still out on this one, folks.
So, is $200 worth of magnetic placebo worth a pound of cure? Quite possibly. Whatever the merits of the Biomag project may prove to be, Joan's hard earned cash seems to have been well spent.
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/mdd/99/aug/mysterious.html
Next week: Why UFO's from Atlantis built the pyramids.