Tony Blair .....

[????]

besides, as a middleclass (there, I said it) family with kids in state school and nursery. I suspect the cuts will affect me more than a fair few in actual net terms as it happens....

[DJKillaQueen]

So your kids will suddenly find they don't have a school to go to? I don't think so.

Compare that though to the million or so about to lose their jobs (some of which will lose their homes too), the disabled about to lose essential care services, the millions about to see their already meagre benefits cut whilst the government do feck all to help job creation, I could go on....yeah right, the cuts will affect you more than a fair few!

And Sean you are absolutely right....I am fed up with any kind of debate being disregarded as the ramblings of a caracitured left. It is not 'loony left' to argue for fairness or pregressive policy. Nor is it 'loony left' to argue for the need of stable economic policy instead of boom and bust based on short term greed.

Many major economists agree that the current governments plans for drastic cuts will harm the UK economy and hinder it's recovery......time will tell if they are right....but nowhere do I see anything that will help create the eight million or so jobs needed if Cameron is ever going to tackle unemployment (and LTU)....meanwhile the banks are back to profitability and big bonusses while the rest of us will continue to pay for their crisis for years to come.

[Keef]

So your kids will suddenly find they don't have a school to go to? I don't think so.

He never said that.

Compare that though to the million or so about to lose their jobs (some of which will lose their homes too), the disabled about to lose essential care services, the millions about to see their already meagre benefits cut whilst the government do feck all to help job creation, I could go on....yeah right, the cuts will affect you more than a fair few!

They probably will affect him more than a fair few, he never said they'd affect him morethan anyone.

Also, what essential care services are the disabled about to lose?

[DJKillaQueen]

Yeah but the tone of his post suggests that it's his kids at school that will be affected by cuts (which they probably won't) and in the grand scheme of things that will make him one of the least affected.

Local authorities are going to be expected to make massive cuts in a system that has little that can be cut. Job losses will mean less staff (and that includes in care services) leaving those behind with bigger demands (as people switch from private sector services they can no longer afford to public sector ones) and less resources to deal with them. At the last Kings Partnership Board meeting for example there was a question raised after some free transport provision for the disabled to take them to the hospital for appointments was cut. I'd say that's a pretty essential service that has already been cut back.

Already the Peckham Rye and Nunead SNT's are going to be merged with less officers.....at a time when crime is likely to increase (as it always does in down turns)

We have to wait for the spending review in October to see just how bad the cuts will be, but make no mistake, those most affected are going to be those that can least afford to lose those services.

On the other hand, the thing most likely to affect the middle-classes will be any changes to the child tax credit and child benefit system. It is expected that the threshold will be lowered on tax credits (rightly so) and that child benefit may be means tested. Along with expected rises in interest rates - it's homeowner's with mortgages that will feel the impact there....THAT's where Quids is likely to be hit......on those things.

[Keef]

Local authorities are going to be expected to make massive cuts in a system that has little that can be cut. Job losses will mean less staff (and that includes in care services) leaving those behind with bigger demands (as people switch from private sector services they can no longer afford to public sector ones) and less resources to deal with them. At the last Kings Partnership Board meeting for example there was a question raised after some free transport provision for the disabled to take them to the hospital for appointments was cut. I'd say that's a pretty essential service that has already been cut back.

25% within 3 years, but I you're looking at it rather simplistically. There is a duty of care, and services have to be provided. The problem for local authorities is going to be making the money stretch. The staff will suffer for it, but I don't think we'll see actual care services disappearing. There is a leaning towards personalisation, and it will allow people to use local authority money to buy in private sector services.

What I hope will happe, is that private care homes for people with various disabilities will have to stop charging a fecking silly amount of money to local authorities, as this is where the money goes, and the LA's will hopefully start to turn round and just tell these businesses that they can't afford them!

[DJKillaQueen]

I totally agree with you on the overcharging by private companies of the public sector (especially in care services)....

There are other areas though where (for example in maintenance contracts) where the service provided is substandard because the price paid, is too low.

Many things in the private sector are more expensive then in the public sector so I can't personally see how that much can be outsourced to achieve these cuts.

[Keef]

Local authorities need to be smart about their services, and inventive, and they can provide a better service for less money, simple as that.

I've spent the last year building a project, which now gives an individual about 6 times the input they were getting before, and save the council a bunch of cash. Everyone's a winner.

The problem is that too many councils are scared to spend a few quid to save a load more, but they will have to start.

[DJKillaQueen]

The problem is that too many councils are scared to spend a few quid to save a load more, but they will have to start.

That's the key isn't it. But often they don't have the few quid in the first place to spend. Here's an example....when replacing boilers....ideally you go for a more expensive one that will need less maintenance than the cheaper option that will cost double in the long run. But if you don't have the money for the expensive option in the first place then what do you do? This has been the major problem for local authorities. I totally agree that running costs are more expensive than they need to be but councils are trapped by the inadequacy of their budgets.

My personal area of interest is decent homes and housing. You had a government that imposed legislation and deadlines on local authorities but gave them no way of finding the money to do it. But then you have an authority like Southwark that thinks it's ok to spend 100 million on a call centre. So in the end it becomes a bit of both...impossible demands on resources and poor prioritising of what funds do exist.

[ratty]

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Tony Blair's biggest crime was Iraq

>

Are people honestly thinking that the Tories, had they been in power, would not have swarmed into Iraq and Afghanistan alongside Bush with as much, if not more blood thirst and enthusiasm as Blair did?

Sheesh! Blair is rightly dammned for joining these wars, but the opposition would have gladly done so as well! Then it would be the tories damned with it.

[DJKillaQueen]

Good point Ratty.

[mockney piers]

Actually I dont think they would have done.

Well, maybe at a pinch they'd have done just enough in Afghanistan to fulfil their NATO obligations like many other countries, but I don't they'd have wanted anything to do with Iraq.

Pre emptive interventionism came as a logical end of the faoreign policy theories that Clinton and Blair started with varying success in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, probably bolstered by some success in Norther Ireland.

The thing is Clinton was a pragmatist as well as an idealist. Blair met his true kindred spirit in Bush, both men convinced of their moral conviction and dare I say purpose. Also both deeply religious men and both felt this hand of history nonsense. And frankly both cluless when it came to understanding the subtleties of how the real world actually operates.

Clinton would never have done Iraq, bush senior sure as hell understood it.

Contrast clinton's bashing up against the Tories regards Bosnia. The Tories wrung hands saying 'we mustn't intervene' at a dreadful humanitarian cost to the locals, whilst Clinton covertly rearmed and trained the Croats in a bid to get them to end the war by effectively winning it ... for the Croats ... at a dreadful humanitarian cost for some other locals and at a political cost to the non-ethnically partisan Bosnians.

Nont really sure who was more right or wrong in that one, but a discussion for another thread.

All to say that had they stayed in power, the Tories wouldn't have touched Iraq with a barge pole.

But I digress, sort of.

[DJKillaQueen]

Do you also think that the Tories would have accepted that the 'secret' dossier showed the case for WMDs wasn't that strong as opposed to Blair who sought to beef it up to back up the decision he'd already made to join Bush in Iraq?

Btw I think you are absolutely spot on in your summation of the different characteristics of Clinton and Bush, and in your comment that Blair and Bush believed in some delusion of fate and god and destiny (Blair bolstered by success in former Yugoslavia and N.Ireland) rather than taking a pragmatic view of the evidence. Bush came into power in the belief that Iraq needed to be dealt with 'should an opportunity arise' - a comment from a report on how America could maintain it's strategic and military power in the world "Rebuilding America's Defenses (RAD)" published by neo-cons before Bush came into power (2000). that report gives probably the best insight into Neo Con thinking on Iraq prior to 9/11 and best explains why 9/11 was then used by America as an excuse to invade Iraq (which it was). You can find it online if you want to read it out of interest.

[mockney piers]

I dont think the dodgy dossier would have existed under the Tories, unless of course Alistair Campbell had been working for them.

I agree that it was a neocon thing and that it happened to chime with Bush's loose world view. The neocons thought that where Clinton went wrong was to misuse American power by a) using it (vaguely) altruistically and b) doing it half heartedly rather than scaring the world into submission to American hegemony thanks to it's vastly superior firepower and technology.

The irony is that there might have been a kernel of truth to their policies had they picked their fights sensibly and that they also, in Iraq notably, but I think more crucially in Georgia, massively exposed to everyone the limits of american power rather than its strengths.

[Chick]

Short memories. He lied, lied and lied again. Still thinks GB is a world power, pah. WMD, 45 minutes to attack UK, dodgy dossier.

Iraq had been on it?s knees ever since sanctions from the early 90?s. Madeline Albright thought the deaths of 500,000 children was a ?price worth paying?.

Blair stinks and should made a war criminal.

Humbug.

[Wilhelm]

Does anyone fancy a pint?

[????]

I'd just like to say thanks to keef for actually reading what I wrote and sticking up for me - especially given that I believe Keef's position is/was? generally under threat from the cuts. And add that others - yes you DJKQ - should actually try reading what people write before opining and unpleasant posturing....no surprise though.

[DJKillaQueen]

I did read what you wrote. Maybe you should have been a bit more in depth in what you wrote so as to be clear in what you were saying. We both know we don't see eye to eye politically (I can easily accept that) but I'm a getting a little tired of personal digs every time I post something you don't agree with.

[????]

Well your response was even worse then. Maybe you shouldn't make assumptions about people you know nothing about, as you clearly have me on a couple of occasions before too...as I said someone whose job was certainly was uneder threat at one point as a direct result of the cuts, could see you completley missed the point of what I said, but self appointe defender of the poor and weak on her white stallion piles in. Poor.

[????]

Personal digs - when? You know nothing about my politics, have accused me of voting for a party i did not vote for, completley misinterpreted what I wrote and tried to act like I was saying I'm worst affected than people losing their jobs? And you act like I'm being unreasonable for being annoyed for being so unplasantly misinterpreted?

[????]

I can't think that I've made any other dig at you ever, so don't start playing the victim.

[Mick Mac]

Have you fallen off the wagon ?

[????]

Nope. Just making up for being absent whilst my posts were twisted.

[DJKillaQueen]

Give it a rest Quids...no one is interested.

Back to on topic. I think you are right Mockney. American's limitations have once again been shown rather than strength. But they are the same limitations shown in Vietnam and Korea. There is something about the American ethic that just doesn't work. It's not for a lack of intelligent people. There are some very intelligent military advisors and indeed politicians and journalists.....but they somehow get sidelined every time American engages in unilateral conflict.

Colin Powell (then Secretary of State) quit telling Bush that to go to war without a proper post war plan in place was lunacy - and Powell should know. That alone should have told Blair that America were not properly prepared. Legitimacy of war is one thing, and often that is just a point of view, but to be ill prepared is something else and that was a tragedy for Iraq in the immediate aftermath. Tony Blair has to accept some of the responsibility for that.

And whether he, or we, like it or not, that will always overshadow everything else.

[Huguenot]

I was interested :)

I always thought it was a peculiar and rather weak tactic to claim to be speaking for a group of people (as in 'no-one's interested'). I think you should accept DJKQ that your views are yours and yours alone, even if you feel they're not worthy unless you have a gang behind you ;-)

I think people are trying too hard to post rationalise Blair's motivation for war in Iraq. I think claiming that Blair and Bush committed to it out of moralistic quasi religious fervour is just as bad as claiming that they deliberately concocted dodgy dossiers because they were hate-fuelled murderers.

I suspect that the truth is far more complex, and probably a whole bundle of all the motivations that people have proposed. My own view is that people are understating the influence that anxiety about a stranglehold on Middle Eastern oil would have had.

The problem is that no-one can accept a 'war for oil' because then they have to take personal responsibility.

So instead we heap all of our guilt on the shoulders of one man who frankly didn't act alone. We fabricate other hypotheses that let us sleep easier at night.

[reggie]

Huguenot

What's your personal view on 'war for oil'. Do you think it was worth it? I mean do you have a bit of guilt (because you are implicit in war) or anger cause you didnt want war.

As for sleeping easier at night, its more my anger that keeps me awake than my hypocrisy helping me to sleep.