Just About Managing

[Lordship 516]

MAY, HAMMOND, DAVIS, FOX, JOHNSON

[????]

better than CORBYN, MCDONNELL, ABBOT

[Jenny1]

Can we just agree that neither the Labour or Conservative leadership teams inspire great confidence at present?

[Jules-and-Boo]

Blair to the rescue

[Earl Aelfheah]

Jules-and-Boo Wrote:

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> Blair to the rescue

Ha, ha!

[Earl Aelfheah]

Seriously though, I kind of feel sorry for May. She's been left an impossible legacy by that incompetent Cameron.

[Jules-and-Boo]

Years of incompetence. Really can't be hidden anymore.

She certainly has a lot on her plate and a lot of criticism for anything she does. I don't envy her at all.

[Lordship 516]

May took on the job & has done precious little since taking office.

More years of incompetence to come.

Prospect for 10 years

Debt - UP

Deficit - UP

Prices - UP

GDP - DOWN

Incomes - DOWN

Profits Tax - DOWN

Unemployment - DOUBTFUL

Brexit - UNCERTAIN

NHS - NOTHING

Care - NOTHING

Disabled - NOTHING

Housing Funding ?1.4 billion

40,000 dwellings = ?37,500 per unit

Housing Infrastructure Fund ?2.3 billion

100,000 dwellings = ?23,000 per unit

Much too little, barely scratching the surface

London will be faced with a 559,000 deficit of homes by 2021 [LSE]

London needs 80,000 dwellings per year to catch up with unmet need & growth

Less than 20,000 are currently being built.

[Otta]

I'm not forgetting Blair's past (and again, I never voted for him), but I can't disagree with anything he's said in the last 6 months or so.

[Jeremy]

Without the war, IMO Blair would have been a perfectly reasonable PM... who has been better in the past 40 or so years?

[Jules-and-Boo]

Without our faults we are all perfect.

Without the war, WMD..... not really minor flaws, are they.

[uncleglen]

Crown House is now being sold - 1 bed flats at over ?400,000- and that used to be the local Southwark Council housing office so maybe the local councils are contributing to the building

[Loz]

Jeremy Wrote:

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> Without the war, IMO Blair would have been a

> perfectly reasonable PM... who has been better in

> the past 40 or so years?

I agree. His first term was very effective, centre-ground politics.

Considering the current highly unappealing - appalling, even - choices on offer (and I include the dreary Tim Farron in that), I'd consider voting for Blair.

[Seabag]

Tony Blair is back!

Who'd have thought it, I wonder how much he's charging

He's talking a bit of sense at least, whatever that means in this 'it's all gone mad' world we seem to be living in

And is Clegg 'back' too?

[Otta]

Jules-and-Boo Wrote:

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> Without our faults we are all perfect.

>

>

> Without the war, WMD..... not really minor flaws,

> are they.

No, but equally they have absolutely nothing to do with what he's been saying recently. His previous mistakes don't mean that everything he says is wrong.

[JohnL]

BLAIR

CLEGG

MAJOR

BRANSON

GELDOF

soon to be joined no doubt by

MANDELSON

CAMPBELL

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/24/british-politics-will-soon-fight-tony-blair-nigel-farage-theresa/

[JohnL]

Jeremy Wrote:

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> Without the war, IMO Blair would have been a

> perfectly reasonable PM... who has been better in

> the past 40 or so years?

We actually forget how popular he was at the beginning of

the war - remember those shirt sleeves pulled up meetings

with troops.

But then we found out how dodgy his dossier was ...

[BrandNewGuy]

If you'd paid attention to what the weapons inspectors were saying (and it was reported extensively in the press), you'd have known that the dossier was a work of fiction before the war started.

[rendelharris]

JohnL Wrote:

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

> We actually forget how popular he was at the

> beginning of

> the war - remember those shirt sleeves pulled up

> meetings

> with troops.

>

> But then we found out how dodgy his dossier was

> ...

There were nearly two million of us who marched against him before the war started, the largest ever demonstration in the UK - not that popular!

[Jah Lush]

Excuse me, is there some kind of re-branding of The Bliar going on here? Have I missed something? I did vote for him in '97 and I agree he was pretty good up until he became Bush's simpering little whore. He's a war criminal. Plain and simple. Let's not forget that.

[JohnL]

rendelharris Wrote:

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

> JohnL Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

>

> > We actually forget how popular he was at the

> > beginning of

> > the war - remember those shirt sleeves pulled

> up

> > meetings

> > with troops.

> >

> > But then we found out how dodgy his dossier was

> > ...

>

> There were nearly two million of us who marched

> against him before the war started, the largest

> ever demonstration in the UK - not that popular!

Fair enough - I think I must have taken him on trust

at the start - because it turned out to be sixth form

stuff.

Edit: and I sort of believed in Liberal Interventionism

at that time - discredited now.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.12229/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+unavailable+on+Saturday+26th+November+2016+from+07%3A00-11%3A00+GMT+%2F+02%3A00-06%3A00+EST+%2F+15%3A00-19%3A00+SGT+for+essential+maintenance.++Apologies+for+the+inconvenience.

[Otta]

Nothing Blair has done in the past means he isn't capable of commenting on the current political mess we are in.

Harold Shipman killed loads of people. He still could have offered you sound medical advice if he'd wanted to.

All this "because of Iraq, nothing Blair says should be listened to" attitude is doing my head in.

[rendelharris]

But to use your own analogy, Otta, if Harold Shipman offered me medical advice and gave me a prescription now, knowing he's a serial killer I wouldn't take it! Similarly knowing Blair has proved a liar of psychopathic proportions in the past (I'm not using the words lightly, one of the defining characteristics of a psychopath is the inability to accept any version of reality other than his own as true) then I'm not prepared to take what he says now on trust (even though thus far he hasn't really said anything I disagree with - maybe I'm a psychopath too....)

Actually it's not the Iraq issue which makes me distrust him in the current debate, it's the fact that he has a track record of cosying up to and giving advantages to (and being paid by) large multinational corporations, and I suspect he's far more interested in what Brexit means for them rather than the person in the street.

[Henry_17]

Rendel,

Examples of corporate cosying?

Im not surprised that he has, however I wouldn't expect this to have been motivated by an intrinsic affinity for corporations, rather that doing so would have been in his view the most efficient method of furthering whatever his particular personal agenda was at that point in time, and so we can't assume he will behave the same way in the future.

Seabag,

I'd guess that having made as much as he has already, money won't be his primary motivation, rather a yearning for greater power, having realised it is that not money that can grisly satisfy him.

[rendelharris]

Henry_17 Wrote:

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

> Rendel,

>

> Examples of corporate cosying?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/petrosaudi-tony-blair-emails-oil-company-chinese