Walter Mitty Blair

 

Tony Blair has never had a secure grip on reality. While he was swanning around the world in the General Election 2010 I was on the doorstep for five weeks talking to voters.

They raised many issues, immigration, NHS, ‘scroungers’, global warming, jobs, and the credit crunch. No one mentioned ‘New Labour’. Many did not like Brown but not because he had shifted 100 millimeters from the New Labour nostrums-whatever they were. Nor did they claim that they were worried about the party straying from the path of the third way. Another mystical concept that was never defined. Both ‘New Labour’ and the ‘The Third Way’ were marketing tools to sell the party. Those words never crossed my lips or appeared in any of my election literature in the last or any other election.

 

In the fantasy world of ‘Walter Mitty’ Blair New Labour was his creation, which won three elections. It’s absence lost the fourth election. That fiction suits his self-image as the Redeemer of the nation. My views are a little more realistic. ‘New’ Labour disappeared in 2010 because the brand is discredited. The victories of Labour in Newport in the past four elections were thanks mainly to revulsion from Old Tories. Actor, salesman Blair was a persuasive acceptable front man that the nation liked. That helped to cut the public’s fear of the party. But there is no deep-seated devotion to the new religion of 'New" Labour Party.

 Nothing can stay ‘New’ for 15 years and the concept has faded and died. Blair has convinced himself that it’s ‘Apres moi, le deluge’.  He is man without political convictions. He is offering himself for hire. Can he now be cosying up to Cameron?

The contempt that his party has for him had hit rock bottom. If he takes a job with Cameron it will become subterranean.

 Vaccines not WMD

It’s not all bad new from Obama

Pentagon shifts $1 billion from WMD-defense efforts to vaccine development

The Obama administration has shifted more than $1 billion out of its nuclear, biological, and chemical defense programs to underwrite a new White House priority on vaccine development and production to combat disease pandemics; Defense Department projects under the budget-cutting ax include the development and acquisition of biological and chemical detection systems; gear to decontaminate skin and equipment after exposure; systems to coordinate military operations in a chem-bio environment; and protective clothing for military personnel entering toxic areas, the document indicates

 

Comments

[Kay Tie]

You can say that New Labour was a delusion, but while people believed that Labour wasn't going to crush their aspirations they were prepared to vote for it.

As Labour drifts back to its core ideals of levelling down it will go back to its core vote: people on welfare, public sector workers and the rich middle class bien pensants that have the wealth to buy themselves out of failing public services. What a motley crew!

[HuwOS]

KayTie and Blair are quite alike, they both believe their own personal fictions and eschew the realities.

Has anyone seen them both in the same place at the same time?

[Kay Tie]

If only! I'd be swanning around in the Carribean now, rather than holed up with a cold feeling miserable.

[D.G.]

Well, I'm not on welfare, and I'm not a public sector worker, so I guess I must be rich and middle class. Can't wait to tell my folks! :D

[Kay Tie]

There are always a few people who hang around a group but don't really belong :-)

[HuwOS]

Yup, when the facts don't fit, just pretend they're an exception, very blairlike.

[Jane]

Whether you can accept it or not New Labour was successful in winning elections. It took the fear out of voters that the Labour Party would raise taxes and spend foolishly. I have always voted Labour but my friends have not. They voted for Tony Blair because they believed that he was in touch with them, modern Britain and individual's aspirations. They have all moved to David Cameron as they thought that Gordon was taking the party backwards. He did try and regain momentum when he sought to pursue previous policies of Tony Blair that he initially abandoned. Even with Peter Mandelson's expertise in stabilising the ship and putting fear into the electorate regarding Tory cuts the damage had been done. I therefore share Tony Blair's assessment of what went wrong. Policy confusion as well as the dire presentation of GB.

I am concerned that several of the leadership contenders have moved positions to appeal to core voters only. I am astonished at their doing so as history tells us that parties do not form governments unless they appeal to the electorate - particularly Middle England. We only need to look at the huge parts of the country where labour won no seats. As Kay Tie states above the Labour Party is in danger of only appealling to those parts of the community who gain from a labour government. Those groups do not give enough votes to become a government and you abandon many people at your peril.

I feel sad at your criticism of the most successful Labour PM we have had. In doing so you deny the millions of people like me who supported Tony Blair and indeed the Iraq war. I do not expect a Labour MP to write similarly to the ghastly Mail. Surely you are not telling me that you prefer opposition? Also, everyone around me regularly discussed labour losing its appeal once Tony Blair departed. Fortunately David Cameron took over from Michael Howard and filled the gap for all of those who voted for Tony Blair.

A Tony Blair fan....

[HuwOS]

"A Tony Blair fan...."
Bloody handed murderer that he is, more shame on you.

"Labour Party is in danger of only appealling to those parts of the community who gain from a labour government"

That'd be the majority of the community,
how fortunate for the minority inspired by greed and envy and deluded by glistening mirages, that so few of the people who would benefit from rational just and fair policies vote.

But those for vested interests, corporations and the hope that they too will someday be able to walk all over other people need not fear.
The defunct Labour party has a Blairite far in the lead in the leadership contest and there is no danger of the party moving back to the centre never mind to the left whatever your overheated imaginations cook up.

[Kay Tie]

"That'd be the majority of the community"

In what way have the majority benefitted? The people who gave gained most have been the core vote: welfare recipients, public sector workers, and quango heads on six figure salaries. Losers have been the working majority who pay vastly higher taxes and at the same time are despised by Labour for wanting to get on.

[HuwOS]

All in your head KayTie.

The last thirteen years were not 13 years of a leftist labour party. They were 13 years of the New Tory Labour party. If you didn't like them, then that's understandable, neither did anyone on the left.

Lovely that you point out with scorn that the quango's, the Thatcherite concept that was continued by a Thatcherite party calling itself new labour.
If you recall, Thatcher championed them because everyone who had the powers that she gave to the quangos was far to her left and she was depriving the people who elected them of their choices.

The reality is that, the vast majority of the working majority have had 13 years of below inflation pay rises while profits soared and who are now expected to accept less or cuts, or lose their jobs now that times are tight.

Not sure how you reckon welfare recipients have done particularly well, there was some improvement for current pensioners, but with the moving finish line for retirement installed everyone else has become less likely to ever receive theirs whether its a state or a private pension.
Of course the people who did best from welfare were in fact the businesses who don't pay their employees enough to live on who are being subsidised with the awkward system of tax credits, but to their great joy, the awkwardness was put onto the underpaid workers who never know if what they are told they are entitled to receive will be taken back later when they are told it was an error.
PFI was more welfare to businesses.
Those welfare recipients did do particularly well for most if not all of the last 13 years and will probably continue to do so.

Under the New Tory Labour party, the wealthy got wealthier while the poor stayed poor, with the illusion of improvement held up with easy credit.
A success by any right wing standards a disgrace by anything from the centre on out to the left.

[Kay Tie]

Inflation averaged less than 3% yet median salaries (the "majority of the working majority") grew by more than this:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=285

Please argue with facts not ideology.

[Kay Tie]

Some very interesting analysis by Janet Daley. She argues Labour needs its civil war to decide if it is the political wing of public sector trade unionism and inherently symbiotic with big government, or whether it is a party of aspiration and efficient small government.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/7981859/Labour-must-free-itself-from-its-ideological-shackles.html

If the aspirationists win then the rest need to leave the party and it needs to sever its links with the unions. If the big government symbiotes win then the aspirationists need to leave and deprive the party of any means of cloaking its aims from the majority that will ultimately be predated upon.

[HuwOS]

"or whether it is a party of aspiration and efficient small government"

Not doing your job is not efficiency.
It's just not doing what you're supposed to be doing, it is in fact many things, it is shirking, lying, cheating and stealing, something very common on the right as the Tories proved and new labour proved again.
I know some men who are so efficient at ironing that they never do any.

As far as aspirations go, for the majority aspiration is all they would ever have under right wing governments of the ilk of new Labour or the old Tories.

"Please argue with facts not ideology"

RPI is a measure that is flawed, less flawed than some others, but many people do recognise that the effects of inflation is always higher than RPI suggests.
As a spokesman for the ONS said,
"The CPI and RPI are specifically not intended to measure what people often refer to as 'the cost of living'."

If we were taking RPI as the holy grail of accuracy, that truly states inflation then indeed we could say that wages have exceeded inflation over 13 years by what? being generous 1.4%?

It is both fascinating and a welcome development though, that for once we have witnessed one of the rarest of events, a time when KayTie managed to present anything even remotely factual in a discussion, so I commend you on the effort.

[D.G.]

" In doing so you deny the millions of people like me who supported Tony Blair and indeed the Iraq war."

Yeah, he fooled me too - at the time. But "fool me twice... won't get fooled again" as the saying allegedly goes.

[D.G.]

"In what way have the majority benefitted?"

Minimum wage, some regulation of shift patterns and the Freedom of Information Act.

Credit where it's due.

[Kay Tie]

"It's just not doing what you're supposed to be doing"

And what is government supposed to be doing? Hectoring us about made-up drinking ills? Telling us how we should stop throwing things away? What kind of car we should drive? That we shouldn't play a guitar in a pub? That we can't replace the windows in our house? That we shouldn't think certain thoughts and say certain things? Because that's what inevitably happens when you have politicians and government workers with time in their hands.

"RPI is a measure that is flawed"

It is flawed only in so far as it is a single measure. Elderly people consume more services, younger people buy more gadgets. The former see higher inflation, the latter lower. It has to be averaged out to compare with an average salary.

"13 years by what? being generous 1.4%?"

That's each year, compounded. That's about 20% in total. Isn't it good when people get richer?

[HuwOS]

Sorry? KayTie, now you are arguing that all people got richer under New Labour?
Whilst simultaneously whining about those right wing wallies being terrible socialist lefties who crushed all aspiration.

[Kay Tie]

First Huw, you could admit you were wrong, and that there have been significant increases in income for everyone. You might even like to make the leap that liberal market economics does this (especially if you think we have been governed by right wingers).

Crushing aspiration is more than about real-term wages. It's about the sneering attitude at those who want to get on. The constant tinkering with education to try and socially engineer the outcomes that fail to happen (making universities accept ignorant poor children because of "potential" when any decent school would already have done something with that potential).

[buster]

it wasnt my fault
i couldnt stop what happend.
i am a party member but i didnt send in the troops.
i didnt kill those innocent people
there's no blood on my hands and i didnt have anything to do with the demise of this country.
it was all the leaders fault.

a nazi's words or a labour mp
all sounds sounds the same.

your theme tune should be shaggy's
"it wasnt me"

who are you trying to convince of your innocence, us or yourself.

[HuwOS]

I would admit I was wrong KayTie, unlike you, if I was wrong.
I clarified and acknowledged your claim agreeing that median wages have in fact been ahead of RPI.
But while RPI is a guideline for policy it is not an accurate reflection of the reality for actual people, the reality is that wages have stagnated and that in real terms the majority of people are in fact poorer.
Now while you like to call New Labour left wing socialism, they followed right wing monetary policies, just not quite as far to the right as you would like, despite being further to the right than the previous tory administration, people like you seem to believe in the maxim that if stupidity got is into this mess, there is no reason to believe that even greater stupidity cannot get us out again.
Well I can understand why you think so, after all you have to work with what you've got and it seems that there is just that one asset on the right.

So now you wish to claim that people became richer year on year under what you have often, although completely falsely, called a socialist(also stalinist) administration.

You are, we are all aware, used to moving the goalposts on every comment you make, but on this occasion in this thread, it is so glaringly obvious that you are contradicting yourself completely that there really is nothing more to say.

[Kay Tie]

"But while RPI is a guideline for policy it is not an accurate reflection of the reality for actual people"

I'm afraid you're wrong there. RPI is *exactly* that. Different individuals suffer different inflation rates, but you don't even concede that individuals are important, and that the people as an amorphous blog is what is important.

"the reality is that wages have stagnated and that in real terms the majority of people are in fact poorer."

Standard of living has fallen recently amongst those working in the private sector, and wages are falling (both in nominal and real terms). But not in the public sector. The reason for this is the transfer of wealth by taxes from the working majority to Labour's clients - mostly consisting of the unionised public sector workers.

"if stupidity got is into this mess, there is no reason to believe that even greater stupidity cannot get us out again."

Debt got us into this mess. It is the Left that believes more debt will get us out of it. It is this that is the height of stupidity.

"You are, we are all aware, used to moving the goalposts on every comment you make"

You were the daft one who thought that wages outpaced inflation by 1.4% and didn't think much of this. If you're too ignorant to understand how compound growth works then we really ought to be ignoring any sputterings from you on anything related to economics because you don't understand any of it.

The general level of ignorance on the Left in economic matters is no surprise, but it does show that superficially easy solutions ("raise more money by taxing the rich!") turn out to have unforeseen consequences (unforeseen by dolts, that is - the rest of us can foresee these things very easily).

Your ideas were put into practice in the 1960s and 1970s and failed. Human nature hasn't changed, and they would fail again in the same ways - you people don't understand complex systems and the way they interact with human nature. You don't understand how incentives matter, how people respond to them. You think that passing a law is the end of things. Well the real world is complex, my friend, and if you can't understand that simple fact then you really have no place lecturing those of us who do.

[Paul Flynn]

Jane my feelings about Blair are so strong that I hesitate to express them fully. I don't know what greater offence a Leader can commit worse than sending 179 soldiers to die in an avoidable war on the basis of a lie. Plus conspiring with the party's enemies to sabotage Labour's policies on hunting and devolution. I wrote a book about the latter entitled Dragons led by Poodles. Now Tony Blair has confessed that every word I wrote was true.

He now seems to be angling for a job with Cameron. Ach-y-fi!

[Paul Flynn]

If I understand Buster right, he is ignorant of my record when i voted and spoke AGAINST the Iraq war in 2003 and I spoke in 2006 AGAINST the deployment of British troops in Helmand. Then 2 had died in combat. Now it's 334. this is being right before the event. not hindsight but foresight.

[HuwOS]

"You don't understand how incentives matter, how people respond to them. You think that passing a law is the end of things. Well the real world is complex, my friend, and if you can't understand that simple fact then you really have no place lecturing those of us who do."

Kaytie does always either start or end by accusing the people she is arguing with of her own greatest failings.

" but you don't even concede that individuals are important, and that the people as an amorphous blog is what is important."

No, your view is that anyone on the left does not view individuals as important, it is the mad fantasies within your head you are attacking, not any part of reality.
Highlighted then by you insisting that the RPI is what it is not intended to be and further claiming, inaccurately that the vast amorphous blob of people were made richer by labour.

"You were the daft one who thought that wages outpaced inflation by 1.4% and didn't think much of this."

No, what I clearly said was that wages did increase above RPI by being generous up to 1.4%. Having clearly stated that RPI is not an accurate reflection of how inflation actually affects the majority of individuals, the implication of my suggesting that 1.4% was not much was in the context that actual inflation or the real cost of living increases for the majority of people were considerably higher, meaning they did in fact lose out in real terms.

And of course, you are still by insisting that RPI is accurate arguing that New Labours economic policies which you have spent god knows how many years decrying as stalinist and socialist (against all evidence) made everyone richer.

So is now the time you turn around and say YES, new labours economic policies were good.
No, you won't because you have to pretend that their economic polices were left wing, and because of this fiction you have to oppose those policies which you also claim made people richer.

Such an impossible contradiction.

[Kay Tie]

"that New Labours economic policies which you have spent god knows how many years decrying as stalinist and socialist (against all evidence) made everyone richer."

No, people became richer despite Labour's policies. Tax went up enormously.

My biggest complaint is not with Labour's economic policies (they could have been much worse) but with the insidious authoritarian social engineering. Although i do note you don't attempt to defend those much.

[HuwOS]

Actually what you noticed, if you noticed anything was that I opposed their seriously obnoxious policies, mostly brought in on the pretence of them somehow protecting people from terrorism.
Real problems, like extended detention without trial, secret accusations etc and all their requirements that cause real invasions of privacy.

Whereas you Kaytie show no discernment and while your rage will occasionally hit a target that a rational person would oppose
it is just as likely to cause you to decry an advice pamphlet from the FSA, drawn up in consultation with the Federation of Fish Friers as
"You and other socialists believe that a few people should tell me that I must eat chips of a certain minimum size"

[HuwOS]

As far as social engineering goes, your most recent junk has been about university places.

Now I do actually oppose New Labour's and most of the western world's fixation with having ever increasing percentages of the population attending universities.

But your objection seems centred around making it possible for people who have been seriously socially disadvantaged to go.

To you this is apparently depriving nice middle class children of places.
But Labours policies increased the overall number of places considerably, the number that actually go to anyone socially disadvantaged are minute and a great many people who would have gone to university from poor backgrounds in the 70's and even 80's often cannot go due to the charges and top up fees brought in by the last two sets of tories, the actual ones and the new labour wannabe tories.

All, what you call "their social engineering" has ensured is that 57 per cent of school leavers from the wealthiest areas go on to university compared with 19 per cent from the poorest.

Gosh, 19% of the "scum of the earth", which is how we must presume KayTie sees them are going to university, what horror, thats nearly 1 in 5.

I guess even if they do manage to complete a course and get a degree you realise that they'll just go on to expect a job in the civil service, where people get paid for doing nothing and still be sucking you dry eh KayTie.

[Kay Tie]

"Gosh, 19% of the "scum of the earth", which is how we must presume KayTie sees them are going to university, what horror, thats nearly 1 in 5."

No, I see it as 30% of the poorest people who have such a bad Labour-provided education, such a bad start in life because of bad parents, that they've had their life chances ruined way before university became a possibility.

I want to see the maximum life chances given to people, regardless of their incomes or backgrounds. It's you who want to hack down the achievers to make non-achievers feel more equal.

And I, like you, don't agree with this mass university education that's going on. We are creating a generation of debt-ridden people who have spent good money on useless degrees. We saw Labour desperately inflating the educational requirements of public sector jobs (e.g. nurses requiring a degree) to justify this farce.

When you take a step back from it, you realise how bigoted it is: the notion that there is no worthy job in life other than one that requires a degree. But I'd not be the first to notice the hypocrisy of Labour, would I?

[HuwOS]

Nope, as I constantly point out, the right wing are hypocrites one and all whether they are calling themselves tories or hijacking the name labour.

[Kay Tie]

" the right wing are hypocrites one and all"

If we take it as axiomatic that I'm a baby-eating right-winger, then it is a logical contradiction that I advocate libertarian individualist policies that (for example) give educational opportunities for all, tailored by the individual themselves to their aptitude, aspirations and goals. This is not hypocrisy: I advocate what I believe and what I practice.

[HuwOS]

Nothing contradictory between the hypocrisy of the right and your own stance.

Labelling self interest in all kinds of noble language doesn't change it from being blatant and incredibly short sighted, self interest.

Where something is wrong and doesn't benefit you, you will at times attack it, where it is wrong but benefits you, at least in the short term view that seems to be all people on the right can think in, you will support it.

With you any errors made by the left are proof that the left is not only foolish and wrong, but pure evil, although anywhere the right causes havoc, misery and destruction, in those cases that you will even accept that they were right wing policies.
They are not even an error to them, with the right it's not a bug, it's a feature and if people complain and fuss, you'd just tell them they're not adapting to those features.

Where we are now, is a result of the last 30 years of right wing policies and where we are now is facing a world less fit for us and our children.
A world where the parents of today will be poorer in their old age than their parents and where the children of today will be poorer as adults and when they have children?
Well, pity the poor sods.

When most of the western world had a tough 1970's, Britain's hard won leftism, still left it with valuable assets.
The right sold them off at a discount.
Now we're back again to hard times, what has the right built up?
The only thing the right can build up, their own fortunes and what have they left behind them, nothing but salted fields.

[Kay Tie]

"Labelling self interest in all kinds of noble language doesn't change it from being blatant and incredibly short sighted, self interest."

Apart from the fact that self-interest rarely leads to poor outcomes. Unless the self-interest is that of a socialist leader who has power over others. Just look at what happens when trade union leads get unchecked power: snouts in the trough.

"Where we are now, is a result of the last 30 years of right wing policies and where we are now is facing a world less fit for us and our children. "

How? I'm much better off than when I was a small kid. We're all much richer, having wealth that could be only dreamed of. Most of this is through innovation that comes from the eternal struggle of the free market - very little comes from the diktats of central government.

"When most of the western world had a tough 1970's, Britain's hard won leftism, still left it with valuable assets."

You think British Leyland was a valuable asset? I can only drop my jaw in astonishment. These "valuable assets" are the lumpen remains of the valuable assets confiscated by the socialist "commanding heights" state of the 1950s and 1960s.

The trouble with you, my friend, is that you have a poor memory and can't remember what it was like Before Socialism. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as the bitter old Trots masquerading as teachers told you.

[HuwOS]

"The trouble with you, my friend, is that you have a poor memory and can't remember what it was like Before Socialism. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as the bitter old Trots masquerading as teachers told you."

I imagine that I would have to be very old indeed to remember what it was like before socialism, the beginnings of which were I believe in the late 18th century.

Maybe you meant the beginning of the unions in the mid 19th century or perhaps you are thinking of later again, perhaps the time of the Fabians starting in the late 19th. century, the foundation of the Labour party in 1900, was it?

Or could it be that you think socialism really only began at the end of the second world war when millions of people who had fought along with the millions of people who had suffered and struggled to keep everything going while death and destruction sought them out decided that they hadn't gone through all that to have things go back to the way they were.

Honestly whichever date you had in mind, you can rest assured that your comment has provoked gales of laughter in everyone that I have pointed it out to.

What parts did you think were not so bad?
The workhouses and the debtors prisons, I suppose given recent statements from you, are okay?
The vitamin deficiencies that ravaged the poor and began to concern the establishment when the first world war rolled around and they found that large numbers of their cannon fodder was barely capable of picking up and holding a rifle.

Perhaps it was the squalor that market forces created and maintained.
Was it the lack of education that was fine by you, or the privileges of the few.

Was it the fear of calling out a doctor, described so well by Paul in his biography.
Exactly what was it, that you think was so great before socialism and socialist along with other less specific leftist thinking, started to change the balance of power.

Without knowing what arbitrary date is buzzing about in your head how can anyone know which set of arrant nonsense to put you straight on.

[Kay Tie]

Before socialists took power and started plundering, of course. 1945.

[HuwOS]

So, what is it you think was better.
The second world war?
or the period just before the second world war?

If you pick the second world war itself, then there is no point in discussion and you are definitively in need of psychiatric help.

Not that you fare much better for the interwar period, which was, as everyone else knows, characterised by depression, massive levels of poverty and as a time when unemployment peaked at 20%.

Well, at least we now know what you consider to be the golden era, when things were done properly before those nasty socialists destroyed the country.

[Kay Tie]

"Well, at least we now know what you consider to be the golden era, when things were done properly before those nasty socialists destroyed the country."

Mankind progresses. Things get better. They get better faster when socialists aren't predating on the population.

Post war socialism accelerated our decline. It was only in 1979 that someone attempted to arrest the nation's rot.

[DG]

'... you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'

Lord Vetinari (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

[HuwOS]

I see, things got better under the "socialists" but they would have gotten even more betterer if all the policies that had failed so miserably to benefit the vast majority up to 1939, had only been tried again.

You and your right wing crowd are the predators KayTie, your constant lying and dissembling prove that you belong with them.

What you will find however, should they get their way to the extent that they want their way,
that they,
will not consider that you belong with them and will consign you to the tenements, absolute poverty and hunger that would have been your lot, but for the socialists after the war.

[Kay Tie]

"if all the policies that had failed so miserably to benefit the vast majority up to 1939"

How had they failed? People in 1939 were vastly richer than they were in 1914.

You just don't accept that we are getting wealthier. People in 1700 were richer than 1600. And they were richer still in 1800. And even richer in 1900. That's the VAST MAJORITY of people.

Your trouble is that your definition of "richer" is the narrow socialist one: equality. If person A gets richer faster than person B, then you say person B is poorer. And when there are lots of people B, you say the "poor are getting poorer". Even though all those Bs are getting cars, TVs, indoor plumbing, computers and food from around the world.

"will not consider that you belong with them and will consign you to the tenements, absolute poverty and hunger that would have been your lot, but for the socialists after the war."

Absolute poverty? You don't even know the meaning of the phrase. No-one in this country lives in absolute poverty. Socialist power came to an end in this country in 1979 (by your definition, anyway). That's 31 years. Over those 31 years the vast majority of the population is vastly richer. In countries where socialists were in power - the Soviet Union being the best example - people got poorer and many were in absolute poverty.

You cannot escape the facts by parroting stale slogans from the glory days of waving red flags. Socialists had their time in power and left the country in economic ruins, having hastened the demise of the nation at every stage. This country had the lion's share of the Marshall Plan aid and simply spent it on grandiose plans to nationalise everything in sight. At the end, the things they bought were ruined and virtually worthless, a rusting car industry being the symbol of the wreckage socialism makes of human endeavour.

[HuwOS]

KayTie, your dedication to presenting yourself as a parody and caricature of the right wing is really paying off.

The fact that the worst effects of the radical right wing experiment of Thatcherism were hidden by the sale of the infrastructure built up by what you call socialists plus the sale of Scottish Oil is something you overlook.

Everyone else can see quite clearly that when business wants state owned infrastructure it is not with the best interests of anyone but the business in question in mind.
And just as with the ludicrous PFI, it is at greater cost to the taxpayer than the state simply doing things itself.

You according to yourself, grew up on a crappy council estate, went to school and got educated, who knows maybe you went to university too.
During that time if you got sick, you could have the attentions of doctors and nurses without your family having to panic about where they were going to get the money from to pay for the ministrations of the health professionals and without the health professionals having to worry about whether they should accept the money they got paid or whether that would mean that you and the rest of your family went hungry.
That would all have been very different but for those horrible people you call socialists.
Of course it all depends on where in the country you came from.
The 20% unemployment was the average, if you were in wales, the average there was 36%, but of course in lots of places all over britain unemployment was up to 75%.
Places like Jarrow, have you even heard of their famous march or crusade in 1936.
It is laughable that you pick 1939, the year when production had to be ramped up for war that you perceive as some kind of right wing success.

You really are a pathetic and ludicrous individual with little or no sign of intelligence never mind the education you claim to have.

[Kay Tie]

"You according to yourself, grew up on a crappy council estate"

No I didn't.

I went to a rare thing for the time, and even more so now: a good comprehensive school. I had working class parents. Of course, you can't conceive of a working class person not living at the behest of the state. It did happen from time to time, even under very old Labour.

All the ideas you hold so true have been tried and failed, leading to long term national decline. You just want to take us back to the past, spending more, taxing more, regulating more, privatising more.

Why don't you take your ideas that so many of your countrymen support and become independent? It would be an excellent example to remind the English of the folly of socialism.

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''... you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'

Lord Vetinari (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)'

There are errors and virtues on each extreme. Turns on both sides which are seemingly straight paths can be mistaken for the right way. Checks of conscience are better able to guide us.

[Nike Shox Navina]

Let my sincere blessings like flowers, blooming in this warm forever, with a sincere heart ornament gives joy and happiness, I deeply tianya-haijiao blessing you - my friend, wish you good luck and happiness!