[Cyclist]

If people *will* keep feeding the troll, it's going to keep coming back to troll some more.

Just stick the fucker on ignore and let it dribble away to itself . Works for me.

[Winegums]

why r u such a nerd lol

[Malcolm Armsteen]

If people *will* keep feeding the troll, it's going to keep coming back to troll some more.

Just stick the fucker on ignore and let it dribble away to itself . Works for me.

Tu as raison!

I'll do the same.

[Winegums]

Fair. I put Malcy on block for ages after an endless stream of shitposting, and it improved my life. I'd put LK on mute too but you can't mute mods.

[Biggus Robbus]

I never thought I would say this.

Tony Blair is the guy to solve your problems right now.

[Winegums]

Please explain. I assume you're not from the UK, and therefore may not be aware that everything Blair touches immediately becomes toxic.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

What a patronising post.

[visage]

Its the same reason why you could say the same about John Major - they're both guys who have been at the very top of politics, and have huge amount of experience negotiating with bastards.

Most importantly, they have the skill of being able to point out to said bastards that they should be careful what they wish for.

Unfortunately that requires intelligence, empathy and intellectual curiosity. I dont think either May or Corbyn possess any of these things.

[crabcakes_windermere]

Please explain. I assume you're not from the UK, and therefore may not be aware that everything Blair touches immediately becomes toxic.

Top 50 Labour achievements while they were in office:

1. Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 60s.
2. Low mortgage rates.
3. Introduced the National Minimum Wage and raised it to £5.52.
4. Over 14,000 more police in England and Wales.
5. Cut overall crime by 32 per cent.
6. Record levels of literacy and numeracy in schools.
7. Young people achieving some of the best ever results at 14, 16, and 18.
8. Funding for every pupil in England doubled.
9. Employment at its highest level ever.
10. Written off up to 100 per cent of debt owed by poorest countries.
11. 85,000 more nurses.
12. 32,000 more doctors.
13. Brought back matrons to hospital wards.
14. Devolved power to the Scottish Parliament.
15. Devolved power to the Welsh Assembly.
16. Dads now get paternity leave of 2 weeks for the first time.
17. NHS Direct offering free convenient patient advice.
18. Gift aid worth £828 million to charities.
19. Restored city-wide government to London.
20. Record number of students in higher education.
21. Child benefit up 26 per cent since 1997.
22. Delivered 2,200 Sure Start Children’s Centres.
23. Introduced the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
24. £200 winter fuel payment to pensioners & up to £300 for over-80s.
25. On course to exceed Kyoto target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
26. Restored devolved government to Northern Ireland.
27. Over 36,000 more teachers in England and 274,000 more support staff and teaching assistants.
28. All full time workers now have a right to 24 days paid holiday.
29. A million pensioners lifted out of poverty.
30. 600,000 children lifted out of relative poverty.
31. Introduced child tax credit giving more money to parents.
32. Scrapped Section 28 and introduced Civil Partnerships.
33. Brought over 1 million social homes up to standard.
34. Inpatient waiting lists down by over half a million since 1997.
35. Banned fox hunting.
36. Cleanest rivers, beaches, drinking water and air since before the industrial revolution.
37. Free TV licences for over-75s.
38. Banned fur farming and the testing of cosmetics on animals.
39. Free breast cancer screening for all women aged between 50-70.
40. Free off peak local bus travel for over-60s.
41. New Deal – helped over 1.8 million people into work.
42. Over 3 million child trust funds have been started.
43. Free eye test for over 60s.
44. More than doubled the number of apprenticeships.
45. Free entry to national museums and galleries.
46. Overseas aid budget more than doubled.
47. Heart disease deaths down by 150,000 and cancer deaths down by 50,000.
48. Cut long-term youth unemployment by 75 per cent.
49. Free nursery places for every three and four-year-olds.
50. Free fruit for most four to six-year-olds at school.

Was he far too keen to go into a highly questionable war? Absolutely. Do I like Tony Blair? Nope. Doesn't erase the fact his government did a shitload of good stuff. Stuff the tories would never do.

All the time this was going on, St. Jeremy of Islington was complaining and doing fuckall of note without stepping up to take responsibility for anything. And now, all Labour essentially do is complain and do fuckall of note without stepping up to take responsibility for anything. So if you're looking for people who make everything toxic in their own image, I've got another guy you may want to take a look at.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I think the cult hates Blair because he was mostly a successful PM. Makes a contrast...

[davidjay]

The Tories hate Blair because he turned Labour from a protest movement in danger of being overtaken by history into a natural party of government. The cult hate him for the same reason.

[Andy McDandy]

I think you're right. There's a certain purity to standing on the corners of the internet, damning everyone else and claiming that in an ideal world...

[cycloon]

Ideological conformity is the easiest thing in the world. You are excused everything by virtue of it, and everyone else is damned because of their heresy. There's a reason it's so prevelent.

Again, none of this precludes Blair being a lying shit, and Corbyn sometimes being bang on about things. The issue comes when what is read is ideological, not... everything else.

[Biggus Robbus]

Please explain. I assume you're not from the UK, and therefore may not be aware that everything Blair touches immediately becomes toxic.

Nah I only lived in the UK for the majority of my life.

Blair screwed up with the Iraq war. If the Tories were in power they would have joined in the Iraq war too. Blair was merely trying to scrub off the association of Michael Foot's *cough* Corbyn *cough* association with CND and the like.

The fact that both Blair and Bush put their trust in the world's most useless cunt (Donald Rumsfeld) is, well, going to stain their records but it does not mean they have nothing useful to say.

Hey Bush even sacked Rumsfeld. I give him credit for that. More importantly he put Petraeus in charge of The Surge, which, whether you like it or not, reduced violence in Iraq.

However that's dealing with facts.

[Winegums]

Please explain. I assume you're not from the UK, and therefore may not be aware that everything Blair touches immediately becomes toxic.

Top 50 Labour achievements while they were in office:

Nobody said Labour did nothing good in office. But so much of what they did fell short of what they could've done, and plenty of what he did was actively bad. Even the Tories legalised gay marriage but I wouldn't call Cameron a good PM. He had a giant majority, and Blair still ruled from the center rather than the left. He didn't undo all the damage Thatcher did, much of it he perpetuated.

I'm not going to go through that list because life's too short. So many points on that list need a "However..." at the end it's unreal. e.g. He created a minimum wage (good), but set it pretty low (bad).

He did bad things, and most the good things he did were 1/2 way measures. Where was the restoration of trade union powers destroyed under Thatcher? Why didn't he reform the media? I, and Jeremy Corbyn too I'm sure, were glad to see Labour in power. However that doesn't mean I'm willing to settle for Blairite shit when something better is on offer. Maybe that was what we had to settle for in the 90s, maybe socialism wasn't paletable to the public. But now, centrism is utterly dead in the water and people are clamouring for significant change. Not tax credits, not PFI schemes, not borrowing money against your pension so you can get a mortgage, they want something better than that.

All the time this was going on, St. Jeremy of Islington was complaining and doing fuckall of note without stepping up to take responsibility for anything. And now, all Labour essentially do is complain and do fuckall of note without stepping up to take responsibility for anything. So if you're looking for people who make everything toxic in their own image, I've got another guy you may want to take a look at.

The fuck are you even talking about here. He was being a constituency MP - you realise only one person can be party leader right? Did Tony ask him to join the cabinet at any point? What was he meant to have done to "take responsibility"?