Oh be-Jesus! As if I wasn’t struggling enough! As if I hadn’t had enough to challenge me recently!
First, I wake up to the news that Woodhead has been knighted and seconds later, for some light relief, I turn to the newspaper to find Tony Blair staring out at me with his oh-so-sincere face.
ALERT: For those of a gentle disposition who do not want to lose sight of their natural pacifist view of life please enter the link with caution.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/12/tonyblair
So, having read this, should I just switch off and do some meditation? Quite frankly, at present I wish to keep my mind alert and alive. I am meditating constantly at the moment and I think I need to divert the full force of my passion to my writing at present. So I have decided to respond to Mr. Blair by adding my own comments to his “This Much I Know” interview.
There is certainly plenty in this piece that requires comment and needs highlighting.
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Sometimes it feels strange not to be prime minister – if you are at an occasion like the Obama speech, for example. But then you also have to remember what it was really like: the enormous responsibility, the huge daily pressure. I had 10 years of that, and I am not at all into looking backwards.
For far too many years, every time I heard the phrase “The Prime Minister” on the radio or television, I had a vision of a woman in blue, clutching her handbag and opening her mouth with that patronising tone of hers. It took me years to come to terms with the fact that she was no longer PM. Years into Tony’s premiership, I still thought of the main minister as Thatcher and even now, after 20 years of her not being the leader, the image still haunts me whenever I hear the phrase.
A little bit of honesty from Tony then? “It’s strange not to be Prime Minister.......... I am not at all into looking back” I bet he isn’t. I wouldn’t want to look back if I was in his position but it is clear from his contextual statement that he felt some discomfort that he could not stand next to the greatness of a man like Obama as leader, such is his delusional state of grandeur.
I've met Michael Sheen, and I watched the Brian Clough film, which I thought was brilliant. But I haven't seen him playing me. I know I'd just be screaming at the TV: "It wasn't like that at all!"
Oh but it was like that Tony, and perhaps the more honest statement would have been that Michael Sheen’s portrayal of you was too accurate, too vivid and you could not really stomach the reality of what was being shown.
I have always been very certain about my ethical values, but I have always tried to have the appropriate level of self-doubt about the solutions they suggest
Thank goodness for that! Heaven knows what might have happened if he had actually followed his ethical values. For if he is, as reported, a devout follower of Catholicism, then we should indeed be incredibly grateful that he did not allow his ethical values to dictate all of the policies that he put in place whilst in power. Here’s another thing Tony. I am not convinced that the positive aspects of your ethical values, if indeed there were any, ever came to legislative fruition during your reign.
I was in Brazil working at the time of the royal wedding. They have their protocols and it didn't trouble me in the least that I wasn't there. I was absolutely fine about it. Really. And that's the honest truth.
I wonder where Tony Bliar got the label of being a liar? “They have their protocols”. In fact I actually thought the royal family not inviting Bliar and Brown to the party of the year was such a mindless and petty thing to do, that actually showed them up for what they really are. If Tony had the guts, he should say so. As the reader may have gathered, I hold no particular admiration for the man but I hold less or as little for the institution of the Royal Family, and their disregard for the Labour Party PMs by not inviting them to the wedding was so pathetic really.
People still ask me if military decisions in Iraq or Afghanistan were based on some kind of divine instruction. It's rubbish. Of course not. Just as I couldn't go into a corner and pray to ask God what the minimum wage should be.
Pity you didn’t go into a corner and pray about the minimum wage. Pity you didn’t go into a corner and pray about education and the real value of learning. Pity you didn’t go into a corner and prevent accountants and civil servants from running our key professional servers in health and education and social care and housing. Pity you didn’t go into a corner and pray about lots of things. And that is even before we get onto the whole Iraq debacle.
Only I didn’t want my PM to go into a corner and pray but I would like to think that my PM spent some time looking at his own moral framework. I would quite like my PM to spend some time each day considering and meditating on his role and what he could do to make a difference to the lives of the masses. I would like a LABOUR PM to have some sort of moral framework that he referred to as he developed societal changes that were supposed to narrow the inequalities gaps!
I was a child of the 70s, not the 60s. It's a very important difference. I came out of university in 1975. Life had got tougher. Idealism wasn't enough; we were far more practically focused.
Ah! Finally a piece of self-reflection that gets to the heart of the matter and tells a thousand stories!
So, so true Tony. The ideas that were formed in the 60s were partially buried by the time that Blair left university. Harold Wilson was in power. There was turmoil and battle in the industries of our nation. Didn’t you learn anything from this, Tony? Apparently you did! The idealism should always be enough in so far that values should drive the practicalities of change. Without idealism you are left with no real purpose, no inspiration, no understanding of what you are hoping to achieve. Without idealism, you can lose your way as was so clearly demonstrated with the stance on Iraq. The pragmatism that dictated your premiership was abundantly clear to those who chose to look, whilst those same people were desperately waiting for some ideology to seep forth. And here is another thing Tony, some of those who were waiting weren’t around in the 60s either. Some of us were born in the 60s and yet we have still managed to maintain a vision and a hope based on idealism of equality, liberty and fraternity – I think I am in the wrong country!
To be faith-literate is crucial in a globalised world, I believe. I read the Bible every day. I read the Qur'an every day. Partly to understand some of the things happening in the world, but mainly just because it is immensely instructive.
And what of the readings of Confucius or the Buddha? Have you considered any of those? How about some Zen writing or some humanist ideas? Do you read these? Do you make time to look at some of the millions of brilliant and thought provoking blogs from real people who are “people literate” and that their “faith” is all about the needs of humanity?
Haven’t the majority of world problems originated from the very faiths that you are reading about on a daily basis? Have they ever come up with a solution to the problems of the world? Is there not a certain amount of futility in doing this daily task? In your first comment, you said that you did not do introspection so why continue to read these anachronistic texts when they give so little insight into our world today. That is not to say there is nothing to learn from either of these texts. Both the Bible and the Koran offer a wealth of spiritual guidance but there is also a mass of scary stuff in there too!
Reports of my wealth are greatly exaggerated.
So how much does the former PM earn? If they are grossly exaggerated why do you feel that you cannot be honest about how much you are earning doing the circuits of sycophants? I wish I could have a mere fraction of your earnings to get me started on my new life.
In actual fact, I don’t give a toss about what you are earning. It pales into insignificance compared with the other things that I take issue with.
The experiment that said "the bigger the state, the more just the society" clearly failed. There is no point pretending that it didn't.
Then bloody well say so. Loud and Clear. YOU FUCKED UP!
Enable real progressives in the party to move on and accept that many of your policies did not do anything to address the imbalance in our society. By not clearly stating that the domination of central government, with all its quangoes and tests and targets and quantifiable evidence, did nothing to narrow the appalling gaps in our society, you are disabling those who sadly served in your government from getting on and rethinking the whole role and responsibility of reasonable governance. You need to say something really big and I would nearly respect you for doing so. You need to say, “I was wrong”. And then you need to shut up and let some people get on with looking at what socialism in the 21st century should actually look like.
I would never have used Peter Mandelson's phrase about being relaxed about people getting filthy rich. But should Lionel Messi – or an investment banker – earn more in a week than a nurse earns in five years? You can debate that, but I don't know the answer. One thing I am sure of is that the way to make poor people better off is not just to target a wealthier group of people and take their money off them.
Bloody hell! Bloody hell? “but I don’t know the answer”!!!!!!!!!!!
I do!
I’m not one for overuse of exclamation marks. It actually really annoys me to see it in writing but for goodness sake.
So you don’t know the answer then Tony. You cannot ascertain whether a care worker who spends hours and hours and hours comforting, supporting, enabling, caring for the disaffected, the ill, the homeless, the disadvantaged in our world deserve so much less than a man who plays football for 90 or 180 minutes a week, spends time on the golf course and has his dick tickled by whoever takes his fancy (not that this is a problem, of course).
You don’t know?
Clearly, the whole economics of earnings is not simple. The horse has bolted and it is going to be difficult to turn these injustices around. However, we cannot simply sit there and say that we “don’t know” whether this is right or wrong. Morally, it is clearly wrong that a man who plays with other peoples’ money rather than caring for their wellbeing should not be earning as much money as the more altruistic in society. The fact that this situation exists is wrong in every single way.
Poor people may not get rich on the assets of the few but it might be a good starting point!
The most fascinating thing to me now is learning about the places where I work. In the Israeli-Palestinian situation, for example, my understanding is significant layers deeper and better than it was when I was prime minister.
Oh dear, my brain is aching. Perhaps I ought to stop doing this but I feel a passion to speak. I can’t speak to the man himself so this is what I have to do.
Me, me, me.
So here is a decent admission. As Prime Minister I had no real idea of how the world was working. So here is a solution. How about actually using information from people who know what they are talking about? How about talking to teachers about education rather than rely on so-called experts like Woodhead? How about following up with some of the children that were seen in a recent Despatches document about what life in Palestine is really like rather than relying on the Mossad influenced specialists of the region? How about listening to the people? Oh that’s right – you answer that one next.
People always used to say to me: listen to the people. That was a fine idea, of course, but unfortunately the people were all saying different things.
Of course people say different things. Guess what Tony, sometimes you get some people, good people, honest people who say different things than what they said yesterday, that forget what they have said and believe that they had never said the things that you know they said. Get real! This is the way of the world.
Our lives, ourselves are such complex things that of course there are differences of opinions. Sometimes these differences can be overcome, sometimes there is no possibility of compromise but we still have to live and we still have to listen, even if there is conflicting opinions, even if it doesn’t marry with what you want to hear.
Tony, people are always going to say different things. It is up to you, and all of us, as intelligent human beings to make informed, empathetic, valued decisions based on all that has been heard. Surely to goodness you know that!
But I suppose when it comes down to it, it is the survival of the fittest. Those with the biggest gobs, with the largest bank accounts, with the ability to bully and indoctrinate win a battle which should never be a war in the first place.
The social media, I know, is having an enormous impact in places like the West Bank and Gaza. But I've not tweeted. Wouldn't know how.
Thank goodness for that. I’m not sure I could cope with TonyTweet.
I was a very different prime minister at the beginning to the one I was at the end. The irony is I was probably best at the job at the end, but least popular in doing it.
More delusion Tony! Don’t even get me started on this one.
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So there we have it – the world according to the Archbishop of St. Albion on this day of Pentecost. I think I will return to the Archbishop of Canterbury for some interesting reading today.
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