wrote in news:db41e5eb-5f5c-4923-b399-4cd201636f44
@z5g2000vba.googlegroups.com:

Please explain how?

I'll accept "Because I'm a Tory, and hence am incapable of rational
thought", if you can't come up with anything else.

Given that second sentence, it's not worth the hassle.

(BTW, I'm not a Tory.)

"James Farrar" wrote in message
. 4...

(BTW, I'm not a Tory.)

Well, you should be!

Ian

On Jun 3, 7:38*am, James Farrar wrote:
Please explain how?

I'll accept "Because I'm a Tory, and hence am incapable of rational
thought", if you can't come up with anything else.

Given that second sentence, it's not worth the hassle.

(BTW, I'm not a Tory.)

Meh. "Please explain how Cameron is less bad than Tony Blair". I'd
probably accept at this point that Brown is a worse party leader than
Major.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

On Wed, 3 Jun 2009 04:14:46 -0700 (PDT)
wrote:
Meh. "Please explain how Cameron is less bad than Tony Blair". I'd
probably accept at this point that Brown is a worse party leader than
Major.

I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't just for his own ego that Blair kept
Brown out of No10 for so long. Perhaps he realised just how truly bad he'd
be for the labour party as leader.

B2003

In uk.transport.london message , Wed, 3 Jun 2009
11:32:27, posted:
On Wed, 3 Jun 2009 04:14:46 -0700 (PDT)
wrote:
Meh. "Please explain how Cameron is less bad than Tony Blair". I'd
probably accept at this point that Brown is a worse party leader than
Major.

I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't just for his own ego that Blair kept
Brown out of No10 for so long. Perhaps he realised just how truly bad he'd
be for the labour party as leader.

Then he should have "appointed" John Prescott, who at least would have
been better able to handle dissidents.

Blair's position as the "appointer of the worst successor as political
head-of-country" can surely be challenged at most by the family Kim.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.

Dr J R Stockton wrote:
In uk.transport.london message , Wed, 3 Jun 2009
11:32:27, posted:

I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't just for his own ego that Blair kept
Brown out of No10 for so long. Perhaps he realised just how truly bad he'd
be for the labour party as leader.

Then he should have "appointed" John Prescott, who at least would have
been better able to handle dissidents.


ITYM "anointed".

Whatever, John Prescott would have been a far worse choice than Brown.
Brown is an intellectual who cannot effectively communicate; Prescott is
severely intellectually challenged, and can effectively communicate only
with his fists.


Blair's position as the "appointer of the worst successor as political
head-of-country" can surely be challenged at most by the family Kim.


True. ;-)

In uk.transport.london message
om, Thu, 4 Jun 2009 20:01:22, Tony Polson
posted:
Dr J R Stockton wrote:
In uk.transport.london message , Wed, 3 Jun 2009
11:32:27, posted:

I'm starting to wonder if it wasn't just for his own ego that Blair kept
Brown out of No10 for so long. Perhaps he realised just how truly bad he'd
be for the labour party as leader.

Then he should have "appointed" John Prescott, who at least would have
been better able to handle dissidents.


ITYM "anointed".

No. But note the difference between 'appointed' and '"appointed"'.


Whatever, John Prescott would have been a far worse choice than Brown.
Brown is an intellectual who cannot effectively communicate; Prescott is
severely intellectually challenged, and can effectively communicate only
with his fists.

Any effective communication is better than none, except perhaps from the
point of view of the immediate recipient. Prescott is substantially
what he appears to be; but Brown deceptively appeared competent.

Blair had Brown as his Chancellor for a decade, and apparently as his
friend for a considerable while before that. Blair should have known
what he was doing. He has, in fact, managed to make his regime look
comparatively good by contrast with Brown's.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05 IE 7.
Web URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
I find MiniTrue useful for viewing/searching/altering files, at a DOS prompt;
free, DOS/Win/UNIX, URL:http://www.idiotsdelight.net/minitrue/ unsupported.

wrote in news:e5d7d550-78f8-472b-b17b-9d79d70e64b4
@d31g2000vbm.googlegroups.com:

On Jun 3, 7:38*am, James Farrar wrote:
Please explain how?

I'll accept "Because I'm a Tory, and hence am incapable of rational
thought", if you can't come up with anything else.

Given that second sentence, it's not worth the hassle.

(BTW, I'm not a Tory.)

Meh. "Please explain how Cameron is less bad than Tony Blair".

He seems to have some idea of what he wants to do with power. Blair never
did.

Of course it's possible that appearances are deceptive; only the event
will prove it.

I'd probably accept at this point that Brown is a worse party leader
than Major.

It would be difficult to argue the other way, quite frankly.

On Jun 4, 7:36*am, James Farrar wrote:

wrote:

On Jun 3, 7:38*am, James Farrar wrote:
Please explain how?

I'll accept "Because I'm a Tory, and hence am incapable of rational
thought", if you can't come up with anything else.

Given that second sentence, it's not worth the hassle.

(BTW, I'm not a Tory.)

Meh. "Please explain how Cameron is less bad than Tony Blair".

He seems to have some idea of what he wants to do with power. Blair never
did.

That's just nonsense - I'm not going to wage some massive defence of
Blair, but to say that he didn't have any idea of what he wanted to do
in power is just plain ignorant.


Of course it's possible that appearances are deceptive; only the event
will prove it.

I'd probably accept at this point that Brown is a worse party leader
than Major.

It would be difficult to argue the other way, quite frankly.

I'm sure someone could come up with an argument, but I'm not going to
waste my effort trying! The Tories problem in the 90's was Europe, and
also that John Major wasn't Margaret Thatcher. The Labour Party's
current problem is Gordon Brown himself. That, and the fact they're
going to lose the next election, the two issues being rather fused
together.

Mizter T wrote:

That's just nonsense - I'm not going to wage some massive defence of
Blair, but to say that he didn't have any idea of what he wanted to do
in power is just plain ignorant.


What Blair wanted to do was to modernise Labour so that, having obtained
power thanks to John Major, it could retain it and gain the full second
term Labour had never previously managed. And he achieved that.

But where James is right is that, once in power, Blair didn't know what
to do with it. He came to power promising that his top three priorities
were "Education, education, education" then presided over the most rapid
decline in educational standards in living memory.

Labour doubled spending on the NHS in real terms only to squander the
money on increasing the salaries of consultants, GPs and nurses and
employing vastly more of them, to the point where there was hardly any
money left for patient care. The doubling of spending (tripling in cash
terms) led to an increase in procedures (the best available index of
output) of only 17%. Now it's true that nurses needed to be paid
significantly more after a decade of declining remuneration, but does
your local GP really deserve to be paid £107,000 on average, or a
consultant £170,000? This was the price Labour paid for getting them to
agree to a modernisation that is far from the significant root and
branch reform of the NHS that was needed.

And then there was the illegal war(s). Blair cynically looked at them
from a party political point of view, and realised that he would be
toast with some of New Labour's new Middle England voters if he opposed
the war(s). So he wrong-footed the Conservatives and joined up with
some of the most repugnant war criminals that have enjoyed power since
1945 - Cheney, Rumsfeld and their idiot stooge, Bush, all for domestic
party political gain.