Harry Hutton speaks for many, I am sure, when he says this:
It’s been a pretty good week for all you non-smoking, non-terrorism glorifying, pro-ID card tossers. All going your way at the moment, isn’t it? Must be feeling pretty pleased with yourselves.
For now you triumph. But you’ll get your comeuppance, you swine. That slippery villain is going to ruin us all. You think he doesn’t have plans for you too? You think that just because you don’t smoke or glorify terrorists you’re off the hook? Just wait. You’re gonna learn the hard way.
Personally I have never really bought in to this Blair-is-evil meme. Perhaps if I met him face to face I would feel differently, but to me he merely seems desperately eager to do good, but somewhat dim about how to actually contrive goodness, like a trendy vicar. Good at winning elections though, and making speeches, and doing Hugh Grant impersonations. The man knows his rhetoric, and if, at any time during the twenty first century, Blair were to step down from being the Prime Minister, I think his rhetoric will be sorely missed by the next government, assuming it’s Labour. Slippery, yes. But a villain? Not really. I don’t think so, anyway.
But whatever his motives may be, and however little he may have any deliberate plans to screw the non-smoking, non-terrorism glorifying, pro-ID card tendency, Blair, or the processes he has now set in motion, will still do this. But, he meant and he means no harm.
But feel free to disagree.
While you are still allowed to.
I think you’re trying to provoke Mexico’s rival to Popocatapetl.
……….and may the guid Laird protect us from do-gooders….who lie at the absolute outside perimeter of the human race.
……….and in “The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition” it is clearly stated that (Rule 286) a good deed never goes unpunished. The Sooner the better.
Few things are more dangerous and likely to end in evil circumstance than juxtaposition of the desire and the power to ‘do good’.
Satan/Lucifer was a do gooder as well who thought he knew better, and look where that got him…
Depends what you mean by evil?
Was Stalin evil? most would say yes, but if he believed he was taking people to utopia and that the ends justified the means are his actions mitigated?
If Blair believes his opinion is the correct opinion so much so that he will use the machinary of the state to force other people to live according to his rules. Is that not essentially bullying but on a much bigger scale? Is that not kind of evil?
Dave starts doing the Prof.Joad thing in querying what one means by evil. The definitions are myriad & sometimes complex or hidden………but in terms of character I think that evil cannot help but ooze from the person concerned. There were not many bad guys in the last century who were able, successfully, to disguise themselves.
Unfortunately, evil, like beauty, is oft in the eye of the beholder……….which complicates things a tad.
Whether Harry’s right or wrong, he’s still the funniest man in the blogosphere.
The issue is less about the meaning of “evil” than it is about the concept of meaning to do something, which has both an intensional and extensional sense. In the first sense no-one can mean evil (or anything else) unless they would characterise themselves as meaning it; in the other (extensional) sense what they mean is as it were detached from their meaning it, and can therefore be characterised however we want. We don’t actually have to believe that Blair thinks what he is doing is evil to believe that what he is doing is evil or has evil consequences. So it has bugger all to do with what you feel when you meet him. I care little about his inner life but rather more about the consequences of his actions.
Brian Micklethwait: “Good at […] making speeches,”
Brain have you never heard the empty mindless drivel that passes for a Blair speech?
Brian Micklethwait: “The man knows his rhetoric.”
Now I know you are taking the piss.
Perhaps, he knows his target audience? One brazen characteristic of Blair, he is quite happy to make a public speech to one group, and a conflicting speech to another group.
All in all, an odious little demogogue
This thread reminds me of the old Rupert Bear cartoon which used to appear in the Daily Express?? I think.
After sundry adventures which generally involved explosions mayhem and untold disasters Rupert always said ” I meant no harm.”
Blair’s overweening desire to stamp his authority on all he touches is a component of totalitarian evil.
From that ludcrous failure the Dome to ID cards, the smoking ban ,a deep miring in the EU and an intractable war,these all have the stamp of Tony Blair’s determination to have his way.
The man is not concerned with the realities of the outcome,only the imposition of his will,where is that different to some batty Roman Emperor,or third world dictator.
As our mate Johnathan Pearce once said, Tony Blair makes Oliver Cromwell look like Hugh Heffner.
The people above who think Blair is evil although he doesn’t really mean it – it’s just that he thinks he knows better than other people how they ought to live their lives – are wrong. Blair emanates self-congratulatory malice. There’s a vicious destructiveness about this individual. I say he is deeply and intentionally evil because he has managed to cow an entire country of 60m people in the short space of eight years. That takes some determination, a well-thought out road map and single-minded application.
Had Blair had his way, we would have signed up to the EU “constitution” and we’d be trading in euros. He has made a pact with militant (and I would argue that there is no other kind) Islam because it keeps the rest of the population in line. (Why else did he offer his sympathies, on July 7, not to the British but to the “Muslim vast moderate majority”? Why didn’t he put together a task force to solve the Islamic problem instead of appointing Sacranie, Bunglawungla, Yusef Islam [aka Cat Stevens, banned from entering the US] and various other disreputable and destructive odds and sods to act as advisors? Why not appoint a committee of British people to work on a Manhattan Project of solving this aggressive Muslim problem?
His speeches are empty of content and big on flattery. He alters his accent according to which TV couch he’s sitting on. He is a CNDer who sends soldiers off to war at the drop of a hat because it’s his dream to stride the international stage as a great war leader.
Blair is not just evil, but he knows he is evil. The Hugh Grant act and the David Niven act and the Margaret Thatcher act and the Winston Churchill act are all part of the props he keeps in the attic in Downing St. None of it means diddly.
Blair knows what he is. And so do I.
Bliar has no capacity for self-doubt. That is what makes him evil.
He truly believes he knows what is right and if we refuse to succumb to his persuasive powers (limited though they may be), he is ready to force his will upon us ‘for our own good’.
That is a sufficiently good defintion of an evil man for me. It is precisely the type of mental derangement that drove every totalitarian in history. And the world would have been a better place, had every single one of them been strangled at birth. Including Tony Bliar.
GCooper says: It is precisely the type of mental derangement that drove every totalitarian in history. That is the case.
Another of Blair’s long list of failings is his utter lack of interest in this country’s history. For someone educated at Fettes and Oxford, he appears to be dumb as a stump, although he has a certain ferile cunning.
Johnathan – This has baffled me for a long time. He knows absolutely no British history and knows nothing about our constitution. He has no curiosity about what molded us. He must be the first ever British prime minister who has absolutely no interest in his own country.
It is best to judge someone according to their actions, rather than according to their intentions: believed or claimed.
Rhetoric is, sadly, just as useful when applied to bad ends as to good ends. In politics, I believe this is because everyone has better things to do than think: it’s just too hard to decide on what should be done in the long term.
Furthermore, for those who do engage their brains: everything is grey; certainty is rarely available: on background let alone on decisions. One is balancing apples against pears.
However, there is hope.
Anyone who includes in his rhetoric that which is known to be false?! And when he adds to this: “argumentum ad hominem”, “argumentum ad populum”, creates strawman fears that must be protected against, and so on?!
He has obviously failed to find better argument for his cause; thus the balance of the argument is clear.
Such skepticism comes easily to most scientists, philosophers and historians who have not become politicians (for whom such thoughts are inconvenient), and many others of medium intellectual calibre or better. All that remains to be done is to persuade the rest of the people (inconveniently in the majority) of the desirability of this train of thought.
Best regards
All tyrants practice their speciality in the name of the public good. This is why good intentions are no defense.
Blair will be remembered as someone who was good at winning elections while taking the country on a broad and pleasant path to disaster.
His combination of an (effectively) open borders policy, a tax and benefit system that discriminates against married single-earner couples (aka ‘the traditional family’), and continued easily-available abortion has taken England towards the demographic tipping point.
Less than half the children born in London are now native Brits and the same is happening in half a dozen major cities. I think this is a recipe for instability and probably race-based politics – neither of which are desirable but both of which are probably now inevitable.
He had the opportunity to reform welfare in his first term and blew it. Few Prime Ministers have come to power with such broad based goodwill. All gone and wasted.
Stanley Baldwin is a good parallel – he told the Brits what they wanted to hear and was reelected for it.
Back in 1997, I was against the idea of Prime Minister Blair—seemed like anathema to me. A man who offered trendy, rather than accurate, replies; a party that would act on changing the relationship between the Bank of England and the government without little debate after it came to office. Nine years on, my summary is not unlike yours: the man is not evil, but a better adjective for him might be shrewd.
intentoins shmintentions! hes a eval fuck an i recamend u hangn im. but for gods sake tar an fethar im frist like civalizd poeople. its no good acteng liek savegs.