Musashino Musings

So, after 10 years of broken promises and bullshit, Blair has finally named the day. It will come as no surprise to any regular reader of this blog when I say "good riddance". But, overjoyed as I am to finally see the back of such a despicable sleazeball, I am also depressed by the knowledge that by the time the big day comes around, the PR clean-up campaign will have ensured that Blair's sins are expunged and he will leave as he arrived - that fluffy, squeeky clean, earnest individual we all know and love. Just like the criminals featured nightly on the numerous police docu-soaps, you just know that despite the overwhelming weight of evidence to the contrary, he'll end up sailing away from the scene of the crime without a stain on his character. The timing of the departure announcement itself was transparent, bordering on the pathetic: It's obvious Blair has been waiting for a good news story on which to float his announcement, and the devolution of power in Northern Ireland provided just such a convenient vehicle.

The really scary thing is just how effective his methods are: It's noticable how the post-Blair analysis vox pops all seem to be echoing the same sentiments - "We know he's made some mistakes, but he's really not that bad". Blair himself, in characteristic fake candidity, admits that maybe expectations of his premiership were too high in 1997. Is he saying that we, the people, laid this unfair burden on his shoulders? A burden that despite valiant efforts, he was unable to bear? Poor Tony. The reality is that expectations were high because that's what he promised. Remember "Things Can Only Get Better"? Remember "Education, Education,Education"? Remember "Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime"? All his words, and his promises: All promises he has singularly failed to keep. And now, after 10 years of excuses, the best he can come up with is "I did my best but you asked too much."

I will never forgive or forget the damage that this individual and his incompetant cronies have done to our country, to our standing in the international community and to the countless thousands of innocents around the world whose lives have been destroyed his blundering mismanagement. To all those people tempted to reach for the rose-coloured spectacles, I say you owe it to your fellow citizens and to all decent people in the world to not let Blair slime his way out of his personal responsibility for 65,000 dead civilians in Iraq, a third-world health service, a country crippled by petty beauracracy, a country rotten with anti-social behaviour, with corruption; devoid of civic morality. An education system designed to not to educate, but to entrap in debt; and a society where the favoured rich get filthy rich on the backs of hard-pressed tax payers.

There's much debate about what will be remembered as Blair's legacy: Luckily, we will all be able to be reminded of Tony everytime we want to find an NHS dentist, or we need medical treatment, or feel intimidated by gangs of drunken yobs, or get fined for doing 41 mph in a 40 mph limit. Things can only get better? How wrong we were.