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Blair's black day of scandal
The Australian ^ | 28 April 2006

Posted on 04/27/2006 11:26:34 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher

SCANDAL and crisis engulfed British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Government yesterday as three of his most senior ministers came under growing personal and political pressure on Labour's blackest day since it came to power in 1997. Newspapers gave a damning verdict on the Government's woes, which climaxed in a sex scandal starring the Deputy Prime Minister, a crime blunder by the interior minister and a snub by nurses for the Health Secretary.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke was fighting to stay in his job after admitting that 288 foreign prisoners were released without consideration of deportation even after he learnt of problems in the system last July.

The Home Office had revealed 24 hours earlier that it had failed to consider whether more than 1000 foreign convicts should be deported at the end of their sentences. Instead, the criminals, who included murderers, rapists and child molesters, were set free in Britain.

Labour MPs, generally supportive of Mr Clarke, were warning that his position might become impossible if any of the foreign prisoners were later found to have committed serious crimes.

The scandal was one of a trio of disasters to hit the Government, with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, 67, trying to save his marriage, and facing serious questions about his judgment, after owning up to a two-year affair with Tracey Temple - a divorcee 24 years his junior who was in charge of organising his diary.

And Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt faced the humiliation of being jeered and slow-handclapped by nurses as she tried to calm their fears about National Health Service deficits and redundancies.

The heckling eventually forced Ms Hewitt, who has been repeatedly mocked this week for claiming the National Health Service has enjoyed its "best year ever", to cut short her speech.

All of it left the Prime Minister grim and angry, and Labour MPs in despair, fearing a battering in local elections next week.

Government aides were in a state of trepidation, wondering where the next misfortune would come from. Inevitable comparisons were being drawn with the dying days of John Major's administration when sleaze and incompetence combined in a toxic and ultimately fatal mix for the Tories. And the public humiliation for three close Blair allies inspired columns of criticism in the British press.

"It is possible that Tony Blair has had worse days as Prime Minister. It is not immediately evident when they might have been," said The Times in an editorial.

"It has left the collective impression of a government that is out of touch in the first case, astonishingly incompetent in the second and morally unhinged in the third."

The Daily Mail, a frequent critic of the Government, devoted at least 14 pages to the furore.

Next week's local council elections are being closely watched as a test of Mr Blair's popularity a year after he led Labour to a third straight term in power.

If the party suffers big losses next Thursday, it could hasten the day that Mr Blair decides on his pledge to stand down to make way for Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

Picking up on a comment made by the PM about how to lead a healthier life, The Daily Telegraph noted that "he suggested that people improve their lives by getting off the bus one stop early. Mr Blair could do worse than take his own advice."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: britishlabour; pommygovernment; poms; scandal; sex; tonyblair; uk
BJ Clintton aside, no-one puts on a good scandal like the Poms!
1 posted on 04/27/2006 11:26:36 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
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the left wing british media is going after Blair


2 posted on 04/27/2006 11:33:41 PM PDT by 4rcane
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To: Aussie Dasher

True, but Klintoon engaged in more malfeasance and debauchery by himself than did the entire Brit cabinet collectively.


3 posted on 04/27/2006 11:44:38 PM PDT by lesser_satan
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To: 4rcane

THe right-wing media, too. I think he's gone.


4 posted on 04/27/2006 11:45:11 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher (The Great Ronald Reagan & John Paul II - Heaven's Dream Team!)
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To: lesser_satan

Can't argue with that.


5 posted on 04/27/2006 11:45:39 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher (The Great Ronald Reagan & John Paul II - Heaven's Dream Team!)
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To: Aussie Dasher

As in the States, the news media lost the election (PM Blair just won a historic 3rd term) but behaves as if they won...attempting to scandalize PM Blair out of office (something that they couldn't do via the ballot box).

6 posted on 04/27/2006 11:51:34 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Aussie Dasher
And Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt faced the humiliation of being jeered and slow-handclapped by nurses as she tried to calm their fears about National Health Service deficits and redundancies.

Oooohhhh....I HATE it when that happens!

7 posted on 04/27/2006 11:57:25 PM PDT by EternalVigilance (Being conceived is NOT a capital offense!)
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which climaxed in a sex scandal


8 posted on 04/28/2006 12:05:54 AM PDT by GretchenM (What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Please meet my friend, Jesus.)
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To: Aussie Dasher

"The Home Office had revealed 24 hours earlier that it had failed to consider whether more than 1000 foreign convicts should be deported at the end of their sentences. Instead, the criminals, who included murderers, rapists and child molesters, were set free in Britain."

We do this all the time and nobody gets fired.


9 posted on 04/28/2006 12:28:33 AM PDT by Marius3188 (Happy Resurrection Weekend)
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I'd infiltrated Democratic Underground for about 15 minutes, and when they posted this story, wrote, "they should send Bill over to give them some tips...ah, let me rephrase that, some assistance."

I'd played along as a "moderate". Didn't last but 7 or 8 posts. Moderates are too far right for them. They wanted to nationalize oil, I wrote, politically it's a good way to hang the left forever. They didn't get it.

What the last straw was posting my first article; posting the results about The Daily Kos and Air America from The Drudge Report under the title, "Bad News".

If you want a great howl, go take a looksy. It's great entertainment.


10 posted on 04/28/2006 1:20:13 AM PDT by Ombudsman
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To: Ombudsman

Did you try to re-post the anti-Clinton and anti-American comments the British Left put behind Bubba's back when he was still in the White House?

Something like this:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1597970/posts




He will go down as the man who made America vain and egocentric and not willing to deal with the outside world. He encouraged the US to use its financial muscle to dictate to the world how it should live and any difference of opinion is not to be tolerated. Wake up America and get a president with compassion not just passion.

Mark Lisle, Germany




For merciless bombing campaigns to distract attention from him NOT 'having sexual relations with that woman'. For supporting Israel as they broke numerous UN Resolutions in order to gain the political support of the New York Jewish Vote. For his love for a fine Cuban Cigar!

Wayne Brannan, UK




Clinton clearly has done a good job on the domestic front creating jobs and improving the already high American quality of life. However he still pursued the bully-boy foreign policy of the United States which did not help his popularity outside of the US. Inside the US I believe he will be remembered as the President who was there when petrol prices peaked.

Nicholas Bradley, UK




I think the DU will suffer massive heart attacks when they read things like these.


11 posted on 04/28/2006 1:37:00 AM PDT by NZerFromHK (Leftism is like honey mixed with arsenic: initially it tastes good, but that will end up killing you)
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To: Aussie Dasher
My reaction:

Regards, Ivan

12 posted on 04/28/2006 1:38:32 AM PDT by MadIvan (I aim to misbehave.)
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To: Aussie Dasher

Looks like the Devil is bringing down all the world leaders, so he can implement his final deception. Things are getting intense!

Revelation 13
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.


13 posted on 04/28/2006 3:21:33 AM PDT by HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath (My Homeland Security: Isaiah 54:17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper)
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To: Southack

"As in the States, the news media lost the election (PM Blair just won a historic 3rd term) but behaves as if they won...attempting to scandalize PM Blair out of office (something that they couldn't do via the ballot box)."

That doesn't logically make sense. If the press were rooting against Blair in the last election, that would mean they wanted the conservative party to take parliament (the Liberal Democrats aren't even part of the equation).


14 posted on 04/28/2006 3:44:08 AM PDT by NYIslander
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To: Southack

Blair must be the most popular socialist ever in the US - odd really!


15 posted on 04/28/2006 3:49:02 AM PDT by Vectorian
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To: Aussie Dasher

I became convinced that Tony Blair, who always mocked W, and was a big FOB, was on his way out when he was saved by 9/11, and joined himself at the hip to W, started talking tough, and acting like a Tory.

Never liked the SOB, and he has stayed long enough. The UK needs to clone Thatcher immediately!


16 posted on 04/28/2006 9:20:24 AM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Any legal immigrant who wants to join me as an American, is welcome.)
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To: NYIslander
"That doesn't logically make sense. If the press were rooting against Blair in the last election, that would mean they wanted the conservative party to take parliament (the Liberal Democrats aren't even part of the equation)."

The Labour Party had an enormous rift; almost half wanted no part of the Iraq War and wanted PM Blair out because of it.

PM Blair won re-election in spite of that rift...but the UK news media was against him, supporting the dissident Labour revolt against PM Blair.

17 posted on 04/28/2006 10:47:08 AM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Vectorian
"Blair must be the most popular socialist ever in the US - odd really!"

PM Blair's "Third Way" has been popular with many in the U.S. ever since Pinochet invented it for Chile's economic revival.

...That PM Blair stood strong by the U.S. while the French and Germans were backstabbing us internationally -- further enhances PM Blair's standing in the U.S.

As a Labour leader, PM Blair is supposed to be a socialist, and as a center-rightest, PM Chirac in France is supposed to be a free market capitalist...yet one might go astray applying those labels willy-nilly.

18 posted on 04/28/2006 10:51:11 AM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Aussie Dasher

<< BJ Clintton aside, no-one puts on a good scandal like the Poms! >>

Gough Whitlam, Rex Conner, "Mr Justice" Lionel Murphy, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Peter Ables and Kerry Packer - to just whip a couple of Australia's most egregious racketeers, mosters, drug runners and idiot savant bloody gangsters off the top of me head - don't leave Aussies with much of a platform from which to bash pommies.

But this piece quite properly shines light on the absolute Truth that such terms as "socialist" and "communist" are just words and masks for the kind of organized criminal gangsters that hide behind them.

And that Truth, like every other, must out. And, for the execrable Blair gang, is outing. And as the Whitlam Gang once observed, it's time for a change!

The meglamaniacal Mao Tze Tung was Human History's most prolific mass murderer and most prolific ever child rapist only because the somewhat homogenious law-abiding populations and tattered remnants of, for example, Great Britain's and America's Rules of Law, precluded the need, thus far -- with the exception of such atrocities as the Cli'ton/Wesley Clarke/Delta Force Waco mass murders, the expulsion of Elian Gonzales and the craven surrendering into slavery of once-free-British Hong Kong's citizens and their wealth and by the picked-up-where-Hitler left off, radical-islam-supporting, Blair-Cliton/NATO Neo-Axis attacks on Christian Serbia -- for those countries' gangsters posing as politicians to resort to such tactics.

But Britain's, Australia's and America's and every other of the world's universally envy-motivated, hatred-engined and [Albiet somewhat supressed] rage-driven socialists are nonetheless by degree as criminally depraved as were the likes of Stalin and Hitler and Mao and differ from those of their fellow "socialists" only by the reign thus far given them and by the scale of their evil.


19 posted on 04/29/2006 5:55:40 AM PDT by Brian Allen (Life's only certainties include the absolute corruption of those who collect and spend our taxes.)
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To: Kenny Bunk

<< The UK needs to clone Thatcher immediately! >>

Wouldn't seem to be much point.

For the few pieces of silver slung her son and her criminal cabinet, the snatcher already surrendered into slavery the last of Britain's once-free colonial citizens and all of their wealth.

And Blair has completed the surrender of the UK's culture to the tyranny of "multi-culturalism" and its sovereignty
to the Europeon Neo-Soviet.

All dead but not quite buried Britain needs any more is that someone with a fiddle fling it to a Nero who can play the Internationale.


20 posted on 04/29/2006 6:04:46 AM PDT by Brian Allen (Life's only certainties include the absolute corruption of those who collect and spend our taxes.)
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