Our former PM and his £25,000 shepherd hut in the age of austerity

[Puggsville]

He had the salmon faced cheek to introduce the Bedroom Tax and disability cuts. Then he wimps out of office and splashes out £25,000 (minus any discount he might have received for publicising it in the papers) for a shepherd's hut in which he can churn out his memoirs about how he imposed austerity on the rest of us.

Surely he has a spare room in his Chipping Norton mansion in which he could plonk away on his laptop.

You don't think Cherie Blair - a working class girl who went to a poly and worked her way up to a QC - earned her wealth? Not doubting that being married to Blair helped in some ways later on, but she did incredibly well to get where she is now. She's a very well respected QC.

She made her cash from the badly-drafted Human Rights Legislation that her husband faced through. Legislation that makes it almost impossible to chuck a murderer, rapist or terrorist out of this country no matter how horrible the crime.

It's been a license to print money for many lawyers - and most of it os coming out of public funds.

The worst PM ever?

How about Neville Chamberlain?

Anyone who votes tory should hang their heads in shame.

SchadenfreudePersonified* Do you think Tony Blair and Charlie Falconer and the others got round a table (in a restaurant in Islington?) and said Right, let's give Parliamentary Counsel instructions to write this new law so as to maximise the opportunities for the Bar^ - and especially for Charlie and Tony's wife?

If you do you are the doyenne of conspiracy theorists. Please tell us the truth about the assassination of JFK and the death of Di.

@AndrewFog

Neville has been kind of re-habilitated....maybe Dave will be in 70 years

www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24300094

Anyone who votes tory should hang their heads in shame.

Pathetic.

Anyone who votes tory should hang their heads in shame.

LOL

Dave could always rent his shepherds hut to a homeless person.

Or to a homeless shepherd once Brexit takes effect.

No matter what anyone says about Blair he is nowhere near as stupid or arrogantly incompetent as Cameron. He modernised his party and won 3 elections, one of them after the hugely unpopular Iraq war. Cameron couldn't even beat Brown, who was unpopular anyway and had the global recession happen during his tenure. Then, when ham face did get a majority he fucked it up with his unnecessary and poorly executed referendum shambles.

What a cock.

Ex PM owns a nice shed...so what? It's hardly a golden lambourghini. You might not have liked his politics, but he's done a job, got paid, bought something nice. What do you expect him to do? Live out the rest of his days pretending he doesn't have any money?

I expect him to hang his head and keep his mouth shut.

I agree with you Duchess. It's a difficult one though. People forget that in reality, in the light of 9/11 etc, that it was a huge decision for the PM to potentially imperil the UK by going against our supposedly closest ally, the USA, and if I remember correctly quite a few other countries - 10 or so- showed support for the war too not just the UK. Is it easier in hindsight to look back and say the Iraq war was going to be a disaster? Somewhat easier (imho) to look in to the future and say it about Brexit. Both are examples of politicians desperately trying to shape falsehoods in to facts.

I must be the only person on mumsnet that didn't think he did a bad job

No he didn't do a particularly bad job, but this is MN typical anti Tory bullshit.

People forget that in reality, in the light of 9/11 etc, that it was a huge decision for the PM to potentially imperil the UK by going against our supposedly closest ally, the USA

There were a million warnings given to Blair about that. I can still remember the kind of resistance he faced for that, London organising the biggest march against war in that time (including all the Muslim countries may be except Iran!). I mean 9/11 was done by Saudi national terrorists, you go and bomb Afghanistan? And Iraq FFS?!!
Hitler made mistakes too?
War criminals don't make mistakes. He blatantly misled the parliament and the government is keeping the various very relevant correspondences hidden till he is gone any way. Funny that.

Valentine I agree with you. The decision was obviously a disaster. What I am trying to say is that for the PM at the time, weighing up the possibility of a potential similar sized attack happening in UK and not having the back up of the US was a difficult decision to make and one that no doubt came with lots of military pressure. I am not saying it was the right decision.

ie those countries that warned us are not necessarily the ones that we traditionally rely on to bale us out of a military crisis

ginghambox phew, I'm not living in an alternate universe then!

I'm not a Tory voter, but I am not rabidly anti-Tory either. I personally can't forgive Cameron for calling an advisory referendum on Brexit and then treating the result like it was a fait accompli.

Cannot stand the spam headed bastard

Hapaxlegomenon

It's like Pavlov's dogs in here - some posters are so conditioned that they hear the word "Tory" and start foaming at the mouth and using expletives.

On the other hand, say "Corbyn" and they're practically wetting themselves to say how fabulous and amazing the man is.

Pathetic about sums it up... I couldn't care less how other people vote and I'm grown up enough not to sling obscenities at people who don't share my political views.

same, brownsausage.

If people's only response to what a crap leader Cameron was is nurh Blair/Corbyn are crap too' I just think 'you twat- you really can't see beyond tribal party politics, can you?!'

Also all this spam - headed ham face stuff about his appearance is a bit below the belt. Would have thought MN would have objected to those sorts of insults.

I think what Blair and Cameron share is a delusion that they still have something worthwhile to impart to the rest of the world.

If I had made a mistake (I'll be kind and call them 'mistakes') of such catastrophic proportions, I would be keeping my head down and my mouth shut for the rest of my life.