Would you credit it! After getting flu my computer gets graphics disease and tries to emulate an oriental language - and then I get flu again! So my posting capabilities have been somewhat limited. However, I am back with new valves in the computer and stimulants in the head raring to go again.
Listening to Tony Blair this week has been like asking Lewis Carroll to explain the world's workings! Blair has a canny way of saying to a questioner "You're absolutely right to say that" and then twist the whole thing away from the question. With David Cameron and Charles Kennedy he "simply says" what they said some time ago. By quoting their quotes, he is allowed never to answer difficult or controversial questions.
Recently, he ducked commenting on the fact that the European Commission has failed to sign off its accounts. He is prepared to stick his head in the sand over EU money going to dodgy characters and plain crooked thieves! He also, today, appeared totally unconcerned, in fact unwilling, to question the matter of renditions. No matter if the practice has a few loopholes legally, so long as the US says it is lawful he's alright by that!
All I can say is that you don't need headache pills when Blair's around. Just thinking of his ducking and diving is cure enough!
This exchange in the House of Commons on Monday!
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells) (Con): This descent by the Prime Minister from tough talking in advance to concessions and surrender is such a familiar path for his European policy that this latest humiliation is no surprise. But why will we pay twice the amount into a budgetary and control system in Brussels that is so riddled with corruption and inefficiency that the auditors have not signed it off for the past 11 years? Was that raised at the summit—
Mr. Speaker: Order.
The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman and I just have a fundamental disagreement about Europe. I happen to believe that having championed the cause of enlargement it would be absurd for this country to say that we were not prepared to pay for it. That is our position. He apparently wishes to support enlargement but would refuse to have anything to do with paying for it. I would say that that is a ridiculous position. Sometimes it is actually better to have a situation in which we work with our allies to secure a proper deal, which will mean—as I said earlier—that France will actually pay more than us in the difference between their net contributions in the next period compared with the last. It is better to do such a deal than to end up alienating every ally in Europe and getting nothing for this country.
So NO answer on corruption there, then! Keep the gravy train going at all costs! Would you want Blair running your household budget? No way!
Today at his monthly press conference a journalist asked if it was true that he was First Lord of the Treasury! He blinked in amazement, realising it seemed, that he had just been spouting nonsense about not knowing what the Treasury officials were saying!
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm051219/debtext/51219-10.htm
Listening to Tony Blair this week has been like asking Lewis Carroll to explain the world's workings! Blair has a canny way of saying to a questioner "You're absolutely right to say that" and then twist the whole thing away from the question. With David Cameron and Charles Kennedy he "simply says" what they said some time ago. By quoting their quotes, he is allowed never to answer difficult or controversial questions.
Recently, he ducked commenting on the fact that the European Commission has failed to sign off its accounts. He is prepared to stick his head in the sand over EU money going to dodgy characters and plain crooked thieves! He also, today, appeared totally unconcerned, in fact unwilling, to question the matter of renditions. No matter if the practice has a few loopholes legally, so long as the US says it is lawful he's alright by that!
All I can say is that you don't need headache pills when Blair's around. Just thinking of his ducking and diving is cure enough!
This exchange in the House of Commons on Monday!
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells) (Con): This descent by the Prime Minister from tough talking in advance to concessions and surrender is such a familiar path for his European policy that this latest humiliation is no surprise. But why will we pay twice the amount into a budgetary and control system in Brussels that is so riddled with corruption and inefficiency that the auditors have not signed it off for the past 11 years? Was that raised at the summit—
Mr. Speaker: Order.
The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman and I just have a fundamental disagreement about Europe. I happen to believe that having championed the cause of enlargement it would be absurd for this country to say that we were not prepared to pay for it. That is our position. He apparently wishes to support enlargement but would refuse to have anything to do with paying for it. I would say that that is a ridiculous position. Sometimes it is actually better to have a situation in which we work with our allies to secure a proper deal, which will mean—as I said earlier—that France will actually pay more than us in the difference between their net contributions in the next period compared with the last. It is better to do such a deal than to end up alienating every ally in Europe and getting nothing for this country.
So NO answer on corruption there, then! Keep the gravy train going at all costs! Would you want Blair running your household budget? No way!
Today at his monthly press conference a journalist asked if it was true that he was First Lord of the Treasury! He blinked in amazement, realising it seemed, that he had just been spouting nonsense about not knowing what the Treasury officials were saying!
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm051219/debtext/51219-10.htm
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