When I did a book signing at the Easons on O'Connell Street, Dublin four people showed up, one of whom wanted to know the way to the toilet. When Tony Blair arrived there on Saturday to promote his memoir: A Journey, hundreds queued to get the book signed and several dozen "peace activists" came to demonstrate against Blair and to throw, according to the Belfast Telegraph "shoes and eggs." (In the video I see only one shoe which looks like an uncomfortable woman's cork heel but I'll take the Tele's word for it that there were more.) Blair didn't get hit by either a shoe or an egg but he must have heard the "peace activists" chant of "Hey hey Tony hey - how many kids did you kill today?" which, admittedly, isn't as good as the LBJ original but at least it scans.
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I assume the "peace activists" are not talking about Northern Irish kids. Since the Good Friday Agreement which Blair brokered between Nationalists and Unionists in 1997 the murder rate in Northern Ireland has plummeted, presumably saving the lives of many children and there are certainly a lot fewer orphans. Perhaps the UK was wrong to support the US invasion of Iraq, de jure and de facto, I don't know, but the "peace activists" chant seems perverse in the context of what Blair has done for peace in Ireland. A peace that was supported in a referendum by massive majorities north and south of the border.
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Incidentally Ghandi was a peace activist who never felt the need to throw a shoe or an egg, but then again the protesters on O'Connell Street were Irish (not one of the great culinary peoples of the world) and so maybe they were just trying to make a Dover sole omelette.
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Dover sole omelette, geddit? Huh? No? Is this thing on? . . . Sheesh, sometimes I dont know why I bother.
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31 comments:
£24.99...value?! Outrageous!
And I liked the Dover Sole joke. No, really, I did.
Giving 4 million quid to charity isn't going to buy him many new friends. Can you believe that book deal for a book of fiction...sorry, aparently it's a book of fact. Yeah, right! Ha!
Just having a mooch round your blog. :-)
The word HELPED should be emphasised in the phrase 'helped broker a peace deal' as old 'Honest Tone' generally tries to take all the credit himself.
It is of course great that things have changed in N. Ireland, but I think the numbers of innocent bystanders massacred since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq dwarf the death-toll of the 'troubles'.
I got the joke..or at least the spirit of it..
Michael
I'm glad someone did. You and me mate. Motorbikes and bad jokes...
David
The PR has worked on some level though hasnt it? I've ordered the bloody book and I never read anything about politics.
Y Ddraig,
Well we mustnt commit the fallacy of thinking numerically about moral facts.
I dont think you'd get many complaints from your average Iraqi Kurd about Saddam's removal either.
Glenna
You are TOO kind.
i know i'm corrupting what he's trying to say, but it would be a really tough one if i were to choose between him and bono ...
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6243443/blair-for-sale.thtml
my eggs and sole receptions are always ready for charismatic evils ...
;o)
Glenna IS too kind.
Throwing eggs is sounding a bit more dangerous here with the massive outbreak of salmonella. The New Yorker--yes, the New Yorker--wasn't all that encouraging about how you could know that you weren't giving yourself food poisoning. I'm kind of surprised that eating breakfast out hasn't taken a bigger hit, but not in this town. Well, not yet, anyway.
Whoever brokered the peace in Northern Ireland, I'm very glad for it. I have never been able to understand why Blair decided to hitch his star to the Bush agenda, though. He seems a more Clintonesque kind of climber and although I would certainly expect him to make errors, I would have thought they would be of a rather different kind.
I hope you're going to review the book, as I not very likely to read it.
Red Bike
Tough choice but I'd have to pick Bono, he's an expert at paying zero taxes so if he could somehow translate that financial genius into the UK economy as a whole then we'd all be laughing.
Seana
I'll definitely review it here. It might take me a while to read it but I'll review it.
I dont really understand how cooking doesnt kill the bacteria. Surely if you boil the egg it'll kill everything right?
Well, you know, sunny side up and eggs over easy are a risk. But the thing is that no one seems to be laying down any simple guide lines that allay fears, which is kind of weird. Salmonella used to be outside the egg and now it's inside the egg which seems to be a bit strange all by itself. I think there isn't much consensus on how hot the egg has to get in order to kill salmonella.
Although you might not be able to tell, I'm more interested than panicked by all this, though.
I suppose people do throw raw eggs rather than hard boiled ones? I have to say I've never been in a position to find this out.
Very conflicted about Tony Blair, and not least because he turned what should have a bright new dawn in the UK into a Tory-lite farrago.
He was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to hitch his wagon to Bush, as Seana says, and take Britain into the Iraqi invasion. And there's no gainsaying the numbers of Iraqi dead as a direct consequence of his actions.
He did make the point, when interviewed on The Late Late Show on Friday night, that the child mortality rate under Saddam was 300,000 per annum, and that that figure has plummeted in the years since the invasion.
The interviewer neglected to ask him how that mortality rate of 300,000 per annum was influenced (or not) by the sanctions imposed on Iraq once the US stopped favouring it in the war (actual or covert) against Iran.
As for the Peace Process and the Good Friday Agreement, Tony Blair did more - much more - than any other British prime minister to bring peace to Northern Ireland. For that reason, and on balance, I think Tony Blair is and will be well regarded in Ireland.
Cheers, Dec
Dec
No one else could have had the patience to put up with Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. He did a man's job in Northern Ireland.
He really does seem to be hated in Britain though, absolutely despised by everyone and I think its because of this blind spot whereby he couldn't see that Bush was leading America to utter ruin on a number of fronts. Most normal people could see it but he, apparently, could not.
When I was a kid, my dad was very into David Halberstam's book The Best and the Brightest, which I'm sorry to say I never got around to reading, but I do know it was about how the blinkered state of the intellectual class around Kennedy was supposed to have helped him dig us further into the Vietnam War. It might be somethign like that.
Seana
Yes that's an excellent point. I wonder if it was that, or perhaps the shared Christian thing? I dont know but it is strange for someone so obviously intelligent.
I also wonder if Bush is much more winning in person than he has ever seemed on television.
One of my teachers once mentioned the time he saw Ronald Reagan in person--probably while he was still governor, so not surrounded by presidential regalia, just out on the street. They were not at all on the same side politically, but he said there was something about the charisma Reagan radiated that actually made him feel lightheaded.
Of course, Tony Blair has been with the queen, so it's probably not like that.
Christianity is a link I hadn't thought of.
I also wonder if Bush is much more winning in person than he has ever seemed on television.
I have friends that know Bush personally, and are still in contact with him, and both say he is a wonderful guy. What the media shows isn't necessarily, (or typically in my opinion), how things really are.
Glenna
Thats interesting that you say that. I think its kind of my opinion too. A fairly decent guy, unpretentious, just way out of his depth as leader of the free world.
Although, it's no surprise that I find myself on the other end of the political spectrum from Bush, I'm quite sincere in saying that it's comforting to hear that, Glenna.
And I have to say that with all the hatred of Muslims being expressed in recent days, it does remind me that Bush was good at separating Muslims on the whole from terrorists in particular. I mean he was good at leading people to their better angels in that regard in what could have been a much more volatile time domestically.
Adrian,
Exactly. I think most often, in politics, the choices put the chooser between a rock and hard place. The pressure must be unimaginable.
Seana,
I think he did his best.
I don't Hate Blair for the war, Im midly miffed with him for using the war as an excuse to take away all our civil liberties in one fell swoop. Also for the huge underclass that exists in England.. Im talking the chav class who think its ok to swear in front of their children.. tracksuit around their arse wearing.. Staffordshire Pitbull terrier owning.. no political or social conscience..I live amongst these people and it gets you down. Can I blame Blair for this or not?
Frankie
I suspect not. There were plenty of chavs and chavettes when I lived in England and that was during the Thatcher-Major years.
Plenty of spides in Belfast too. Same thing as chavs but with a bit more bling and just that smidgen stupider.
Couple of chav jokes for our American readers:
Q) 2 chavs are in a car, there’s no music on, who is driving?
A) The Police
Q) 2 chavs are fighting on a cliff side, both fall over the edge and die, who wins?
A) Society
hee! hee!
Why did the chav cross the road?
To punch someone for absolutely no reason whatsoever
Good ones, though I have to admit that I spent too long trying to figure out what song of Sting's that first joke related to.
I'm not sure what part of America is equivalent to this slice, though I'm sure there is an equivalent as there are plenty of people with out any larger frame of reference. I get the sense that a parallel group is the one whose main chance to appear on television would be to hope that their arrest would be featured on Cops.
Well, I'm saying NOWT but I've TWOCed the chav jokes. The Dover Sole one however ...
What do you call a Chav with a degree?...... An Oxymoron...
If there were not so many dead people in this war in Iraq, it would be one of the best satires ever. From the lies that lead to war to the civil war that might break out soon.
From my german point of view: Every politican from right to left, every expert told us before the war, what would happen after the war, and that it would be insane to start this war without having a real good plan for the time after Saddam's fall and that many civilians would die. (beside the impact, that an illegal war would have to the muslim world)
I would not throw an egg, if Blair showed up in my favourite bookstore in Munich. I would try to kick his ass, haha. I wonder if George-Boy would come running to help him.
(no, I am no peace activist)
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