… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Tony Blair

  • Sweet like chocolate: Alan Milburn’s new deal

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/sweet-like-chocolate-alan-milburns-new-deal

    Alan Milburn speaks at the first national conference of the Social Enterprise Coalition, January 25, 2005

    Behind a facade of flimsy restrictions, the man who was Tony Blair’s privatisation champion is back in an advisory role, despite the fact he already works for firms that will profit from the selling off of the NHS, writes SOLOMON HUGHES

    HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting says he put Alan Milburn, who was health secretary under Tony Blair, onto the board of the Department of Health “to help government fix health and care.”

    But Milburn can’t talk about anything relating “to nutrition, diet, and food, including any work related to the department’s sponsorship of the Food Standards Agency” on that board because he has a part-time job working for Mars Inc.

    Appointing someone who works for the firm making Mars Bars to the Department of Health board in the middle of an obesity crisis shows how Streeting values corporate interests above public services.

    Milburn was health secretary under Blair from 1999 to 2003. He oversaw the wide-scale privatisation of the NHS. He continued the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments’ plans to privatise NHS “support services” like cleaning, catering and building management, with the disastrous PFI scheme expanding on his watch.

    Milburn also broke new ground by privatising “clinical” services by buying in private operations or giving NHS money to set up privately run clinics. Milburn then cashed in his experience by leaving government and taking on lucrative corporate jobs.

    Milburn and his family get around £1-2 million a year from his “advisory” firm, AM Strategy, where all the funds for his “advisory” jobs are collected. Streeting clearly admires both Milburn’s record of privatisation when he was a minister and his highly paid post post-ministerial corporate work.

    The Department of Health says Milburn will give up his job as an adviser to Mars Inc at the end of this year, so next year, he will be able to forget all about working for Mars Bars and start discussing obesity.

    …

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/sweet-like-chocolate-alan-milburns-new-deal

  • Thoughts of the day 27 November 2024

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    Years ago I would – amoung many others – criticise Tony Blair for being Dubya’s poodle. I remember a cartoon with Tonee coming out of a birthday cake for Dubya with Dubya proclaiming “Just what I wanted, a Kissassogram!”.

    Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
    Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA

    Tonee was in thrall to Israel like Starmer and I did criticise the Labour party at the time as being Likud Labour. So what is it with Starmer? He’s clearly a staunch Zionist – he’s admitted as much saying that he’s a Zionist without qualification, there’s an Israeli spy working in his office and he and the UK military are actively doing genocide for Israel.

    I suppose that we can defer the decision whether he works for Israel or US while the effect is the same and that’s unlikely to change with the replacement assole. We can go with the working assumption that he’s a dual analingalist.

  • Media silence over Jonathan Powell’s bloody hands

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    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/media-silence-over-jonathan-powells-bloody-hands

    ARCHITECTS OF SLAUGHTER : Jonathan Powell (right)and Alastair Campbell attend a Gala dinner to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland on April 16 2023 [dizzy: War criminal Alastair Campbell often complains about being called a war criminal.]

    The British press has welcomed Keir Starmer’s new National Security Adviser without any mention of his deep, central involvement in the criminal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan — but history remembers, writes IAN SINCLAIR

    “THE US media’s gravest shortcoming is much more their errors of omission than their errors of commission,” William Blum, historian and fierce critic of US foreign policy, once astutely observed. “It’s what they leave out that distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies.”

    Blum’s evergreen maxim very much applies to the British media, too.

    Take the press response to Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently appointing Jonathan Powell to be his new National Security Adviser.

    …

    Given the job description for his new position, amazingly, none of the five newspapers thought it pertinent to mention Powell’s central role in the illegal and aggressive invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and Britain’s subsequent military occupation. Or, for that matter, Powell’s role in Britain’s (also illegal) 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent occupation.

    If we judge Powell’s political career in the 2000s using the limited, liberal framing endemic to these newspapers, his record is a disaster.

    The British military interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan are now widely understood to have been catastrophes, leading to the deaths of hundreds of British soldiers. The presence of British troops in both countries energised the armed resistance.

    The Taliban are now back in control of Afghanistan, and Iraq’s social fabric was torn asunder to such an extent that Isis was able to take control of around 40 per cent of the country in the mid-2010s.

    …

    If we judge Powell’s career using a moral lens, then he arguably becomes a blood-soaked, criminal political figure. He was, after all, one of the key individuals in Blair’s inner circle in the run-up to the invasion when this cabal repeatedly misled the cabinet, parliament, media and British public.

    He attended the infamous July 23 2002 meeting recorded in the leaked minutes which have become known as the Downing Street Memo.

    Summarising recent talks Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, had had in Washington, the minute’s note: “Military action was now seen as inevitable” but “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

    The minutes also note foreign secretary Jack Straw said the “case [for war] was thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his [weapons of mass destruction] capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”

    Powell was at Blair’s side when the September 2002 dossier was compiled, with little regard for the actual evidence, to strengthen the case for war. In fact, Powell “instructed intelligence chiefs to change the … dossier to make it appear that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was much greater than they believed,” the Guardian reported in September 2003.

    …

    [T]he ramifications of the historical record are clear. Rather than returning to Downing Street, Powell — like Blair, Campbell and Brown — should be heading to The Hague.

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/media-silence-over-jonathan-powells-bloody-hands

  • Starmer appoints national security adviser who negotiated secret deal to free genocider Pinochet

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    Starmer appoints national security adviser who negotiated secret deal to free genocider Pinochet

  • Labour admits super-rich are propping it up as member numbers collapse again

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    Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

    Record fall in membership despite earlier claims of increases from right-wing figures

    Labour has admitted it is only kept afloat by the money of the mega-rich, after yet another massive fall in party membership numbers – to a level lower than its peak under Ed Miliband and far below the almost 600,000 when Jeremy Corbyn was leader.

    According to its latest official figures, the party suffered a net loss of 37,000 members, 9% of its total, by the end of 2023 compared to a year earlier – the biggest year-on-year loss since 2003 when Labour haemorrhaged members during Tony Blair’s illegal war in Iraq. Even the claimed latest membership of 370,000 is suspect according to party insiders, as Labour under Keir Starmer has long padded its figures by continuing to count lapsed members – and its records were long in chaos after outsourcing led to a massive hack and the freezing of its membership administration systems.

    Leading right-wing Labour figures have repeatedly briefed that members were pouring in and numbers were rising, attributing this to Starmer. In fact, given Starmer’s deep personal unpopularity, it makes far more sense to attribute the collapse in membership to him, his support for Israel’s genocide, his cowardly assault on left-wing MPs and members and his dog-whistle red-Tory ‘policies’.

    And the party has inadvertently admitted that it is only propped up by donations from the super-rich. Party general secretary David Evans has said that the party losing less than the expected £2.5m during the general election campaign was because of “an increase in high-value donations”. Under Corbyn, large numbers of ordinary people chipped in what they could afford – so many that Labour’s debts, grown huge under previous leaders, were wiped out.

    Now, even kept afloat by billionaires – and clearly beholden to them, given Labour’s atrocious announcements penalising the poor since Starmer was ushered into Downing Street by the fascist Reform ‘party’ – Labour is still losing money, just less than it would have without the huge donors wanting payback for their investment.

    Original article republished from the Skwawkbox.

    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
    Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted "I support Zionism without qualification." He's asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
    Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.