Tony's fondness for taking it up the arse.... just read this. For fuck sake, for some of his reasoning he quotes a mental retard like George Bush! And his views on Israel is sooooo brainless (drain the swamps & there won't be any mosquitos). From the FT.

SJ

Blair on Saddam and Mideast peace

Published: December 9 2002 22:51 | Last Updated: December 9 2002 22:51


Let's move on then to one of the issues that you think - well clearly is - of great importance to people, Iraq. If you talk to people from Washington you get a much stronger sense that war is inevitable than you do perhaps when you talk to people in London or in other parts of Europe. There seems to be a gulf. Do you think that war with Iraq is inevitable in the next few months, or do you think it can be avoided, and would we support a war that didn't actually have the support and backing of another second UN Resolution.


It's plainly not inevitable if Saddam complies. But you would have to be somewhat naïve not to be sceptical about the likelihood of his compliance, given his past history. But the short answer is, his duty is to co-operate. If he fails to co-operate, either in any false declaration or in refusing access to the sites, or interviewing witnesses, or any of the rest of it, then that is a breach. And in those circumstances, my understanding is that the United Nations are very clear there should action.

As for a second Resolution, we said we would go back for a discussion, but the implication of what we agreed before was that, OK we will go the UN route, but the UN route has the implication that if there is a breach and Saddam doesn't comply, then we are prepared to take action.

We want to do this with the maximum international support and I believe that support will be there. So we wait and see what circumstances we get to. But in my view it is clear and right that if Saddam is in breach then we have to impose by conflict, that which we would have preferred to impose by the will of the UN and the inspectors.

Have the events of the weekend in which he is saying well I don't have any weapons of mass destruction made you more pessimistic about the outcome?

We will obviously have to study very carefully what this declaration actually amounts to. You will know the dossier we have put out earlier, and anyway he has made his declaration.

But there were no hidden triggers in that UN Resolution were there?

No, we have always been very open with people about this. His duty is to co-operate and that includes making an honest declaration and if he is in breach of that duty, then we act.

You seem to be saying by saying that you want the maximum international support, that in an ideal world you would have a second Resolution which would demonstrate that support, if he is indeed in breach, but actually that you don't need a second Resolution to take military action against him.

If we get to a situation, let us say, where there is a clear breach and the circumstances that we always .... would result in action - someone puts an unreasonable block down on it - well as we have seen before when we were in the situation over Kosovo you cannot say there are no set of circumstances in which you would ever refuse to act, because in my view if he breaches and the UN does nothing, then the authority of the UN is then hugely weakened. But I don't believe that will happen. I believe that at the heart of that UN Resolution is really a deal. Let's be frank about it. There was a deal which said OK the US and the UK and those who feel really strongly about the threat that Saddam and weapons of mass destruction pose, they are prepared to go the UN route, to bring everyone together, to say right we will put in the inspectors and give him the chance to comply. We'll go back to the UN route as the way of enforcing this, then the quid pro quo is OK but if he then having been given the chance to do the right thing does the wrong thing, we are not going to walk away from it. And I think that was a very sensible way of proceeding. Again, it is difficult. I mean it is difficult for two reasons. It is difficult because I think a lot of people don't share our view of the importance of weapons of mass destruction, and I am completely passionate on this. I think this is one of the biggest threats that the world faces. And I should just point out that at the first meeting I had with George Bush in February 2001, at my press conference I actually majored on this topic. It didn't get picked up at the time because it wasn't a great issue at the time. But I think what is happening with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the potential of this to fall into the hands of either unstable states or terrorist groups is enormous. And I would just point out to people that if anybody had come along in August 2001 and said that we needed to deal with Afghanistan, people would have thought you had gone off your rocker. But actually we do need to deal with this issue.

The other thing you have pressed on is the Middle East Peace Process. Do you think there is any prospect in the short term for pushing that process along.

I hope so. But obviously there is a complicating factor with the Israeli elections, but I have no doubt at all that this is a very dark shadow over the region, the world, and our relations with the Arab world and the relations between the Muslim world and the outside world, and for many people I think in the Arab and Muslim world they feel that we are not wrong about Saddam, but we are not sufficiently serious about the suffering that the Palestinians are facing. Now my answer to that is, look we have got to be clear about this, the Israelis are also facing their citizens being butchered in appalling terrorist attacks. The only way of resolving this is to start working out on the basis of the principles, that are actually clearer now than they have ever been. To be fair George Bush has set out in the Two-State solution the clearest enunciation of the end game in this that there has ever been. So we should be able to take it forward. But my point always is that these peace processes, as we found with Northern Ireland, they never move unless there is intensive activity, and usually from external forces. There is no doubt at all that there is a strong feeling in the Arab and Muslim world that we have engaged in double standards here. I don't believe that is justified because I think that people like ourselves really are working very hard to try and get this situation changed. But I understand that feeling and it is important we are sensitive to it. I always think there is a big issue to be made about the US and the relations with Europe and how we play a part in that. I think it is very important - I was dealing with this at a Party meeting in Bristol on Thursday - that we actually take on some of the anti-Americanism there is and put some of the criticisms into proper perspective. It's a very important thing in the world today as well.

Blair on universities, pensions, and those Bristol flats

Published: December 9 2002 22:02 | Last Updated: December 9 2002 22:02


Would you raise taxes again if it is seen that the revenue coming in over the next two or three years is going to undershoot ... and the economy is slower than people thought? Is this a project which, if necessary, you would say OK we need to raise taxes to pay for our commitments?


We believe our programme is funded as it is, and I am not getting into speculating on future budgets, but I don't believe it is necessary to do that because we have got the funding that we need to take ourselves up to - actually more than the European average - both for education and health.

But the world, as the chancellor has said, you can't predict the world outside, and if the world economy is slower for the next two or three years, then that will impact on us, so it might be that the revenues you have predicted aren't there, so I am just trying to test how strong your commitment to this is by saying that if necessary are you ready to raise taxes again to see this through.

I understand where you are trying to get to, but these are things done on a cautious assumptions, and we believe they are fully funded, and I have learned over long experience that it is not very wise to speculate on any other basis than the basis on which we have actually produced our figures.

You have set ambitious goals for public services. The government has repeatedly talked about delivering a world class public service. How will we know when we have got there, and how will you persuade people that we have, not least the sceptical media?

Yes, and that is a very good point. You see, I think there are real improvements happening in the National Health Service at the moment and what is fascinating is the difference that is profound now between how people when they are polled about their own experience of the health service will respond, where basically 80 per cent said they had got good treatment, and how they will respond when they are asked about the Health Service as a whole, where the same number are liable to say it is poor. And I know in my own constituency there is no doubt at all the Health Service is getting better. Now on schools, partly because of this A-level business which turned out ultimately to be less than it seemed, people have questioned the progress in education, but you go to any constituency in the country and you will see the investment going into schools, and there are real improvements in the results and they have been the best primary school results, GSCE results, A-Level results the country has ever had.

Given that there clearly is progress, why does it feel so slow? There has been serious money going in for three years now.

Well, for two reasons. First of all you are catching up with significant under-investment over a long period of time, that's the first point. The second thing is, and let me be very blunt and political here, our opponents who are opposed to the extra investment going in have got to say that the money is not delivering an improvement, otherwise their goose is cooked. So that is why you will find it just continually said as a refrain by them, and the papers that support them, that there is no improvement in the Health Service, no improvement in the schools, or they are getting worse, when manifestly objectively they are not. And that's the other reason. Now I think we will get to a critical mass on both where people do accept that there is real change. But a lot of that will depend on the pace of our reform.

But is it also because the services have either been unwilling or unable to reform the way they themselves deliver it.

I think they are reforming, to be fair. If you look at primary schools, for example, as a result of the literacy and numeracy strategies, they are delivering their schooling differently. The specialist schools - I've got two in my own constituency - have been transformed as a result of this. Maybe it is just my constituency, but I don't think so. Once the new city academies really come on stream they will be big centres of excellence with a fully comprehensive intake of students, and if you look around at what is happening in the health service, yes there is still a great deal of progress to be made, but there are real changes and improvements too in the way that services are delivered. When I have been going around the country and opening new hospitals, and parts of new hospitals, there is just no doubt. I was in a hospital in County Durham the other day looking at the maternity provision there which is,I would say, as good as anything you would get in the private sector. No-one could complain about that. It is also true that you have still got hospitals where there is huge pressure on accident and emergency. The people are waiting too long. But if you look, for example, at cancer or cardiac services, there is no doubt that they have got better. I've written out ... [PM handed over statistics to the interviewer]. When people say where has all the money gone in the health service, it is not just in the input, but you have got one million more acute hospital admissions. If you look at the hip operations they are up something like 15 per cent; heart operations up by 40 per cent; cataract operations up by 50 per cent,with 30,000 more nurses. I'm not saying there is not a long way to go,there is. And of course with a service that treats 1m people every 36 hours, it is always possible to get something that goes wrong,or someone makes a mistake.

But isn't part of the problem that there are one million more patients being treated, but the rate of increase over recent years has been slower than the historical trend. There's a real paradox there, given that there is actually more money going in.

Well except that I think if you look at some of the critical areas where the money has gone to like the cardiac or the treatment of cancer patients, I think there have been real improvements. I am not disputing at all ... this is a big reform programme, and I think in exactly the same way that if you go back to 1984 with the Tories, you wouldn't have been sure - you would have been in the middle of the miners' strike - you wouldn't have been sure at that time that there had been a major process of industrial restructuring and Trade Union law that had been completed. But you would have been sure 2 or 3 years later that that had happened. And I think that we will be in the same position, but only if we keep up with reform. So we must not fall for this idea that somehow that the Labour Party, at the most testing time, which is now, should slip back into its old ways. And that's the same with the fire dispute, it's the same with public service reform, it's the same with questions to do with the Universities. You see, if you take the Universities - I could as Prime Minister decide, 'Look I'm not going to bother with this issue because it's not obvious to the country at large that our top Universities are going to slip behind'. However, it is true and the point that Martin Wolf is making in his article [in the Financial Times] this morning is correct. That is a completely correct analysis. Some of those great European Universities are no longer great European Universities. And, what motivates me on this is if you look at what is happening in America with their top universities, I think even more interesting, you look at what is happening in China or India - and that may seem a completely bizarre thing to say to you - but if we are not careful, those countries, which are developing countries but have realised the importance of world-class universities as the cutting edge of their technological and intellectual advance, those countries are going to have universities that are better than our universities.

Could we just deal with a couple of principles on that. I know you said that you have yet got to work out your plans, but there are a couple of principles. Could one say as a principle that graduates will not pay back more than the cost. So if tuition fees are £5,000, or whatever, over the course of a university career, can one say as a point of principle that someone who goes through that system won't actually pay back more than the cost of their education, or whatever it is, at university?

Well, I think we had better await the outcome of this.

But that's a pretty straightforward principle. It's not a question of detail.

There are all sorts of different ways you could do this, but at the moment I would just point out that people do pay back their actual loan, so it would certainly be a change of principle if we were to make you pay for somebody's else's university education.

Are you actually contemplating that?

It doesn't mean to say that you are not contemplating it. It simply means to say that before you have published your review, it is best not to dribble it out, bit by bit, by bit.

But that must be part, then of your review. This question must believe that students may be faced ...

No, you may well go down a mistaken path on that. All I'm saying is - there are two quite separate issues. One is do you have a variable fee for universities? The other is how do you pay it back?

Or how much do you pay back? That's my question.

Well, how do you pay back collectively or individually. Yes, exactly. Now, all I'm saying to you is those are two separate questions. We are looking at both of them. But I wouldn't read into my saying that, that we are about to change from an individual pay-back to a collective pay-back.

Would it be fair to say, though, that you agree to the principle of a variable fee?

Well again, you've heard what I've said already that I think that it is wrong that we treat all universities in the same way, however I can't get into declaring what the outcome is before we have done it. This is always part of the trouble. If you say we are going to look at everything and then come out with a review for people to speculate. What I have said is - I think I've said this in the House of Commons already - that it doesn't make sense to treat all universities as if they offer exactly the same. Does that mean that we are going for a variable fee? You'll have to wait and see what the outcome of it is.

But I don't see how you cannot if that is a primary...

How do you treat universities differently if you don't allow them to charge differential fees?

Well, they are actually ways you could do it. But let them wait for .... I've said more than I want to say actually because until we come out with the proposals I think it would be a mistake to speculate more on them.

Well, I take from that there are going to be variable fees, and there is going to be a repayment system linked to the actual costs?

Well, you don't know that until we come out with the conclusions of the review, and we have not made those conclusions yet. And, as with all these things you can't rule things in, or rule things out until you come up with the final answer. You say what are the principles that should govern it. The principles are surely these: (1) that we do need to make sure that we get more funding to our universities; (2) that we have serious and significant problems with our top universities if they fall behind universities in other countries; (3) there is a limit to how much this can come out of the tax-payer. The tax-payer already makes a significant contribution and it is up 20 per cent in real terms in the last 5 years; and (4) you have got to make sure that any repayment system you have is fair, does not people off university and, if possible, (5) you increase the numbers of people going to university by opening up access and by making it easier for people from poorer backgrounds to go to university. But it really isn't sensible, and all these things we have been discussing may or may not happen, but you wouldn't be able to take from what I have said a specific conclusion, because the conclusions haven't been made yet.

There is a lot on your plate at the moment including a pensions green paper coming shortly. How ...

I think I'm about to get into the same dance, am I?

I don't know. We'll see. How serious do you think the pensions problem is? Do you think there is a crisis out there, or do you think that it is just a bit of fiddling that needs to be done?

No, there is a serious issue because I think for people on moderate incomes it is very confusing as to how they make provision for themselves, and you are operating against a background where, as around the rest of the world, the stockmarket has fallen and companies are finding it hard going. But what we have got to do - which is what the Green Paper will do - is address the issue of how you get people on more modest incomes to get easy to use vehicles for saving.

But the green paper is in that sort of area? Because certainly some people out there perceive there's a pension crisis. There have been some pretty radical ideas put around about how you might tackle it from restructuring the current state pension system to compelling employers. Andrew Smith [the pensions secretary] seems to have ruled most of those out, so what you seem to be talking about is a series...

Well, the idea that you can pump a whole lot of money in from the state I think is wrong.

Yes, I don't think anyone has been arguing for that. But you seem to be talking about providing clearer vehicles for people to save with, rather than any big restructuring of the way the system functions.

Well, in the end what is the root of the problem? The root of the problem is that people need to save for their retirement and they find it difficult if they are on lower incomes now. And you want people to be, as far as possible, self-reliant rather than dependent simply on the State. So that's the nature of the problem, and you can buzz around this any number of different ways, but in the end that is what you come back to. And therefore people do need a low-cost, easy to use vehicle for saving.

Could I move you on to another couple of topics. Looking back over last week, do you think there are any lessons to be learned about your family's purchase of these flats and the amount of information that was given out, and the way it was handled, or do you think it is actually it is just got up by the media?

I think we have said all we need to say on that. This is just part of what comes with the territory nowadays. And what is important is for me to carry on focusing on the things people would want me to focus on, which are public services and the economy, and Europe and Iraq and crime and all the things that matter. And I have just learned this lesson over a number of years that you just mustn't get distracted from those things, and this type of media frenzy will come and it will go.

But there's nothing that you or the family should feel that you have done incompetently or wrong or whatever?

Well, I think that is for ... the things we have said on this already. I've spent a long time on these things.



He also talks about a few other issues. If you can hack reading more, let me know & I'll post it.

SJ