#tony blaire

[eaglesnick]

“We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - Peter Mandelson

The other day I made the assertion that when the people of Britain voted for Keir Starmer, what they were really getting was Tony Blaire. To be fair this was partly tongue-in-cheek but having read the Kings Speech setting out the Labour Party's plans to change Britain it is closer to the truth than is comfortable.

The Tony Blaire Institute for Global Change has a paper entitled: The Economic Case for Reimagining the State that was published July 9th, 2024, just five days after the UK elections. Some of the wording in this report is almost identical to some of the wording in the Kings Speech.

Tony Blaire Institute:  “reforming the UK’s antiquated planning system is a high priority that could unlock much needed infrastructure investment and help un-gum the UK’s housing market.”

Kings Speech: “My Ministers will get Britain building, including through planning reform, as they seek to accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure and housing."

Tony Blaire: "Normalization of relations with the EU: A full reversal of these losses may be politically unattainable during this Parliament, but there is a path to a better post-Brexit relationship in the coming years"

Kings Speech: My Government will seek to reset the relationship with European partners and work to improve the United Kingdom's trade and investment relationship with the European Union

Tony Blaire: "The new government will need to lean in to support the diffusion of AI-era tech across the economy by adopting a pro-innovation, pro-technology stance, as advocated by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.”

Kings Speech: "It will seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models.”

The Kings Speech is, by necessity, very brief and gives virtually no detail how the government’s aims are to be achieved. We will have to wait and see how much more of Keir Starmer’s vision for the future of Britain mirrors that of Tony Blaire. If Starmer is as closely aligned to Blaire as these comparisons suggest then public sector workers beware.

Blaire places great reliance on the introduction of artificial intelligence to ALL sectors of the economy, but  especially within the public sector. Once introduced Blaire predicts a productivity gain of “one-fifth workforce time”

 Public sector workers, having adopted the new AI and having increased productivity by 20% can then expect the sack.

“If the government chooses to bank these time savings and reduce the size of the workforce, this could result in annual net savings of £10 billion per year by the end of this Parliament and £34 billion per year by the end of the next – enough to pay for the entire defence budget.”

This is the true Blairite mindset. Nothing about sharing the productivity gains made by workers in the form of higher wages, nothing about the redistribution of wealth or tackling income inequality. In Blaire’s Case for Reimagining the State poverty is not mentioned once. Inequality gets one mention but only as a statistic relating to workers forced to use food banks. 

What Blaire and Starmer – like the Conservative Party - appear to have forgotten is that  public services are exactly that –  services.  Yes they need to be efficient and cost effective but NOT to the extent that the service element is lost. The rich can afford to buy service, ordinary working people have to rely upon government for basic services and over the last few years they have been badly let down.  Poor pay, increasing workloads, job insecurity and private sector creep have all contributed to bringing Britain’s public services to the verge of collapse. Let us all hope Starmer and Blaire don’t push them completely over the edge.

[actaecon]

Tony Fucking Blaire by Kennard Phillips

[sayruq]

That evil scumbag isn't satisfied with all the blood he has already spilled, he is now the head of a team plotting to push 2.3 million Palestinians into Egypt.

[justprettywordsmydear]

britpop and blair

[starmergeddon]

[scavengedluxury]

Happy 10 year anniversary of Tony Blair’s 2014 Christmas card, where he looks like he’s about to smash up a flat roof estate pub.

[invisibleicewands]

[misspeppermint2003]

⭐️ Weekly Fandom Vote (Round 5) ⭐️

[thetimelordbatgirl]

...What UK is this fucker living in???? Because the one everyone else is living in literally hates people trying to get benefits so much, you can show up with an actual diagnois and years and years of medical records and you'll still get rejected and have to appeal just to try and get the benefits.

[sashathegreyhound]

"As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;

as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it;

as he was valiant, I honour him;

but as he was ambitious; I slew him"

[gaylittlebillionaires]

happy the deal (2003) thursday

[eaglesnick]

“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”

Sydney J. Harris

Yesterday we saw further reason to question/fear Sir Kier Starmer’s close alignment to the views of Tony Blaire.

The Tony Blaire Institute for Global Change paper, “The Case for Reimagining the State”, of which several ideas appeared in the Kings Speech this week, relies heavily on deploying artificial intelligence to “unlock economic growth”.

Blaire believes that raising living standards, improving the public finances and increasing productivity all depend on "technological progress". According to Blaire, we should wholeheartedly embrace “the transformative power of AI-era technology to reimagine the state”

Whereas I fully believe AI has a major role in all our futures, I think yesterdays IT outage demonstrated beyond doubt that reliance on IT is more a gesture of faith than level headed realism. Airlines, banks, broadcasters, healthcare, and many other sectors of the economy were paralysed because of a simple update mistake. Think how much more serious things could have been if this had been a deliberate cyber attack or if the faulty update had been AI generated.

Over reliance on IT is a weakness. Many have likened yesterday’s IT outage to the Covid pandemic where countries all across the world, and especially here in Britain, were totally unprepared for what unfolded.

Information technology experts in the UK issued this warning regarding cyber pandemics.

“The Government needs to consider the risk that comes with so few companies controlling so much of our essential infrastructure.  In all industries, Government should see the value of more competition in their supply chains, and work to increase the number of companies that provide these essential services and avoid monopolies controlling our national infrastructure.” (Dafydd Vaughan: quoted in Evening Standard: 19/07/24)

Good advice, but it doesn't go far enough. Stamford University has highlighted our deferential behaviour when it comes to AI decision-making.

“In theory, a human collaborating with an AI system should make better decisions than either working alone. But humans often accept an AI system’s recommended decision even when it is wrong – a conundrum called AI overreliance."  (‘AI Overreliance Is a Problem: Are Explanations a Solution’: 13/03/23)

In answer to their own question, Stamford University found that

“…explanations have no impact on overreliance if the task is hard and the explanation is complex, or if the task is easy and the explanation is also easy."

The Tony Blaire institute, and by default Sir Keir Starmer, should take note of overreliance on AI to solve the country’s ills as it would seem the fourth industrial revolution has a little way to go yet.

[reusedtvseriescostumes]

This Black Jacket worn on Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester in Supernatural: Rock Never Dies (2016) and worn later on Dominic Sherwood as Jace Wayland in Shadowhunters (2017) and worn again on Blair Redford as John Proudstar in The Gifted (2018) and last worn on Christian Navarro as Tony Padilla in 13 Reasons Why: The World Closing In (2019)

[ellery-six]

Chopper and Carrot in Mirro-world inspired by Mary Blair’s concept artwork for D!sney’s Alice in Wonderland. I loved how the Whole Cake Island arc referenced bits of Alice in Wonderland, which I’ve also always loved. It’s actually not too hard to imagine a lot of scenes from One Piece in Mary Blair’s signature concept-art style, I am going to try and do some more 🙂 I’m bored with my usual stuff 😴

[libdeminomenon]