The Which Blair Project?

To me, fashion is a dirty word. Something to be despised. Something for the brainless.

It is ephemeral, superficial and a tool the empty and inadequate believe gives them substance. Because of these things, it attracts the empty and inadequate into herds for supposed protection from the crushing reality that its members have nothing to offer as individuals.

Fashion, like the Devil, comes in many forms – “my name is legion, for we are many”. Talking of names, they are as much subject to the fleeting whims of fashion as are sideboards, the length of skirts, flares and tattoos. I was reminded of this the other day chatting to a good friend who is a swimming instructor at our local swimming baths (N.B. Our principal aquatic leisure facility is, thank God, still officially called “Small Town Baths”, and not “Crystal Glade Leisure Centre” or “Blue Lagoon Heaven”). Anyway, said pal told me about a little lad of seven or eight who impressed her and made her laugh, his personality shining through during a learn-to-swim session. His name? He was called Albert. What a great name! Particularly for a little lad.

How refreshing to come across a kid not called Brad, River, Drew or Angelina. Fashion waxes and wanes like the moon. Sometimes, some names are in, sometimes, some names are out. I mean, when was the last time you came across a little lad called Adolph? It’s just not as popular as it used to be about 70 years ago. Likewise, Hermann, Heinrich, Jack The, Vlad The and Marquis de – all gone.

Christian names are not the only ones subject to the tides of fashion. Thanks, I’m sure, to deed pole, surnames seem to go in cycles. For instance, there seems to have been a rise in the number of Blairs about these days, and they seem to have one thing in common.
Can you guess what it is? Firstly, there was the Middle East war-starting Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair. He was the man who oversaw the “miracle economy” built on debt which the whole of Britain is paying for now. He was the illegitimate heir to Thatcher who ushered in raving right policies not even that mad, old bitch dared to.


Last week we said goodbye (fingers crossed!) to the grinning oilbag’s namesake, Sir Ian Blair, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Yes, the top bitch, the boss hog, the big cheese in our nation’s police forces. This was the man who, when his underlings shot a Brazilian seven times in the head as a way of finding out whether or not he was a Moslem terrorist, then bullshitted out a defence and was somewhat unclear about what he did and did not know about the incident. He was also the driving force behind making Britain what it is today – a police state.

It is not widely known, but before Blair was shown the door, he had drawn up proposals to increase the strength of the police force in the country to 42 million. That would have paved the way for his masterplan which was to have every man, woman and child in Britain permanently surrounded by three cops, wherever they went.

He was also a big proponent of locking people up for 18 years without charge to give our thick coppers time to forge documents, intimidate witnesses and practice lying in court so that a case could be brought against them and so boost the conviction figures.

His plan for lavatory bowl spy cams to be compulsory in every home were only narrowly defeated and his eviction from office has seen his “Hang Some Sense Into Them” amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill put on the back burner.

Only at the very end of his career did he actually start behaving as we would have wanted him to. His newly introduced policy of arresting and locking up Tory frontbench politicians was, I think, a real vote-winner but no doubt it will be revoked now he has gone.

Like his lying namesake, he also had a less than firm handle on the concept of irony. In his valedictory address, he hinted that he had been a victim of politics. Hah! That’s a laugh. He was the most political cop we’ve ever seen!

I hope they have a leaving do for him – and I hope it involves him and all the other boys and girls at the Met having to run through a tube station carrying a backpack.

Sir Ian Blair can follow the fashion by following Tony Blair to Grantham.