Posted on 07/19/2004 9:47:04 AM PDT by Rutles4Ever
Tony Blair today launched an extraordinary attack on the decline of the traditional family and the rise of "different lifestyles".
In a speech which risked a backlash from single parents' groups and Labour MPs, the Prime Minister said the culture of the "Swinging Sixties" was partly to blame for crime and social breakdown.
"A society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to others," said Mr Blair. "All of this was then multiplied in effect by the economic and social changes that altered the established pattern of community life in cities, towns and villages."
He added: "Today, people have had enough of this part of the 1960s consensus. People do not want a return to old prejudices and ugly discrimination. But they do want rules, order and proper behaviour. They want a community where the decent lawabiding majority are in charge."
(Excerpt) Read more at thisislondon.com ...
This guy is growing on me.
wants to win re-election, but this guy is a believing Christian from what I've read.
Sounds like straight out of Bush's playbook!
He's got a houseful of kids too.
Reminds me of Austin Powers' speech to Dr. Evil on the difference between the 60s and the 90s:
"Freedom and responsibility, it's a very groovy mix, baby!"
:-)
I agree. It's sad that we live in a world where the desire for safety, security and family values are mocked as being out of touch and prejudicial. Good for Tony.
I've heard that, if it weren't for his brain-dead leftist shrew of a wife, Tony would be right at home as a Tory. Ivan, what do you think?
Tony is awesome! It's about time someone else takes a stand against permissive behavior and irresponsiblity!
Amen brother! Hanging out with W. is doing old Tony some good!
....Mr Blair spoke out in a speech to a community centre in Somers Town, Camden, as he launched the Government's law and order strategy. His words will be seen as highly controversial because they appeared to criticise divorced couples and single parents for failing to give their children proper role models.
The speech evoked memories of John Major's infamous "back to basics" speech, which attacked the permissive society but backfired disastrously when a string of Tory MPs were caught up in sex and financial scandals.
Mr Blair blamed "swinging Sixties" attitudes for encouraging criminals to think they could get away with it. He said laudable attempts to understand criminal behaviour had bred "freedom without responsibility" while a new generation of criminals were more violent and better organised.
"The petty criminals were no longer the bungling but wrongheaded villains of old, but drug pushers and drug abusers, desperate and without any residual moral sense."
Mr Blair added: "I got used to the society of fear in the Eighties, canvassing on the Holly Street estate in Hackney - now thankfully greatly improved - when people were too scared to open the door and the letterboxes had burn marks where lighted rags had been shoved through them."
The clampdown on yobbish behaviour aims to identify the 50 worst offenders in each area and bring them to justice. The measure is at the centre of a package of hardline law-and-order policies being announced by Home Secretary David Blunkett, who accompanied Mr Blair on today's visit.
It comes as Scotland Yard revealed the results of the first four weeks of its three-month blitz on drunken troublemakers in London, codenamed Operation Optic. Figures released to the Evening Standard show that roving riot squads made more than 200 arrests in 14 boroughs for offences including violence and robbery.
Under today's proposals, residents and businesses will be asked to nominate the 50 worstbehaved individuals who make life a misery in their neighbourhood. Police will target them with antisocial behaviour orders where possible. The experiment will be tried first in 50 areas, including at least two London boroughs, Westminster and Camden.
The Government hopes the plans will reassure voters before figures later this week show a rise in violent offences despite an overall fall in crime.
Mr Blunkett claimed the new measures would help him meet a tough new target to cut crime by 15 per cent in five years. He admitted Britain was suffering from the spread of "antisocial behaviour, drug-taking, fear [over] walking down the street late at night". He was announcing details of the five-year plan to MPs in the Commons this afternoon.
Ministers fear that growing concern over drink-fuelled violence will play into Tory hands at the election expected next year.
The Home Secretary has pinned some of the blame on women, claiming an upsurge in female binge drinking meant they no longer acted as a restraining influence on men. He pledged to act if extended pub opening hours under the new Licensing Act brought a rise in violence.
'splains why he never liked Clinton.
"Blair Attacks "Swinging 60's""
G-d damn hippies.
Liberty without responsibility is destructive and leads to inevitable tyranny. That's what the founders of this nation knew and this generation has forgotten or dismissed. Self-government can only exist if the people are willing to be responsibile for themselves.
BTTT
Inside every bleeding-heart moderate/socialist/leftist, there's a conservative just screaming to get out. Unfortunately, it takes real world experiences like getting mugged, seeing 3000 Americans die on a beautiful tuesday morning, or having the government confiscate half your paycheck for most people to realize it. Glad to see Blair's war credentials are being matched by his moral credentials. The guy grows on me every day.
i blame benny hill
Now if he'd just back quietly away from his attacks on foxhunting and country life, we'd be all set.
ping!
OH BOY...I just love it.
Hooray for Tony Blair!
Who, more than us members of that generation, have the entitlement and ability to be self-critical. There have been recent articles and reports of drops in crime, drug use, lower teen pregnancy, etc. and I can't help but think this is the best news for the future that I've heard in a while. Fortunately, somehow, we managed to raise a generation that seems to have seen through and rejected the worst effects of our self-indulgence. My/our generation was spoiled and given far more credit than we deserved mostly by a media and other so called adults of that time who fostered this 'rebellion' for their own purposes. We then proceeded to operate from an abiding sense that we, unlike any previous generation, had discovered the essential elements of right and wrong and way, way too many of us stayed in that mind set as cases of arrested development who created or fostered much of today's societal ills.
Don't get me wrong. It was a blast. And I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But, hopefully, some of us got it - or are getting it.
Finally.
All in all, I'm starting to get some hope that things will be in good hands - in spite of us.
bump for Tony Blair
The leftist hordes aren't going to like Tony straying off the plantation.
Paging Mr. Clinton, Paging Mr. Clinton, please step to the white courtesy phone, we have a call for you ...
Down with yobbish behavior.
I think we are responsible for the way we live.
We can't blame Jefferson or Lincoln or Marx for our present politics. We can't blame Roosevelt or Hoover or Reagan for our current budget decisions. We can't blame Pope Urban II or Martin Luther or Confucius for our current religious beliefs. We can't blame Johann Bach or Elmore Jame or Gregorian chants for our popular music. We can't blame the twenties for the fifties and we can't blame the sixties for our present culture.
We own the present, just like they did when they were running loose. ;-)
And of course, they need more government to solve the problems they just caused. How convenient.
Sounds like he doesn't have any black friends, either.
No need to beat about the bush, Tony. Just say it. "Maggie Thatcher was right!!"
This is very strange. Blair is the guy, after all, who gave the speech about "Cool Britannia" - basically a pitch to completely destroy traditional British society with leftist sexual degeneracy and multiculturalism. He's also presided over Britain's transformation into an Orwellian regime, complete with "diversity directorates" who send storm troopers to break down doors and arrest those who have been accused of making "racist" statements.
Let's also not forget that Blair's regime routinely arrests and imprisons anyone who dares to defend himself or his family from assault from criminals. Not to mention handing over English sovereignty to the EU regime in Brussels. Is this just a case of political pandering? It's very rare for a egotisical politician to have a real change of heart, but its not impossible. Time will tell, I guess.
Watching all the "Bush led us into war" blather from the Left on television makes me want to ask one simple question: "If Bush was lying to the American people to get us into Iraq, then why did Tony Blair, who has access to his own intelligence, go along with it?" Nobody mentions Blair's support of the war on this side of the puddle.
I would never put much of a bet on the Tories. You probably are thinking of Churchill. He was always an ill-fit in that party. You gave to start with what his father stood for and then note that he entered parliament as a Liberal imperialist ad a free trade. A conservative, but more in common with American conservatives than English Tories.
Vegetable rights and peace!!!
Regards, Ivan
I believe he wants to cut the term in which one can get an abortion from 24 weeks to 12.
Regards, Ivan
That is why I carefully chose the word 'grow'. I will mind the gap. Thx
IMO, he is referring to the hippy philosophy.
I also think he is referring to a resurgence in the hippy philosophy. I have heard Drew Barrymore and some others refer to themselves as "hippies". There is the mantra from the left that this (Iraq) is their (this generations) Vietnam. The fashion industry seems to be trying to reinvent and/or influence fashion of the "hippy" days. Icons of the "hippy" days are all over the news... politicians, musicians, stars, etc. There is a definite "wind blowing" and blowing hard, blowing us back to that "movement and mindset" of free love and hedonism. Eric Erikson called these particular social-psychological "stages" of human development, Generativity vs. Stagnation & Integrity vs. Despair. Those stuck in the 60's who feel they have to go back to those times and impose them on another generation, would be stagnated and in despair according to Erikson.
I think that is what Blair is referring to.
Turning back the clock is never an option. This is a one way street and we can only go forward. It is up to us to decide what parts of the past we wish to emulate. We can learn from their experiences, but the choices remain ours and ours alone to make.
Blaming dead people and the way they did things in the past is just too easy a way to evade responsibility. How much evidence do we have to believe that the dead folks really even care about how we choose to live? ;-)
LOL. The one thing that we can sure of is that, however much we huff and we puff, we ain't going back to the Sixties again. Or the Fifties. Or the Eighties.
Next up is 2005!! And you're gonna have much more influence on how we live next year than dead people!
Trust me on that!! ;-)
He's beginning to sound like a Tory !
when does someone start organizing another Woodstock? that should be good for some laughs!
It's hard to say what this means. Either he has repented his former ways or he is playing to the electorate.
Tony Blair was definitely a clintonoid for many years. One of his proudest achievements, for which he had to fight extremely hard, was to lower the age of consent for homosexual sex with minors. His cabinet ministers included an unusually large number of homosexuals, and he himself has been suspected of being homosexual.
He and Cheri are religious, but it's not clear what their religion is. I'd call it some kind of New Wave Spiritualism with a Christian veneer.
But people do sometimes repent and change, and it's possible that Blair is doing so. Even Jane Fonda got religion for a couple of days when her husband threw her out. (Sorry. I couldn't resist that, but I'll be really delighted if Blair has gotten religion.)
Blair's wife is what I would charitably refer to as a "Maryknoll Catholic."
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