Mr. Blair will lead a seminar at Yale and participate in a number of events around the campus. The course in which he will participate with Yale faculty will examine issues of faith and globalization. His efforts at Yale relate to the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that he will be launching later this year.
Praise be.
29 comments:
So that's faith and charity but apparently no hope.
"His efforts at Yale relate to the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that he will be launching later this year."
So now he's starting his own religion? Will he be the deity?
the Vicar cant resist it, can he?
This is hysterical! He's got a job at Yale relating to the 'Tony Blair Faith Foundation', which doesn't actually exist yet.
The old habits of the carny barker die hard, don't they?
I wonder what gig they've conned for Cherie? Maybe weight loss programmes based on a book she hasn't written yet.
Place has gone to the dogs - used to be OK when my father was a prof there.
Alan Douglas
On the subject of faith, I pray that Blair never returns to our shores.
Apparently he has been appointed because of his outstanding contribution. None better. Just ask any Iraqi - while they're still alive.
He joins such luminaries as Baroness Williams of Crosby (Shirley Willliams) in the humourless world of American academia. He’s welcome to it.
There is a terrible streak of austere earnestness running through American universities. Manifested in pompous political correctness and achingly boring tomes on obscure subjects.
Judging by your posts about your recent visit to the U.S.A., Iain, you learnt that that tendency can “spill over” into political reportage.
I am afraid that I could never resist teasing American academics. Not a strategy to guarantee academic success.
One of them had the annoying habit of prefacing all his questions to his students with the word “surely”. This is a common Americanism but I said that I felt he was blackmailing us into agreeing with him. I did this because I was bored but he took it terribly seriously, spent half an hour discussing the phenomenon and apologised to me at the next lesson.
gm - Geopolitics and georeality are not your strongest points, then?
Could you let us know your fields of expertise, as you imagine them to be, so we know whether to skip your posts? We would take it as a courtesy.
So that's why we've not heard anything about his Middle East role in the last week of crises.
You are all unfair.
After Tony has left us his legacy:
Middle East peace,
democracy in Iraq,
a new PM in Gordon Brown
He's entitled to try to make a success of something after a decade of failure.
:-)
Is he as mad as David Icke?
Verity said...
This is hysterical! He's got a job at Yale relating to the 'Tony Blair Faith Foundation', which doesn't actually exist yet.
No. You are hysterical. The Yale job doesn't start until October, by which time the Foundation will be up and running.
That job was as good as promised to Gordon Brown,the rotter!
11:19 - My God! You read the article all the way through?
MHristov - "The humourless world of American academia." Great phrase - and correct.
Just as long as the conniving bastard and his monstrous wife and ghastly family stays well away from this country I'm a happy chap.
As far as I can tell, Tony Blair doesn't actually believe in anything - so what the hell will his 'faith foundation' promote a belief in?
For example, he's become a Catholic - but he was still against reducing the term limit for abortion (I'm not saying that he should have imposed his view on MPs - merely that he should have allowed a free vote).
This sort of 'faith in nothing' religion is best left to the CofE. I wish the RC Church had had the balls to tell him to **** off!
Maybe the Faith Foundation is to encourage people to have faith that tony blair is not really a cheap shyster and a deranged bully.
Whatever happened to that job of being the saviour of the Middle East that Mr Bush found for him? Didn't he take grandiose offices in Ryadh or somewhere and swank about as the Great Negotiator? For two or three months?
I have a feeling the reason we never heard further about that job is, Condoleezza Rice sacked him after he mouthed off about being being empowered to negotiate for the United States. I remember that the minute the State Department heard about his foolish boasting, they put out a strongly worded denial.
Whatever happened to that boring autobiography he was writing? Never seems to have got off the ground, does it?
(What happened to Alastair Campbell's book, btw? It seems to have sunk without trace.)
What happened to that job he had with the investment bankers in New York?
And now he's going to take Yale by storm and at the same time have another new foundation. Maybe, after all these failures, he's just saving faith.
Verity said ...
"Whatever happened to that boring autobiography he was writing? Never seems to have got off the ground, does it?"
He is holding back publication until after the next general election. Presumably because it contains adverse comments on Brown.
"What happened to Alastair Campbell's book, btw? It seems to have sunk without trace."
It was one of the best selling political books in the UK last year.
9:51- Holding back publication. Oh sure. That's what they're calling non-delivery of a manuscript now, is it? And he has so much respect for Gordon Brown.
I didn't know Alastair Campbell's book sold well. I wonder why it did, given that it would not have told the truth about anything, especially Tony Blair.
my lefty best friends overseas love Tony Blair. I don't know why but as godfather to their young children I keep schtum and hope to use the difficult teenage period a bit later and convince them that Tony Blair is a TOTAL TWAT. Sorry cant say it in polite family company but thanks for the opportunity here Iain.
Alastair Campbell's book "The Blair Years" was a best-seller. It sold 130,000 copies last year.
Well, on consideration, it doesn't surprise me that there are 130,000 socialist suckers in the UK.
I wonder how many individuals bought the book, as opposed to Labour party associations buying in bulk to pump up the sales.
And frankly, for someone who had that much power and was able to silence the entire British press for years, and was at the centre of the whole sinister New Labour "project", 130,000 sales is not very impressive.
Any one of Anne Coulter's books outstrips that figure.
Edward Heath's autobiography sold only 15,000 copies.
Margaret Thatcher's memoirs sold about 250,000.
verity said...
"Any one of Anne Coulter's books outstrips that figure."
Not in this country.
12:35 - That's because she doesn't write about British politics. My point was, Alastair Campbell's book, given the immense power of bullying that he wielded, and the immense effect he had on British freedom of speech and public life, has sold very poorly.
Yet an American writer who is a writer, not a politician and not seeking political power, outsells him. His book sounds like a thumping failure. Especially as many Labour organisations will have been ordered to go out and buy a dozen or 20 for giving away as gifts. School libraries will have had their coffers raided to buy it, too. How many state school libraries are there in Britain, I wonder?
For a man who had so much unelected power, this is a very poor showing.
"My point was, Alastair Campbell's book, given the immense power of bullying that he wielded, and the immense effect he had on British freedom of speech and public life, has sold very poorly."
How can you say that it has sold 'very poorly' when it is a best seller?
Why compare him with Ann Coulter? You might just as well compare him with J K Rowling.
9:17 - As noted by me earlier, Campbell's book was a "bestseller" in the manner that anything written by Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-il is a "best seller".
Re the headline of this post: Blair Adds to His Job Portfolio has Blair ever actually had a job? He wasn't running the government he was elected to run; alastair campbell was doing that for him.
Will he perform equally well in all these jobs he currently has? Middle East Peace Supremo - which the US State Department has already slashed off at the knees; advisor to an American investment bank when he is nowhere close to that level of sophistication.
Blair is a carny barker. He doesn't have a grasp of anything. They won't keep him on the payroll although, when they realise the awful truth, they will be discreet about letting him go to pursue other interests.
And next up he's going to have a faith foundation. Oh, God - not just one religion, but "faith". Like Prince Charles, another twerp. And lecture at Yale, which will fit him like a glove. Political correctness enshrined as a new "faith".
And his book is being written for him by some poor writer who is fishing around in an empty pool.
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