simonslife

The Twitter community (or at least the majority of those politically minded that I follow) always look forward to when a new opinion poll is released.

I recently got in to a discussion on Twitter regarding the fact that the news often reports when there have been civilian casualties in war. In this case, I am refering to Operation Moshtarak taking place in Afghanistan.

The conversation started after a fellow tweeter posted:

‘Why does the media continue to announce civilian deaths caused by NATO in Afghanistan. What about the 100s of deaths caused by the Taliban?’.

My initial response was as follows:

My relationship with the Labour Party has been a love/hate affair since it was clear that Tony Blair was determined to align Britain with America in Bush’s war on terror.

As a pro-European, I found it difficult to believe that a Labour Prime Minister was prepared to side with possibly the worst American President in history and invade Iraq.

It all seemed on May 1st 1997 that everything was going to be better with the country from then. The wave of optimism that swept Blair and Labour to power was huge and expectations were (perhaps too) high.

For a long while, things were better. We had a new National Minimum Wage, record investment in the NHS, rebuilding of crumbling schools, a more cooperative approach with Europe, more nurses, doctors and police, lower crime figures, 100% of debt owed by poorest countries written off, tax credits, winter fuel payments, the New Deal, Sure Start, free nursery places, NHS Direct, and the list goes on (we’ve seen it before on many websites).

However, it was not all good in my opinion and my belief in the Labour Party was starting to be questioned. Much of this had to do with the erosion of civil rights and Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq with Bush.

Two young boys of just 10 and 11 years old inflicted horrific injuries to