2007 - May

[El Gordo]

It took me a long time to get pissed off with Blair, but eventually it happened.

I still suspect that he's an essentially decent man, but it's exasperating that he seems to have wasted the golden opportunity of a mandate stretching over ten years. Even the bitter pill of Iraq could have been sweetened a little by striking success at home -- and I just don't see it. Teacher friends tell me of more books in the classroom, and I can see that my local GP's surgery has had money spent on it, but I was hoping for something rather more radical than this.

In particular, public transport was an area that I had great hopes for but I see no progress here whatsoever. I was in London yesterday, and my colleague mentioned it had cost her £130 to get there from Bristol on the train. Staggering to have to pay that much for a journey of what -- 100 miles or so?

Anyway, no doubt we'll all pitch in with more analysis overe the coming weeks but that's a summary of my overwhelming conclusion: a missed opportunity, and one that I'm not at all sure we'll get again in my lifetime.