New Neighbours To Blair- Get Off My Lawn, You Oik!

It seems the Blairs’ new neighbours in Connaught Square are not best pleased with their pending arrival and have got up a petition against them. Here’s some of the Blairs’ neighbours in full fighting fig:

Even though the neighbours are loathsome snobbish hunt-supporting buggers (see above) – can you blame them?

I wouldn’t want the Blairs on my street either: I’d prefer not to be arrested for giving into the perfectly natural impulse to punch one of the elder Blairs in the face should we run into each other on our way to the corner shop for milk and a paper.

Neither would I be happy about my whole street becoming the No 2 world terrorist target after the White House.

But what the Blair’s posh neighbours (who include way-too-old for winsome-rich-girl yoof tv presenter, Claudia Winkelman) are bothered about isn’t annihilation by suicide bomb or anthrax letter, it’s the sheer bloody inconvenience, darling.

The Independent:

:There goes the neighbourhood: ‘The Blairs ought not to be living here…’

[…]

What has alarmed the residents of the square is the extraordinary precautions underway to ensure that the former prime minister and his wife are protected from anyone who may be contemplating revenge for the war in Iraq or over some other grievance.

If the Blairs are really that much at risk, the neighbours say, someone should tell them for their own sake that it is not a good idea to be living in a crowded part of central London. On the other hand, if the risk is low, life in Connaught Square is being disrupted for no good reason. A petition has been passed around the Square pleading for help from Westminster Council. It says: “It has been suggested that to protect the Blairs it may be necessary to prevent vehicles and unauthorised pedestrians entering the west side of the Square, run part of the Square into a gated community, policed by armed guards, prune or cut down some of our magnificent old plane trees [and] have a police helicopter hovering above the Square.”

“It has been suggested that to protect the Blairs it may be necessary to prevent vehicles and unauthorised pedestrians entering the west side of the Square, run part of the Square into a gated community, policed by armed guards, prune or cut down some of our magnificent old plane trees [and] have a police helicopter hovering above the Square.”

Oh dear. They’re going to cut down a tree. In a historic square, in central London. They didn’t want to do that…

But really at the heart of this petition is distaste and a massive amount of snobbery.

Who wants to live near to someone like the vainglorious, lying jumped-up Blair and his horrible greedy wife with their pretensions and their overweening arrogance and self-importance? And they’re just so bloody middle class, sweetie. I doubt that the pro-hunting types who attended to the Connaught Square Squirrel Hunt Ball will be popping round to Tony and Cherie’s for sherry and little cheesy things.Somehow I can’t see an invitation to this year’s event plopping onto the anti-hunting Blairs’ new doormat either.

This all raises an interesting and potentially very entertaining possibility. Once the local authority’s bureaucratic machine starts to grind into action (and you can bet it’ll grind extra-slow for the Blairs after tomorrow) this dispute could take months, years even, to resolve, especially if the planning department gets involved. The Blairs are staying at Chequers, the country house allotted to prime ministers, at some public expense until they can move in.

That was kind of Gordon Brown, though I wonder how kind he’ll be feeling when he can’t get them out again. I can see the Blairs’ll be the freeloading guests who check in but never leave; they’ve certainly had the practice:

Mr Blair has stubbornly refused to fork out for his own summer holiday, and every year that he has relied on freebies has brought trouble. First, he accepted Geoffrey Robinson’s villa, a favour which feeds the businessman’s sense of injustice at being dismissed from the Government after he placed his wealth at New Labour’s disposal. These resentments are likely to feature heavily in his autobiographical reckoning later this year. Last year, the Prime Minister lighted on Prince Girolamo Strozzi’s renaissance palace. The Prince was miffed to be banished to the stables and Mr Blair ended up fending off completely avoidable criticism.

This year, La Nazione anointed him “the scrounger”. The beach around the house has been sealed off to protect the privacy of the Blairs at play: and then sealed on again to forestall local protest at the inconvenience. Once a public figure has allowed himself to become the target of such easy carping, everything – from a local restaurant which stops serving at 6pm to feed the hungry to the Leaning Tower of Pisa having to open specially so that Mr Blair could enjoy the forgotten sensation of something leaning to the left – becomes a big deal.

It would be nothing to the Blairs, given this record of barefaced freeloading, to just stay on at Chequers on sufferance when they can’t get into Connaught Square. Won’t it be fun if Gordon Brown ends up having to call in the bailiffs to get them out?