London Review of Books

April 2005

  
     

Metro

March 2005

  
     

Guardian

26 March 2005

Steven Poole

  

(c) Guardian Unlimited

The truth that garbage gets everywhere is shown by an intriguing typo in this book: "Will you eat that chocolate or have a slim waste?" Spunky freelance philosopher Jamie Whyte, pictured on the back flap hold ing the top of his head as though to prevent cranial explosion from the pressure of thinking, here mercilessly dissects the rhetoric of our leader and handily sorts Blairish dicta into the appropriate philosophical fallacies. Thus, despite that old stuff about a Third Way, Blair is an inveterate user of "the false dichotomy fallacy" (an inconsistency little appreciated), not to mention elitist fallacies, cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies, and so on.

Of course Blair did not invent this way of talking, and there is time for the occasional swipe at the opposition: "William Hague ... promised a 'common sense revolution'. God knows what one of those would look like but it must be better than a slow creep of uncommon stupidity." It's all good, abusive fun, spiced by entertaining anecdotes, such as the one about the time in 1992 when Cambridge was deciding whether or not to award Jacques Derrida an honorary degree. Whyte sat down with the naysayers on one side of the hall, but "I couldn't help but notice that all the beautiful women were on the other side of the room". Various morals may be drawn from that story.

     

Evening Mail

April 2005

John James

  

The biz! Emptiness of PM promises

(c) 2005 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd

Well, at long last the hare is running and the dogs are about to jump out of the traps. lt's General Election time!

From now on no baby will be left unkissed, no opportunity to make a meaningless promise missed and no bland cliche ignored. The posturers and posers who make up the bulk of our elected representatives - and let's face it you wouldn't hang a dog on the word of most of them - will be pleading for your vote None more so than the "President's poodle" Tony Blair who will put on his smug smile and ask us to trust him again because "he's basically a decent kind of guy"!

Hello? This is the man who lied to us about never introducing university top-up fees (Labour Party Manifesto 2001) deceived us into going into an illegal war with Iraq (how many of our boys were killed or died needlessly?) and cheated us over his promise not to increase direct taxation (national insurance increases have had the same impact on the pound in your pocket as if basic and top rates of income tax had been raised by one per cent.)

But don't take my word for it. If there is one thing you should do before you cast your vote go and buy a little book called A Load Of Blair by Jamie Whyte. It is a brilliantly witty analysis of political spin which exposes simply but ruthlessly effectively the emptiness that lies behind Tony Blair's apparently impressive policy statements and promises. The book takes apart our Prime Minister's use of dodgy logic and bogus statistics and exposes him for the character he is. It's the best read I have had in years and Jamie Whyte's detailed breakdown of a speech made last June is devastating in its exposure of the hypocrisy and insincerity of our leader.

I wouldn't presume to tell you how to vote. But remember this. All politicians play the public for fools but if you vote for Mr Blair you'll be fooling yourself.
     

Spoiled Ink

May 2005

Phillip Lawrence

 

(c) Spoiled Ink

When an election looms and the weasel words are flying even the most intelligent need a little help to decipher the verbiage and try to work out what the politicians really mean. This is the book to do that, it exposes ruthlessly all politician's lack of logical thought but chooses to focus on Tony Blair as the supreme manipulator of the media. He has been with us the longest of all the major politicians and is a master at saying a lot whilst saying nothing, leaving those who listen without the ability to spot fallacies, falsehoods, and flim-flam the impression that he has promised a veritable new dawn when he has said nothing at all. He is so good at it that Jamie Whyte chooses to concentrate on Blair's speeches and policy statements in order to let us see what any politician is capable of, given ability and a lack of morals.

When a philosopher examines the words of any of us in the hope of revealing our true meaning, peeling away the self-serving nonsense and self justifications we will all be found wanting. It seems like a daunting and thankless task. But you or I are not at the helm of vastly powerful armies, our decisions do not alter the economy, our finger is not on a little red button. That is justification enough for this book, when someone is that powerful their words need to be understood with maximum clarity. Their intentions known. Lives depend upon it.

Jamie Whyte shines the clear light of reason on Mr. Blair's words and finds them wanting, with wit and humour he confronts the hollow ideas in those words and reveals their foundations. He divides his analysis into various humorous headings: “Love me” Describes Blair's tactics for getting us to like him, to make us think he is one of us. “Magic Words” shows us how Blair uses language to praise his own achievements and convince us that his way is the only way, that there is no alternative. Later chapters illustrate Tony Blair's false logic in drawing dodgy lessons from the past, in refusing to lay out his general principles so that they can be examined, in offering comparisons between bad and impossible and expecting us to go for his preferred option-bad.

It is enough to make the sanest amongst us intemperate and Jamie Whyte lets his frustration show with a caustic wit just held in check. One can feel the author's blood pressure rising as he confronts each new evasion, each new side-step away from the truth. He has our sympathy. Now and again Mr Whyte's sense of injustice overcomes his calm rationality and he descends into petulance, but such moments are rare and understandable. When you read his dissection of an entire Blair speech at the end of the book you too will feel like putting the boot in. Indeed I find it astounding that anyone could bring themselves to sit and comb through a Blair speech at all, for a philosopher trained to use reasoned argument it must have been nauseating. Such leaps of logic, such false inferences, such mendacity. A load of Blair has a fire in its belly and even though leavened with humour it is a book full of child-like shock and righteous anger.

Any politician's words exist to do only one thing, to get your vote. Any words are judged permissible in pursuing that aim. Any tactic fair in getting your approval. . But before you vote ask why this person wants power, think about what they wish to do with it, try to follow their reasoning. As an aid in that quest A Load of Blair is an invaluable tool and is worth careful study before you enter the booth and put your x down.

     

Contemporary Review

August 2005

George Wedd

  

Tony Blair and the Queen's English

(c) Contemporary Review Company Ltd.

This short book was published before the general election of 2005 to provide seekers after truth among the electorate with a logician's guide to the thought and language of Tony Blair. It digs into an enormous quarry. One has to go back to Gladstone with his twenty postcards a day to meet a politician who has said and written so much. Postgraduate students will be hacking their theses for the next two centuries from the speeches, articles, letters and interviews that carry his name. How much of this corpus is his own work, of course, we shall never know, since rapid, informal re-drafting round the coffee-cups by his young advisers has been the characteristic of 10, Downing Street ever since he arrived there; but he decrees the subject and the style of every major piece and approves the finished product. His English style is unmistakable, idiosyncratic--and atrocious: this reviewer once counted seventeen consecutive sentences without a verb. He, of course, would say that this is conversational and demotic. He also lacks a 'hinterland', and there is no evidence of broad culture or knowledge of history, economics, art or pretty well anything--except, to his credit, the Bible (one catches echoes of the Book of Proverbs in quite a number of places).

With all this to go at, Jamie Whyte has enjoyed himself applying the rules of formal logic to several Blair set-pieces and produced a wonderfully entertaining short book. His English style is very good, as one short, clear sentence follows another driving his points home. One read the book at a sitting, chuckling and occasionally feeling grateful that one did not have him as a supervisor at Cambridge. He begins by analysing the Ten Goals that Mr Blair set out for the two Governmental terms running from 2001 to 2010, pointing out that he has telescoped several in order to echo the Ten Commandments. Seven would echo the Seven Deadly Sins; twelve would echo both the Twelve Apostles, but also the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. He points out that they are without substance, in the sense that no-one sane would disagree--an echo of Popper's falsification principle. Which politician, hoping to save his deposit, would say that he wanted insecurity for all pensioners or lower living standards for all?

Passing over the gap with reality--which includes the Chancellor, Gordon Brown's, vast raid on the pension funds--Jamie Whyte points out that Blair operates on Lewis Carroll's principle that words mean what he wants them to mean. 'Poverty' is one example. By this, Blair means 'less than 60 per cent of the national median income'--a level at which many people own their own homes, have deep freezers and fill them, own cars and run them. Another is 'investment', by which he means 'any expenditure I approve of', such as repairing roads or paying nurses. There is a latent conflict here with the Chancellor, who cannot call too much of this expenditure 'investment' without worrying about his Golden Rule (though at any given moment, the more 'investment' he has the more he can borrow and still look respectable).

'Hooray' words, warm and cheering but devoid of real meaning, are another Blair specialty. Examples are 'justice', 'modern', 'progress', 'fair', 'equality', 'opportunity', and 'community'. But beyond the words is the structure of argument. Jamie Whyte does not mention a couple of old-fashioned errors such as 'Begging the Question' and the 'Undistributed Middle', but he has a lot of good things to say about the False Dichotomy (saying that there are only two choices when there are in fact an infinity of them) and an old friend, propter hoc, under which credit for every good thing is claimed for the Government (this is the principle under which a rush of consumer spending every November and December obviously causes Christmas).

Jamie Whyte ends with a paragraph-by-paragraph dissection of a major Blair speech mainly on the National Health Service, delivered in June 2004 to a medical audience, who seem to have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. There is no end to the gullibility of an educated British audience when soothed and stroked by flattery. Mr Whyte occasionally appears on TV, where he comes across as quiet, reasonable and rather academic, and usually gets squashed by some partisan rough-houser. But he has contributed a tract for the times, and this reviewer can only wish that it may have the same influence as, say, 'Cato's' Guilty Men which had so much influence in the Second World War.

     

Scotland on Sunday

17 April 2005

  

(c) Scotland on Sunday

Whyte's excellent little volume slices through political rhetoric and soundbite demagoguery like a knife. His final chapter analyses a speech given by Tony Blair in June 2004: by this point, philosopher Whyte has taught the reader how to spot "false dichotomies", "obfuscatory metaphors", the "cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy" and a myriad of sophistical techniques by which a politician appears to be saying something while actually saying nothing worthwhile whatsoever. However, more of an overview of how this eviscerated oratory came about would have added momentum to the piece. Spin, it seems, existed long before New Labour.