I had a rather peculiar happy thought today, caused by a somewhat aggressive phone call I received yesterday. The happy thought is that, while I am generally regarded as a pleasant and amusing fellow, there are a small but definite number of people who absolutely detest me.
How can that be a happy thought? Well, let me list them. I do not include people I surmise may dislike me, but only those I know for sure are aware of my existence and have said very nasty things about me:
Islam Karimov
Tony Blair
Jerry Rawlings
Gordon Brown
Tim Spicer
Jack Straw
Alisher Usmanov
Peter Mandelson
Gulnara Karimova
Baroness Amos
Lord Taylor of Blackburn
David Aaronovitch
That really is a collection of deeply unlovely people. If I have managed to do anything to protect anyone else from the effects of their relentlessly succesful and acquisitive lives, then I have achieved something in my life after all.
That has made me chuckle. Keep up the good work! 🙂
The list of your fans is a lot longer, even if not all of us are so well known as your enemies!
I would consider myself a success if I were to have a list half as long as yours filled with such loathsome scum. Congratulations; may we all aspire to be so disliked by such as they!
“That really is a collection of deeply unlovely people”
“unlovely”…I can think of many more words that could be inserted in the above sentence.
Talking about Blair…Does anyone know how much money he has got his blooded hands on since he left No 10?. I only ask as I often wonder if he has passed the £100 million mark yet?…
http://tinyurl.com/chxzg5
Sickening,thats a word…
Definition…”sickening adj. Revolting or disgusting; loathsome: a sickening stench. Causing sickness. sickeningly sick’
In the olden days, when I was young and innocent, I used to have a soft spot for Jerry Rawlings because he seemed a rather enlightened rascal.
Regarding Blair, is it true that his recent conversion to Catholicism has rather a lot to do with his ambition to becime President of the EU (Lord help us)?
Tony Blair may have the ambition, but who would support him? And how would the arrival of Obama affect the issue – in terms of how the EU would see Tony Blair’s suitability? I’d love to know what Obama thinks of Tony Blair. I’m not aware of any indications. I feel queasy just looking at him – Blair, not Obama.
dreoilin:
I fear it is only a matter of time before you start to feel queasy looking at Obama also…
With the Spanish national courts now investigating seven Israelis for potential crimes against humanity (after relatives of the dead in the 2002 bombing of Gaza made a complaint to the court), I can only wonder how long it will be before some relatives of the dead in Iraq make a similar complaint against Blair.
Does this also mean that, as Britain tends to be the jurisdiction of choice for defamation cases (due to its oppressive laws against free speech), that Spain will become the de facto jurisdiction for human rights cases?
Sic a parcel o’ rogues in a nation.
In the immortal words of Claud Cockburn: “Roars of applause are nice too, but there is historical evidence for the belief that you get, in the end, better service out of a sound piece of denunciation and insult by some properly accredited reviler.”
Craig,
I have only recently stumbled across your blog via another bloggers recommendation and I can say that in that short time, I have come to the conclusion that you’re a reasonable and honest person.
The list of those who ‘dislike’ you only confirms my original assessment.
Keep doing what you do….because it clearly upsets the truly unlikeable as mentioned in your list…..and anything that hacks them off, can’t be bad.
Kudos to you! :o)
Well, you must be doing something right.
PS nice to see SilentButDeadly here.
“To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing,… since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves.” (May 26, 1939); Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong.
Or as David Aaronovitch famously repeated on university challenge: “Trotsky”.
You can indeed judge a man by the enemies he makes, and you can rightly take pride in the roll of yours.
Sandwiching Blair between Karimov and Rawlings strikes me as both elegant and thoroughly appropriate. It wouldn’t do to class him with important miscreants.
An impressive list, and one to be proud of…..I recommended your blog to some Free Palestine protesters today, hoping you’d be fine with that?
Just finished the book. Well done.
And if I went to my grave having hacked off that list above, AND published both books, AND still had this blog going, I’d be more than happy.
Honesty is very scary to those who seek power and money.
“Spain will become the de facto jurisdiction for human rights cases?”
I somehow don’t think so…
http://tinyurl.com/b8y2ew
Craig Murray,
I think you are a lovely human being, and I often quote you and your website when I post in America
Thank You
Why Should We Idly Waste Our Prime?
Robert Burns
Why should we idly waste our prime
Repeating our oppressions?
Come rouse to arms! ‘Tis now the time
To punish past transgressions.
‘Tis said that Kings can do no wrong —
Their murderous deeds deny it,
And, since from us their power is sprung,
We have a right to try it.
Now each true patriot’s song shall be: –
‘Welcome Death or Libertie!’
Proud Priests and Bishops we’ll translate
And canonize as Martyrs;
The guillotine on Peers shall wait;
And Knights shall hang in garters.
Those Despots long have trode us down,
And Judges are their engines:
Such wretched minions of a Crown
Demand the people’s vengeance!
To-day ’tis theirs. To-morrow we
Shall don the Cap of Libertie!
The Golden Age we’ll then revive:
Each man will be a brother;
In harmony we all shall live,
And share the earth together;
In Virtue train’d, enlighten’d Youth
Will love each fellow-creature;
And future years shall prove the truth
That Man is good by nature:
Then let us toast with three times three
The reign of Peace and Libertie!
All well and good Craig, but who’s the particular gilipollas who harassed you on the phone yesterday?
Judge a man by his enemies – always more telling than by his friends.
Well done.
Keep upsetting the bastards. I admire your courage and persistence.
its nice that they are pissed.
Lets look forwards to seeing them flayed and boiled in quicklime.
Does you credit.
Johan,
Oh just a creepy libel lawyer hoping I’d be scared (yawn).
Craig,
I hope you told the creepy lawyer that you were considering reporting him to the cops and subsequently suing his arse off for making harrassing phone calls. I’d have further told the pillock to a) put his threats in writing and, b) to to get his writ on my desk just as soon as he possibly could.
Craig, you are too modest; I know that list to be full of plenty more unlovely people most of whom are rather smaller household names other than across the breakfast tables of the staff of the University of Dundee 🙂
Take care
Frank
Mr. Murray,
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, but back during Richard Nixon’s administration, he put out an enemies list. Many progressives were absolutely insulted and appalled to have been left OFF of the list.
Cheers to you, and thanks for your work.
From across the pond.
The Dirty Dozen.
An interesting exercise is to try to list them in order of unloveliness.
You get one list if you list them in order of personal malevolence or the number of people they have personally ordered to be tortured or killed.
But if you list them in order of the number of deaths their actions are ultimately responsible for, then Blair – at over a million – is surely top of the list. Can’t we get the Spanish prosecuting judge on his case?
Mr Murray,
Anyone who opens their mouth and says something other than the approved script will be hated. Even a nobody like me. But my haters are penny-ante scum. But yours are truly bottom of the barrel! Slime green with envy me…
The list, while impressive, could do with a few extra names like
Jaqui Smith
Tessa Jowels and her husband
Silvio Berlusconi
Vladimir Putin
Nicolas Sarkozy
and last but not least Dick Cheney.