Just when you run out of ways to despise Tony Blair he comes up with a new one. I'm not talking about his pathetic penchant for freebie holidays. I couldn't care less where he takes his holidays; what I do care about is his habitual lying. 

A few weeks ago, in a heartwarming attempt to stir up some more racial hatred in his septic isle, Blair concluded that one of the reasons motivating the suicide bombers who viciously destroyed the lives of some 52 of their fellow citizens was their hatred of the Olympics. Yeah, I know, it sounds too stupid to be true but, for Blair, it was just another casual lie, another slight of hand to divert the public from the real reason the bombers were prepared to commit unjustified and obscene murder, their opposition to the unprovoked and illegal UK attack on Iraq. 
 
No one should really be that surprised though; from the very first Blair has had a difficult relationship with reality. 
 
On coming to power he swore he'd sat behind the goal watching Jackie Milburn play football for Newcastle United. The reality is Jackie Milburn played his last game when Blair was four and there were no seats in the ground at the time. So OK, that might have been a harmless fib -- perhaps he had been taken to the ground as a kid? Maybe he'd sat on his dad's shoulders and watched the game? But the "Milburn mendacity" is just one example of Blair's dodgy statements. British writer Francis Wheen teased out more Blair baloney when he detailed the lies behind Blair's 1996 claim to UK entertainer Des O'Connor that he'd tried to run away to the Bahamas when he was fourteen, telling O'Connor that: "I snuck onto the plane, and we were literally about to take off when the stewardess came up to me..." 
 
Oh yeah? His dad denied all knowledge of it, never mind the fact Blair couldn't explain how he got on board without a boarding pass -- or a passport -- and the inconvenient truth that there has never been a flight from Newcastle to the Bahamas. 
 
One of life's first lessons is that when someone says trust me -- trust is almost certainly the last thing you should offer them. Blair defines this truism. Almost as soon as he was in the door of Number Ten, he was caught doing favors to F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone by postponing a ban on cigarette adverting. The fact that Ecclestone was giving the Labour Party a million pound donation was pure coincidence. Blair's response to the questions raised by the deal was that people should trust him -- since he was a "straightforward kind of guy." 
 
Blair's lies are too many to list here and there is the joyous possibility that nemesis might finally catch up with him over accusations he's been flogging UK honors in return for dodgy loans to his Labour Party. Blair's plenipotentiary to the Middle East, Lord Levy (the former manager of crap British pop star Alvin Stardust and who was ennobled by Blair) has been arrested; while the police have also popped into Downing Street for a little chat with Blair about the allegations -- somewhat coincidentally on the day the report into Diana's death was released -- it being another good day to "bury bad news." 
 
But, of course, the thing Blair should really be tried for is the lies he told before the illegal invasion of Iraq and his complicity in the slaughter of tens of thousands of people. 
 
Documents, such as the "Downing Street Memo," show just how much the British public were lied to. As far back as July 2002 the government knew that "military action was now seen as inevitable" and that "facts were now being fixed around the policy"; but all the while Blair was lying to the public with his "dodgy dossiers" and claims from his collaborators in the media that it would only take Saddam 45 minutes to launch his weapons of mass destruction. 
 
And now we have the situation in Iran. Anyone out there doubt that Blair has not already started to crank up the lie machine again to justify the inevitable US or Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities? He said his recent tour around the Middle East was principally to promote the "peace process." Sure it was.

Yo, Blair, Happy New Year.

Simon Mars is a TV producer living in Dubai. He can be reached at: asimonmars@aol.com.