Article about Tony Blair

[thedaffodils]

Tony Blair's suntan preceded him by a good yard, a halo of burnished prosperity. The former PM had vouchsafed an hour of his (these days plentiful) time to a committee of MPs interested in international development.


Mr Blair is the Middle East representative of the Quartet these days but few of us were there simply to hear his views on Gaza. We wanted to run a measure over the old fraud, see how he was bearing up and listen closely in case he said something unhelpful about Gordon Brown.


The event took place in the Thatcher Room. That must have niggled a bit. Why no Blair Room yet? Why no equestrian statue of Tony in Parliament Square with the poor ruddy British taxpayer as his mount?

Hi! The quote above is the foremost paragraphs from an article by a Daily Mail's columnist. Would you please answer me the following questions? Thank you.

Q1: (Tony Blair's suntan) preceded him by a good yard =?

Q2: Thatcher Room=?

Q3: That must have niggled a bit =? What does "that" refer to here?

Q4: Who is "the poor ruddy British taxpayer"?

[Anglika]

Hi! The quote above is the foremost paragraphs from an article by a Daily Mail's columnist. Would you please answer me the following questions? Thank you.

Q1: (Tony Blair's suntan) preceded him by a good yard =? Blair is believed to have used artificial tanning, so his suntan was rather too obvious

Q2: Thatcher Room=? A room named in honour of Margaret Thatcher

Q3: That must have niggled a bit =? What does "that" refer to here? The fact that the meeting was held in a room named in honour of a notable predecessor as Prime Minister, and suggesting that Blair feels he should also have a room named for him.

Q4: Who is "the poor ruddy British taxpayer"? Me - and everyone else in the country who is being ripped off by taxation.

Ooooh - they can be so rude!

[thedaffodils]

Thank you very much, Anglika. I don't really understand them completely. Hope to learn it bit by bit.

At least, I can understood basically one article written by a columnist I read recently.

[Kraken]

Q1. Preceeded him by a good yard.

His suntan was to be acknowledged way before Blair himself. A humorous or merely sarcastic note.