I enjoy being off work, at least for a while. At first it’s all about catching up with sleep and going on nice walks. Before too long it’s about not getting up until 15.00 and not opening the curtains for five days, but thankfully I am rarely off for that long. Unfortunately though, even if I am off for a single day, there is the chance that I might forget myself and tune into the phone-ins on Radio 5 Live.

I have my radio tuned in there to catch the football, which is what’s on in the evenings when I tend to be in the car. I forget that during the day the station opens its phone lines to people who seem to actively enjoy shouting unfiltered bile to the entire nation, as if there’s a switch in their brain which simultaneously compels them to screech rubbish and dial national radio stations.

Today’s question was about Tony Blair’s donation of the entire proceeds from his memoirs (at least £4.6m) to the Royal British Legion to help them build a rehabilitation sports centre for injured service personnel.

That’s right. A man who could potentially earn an 8-figure sum writing his life story has decided to donate the entire amount to charity. A generous gesture, no? Well, no, not if you were one of the many boiled-blooded scream-mongerers who rang in this morning. I simply couldn’t believe the self-righteous harping and the frankly stupid remarks from what seemed like the majority of people ringing in. It made me, genuinely, ashamed to share a country with some of them.

Now, having worked for a time answering the phones at a radio station, I understand that a lot of people who ring in to daytime radio shows are at the polar ends of the normality spectrum. But I just don’t understand the pure hatred directed at a man who led the country for a decade, did so with a thumping democratic mandate which he won three times over, and then donated several millions of pounds of money which he rightfully earned to an exceedingly good cause.

Of course people are angry about the decision to go to war in Iraq. I disagree with that decision myself. But that decision was taken honourably, and the man who took it led his party to a general election victory two years later. The reaction to this donation made it seem as if Bernard Matthews had left his estate to the Cute Little Turkey Wurkeys Stroking Society. Shouts of “hypocrite” and “blood money” abounded, from people who clearly had never heard Mr Blair speak with such compassion about troops, and who probably don’t go about handing out millions to charity.

More seriously, it re-awakens the Iraq debate, and displays two worrying trends.

Firstly, it once again shows the lack of understanding that a lot of people (or at least those ringing radio shows) seem to have about how democracy works and what the relationship between electorate and elected is all about. We don’t elect governments (or councillors) to do everything we want, whenever we want it. We elect them to listen, take soundings, and then make their own decision based on what they think is best. That’s what representative democracy is all about. Sometimes, unfortunately, it means doing things that will annoy a lot of people. But if they annoy too many people then the next time there’s an election the electorate can undo them.

Unfortunately this concept seems to have been lost to some people, and it’s especially clear on issues like Iraq. We elected Labour in 2001 to make decisions. They made a decision over Iraq even though many people thought that the decision was wrong. It was their decision to make though, and the way our democracy works is to put that decision making power in the hands of the people we elect. Contributors to the phone in today seem unwilling to accept that the decision was valid just because it went against what they thought. This is worrying, especially given the tough decisions coming up over spending cuts, and shows a potential gap between the reality of our democracy and what people understand democracy to be.

The second worry is the incredible personal vitriol handed out to Mr Blair. Even the newspapers are hinting that this multi-million pound donation, the biggest single donation in the history of the Royal British Legion, is blood money. I am staggered that Mr Blair isn’t being universally praised for a gesture of unrivalled generosity. This is a huge sum of money, and yet so many people today were suggesting that Mr Blair was some kind of robber from the public purse simply for being able to earn that money in the first place. And all this hot on the heels of the Brown baiting which made me feel a bit queasy during the general election campaign. Why the hell would any sane person want to be PM if the best they can hope for as a legacy is either obscurity or hatred?

Mr Blair was Prime Minister for 10 years. I didn’t agree with a lot of what he stood for, but he’s definitely the top PM in my lifetime so far for the good he did. I don’t care how much he rakes in or what he chooses to do with it now that he’s a private citizen. That he has given up every penny from a highly lucrative book deal to support a worthy cause is something I doubt almost anyone else would do. I probably wouldn’t! The criticism, from people who clearly have enough time during the working day to ring in radio shows rather than run countries, is maddening in its wrong-headed intensity, and upsetting in its jaw-dropping personal hysteria. Criticise the guy by all means, but for God’s sake do it with some grace.

Some people were even suggesting that the Legion turn the money down! There’s so many people cutting off their own noses to spite their own faces that I must be the only 5 Live listener in the UK to have a nose at all!

Anyway, rant over. I’m listening to Radio 2 tomorrow.

Rick