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Justin Hale
Joined: 24 Nov 2007
Location: the Straight Talk Express
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 Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 10:49 pm Post subject: Is this the real reason Blair was Bush's poodle? |
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from the Daily Mail
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It's a troubling thought, but was Tony Blair thinking of his bank balance when he backed Bush? Since he left office last June, Mr Blair is estimated to have netted more than �10 million in payments. There is the advance of �5 million on his memoirs. He has been signed up by the American bank J. P. Morgan at a salary of �2.5 million to do work that is not expected to be very onerous. For �2 million a year he will act as an adviser to Zurich, a Swiss-based financial multi-national. Then there are untold hundreds of thousands of pounds to be made by delivering speeches to credulous U.S. businessmen, and others.
I hope I am moved neither by jealousy nor a sense of puritanism, but the speed and scale of these transactions appear to me to be unseemly. Most of us expect that former prime ministers should be able to obtain the best sum they can for their memoirs, and even to make paid-for speeches, to add to a relatively modest pension entitlement of �64,000 a year. But Mr Blair is going much further, and at a much faster lick, than any of his predecessors.
He is said - though the figure is so stupendous one can hardly believe it - to have made a speech in China for �500,000. The "jobs" with J. P. Morgan and Zurich do not reflect his financial acumen - for all his great political gifts, he is virtually financially illiterate - and so he is being rewarded for providing access to contacts he made as prime minister.
Perhaps you don't mind. Perhaps you think he should fill his pockets with gold as fast as he can. To me, his behaviour seems greedy, though it should come as no surprise that this supposed socialist (what a joke!) should be so in love with money. He was always infatuated with billionaires, and his "freebie" holidays in the villas of the super-rich became legendary.
Is there potential corruption in what I have described?
All this is bad enough, but there is a further consideration of an even more serious nature. I will not accuse Mr Blair of corruption on an epic scale, but nor is it possible to exculpate him. The money any modern British prime minister earns on retirement will come in large measure from the U.S. - from book sales, speeches and "jobs" at banks.
So, it has proved with Tony Blair. If we include the advance for his memoirs, which will sell many more copies in the much bigger American market than here, more than half of his income so far can be attributed to the U.S. Mr Blair was America's limpet ally before and during the Iraq war. I am not suggesting he was driven at that time by a wish to suck up to the U.S. so he could make as much money as possible there when he stood down as prime minister. There were doubtless many imperatives. But we have only to ask how much money former President Jacques Chirac of France - who opposed the war - could make in the U.S. to understand the point. Or, to put it the other way around, if Tony Blair had not stood shoulder to shoulder with George Bush, would he be such a hot property in the U.S.? Of course not. Any British prime minister - and this was certainly true of Mr Blair - knows the foreign policy he espouses, and the degree to which it is deemed pro-American, could largely determine his retirement income.
The worry is all the greater in the case of Mr Blair because of the enormous liabilities which he built up, and which he could not conceivably have paid off without the assurance of a huge income that would have to be largely generated in the U.S. As a result of buying a lavish town house in London in 2004, and a mews house behind it last year, he had by the time he stood down seven months ago racked up a mortgage of more than �4 million - or 25 times his prime ministerial salary. He needed mega bucks to service this debt, and he would have had to convince those who were lending him so much money that he had set up the means of doing so
His manic greed is depressing enough - what an appalling example it gives to the young and idealistic! - but the thought that the foreign policy of this country might have been even partly affected by his future financial needs is deeply troubling. Be assured that I write largely as a pro-American. But the next time we team up with Uncle Sam on a perilous international adventure, we want to be sure the Government is acting with only this country's best interests in mind. As I look at Tony Blair lining his pockets at a preposterous rate, I do not believe we can be certain that this was the case when he was prime minister. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:20 pm Post subject: |
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Then there are untold hundreds of thousands of pounds to be made by delivering speeches to credulous U.S. businessmen, and others.
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It would appear the lap dancing poodle has taken a leaf from Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush I. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:02 am Post subject: |
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| This is the norm. Most pols end up selling their Rolodex via "consulting" gigs. Al Gore does so with Google and Apple (he is on the BOD for both) and even failed candidate Edwards did work with a hedge fund. Brian Mulroney has done consulting work for everybody and their dog too. |
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Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Location: Goseong
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:29 am Post subject: |
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| So it is true, the world has gone to the dogs. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:14 am Post subject: |
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I can see where people with the historical perspective of a house fly would consider this 'the norm'. It also leads them to espouse free market capitalism since they have no conception of the world outside the covers of an obscure economics book.
Excuse me. I have a hard time respecting the intellect of anyone who hasn't figured out by page 3 of an ideological treatise that they are being led down the garden path. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 12:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
I can see where people with the historical perspective of a house fly would consider this 'the norm'. It also leads them to espouse free market capitalism since they have no conception of the world outside the covers of an obscure economics book.
Excuse me. I have a hard time respecting the intellect of anyone who hasn't figured out by page 3 of an ideological treatise that they are being led down the garden path. |
Did I say it was good? Or normal? It is normal now, and that is a fact. But thanks for the troll you lonely old fool. |
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