Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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"aussie tony" & the value of loot .....

"aussie tony" & the value of loot .....

As the stock market plummets and house prices slump, Tony Blair, the man who as Prime Minister championed the "light touch" system of financial regulation blamed by many for the current crisis, is enjoying an unprecedented boom in his fortunes.  

The Times reveals today that the former Prime Minister's earnings in his first year since leaving Downing Street topped £12 million, more than six times his previous lifetime income. 

The lion's share of his income does not come from his various advisory jobs, but from the lucrative international lecture circuit where he is now said to be the highest-paid speaker in the world.  

Since his first gig last October, Blair is understood to have earned £5.3m, which is even more than Bill Clinton did in his first year after leaving the White House. 

Tony Blair’s Earnings Are £12m A Year

Freudian slips...

Yes John...

But I remember the Chinese not being impressed with Blair's early rancid ramblings when they paid him big bux...

Incidentally, being mildly dyslexic, my typing — mostly screwed-up by the different reactive speed in my left and right hands — always make me type "Blair" as B liar... Always have to correct myself. Or is it a Freudian slip?

Meanwhile at the coal face of public service, our Costello-of-the-back-bench had the humoured smirk to chastise Rudd for politicising the Aussie public service by seeking to talk with Mr Henry and get advice on the giant cock-ups from the markets... Oh my! Here is the cream de la cream in poking one's own eye. as someone points out in the letters of the SMH (30/10/08)

"Peter Costello, you must be kidding in your comments about the politicisation of the public service. Your bunch wrote the book on this. Remember Tamparing with Haneef." Mark Honeysett Wollstonecraft

Yet the Howard steam engine was not the only one doing it at full speed...

Coming into government, Blair and Powell were determined to unify the political and civil service ..... Cherie Blair - 'Speaking For Myself', Part 1

as well, Bush was doing it by sacking "democratic" attorneys and replacing them with "republican" ones and by appointing staunch conservative (neo-cons) as high court judges...

There... we have the era of the three stooges — Blair, Bush and Howard — coming to an end in a floury of disasters. But while Bush is still glued to the leather seat for a few month despite the US elections in a week (Bush should have been impeached a long time ago) and while Blair is doing the spruiking circuit for money on behalf of the Pope and the banks, we've heard pipsqueak from our former PM. I thank him for his relative silence. May he win his next game of golf.