- l'Américain : c'est business, ne se laisse pas distraire: (the American, nothing distracts him, it's business).
- le Canadien : typique, un peu débranché et naïf; (the Canadian, typically rather uninterested and naive).
- l'Italien et le Français : ne pensent qu'au cul: (the Frenchman and the Italian think of nothing but her butt!)
A few weeks ago I wrote a story about Blair taking from Downing Street (quite legally, but greedily) gifts that he was given as head of government, and therefore gifts to the country, rather than to him personally.
Now it appears that Mrs Blair has been selling stuff on Ebay, including a watch given to her husband/the state by the Italian Prime Min
ister Silvio Berlusconi, for well under a third of its value.
Blair is said to earn around £6000 a minute as an after dinner speaker (in addition to having heaven knows how many other jobs to occupy his 24 hours a day). It seems that people desperately want to hear about how he agreed with everything that President Bush said, and nothing that Gordon Brown said... Oh well, folk are funny. They like The X Factor too!
Mrs Blair has also been selling her husband’s signatur
e on Ebay. According to the Daily Telegraph: Mrs Blair claimed she had not intended to profit from the autograph, saying she had advertised it to "undermine the market" in Blair signatures, because she was upset that people were selling them for up to £35. She claimed to have refunded the £10 as soon as she had sold the signature.
Why would a QC, with a millionaire husband and the ability to earn between a quarter and half a million a year (despite being, of course, a good socialist) be interested in whether her husband’s signature sold for a tenner or 35 quid?
I think she’s flipped!
Afterthought: With all her money, you'd think Cherie could afford a better looking wig, wouldn't you?
After Afterthought: Hat tip to my mum for alerting me to this story.
It never ceases to amaze me just how greedy some people can be.
And another thing I can never get quite used to is how secretive our government can be, despite the Freedom of Information Act .
This is all about Blair...well, the word "greed" was a hint.
Apparently when he left office, he took with him 76 prime ministerial gifts including 12 expensive watched, nine of which were presented to him by the Italian PM, Silvio Berlusconi. (It looks like Silvio, for all his money, lacks imagination.) He also took a guitar signed by the U2 singer, Bono.
Ministers are allowed to keep anything worth under £140. They are allowed to buy gifts worth more than that at the market value, less £140. (Why less £140 I do not know.) The Cabinet Office and Mr Blair's office are not letting on how much he paid for the items. But my bet is tha
t a guitar signed by Bono wouldn’t be a cheap item.
But here’s the rub. It took a campaigner against waste in government, Lee Rotherham, 10 months to obtain the list and required two interventions by the Information Commissioner. Why is our government so careful with information that could not possibly be of use to our enemies, and only shows what greedy, grasping, self-serving cretins we have had for leaders?
I’ve always been more than a little dubious at Blair’s insistence that toppling Saddam Hussein made Britain, or London, a safer place.
I can only imagine that the illegal (in that it didn’t have the backing of the UN) invasion of a sovereign state; the killing of tens of thousands of its totally innocent citizens, including children, in night after night of utter terror in the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign conducted jointly by the US and its poodle, would have made the likelihood of a revenge attack on these co
untries more likely...
Especially as the reason given for this horrific invasion was to rid the country of WMDs, which were there for absolute certain, but in fact haven’t been found in the 7 years since.
The fact that the invading powers were pathetic enough to go in without the semblance of a plan for what would happen after Saddam was toppled, and that the resultant mess makes people’s lives intolerable even now, may have an added effect of disgruntlement in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
But hey, what do I know?
Well, nothing of course. For me it was a simple application of common sense. Bush and Blair together with two other nut job right wingers in the form of Silvio Berlusconi and José María Aznar López acting, as Lord Bingham described it, like ‘world vigilantes’, seemed to me to be an open invitation for revenge. As indeed it has been.
However, I feel somewhat vindicated because yesterday came (for Blair) the damning evidence of Eliza Manningham-Buller at the Chilcot Inquiry. She told the inquiry that, contrary to what Blair had said, the surge of warnings about home-grown terrorist threats after the Iraq invasion led to a 100% in MI5's budget. A fact presumably hidden from FoI requests on the grounds of national security.
Mrs Manningham-Buller said that the UK’s involvement in Iraq had 
radicalized a whole generation of young people who saw it, and our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam. She added that arguably it had given Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before.
I wonder why Mr Blair neglected to mention this information when he was giving his evidence to Chilcot. Did he not know, was he not briefed, did he just forget with all his money making activities to worry about....or did he just plain, old fashioned lie?
To be honest there is little satisfaction in the knowledge that I was right all the time. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, millions more rendered homeless or injured, some horribly and irrevocably. Freedoms, including women’s rights which were widespread and liberal in Saddam’s Iraq have been rolled back and there is still no effective government.
Unlikeable though he was, Saddam was the kind of man who could keep this concoction of a country together and the blockheads got rid of him.
When will the “stupid white men” learn to keep their stupid ignorant paws off other people’s countries? Eliza Manningham-Buller for Defence Secretary!!
ister Silvio Berlusconi, for well under a third of its value.
e on Ebay. According to the Daily Telegraph: Mrs Blair claimed she had not intended to profit from the autograph, saying she had advertised it to "undermine the market" in Blair signatures, because she was upset that people were selling them for up to £35. She claimed to have refunded the £10 as soon as she had sold the signature.
t a guitar signed by Bono wouldn’t be a cheap item.
untries more likely...
radicalized a whole generation of young people who saw it, and our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam. She added that arguably it had given Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before.
