It's Payback Time

If Silvio Berlusconi 'fingered' you for a particular role, I should think most of us would feel distinctly uncomfortable and start looking over their shoulder.

As David Mills has found out, there can be a high price for helping him out even if the initial rewards are good. So I wonder how Tony Blair must be feeling now, having just been endorsed by the Italian PM as the 'ideal' candidate for the new role enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty of EU Presidency. Currently, Mr. Blair is busy squeezing being a Middle East Envoy in between earning an estimated £12m since leaving office in 2007 in various other roles as writer, public speaker, non-executive director and adviser on globalisation to people willing to pay £2m a year for his wisdom.


Only the ratification of the Czech Republic stands in the way of the appointment which Berlusconi wants confirmed as soon as is 'legally' possible. The word 'legal' must send a shiver down his spine for the man who describes himself as, 'The most persecuted man in the world'. There are no suggestions of favours being called in although those with good memories will remember that the Blairs have enjoyed multiple free holidays at various Berlusconi properties in Tuscany and Sardinia. But as Tony's good friend, Peter Mandelson, knows there are always such things as free lunches and holidays on £80m yachts and the like. Just tell the public that you discussed the weather and they will believe you.


My memories are of Berlusconi smiling and greeting with a bandanna as his hair was busy being transplanted and dyed while dreaming of nubile young girls. It is as good as endorsement as Blair will get as Sarkozy and Merkel are rumoured to have not endorsed him while he is unlikely to get it from Chairman Brown.

Where's George W Bush when you need him?

Hauntings

I could never be a Politician for the simple reason that some of the embarrassing and occasionally unpleasant things that have happened to me in my life would eventually catch up with me. I dare say that most people are the same as are modern day Politicians. The difference between us and them is generally the thickness of their skin and their sheer front.

I always try to work by the adage that if I do something I would not be proud of others knowing then it's probably a wise idea not to do it. The Max Mosley issue is a case in question and that man has so much front he's going all the way to the Court of Human Rights to have his dignity bought back after his bizarre orgy was filmed.

For Jaqui Smith, expenses had seemed to become a part of family life. Already at the centre of a hubbub over expenses we now find that her husband had claimed for several films to be viewed. She is actually trying the falsely enraged act over the issue that two of the films happened to be blue movies and he got a real ear bashing.

The fact is that there is no earthly reason why she or any of her family should be claiming for watching films at all.

McNulty is one of those great characters too. One of the go getting set of MPs living just outside the limit of the expense line in London and just 11 miles from his 'office' he claims for a second home - which happens to be his parents while he keeps another in Westminster.

It is not a question of whether he does anything wrong on expenses prodecures, as they are as daft as a bag of spanners anyway, but that he has the front to say this is morally right.

Having spent a pleasant weekend in Milan, the local talk is of Berlusconi and how he has had 3 terms in office but continues to front out the dodgy dealings in his business life. Tessa Jowell's husband was not so lucky, having been one of the Berlusconi 'bag men' he took his pay off and blatantly used it to pay off a mortgage while Tessa herself unquestioningly signed off the papers. She later ditched him when the trail led back to the Italian Master and that would be no good for her career.

Blind trusts are another example of good political thinking. Peter Mandelson, a career politician with no other visible source of income, has one set up to keep his investments away from the public eye. To set up such a trust is itself an expensive business, at least £20,000 of keenly attuned accounting and lawyering to make sure 'tax is mitigated'. For such an earner though, it makes you wonder where he gets so much money to have to hide it. The Blairs had one and even though they are not allowed to be accessed, Cherie did so - to buy her young one a flat in Bristol both to accommodate him as a student and as an investment. Good thinking, until we found out she bought not one but two. And there was the small affair of the convicted conman who brokered the mortgages without a licence - and she a QC and all that. There is never smoke without fire and as a lawyer she would have known how indefensible her actions were.

The Blairs courted controversy when Cherie got paid handsomely for dinner speeches about being the 'First Lady' while touring with Tony and latterly in his role as peace envoy to the Middle East, he has visited once after the latest violence because he was too busy lining his pockets on conference speeches, adviser roles and penning the 'story' of his gifted life.

So what is the point of this article today?

Well choosing your friends is one thing but choosing your 'employees' is another. We find that Lord Myners was indeed one of the in crowd of blind trusters who had protected his wealth from public view. Mainly as he was one of the City boys and when it came to understanding how he or any of his clan would deal with Fred Goodwin and the boys at RBS, he was one of the team. We are about to hear the rebuttals from McKillip and Scott, the NXDs who negotiated the pension, and it will assert that Myners and the Government were fully aware of Goodwin's pension prior to him signing the deal.

If the Government is going to lie, do so convincingly rather than just trying to hang a single individual out to dry.

Finally, after his exhausting and wasted trip around the globe, the PM has now told us that tax havens are the next area to be targeted. I do hope he makes sure that all those around him, the likes of Glen Mareno, Lord Levy, Lord Sainsbury, Blair, Mandelson, Myners and the rest have got their books in order. I feel we are yet to hear the full Deripaska story, maybe we will soon.

I feel another set of hauntings coming on.

Here Come The Girls

It’s a sure sign the country is in trouble when beer sales fall – in fact at a rate faster than the recession itself at -5.1%.

Perhaps a more worrying sign is that loonies other than David Cameron and Nick ‘Who?’ Clegg are lining up to mount bids for leading the country. Harriet Harman has bid to undermine her glorious leader and raise her own importance by organising a Women’s Summit prior to the G20 meeting.

Should we be scared?

Probably. For the cynical chauvinists this is no ladies book club meeting or hen party, this is a serious attempt by someone who really does think she will be Party Leader at least and second Lady Prime Minister at best (or worst) to undermine Gordon’s Browns attempt to augment his position as World Saver.

I can’t say I like her. I like her husband even less. Jack Dromey was the man, who as Treasurer to the Labour Party, claimed he had no idea about the nature of the Party funding. Apart from the fact it was his job to know how the party was funded and manage the finances, it was certainly his job to find out as he was in charge of the coffers. But no, he was whiter than white when it was found that only Tony Blair, and his long-time friend Lord Levy, who knew what was going on. They had obviously taken the passwords to the computers, the ledger books and access to the bank accounts away – hadn’t they? Nor Gordon Brown, who knew a thing or two about economics or so he had us believe, who was Chancellor, had no idea where or why money was being taken in or possibly repaid at some point in the future. No such thing as adding up or keeping the books tidy in the Labour Party despite the fact the Treasurer would have to be aware that there was a serious hole in the finances which needed shoring up.

It’s about as believable as Bernard Madoff having a 'Mom & Pop' accountant or Sir Allen Stanford having accountants with tiny offices and two desks in Enfield. Indeed they did – how convenient?

The Italian Connection

Rather like Tessa Jowell, whose ‘former’ husband has taken the dive on behalf of his alleged briber, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, this week, Harriet claims to know about as much as Manuel the Waiter when it comes to her husband’s doings – how very convenient. Jowell reacted very badly to finding out her husband might ruin her career despite helpfully signing forms when their mortgage was remarkably paid off on a house in the Cotswolds from a lovely ‘gift’ by their Italian benefactor's 'people'. Rather like his old friend and holiday largesse receiver Tony Blair, Berlusconi enjoys a life of freedom despite allegations of ‘bribes’; in Tony’s case they were mere peerages for loans. For Berlusconi, it was just a way of life.

Then again, I am sure Harriet has a clear conscience – as does Jack, Tessa, Tony, Gordon, Lord Levy, Silvio et al.

Dodgy Deals Galore

On the subject of dodgy deals, we are told that Jacqui Smith will be hauled up in front of yet another committee with a foregone conclusion over her claiming £116,000 in expenses on her alleged second home – the one she spends most time in no less. According to complaints by neighbours of her ‘primary’ residence which happens to be a room in a house, she spends no more than 2 days a week there despite it being in London where she is supposed to work. No surprises here, I think, as I would imagine this is the thin edge of the wedge of the vast scam that is MP, Civil Servants, National Assembly and Councillor expenses generally and I certainly think she is not putting much effort into her job.

Rising Value

But a lady who is rising in stock value quickly is none other than Secretary to the Treasury, Yvette Cooper. In the skulduggery that is the slow and clandestine preparations to replace Brown as Leader, Cooper has emerged as a viable candidate to at least block Harman’s manic bid. Cooper is the one who has been trooped out to give condescending , ‘Janet & John’ interpretations of high finance so that the public can understand that billions down the toilet is not as bad as we think and the only way to fight the dreaded doom of financial oblivion so neatly masterminded by people like her. I find her obsequious and sanctimonious tones less than credible and if it represents the standard of opposition to Harman then we may as well have ‘Watch with Mother’ rather than Parliamentary Debates and PM Question Times in the future.

And Your Coffee Is Rubbish Too!

After Starbucks's CEO Howard Schultz had said on a TV Show in New York that the UK was spiralling down (faster than his company's profits), Lord Mandelson, ever the true patriot, reportedly used a four letter word in questioning Schultz's knowledge of the UK economy.

Evidently, Schultz had read my blog linking the bursting of the South Sea Bubble and the collapse of the Coffee House Culture in Britain and how his company's decline is similarly linked to the current recession - or at least that was my view.

I think there would be several people who might use several four-letter words to question Lord Mandelson's understanding of any economy let alone the British one.

But that's Mandy for you, all froth and no cappuccino.

From Facebook to Face-ache

On a non-political note, I see Facebook has withdrawn its new Terms and Conditions which would have allowed them to have kept people’s personal information for themselves even if you decided to delete your account. Amid a clamour of complaints euphemistically termed as ‘Questions’, Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) has sought to calm his followers by reverting to the old terms until they ‘can figure out’ a way to do it without any legal recourse.

Many lawyers and concerned people who know something about data privacy think this will be the last of the matter but it is really only Round 2 in the journey that is known amongst the Venture Capital glitterati as ‘Monetizing’. Facebook has been pretty much a huge sump for cash since its inception and despite its extraordinary valuation has clocked up no revenue to talk of to date. This is because it has spent its money accumulating vast amounts of data – the latest is the craze for people to admit to 5 or so things that people didn’t know about them which sounds like a recipe for disaster if ever I heard one.

The fact remains that Facebook is on a race to create a credible and sustainable revenue stream for the future and it has just one asset from which to extract this – that’s us and our valuable data. So, if you have Facebook as your home page, think about this for the future – from there you may enter many other applications or websites and even spend money. Imagine being given a Facebook ‘credit card’ or being tracked as you do so with Facebook getting a referrer fee or percentage of spend in exchange for making your data available to others.

Not possible? Just you wait and see.