Skip to main content

The spectacular -evil- greed of Tony Blair


I see Tony Blair is intending to be one of my successors as an advisor to the next government of Albania. 

I was previously unaware of his interest in the land of the Eagle. So -it seems- was he, until somebody offered him money

After I was approached to advise the Albanian government 10 years ago, I met with Prime Minister Berisha several times and also the then President Mosiu. I tried to give the government the benefit of my experience and my knowledge as an investment banker active in the region. With over twenty years being involved in the region I was also able to open up connections to other countries- like Estonia- who could advise and help. I developed a detailed knowledge of the relative merits of dams on the rivers Shkumbini and Drin, and the impact of one road route from Tirana to Elbasan versus another. I helped create links that supported the low tax policies which did so much to stimulate investment. I can understand the history, the economics and the politics that drive Albanian society. I know about Edith Durham, Zog, and the Congress of Prizren.

Blair, so far as I know, is driven not by personal interest, but by personal greed.

For the work I did, I was not paid a penny and neither did I ask to be paid.

So why did I do this?

Simply put, the extremely poor population of Albania needed help. I could help and so I did. I would not have taken the bread from the mouth of Albanian children- even if far too many Albanian officials would and did.

Tony Blair has no such scruples. He will take  a multi-million Pound contract to "advise" the Socialist party in Tirana. 

Edi Rama, the Socialist leader, is implicated in massive corruption, this clearly does not bother the former British Prime Minister.

It bothers me.

Personally, I hope Blair rots in hell. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are the Liberal Democrats Libertarian?

A few days ago Cicero met with one of the better known figures in the Libertarian Alliance, Brian Mickelthwait . Brian writes for various blogs that I enjoy reading- including Samizdata . Ahead of our meeting Brain expressed "scepticism" about the Libertarian credentials of the Liberal Democrats: "My charge was that when you meet a Liberal Democrat you never know what he will believe. The one who talks to you is likely to say what you want to hear. But the others will simultaneously be telling other people with quite different views what they want to hear. So don't vote for these lying creeps." Political parties- all of them- are coalitions of people who quite often disagree with each other. Apparently we are not supposed to "air our dirty linen in public", but actually one of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats appealed to me was that they were prepared to talk about issues and policies amongst themselves in public. The eclipse of the Liberal Party...
18 comments
Read more