[Shadow_Group] Fw: The Socialists Have Bought In

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts74.html<http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts74.html>

The Socialists Have Bought In
by Paul Craig Roberts
by Paul Craig Roberts 

         

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie, have purchased a
$6.4 million townhouse in Connaught Square and plan on spending another
$900,000 fixing it up. The Blairs already own an $800,000 six-bedroom
home in his Sedgefield constituency on which taxpayers have spent $3.6
million to turn it into a terrorist-proof fortress. 

According to the British press, a down payment of $1.8 million would
leave the Blairs with a $324,000 annual mortgage payment on their
Connaught Square townhome. The mortgage payment would use up 100% of
Blair's pre-tax income as prime minister, leaving the couple to get by on
Cherie's income as a lawyer. 

Blair is banking on his loyalty to President Bush to produce the future
income to pay off his mortgage. The British press estimates that Blair,
having provided cover for Bush's ill-fated invasion of Iraq, can look
forward to earning $3.6 million on the American lecture circuit once he
leaves office, along with a $1.8 million book advance and lucrative
directorships, Halliburton, no doubt, included. 

Many have been puzzled why Blair, with Britain's sizable Muslim
population, threw in with the American neoconservatives' agenda to attack
weaponless, secular Iraq. Modern Britain has as many Muslims as
Presbyterians, Methodists, and Jews combined. The answer, it appears, is
money. By hiring out Britain's army to the Republicans, Blair struck it
rich. 

According to news reports, one of Connaught Square's true blue residents
expressed some concern about the neighborhood with a politician moving
in. But it is too late for that. A chief whip already inhabits the posh
residential area. Make that chief whiplash. One of the Blairs' neighbors
will be a madam who specializes in sadism. According to press reports,
whippings are a specialty of her "torture den." 

"More honest work," quipped one cynic. 

The British Labour Party, having spent the 20th century dispossessing the
British aristocracy of their estates with death duties and super tax, has
ensconced itself in the House of Lords with life peerages. The upper
house now contains 500 government-created life peers and only 92
hereditary lords. 

Life peers receive titles, but no country estates. Labour ministers in
the Lords are setting about to remedy the situation. Two-thirds of them
are cashing in on a housing allowance to purchase country homes. 

According to the London Times, the Cabinet Office concedes that the
taxpayer-funded allowance is large enough to support the mortgage on a $1
million home. Lords ministers do not have to serve constituencies outside
London. But what is a Lord without a country home? 

Some of the proletariat's representatives feel that it is unseemly to
purchase million dollar country estates on the taxpayers. Labour Science
Minister, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, whose family is worth $2.7 billion,
does not claim the allowance. 

The question arose: Can a Labour Party tolerate perks for Lords that are
denied to commoners? Tony Blair has cleared the way for a less lucrative
housing allowance for ministers in the House of Commons. As Commons
ministers are often elevated to the Lords at the conclusion of their
political careers, they can make it up later. 

In his great historical novel, The Leopard, Guiseppe di Lampedusa
observed that "things have to change so they can remain the same." 

The aristocracy collected land rents. The socialists collect taxes and
hire out Britain's army.

October 15, 2004

Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for
Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is
a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former
assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. 

Copyright © 2004 Creators Syndicate

 
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