Blair's rewards from big business

SO TONY Blair has a new Ł2.5 million a year job as a part-time adviser to the international financial services and investment banking group, JPMorgan.

This is a banking group that is profiting from the Iraq war that Blair and Bush led. It was chosen to run the Trade Bank of Iraq, which has raised billions in 'trade guarantees' by mortgaging future oil production. It aims to make massive profits from these deals.

It is also now the case that Blair will be promoting JPMorgan's commercial interests in the Middle East and worldwide, while at the same time supposedly playing a public role in his other job as a Middle East 'peace' envoy on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU.

The Daily Telegraph estimates that when you add Blair's Ł5 million advance on his memoirs to the estimated Ł1.2 million he will make giving lectures, Ł210,000 a year in pension and benefits for being an ex-PM, over Ł2 million from JP Morgan and possibly Ł2 million from other new posts, he will be on over Ł10 million a year!

All this for someone who brought many people mounting debt and poverty, with a recession now in the offing and massive hikes in the cost of living.

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In The Socialist 17 January 2008:

Fight for a living wage