Tuesday 27 January 2009

What do you call this......?

In any civilized country, a conversation like the one below, between a business representative and a member of the legislature would be considered to be corrupt.

In Britain, this doesn't appear to be the case....

The Sunday Times: "Obviously, from our point of view, this would be something we would remunerate you for. And I don't think money is an object. But [what] I would ask you to do, I think, is to give us some idea of what a fee structure would be."

Lord Taylor: "This is absolutely difficult, this is very difficult for me because some companies that I work with will pay me £100,000 a year."

The Sunday Times: "£100,000?"

Lord Taylor:
"Oh yes. That's cheap for what I do for them. And other companies will pay me £25,000. It all depends on what you are trying to do and how much time I think I am going to spend on it."

The Sunday Times: "Those fees are not impossible. They are all fine."

Lord Taylor: "Yes, but these are the sort of fees I get. I am being absolutely honest with you. I am not exaggerating. It's whether I want to do it or not. You've got to whet my appetite, to get me to come on board."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i seriously hope that can not go unpunished. so much for civil servants. and people wonder why i have no faith anymore

Jon said...

A simple question occurs to me – if these four Labour peers, outed by the Sunday Times, were making money from commercial interests, then were the payments declared to HMRC?

If so, why was an inquiry not launched into the nature of those payments?

If not, that is surely prima facie evidence of wrongdoing and we can confidently expect prosecutions for tax evasion. (He said, naively.)

Mitch said...

They are traitors and should be treated as such.

Anonymous said...

Dress them up as wimmen and set them loose in Afghanistan.

Anonymous said...

Mother of democracies ...

Less the Road to Serfdom and closer to Wealth of Nations - replace candlemakers with (socialist) politicians....