Paul Staines

Hard to say. I don't think he has personally enriched himself. Cherie has done some trivial grabby things, the children have had a very privileged upbringing. Euan leads a playboy lifestyle. Blair has effected a corrupt financial support system for Labour to escape the clutches of the trade unions. I believe that Lord Levy will be charged before year end. But Blair is complicit. Blair believes he is serving a higher purpose. He is motivated by that end. it will be shown to have been poor judgement only if he pays a price. Maybe it is my Irish rebel streak, but the idea that someone can buy their way into the legislature offends me greatly. Lord Drayson is offensive. He negotiated his peerage over breakfast with Blair. Half a million quid now, half a million quid later. He is now a government minister. Spend less and raise money from voluntary supporters, that applies to all the parties. They will have to listen to their supporters as well. No bad thing. State funding will only make things worse.

Hard to say. I don't think he has personally enriched himself. Cherie has done some trivial grabby things, the children have had a very privileged upbringing. Euan leads a playboy lifestyle. Blair has effected a corrupt financial support system for Labour to escape the clutches of the trade unions. I believe that Lord Levy will be charged before year end. But Blair is complicit. Blair believes he is serving a higher purpose. He is motivated by that end. it will be shown to have been poor judgement only if he pays a price. Maybe it is my Irish rebel streak, but the idea that someone can buy their way into the legislature offends me greatly. Lord Drayson is offensive. He negotiated his peerage over breakfast with Blair. Half a million quid now, half a million quid later. He is now a government minister. Spend less and raise money from voluntary supporters, that applies to all the parties. They will have to listen to their supporters as well. No bad thing. State funding will only make things worse.

Paul Staines was the creator of Popular Propaganda, a libertarian marketing enterprise which produced T-shirts and posters aimed at the student market. It was moderately successful and earned him a degree of notoriety in the mid-80s in student politics. 'In the Grip of the Sandinistas', his critical study of a decade of Marxist rule in Nicaragua, was published in 1989. He was a foreign policy analyst with the Committee for a Free Britain before becoming director of the Freedom to Party Campaign and later UK secretary-general of the International Society for Human Rights and editor of 'Human Rights Briefing.' [1] (http://serendipity.nofadz.com/wod/staines.html) Paul Staines is a former member of the Committee for a Free Britain a shadowy organisation which was funded by Sir James Goldsmith, Rupert Murdoch and David Hart. His self described role with the organisation was as "a foreign policy analyst". Paul Staines went on to become one of the people behind the Acid House craze of the early 90s and was involved with the "Sunrise" and "Back to the Future" M25 orbital raves that led the police on a merry dance. He features in the best selling "Altered State : The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House written by Matthew Collin, ex-editor of trend bible ID magazine. "Generation Ecstasy : Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture by Simon Reynolds describes him as "a Libertarian Conservative whose day job was as assistant to rabid freemarket ideologue David Hart, one of Thatcher's favorite advisors." David Hart masterminded the breaking of the miner's strike and was a favourite courtier of Thatcher. She would ask multi-millionaire Hart to make suggestions for her speeches. Staines as aides-de-camp was reputed to come up with the jokes. Hart and Staines shared a right-wing hippy libertarian outlook. Staines wrote a seminal chapter in Nicholas Saunder's classic "E for Ecstasy where he admits to enjoying deliberately mixing politics, dance music and drugs. He is reputed to have made his later fortune in Asia from investing in technology companies via Bahamas based hedge fund, Mondial Global Investors LLC and the Tokyo based MGI Nihon Seicho Kabushiki Fund. Mondial Global Investors is now defunct. His current overt public political activity appears to be restricted to working with the Global Growth Organisation, an NGO he founded in 2004. GGO focuses on international trade and development issues advocating "enterprise based solutions to poverty". It campaigns against protectionism and advocates free trade for Africa and the opening up of Western economies to developing world exports unilaterally. GGO has held fund raisers at the Cobden Club in Notting Hill. A controversial Thunderer column with the headline "You want policy? In cash?" under his byline appeared in The Times (December 20, 2005) attacking think tanks as "wonk whores" for taking covert corporate funding. Paul Staines has neither denied or confirmed that he is the author of Guido Fawkes' Blog. The popular political gossip site won the 2005 Guardian Political Commentary Blog of the Year Award and has a large following in media and political circles. "Guido Fawkes" co-edited with Iain Dale the bestselling Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze published in May 2006.