Talk Isn’t Cheap

‘WHEN time is called on George Bush’s premiership, he will doubtless be called upon to give the occasional speech.

”Take my mother-in-law…”

When that day comes, a huge circus tent will be constructed and people will pay vast sums of cash to hear Bush talk. They will then go home wondering how he ever came to be given so much power and what Muslimers are.

But Bush should not be put off because, as the Telegraph says, where there’s hot air, there’s brass – and no-one is brassier than William Hague.

The former leader of the Conservative party, the man who spent much of his time campaigning to keep the pound, managed to keep around a million of the gold coins for himself last year.

According to the latest edition of the annual register of MPs’ interests, Hague is now earning around £1m a year as a newspaper columnist, business consultant and mainstay of the after-dinner speaking circuit.

And he’s not alone. In the rest home for retired front-line politicos, the paper notes how Michael Portillo was paid more than £500,000 last year for a series of speaking engagements and broadcasting work.

And even the thin-lipped Clare Short found someone interested enough in her line in bitter cant to pay £125,000 (earned since her resignation from the Cabinet in the summer of 2003) to read her jottings on yellow paper and hear her speak.

And then there’s Cherie Blair…’

Posted: 22nd, February 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink