I have no words – every time I try to produce some, I want to throw up instead. Please come up with some comments for me.

Big bucks for Blair on lucrative China trip

Former British prime minister Tony Blair was paid 500,000 dollars for a three-hour trip to a luxury Chinese housing estate, state press reported Thursday and questioned whether he was worth it.

Some newspapers criticised the whirlwind visit, sponsored by a real estate company, as a show of extravagance and said Blair, who resigned earlier this year, produced little more than cliches.

Blair gave a speech during Tuesday’s visit to Dongguan in China’s southern province of Guangdong and stopped by a luxury villa compound developed by his trip’s sponsor, Guangda Group.

The real estate company also offered him one of the houses worth 38 million yuan (five million dollars), the Guangzhou Daily said.

The newspaper did not say whether he accepted the villa, while noting that the cash payment would have been 330,000 dollars after tax.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20071108/ten-china-britain-politics-blair-a56114e_1.html

It is narcissistic and a bad habit, but I google myself from time to time. In so doing I feel I have come to know some other Craig Murrays – the ice hockey player, the film producer, the aviation photographer and the naturalist. But the one that I have been most worried about has been in the shit for some time.

Craig Murray, in charge of the sewerage of Las Gallinas, California, is responsible for the turds of some very exclusive people, who seem to take a most extraordinary interest in the fate of their by-products. Is the system functioning with enough capacity? Can it cope with flood? Is it solar-powered? There is never a google where I don’t find my namesake gallantly defending his handling of the effluent of the affluent. I have no idea who is in charge of my liquid waste here in Hammersmith, but in Las Gallinas Craig Murray is a public figure.

So it is with great delight that I tell you that Craig has been triumphantly re-elected by the Las Gallinas Valley sanitary district, after a bitter and terribly tight three horse race in which he topped the poll with 36% of the vote. I am going to open a bottle of bubbly and toast his success, and then I shall toast again as I dispose of the waste.

http://www.marinij.com/ci_7390556?source=rss