Blairs Finally Rent Out House

Tony Blair finally managed to rent out his newly purchased London house, but only for a fraction of the hoped-for rent, reports said today.

The Blair family bought the house, in a fashionable square of central London, for a whopping £3.65 million ($8.92 million) in September last year.

Intended as their home once they eventually leave the prime ministerial residence in Downing Street, the plan was to rent out the five-bedroom 19th century property immediately to help with mortgage payments.

After expensive internal renovations to improve a reportedly dated interior, the house had finally been let to British film director Michael Caton-Jones and his family, newspapers said today.

But rather than the original weekly rental of £3900, the Blairs will receive just £2000, leaving them thousands of pounds to make up every month on the mortgage, the reports said....

Goes to show you that many politicians are financial incompentents. Where I live a local vet went broke and declared bankruptcy, and then ran as a state representative to manage public money.

Will people never learn?

This is one of the reasons why I don't think Blair knows (or understands) about Peak Oil. This house in Central London will be worth a whole lot less in 10 years time.

A lot less? I wouldn't be so sure about that. Isn't central London vastly preferable to the ghastly commuter belt around London?

Welcome to being a landlord. Actually, this case is the exception. In any rental market, there is a ceiling and this house is obviously well above that ceiling. Mr. Blair should be thankful he got that much for the house. Maybe the British government can spot him the difference? I don’t think tax payers would mind, do you?

What I want to know is, which bank lent Blair money for a house worth 30x his annual salary? I know my own bank manager what laugh me off the premises if I asked him for the same loan.

I heard that they think Bliar will get a huge publishing deal when he finally leaves office, so that will pay for the house.

This is all predicated on things going on as normal.

I don't think we need a poll question about whether that will happen on this forum, do we?

What does everyone think about Blair's motivations?

He must know about PeakOil, and his support for Bush would imply that he follows the US government's "plans" with it should be managed. Yet things like this do question his understanding of the issue, indeed many of the things he says, and the policies he persues, do seem to contradict his apparent strategic alliance with Bush.

I really can't understand the guy.

Neither can I.

Some commentators who know him have ascribe a messianic self-belief. He can persuade himself that whatever is most convenient at any particular moment is absolutely true: thats what give him his conviction.

Although I'd prefer a conviction at The Hague

Blair will likely get a book deal worth $5 million + when he leaves office. He will likely also command about $50,000 per speech on the speaking tour.

Clinton got about $10 million for his book advance and is getting $100,000+ per speech. I think even Hillary Clinton got about $7 million for her book.

I wouldn't assume that logical consistency is a valuable trait for politicians, i'd say the opposite. Being able to believe a host of seemingly mutually contradictory ideas is essential if you want to deceive lots of people.

E.g 'UK will have an ethical foriegn policy & not sell arms to dictators..'
'UK is taking urgent action on climate change..'
'The British Labor Party cares about disadvantage..'
Blair is a master at emoting on cue while saying any one of these lies. Then he can either keep himself ignorant (conspiracy of innocence) or tell himself circumstances are different (rationalisation) when his govt does exact opposite.

Keeping track of the many diff versions of events is pretty taxing (no pun intended), maybe one of his personalities knows about PO but another (the one responsible for steady-as-she-goes) is going thru the normal-world motions in complete ignorance.

I don't understand why anybody would pay to listen to Clinton speak? He has a bad habit of making really loooong speeches. His state of the union addresses were some of the longest in US history. Oddly enough one of his shortest speaches was when he had to admit that he lied and actually did have an affair with the white house intern. I guess the man doesn't have much to say when he's telling the truth.

Incredible that our senior politician could get a loan for that house, maybe he used the same bank as Peter Mendelson !!!!!

I just did a quick calc on a 3.5M @ 5% (which is a low rate) & that would cost nearly 15k a month as interest only, or 20.5k a month for repayment. The verage monthly rental income is only 8.6k if the pfigures are correct. So I hope Cheri is earning a wadge to help him pay the debt until he sells this book !

Its also amazing to find that the senior politician does NOT appear to know that rental rates are set by the local council & capped at a maximum rate. This goes for all private property rental in the UK !!!!!!!

Obviously if he ever had anything to do with his own constituency then he would have known that. I believe its high time that the UK ammended the election rules to only permit long term residents of an area to be selected as electoral candidates. Say a minimum of 5 years local residency would qualify you, thus doing away with the rigging of who gets elected by have people stand in a secure voting area when they don't live anywhere near the place !!!!!

Well he'll get his when the "brown smelly stuff hits the rotary occilator" because as everyone knows, big business & the rich are only interested in serving politicians, so they can have their way with the rest of us. Hope I live to see the trumped up idiot get screwed to the wall when he has to declare bankruptcy