Fancy being a Knight of the Realm?

**InsaneApache** · 03-12-2006, 16:43

You do! Then all you have to do is loan some money to Tony Blair. Easy Peasy, lemon sqeezy.

A MILLIONAIRE businessman has lifted the lid on how Labour is concealing money given by wealthy backers who are then nominated for peerages.

Labour has raised up to £10m from donors but has hidden the payments because they were made as loans, which do not have to be declared. Three of the donors were put forward for peerages by Tony Blair last autumn.

click

He doesn't even bother trying to hide it anymore.

**Duke Malcolm** · 03-12-2006, 16:47

It's hard to hide after the likes of Lord Drayson. Over £1,000,000 for the title and the post of Minister of Defence Procurement...

**Taffy_is_a_Taff** · 03-12-2006, 16:53

*waiting for Labour apologists*

**InsaneApache** · 03-12-2006, 16:57

And again.

SITTING in a glass-fronted office in the headquarters of his health company last week, a visibly upset Dr Chai Patel finally decided to “break ranks”.

He was ready to talk about his nomination for a seat in the House of Lords — and the money he gave to the Labour party, which proposed him.

“I’ve broken the dam,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

and

He says he has been subjected to a campaign of innuendo and suspicion. He has been investigated by the Appointments Commission, which vets nominations for peerages, without the chance to hear any allegations against his character or to speak in his defence.

Looks like he upset Blair then.

link

EDIT: for link

**Louis VI the Fat** · 03-12-2006, 22:47

Patel, 51, who would traditionally observe the protocol of silence of nominated peers, has spoken out because he believes transparency is now essential for a system that is so badly flawed.

He says he has been subjected to a campaign of innuendo and suspicion. He has been investigated by the Appointments Commission, which vets nominations for peerages, without the chance to hear any allegations against his character or to speak in his defence.

He has not even been told the verdict but the commission, which considers “propriety of character”, has apparently concluded that he is unsuitable to sit in the Lords.

He now wishes he had disclosed all his financial links with Labour when it first emerged that he had been nominated.

I'm sure he does feel regret - the kind of regret a burlar feels when he get's caught.

There will be suspicion that Patel loaned the party £1.5m last summer in the hope of an honour, but he vehemently denies this: “Absolutely not. If they had said ‘you will get this, by signing this’ I would have walked out of the room.” .

Patel says that when he was approached about the loan he did not know there was the possibility of receiving a peerage.

Yeah, right.

So Patel says that
- he made a loan without any expection of recieving a peerage.
- In his own words, he did not even know of the possibility of receiving a peerage in this fashion.
- Nor did he receive any peerage for his loan.

So what is he going on about in the first place then?

Or should we believe Patel II? :

That he, 'visibly upset', and with only the public interest in mind, has finally decided to “break ranks" and reveal all about Labour's 'honours for loans'?

Well I'd be 'visibly upset' too if my £1.5m loan and £100.000 contribution didn't get me my peerage in the end. But unlike mr. Patel, I would realise I would be the last person in Britain with any moral right to complain. Maybe the system is corrupt, maybe it isn't. In any case, Patel tried to make the corrution work for him, failed in that, and now Reveals All!! about that very corruption. The man makes me want to vomit all over my keyboard.