Sunday, 15 January 2012

Inside the intriguing world of Tony Blair Incorporated

Telegraph
"It is easy to walk past the anonymous, Georgian townhouse in central London without giving it a second glance. But the five-storey building on Grosvenor Square, close to the American embassy, is home to a multi-million pound industry with tentacles that reach across the globe. ......In all, about 100 people are based there, although insiders say it is often much quieter because so many of his staff, among them several former Downing Street aides, are travelling at any one time. The offices, once the home of John Adams, the second US president who established the first American mission in London, are rented at a cost of £550,000 a year on a 10-year lease. They cover almost 6,000 sq ft.

Mr Blair is rarely present, turning up perhaps once a month. An analysis by The Sunday Telegraph of his travels, garnered from published sources, shows that in 12 months Mr Blair made 61 trips abroad totalling almost 224,000 miles – the equivalent of travelling to the moon.

A rough calculation suggests Mr Blair, who launched the charity Breaking the Climate Deadlock to combat global warming, has racked up 58 tons of CO₂ emissions in a year through jet travel alone. That’s about 30 times that of the average British adult.

Mr Blair may have travelled far more than that but these are the trips we know about. He is reckoned to spend as little as two months a year in the UK.

The trips, from April 1 2010 to March 31 last year, included frequent visits to Jerusalem, where he is a Middle East peace envoy; and to Africa, where his charities do much of their work. The US and China were also popular destinations. The trips occasionally appear to mingle business, philanthropy and pleasure."

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