Blair's moral compass? More like a greedometer

The papers have given plenty of space this week to the "ministers for hire" scandal, but hardly any to the activities of Tony Blair.

Yet I find the news that our former prime minister took hundreds of thousands of pounds from oil giant UI Energy Corporation much more shocking than the behaviour of Messrs Hoon and Byers. What makes the story especially disasteful is the fact that Blair tried to conceal his oil contract for two years on the dubious grounds of "market sensitivity".

Legally, of course, it was all above board. But morally? As Amanda Platell said in the Daily Mail, amidst all that we've learnt in recent years about the dodgy dossiers, secret meetings and spurious logic behind the Iraq invasion, there was still "one consolation": whatever dubious means he used to take us to war, Tony Blair was at least doing what he thought was right.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

"Can we believe that any more, as he pockets another £100,000 from a speech to the credulous Americans who still worship him for his slavish support of George Bush? Does it ring true now we know that Blair also went to great lengths to hide £1 million he earned from advising the Kuwaiti royal family? Moral compass? He's driven by a greedometer."

Since US oil firms have arrived in Iraq after the invasion, its government predicts a 300% increase in oil production, which has already gone up from 300,000 barrels a day to 2.5 million barrels. "As Blair and his rich chums cash in, Iraq's soil is stained with the blood of 179 British troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians. What did they die for? The oil to fuel Blair's first private jet?"

Old news, and probably wrong

Money only makes you happy if you have a lot more of it than your neighbours, say psychologists at Warwick University. It's hardly an original conclusion and one wonders why the academics who came up with it didn't think of something more unusual to research. But then universities excel at wasting our money on pointless studies.

In this instance, the psychologists looked at the happiness level of 10,000 people who took part in the British Household Panel Survey and compared it with their income. The results show that we all still want to keep up with the Jones's ie, that status matters more than salary. "Earning £1 million a year appears not to be enough to make you happy if you know your friends all earn £2 million a year," says researcher Dr Chris Boyce.

This sounds convincing, but how true is it, really? In the first place, anyone earning £1m a year can live very well and ought to be happy, even if they do have richer friends. In the second place, most of us have friends who are richer than us yet we manage to get by without being consumed by jealousy and envy. Whatever we tell happiness researchers.