Tony Blair donates book cash to injured soldier charity
The BBC reports: Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is to donate the profits from his memoirs to a sports centre for badly injured soldiers. A spokesman said Mr Blair would hand over the reported £4.6m advance payment plus all royalties to honour “their courage and sacrifice”. The Royal British Legion will receive the money, Mr Blair’s office has confirmed. The book, called A Journey, is due to be published next month. The money will go the Legion’s Battle Back Challenge Centre, which is due to open in summer 2012.
“As Tony Blair said to the House of Commons on his last day in office: ‘I believe that they [the Armed Forces] are fighting for the security of this country and the wider world against people who would destroy our way of life. But whatever view people take of my decisions, I think that there is only one view to take of them: they are the bravest and the best.'”
Good decision.
I will buy the book and read it with greater pleasure knowing that Tony Blair has made this decision.
This reminds me of the episode in ‘The Sopranos’ where Christopher has a near death experience which he emerges from concluding that he went – temporarily – to hell. This spooks the assorted mafiosi into fearing that they are going to hell too and Paulie Walnuts decides the way to solve the problem and avoid hell is to make a large donation to the church. He is suitably affronted when the priest points out to him that it’s not quite as simple as that.
Moral:
IT’S NOT LIKE PAYING A FINE TONE!!!!!!!!
White Rabbit – Indeed.
So this is why he is charging for book signing, is it?
He is giving all that money away because the spin-offs from the book will compensate him financially. He is able to look good without having to pay too high a price for it.
Like the curate’s egg: good in parts.
http://peterreynolds.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/tony-blair-on-course/
Curmudgeons, ingrates, snide dissemblers retreat! This is a generous move.
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE CAN HE NOT JUST FUCK OFF AND LEAVE US ALONE????? PLEASE?
(apologies for the unusual use of upper case)
A month ago I wrote Estate Planning for the Entrepreneur
a most interesting manifestation has just occured.
A couple of clients have called to ask what this would mean in cash terms by way of a legacy as they had read the earlier post. My response has been: we do not know the details of the gift. But if Mr. Blair wanted to make the biggest difference possible, he should have written a clause in his will that would give the copyright and all of the income from the book to the Royal British Legion in perpetuity.
and that would involve the added bonus of him being dead of course.