Sunday Times: Blair axes watchdog set up to stop honours for donors

The move comes as research shows a strong correlation between Labour’s donors and the honours awards. The research found that three-quarters of people giving more than £50,000 had been honoured.

Sixteenth century pope, Leo X*, gained notoriety by establishing the practice of selling indulgences, whereby people could pay a sum to the Church, have their sins forgiven and thus gain guaranteed entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. He then used the money to fund the lavish rebuilding of the Vatican. This shilling of salvation was one of the catalysts of Martin Luther’s fulmination against the Roman Catholic Church and lit the blue touch paper of the Reformation.

In Dante’s Inferno, the avaricious clergy were consigned to the Fourth Circle of Hell: “Popes and Cardinals, in whom avarice practices its excess… the undiscerning life that made them foul, to all recognition now makes them dim.”

Needless to say nobody’s nailing their theses to any doors in protest at Blair’s patronage or immortalising the greed of our leaders in intricate romantic allegories. I would only my hammer’s broken as is my grasp of symbolic representation.

*Apparently, restive cardinals appalled at Leo X’s profligacy plotted his assassination. The plan was to inject poison into his hemorrhoids. Really.

(File under: Politics, Tony Blair)