11/03/2010

Did someone just try and buy out the UK government?

Which is more or less the title of this latest entry in Charlie Stross's blog. Let me tell you, it's some day when I find a speech by an elderly member of the House of Lords quite gripping. Even if he does turn ut to be lacking a few shingles from the roof. Last I heard it's going viral (according to Charlie's last posting on Facebook) with upwards of a couple hundred thousand hits on Charlie's blog in just a few hours.

It's jaw-dropping stuff either way. Here's a clip (via Charlie, via someone on LJ, via Hansard, the official minutes of the House of Lords), taken from Lord James of Blackheath's speech:

"For the past 20 weeks I have been engaged in a very strange dialogue with the two noble Lords, in the course of which I have been trying to bring to their attention the willing availability of a strange organisation which wishes to make a great deal of money available to assist the recovery of the economy in this country. For want of a better name, I shall call it foundation X. That is not its real name, but it will do for the moment. Foundation X was introduced to me 20 weeks ago last week by an eminent City firm, which is FSA controlled. Its chairman came to me and said, "We have this extraordinary request to assist in a major financial reconstruction. It is megabucks, but we need your help to assist us in understanding whether this business is legitimate". I had the biggest put-down of my life from my noble friend Lord Strathclyde when I told him this story. He said, "Why you? You're not important enough to have the answer to a question like that". He is quite right, I am not important enough, but the answer to the next question was, "You haven't got the experience for it". Yes I do. I have had one of the biggest experiences in the laundering of terrorist money and funny money that anyone has had in the City. I have handled billions of pounds of terrorist money."

Go read the rest. 

1 comment:

Orin Thomas said...

Well Apple had to do something with that cash pile ;-)