Texas billionaire arrested: strange similarities

Your heart goes out to crooks, it really does.

"Sir" Allen Stanford has been arrested accused of orchestrating a $9.2 billion Ponzi fraud in which new investors' money has been stolen to pay profits to existing clients.

The poor bugger had to fly commercial airlines after the federal government confiscated his six private jets.

"They make you take your shoes off and everything," he said. "It's terrible."

Stanford denies the fraud and threatened to punch an interviewer when he was questioned about reported links to alleged money laundering for a Mexican drug cartel, charges he vehemently denied.

He and his wife owe back taxes, penalties and interest of at least $226.5 million, the IRS said in court documents filed in Dallas, Texas, last March.

He should get a job in our parliament - or even better the European Parliament, which is the perfect crook's bolt-hole as I shall explain.

Before turning to that, I see the Bloated One continues to behave in the usual shifty way. After his attempt to conceal the truth about the Iraq War, the facts about MPs' peculations have been published ... with all the details blacked out.

What a twat. As Truman said of Nixon, "That man speaks out of both sides of his mouth at once. Both sides lies."

Brown has operated a giant Ponzi scheme. New taxes and new borrowings are used to pay for all the useless schemes he's set up over the last twelve years, whilst piously prating on about prudence. I remain baffled by the way all the media and "opinion-forming" experts thought he was good at his job. Maybe they just can't can't count.

My partner complains when I moan about British politicians, using the "Berlusconi is worse" theory - a variation on the old "Hitler was worse" theory. Adolf could reasonably have used the Stalin is worse theory. Mao could have said that Pol Pot was worse.

Sorry, but the worse does not excuse the bad.

I'm off to do some seminars and so forth in Romania and Bulgaria next week. In those countries, criminals facing murder charges get themselves elected to the European Parliament because no MEP can be prosecuted for anything.

That is one of many reasons why I hate the political and economic side of the European Community. The whole thing is a licence for rogues. Another is that (although allegedly intelligent politicians like Mandy-Pandy fail to have noticed it) the countries that stayed out - Switzerland and Norway - are doing considerably better than the ones that went in.