The shabbiness of Blair and co revealed...

... it appears Tony Blair, John Reid and co like nothing better than to moonlight as middle men to help British arms dealers sell their wares to the rest of the world (see here).

My favourite part? "Mark Thomas, the stand-up comedian, has done more to expose illegal arms deals than the Ministry of Defence, the Export Control Organisation and HM Revenue and Customs put together, simply by searching the internet and the trade press and attending the arms fairs the British government hosts. In response, the government has investigated not the companies, but the comedian. A confidential email from a civil servant suggested that the trade minister, Richard Caborn, was seeking to gather “background/dirt on him in order to rubbish him.”(15) Caborn claims he was misrepresented."

How very... New Labour.