Not Claiming Benefits

Well, isn't this cosy. Ann Taylor, who was minister for throwing money at arms dealers for a year and minister for treaty circumvention and foreigner detrimentation between 2008 and the general election, has got a nice new job with a firm of arms dealers called Thales. Taylor dealt with Thales on a regular basis during her time at the Ministry for War and the Colonies, and has evidently managed to maintain an amicable working relationship despite the firm being responsible for two aircraft carriers which are one and a half thousand million pounds over budget. No doubt Taylor did her best to argue against the penalty clauses which prevent the present Government cancelling one of the carriers; no doubt it is a tribute to her competence and her concern for Britain's security that her relationship with Thales nevertheless retained its amicability.

Taylor, a former tenant of the Reverend Tony, is the latest of several former War Office personnel to find a happy home in the arms industry, despite all the forthright effort they put in to making certain that profit does not come before the interests of the British people and the safety of British troops. Thales UK alone has a cross-party cabal of three former apparatchiki on its advisory board, and is chaired by a former Conservative Minister for New Toys, Roger Freeman. In order to avoid any whiff of corruption, Taylor has been told that she cannot personally lobby ministers or civil servants for the next seventeen months, under a code of conduct which Freeman proposed and Taylor introduced.