Why do polluters have such dodgy business associates?

While the rest of us are sucked dry of every last penny, corrupt elites splash the cash.

Figures from the Electoral Commission show that Net Zero attack dog Nigel Farage took £750,000 from his largest donor over the past year. Things get interesting when you discover that the son of the donor is George Cottrell, one of Farage’s “unpaid volunteers” (who happens to pay for Farage to take nice trips to the US and Brussels). Now you might say there’s nothing wrong with a bit of nepotism, that’s just how the world works, but the report notes that:

George Cottrell, a former head of fundraising for Ukip, spent eight months in prison in the US in 2016-17 after being accused of offering money-laundering services on the dark web in 2014 – before he worked in politics. He served time for a single count of wire fraud after 20 other charges were dropped as part of a plea deal.

His business interests are largely in Montenegro, where he reportedly lost €20m (£16m) in a single poker game. He recently launched a polling and campaigns company in the UK called Geostrategy International.

What? So we’re expected to trust Reform with the economy who not only have taken money from polluters but also have key “volunteers” who are literal fraudsters (and are terrible at poker)?

Elsewhere this week we saw something similar in the case of Jordan Peterson, whose polluter-defending ARC Project conference was held in London earlier this year and attended by oil executives, Trump allies, Kemi Badenoch and a bunch of other crooks.

We use the words “crooks” carefully as it turns out that Peterson took $500,000 from pharmaceutical CEO Derick Cooper whose company “agreed to pay an eight-figure sum to the DOJ after admitting to healthcare fraud allegations”. According to the report, “Cooper also lectures at the Peterson Academy, the new online school created by Jordan Peterson, on ‘successful mistakes in business’”. Wouldn’t it be great to make successful mistakes that enable you to casually drop half a million dollars on your favourite polluting causes?

So not only do these polluters splash the cash on nice trips and conferences while the rest of us are sucked dry of every last penny in taxes and inflation, they do so having defrauded the system they want us to believe they can successfully run? No thanks!