Life is indeed a continuous process of revelatory discovery and self-education.

If we’ve learned two things this week they are that it is indeed true what they say — birds will always come home to roost — it’s just that sometimes they happen to be vultures.

Second, we have had further verification, as if any were required, of the Machiavellian maxim regarding the prevailing propensity of the powerful with regards to the relative proximity of friends and enemies.

Cue the return to the headlines of one Anthony Lynton Blair esquire and his latest financial finagling which currently makes Al Capone look like a cub scout on bob-a-job week.

It emerged this week that Blair, not content with his bulging portfolio of “advisory” roles to despotic regimes around the planet has hit upon yet another opportunity to line his pockets with filthy lucre.

Yes, the erstwhile premier and full time war criminal has elected to offer his eye-wateringly remunerated services to the Serbs.

ow I know what you are thinking: “Hang on! Didn’t we bomb the hell out of them in the ’90s?”

In fact, wasn’t Blair the main cheerleader for the bombing of Belgrade in 1999?

And you would be right. That is, however, to fail to take into account the sage words of innumerous game show hosts, and those nice people at Halliburton, namely: “What do wars make? Prizes!”

It is also to singly ignore the fact that when it comes to back-handed bastardry and blatant double standards Blair yields to no-one.

Blair, we were informed, will counsel Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in a deal brokered by the United Arab Emirates.

This would be the same Vucic who was information minister during the war and was once such an outspoken critic of the former British PM that he was listed as an editor of a book intriguingly entitled English Gay Fart Tony Blair.

Who said international diplomacy was dead?

But that was a long time ago, and now under a contract sealed by Blair’s private consultancy firm to set up a “delivery unit” the pair are apparently bosom buddies.

In recent times Blair and his cronies have travelled to the country repeatedly and, in an even more bizarre move, his former spin doctor Alistair Campbell also cropped up to deliver a lecture in Belgrade last month.

God knows what the subject matter was but I’m guessing it wasn’t about the importance of transparency in good governance.

Blair of course has form with the UAE including the securing of a contract worth more than £1 million a year advising the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.

Oh, and that business about the murderous aerial assault on Libya.

A spokeswoman for Tony Blair Associates demurely declined to confirm or deny that Abu Dhabi was bankrolling the project.

“This project was directly negotiated and agreed between Serbia and TBA following meetings between Tony Blair and the Serbia prime minister and was not part of any wider agreement,” she said in a statement.

She then went on to claim that it would not affect Blair’s work as peace envoy for the Quartet in the Middle East.

Well, why should it? It’s not like he does anything anyway.

On a related theme of international criminality and a total lack of conscience, Jack Straw has been doing the rounds this week telling all and sundry — but mainly the Torygraph, the Blairite organ of choice — about his decision to stand down as an MP.

Asked what his worst moments as a parliamentarian were he said that he once got a nasty ear infection and had made a haims of a debate against Michael Howard.

So, not being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people by backing an illegal war on trumped up evidence and signing off on the kidnap and torture of innocent British civilians one of whom, Shaker Aamer, is still rotting in Guantanamo after 13 years, then?

Straw in what was probably supposed to be a self-effacing revelation, but came out more like a whine of “why’s everyone always picking on me?” did eventually get round to mentioning the conflict in Iraq revealing to the right-wing rag that he still occasionally gets called a war criminal on the Tube.

All I can say is that he’s lucky he was never on the Northern Line at the same time as this column or he’d have been called a lot worse than that.