Rich people burrowing beneath their properties to create new luxury accommodation in London is such a problem that Kensington and Chelsea are banning “iceberg houses,” where posh people dig as many rooms below ground as exist above ground. 

Rich folks’ rich neighbours got angry at their roads being clogged with diggers and lorries full of mud.

But plain old mega-basements are still a thing. 

Bankers who dig mega-basements for their games rooms and gyms. Financiers who get the diggers to gouge out underground art galleries in their back gardens for their wife’s collections of paintings. 

These are all characters in the latest lists of big money donors to the Conservative Party.  

The latest return from the Electoral Commission shows that Edward Eisler, a former Goldman Sachs banker, gave the Conservatives £50,000 last September.  

Eisler has given before — he gave £10,000 in 2012 and £25,000 in 2011. But he is ramping up the money, putting him in  a different donor league. £50,000 donors are invited to join the Conservative Leaders Group. According to the Tory website this is “The premier supporter group of the Conservative Party,” whose “members are invited to join David Cameron and other senior figures from the Conservative Party at dinners, post-Prime Minister’s Questions lunches, drinks receptions” and the like. 

£50,000 may seem like a lot to pay for a dinner date with Cameron. 

But the Conservatives have been encouraging donations with a naked call to class interest, sending out leaflets to wealthy donors warning them that only the Tories can stop Labour’s mansion tax. 

It stands to reason that mega-basements are dug below million-pound properties. Eisler would almost certainly be caught by the tax. 

This year he applied for plans to dig a massive basement under his seven-bedroom Holland Park home. The plans (above) included a private art gallery to house his wife’s collection of modern art, an underground cinema, a “play room,” a massage room, a steam room, a sauna and a “gun room.”  

Despite some reported discontent among his neighbours, Kensington and Chelsea Council approved the plans. Eisler isn’t the only recent donor with a “mega-basement.” 

Arne Groes, the London-based head of global sales for French bank BNP Paribas, gave the Conservatives £50,000 at the same time as Eisler.  

Groes hasn’t donated to the Conservatives before. He matched his £50,000 payment to the national party with  £5,000 more  paid to the Westminster North branch of the party. This is a strong indication  his donation was prompted by the anti-mansion tax campaign. 

The London Conservative branches  have been emphasising the tax and his donation is not only new, but also includes a London-only payment. Groes, like Eisler, submitted plans for a basement, although a slightly less-mega one. 

A few neighbours objected to the proposals — submitted back in 2009 — because of the potential disruption and noise. However, Westminster Council agreed the scheme and it was presumably dug out.

Owners of other glamorous properties are giving the Tories cash. A smaller donation appears in the records of the Register of MP’s financial interests — MP’s must list money given to their local party which may be used to help their election campaigns. 

Maidstone MP Helen Grant says her local party took £5,000 from Warwick Balfour Capital LLP in November. 

This firm is a vehicle owned by Richard Balfour Lynn, an investor who made his money on luxury hotels like the Malmaison Group and Hotel Du Vin. He is currently mostly invested in winemaking.  

This March, Balfour Lynn bought Amy Winehouse’s old Camden three-bed house — for around £2 million, so well in the sights of the  mansion tax. He was actually downsizing into Amy’s old pad, having sold a six-bed London home for around £5 million. He also reportedly owns a Tudor manor house and an estate in Kent. 

Mega basements and overpriced houses show everything that is wrong with London housing. Bankers and investors push up prices too high and development happens on below-ground luxury for the rich instead of aboveground housing for ordinary folk. 

But the people who can afford underground “gun rooms” and “private cinemas” can also buy access to the Prime Minister to fend off taxes on their properties, making it harder to fix the failing property market.

The Senate Report exposing brutal CIA torture argued the abuse was ineffective. Torture didn’t help the CIA find the truth. But it did help them spread lies. 

The US wanted to respond to September 11 2001 attacks with a show of strength in Iraq, even though it was unrelated to the Twin Towers attack. So it made up absurd stories about Saddam having WMD he wanted to give to al Qaida. 

He didn’t have the WMD and he hated al Qaida. So only torture could bolster this story. 

The US captured key al Qaida man Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi in Afghanistan. They had him tortured in Egypt until he said Saddam gave al Qaida help with WMD. 

It was a lie, but it helped justify the war. Now the Senate report reveals that the US tortured another key captive, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, until he said al Qaida were planning to attack Heathrow Airport. 

This was also a lie, but gave Blair an excuse to surround Heathrow with tanks in February 2003. This stunt helped press and politicians build support for the Iraq war vote in March 2003. It created a feeling Britain was under attack and needed to strike back. There were  a hundred articles under headlines like “War cry”  and “Terror Terminal” with absurd stories about “terror gangs ... hoping to shoot down an airliner with a shoulder-launched rocket.” 

John Reid said: “This is not a game. This is about a threat of the nature that massacred thousands of people in New York.”

Blair spoke of “specific and chillingly credible” information. But it was all lies based on torture. 

The Morning Star and others could see through the fake rubbish back then. George Galloway said, in this newspaper: “I see they’ve fallen back on the old tanks around Heathrow scam.”

Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition called it  “simply hype to justify war.” They were right, but unfortunately too many Labour MPs preferred to believe deceit extracted by abuse.