Tory Funder: Aiming For 10 Million XM8s by 2021

The man-child conservative Winston Churchill (above with Thompson sub-machine gun) would be absolutely delighted. It's official! The Electoral Commision report some donation action from a gentleman known to both his friends and his very respectful enemies alike as Andreas Heeschen.

Mr Heeschen who cleaned up in detergents before diversifying his interests has donated £58,000 to the Conservative Party over the last year. So what's his main squeeze business-wise these days?

That will be triggers. Since 6 December 2002 Andreas has been one of four principals of Heckler & Koch, manufacturer of the very fine XM8 (exterminate! exterminate!) assault rifle as well as a goodly range of fine submachine guns, classic handguns and fearsome technical knifes.


Heeschen and his pals bought the company from Royal Ordnance, a daughter of British Aerospace Plc (known as Bae Systems today) who had owned it for almost 12 years. It was founded in Germany by the Mauser engineers Edmund Heckler, Theodor Koch and Alex Seidel who were it seems at a bit of a loose end in 1949.

By 2021 Heescher's squad plan to be producing almost a million XM8s per annum. Depending on the growth between 2005 when this precision instrument was first introduced launched and that date they will have perhaps put 10 million of these babies onto the planet. Very industrious. If each kill ten people - a modest aim - that's the population of Germany. Kaput.

David Osler pointed me at the story and thinks Andreas had better watch out. New Labour he says know just exactly how to deal with hecklers. He offers the lifelong pacifist Walter Wolfgang as correspondent. Which is a bit of a stretch. But opposites do of course attract.