Best Of

This is the sort of guy we should have over here.

"Farage condemned as 'Putin-loving, free speech impostor and Trump sycophant' by ranking Democrat on House judiciary committee

Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee, says they do have free speech in the UK. He says Keir Starmer has not shut down GB News, even though Farage has a show on that station in which he criticises the government and calls for bans on peaceful protests.

He says Farage is able to parrot “Putin’s absurd talking points” on TV. He goes on:

"For a man who fancies himself to some kind of a free speech martyr, Mr Farage seems most at home with the autocrats and dictators of the world who are crushing freedom on earth."

He says Farage wants to get rid of the Online Safety Act. But if he wants to do that, he should be advancing those arguments in the UK parliament, which is meeting today, Raskin says.

He goes on:

"To the people of the UK who think this Putin-loving, free speech impostor and Trump sycophant will protect freedom in your country, come over to America and see what Trump and Mega are doing to destroy our freedom, kidnap college students off the street, ban books from our libraries, militarise our police and unleash them against our communities, take over our universities … You might think twice before you let Mr Farage “make Britain great again"."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/sep/03/farage-starmer-badenoch-pmqs-news-updates-uk-politics-live

Here’s an easy way to save mega billions. Sack Ed Miliband

“Reeves faces £11bn bill over Miliband’s North Sea shutdown”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/03/reeves-faces-11bn-bill-over-milibands-north-sea-shutdown/

Yes, Miliband‘s approach to net zero is a perfect example of the kind of bone-headed stupidity that the UK is suffering from.

Refusal to permit North Sea gas when we are clearly going to end up importing LNG instead, making blocking the development permits nothing but hypocritical grandstanding. Refusal to implement regional electricity pricing for fear of electricity in Scotland being cheaper than in England. Scotland could probably do with the support of cheaper prices to support local industry, but no - lets force the wind farms to burn their brake blocks up turning themselves off in times of high winds instead. The side effect of convincing yet more Scots that London cares more about English voters than it does about Scottish ones is an extra bonus! etc etc.

Net zero is a worthy goal! We should be going at it 100% - but we do that by being honest about what’s in front of us, not by lying to everyone about electricity prices & hoping nobody notices that it’s our fault because we refuse to build out nuclear at reasonable cost.

Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .

And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.

Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .

So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?

The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .

Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .

In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?

I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.

If the child has been awarded a large financial settlement to pay for their care for the rest of their life. Then a trust with independent trustees would seem a sensible precaution in the child's interest.

From the Guardian


"She said in her statement: “Ashton remains my family home, as it has been for over a decade. It contains the majority of my possessions and it is where I am registered for most official and financial purposes ranging from credit cards to the dentist to the electoral roll. But most importantly, it is where my children live and have gone to school and now college, and where I regularly live while caring for them.”

Rayner has another property she spends time in, too – a grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House on Whitehall. She neither owns this nor pays council tax on it.

This is one reason some have accused her of hypocrisy. For almost everything, Rayner counts the Ashton home as her main property. For stamp duty reasons only, the Hove flat took precedence"


It already looked dodgy af. Where did she get the money?! But now there is potential fraud, to add to the dodginess

And she's housing minister

This is surely not survivable

It depends whether she engaged in tax evasion or not. And we don't know.

My problem is the optics. Basic principle in our modern democracy surely has to be that you live in and around the constituency? I give a little leeway for people who find themselves removed from it by a boundary change, but in and around the constituents you represent.

She claims that she still does. But not when declaring taxes? Even when the belief was that this tax arrangement was allowable it looked politically brave.

Yes, it's the optics

Even if it turns out she has a decent excuse for underpaid tax, the optics are terminal. At the very least she bent the law to avoid tax, on a lovely new flat, by claming her real home is hundreds of miles from her constituency. And she is housing minister?!

Can't be squared away

That point can be squared away. I'll do it now.

The stamp duty payable on the Hove flat depends on whether it was the only property she owned when she bought it. She declared it was. This meant she avoided the higher rate of stamp duty that's applicable to second (and third etc) properties.

This is not tantamount to her claiming it as her 'real home'. Main residence is a separate matter which isn't relevant to the stamp duty calculation.

In which case, there would be no underpayment. However, she says that there was an underpayment. So, the Return was incorrect.

That might be an innocent, or negligent mistakr, rather than fraudulent, in fact, it most likely was.

Yes exactly. The issue would appear to be the trust which owns the family house. That constitutes an interest in it (for her) such that the flat becomes not her only owned property and thus liable for the higher rate of stamp duty.

They must now ascertain whether the error was an innocent one. If it was perhaps she survives (and deserves to). If not she surely doesn't.

My view is that she should resign as a minister, if HMRC impose a penalty. But, not otherwise.

Essentially, penalties are imposed depending on whether the underpayment was innocent, negligent, or deliberate; and whether the disclosure of the underpayment was voluntary or prompted. On a few occasions, as a professional executor, I've discovered that I have underpaid Inheritance Tax, because more assets of the estate have come to light. I've faced no penalty, because the underpayment was innocent, and I disclosed it without any prompting. All I had to do was pay the balance with interest.

Rayner has voluntarily disclosed the underpayment, and it is most unlikely that she was deliberately filing a false return (if she did, she would be made to resign as an MP). So, the issue is likely to be innocence v negligence.

Could she not have just hired a good accountant?

She did.

So was she feeding him duff information?

She’s throwing her original lawyers under the bus in the guardian article:

“I acknowledge that due to my reliance on advice from lawyers which did not properly take account of these provisions, I did not pay the appropriate stamp duty at the time of the purchase. I am working with expert lawyers and with HMRC to resolve the matter and pay what is due.”

Yes, although I assume those were conveyancing solicitors not trust lawyers and she probably didn’t tell them more than “I don’t own any other houses” - which is true but incomplete

She is being very unfair her lawyers (a sentence I never thought I would write)

Yes, it depends crucially on whether she told them about the trust & also whether she requested specific legal advice on this question.

I presume (not being a lawyer familiar with trusts) that the legal issue here is that she continued to have an implied interest in the property in question as she was living in it & not paying market rent?

Had she simply transferred the property to her husband in the divorce then presumably none of this would have mattered?

(It also sounds like Raynor’s child might be yet another victim of the appalling state of NHS maternity care we talked about earlier, but for obvious reasons they’ve tried to keep that a private family matter.)

Dan Neidle links to the relevant section of the law btw: https://x.com/DanNeidle/status/1963192434684285068

“...A trust in favour of child can deem the parents as still owning the property.”

All I know about trusts is that they’re a legal nightmare & you need to be taking professional advice any time you go anywhere near them. Worse, you can create the things accidentally without realising, exposing you to all kinds of fun liabilities,

Joint ownership of a house creates a trust. So do wills. So does a godparent giving £1000 to a parent to give to a child when they are 18. SFAICS all charities are trusts. Every member of a Parochial Church Council is a trustee. The person handling the cash for an unincorporated association like a craft club meeting in the village hall is a trustee.

One problem, is that the legal structure required for the Wellcome Foundation or Oxfam differs from the needs of Little Snoring Duck Pond Preservation Trust, and it is easy to get lost in the quagmire of the process state.