Best Of

Is there anything to stop Farage's girlfriend selling the property and walking away with the money ?

If not then this story is going nowhere.

This is the bit I don’t understand about this story. If she owns all of the home, whether that money is gifted or not, isn’t that the end of it for tax purposes? (Waiting for someone very clever to correct me, and as always I am not a tax expert yadda yadda).

Optically, I can see it looks like an unusual arrangement and unusual arrangements always invite questions, though.

The 'allegation' seems to be that Farage has given the girlfriend the money to buy the house to avoid stamp duty.

Even if true that would mean the wealth change is:

Farage -£885k
Girlfriend +£885k

So Farage would be risking a £885k financial loss in order to avoid paying £44k in tax.

Which would be more financial reckless than a Reform manifesto.

Farage has explicitly said he did not give his girlfriend the money.

(Of course, he had said he'd bought the house and that turned out not to be true...)

So how can Farage have avoided tax when he's not been involved in the financial transaction ?

This is the difference between Rayner and Farage - Rayner owns the Hove flat whereas Farage doesn't own the Clacton house.

Its likely (from those sniffing around the story) an 'original source of the funds' question

Which is a justifiable question.

Instead the focus is "did Farage dodge tax", when he didn't.

Farage claims he had nothing to do with the finance of the purchase.
Which makes his engagement of an expert tax adviser to check 'they did everything correctly' somewhat odd

Given the recent result of not consulting an expert tax advisor, relating to property, consulting one to get ahead of any problem seems prudent.

Not if the purchase was nothing to do with you and you had no part in its funding

The hard bit for Farage will be keeping up the pretence that he is an everyman anti-elite crusader. Difficult to do when you are part of the elite. If not this then something else - and it may well be policy.

If the current trend continues and refuk continue to lead, their policy positions will come under scrutiny.

Policy can win or lose an election, even if people agree with the policies they have to agree with the person saying them. Ask Jeremy Corbyn about this - popular policies until you say whose they are.

Farage has the inverse problem - the popular guy who will Fix People's Problems. But as we get into actual detail and people start to actually think, how much of this will survive as people have it explained to them in black and white how the Nigel's policies are the exact opposite of what they expect? How voting Reform will make their lives worse, not better?

I expect "fake news" to be used a lot to try and explain away awkward facts...

The idea that a member of the “elite” can’t represent the “non-elite” doesn’t pass the test of history.

Where did I say that? I said that he claims not to be the elite.

He is claiming to be "non-elite" in outlook, not personal wealth.

Just as Caesar (nobiles, family going back to the kings, immensely rich) claimed to be an outsider to the existing elite - which he was to an extent. His entire political career was in the face of The Establishment.

See all those who have followed him. All the way to Trump.

It seems difficult for those in conventional politics to realise - The Head Count see *everyone* at the top of politics as rich and powerful.

Angela Rayner is rich and powerful - to them. She earns multiple times their salary in their lifetime, will retire on a pension higher than their salaries, owns lots of property, mixes with the rich and powerful etc.

What the Head Count see is an In Group (Currently the Labour/Conservative/Lib Dem) which, to them seems to consist of identikit politicians, selling the same message. Those aspiring to be the Out Group are accepted as the Populares.

The guy in the Human League song is a creepy, misogynistic stalker.

Just saying.

Next you'll be saying Every Breath You Take is kind of creepy and not romantic!

That song, of course, is meant to be creepy and Sting was disturbed by how many people interpreted it as romantic, even playing it at weddings. He wrote "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" in response.

On the subject of inappropriate songs...went to a wedding in Italy where they brought in a London gospel choir. Despite it being "the best thing we do", they were finally convinced a wedding was not the place for "I still haven't found what I'm looking for"...

Did no one think of the bridesmaids ?

Two or three generations ago our equivalents would perhaps have gone to the pub every evening to see the same dozen people - its still the world shown at the Queen Vic, Woolpack and Rovers Return - now we come here and talk to people from around the country.

Yes and I'm certainly not in the camp of those who believe all "change" is inherently bad. It can be unsettling, certainly, but it's often positive in time.

The technological changes outpace the cultural adaptations - we know that. There have also been huge societal changes over the past couple of hundred years, some of which happened very quickly and again adaptation is outpaced by the speed of that change.

When Mrs Stodge came to England from NZ in 1991, her communication with her family back in Kiwiland was either by letter or a short and expensive weekly phone call. 30+ years on, she can FaceTime her mother for free and it's like being in the room with her. In that sense, as you rightly say, technology has improved the quality of life for so many people who aren't in physical proximity - my parents and my maternal grandparents lived in neighbouring streets on the same estate in south east London in the 1960s.

The converse of that it has encouraged or driven what Gove calls "atomisation" (amongst other factors). We can be anywhere, we can be everywhere and we can be nowhere all at the same time.

I'm probably an extreme example - I grew up in cities in 3 different countries, worked in two others, and I've retired to a happy marriage in an Oxfordshire village. I don't feel particularly rooted anywhere, but I'm aware of multiple influences. People who say proudly that they've never lived anywhere but their home town sound increasingly unusual, and I can't see that ever being reversed. An effect of that is that lifelong friendships tend to be occasional encounters without losing all their essential quaity - I have a friend in California who I met last week for the first time in 60 years, and we rapidly tuned into each other.

Nonetheless, the trend increases the importance of electronic interaction, and in a way I know people on this forum better than I know my Calfornian friend. Couple that to the natural tendency to find idelogically and philosophically ttuned online groups, and you can see how the world becomes atomised and people come to think that nearly everyone agrees with their ideas, however odd. I used to know a Danish Supreme Court judge who deliberately read a hostile daily paper to counter that tendency, but few of us have the time or inclination for tht - I never look at the Mail, and shouldn't think that Marquee Mark spends much time studying the Guardian.

That does make forums with varying opinions like this quite important and refreshing. We may not agree with each other, but at least we become more aware that we exist!

The guy in the Human League song is a creepy, misogynistic stalker.

Just saying.

Next you'll be saying Every Breath You Take is kind of creepy and not romantic!

That song, of course, is meant to be creepy and Sting was disturbed by how many people interpreted it as romantic, even playing it at weddings. He wrote "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" in response.

On the subject of inappropriate songs...went to a wedding in Italy where they brought in a London gospel choir. Despite it being "the best thing we do", they were finally convinced a wedding was not the place for "I still haven't found what I'm looking for"...

Is there anything to stop Farage's girlfriend selling the property and walking away with the money ?

If not then this story is going nowhere.

This is the bit I don’t understand about this story. If she owns all of the home, whether that money is gifted or not, isn’t that the end of it for tax purposes? (Waiting for someone very clever to correct me, and as always I am not a tax expert yadda yadda).

Optically, I can see it looks like an unusual arrangement and unusual arrangements always invite questions, though.

If she was gifted the money, wouldn't she be taxed on it as income? (Apologies for using 'she', I Don know the lady's name.)

Ms Ferrari apparently.

Is there anything to stop Farage's girlfriend selling the property and walking away with the money ?

If not then this story is going nowhere.

This is the bit I don’t understand about this story. If she owns all of the home, whether that money is gifted or not, isn’t that the end of it for tax purposes? (Waiting for someone very clever to correct me, and as always I am not a tax expert yadda yadda).

Optically, I can see it looks like an unusual arrangement and unusual arrangements always invite questions, though.

The 'allegation' seems to be that Farage has given the girlfriend the money to buy the house to avoid stamp duty.

Even if true that would mean the wealth change is:

Farage -£885k
Girlfriend +£885k

So Farage would be risking a £885k financial loss in order to avoid paying £44k in tax.

Which would be more financial reckless than a Reform manifesto.

Farage has explicitly said he did not give his girlfriend the money.

(Of course, he had said he'd bought the house and that turned out not to be true...)

So how can Farage have avoided tax when he's not been involved in the financial transaction ?

This is the difference between Rayner and Farage - Rayner owns the Hove flat whereas Farage doesn't own the Clacton house.

As I understand it...

If Farage gave his girlfriend money to buy a house (which he says he didn't), that is legal and attracts no tax (unless he dies soon and it comes under inheritance tax).

If Farage gave his girlfriend money to buy a house specifically as a way to avoid paying more stamp duty, that doesn't change anything in terms of tax rules, but it might be seen to be cynical.

If Farage came to an arrangement with his girlfriend whereby he pretended to give her money, but they secretly agreed it was still his money, then that would be tax avoidance. (Again, Farage denies doing this.)

Meanwhile, it has been noted that Farage, at the time, said he had bought the house. This turns out to have been not true. It is not illegal to say something that isn't true, but it's not a good look for a politician.

Not quite.
He claims not to have gifted the money but if he had he would have had to declare no interest in the property. He lives there.

One for @Leon, if the maggots haven't done for him...


(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges

Slightly long post. But there's a lot of concern on the moderate Left today about the Robinson event. Fine. But if you actually want to do something about it you have to understand four things:

2) The Blue Sky experiment has failed.

Musk took what was a monopoly and fractured it. While Bluesky isn’t the success others think it should be it’s a far nicer platform to spend time on and 1 I trust because I understand the algorithm that is generating the feed displayed to me.

The fact people on here don’t understand the power of those algorithms is frankly worrying for the world as a whole (because if we don’t understand that power even after it’s been explained x hundred times there is zero chance the general public will understand how they are being quietly manipulated

Picture of the day: I'm always fascinated by abrupt changes of land use. Here is the point where the encroaching flattification of Manchester reaches the bit we might term 'what inner Manchester used to be like'.

Remarkable that there are still places remaining that are “what inner Manchester used to be like”. I remember from childhood visits the bizarre (in hindsight) sight of the centre of a huge city filled with empty old warehouses, car parks and weedy waste ground.

There are still unaccountable pockets of London like that too, mostly along the Thames estuary.

Thirty years ago, there were two covered canal wharfs that I loved the look and atmosphere of: the sort of warehouse that has an awning over the canal so barges can be offloaded in the dry. One was on the Regents Canal at Mile End, and it has now gone. Another was on the Grand Union near the A4 in Brentford, and I fear for that one as well. Deeply atmospheric places, but whose original purpose has long gone.