It appears as though this might well be an extra-judicial execution, not within any existing legal authority,
The Pentagon is working—STILL—to make up a legal rationale for slaughtering 11 people, 1,500 miles from America, AFTER THE FACT? WHAT? You can’t do this after they’re dead. That is a crime. That is murder. https://x.com/hissgoescobra/status/1963464928066711700
Whether or not they were bad guys is really not the point at all.
Yeah, all the explanations so far have been a bit Hague. Sorry, I meant vague...
Legal process and evidence do not appear to be high up the administration's list of priorities.
Further evidence that the Trump admin lied repeatedly (to the public and a judge) when it tried to deport 600 children to Guatemala in the dead of night.
"In rare interviews with NBC News, a dozen federal judges—appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, including Trump, and serving around the country — pointed to a pattern they say has recently emerged:
"Lower court judges are handed contentious cases involving the Trump administration. They painstakingly research the law to reach their rulings. When they go against Trump, administration officials and allies criticize the judges in harsh terms. The government appeals to the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority.
"And then the Supreme Court, in emergency rulings, swiftly rejects the judges’ decisions with little to no explanation.
Do we really want to import all this into the UK via Farage and his crew ?
Farage is a traitor.
So is Trump, and it didn't stop him from winning election.
Indeed. But we need to make it clear who people are voting for when the vote for the Farage Party.
There is much evidence, but Farage's recent time in Washington is one piece.
But that isn't happening.
We have researched Farage's fiasco in Congress. The mainstream media and Farage fans won't be reporting that Farage was f*****' beasted and owned by Jamie Raskin. He was humiliated. But you won't see that on a TV screen near you.
Angela Rayner having her pants pulled down is far more newsworthy than Farage's modesty being exposed.
If Farage was 'beasted' by a US politician I am not sure that reflects particularly well on the politician or particularly badly on Farage.
He was there to give his views on the political situation in the UK. I don't know why the committee particularly wanted to know this, but apparently they did. As far as I'm aware he didn't wade into US politics, so what was the US politician's angle? That he knew UK politics better than a British politician?
I suspect the Dems saw Farage not as an objective analyst from a foreign land but as a Trump sycophant there to boost MAGA by contrasting the US under Trump favourable against Britain. If so, I can't see that they were mistaken.
They may well have done, and been right, but attacking him on the grounds of his UK political background would have been grotesquely crass and offensive. A UK Parliamentary committee wouldn't publicly dress down a US lawmaker who had come over to give evidence to their committee, though they might expect and understand that there would be biases in their evidence.
I saw a bit of it and it didn't reflect well on the US Congress. Politicians of both sides seemed more interested in grandstanding speeches rather than actually letting the witnesses speak.
The evisceration of Farage reflected extremely well on them imo. I hope some of our lot were watching and learning.
I would be surprised if the property was sold to the Trust at an above market rate. Trustees are usually very poorly paid for taking on a lot of legal liability, and therefore tend to be pretty conservative around valuations.
Apparently Angela Rayner's lawyers say they never gave her tax advice and she is 'scapegoating' them !!
Which ones? Shoosmiths said yesterday it was nowt to do with them
Telegraph is reporting:
Angela Rayner’s lawyers claim they have been made “scapegoats” and did not give her tax advice, the Telegraph can disclose.
The conveyancing firm that handled the purchase of her £800,000 flat in Hove insisted that it had done nothing wrong.
The comments are a major blow for the Deputy Prime Minister, who has blamed “legal advice that I received” for her failure to pay a £40,000 stamp duty bill on the purchase of her seaside holiday home.
Verrico & Associates, a family company based in Herne Bay, Kent, confirmed that it advised her on the purchase of the flat.
Joanna Verrico, managing director, told The Telegraph: “We acted for Ms Rayner when she purchased the flat in Hove. We did not and never have given tax or trust advice. It’s something we always refer our clients to an accountant or tax expert for.
“The stamp duty for the Hove flat was calculated using HMRC’s own online calculator based on the figures and the information provided by Ms Rayner.
“That’s what we used and it told us we had to pay £30,000 based on the information provided to us. We believe that we did everything correctly and in good faith. Everything was exactly as it should be.
“We probably are being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it. We are not an inexperienced firm, but we’re not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these.”
A spokesman for the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, which regulates such firms, said: “We have asked them for a full account of events. They are not licensed to provide tax advice. What they are licensed to do is to provide conveyancing advice, and they are regulated to the highest standards.”
Ms Rayner admitted on Wednesday that she underpaid £40,000 of stamp duty on the seafront flat. She insisted that she had relied on “legal advice that I received that said that I was liable to pay the standard stamp duty.”
Her own lawyers are now briefing the media.
She’s Donald Ducked.
The Telegraph has also been talking to local estate agents and is suggesting that the house may have been overvalued:
The price of any home is that which 'a willing buyer will pay a willing seller' so not really relevant
It will be when she wishes to remortgage.
That rather depends on the mortgage and LTV
My daughter has just agreed to buy a home and is only seeking a 25% morgage so no survey or valuation needed
The press are claiming it’s a £650,000 mortgage on a £800,000 flat. So already 80ish %
Is it not her Ashton house that they are suggesting was overvalued?
She was purchasing from herself with the child's trust, so must have taken a valuation to work out how much the 25% would cost. This would never have been tested against any sort of market.
As a trustee and a beneficiary of the sale that does create a conflict of interest.
On the other hand, *not* ensuring that hte house was safeguarded from the parents' future finances would also be a different kind of conflict of interest, given the money already spent on adaptations.
Were I the Ethics investigator (oh please, God, one last job?!) I'd want to have the complete file from Shoosmiths, the complete file from Verrico, the conveyancers, all other correspondence AR or anyone on her behalf had with any other advisor on this matter and an interview with AR herself to ask her the questions I have outlined above at a minimum. It might also be necessary to speak to the relevant solicitors & conveyancers
Now if you can get those quickly and you have the time and resources to read everything, prepare the interviews, do them, get an accurate record of them written up, consider the evidence, get any tax advice needed, consider the Ministerial Code, assess whether this was cock up or deliberate and any mitigating circumstances and then write your report and you're prepared to work pretty much round the clock etc etc, you can probably do this in a couple of days or so. A stretch but doable.
But does the Ethics advisor have those resources and will he in fact do this? And if he doesn't read and review all the evidence what value will his report actually have?
DEAR GOVERNMENT - GET INVESTIGATORS IN WHO KNOW HOW TO DO THE FUCKING JOB. THAT SUE GRAY WOMAN WAS USELESS.
Great to hear from you, but I think you are under the misapprehension that governments want Ethics Investigators who investigate.
The French system is vastly better than the UK one with a notaire handling everything , aswell as the conveyancing side the buying and selling process in terms of estate agents and offers is also much better . You do however pay higher commissions.
Apparently Angela Rayner's lawyers say they never gave her tax advice and she is 'scapegoating' them !!
Which ones? Shoosmiths said yesterday it was nowt to do with them
Telegraph is reporting:
Angela Rayner’s lawyers claim they have been made “scapegoats” and did not give her tax advice, the Telegraph can disclose.
The conveyancing firm that handled the purchase of her £800,000 flat in Hove insisted that it had done nothing wrong.
The comments are a major blow for the Deputy Prime Minister, who has blamed “legal advice that I received” for her failure to pay a £40,000 stamp duty bill on the purchase of her seaside holiday home.
Verrico & Associates, a family company based in Herne Bay, Kent, confirmed that it advised her on the purchase of the flat.
Joanna Verrico, managing director, told The Telegraph: “We acted for Ms Rayner when she purchased the flat in Hove. We did not and never have given tax or trust advice. It’s something we always refer our clients to an accountant or tax expert for.
“The stamp duty for the Hove flat was calculated using HMRC’s own online calculator based on the figures and the information provided by Ms Rayner.
“That’s what we used and it told us we had to pay £30,000 based on the information provided to us. We believe that we did everything correctly and in good faith. Everything was exactly as it should be.
“We probably are being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it. We are not an inexperienced firm, but we’re not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these.”
A spokesman for the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, which regulates such firms, said: “We have asked them for a full account of events. They are not licensed to provide tax advice. What they are licensed to do is to provide conveyancing advice, and they are regulated to the highest standards.”
Ms Rayner admitted on Wednesday that she underpaid £40,000 of stamp duty on the seafront flat. She insisted that she had relied on “legal advice that I received that said that I was liable to pay the standard stamp duty.”
Her own lawyers are now briefing the media.
She’s Donald Ducked.
The Telegraph has also been talking to local estate agents and is suggesting that the house may have been overvalued:
Now that would be funny, if she ends up underwater on the mortgage.
So the next political question: who was the seller, and was the apartment sold specifically to Ms Rayner at that price…?
It's the Ashton-under-Lyne that Angela sold and the Trust bought a part share of which that the Telegraph is saying was seriously overpriced.
I.e. she's taken more money from the trust that she shouldn't have - and that is way more damning than the stamp duty...
I’m guessing that UK trusts are like offshore trusts where the trustees are liable to legal action from beneficiaries for any actions they take that can be considered damaging to the trust.
If they paid over the odds then the Trustees would be in a potential pickle, even from the current beneficiary’s children, if future beneficiaries, if they have overpaid for an asset to the detriment of the Trust so I would imagine the trustees will have ensured they paid market rate or less. If not, well.
I'd think that's true of almost any trust. Even the Little Snoring annual pancake day race charity. Though oddly executors of probate estates seem to be exempted in the standard legal boilerplate.
I don't think people will want a Reform government. But will it be possible to block it in a first past the post system where they are the largest party? I'm not sure. The British public is often quite good at gaming the system to get the result it wants. The fundamental problem is that nobody is willing to make the hard choices necessary to fix our problems. Everybody wants someone else to pay the costs involved. The voters are the real villains here.
I think that's unfair on the voters. With a few honourable exceptions the voters aren't economists, they aren't experts on the public finances. They're only believing what they're being told.
If it was the case that one of the parties had told them the truth about the current situation, and the hard choices that would be required, and had rejected that in favour of platitudes from other parties, then it might be fair to blame the voters.
But that hasn't happened. No-one has levelled with the voters.
May's "dementia tax" is an example of what happens when you try to level with voters. Labour's cuts to WFA similarly. Probably neither party did enough to give voters the true picture. But how do you even communicate reality to voters when they're all in their own echo chamber?
Okay, those aren't terrible examples of the voters rejecting reality. But I think in neither case did either government prepare the ground and create a convincing narrative in the way that Cameron and Osborne did with austerity and, "we're all in it together."
Now, maybe the coalition austerity was austerity-lite. Some special groups were protected. And the Tories at the 2015GE benefited from cannibalising their coalition partners. But you did have a government that had done some plenty unpopular things for the purpose of balancing books win reelection. The voters were willing to be convinced that it was necessary.
To my mind coalition austerity had a lot of unfortunate features. For instance, it targeted cuts at local governments in poorer areas of the country. So much for all in it together or making tough choices. Also, far from dealing with the underlying ageing related drivers of our fiscal problems they introduced the triple lock which makes the problem even worse! The real problem is that rather than addressing ageing related costs directly we have seen Tory governments slashing spending on everything else instead, and Labour governments looking for ever more distortionary sources of taxation to plug the gap. As a result, people are left asking why are we getting less and paying more for it? While the underlying problem is left unaddressed and continues to drive a year by year worsening in our fiscal picture. Meanwhile politics gets lost in a series of essentially pointless debates on Brexit and small boats. It's enough to drive even a natural optimist like me to despair.
Yes. I'm not a fan of how the coalition implemented austerity, but I think they did pretty well with the politics of it.
Cameron and Osborne sold austerity brilliantly. The notion of the maxed out credit card was very clever too, although was a wholly inappropriate analogy.
Then Johnson came along and spent like a drunken sailor.
This time last year you were criticising me for saying Rachel Reeves is shit.
She still is
Indeed but to be to fair to him he’s been on a journey and no longer does that and is critical of labour at times too.
I think for some of us the buyers remorse came quickly. Others it didn’t.
So you are not allowing me to criticise Labour or the Conservatives now? Better give me some more of your flags then.
Buyers remorse? Whilst this Government has been a major disappointment in so many ways, not least their absurd "no new taxes" policy, I would vote for them in a heartbeat if the alternative were Reform or the Conservatives. Reform are quite disgusting, and the Conservatives are less effective than they were under Sunak, and with Jenrick in the wings that could get even worse. The memory of Tory supporters on here and Ministers is remarkably short. Your team were utterly dreadful!
Apparently Angela Rayner's lawyers say they never gave her tax advice and she is 'scapegoating' them !!
Which ones? Shoosmiths said yesterday it was nowt to do with them
Telegraph is reporting:
Angela Rayner’s lawyers claim they have been made “scapegoats” and did not give her tax advice, the Telegraph can disclose.
The conveyancing firm that handled the purchase of her £800,000 flat in Hove insisted that it had done nothing wrong.
The comments are a major blow for the Deputy Prime Minister, who has blamed “legal advice that I received” for her failure to pay a £40,000 stamp duty bill on the purchase of her seaside holiday home.
Verrico & Associates, a family company based in Herne Bay, Kent, confirmed that it advised her on the purchase of the flat.
Joanna Verrico, managing director, told The Telegraph: “We acted for Ms Rayner when she purchased the flat in Hove. We did not and never have given tax or trust advice. It’s something we always refer our clients to an accountant or tax expert for.
“The stamp duty for the Hove flat was calculated using HMRC’s own online calculator based on the figures and the information provided by Ms Rayner.
“That’s what we used and it told us we had to pay £30,000 based on the information provided to us. We believe that we did everything correctly and in good faith. Everything was exactly as it should be.
“We probably are being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it. We are not an inexperienced firm, but we’re not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these.”
A spokesman for the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, which regulates such firms, said: “We have asked them for a full account of events. They are not licensed to provide tax advice. What they are licensed to do is to provide conveyancing advice, and they are regulated to the highest standards.”
Ms Rayner admitted on Wednesday that she underpaid £40,000 of stamp duty on the seafront flat. She insisted that she had relied on “legal advice that I received that said that I was liable to pay the standard stamp duty.”
Her own lawyers are now briefing the media.
She’s Donald Ducked.
The Telegraph has also been talking to local estate agents and is suggesting that the house may have been overvalued:
Now that would be funny, if she ends up underwater on the mortgage.
So the next political question: who was the seller, and was the apartment sold specifically to Ms Rayner at that price…?
It's the Ashton-under-Lyne that Angela sold and the Trust bought a part share of which that the Telegraph is saying was seriously overpriced.
I.e. she's taken more money from the trust that she shouldn't have - and that is way more damning than the stamp duty...
If true, yes, that is what can sink her. The stamp duty business is a nothingburger. Voters won't understand it, and the whole thing can be written off as a cock-up if neither Rayner nor the conveyancers knew the trust changed things.
Problem is then I read the article and as I've pointed out below the comparators aren't valid.
What you are then left with is the difficult question of how do you value a property especially adapted for the needs of someone who needs a property to be adapted. Which if £80,000 of adaptions would be required to your typical £550,000 home may make a £630,000 valuation reasonable under the circumstances...
Yes, in which case, Angela Rayner might be free, although perhaps a more politically aware Prime Minister might rotate her away from housing.
Nadine Dorries has sensationally defected to Nigel Farage's Reform party and declared: 'The Tory Party is dead'.
Mail
TBH, I would have assumed that Mad Nad had transferred her affections a long time ago. One of those folk with an opinion of her own abilities not shared by many others.
Presumably Rayner is going to claim to have taken advice from someone else.
That Telegraph story is a bit weird. As far as I am aware, no one knew who those people were until they voluntarily told the Telegraph. Not sure they are being scapegoated (unless I've missed Rayner naming them in an Alan Partridge kind of way).
Rayner said she received advice from the conveyancer and 2 tax/trust experts Conveyancers here say, no she did not
The Conveyancers are just saying they didn't give her any bespoke tax advice.
Yes. In response to her saying or intimating they had
I didn't see that in her statement. It doesn't say who she got the advice from.
Be a bit odd if she sought advice of a different conveyancer to the one she was using
I don't think people will want a Reform government. But will it be possible to block it in a first past the post system where they are the largest party? I'm not sure. The British public is often quite good at gaming the system to get the result it wants. The fundamental problem is that nobody is willing to make the hard choices necessary to fix our problems. Everybody wants someone else to pay the costs involved. The voters are the real villains here.
I think that's unfair on the voters. With a few honourable exceptions the voters aren't economists, they aren't experts on the public finances. They're only believing what they're being told.
If it was the case that one of the parties had told them the truth about the current situation, and the hard choices that would be required, and had rejected that in favour of platitudes from other parties, then it might be fair to blame the voters.
But that hasn't happened. No-one has levelled with the voters.
May's "dementia tax" is an example of what happens when you try to level with voters. Labour's cuts to WFA similarly. Probably neither party did enough to give voters the true picture. But how do you even communicate reality to voters when they're all in their own echo chamber?
Okay, those aren't terrible examples of the voters rejecting reality. But I think in neither case did either government prepare the ground and create a convincing narrative in the way that Cameron and Osborne did with austerity and, "we're all in it together."
Now, maybe the coalition austerity was austerity-lite. Some special groups were protected. And the Tories at the 2015GE benefited from cannibalising their coalition partners. But you did have a government that had done some plenty unpopular things for the purpose of balancing books win reelection. The voters were willing to be convinced that it was necessary.
To my mind coalition austerity had a lot of unfortunate features. For instance, it targeted cuts at local governments in poorer areas of the country. So much for all in it together or making tough choices. Also, far from dealing with the underlying ageing related drivers of our fiscal problems they introduced the triple lock which makes the problem even worse! The real problem is that rather than addressing ageing related costs directly we have seen Tory governments slashing spending on everything else instead, and Labour governments looking for ever more distortionary sources of taxation to plug the gap. As a result, people are left asking why are we getting less and paying more for it? While the underlying problem is left unaddressed and continues to drive a year by year worsening in our fiscal picture. Meanwhile politics gets lost in a series of essentially pointless debates on Brexit and small boats. It's enough to drive even a natural optimist like me to despair.
Yes. I'm not a fan of how the coalition implemented austerity, but I think they did pretty well with the politics of it.
Cameron and Osborne sold austerity brilliantly. The notion of the maxed out credit card was very clever too, although was a wholly inappropriate analogy.
Then Johnson came along and spent like a drunken sailor.
Due to Covid no different to other major economies.
But due to Brexit we had a million workers a year arriving from across the World, and the Welfare bill became unsustainable under Johnson. Nothing to do directly with Covid unless you want me to bang on, and on, and on about PPE fast lane profligacy.
Apparently Angela Rayner's lawyers say they never gave her tax advice and she is 'scapegoating' them !!
Which ones? Shoosmiths said yesterday it was nowt to do with them
Telegraph is reporting:
Angela Rayner’s lawyers claim they have been made “scapegoats” and did not give her tax advice, the Telegraph can disclose.
The conveyancing firm that handled the purchase of her £800,000 flat in Hove insisted that it had done nothing wrong.
The comments are a major blow for the Deputy Prime Minister, who has blamed “legal advice that I received” for her failure to pay a £40,000 stamp duty bill on the purchase of her seaside holiday home.
Verrico & Associates, a family company based in Herne Bay, Kent, confirmed that it advised her on the purchase of the flat.
Joanna Verrico, managing director, told The Telegraph: “We acted for Ms Rayner when she purchased the flat in Hove. We did not and never have given tax or trust advice. It’s something we always refer our clients to an accountant or tax expert for.
“The stamp duty for the Hove flat was calculated using HMRC’s own online calculator based on the figures and the information provided by Ms Rayner.
“That’s what we used and it told us we had to pay £30,000 based on the information provided to us. We believe that we did everything correctly and in good faith. Everything was exactly as it should be.
“We probably are being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it. We are not an inexperienced firm, but we’re not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these.”
A spokesman for the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, which regulates such firms, said: “We have asked them for a full account of events. They are not licensed to provide tax advice. What they are licensed to do is to provide conveyancing advice, and they are regulated to the highest standards.”
Ms Rayner admitted on Wednesday that she underpaid £40,000 of stamp duty on the seafront flat. She insisted that she had relied on “legal advice that I received that said that I was liable to pay the standard stamp duty.”
Her own lawyers are now briefing the media.
She’s Donald Ducked.
The Telegraph has also been talking to local estate agents and is suggesting that the house may have been overvalued:
Now that would be funny, if she ends up underwater on the mortgage.
So the next political question: who was the seller, and was the apartment sold specifically to Ms Rayner at that price…?
It's the Ashton-under-Lyne that Angela sold and the Trust bought a part share of which that the Telegraph is saying was seriously overpriced.
I.e. she's taken more money from the trust that she shouldn't have - and that is way more damning than the stamp duty...
If true, yes, that is what can sink her. The stamp duty business is a nothingburger. Voters won't understand it, and the whole thing can be written off as a cock-up if neither Rayner nor the conveyancers knew the trust changed things.
But isn’t that on the trustees, not her? If they’ve overplayed for her share that’s their duties in the spotlight, she just got the cash?
Lloyds to make underperforming staff redundant while offshoring jobs to India.
'The jobs of thousands of Lloyds Banking Group staff are at risk as part of a performance shake-up at the financial firm.
The banking group is set to tell those it deems are among the weakest performing 5% that they could be made redundant unless their work improves.
The policy applies across the organisation - from branch staff to senior directors - and marks the second time in less than two years that thousands of Lloyds' employees have faced job losses, after it cut 1,600 roles in January last year...att Britzman, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Lloyds had been "forced to take a more aggressive approach to weed out the lower performers".
"This seems like sensible business and aligns with the bank's quiet push to offshore more roles, aiming to hire 4,000 people in its India tech hub by year-end," he added.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx209gzg71wo
It's not a good luck - but it does confirm that the bank cares more about profit than it's customers and staff..
Surely even if these weakest performing 5% improve, the bank is always going to have a weakest 5% somewhere.
I don't think people will want a Reform government. But will it be possible to block it in a first past the post system where they are the largest party? I'm not sure. The British public is often quite good at gaming the system to get the result it wants. The fundamental problem is that nobody is willing to make the hard choices necessary to fix our problems. Everybody wants someone else to pay the costs involved. The voters are the real villains here.
I think that's unfair on the voters. With a few honourable exceptions the voters aren't economists, they aren't experts on the public finances. They're only believing what they're being told.
If it was the case that one of the parties had told them the truth about the current situation, and the hard choices that would be required, and had rejected that in favour of platitudes from other parties, then it might be fair to blame the voters.
But that hasn't happened. No-one has levelled with the voters.
May's "dementia tax" is an example of what happens when you try to level with voters. Labour's cuts to WFA similarly. Probably neither party did enough to give voters the true picture. But how do you even communicate reality to voters when they're all in their own echo chamber?
Okay, those aren't terrible examples of the voters rejecting reality. But I think in neither case did either government prepare the ground and create a convincing narrative in the way that Cameron and Osborne did with austerity and, "we're all in it together."
Now, maybe the coalition austerity was austerity-lite. Some special groups were protected. And the Tories at the 2015GE benefited from cannibalising their coalition partners. But you did have a government that had done some plenty unpopular things for the purpose of balancing books win reelection. The voters were willing to be convinced that it was necessary.
To my mind coalition austerity had a lot of unfortunate features. For instance, it targeted cuts at local governments in poorer areas of the country. So much for all in it together or making tough choices. Also, far from dealing with the underlying ageing related drivers of our fiscal problems they introduced the triple lock which makes the problem even worse! The real problem is that rather than addressing ageing related costs directly we have seen Tory governments slashing spending on everything else instead, and Labour governments looking for ever more distortionary sources of taxation to plug the gap. As a result, people are left asking why are we getting less and paying more for it? While the underlying problem is left unaddressed and continues to drive a year by year worsening in our fiscal picture. Meanwhile politics gets lost in a series of essentially pointless debates on Brexit and small boats. It's enough to drive even a natural optimist like me to despair.
Yes. I'm not a fan of how the coalition implemented austerity, but I think they did pretty well with the politics of it.
Cameron and Osborne sold austerity brilliantly. The notion of the maxed out credit card was very clever too, although was a wholly inappropriate analogy.
Then Johnson came along and spent like a drunken sailor.
This time last year you were criticising me for saying Rachel Reeves is shit.
She still is
She isn't my choice for CoE. My beef with your posting from 2024 was all of your million pre-09.00 posts each day saying "Reeves is s***". At least over the years I only criticise Johnson in every other post.
Were I the Ethics investigator (oh please, God, one last job?!) I'd want to have the complete file from Shoosmiths, the complete file from Verrico, the conveyancers, all other correspondence AR or anyone on her behalf had with any other advisor on this matter and an interview with AR herself to ask her the questions I have outlined above at a minimum. It might also be necessary to speak to the relevant solicitors & conveyancers
Now if you can get those quickly and you have the time and resources to read everything, prepare the interviews, do them, get an accurate record of them written up, consider the evidence, get any tax advice needed, consider the Ministerial Code, assess whether this was cock up or deliberate and any mitigating circumstances and then write your report and you're prepared to work pretty much round the clock etc etc, you can probably do this in a couple of days or so. A stretch but doable.
But does the Ethics advisor have those resources and will he in fact do this? And if he doesn't read and review all the evidence what value will his report actually have?
DEAR GOVERNMENT - GET INVESTIGATORS IN WHO KNOW HOW TO DO THE FUCKING JOB. THAT SUE GRAY WOMAN WAS USELESS.
Great to hear from you, but I think you are under the misapprehension that governments want Ethics Investigators who investigate.
[Sen] Cassidy: Do you agree that the president deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed?
RFK: Absolutely.
Cassidy: But you just said that the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID.
America is so screwed. Essentially every normal country in the world thinks they have gone mad and no longer trusts them. The only countries that favour Trump and his government are places like Russia and China, and not because he is Making America Great Again.
The damage done to the US will outlast most of us here.
China doesn't given the big tariffs he has imposed on their exports
The US is driving all kinds of countries into the arms of China. Not to mention the economic damage that the US is doing to itself, that will hand dominance of many key economic sectors to China. The US has done a ludicrously bad job of containing China, and not just by Trump's administration, rather than slowing China down they have spurred China on. There won't be many measures by which the US is number one for much longer.
Russia and North Korea were already allied to China before Trump.
China was also undercutting US manufacturing jobs with cheap dumped goods on the US market, Trump's election victory is a reaction to China's economic growth not its cause
It's a lot more than Russia and North Korea. All sorts of countries in Asia and further afield are having to evaluate the worth of American promises and how close they should be to China.
As for manufacturing there has been a US effort to try to prevent China encroaching on areas where the US has technological and engineering leadership. The sanctions, export controls, and basically harassment don't appear to have worked at all. China is either catching up fast or caught up in many areas now. The growth of a Chinese middle-class means that China alone will likely take the lead purely to service internal demand and growth, export markets will be a bonus, and the US having driven many countries closer to China there will be a lot of trade to be done.
Like who? Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are at visible threat from China for starters.
The right in Canada, Le Pen's party in France, the AfD in Germany, Reform here etc are all looking to impose tariffs on Chinese imports too.
You are also wrong on the effects on the Chinese export market to the US 'China exports to the U.S could decline by $485 billion by 2027 based on current tariffs, according to a global trade simulation from the Observatory of Economic Complexity.'
Apparently Angela Rayner's lawyers say they never gave her tax advice and she is 'scapegoating' them !!
Which ones? Shoosmiths said yesterday it was nowt to do with them
Telegraph is reporting:
Angela Rayner’s lawyers claim they have been made “scapegoats” and did not give her tax advice, the Telegraph can disclose.
The conveyancing firm that handled the purchase of her £800,000 flat in Hove insisted that it had done nothing wrong.
The comments are a major blow for the Deputy Prime Minister, who has blamed “legal advice that I received” for her failure to pay a £40,000 stamp duty bill on the purchase of her seaside holiday home.
Verrico & Associates, a family company based in Herne Bay, Kent, confirmed that it advised her on the purchase of the flat.
Joanna Verrico, managing director, told The Telegraph: “We acted for Ms Rayner when she purchased the flat in Hove. We did not and never have given tax or trust advice. It’s something we always refer our clients to an accountant or tax expert for.
“The stamp duty for the Hove flat was calculated using HMRC’s own online calculator based on the figures and the information provided by Ms Rayner.
“That’s what we used and it told us we had to pay £30,000 based on the information provided to us. We believe that we did everything correctly and in good faith. Everything was exactly as it should be.
“We probably are being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it. We are not an inexperienced firm, but we’re not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these.”
A spokesman for the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, which regulates such firms, said: “We have asked them for a full account of events. They are not licensed to provide tax advice. What they are licensed to do is to provide conveyancing advice, and they are regulated to the highest standards.”
Ms Rayner admitted on Wednesday that she underpaid £40,000 of stamp duty on the seafront flat. She insisted that she had relied on “legal advice that I received that said that I was liable to pay the standard stamp duty.”
Her own lawyers are now briefing the media.
She’s Donald Ducked.
The Telegraph has also been talking to local estate agents and is suggesting that the house may have been overvalued:
Now that would be funny, if she ends up underwater on the mortgage.
So the next political question: who was the seller, and was the apartment sold specifically to Ms Rayner at that price…?
It's the Ashton-under-Lyne that Angela sold and the Trust bought a part share of which that the Telegraph is saying was seriously overpriced.
I.e. she's taken more money from the trust that she shouldn't have - and that is way more damning than the stamp duty...
If true, yes, that is what can sink her. The stamp duty business is a nothingburger. Voters won't understand it, and the whole thing can be written off as a cock-up if neither Rayner nor the conveyancers knew the trust changed things.
But isn’t that on the trustees, not her? If they’ve overplayed for her share that’s their duties in the spotlight, she just got the cash?
Were I the Ethics investigator (oh please, God, one last job?!) I'd want to have the complete file from Shoosmiths, the complete file from Verrico, the conveyancers, all other correspondence AR or anyone on her behalf had with any other advisor on this matter and an interview with AR herself to ask her the questions I have outlined above at a minimum. It might also be necessary to speak to the relevant solicitors & conveyancers
Now if you can get those quickly and you have the time and resources to read everything, prepare the interviews, do them, get an accurate record of them written up, consider the evidence, get any tax advice needed, consider the Ministerial Code, assess whether this was cock up or deliberate and any mitigating circumstances and then write your report and you're prepared to work pretty much round the clock etc etc, you can probably do this in a couple of days or so. A stretch but doable.
But does the Ethics advisor have those resources and will he in fact do this? And if he doesn't read and review all the evidence what value will his report actually have?
DEAR GOVERNMENT - GET INVESTIGATORS IN WHO KNOW HOW TO DO THE FUCKING JOB. THAT SUE GRAY WOMAN WAS USELESS.
It is not a criminal investigation. Everyone is agreed that none of the lawyers or conveyancers told Rayner she had to pay extra stamp duty. One lot did not know about the purchase; the other lot did not know about the trust.
So what is there to investigate?
For Raynergate to be worthy of that suffix, Rayner herself would have to have known enough about trust law (which pb lawyers say is particularly abstruse) to have realised the tax implications and engineered the use of different and isolated legal teams to ensure none had the full picture. That seems unlikely.
So what is left? Overvaluation of the altered home has disappeared as a factor thanks to eek in this thread.
What they might get Rayner on is flipping her primary home designation. This used to be standard practice for MPs but have the rules been tightened up after past scandals?
Apparently Angela Rayner's lawyers say they never gave her tax advice and she is 'scapegoating' them !!
Which ones? Shoosmiths said yesterday it was nowt to do with them
Telegraph is reporting:
Angela Rayner’s lawyers claim they have been made “scapegoats” and did not give her tax advice, the Telegraph can disclose.
The conveyancing firm that handled the purchase of her £800,000 flat in Hove insisted that it had done nothing wrong.
The comments are a major blow for the Deputy Prime Minister, who has blamed “legal advice that I received” for her failure to pay a £40,000 stamp duty bill on the purchase of her seaside holiday home.
Verrico & Associates, a family company based in Herne Bay, Kent, confirmed that it advised her on the purchase of the flat.
Joanna Verrico, managing director, told The Telegraph: “We acted for Ms Rayner when she purchased the flat in Hove. We did not and never have given tax or trust advice. It’s something we always refer our clients to an accountant or tax expert for.
“The stamp duty for the Hove flat was calculated using HMRC’s own online calculator based on the figures and the information provided by Ms Rayner.
“That’s what we used and it told us we had to pay £30,000 based on the information provided to us. We believe that we did everything correctly and in good faith. Everything was exactly as it should be.
“We probably are being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it. We are not an inexperienced firm, but we’re not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these.”
A spokesman for the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, which regulates such firms, said: “We have asked them for a full account of events. They are not licensed to provide tax advice. What they are licensed to do is to provide conveyancing advice, and they are regulated to the highest standards.”
Ms Rayner admitted on Wednesday that she underpaid £40,000 of stamp duty on the seafront flat. She insisted that she had relied on “legal advice that I received that said that I was liable to pay the standard stamp duty.”
Her own lawyers are now briefing the media.
She’s Donald Ducked.
The Telegraph has also been talking to local estate agents and is suggesting that the house may have been overvalued:
The price of any home is that which 'a willing buyer will pay a willing seller' so not really relevant
Which house - the new flat, or the old home that was sold to her child's trust?
If this is about the old home, then potentially the "willing buyer/willing seller" are both controlled or influenced by Rayner, and if the value is way off she's effectively extracting money from the trust into her pocket.
Lot of ifs in that lot, but that's possibly the angle they are after. If it's the new house, I suppose the only conclusion is she's yet another politician who would pay full price at DFS...
This is the crucial statement from the Verrico & Associates
“The stamp duty for the Hove flat was calculated using HMRC’s own online calculator, based on the figures and the information provided by Ms Rayner.
So did the information provided by Ms Rayner reference a trust because I bet HMRC's online calculator doesn't ask any question about trusts - HMRC's calculators only go so far and are designed for simply common scenarios..
Will the purchase of the property result in owning two or more properties?
They probably asked her this question. I doubt they were involved in working out whether the answer was Yes or No.
She's silly to have mentioned these people at all.
Apologies, I seem to have flagged this post. Hope I managed to unflag it again.
Presumably Rayner is going to claim to have taken advice from someone else.
That Telegraph story is a bit weird. As far as I am aware, no one knew who those people were until they voluntarily told the Telegraph. Not sure they are being scapegoated (unless I've missed Rayner naming them in an Alan Partridge kind of way).
The law firm’s name is on publicly accessible records relating to the transaction. I believe they were named in the Guardian today.
Comments
I would be surprised if the property was sold to the Trust at an above market rate. Trustees are usually very poorly paid for taking on a lot of legal liability, and therefore tend to be pretty conservative around valuations.
@drdavidbull
·
4m
Yet more fantastic news for
@reformuk
as Nadine Dorries defects to us. How being raised in a Liverpool terrace made me a Conservative. And why I've ... https://mol.im/a/15065561 via
@DailyMail
Buyers remorse? Whilst this Government has been a major disappointment in so many ways, not least their absurd "no new taxes" policy, I would vote for them in a heartbeat if the alternative were Reform or the Conservatives. Reform are quite disgusting, and the Conservatives are less effective than they were under Sunak, and with Jenrick in the wings that could get even worse. The memory of Tory supporters on here and Ministers is remarkably short. Your team were utterly dreadful!
But she may yet be right.
NEW THREAD
Wasn't Nigel making a fuss last week about the number of Reform peers?
There is nothing left for me now.
** wanders off sobbing piteously **
The right in Canada, Le Pen's party in France, the AfD in Germany, Reform here etc are all looking to impose tariffs on Chinese imports too.
You are also wrong on the effects on the Chinese export market to the US 'China exports to the U.S could decline by $485 billion by 2027 based on current tariffs, according to a global trade simulation from the Observatory of Economic Complexity.'
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/28/chinese-trade-to-us-could-drop-by-485-billion-tariff-simulator.html
@BristOliver
·
6m
Wait, Nadine Dorries wasn't in Reform already?
https://x.com/BristOliver/status/1963665542159712484
So what is there to investigate?
For Raynergate to be worthy of that suffix, Rayner herself would have to have known enough about trust law (which pb lawyers say is particularly abstruse) to have realised the tax implications and engineered the use of different and isolated legal teams to ensure none had the full picture. That seems unlikely.
So what is left? Overvaluation of the altered home has disappeared as a factor thanks to eek in this thread.
What they might get Rayner on is flipping her primary home designation. This used to be standard practice for MPs but have the rules been tightened up after past scandals?
If this is about the old home, then potentially the "willing buyer/willing seller" are both controlled or influenced by Rayner, and if the value is way off she's effectively extracting money from the trust into her pocket.
Lot of ifs in that lot, but that's possibly the angle they are after. If it's the new house, I suppose the only conclusion is she's yet another politician who would pay full price at DFS...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/04/reform-secured-almost-1m-from-former-tory-donors-in-second-quarter-of-2025?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other