THE QUESTION CAMERON MUST ANSWER – HOW BIG WAS THE MORTGAGE ON YOUR CONSTITUENCY HOME?

          It takes some gall and arrogance to claim, as David Cameron did in an interview with Alan Titchmarsh on ITV, that he is just a regular guy who understands ordinary peoples' concerns because he also has a mortgage. That's right; 'Dave' is just an ordinary guy with ordinary concerns who can supposedly emphasize with the man and woman in the street.

David Cameron and his wife are hugely rich people, with parents whose fortunes are eye-watering. Cameron's mortgage claim is utterly breathtaking in its manipulative arrogance. The only mortgage that Cameron has is on his declared constituency home in Oxfordshire. I would hesitate to say second home, as it actually could be the Cameron's third or fourth property.

His mortgage on his declared constituency home appears to have been structured solely for the purpose of claiming parliamentary expenses so as to gain a pecuniary advantage, at taxpayers' expense (i.e. the ordinary people he claims to understand), his purchase of a second home.

To avoid perfectly reasonable accusations of rank hypocrisy and gouging of taxpayers' money, David Cameron (and George Osborne) should reveal all the facts surrounding their financing of their constituency homes.

If Cameron's completely unnecessary mortgage on his constituency home is in the region of £300,000 to £350,000 then the only conclusion a reasonable person could make is that it was taken out purely to make some money at the expense of the taxpayer.

Between 2002 and 2007, Cameron claimed virtually the full second home allowance under Parliamentary expenses, i.e. in excess of £100,000. In fact he claimed so close to the maximum that it left very little for the reasonable expenses that most MPs honestly claimed for.

In 2001, after Cameron was elected, he and Samantha bought a second home in his new constituency for £650,000 Four months later they controversially paid off £75,000 of the mortgage on their London home (now worth £1.6 million and without any mortgage).

Experts reckon Cameron could have saved taxpayers at least £22,500 in interest payments between 2002 and 2007 if he had cut the loan on his second home in Oxford shire instead, which is now valued at up to £1million. That equates to a profit of £350,000, at least half of which was made on the basis of taxpayers' contributions in the form of parliamentary expenses.

In 2006, Samantha Cameron had a windfall of £300,000 when the stationary company she was creative director for was sold, did the Cameron's use this largesse to pay off the mortgage so as to save taxpayers' money? No, they did not; David Cameron continued to claim tlmost the maximum of the lucrative second home allowance despite his wife's bonus.

George Gideon Oliver Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, still has a lot of questions to answer about his sharp practice in 2009 when he received strong criticism for the way he had handled his expenses.

This after he was found to have 'flipped' his second home, changing which property he designated as his second home in order to pay less capital gains tax. The Lib Dems estimated he owes £55,000 to the public purse. Has Osborne offered to pay (as Hazel Blears did, and paid her liability in full)? The short answer is No.

Remember, Osborne, who is worth in excess of 4 million pounds, yes, 4,000,000 organised a totally spurious mortgage so he could get his snout in the second home trough for the sum of about £20,000 per annum. You would have to earn about £35,000 before tax and National Insurance and pension contributions to be able to devote your entire salary to the mortgage payment.

Put simply, George Osborne and David Cameron want to run the country and, if they win the general election they will be dictating to public sector workers to show pay restraint (i.e. cuts in real pay with below-inflation miniscule pay rises , this despite the fact that most public sector workers earn a lot less than £35,000. In fact the UK national average wage is £25,000 per annum

Cameron has the gall to accuse others of abusing the parliamentary expenses system, when it can be convincingly argued that he and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne have acted with the most mendacious avarice.

Cameron is increasingly resorting to gesture politics. His proposal to reduce ministers’ pay by 5 per cent is reminiscent of the calls Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair used to make for pay restraint from others. This was while they were anticipating the millions they were going to make once they quit British politics.

A 5 per cent reduction in the Prime Minister’s salary is nothing to a rich man such as Cameron. However, he will use the gesture to cut public service pay and jobs and impose worse jobs. It’s going to be very bad news for thousands of low-paid workers in public services.

Both Cameron and Osborne are independently hugely wealthy. The Camerons have in excess of £30 million. Osborne is worth £4 million and will inherit a great deal more. Yet they structured their personal affairs so that British taxpayers financed mortgages on their second homes of approximately £300,000 - £350,000 each.

Neither needed to have mortgages on their second properties. Neither needed to claim the lucrative second home allowance from the public purse, yet both did so. Both stuck their snouts in the trough of the public purse and fed voraciously.

Nothing they did was illegal, but the sheer hypocrisy exhibited by the 'holier than thou' act that Cameron would normally take the biscuit. However, to claim that 'Dave' is an ordinary guy because he has a mortgage is not just beyond the pale, it is rubbing salt in the wounds of working class people up and down the country who have nothing whatsoever in common with 'Dave'.

Come on, 'Dave' tell us the truth about the mortgage on your constituency home.

WHY CAMERON IS MUCH MORE CULPABLE THAN HAGUE OVER THE ASHCROFT MONIES AND STATUS

           David Cameron's judgement and political antenna is much more suspect than William Hague's is over the Lord Sleaze of Belize affair.

          Ashcroft was, as Tory sources claimed at the time 'a foul-weather friend' and was the only siginificant party donor in their dark days of 1997-2000. In other words William Hague had little chouce but to accommodate Ashcroft's aversion to scrutiny of his personal tax affairs. Once he made the decision to turn a blind eye (and he had very few options at the time), he was complicit in Ashcroft's tax cover-up, even if he wasn't aware of the precise details at the time.

          However, it is Cameron who has made the greater error. Cameron assumed the leadership of the Tory party at a time of much more financial stability for the party. Donations from class allies in the City and elsewhere were flooding in. The rea of almost total dependence on the Ashcroft millions had long gone and the funds raised by the Tories now came from a much broader base.

          Hence Cameron had the perfect opportunity to confront the issue of Ashcroft's 'unknown' tax status and take whatever remedies he wanted to, if Ashcroft either refused to tell him or revealed his non-dom status at the time. He would have been able to ring-fence the issue of Ashcroft 2 years ago and forestalled any electoral impact it would have had.

          But what did he choose to do? He stuck his head in the sand and hoped it would go away. He is a bottler who seems to avoid the hard decisions and instead continues to implement a PR strategy for his party almost wholly dependent on his own personality, when that said personality is so obviously flawed.

          Ashcroft, tax breaks for married couples, his own gouging of parliamentary expenses on a tozlly superfluous £350,000 on his constituency dwelling in Witney, Oxfordshire, his gross misjudgement in cosying up to the Ulster Unionist Party in his desparate attempt to try and ensure a Parliamentary majority for his party etc etc etc.

         David Cameron is temprementally, intellectually and morally unsuitable to become Prime Minister of the UK.

Taxpayers money bailed Ashcroft out?

In the furore surrounding Lord Sleaze of Belize, one genuinely hypocritical fact stands out, the non-taxpaying Tory peer benefited enourmously frm the taxpayers' bail-out of the banks, led by a Labour Government.

Ashcroft, who has substantial banking interests in Central and South America would have seen his fortune rapidly diminish if the bail-out of the bankers had not happened.

US and UK governmental intervention ensured that the big banks such as HSBC, RBS, Bank of America etc etc etc were protected from the consequences of their reckles behaviour.

However, what has not been focused on, is that because of the complex inter-relationships between banks and other beanks as well as with their depositers, is that Ashcroft's banking interests would have been worthless as banks would have defaulted on their debts.

Ashcroft's Bank of Belize and his other banking interests would have been swallowed up in the financial maelstrom and he would have lost a substantuial part of his fortune.

Yet this tax-dodger had for years claimed for years that his personal tax status was a private affair. Even though he sat in the House of Lords as a Tory peer and was able to speak on what the UK Treasury was up to without declaring an interest. He should be stripped of his peerage.

ASHCROFT AFFAIR JUST GOT A LOT SMELLIER

Today's Guardian alleges that Lord Ashcroft used one of his companies in Belize to pay for a massive opinion poll in the UK andavoided paying VAT in the process.

The ploy used by Ashcroft (invoice to company/person based abroad so as to be classified as an export of services and  attract zero rate VAT) actually makes no real commercial sense IF he had a legitimate business in the UK carrying on normal copommercial activities.
Let me explain, if a UK-based company (and registered for VAT in the normal way) had commissioned the survey, the invoice(s) would have been sent to them by Populus/YouGov and would have had VAT added to the bill (lets say £250,000 +15% Vat = +/- £37,500 VAT).
The £37,500 would have been classified as input tax and be able to be offset against any sales made by the registered company  which would have attracted VAT in the normal manner (also known as output tax). The difference between the two wouold be the net VAT payable or repayable by C&E.

So, purchase costs of 400,000 + 70,000 VAT   Sales of 600,000 + 105,000 VAT
VAT return would state 1005,000 -70,000 = 35,000 payable to C&E.

Now the interesting bit, even if the company was not doing too well and was trading at a loss, the company would still be able to claim VAT back on its purchases and be eligible for a refund of VAT

i.e. purchase costs of 400,000 + 70,000 VAT, sales of 200,000 + 35,000 VAT = £35,000 repayable by C&E.

Hence why 'export' the transaction when you can claim it back? Unless,  UK-based company controlled by Ashcroft was not engaging in normal commercial activities relating to the polling.

OR, that the UK based company (ies) controlled by Ashcroft were engaged in what could be VAT-exempt activities (such as finance etc) and therefore would not have been able to claim the VAT back. Even then, a lot of companies that engage in VAT exempt activity structure their tax affairs so that they can claim VAT back on their purchases/running costs etc

There is a lot more to this than meets the eye.

Ashcroft's guilty secrets

It would be interesting to know how much tax Ashcroft has paid in the UK (both income tax and corporation tax on his UK companies).
After all if Ashcroft had donated millions to the Tories over the past 10 years, he should have made a healthy profit on his UK trading activities and thus paid a bucketload of corporation tax? NOT.

I also wonder exaxctly how much income tax he has actually paid in the UK? I expect it to be close to zero; the Belizian shyster.