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
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.
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