CAMERON AND OSBORNE; HYPOCRICY KNOWS NO BOUNDS

Following from Gideon Osborne's avaricious announcement yesterday that families on benefits will only receive a maximum amount equivalent to the average family wage, this set me thinking.

Since the average family wage is believed to be £26,000 per annum, I remembered the taxpayer each year paying out an equivalent sum to Cameron and Osborne during the last Parliament.

When they both bought second homes after being elected to Parliament in 2001, they structured their financial affairs so that they could get their snouts into the trough for the maximum amount they could claim from the public purse.

i.e. These two independently wealthy people took out totally unnecessary mortgages so as to be able to claim public funds instead of using their own capital to buy their second homes. This enabled them to use the capital they didn't employ to invest in othe opportunities. For instance Samantha Cameron had a £300,000 bonus paid the same year that Cameron bought his 2nd home in Oxfordshire with a mortgage of £300,000.

Hence they have profited big time from house price inflation and on the returns from their investments whilst the taxpayer picked up the tab.

Cameron claimed over £141,000 over five years in second home allowances.

By the way, the amount claimed by both Osborne and Cameron was in excess of £26,000 per annum each, sounds familar, If the cap fits wear it.

FROM BRUGES TO BEVERIDGE

Why examining the coalition's DNA reveals the seeds of its own destruction

Marjorie Smith

One of Labour's main strategic pre-occupations has to be how to unpick this coalition of parties (if not of interests).  Any hope of returning to government has to be dependant on the Tories and the Lib Dems either hanging separately or being hung together. Either the coalition splits, or it becomes overwhelmingly unpopular at the next election.

Whilst an extended marriage of convenience, at first glance, may well be in Labour's interest, with the probable deep unpopularity of this coalition becoming a political fact. It would also mean five long years in opposition and having to fight the next general election with a new 'reformed' electoral system stacked against the party.

Make no mistake, the early indications of this coalition's instincts concerning electoral reform do not presage well for Labour. Cameron's proposals to cut 100 plus MPs combined with significant changes to constituency boundaries is a direct threat to Labour's medium and long-term interests. Both the Tories and the Lib Dems will become increasingly desperate to hold on to power in a mutual embrace as electoral unpopularity will surely hit them in the medium-term.

The coalition's pre-nuptial agreement already includes proposals to shore-up the coalition in the face of real threats to its existence. The proposed 55% threshold of MPs needed to call a new general election before a government has completed its five years term of office is a naked attempt start building the first steps into locking Labour out of power for at least one to two generations.

The coalition's proposals to stack the House of Lords with well over a hundred new Tory and Lib Dem peers is a blatant attempt to gerrymander the constitution in favour of the coalition's political interests. A gerrymandering, it should be noted, that was completely absent from either of the coalition's manifestoes. It is also clearly in the interests of the Tories and the Lib Dems as separate parties, as they can reward their financial benefactors and influential supporters with the prizes of patronage.

Whilst most of the Mainstream media in the UK seems to have meekly accepted that the recent compact between the (what is now quite apparent) two UK parties of the centre-right is a sustainable concoction. The DNA of the two parties is still radically different, as any perfunctory analysis of the make-up of either party reveals.

The coalition's leadership may well sit (and fit) comfortably with each other, after all they share common backgrounds, common schools, common universities, all very different from the experiences of the common man. There is very little political capital to be made out of trying to divine differences between Clegg and Cameron (One Nation Tories in all but name) or, for example, between Osborne and Laws (Thatcherite free-marketeers). These are However, there are also significant elements in both parties, presently marginalised, that are as different as chalk and cheese. 

For simplistic (but pertinent) purposes, it is highly revealing to examine the two extremes of the coalition. If one accepts that there are still some well-meaning centrist, or even some who would claim they are of the centre-left, then they are to be found in the Beveridge Group of Liberal Democrat MPs. Whilst many of those on the right of the Tory party are members of the Bruges Group, a radically eurosceptic group that also appears to share a deep and abiding belief in free market fundamentalism with libertarian tendencies.

It is quite apparent that the fault lines between the Tory's Bruges group and the Lib Dems' Beveridge group are very deep and, in the main, irreconcilable on most social and international issues.

It is into these obvious fissures that Labour has to drive home, at every opportunity, exposing the crass hypocrisy that is so blatantly obvious in the make-up of the coalition. The idea that Lib Dem figures such as Simon Hughes and Don Foster can sit comfortably on the government benches with the likes of Bill Cash, John Redwood and the odious David Heathcoat-Amory is an illusion that deserves to be shattered.

The social market values that the Beveridge group purports to share is a total anathema to most Tory MPs (including most Ministers) and that is why most of the Lib Dem MPs belonging to the group have been deliberately ignored for Ministerial posts (even at junior level). This faction of the Lib Dems could be a rich source of discontent and internal unhappiness with the direction of the centre-right coalition.

In Prime Minister's Questions, Deputy PMQs, Ministerial Questions, speeches in the chamber, Select Committee meetings, appearances on TV, radio etc, i.e. at each and ever opportunity, Labour has to focussing on exposing and magnifying the discomfiture of Beveridge group Liberal Democrat MPs. The idea that there is a permanent air to this coalition needs to be exposed as a lie as soon as possible, before the commentariat in the UK media persuade everybody that this is an established fact.

What should also be exploited is the deep, but presently underlying, anger on the Tory backbenchers about Cameron's acceptance about the status quo in the European Union. There are a host of Tory eurosceptics, both inside and outside of Parliament, who viscerally hate the EU and deeply resent having to make accommodations with Clegg over the European issue.

These very same people are ant-statist and instinctively opposed to nearly all aspects of public expenditure (except for the Ministry of Defence obviously). Again, this exposes a rich seam of discord for Labour to exploit mercilessly.

This campaign against this contradictory coalition should also be extended to local government and with party activists. At every turn the Labour leadership, MPs, Councillors, party membership and the wider Labour movement should be exploiting the discomfiture that is already there about this posh alliance and the growing discomfiture that is to come.

Every Labour party member and supporter has an opportunity to contribute to undermining this real threat to labour's interests by foreshortening the lifetime of the coalition by helping to spread a growing discord amongst its supporters and members, thereby establishing an irresistible momentum that will destroy this iniquitous government.

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.