4/DAVID CAMERON

DAVID CAMERON. David Cameron is clearly and certainly the worst abuser of the second home allowances scheme. He is the 1477th richest person in Britain according to the Rich List of The Sunday Times, with wealth of £38 million based on property. As would be expected from a man of such wealth, he managed his allowances claims with maximum and cynical efficiency.//

Cameron bought his base London property in 1995 for about £200,000. He became an MP in 2001 and bought a ‘property’ in his Oxfordshire constituency. He probably paid cash for the Oxfordshire ‘property’, worth at the time £650,000. But he established a £350,000 mortgage on the Oxfordshire ‘property’, which surprise surprise meant that he claimed the maximum second home allowances for about five years.//

Shortly after he was elected to the Commons, he paid off with cash a £75,000 mortgage on his London property, bought in 1995, and in 2005 he sold the London property for about £1,200,000. A profit of about £1,000,000. This at a time when tax payers were subsidising his punt on his Oxfordshire second home.//

And what about this second home? It was bought basically with cash, but with a tax payers funded mortgage. At the time of the Cameron purchase, the ‘property’ was worth about £650,000 and it is now worth about £1,000,000. A possible capital gain of about £350,000. Cameron has been gambling in the property market at the expense of tax payers.//

When there was a collapse in property prices recently, I recall Cameron saying something like, this has really caught us out. Nobody could have foreseen that asset values were unrealistic.//

AT THAT TIME DAVID CAMERON WAS BEING PAID AS LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION TO APPLY REALISM TO POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROCESSES. CAMERON COULD NOT APPLY REALISM TO SUCH PROCESSES, BECAUSE HE WAS ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN GAMBLING ON AN EVER EXPANDING PROPERTY PRICES BUBBLE.//

The Oxfordshire ‘property’ was described in The Daily Telegraph of May 13th 2009 as a ‘stone built cottage’. I genuinely thought that I must be getting confused. I have seen photographs of the Cameron Oxfordshire ‘property’, and it is a three storey, twenty rooms mansion set in a large well wooded garden.//

The mystery was cleared up when I noticed that The Telegraph was also describing as a cottage, Oliver Letwin’s second home, the one with the tennis court. It is absurd that people like Kitty Ussher should be driven out of public life, because of the allowances scandal. Kitty Ussher’s two homes could reasonably be described as ‘modest terraced houses’.//

When Kitty Ussher became an MP, she just dealt with the financial realities as she found them. David Cameron by contrast has efficiently and cynically managed the allowances system for his personal enrichment. The allowances system was planned to make sure that people from poor backgrounds could become MPs. The allowances system was not planned to provide investment opportunities for on of the richest men in Britain.//

Is it reasonable to expect tax payers to fund the purchase of a twenty rooms mansion for one of the richest men in Britain? The facts of the matter make it clear that David Cameron is not motivated by any abstract nonsense about ’public service’. The behaviour of David Cameron makes it clear that he thinks he has been born into a particular social class of people. A social class of people who apparently have a right to make a lot of money merely from being in public life. The Old Etonian, political waste of space is at least three centuries too late. //

CAN ANY REASONABLE PERSON SAY WHAT DAVID CAMERON STANDS FOR POLITICALLY?//

Tom Smith, Monday, 22nd February 2010.//