Saturday 9 April 2016

Sins of the Fathers

I appeal to those of you who did better than scrape a C at GCSE Maths, although I still did better than George Osborne.

How did David Cameron sell in May 2010 the shares that he had inherited from his father, who did not die until September 2010?

And no, BBC, the main news is not Justin Welby's human interest story. It is this.

Yes, the governing Conservative Party's Spring Forum is bigger news than the enormous demonstration on this issue outside it.

But that demonstration is also news.

Honesty, I sometimes think that Rupert Murdoch would be welcome to the BBC. Who would notice any difference? Editorial standards might even improve.

I have wondered for some time why the resurgent Left was so keen to protect the pillars of the Liberal Establishment and the bailiwicks of that Establishment's provincial client classes.

For example, does it really, truly and sincerely believe that schools are best run by sixth term, third generation Labour Councillors of the kind that property developers do not even need to bribe, since the service is gleefully provided for free?

Has that belief always been borne out by experience?

An opportunity is being missed here, to circumvent all of that by cutting a deal for representation without reference to it.

The churches are making a similar mistake.

More broadly, the churches are committing the error of dealing with the Conservatives in England, and with the SNP in Scotland, on the assumption that those parties were going to be in government forever.

Not after this week, they are not.

5 comments:

  1. Dave is telling porkies again, like when he forgot about his house in Chipping Norton.

    Al Jazeera reported the demonstration, RT carried it live, Press TV might have done so online. Nobody else, though. Disgraceful. Just disgraceful.

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  2. He didn't inherit them, it was an investment company in which he had bought shares himself.

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    Replies
    1. Really? How much did he pay his father for them?

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  3. A bit under 13k apparently, though it would have been the company he paid. It was an open-ended investment company, it would have issued shares to each investor in exchange for cash. Income and the capital gains realised on the sale would have been declarable, and taxable subject to annual allowances, in the uk.

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  4. The second part of this post is vitally important and deserves the utmost consideration.

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