Kmflett's Blog

one of Farage’s houses in Lydd-on-Sea

After Angela Rayner, the case of Nigel ‘Five Houses’ Farage

The class war right- Tories, the Telegraph and the rest have finally managed to engineer the departure of Angela Rayner on the question of where she does or does not live and how much tax has been paid. It might be suggested given the gender and age of those involved that the actual obsession is with Ms Rayner rather than her properties.

A particular focus is on a property she has bought in Hove. She has admitted to an error in duty paid (or rather not paid) and now resigned following a report from the Government’s ethics advisor.

Hove is a good place to watch cricket certainly and a favourite spot of both Marx and Engels. I’m not an expert in the Hove property market fortunately but I doubt the price paid was anything out of the ordinary. Whether this is a good look for a now ex-Labour Minister is a question, perhaps more particularly how many properties are actually required. Most people struggle to keep one.

Meanwhile another politician who owns lots of houses in one form or another is Nigel Farage

Joint research by the Mirror and the Good Law Project in 2024 and early 2025 revealed that the Reform UK owner has four houses in the South of England as well as the one in Clacton he eventually acquired being the local MP (which is owned by his partner, no doubt for prudent financial reasons, in particular the legal avoidance of paying higher Stamp Tax).

Farage owns the house he shared with his ex-wife, two properties near Dungeness, one of which is reported to be rented out and another rental property in Surrey. The Dungeness houses are in fact officially owned by Farage’s Thorn in the Side company, which also receives his earnings from his GB News blatherings. Again that is a legal tax avoidance move.

Of course it is far from unique for both Tory and Labour MPs to be involved in property but Farage styles himself as a man of the people rather than a millionaire property owner. Farage said in 2024 that Britain has a housing crisis and given how busy he clearly is managing five properties must be a struggle

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-nigel-farages-3m-four-33575119

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/nigel-farage-uses-private-company-to-pay-less-tax-on-gb-news-earnings?CMP=share_btn_url

(Farage) said Truss had played “all the right notes, just not in the right order” while in No.10.

Huffington Post 2^nd October 2023

Nigel Farage, ex-Ukip leader

Offers unambiguous support as he compares the budget with the income tax cut from 30% to 29% under Thatcher: “Today was the best Conservative budget since 1986.”

Guardian 25^th September 2022

The expression ‘unfit for public office’ comes to mind if for no other reason than she is now putting colleagues, volunteers and others, including voters, into an incredibly toxic position without a care in the world. (9^th June 2023)

Simon Hart’s Sunak’s Chief Whip 2022-24 on Nadine Dorries resigning her seat because she was not offered a seat in the Lords by Boris Johnson (Ungovernable 2025)

Parliament where Nigel Farage is meant to be the MP for Clacton was sitting on 3rd September. Instead he was in Washington patriotically comparing Britain to North Korea in a session of Congress and then patriotically saluting the flag in a meeting with the Orange Felon in the Oval Office

Beard Liberation Front

4^th September

Follicly challenged Daniel Levy steps down at Spurs after appointment of perpetually clean shaven Thomas Frank

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it comes as no huge surprise that follicly challenged Daniel Levy has stepped down as Chair at Spurs.

In recent times Levy has struggled with a series of managers who were either not always clean shaven (Mourinho, Conte, Pochettino) or who had distinctive beards (Nuno, Postecoglou).

With the appointment of perpetually clean shaven Thomas Frank as manager at White Hart Lane, Levy may well feel that his long struggle to get rid of managerial facial hair at White Hart Lane has succeeded.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we suspect that Levy won’t be going too far away in case Thomas Frank is tempted to start growing a beard.

Drinking craft water is not new. Karl Marx tried it in 1874, (rather grumpily)

The Guardian recently published an article where various Spring waters available in a Cheshire restaurant were sampled. Its now a new thing. Spring water has long been seen as health giving as well as having a range of how shall we say distinctive tastes.

Marx was a regular if not particularly enthusiastic sampler (he preferred beer) and I note one example in the Guardian letter below (1^st September 2025)

Simon Usborne enjoys a water menu at a Cheshire restaurant, but sampling craft water is nothing new. In 1874, Karl Marx was in Karlsbad – still known for its artisan waters – to imbibe spring waters for health reasons. Marx, who liked a pilsner beer, was rather grumpy about it, writing to Engels on 18 September 1874 that drinking the water made him irritable.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/sep/01/pouring-cold-water-on-h2o-sommeliers?CMP=share_btn_url

Flag news. Hard right Tory MP calls for the Union Jack to be displayed across the UK. Starmer agrees

The demand originally came from Dubai resident and Telegraph columnist Isabel Oakesh*tt but thanks to hard right Tory MP John Hayes it reached the Commons on 3^rd September

Hayes is the chair of the hard to far right Common Sense group which specialises in culture wars Common Sense Group – Wikipedia

Hayes called for the Union Jack to be displayed everywhere (see Yvette Cooper) not just in England but also in Ireland (Northern Ireland, its not clear if Hayes has heard of Partition) Scotland and Wales.

Starmer agreed noting that the Union Jack represents ‘our history, our heritage and our values’. There is no question that numbers in Ireland, Scotland and Wales (as well as England) would agree but would delete the word ‘our’ and insert ‘your’.

Is Starmer so badly briefed or so leaden footed that he is aligning himself with Culture War Flagshaggers?

Sir John Hayes 

(South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

Q14. Mr Speaker, I know you will agree that flags and banners, in bringing national pride, nourish individuals’ sense of worth and nurture our shared sense of belonging. Will the Prime Minister take steps to ensure that across every part of our kingdom, alongside the crosses of St George in England, St Patrick in Ireland, St Andrew in Scotland and the red dragon in Wales, our flag is flown on every Government and public building—hospitals, schools, police stations and railway stations—for every Briton deserves the chance to see a forest of flagpoles and the flutter of the Union Jack? (905498)

The Prime Minister 

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s pride in our country’s flag. It represents our history, our heritage and our values. That is why we display it. I was the Labour leader who put the Union Jack on the membership card for the Labour party, and I was very proud to do so. It belongs to all of us. We should be proud of it and value it.

This cartoon appeared in the Guardian in 2021. Steve Bell deserves but probably won’t get recognition of his foresight into Labour’s Great Moving Right Show. He was sacked by the Guardian on spurious grounds in 2023 and the paper is poorer for the absence of his work.

Not in Parliament where Nigel Farage is meant to represent the people of Clacton today but instead he was at the US Congress in Washington. Judging by the badge on his lapel he had turned up as the MP for GB News

Farage of course forgot that in Congress no one will lose any votes by telling the truth about him as a Democratic Congress politician noted that Farage is a Putin-loving, free speech impostor and Trump sycophant

Global Big Beer company Carlsberg-Britvic has confirmed the closure of Banks’s brewery in Wolverhampton on its 150th anniversary.

The last batch of Banks’s bitter was brewed on 30th August and the site will close at the end of September. 97 workers are impacted.

Carlsberg-Britvic which has been closing breweries for a while didn’t listen to opposition from local politicians and the Campaign for Real Ale. Beer production is being moved to Burton but some beers including Banks’s mild are being dropped altogether.

Carlsberg doesnt quite always get its own way. After it shut Jennings Cockermouth brewery, despite saying it wouldn’t, it is now up and running again and independently owned.

Even so the ability of a global beer company like Carlsberg-Britvic to destroy British brewing tradition and beer at the tap of an accountants keyboard is something that needs to be challenged a lot more robustly by politicians.

BBC report

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgq42ynzyejo