Letters: Shameless, charmless but Nigel isn’t penniless
Nigel Farage in Dagenham Heathway. Picture: Ken Mears - Credit: Archant
Readers had plenty to say this week about Nigel Farage's claim he's '53, separated and skint'.
Nigel Farage says he is '53, separated and skint'. It is probably the first time one of his sentences has been two-thirds accurate, but the last bit really bugs me.
Because Farage is plainly not skint. He earns £90,000 per year as an MEP, plus expenses. His difficult work talking over and then cutting off pro-Remain callers on LBC must be worth a similar amount, if not more.
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His frequent appearances as a pundit on the BBC, ITV and Sky News are not likely to be unpaid, neither are his speaking engagements in the USA.
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He's done a speaking tour of pro-Brexit seaside resorts. He will be in receipt of royalty cheques for the two books he has written.
He is due a £150,000 golden handshake from the EU Parliament when British MEPs finally leave the chamber and will receive an EU pension of £73,000 a year once he reaches the age of 63.
Yes, Farage is separated from his wife and presumably supports her and their children, as he should. But he will still own a share of his own of his family home in Westerham, Kent, which is worth £500,000 and he is currently living in a £4 million townhouse in Chelsea.
The only ways in which Nigel Farage can be called remotely skint are the bankruptcy of his ideas and the poverty of his imagination.
Sarah Walker, Hull
After reading of Nigel Farage's plight I am starting the 'Farage Ordeal Fighting Fund' – or F-OFF for short.
Paul Smith, Bournemouth
I think we all know that what Farage actually means is not 'I'm actually skint' but 'I'm not as well-off as some of my former peers in the City'. A tragedy for which no-one other than Nigel Farage is responsible.
There are not many business empires these days built on long, boozy lunches, on self-aggrandising speeches, on a constant need to appear on television and on demonising your trading partners.
The few notable Brexiteer businessmen have done these things AFTER making their millions and not before.
Gareth Carlisle, Cambridge
So, a mere 18 months after Cameron's arrogant, stupid and utterly needless political misjudgment with the Brexit referendum, he has crept out of the garden shed and is to be 'rehabilitated' as a sort of trade envoy to China... step one, no doubt, in a Tory Establishment plan to eventually grant him a gong, probably as Lord Cameron of Little Dithering in the House of Lords!
This is the prime minister who instigated the most disastrous act of folly since Suez, which has bitterly divided this country and threatens decades of decline, insecurity, economic and political instability, as well as screwing up the future for generations to come. He then slunk away like a coward apparently to write his self-justifying memoirs.
Now he's back. Another failed politician given a nice cosy job and pension pot! It's a bit like giving Neville Chamberlain the War Office in 1940.
Garth Groombridge, Southampton
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