PM accepted £20,000 so his boy could study

growstuff

Allira

eazybee

The cost of the accommodation was estimated at £20,000 when declared. That makes it some gift.

Does he have gold taps in all the bathrooms?

You don't get much for £20,000 in Covent Garden, which is where the apartment is situated.

This one is available for £14,551pcm, if anybody wants somewhere.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/151809656#/?channel=RES_LET

Presumably it was not being inhabited by tenants at the time.

Oh! I have a friend who lives there.
You're right, some of the property there is not much at all, theirs is nothing like that one which is very large and rather posh.

Poor kid, being yanked away from familiar surroundings, and presumably friends, to have to catch the Picadilly Line to Leicester Square, then the Northern Line out to Camden for school, probably 40 minutes, just to sit his exams.

I'm thinking we could have a case of child cruelty here...

They will give him a hard time when he returns to school.

Who is "they"?
The public?

I've found children today don't tend to give others a hard time as we did back in the day.

They're too busy doing their own thing.

I think his mates would feel pretty sorry for him. Covent Garden is hardly "cool" compared with gritty Islington. Bet he couldn't wait to get back after his last exam!

I'm sure he'll be fine.
He appears to have caring parents, and that's all most children need, whether they're rich or poor.

Presumably, unless someone comes up with a reason why not, his parents are good ones.

Starmer has always tried to keep his children out of the public eye. They’re at those difficult ages that any of us who have brought up children or worked with them will be aware of.
The election was called at short notice so media attention on KS and his family increased. The mail printed the son’s name despite requests from his parents not to do so. I’m in no doubt that journalists are desperate to find negative stories about these children
Most of us will have friends in similar earnings brackets, with some better off, some not so fortunate. One of my friends lent me their holiday cottage so I could take family members having a tough time for a much needed break, I don’t see this borrowing of a friend’s house as any different

Perhaps his son went off back packing around Europe after the exams, like Kirsty's son?! Especially as dad gave up his summer holiday to work.

I'm totally uninterested in the PM's children, as an adult, and certainly not as some sort of lever to gain points.

True Iam

In addition, many of us do know that huge numbers of children have inadequate homes/temporary accommodation and nowhere to study. We are not all ignoring this or blind to it.

That said, as parents we usually try to protect whatever we can for our children. We don't normally add extra stresses into an exam period if we can avoid it.

Surely this is true whatever your socio-economic situation.

Grantanow

A lot of kids are lucky to have a corner of the kitchen table to study while life goes on around them. Starker junior is very lucky to have a benefactor. Most kids don't have that.

When I went to school one of the brightest girls who got the most O levels lived in a cottage with an outside toilet and no electricity. She did her homework and revision by the light of an oil lamp. She also had to cycle about 4 miles to and from the nearest bus stop every day.

Which shows good reason to invest in education for children, whatever their circumstances.

So true MissA!

I hope Starmer makes a better fist of governing the UK than he has shown in accepting freebies and handling the malign criticism from the Tory gutter press. We are going to judge him on NHS access and the cost of living and that is what he should focus on.

He is, I think.
No reason to think otherwise, so far.

I sometimes (rarely) knit for friends and family.

If I decided to knit for sale, and to charge £500 an hour for doing so, even though I had no customers liked up, does that mean that the pair of socks I made for my son are worth £10,000, and that he has accepted a donation of that amount?

@Iam 64, I'm abroad this month and friends are staying at my coastal property in the UK. Free of charge of course. The catch is, that they have to look after the psycho cat! 😻
Perhaps Lord Alli has pet snakes to feed? 😁

Oh...
That is a recurring nightmare for me.
Being asked to look after Fluffy and Tiddles while someone is away, and finding out, once I'm in the house with them, that they are lions.

MissAdventure

Oh...
That is a recurring nightmare for me.
Being asked to look after Fluffy and Tiddles while someone is away, and finding out, once I'm in the house with them, that they are lions.

Mine is being asked to look after someone else’s pets and they escape or die whilst in my care!

You would be surprised.
His contemporaries, and some of the teachers, (but perhaps not, as he is Labour.)
Saw it with a few of the younger teachers at the Grammar schools with the children of the Conservative MP.

Surely we all do lots of things, which potentially have a monetary value, for our friends. We have a self contained granny flat which has been empty since Mil died which I've lent to friends foc on several occasions. I've got the OH of a friend living there ATM whilst they are sorting their marriage out, I don't want money from them, I just want to help them. These comments about Lord Alli makes me wonder about people's attitudes to "friendship" especially when it's said that he must expect something in return. Does everyone expect "something in return" when they help a friend because I don't! Lord Alli has been a supporter of the LP for over 30 years, he's close friends with Starmer and others, he's very active in fund raising for the party tbh it seems quite natural to me that he would offer somewhere out of the media glare for Starmer's family to be, regardless of exams or not. It's what friend's do if they can.

I'm going to have words with my son - I don't think he realises what he owes me for those socks.

Doodledog

I'm going to have words with my son - I don't think he realises what he owes me for those socks.

😂😂😂

A gift that wouldn’t have been available to me or you unless we paid £20,000

I doubt that me or you would have hoards of journalists and protesters camped noisily outside our home!

If I’d been in his position with my son studying for his GCSEs and needing to get to his school, I’d have done the same … wouldn’t you?

All he did was use the apartment of a friend, away from the press intrusion. I’ve stayed in my friend’s apartment in Spain, free of charge. Fortunately I didn’t have to declare it on a register as KS rightly did. The amount of £20,000 was an estimate of how much it would have cost to rent the apartment.

That’s it … a non story, blown up by the media and deliberately misleading headlines, and seized upon with relish by social media.

He is a father, protecting his son - how terrible is that!