THE LAST DITCH An Englishman returned after twenty years abroad blogs about liberty in Britain
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Where are we now?

It’s been two months since I last posted here. The Last Ditch is not dead but it’s moribund. The same might be said for me.

I have made some progress since Mrs P the Second left last November. I am no longer in purdah. I am going out with my friends. I am making plans for my future. I have progressed from saying that I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me to actually meaning it. That’s not the same as being happy about it  I still feel bereft, lost and lonely.

We have filed for one of the new mutual divorces. We have agreed on the financial terms of our separation. It has not taken many conversations with friends who have experienced divorce for me to realise that I am blessed. Mrs P the Second is being reasonable, kind and considerate. She clearly regrets hurting me and is trying to make this as easy as possible. If anything, I like her better than ever. By this stage of most divorces, the other party and her lawyer would have raised the emotional temperature to the melting point of love. I know how lucky I am (though a smidgeon of hatred might make it easier at this point).

The pandemic being over, I am making travel plans. I intend to tour all the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie locations in New Zealand on an epic road trip next January/February for example. I hope my spirits will have sufficiently revived by then to make a good travel blog of the journey. I’m not shipping Speranza though. I will do it in a hire car.

Having no wife to leave my assets to tax-free I am revising my estate-planning. I’m responding to the wicked, perverse incentives of Inheritance Tax by planning actively to destroy the modest wealth I worked so hard and long to build. I hate that, of course. Those perverse incentives, born of envy and malice, will destroy our civilisation one day.

An Ancient Greek proverb said a civilisation is where a man will plant a tree to shade his grandson. By that definition IHT is uncivilised. No UK-resident family will ever own a global company in the way the Porsche family does. Much English energy that could have been expended on wealth-creation will be wasted. But “equality” (defined as “all being equally insignificant in the face of state power”) is more important to most English people now than productivity. Especially to the leftist “Deep State” Establishment wedded to that state power.

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Felicity

Those readers who know me will be unsurprised that I plan to destroy my wealth by automotive depreciation. My much-loved maternal grandfather was a store man at the Bentley factory in Crewe. He died young and still in service when I was sixteen. The company (then Rolls-Royce Motors of course) sent a car and bearers to his funeral. Talking to his co-workers I learned that grandad, though he had no interest in cars himself, had marked me as a petrol-head. He’d persuaded his craftsman colleagues to make me a scale model from offcuts of real cars. He was almost fired when caught trying to smuggle it out for me and was forced to destroy it in a furnace. Ever since hearing that story for the first time at his funeral, I’ve had an ambition to commission a new Bentley. 

I have already worked out the configuration for “Felicity”, as she is to be known. She’s to be a V8 Flying Spur in a burgundy colour. I plan to place the order when the divorce is final. My financial advisor is clear I shouldn’t tick off the Family Court judge by placing it sooner. Mrs PII is a robustly independent feminist who wants nothing from me but continued friendship, but our courts still see marriage as a financial transaction.

I’m not sure what the lead time is so this may take a while. I’m hoping to take my mother to the factory to collect Felicity. I plan to have Bentley place a plaque in the engine compartment that says “Commissioned in memory of” my grandfather. If you know Mum don’t spoil the surprise please. She hates all extravagance and is quietly horrified by all this. I’m hoping the plaque will make her smile. 

Comments

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Lord T

Tom,

Nice to see you are moving on and making plans. I could always see you as a Bentley person so it is a good choice.

Good luck and best wishes.

John Miller

Tom I wish you good luck on your travels and heartily congratulate you on your plan.

Tom

Nice choice. I did consider a classic Bentley — perhaps even one from the time grandad was in the factory. I was a classic car guy years ago, but there’s a commitment required that I’m not ready for at my age. Best wishes to you too. I hope you get that car and enjoy every mile.

Tcheuchter

Hullo Tom,

It's good to see you are posting again and I look forward to reading your NZ diary.

I too want a Bentley, but it's this one: https://www.classicdriver.com/en/car/bentley/derby/1939/788744

Best wishes as ever.

Tom

No car holds its value if driven hard and long. I’d aim to put 100,000+ miles on Felicity before I die. As for Miss Joan Edwards, what a naïf! But then I suppose the most common error of our age is to mistake the gangsters of the Deep State for a force for good.

Jay

"I plan to destroy my wealth..."

Perhaps instead look at it as enjoying the wealth that you didn't have time to while building it? Make PETs to relatives and enjoy the pleasure that an unexpected gift brings whilst having the satisfaction of denying the government a loathed tax?

Do Bentley's hold their value so that HMRC will still count Felicity when they work out your IHT?

I saw a lovely documentary some years ago in which lottery winners who were enjoying their wealth were interviewed (counteracting all the stories of those whose lives are ruined by a lottery win). I particularly remember a couple who annually paid for a group of children to have an adventure holiday. The couple took great pleasure from the positive feedback from the children.

There was a case reported of a Miss Joan Edwards who in 2013 bequeathed her £500k estate to the Government in power at the time of her death probably in the naive belief that some good would be done with it. When the two parties who were in power at the time couldn't get away with divvying it up for party funds, David Cameron announced that it would go to the Treasury, where it paid off a miniscule percentage of the deficit. If only she'd left it to a local charity.....

I hope that, however you deny HMRC its IHT, you enjoy doing so.

Longrider

"I have made some progress since Mrs P the Second left last November. I am no longer in purdah. I am going out with my friends. I am making plans for my future. I have progressed from saying that I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me to actually meaning it. That’s not the same as being happy about it I still feel bereft, lost and lonely."

I've just gone through something very similar. The heartache of wanting someone yet realising that the feeling isn't mutual - so I both don't want her and do want her simultaneously. Fortunately, it never got close to marriage.

patently

I think that is a superb response to a perverse incentive. Good choice, and I hope you enjoy Felicity!

MarkC

Best wishes to you, Tom. I'll hope to be able to follow your travels as before. Have a marvellous time, when the dust settles.

James Higham

Most interesting, Tom, while sad. I am also de-assetting, but by a different method. We're at a point where hard decisions have to be followed through. Thoughts with you.

Sackerson

I'm glad it's happening in a friendly way. As an IFA I heard of a man who so hated his ex that he deliberately kept switching his pension investments into racing-certainty losers to burn it up rather than share!

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