According to the Times, George Osborne 'flipped' his second home.
The Shadow Chancellor bought the Cheshire farmhouse close to his constituency ten months before winning the Tatton seat in June 2001.
Instead of taking out a mortgage on the property he funded the purchase by increasing his borrowing on the London home where he and his wife had lived since 1998.
After his election he designated the London house his “second home” with the Commons authorities, even though it was his main residence, so that he could claim the mortgage interest payments on his expenses.
Two years later Mr Osborne took out his first mortgage on the house in Cheshire and made that his official second home. He has since claimed up to £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to cover interest payments on the farmhouse, which is situated on the edge of Peak District National Park.
The arrangement also enabled Mr Osborne to reduce the loan on his London home, which he later sold for £1.45 million, to less than £200,000.
Tory Leader Cameron, of course, wouldn't dream of sacking a Bullingdon Club colleague.
The Times also carried an informative piece about the Bullingdon Club.
The Bullingdon Club of 1992: pictured are (1) George Osborne, (2) Harry Mount, (3) Chris Coleridge, (4) Lupus von Maltzahn, (5) Mark Petre (6) Peter Holmes a Court, (7) Nat Rothschild, (8) Jason Gissing
The Bullingdon Club - immortalised in Evelyn Waugh's 1928 novel Decline and Fall - projects an image far from the classless, centrist Conservative Party that Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron have so painstakingly developed.
Famous for trashing restaurants and other riotous behaviour, the society was described in a 2005 article by the Oxford Student, the university's official student newspaper, as drawing "its membership from Oxford's super-rich, enticing them to a life of secrecy, champagne drinking and ritualised violence".
Its habit for rioting, although toned down from its notorious past, reemerged again in December 2004 when police arrested all 17 of the club's members for wrecking the cellar of a 15th Century pub by smashing more than a dozen bottles of wine into its walls. Four members - including Princess Diana's nephew Alexander Fellowes - spent the night in prison.
While many of the society's rituals remain secret, joining the Bullingdon Club is known to involve putting up with having your room trashed beyond recognition and seeing your drinking tested beyond all sane boundaries. And there is also the small matter (and indeed, for its wealthy members, it is only a small matter) of buying the uniform, which costs around £3,000 in total.
