A ramble round Daily Mail tax exile Lord Rothermere's Ferne Park in Wiltshire

Not too sure about bringing up the bible but, photos speak for themselves really. I'm sure every single room in that castle isn't used, and I bet that the smallest main room in that house is gargantuant compared to most of the peoples living spaces who browse this site!

I've seen a video where someone does a similar thing but on a rothschild estate, and actually bumps into one of them! aha :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBLokdZwx8

ROTHSCHILDS are the big fish though.

it is the state that provides the legal framework of "land ownership", that keeps the peasants off the land, and provides the rich with more than their fair share. It is government planing and building regulations that stopped the Dale Farm people from housing themselves on their own small plots. The greedy rich are clearly not the cause of inequality, they are just a symptom of statism. As the state grows, so dose inequality. If your idea of equality is to work in a government office, serving the interests of the central planners, statism is for you. Otherwise you could work illegally, in the black market (free market) to allow an unknown system to organically grow and perpetually change to meet the changing needs of the people.

anarchist said:
"It is the state that provides the legal framework of "land ownership", that keeps the peasants off the land, and provides the rich with more than their fair share."
- more precisely, it is the rich who draw up the laws that exclude the poor from the land (cue the diggers song).

The state is not some imperious structure that exists by its very nature to control or annihilate - it is a structure most usually controlled by the property-owning class who use it to dominate over the rest of the population. Your hyperbolic generalisation is both incorrect, uninformed and wrongheaded

You also incredibly said: "The greedy rich are clearly not the cause of inequality, they are just a symptom of statism."

- No, no , no, absolute garbage!!! To come out with a sentence like 'the greedy rich are clearly not the cause of inequality' shows you up as completely daft

" you could work illegally, in the black market (free market) to allow an unknown system to organically grow and perpetually change to meet the changing needs of the people."
- ....wot a load of absolute bollocks

Vanity fair did a picture story about the place not long after it opened - here are some of the pictures and a snipet of the article

EXTRACT FROM VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2006
"There are a number of people who look at the world in a certain, more liberal way," he says. "The Mail challenges that, and shakes that view, and they find that disconcerting."
But the key to Jonathan is that he is not the Daily Mail. For example, he is known to be friendly with Tony and Cherie Blair, a couple who are far from popular in the eyes of the paper. In a 2004 interview in The Independent he said, "My views are not necessarily the views of the newspaper, and [the Blairs and I] have a relationship outside it. Do I think they are overjoyed by the attacks? No, I don't. But I think they realize that I don't edit the newspaper and that I allow Paul [Dacre, the paper's editor] to do that, and they respect the decision I have made."
This stance affects Jonathan and his wife Claudia's personal profile and habits of going out. Or, in their case, staying in. Although they have every possible bauble (money, influence, youth, and looks) which would qualify them for global social superstardom, neither is faintly interested. Speaking at the imposing country house they recently built in Dorset, Claudia says, "Thank goodness we didn't choose that. Jonathan is very private and family-orientated, and so am I."
Jonathan adds pertinently, "I'm shy, Claudia's shy. If you are shy and you combine that with going to a party and someone is not being rude to you but ignoring you on purpose, and their friends are also ignoring you, because your paper has done a hatchet job on them, it's quite disconcerting. And at the end of the day, my first love is the newspaper."
Now, in the fourth generation, that love is virtually a genetic imperative. (The first Lord Rothermere was one of the men parodied as Lord Copper, proprietor of the Megalopolitan Newspaper Corporation, in Evelyn Waugh's novel 'Scoop', while Jonathan's father, the third Viscount Rothermere, Vere, vastly improved the company's financial health.) Jonathan was swaddled in newspapers, and after a stint in high school in Connecticut, which engendered a love of America, he spent his formative years working his way around the business.
Editorial autonomy and journalist appreciation may be a Rothermere "thing," but their continued application also stems from Jonathan's personal experience. During his pre-inheritance scamper throughout the newspaper business he worked as a reporter on the Daily Record and Sunday Mail in Glasgow. While he enjoyed it, he thinks journalism is a difficult job. "You are only as good as the last story, or the story you are working on next, so you get these ups and downs," he says. "When you have a good story and a good show in the paper you feel great. But then when you're not working on a story, or can't find one, then you get these terrible lows and think, That's it, I'm finished. . . . Management is much easier than being a journalist."

[editorial note - there are countless stories out there which are easy for reporters to get - from the corruption of elite groups such as the Nazi founded Bilderberg Group and retired intelligence crooks little club the Pinay Cercle right the way down to harsh treatment of the most vulnerable in society by this Conservative Government. People would even phone them in to the Daily Mail if they felt they would get a fair hearing, rather than being blamed and ridiculed for being on the poverty line. The fact is The Daily Mail presently has an highly politicised Tory and elitist line and some of the best human interest stories and exposees of the evil lurking within the top echelons of society simply will not get past the newsdesk filters]

Octavius Black, the managing director of the consulting firm the Mind Gym and an old friend of the Rothermeres', remembers visiting them during that period. "Jonathan had just had his first article published; he was quite pleased in a modest way. Chuffed to have his first byline, and self-aware enough to know why he'd got it," says Black. "Later, when I holidayed with them in Jamaica, Claudia came down, all the proud wife, saying, 'Jonathan's just got a promotion!' He raised an eyebrow and said, 'No kidding-we know why that is.'
"He's very self-deprecating," Black continues, "which I suspect among newspaper barons is a rare trait. He's great at teasing or joshing-we're always taking the piss out of each other. He's extraordinarily self-aware, and most people in that situation are, in my experience, high on self-delusion."
What Jonathan does know is that he has inherited a historic newspaper company. "The boardroom was moved [to the current headquarters] by his father, piece of wood by piece of wood, from Fleet Street," says Jonathan's friend Charles Dunstone, the founder and chief executive of the Carphone Warehouse and a member of the board of directors of the Daily Mail and General Trust. "When you sit in there, whatever's going on in the world, however it might feel that day, there's a great sense of history-that this organization has been telling the stories that are going on in the world for a very long time and they've seen some wonderful things and some terrible things. But in the end, life keeps going, and it's quite good at making sure you have a sense of what a small part you are in the whole journey of that company, or the world, and that you mustn't over-react to things."
And responsibility comes with that inheritance. "If I crash Carphone Warehouse into the ground," explains Dunstone, "I'm a stupid idiot, but I made it and I destroyed it. I think it's much more difficult when you're asked to look after a dynasty, because if it's really successful, people have a tendency to say, 'Well, he inherited,' and if you make a mess of it, everyone will jump up and down on you. So you sort of can't win."