Thread 17: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
The 14 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer
More from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...
The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)
Links to more Observer videos can be found in an early post of this new thread and here: Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube
Working timeline and references: can be found in early posts of this new Thread 17.
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn
Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^
Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12
Thread 12: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?
Threads 13-14: Links in the OP of Thread 15
Thread 15:Thread 15: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Thread 16: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5395002-thread-16-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting.
To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. Please do not engage with visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for sixteen very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Yes, it really is Thread 17. I'm as in need of smelling salts as the next person.

We seek them here, we seek them there, mumsnetters seek them everywhere: just where are the elusive How not to Dal dy Dir and On Winter Hill?

#handwavium #appropriation

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

The Zefyrn website seems to be connected to the daughter.
https://who.is/whois/zefyrn.com

Re TimMoth, I mentioned before that the DIL makes a loving Facebook post about Sally, but doesn't really mention any feelings towards TimMoth, although everyone else is so effusive.

@Witharellean interesting theory…

my gut certainly tells me SW is the main player…. She was the one who actually embezzled the money, and we know her attitude towards others is disparaging/ resentful etc She also comes across as extremely needy and scared of losing TW.

but he’s no innocent victim. Why, at age 34, fit and healthy, did he go off and volunteer rather than get a job? They clearly weren’t able to live within their means - you don’t buy a 40k house and end up years later with a mortgage close to 300k plus god knows what other debts (and this was with over 60k she’d stolen lining their pockets too) unless you’re spectacularly crap with money. The fact is, the two of them think they’re above doing a normal
days work. They look down on mere mortals who do that. So what if he didn’t like the plastering job? He could have sucked it up and got on with it. Or found another line of work. He was obviously reasonably competent at gardening so he could have got work in that area. But I guess volunteering at a National Trust Manor House with acres of garden feels a lot more appealing than mowing other people’s lawns.

Pair of workshy grifters.

They definitely keep their children close to their business activities. Both children are shareholders in Four Hares and now the website for Zephyr was set up or is owned by their daughter.

I have just read the full thread including about how the mortgage on a £40k loan somehow ballooned to a £230k debt to the bank. @Witharellementions he was head gardener at Plas in Rhiw until 2004. Were lenders offering 5 x salary mortgages back then? I have no idea what 5 x a head gardeners salary would be but perhaps they maxed out the mortgage in 2004 before he left and then used that money for living expenses because he wouldn’t work. Then, when that money started to run out they stopped paying the mortgage and started stealing from the Hemmings. The mortgage debt ballooned and they then had to double up with extra debt secured on the house when the embezzlement was uncovered.

I do wonder why they have rented for the last decade despite being a highly successful author. Perhaps there is still a debt to be settled with the bank and possibly Christian and assets could be seized but living expenses like rent are deemed ok by the courts. And assets such as shares in their company which belong to the children are also beyond the bank’s reach. Caveat: I know nothing about what happens when a mortgaged property is repossessed and sold at a discount to the debts owed on it.

Apparently you can still be pursued for debts after repossession. (These rules may not have been in place when the Walkers’ house was repossessed.)
https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/repossession/mortgage_shortfall_debts_after_repossession

I’ve always been surprised beat they were able to get a 40k mortgage. As a single person who earned around the same as they did when they bought the property in Wales I was only allowed to borrow a max of 35k.I actually bought something far cheaper as everything stopped with me. As far as I’m aware jobs with the NT don’t pay well.

All that hot air spoken in the retaliation post on her website, ongoing discussions with lawyers etc and not another peep since, makes me think the lawyers have discovered that they haven’t got a leg to stand on.
Regarding the “Wellness retreat”, this does mean the kids are part of the deception too. When I originally read the “Vitriol” statement where she talks about “ threats directed at me, my family, and our children” I wondered why the children were being targeted. On a side note, where is the evidence of these “threats”? Or is she just talking about the Observer article? Either way, I can understand why somebody who knew what was going on within the family might point out that more were involved. The stupid woman shouldn’t have dragged her kids into her and Tim’s mess.

Perhaps their house in Staffordshire provided a good deposit but I would have thought even that wouldn't be enough that 2 jobless people could get a mortgage

The Observer repeatedly offered to meet with the Walkers before the affair was made public. This was mostly done through lawyers and clearly demonstrates that, in this regard, the Raynor Winn statement cannot be believed - could we term it a barefaced lie?

All the Walkers have taken thousands of people for a ride and are laughing all the way to the bank.

Do you think they’re not actually going to sue CH or the Observer and are just lying about that? It would make sense of course because they know exactly what they’ve done.

deafening silence since the rebuttal statement over two months ago! I think you’re right. There’s not a lot her lawyers can do. Presumably they’ve pored over every detail of everything that came up in the observer article and it’s a case of ‘well it’s all accurate. What exactly do you think we should do, Sal?!’

I know that The Observer has been scrupulous in affirming the reasons for why this story has been in the public interest.

The damning facts were revealed in print, video and podcast.

The RW statement as well as the lie (I stated above) is the usual protestation, obfuscation, and she called the condition by a different term than she has written and repeated constantly in interviews.

re TW - doesn't strike me that he was particularly blameless given that he gave up his NT gardening job in 2004 when they had two children aged 14 and 15, and then signed applications for additional mortgages of c£180k while his wife was bringing in an additional £64k by theft while he appeared to contribute nothing to the family finances for the next 9 years. he doesn't strike me as being a hen pecked personality, while if anything SW does strike me as the besotted type who won't hear a word said against her DH and never appears to have even made the slightest criticism, which in my view would be pretty unknown for a supposed dominatrix - or perhaps I'm wrong?

But do we know that he wasn't working? He wasn't working at the NT garden but he may have got a better paying job somewhere else?

Testing testing...

The End is nigh....

As quiet as the WWs.

I’m quite sad to say I can’t think of anything more to say about this. But I’ll meet you all again if something new occurs!

Her poor lawyers had already had to contact the observer prior to publication with a ridiculous offer “the Observer were offered the opportunity, by my lawyers, to discuss in detail the allegations made against me to correct their inaccurate account and to be guided on the truth, on the basis that the discussion would not be made public.”

Investigative journalists don’t need to be ‘guided’ on what the truth is. Facts speak for themselves.

i can imagine there were some tricky meetings explaining that in light of the facts presented no paper was going to publish her side of the spin and there was no legal case she could launch.

a ridiculous offer “the Observer were offered the opportunity, by my lawyers, to discuss in detail the allegations made against me to correct their inaccurate account and to be guided on the truth, on the basis that the discussion would not be made public.” @Choux

One could put a big banner across it "unwaveringly brass neck"

True. We don’t know if he continued to work elsewhere. The 2015 consultant letter said he had managed to work up until ‘a couple of years ago’ so that would be working till 2013.

But if they were both working post 2004 albeit Sally part time and she was embezzling c£1k a month and they extended the mortgage from £40k in 1992 to £230k at the point they were evicted then where did all the money go???

Yes they renovated the Wales house and holiday let and bought the ramshackle house in France but that doesn’t account for over £300k of spending (£190k mortgage increase plus £64k embezzlement and then rounded up to include a little post tax earnings).

Were they living some jet set lifestyle? Was there actually an investment of some sort which went wrong similar to what was outlined in the book? What does that nephew know about their ‘pathological’ lying?

She, or they as a couple, do have a habit of trying to buy people’s silence and that is all that was. Chloe H said No to the dirty money.
I think they will be changing their names again and altering their appearance before trying yet another scheme.

Interesting last paragraph. This is the book I want to read. Come on Nephew! Speak up!

@Choux We don’t know if he continued to work elsewhere. The 2015 consultant letter said he had managed to work up until ‘a couple of years ago’ so that would be working till 2013.

@BeguiledSilence I wonder where Tim got his references for his university course? References need to be within the last couple of years.

I have read, in a couple of articles, that he was a master plasterer and was training to teach plastering. I had assumed that his horticultural course and his previous occupation had been merged erroneously.

But, who knows? I could imagine that teaching a trade like that would have been sought after. It would certainly explain how he could show that he had the ability to start a degree course.

I don’t think they offered the Observer money! If they didn’t simply ignore the story and hope it would go away, it sounds as if the response was ‘We’ll tell you — a version of — what really happened on condition you don’t report it’. Which, yes, is pretty much a version of their response to Martin Hemmings ‘We’ll repay the missing cash on condition you don’t pursue this criminally, and aren’t allowed to disclose it, ever’

The offer to help The Observer to "be guided on the truth", but only on the basis that The Observer was banned from disclosing it, sounds odd.

Perhaps the plan was to tell The Observer that: the NDA banned poor SW from speaking; she would go out on a limb and break the non-disclosure obligation in a secret discussion with The Observer; but she didn't want to take the risk of anyone finding out that she had broken it.

As to what explanations SW (and/or her lawyers) would have given in a secret discussion with The Observer, called to provide "guidance on the truth", the mind boggles. I suppose she could have said that mistakes were made, but not by her. No one would have known what she'd said.