WASHINGTON — A pair of unwelcome and destructive guests named Helene and Milton have stormed their way into this year’s presidential election.

The back-to-back hurricanes have jumbled the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom devoted part of their recent days to tackling questions about the storm recovery effort.

The two hurricanes are forcing basic questions about who as president would best respond to deadly natural disasters, a once-overlooked issue that has become an increasingly routine part of the job. And just weeks before the Nov. 5 election, the storms have disrupted the mechanics of voting in several key counties.

Vice President Harris is trying to use this as an opportunity to project leadership, appearing alongside President Joe Biden at briefings and calling for bipartisan cooperation. Former President Trump is trying to use the moment to attack the administration’s competence and question whether it is withholding help from Republican areas, despite no evidence of such behavior.

Adding to the pressure is the need to provide more money for the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would require House Republicans to work with the Democratic administration. Biden said Friday that Hurricane Milton alone had caused $50 billion in estimated damages.

“Dealing with back-to-back crises will put FEMA under more scrutiny and, therefore, the Biden administration will be under a microscope in the days leading up to the election,” said Timothy Kneeland, a professor at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York, who has studied the issue.

“Vice President Harris must empathize with the victims without altering the campaign schedule and provide consistent messaging on the widespread devastation that makes FEMA’s work even more challenging than normal,” Kneeland added.

Already, Trump and Harris have separately gone to Georgia and North Carolina to assess hurricane damage and pledge support, requiring the candidates to cancel campaign events elsewhere and use up time that is a precious resource in the final weeks before any election. Both Georgia and North Carolina are political battlegrounds, raising the stakes.

The hurricane fallout is evident in the candidates’ campaign events as well.

On Thursday, the first question Harris got at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas came from a construction worker and undecided voter from Tampa, Florida. Ramiro Gonzalez asked about talk that the administration has not done enough to support people after Helene and whether the people in Milton’s path would have access to aid — a sign that Trump’s messaging is breaking through with some potential voters.

Harris has called out the level of misinformation being circulated by Republicans, but her fuller answer revealed the dynamics at play just a few weeks before an election.

“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she said.

On the same day, Trump opened his speech at the Detroit Economic Club by praising Republican governors in the affected states and blasting the Biden-Harris administration.

“They’ve let those people suffer unjustly,” he said about those affected by Helene in North Carolina.

The storms have also scrambled the voting process in places. North Carolina ‘s State Board of Elections has passed a resolution to help people in the state’s affected counties vote. Florida will allow some counties greater flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling sites for in-person voting. But a federal judge in Georgiasaid Thursday the state doesn’t need to reopen voter registration despite the disruptions by Helene.

Tension and controversy have begun to override the disaster response, with Biden on Wednesday and Thursday saying that Trump has spread falsehoods that are “un-American.”

Candace Bright Hall-Wurst, a sociology professor at East Tennessee State University, said that natural disasters have become increasingly politicized, often putting more of the focus on the politicians instead of the people in need.

“Disasters are politicized when they have political value to the candidate,” she said. “This does not mean that the politicization is beneficial to victims.”

As the Democratic nominee, Harris has suddenly been a major part of the response to hurricanes, a role that traditionally has not involved vice presidents in prior administrations.

On Thursday, she participated virtually at a Situation Room briefing on Milton while she was in Nevada for campaign activities. She has huddled in meetings about response plans and on Wednesday phoned into CNN live to discuss the administration’s efforts.

At a Friday briefing with Biden to discuss the hurricanes, Harris repeated a message that subtly ties back into her campaign policies to stop price gouging.

“To any company or individual that is using this crisis to jack up prices through illegal fraud or price gouging, whether it be at the gas pump, the airport or the hotel counter, we will be monitoring and there will be a consequence,” Harris said.

Her newfound importance was such that Biden was nudged to wrap up his remarks so she could speak, prompting him to joke, “She’s my boss here.”

Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida late Wednesday and left more than 3 million without power. But the storm surge never reached the same levels as Helene, which led to roughly 230 fatalities and for a prolonged period left parts of North Carolina without access to electricity, cell service and roadways.

Trump and his allies have seized on the aftermath of Helene to spread misinformation about the administration’s response. Their debunked claims include statements that victims can only receive $750 in aid as well as false charges that emergency response funds were diverted to immigrants.

The former president said the administration’s response to Helene was worse than the George W. Bush administration’s widely panned handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which led to nearly 1,400 deaths.

“This hurricane has been a bad one, Kamala Harris has left them stranded,” Trump said at a recent rally in Juneau, Wisconsin. “This is the worst response to a storm or a catastrophe or a hurricane that we’ve ever seen ever. Probably worse than Katrina, and that’s hard to beat, right?”

Asked about the Trump campaign’s strategic thinking on emphasizing the hurricane response, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it reflects a pattern of “failed leadership” by the Biden-Harris administration that also includes the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and security at the U.S. southern border.

“Kamala has left Americans behind and proven she is not equipped to solve crises at the highest level,” Leavitt said.

John Gasper, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who has researched government responses to natural disasters, said storm victims generally want to ensure foremost that they get the aid they need.

“These disasters essentially end up being good tests of leadership for local, state and federal officials in how they respond,” he said.

But Gasper noted that U.S. politics have gotten so polarized and other issues such as the economy are shaping the election, such that the debate currently generating so much heat between Trump and the Biden-Harris administration might not matter that much on Election Day.

“On the margin, it will matter,” he said. “Will it define the election? Probably not. There’s so many other things out there.”

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Do you listen to music while working? I would like to, because I like music, and like to think of myself as a cultural enthusiast, but also because I’m sitting in front of my laptop in an empty kitchen and I worry that the incipient silence will encourage the rodent community I suspect are loitering beneath my floorboards to come and say hello.

Right now, I’m listing to Painless by Nilüfer Yanya, because Pitchfork says that her “sophisticated spin on heartbreak music” puts her at number 56 of “the best 100 albums of the 2020s so far”, and because the songs are just unfamiliar enough I can’t sing along. But, already I can feel my fingers twitching towards Spotify because although it is “mesmeric”, it’s also a bit jangly and I’m in danger of becoming distracted.

Listening to music while working is generally considered a good thing. I’m just very bad at it. Numerous studies have been undertaken that found that music in the workplace can increase mood, productivity and performance, whether that work is performing tedious menial repetitive tasks in a factory, or a comprehension test. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired its first edition of Music While You Work on 23 June 1940, in the midst of the war effort; it ran until 1967. Its up-tempo soundtrack was designed as a 30-minute vibe, loud enough to be heard on the factory floor but not too racy — the corporation forbade the playing of any rumbas. According to letters sent to the broadcaster, its impact was “incalculable”, with many factory owners estimating that productivity increased by up to 15 per cent.

I’m listening to one of its earliest recordings right now via footage dug up on YouTube, and it does indeed have an upbeat, jazzy bombast with occasional flavours of marching band. Just the kind of pep those factory “munitionettes” would have needed to keep the shells stuffed with ammo. But it’s a bit too robust and patriotic for 2024: and so I’ve moved on to Max Richter, the patron saint of ambient somnambulism, whose facility for extemporising on a handful of chords has accompanied dozens of soundtracks. The Blue Notebooks, conceived initially as a protest against the war in Iraq in 2003, has since been used to convey alien encounters (Arrival), mental breakdown (Shutter Island) and male friendship (The Leftovers). Richter is one of the most popular contemporary composers, masterful in his ability to elide mental focus and mood, but, for the purposes of writing this, it’s a bit of a downer, so I’m skipping once again to my brother’s top work-song recommendations, the “looped and repetitive” electronica of things like Bonobo, Aphex Twin or late Radiohead.

In our office, there seems to be a generational divide between those who work in silence and those who must be plugged into their headphones

Nah. Not happening. I can’t find my soundtrack: much as I want to, nothing quite hits the mark. I’ve tried listening to classical, because I mistakenly thought it would be calming and restful, and most of it was so syncopated and unhinged it felt like listening to a panic attack. “Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken,” wrote Ludwig van Beethoven of his contribution to the creative process. But listening to any of his symphonies, I find, feels like taking a tab of acid. Not helpful.

Neither do Bach’s celebrated cello concertos, universally considered to be the ultimate in ambient bliss, do it for me. It all feels a bit performative, as though I’m trying to play a role in someone else’s life: richer, more culturally profound and inhabited by people like Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy. And I’m a George Michael kind of girl.

Of course, one’s choice of soundtrack all depends on whether your sounds are designed to be enjoyed by all simultaneously, or squirrelled into headphones and enjoyed in your own aural hideaway. Productivity is said to be increased by musical accompaniment, but what if your cohort insists on listening to Whitesnake? Or Abba? I still get PTSD symptoms on hearing the first few bars of David Gray’s studio album White Ladder because it played on a loop in the restaurant in which I waitressed at the back end of the 20th century. Play me the first notes of “Babylon” and I’ll try to serve you a grass-reared steak, medium rare, with a side of chunky chips.

In our office, as with many, there seems to be a generational divide between those who like to work in silence and those who must be plugged into their headphones. For the purposes of the group dynamic I’m not a huge fan of the “locked-in syndrome” that seems to have possessed Gen Z workers to block out all extra-sensory stimulation. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t want to hear my fascinating witterings, which I offer frequently and freely. Nevertheless, they like to beetle away while tuned into Steve Lacy’s “Atomic Vomit” or “Take Me Home” by PinkPantheress. And who am I to argue?

Sorry for the brief interlude . . . Just had to accompany Miley Cyrus in the chorus of “Used to be Young”, the best track, I would argue, on her seminal 2023 album 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation.

And here we are, at the column’s end. And Fleetwood Mac has popped up on the Spotify playlist (a compilation of “Work Music” based on my own listening preferences. A last resort solution). Is there ever a circumstance in which the answer isn’t Stevie Nicks?

This week’s contribution was brought to you by a host of artists: but I still haven’t found my optimum soundtrack. Help me knuckle down. I don’t want to sit in silence: so please send me your best suggestions . . . 

Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com

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A CHARMING three-bed flat has come onto the market for an affordable £290,000 – but you’ll have the opportunity to live like a king in a multi-million pound home.

The cosy property is part of a grand castle on the outskirts of Scotland’s Edinburgh – and it’s on sale for the price of a typical home in the UK.

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The three-bedroom flat is part of an imposing fortress in Bonaly, an old village just over five miles south west of Edinburgh’s city centre.

The historic building has a high tower and turrets, and sits at the foot of the Pentland Hills, surrounded by stunning grounds that include a stream.

It is called Bonaly Tower and sits on the site of a seventeenth century farmhouse that once stood at the centre of the village of Bonaly.

The farmhouse was the country residence of Lord Henry Cockburn, who extended the property into something with a little more grandeur.

The peel tower was reportedly added to the building in 1839.

Bonaly Tower was said to be the venue for frequent meetings of the ‘Friday Club’, a group of leading Edinburgh literati, which were hosted by Lord Cockburn.

It is certainly an impressive venue for such occasions, being set in beautiful private gardens.

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These gardens include a decorative wrought-iron gate and recesses filled with statues.

One of the statues is of Shakespeare, which was reportedly salvaged from the demolition of the Theatre Royal in Shakespeare Square in 1860.

Several other pieces of decorative stonework appear in the garden including urns, some bird baths and a plaque depicting Edinburgh Castle.

The flat is being advertised for sale via Glenham estate agents, which is inviting ‘offers over £290,000’.

The average price of a property in Edinburgh is £349,405, according to Zoopla.

It is around £20,000 higher than the average value of a home in Britain, which currently stands at £329,628.

Daniel Copley, consumer expert at Zoopla, said: “While a lot of us might aspire to live in a castle, it’s rare that the opportunity arises for one to have that happy ever after at such an affordable cost. 

“The property is ideally situated, enjoying excellent public transport links that make commuting into Edinburgh fast and convenient while idyllically nestled at the foot of the Pentland Hills.”

The flat for sale comes with three bedrooms and a Victorian-style bathroom. 

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The entrance is a large wooden door, which leads to a hall, living room, kitchen and a separate shower room. 

Natural materials continue to be showcased inside the flat with plenty of wood furniture, painted brick walls and wooden beams on the ceiling.

There are decorative sash windows, and a wood-burner sits in the living room.

Outside, there is a double garage and two allocated parking spaces for the flat at the front of the property.

The flat covers an area of 762 square feet, the equivalent of almost 71 square metres.

It sits beside the 290-hectare Bonaly country park, which has a ski centre, pony trekking and trout fishing nearby.

Bonaly has access to good transport links, with easy community via the city bypass and motorway.

The property is also between 1.5 and 2.3 miles of four train stations, including Wester Hailes, Slateford, Kingsknowe, and Curriehill.

Other facilities nearby include several schools, such as Bonaly primary school, Firrhill high school and Merchiston Castle School.

As well as being well served by amenities, the sale of the flat represents a rare opportunity to live in a historic Edinburgh landmark.

Balmoral Castle

BALMORAL Castle is a large estate house in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, near the village of Crathie.

The vast property is situated 6.2 miles west of Ballater and 6.8 miles east of Braemar.

The estate and castle are privately owned by the Royal Family and are not the property of the Crown.

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The existing house on site was found to be too small, so the royals purchased the estate in 1852.

In its place, the construction of the current Balmoral Castle was commissioned.

William Smith of Aberdeen was the architect, although his designs were amended by Prince Albert.

Historic Scotland classified the castle as a category A listed building.

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The new castle was completed in 1856, with the old castle demolished shortly thereafter.

Successive Royal Family members added to the Balmoral Estate, and it now covers an area of approximately 50,000 acres.

As well as the main castle, there are 150 other buildings on the estate, including Birkhall, the estate of King Charles, Craigowan Lodge, and several other cottages.

Balmoral is a working estate, including grouse moors, forestry, and farmland, as well as managed herds of deer, Highland cattle, and ponies.

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Since 1987, an illustration of the castle has been featured on the reverse side of £100 notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The crimson-coloured notes are the largest denomination of banknotes issued by The Royal Bank of Scotland and are still in production.

With less than three weeks to go until the Budget, speculation about potential pensions tax raids has reached fever pitch.

Those over the age of 55 are panicking over the possibility that the chancellor could slice the cap on tax-free cash to as low as £100,000. I do not think this will happen, but many people with large pensions are not willing to take this chance, and wealth managers report a surge in withdrawals.

Meanwhile, younger readers — especially those with young children — are fretting about a much more credible rumour that Rachel Reeves could charge national insurance on employer pension contributions.

Before we delve into the details, let’s look at the bigger picture. She’s going to have to increase taxes on pensions somewhere. The problem is how to do this without imperilling her central mission of delivering a Budget for growth, breaking manifesto pledges or upsetting the trade unions. I fear the much bigger problem of most people not saving enough for retirement risks being overlooked.

Reeves will want to target tax rises on those with the broadest shoulders and the biggest pension pots. But having delighted unions with above-inflation pay settlements in week one, she will not want to enrage them in week seventeen. For this reason, the pensions expert John Ralfe, tells me his acid test for Budget pensions rumours is “how would this affect NHS consultants?”

His theory is the political imperative to cut NHS waiting lists massively reduces the likelihood of any pensions tax changes that could prompt doctors to retire early or cut their hours. “The British Medical Association have an effective right of veto over UK pensions policy,” he adds, noting how Reeves was recently forced to U-turn on plans to reintroduce the lifetime allowance.

Cutting pensions tax relief for higher earners looks to be off the table as it would cause tax problems for doctors and other public sector workers. Now rumours about lump sum reductions are causing blue lights to flash.

Graham Crossley, an NHS pensions specialist at Quilter, has received many panicked phone calls from medics in their late fifties this week asking if it’s too late to submit their retirement application forms before the Budget.

Fiscal drag offers a more palatable solution. Freeze the maximum tax-free lump sum at £268,275 and, as inflation takes its course, people can slowly adjust their retirement plans. Crossley reckons the purchasing power of this sum will have dwindled to £150,000 after 10 to 15 years. But Reeves needs policies that could start filling the black hole within as many months.

Those of us toiling in the private sector typically pay into defined contribution (DC) pension schemes that are nowhere near as generous as defined benefit (DB) schemes common in the public sector. If Ralfe’s theory is right, tax rises that focus pain on the private sector are more likely.

Ending the inheritance tax benefits of DC pensions is one widely tipped Budget measure. Charging employers national insurance on staff pension contributions is another.

This passes Ralfe’s test, as public sector employers would be reimbursed for any extra costs. And it just about squeaks around Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise NI for working people. But raising NI on the pension contributions that private sector companies make for their staff is obviously going to have major consequences for workers in future.

A snap poll by the ABI found that nearly half of employers who currently pay more than the bare minimum into staff pension schemes would reduce their contributions were this to happen. There would also be knock-on effects for the labour market and your chances of getting a pay rise in future, which could short-change your retirement savings.

But it also threatens the future of salary sacrifice schemes used by most large private sector employers in the UK and, in turn, the ability of many readers to navigate one of the most costly cliff edges in the tax system.

Sacrificing more pay into your pension to avoid the “£100,000 tax trap” of high marginal rates and the loss of state childcare benefits is a tactic increasingly deployed by professional parents in recent years.

If one parent earns a penny over this threshold, this could instantly add thousands of pounds to a family’s annual childcare bill as “free” nursery hours and tax-free childcare are lost. Yet try and out-earn this problem, and you face a 62 per cent marginal rate of tax on income between £100,000-£125,125 as the personal allowance is tapered away.

Increasing your pension contributions to avoid both of these issues has been a valuable loophole. But for companies, using salary sacrifice schemes to avoid 13.8 per cent employer NI on staff pension contributions has been an even bigger one!

If the tax ratchet is only applied to private sector pensions, it will widen the gulf between public and private pension schemes even further

Could Budget day changes close this? The short answer is “perhaps”. Exchanging a slice of salary in return for a non-cash benefit means employers effectively fund 100 per cent of a worker’s pension contributions, and would be exposed to paying NI on all of it.

If Reeves imposed NI at the full whack, this could raise up to £12bn a year. Sir Steve Webb, the former pensions minister and now a partner at LCP, has suggested a much smaller levy of 2 per cent, saying this would still raise a couple of billion, but wouldn’t frighten the horses too much.

If that were the case, employers would likely still keep salary sacrifice schemes going — Webb points out they’d still be saving 11.8 per cent — and either absorb the extra costs, or cut the value of their contributions. Having started down this path, the chancellor could increase this levy at a future Budget. But this would make increasing employers’ default auto-enrolment contributions a much harder sell in future.

We don’t know if this will happen, let alone the precise terms of any new rules. But tax experts I’ve canvassed this week think a consultation would be required, meaning any changes would be pushed into the next tax year. Even if this did sound the death knell for salary sacrifice schemes, those navigating the £100,000 cliff edge could still opt to pay more into a workplace or private pension scheme, though this would involve much more admin, and potentially a loss of NI savings for workers too.

We have been warned to expect a painful Budget, but if the tax ratchet is only applied to private sector pensions, it will widen the gulf between public and private pension schemes even further. Whatever route the chancellor decides to take, improving retirement outcomes by incentivising all workers to save and invest should not be forgotten.

Claer Barrett is the FT’s consumer editor and the author of ‘What They Don’t Teach You About Money’. claer.barrett@ft.com Instagram @Claerb