The Steeple Times

Tag: Metropolitan Police

  • Winging it

    Winging it

    Sarah Tucker gives an update on goings on at the resort where Madeleine McCann vanished

     

    Four hundred and thirty euros, one bedroom apartment, one week at the height of season at a luxury family resort in Portugal. And oh yes, it’s the Ocean Club at Praia da Luz. There’s availability with two and three bedroom apartments as well. I asked about apartment 5a where Madeleine disappeared but the PR is coming back to me on that one. That was four days ago.

     

    The Ocean Club entrance and Apartment 5A at the top of the street

    I checked this out because having looked at the comments on The Steeple Times McCann roll call entry, I wanted to know what became of the resort where she disappeared.  Last year the lady who owned the property itself couldn’t sell it because women buyers were put off by it’s history.  I don’t blame them. I would never recommend buying from a divorcing couple, no matter how good the deal, so buying somewhere where a child has been allegedly kidnapped is a no no. Estate agents will say nonsense, but that’s a woman’s superstition for you. Or a mother’s superstition.

     

    I remember writing at the time about Mark Warner, a company synonymous with a reputation for keeping parents who treated parenting as a subject to be studied to A*, not as something to leave to instinct, God forbid.  Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but having recently vox popped over 500 parents* asking if they would leave their children in their hotel room unsupervised while they ate in a restaurant on site, none of them, not one, said they would do so. I never mentioned the McCann case. The question about childcare was mixed in with other family travel related stuff, but some even mentioned the McCann’s case when they responded.  And all claimed they would take advantage of a babysitting service if it was offered or eat earlier and with the kids if it wasn’t.

     

    I was asked at the time if I would ever leave my son alone. I never have. Too risky and having lost him for ten minutes in the salubrious area that is East Sheen high street at five in the afternoon five years ago, because I refused to wait for him to tie up his shoe lace for the nth time, and getting no less than eighteen other men and women, all who had been either waiting for buses, serving or being served in shops, or in several cases drinking in the local pub, to run up and down, shouting his name, I understand the McCann’s need to go to the end of the earth, the prime minister, the Pope, to find their daughter. I completely understand this. What I never understood was their emotional reaction or rather lack of it.    In the meantime babysitting services are still offered at the Ocean Club.

     

    * Using social media (parents of three to six year olds).

     

  • Kerry Grist-Needham (formerly Kerry Needham)

    Kerry Grist-Needham (formerly Kerry Needham)

    Since her twenty-one-month year old son Ben went missing on the Greek Island of Kos in July 1991, Ms. Grist-Needham has tirelessly campaigned to try and find him. Unlike with other cases, little help has been given by the authorities or charities. A volunteer named Scott Morrison has set up a website at http://www.helpfindben.co.uk and it truly deserves the support of each and every one of us.

  • Gerry & Kate McCann

    Gerry & Kate McCann

    Their daughter Madeleine disappeared on the evening 3rd May 2007 from a holiday apartment whilst they sat enjoying tapas with a bunch of friends. Some believe the poor child was kidnapped. Others have alternative theories. A public fund to find “Maddie” raised hundreds of thousands of pounds but Mrs McCann’s book, Madeleine, contains so many references to trips on private jets and meeting famous people that it makes one question whether the search for the child or fame has become the focus.

  • Benjamin Boateng

    Benjamin Boateng

    A club promoter who thought he was above the law. Found guilty in October 2011 of a pre-planned sexual assault, this former actor was previously accused of a similar crime in South Africa whilst his father was High Commissioner there. That time the case was dropped but this time he’s been jailed for nearly four years.

  • James Murdoch

    James Murdoch

    Considered by many as the pretender to the fortune of his father, Rupert, the phone hacking scandal may have put paid to that. He dropped out of Harvard to start a hip hop label named Rawkus and even gave an airing to a then little known Eminem. Here’s a rebel, complete with two tattoos, who, like a phoenix from the ashes, will undoubtedly rise again.

  • Lord Lucan (also known as Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan)

    Lord Lucan (also known as Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan)

    “Lucky,” as he was known to his friends, was a man whose luck ran out on the 8th November 1974. A prolific gambler, Lord Lucan disappeared following the killing of his children’s nanny and he was subsequently declared legally dead in October 1999. Conspiracy theories as to his supposed whereabouts continue to this day. Amongst the most ludicrous are that Arnold Schwarzenegger murdered him and that he’s hiding out in Kenya. This is a mystery that is unlikely ever to be solved.

  • Rebekah Brooks

    Rebekah Brooks

    The youngest editor of a British national newspaper and a former wife of Eastender Ross Kemp. Educated in Warrington but now more likely to be found enjoying a day trip on a private jet to Venice. A true survivor who should not yet be written off.

  • K&C's £50 grifter

    The nuisance conman who pounds the streets of Kensington & Chelsea

     

    When an old man approaches you in the street complaining he’s lost his wallet or can’t afford a bed for the night, no decent person would disbelieve him or begrudge him a few pennies.

     

    On the streets of Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea, however, in the last year I’ve regularly encountered an old man who is plainly seizing on such pity and abusing it. This chap makes the grifters of the BBC’s Hustle seem like amateurs and he’s probably raking in upwards of £300 a day.

     

    The £50 grifter: He may look like The Right Honourable Dr Vince Cable MP but he ain’t quite so well intentioned

    The individual I mention is probably about 65 years old and his favourite haunts seem to be Walton Street, Beauchamp Place, Sloane Street, Cadogan Place and Draycott Avenue. He is certainly a beggar who opts to limit himself to the finest streets and it is certainly apparent why he does such.

     

    The cast of the BBC’s superb Hustle: Robert Gleinster, Matt Di Angelo, Adrian Lester, Kelly Adams and Robert Vaughn

     

    The first time I encountered him I was with a friend. The man concerned approached us with a story of how he’d been pick-pocketed and requested £50 for a train ticket to somewhere up north. My friend opened her wallet and handed him the cash and he went on his merry way leaving her thinking she’d done a good deed.

     

    The next time I was stopped, the same man told me a tale of how he couldn’t afford a bed for the night. “Could you give me £50?” he enquired. I pointed out that we’d met before and he flat denied it. In astonishment, I mumbled some excuse about not having any cash and turned to leave but then his vitriol began to flow: “F**k you, you f**king piece of Eurotrash,” he screamed. I got away as quickly as I could.

     

    Days later I was in Beauchamp Place and he managed to block my path. Plainly, for all of his audacity, he doesn’t or cannot remember who he spins his yarns to and this time my friends and I were given a story about his wife having suddenly died and his being unable to afford a train ticket to Gloucester. “Give me £50, will you,” he politely requested. Yet again, I explained that we’d met before. Yet again, he denied such and realising he wasn’t getting a cent, the swearing commenced.

    All other encounters have been similarly peppered with tales of woe and always end with a request for £50. His success is obvious as the man wouldn’t continue haunting our streets if his strategy didn’t result in people paying up. Many locals have also told me of their conversations with this man and some tell me that they too parted with their cash. Finally, though, I managed to get a snap of the con artist the other day and I publish it here as a warning to my readers.

     

    Don’t get me wrong: I entirely support helping those in need and there are indeed several poor old people who I assist locally when I run into them but confidence tricksters such as this really should be stopped from conning tourists and locals.

     

    If you spot this man, report him to the Metropolitan Police’s Chelsea police station at 2 Lucan Place, London, SW3 3PB on 0300 123 1212 or go to: http://content.met.police.uk/Borough/Kensington

     

    Watch clips of the BBC’s Hustle at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007gf9k

     

     

  • The horse has already bolted

    The horse has already bolted

    My thoughts on the arrest of Charlie and Rebekah Brooks

     

    Whilst growing up, at home, when my family spoke of “hacking” we were talking about taking the horses out into the countryside. Now, sadly, this term has become more associated with Rupert Murdoch, News Corp and a bunch of bleating celebrities than with a leisurely pleasure ride.

    Author and horse trainer Charlie Brooks and his wife Rebekah pictured at Royal Ascot

     

    When the former chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, whom I’d argue has wrongly been made the sole “she-devil” of this seamlessly growing scandal, was arrested along with her husband this morning, I have to say I immediately thought how convenient the timing must have been for many in the public eye.

     

    Today marks the start of The Cheltenham Festival 2012, an event that undoubtedly the horse trainer Charlie Brooks and his wife would have been attending. That their home in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire happened to be raided on this particular morning, to me, seems like nothing other than an attempt to prevent further “horsegate” references and a bid to save further embarrassment for David Cameron and the Metropolitan Police.

    A photoshopped picture of The Right Honourable David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on a horse

    Recent revelations that Scotland Yard had lent an ex-police horse, Raisa, to Mrs Brooks were not helpful to the Prime Minister, who had to concede he’d ridden the animal in the company of Mr Brooks, an old friend from their Eton schooldays. Puns a plenty followed and they were something that Cameron did not want to on “furlong.”

     

    As such, the inevitable photographs that would have appeared this week of Mr & Mrs Brooks in their tweeds with racehorses would have just brought further salaciously horsey headlines and further embarrassment. I do indeed suspect this is the real reason for the arrest of the couple between 5am and 7am this morning.

     

    The Brooks’s may be guilty. They may be innocent. Either way, the timing of their arrests just stinks on the part of Operation Weeting. Though I’ll not gain many plaudits for suggesting this, I say shame on the Metropolitan Police.

     

    For more on The Cheltenham Festival, go to: http://www.cheltenham-festival.co.uk

     

    For a profile on Mr & Mrs Charlie Brooks by The Daily Telegraph, go to: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/9140263/Profile-Rebekah-and-Charlie-Brooks.html