Self-entitled drug flogging billionaires Mortimer and Jacqueline Sackler were rightly roasted by ‘Guest of a Guest’ for their (latest) bleating email
Mortimer D. A. Sackler is a spoilt berk from a family who have galleries named after them. This drip and his ghastly oik of a wife, Jacqueline, hang out with royalty and are part of one of America’s richest dynasties, but there’s something utterly grating about them: They constantly moan.
In July, Jacqueline wrote to her lawyers. In her pathetic missive, this tedious tepid woman whined about the £9.98 billion ($13 billion, €11.99 billion or درهم47.74 billion) the family had gained from flogging dodgy pharmaceuticals including OxyCotin as having destroyed “our work, our friendships, our reputation and our ability to function in society.” She bleated: “And worse, it dooms my children. How is my son supposed to apply to high school in September?”
Now, according to Guest of a Guest, Jackie and her hubby have “been increasingly blacklisted by the upper crust” in New York. “Aren’t they just the worst?” they asked in an email to subscribers. With even the Met museum refusing to take any further donations from them, this vacuous pair have flogged their “ritzy Upper East Side townhouse” and fled to “winter term” it (their words, they wouldn’t come from anyone else, after all) in Gstad, Switzerland.
According to the site, the duo emailed friends and told them: “We would love to see you either in Gstaad, if you are here or nearby, or elsewhere in Europe (taking advantage of the ease of travel here vs ours in NYC).”
A spokesman for this pair of pillocks then followed up to announce that anyone suggesting they were siphoning off funds to Switzerland might be telling untruths and announced: “They fully intend to return to the US in the near future.” Guest of a Guest quite correctly responded: “Here’s hoping they don’t!”
Lady ‘Call Me Victoria’ Borwick makes a fool of herself on the BBC’s ‘Big Question’ as it is revealed that the MP who managed to lose the safe seat of Kensington is ludicrously seeking a comeback
Yesterday morning, Lady ‘Call Me Victoria’ Borwick nodded her head on the BBC’s The Big Questions as another member of the audience suggested it ridiculous that a family living in a poky flat in Beckenham worth £300,000 can be paying the same in council tax as a family living in Kensington in a £25 million mansion.
“Please Victoria, stop interrupting, come on, let’s have someone else,” responded the programme’s host Nicky Campbell as this redheaded mother of the chief technology officer for Vote Leave tried to interject. “I’m a Londoner” later shouted the former Conservative MP – whom lost a seat that anyone would agree a “pig in a blue rosette should have won” – whilst Made in Chelsea’sAndy Jordan, in a bizarre attempt to be meritocratic, added: “Made in Chelsea should be Made for Everybody. I like that.”
This delusional cocktail party loving ex-MP, it should be added, herself lives in Phillimore Gardens, W8 – one of Britain’s most expensive streets and one where houses regularly sell for upwards of £35 million – and is the very same woman who did little to nothing for the homeless whilst in office. Instead, Borwick mostly asked questions during her time at Westminster in support of the antiques trade in general and the ivory business in particular. She now wants to return.
In spite of Borwick declaring: “I’m not a politician anymore” on The Big Questions, her very own website tells a very different story. Its homepage begins with the announcement: “I have made no secret of the fact that I would like to be re-elected as your Member of Parliament for Kensington and represent my fellow residents in Parliament.” No doubt, soon, ‘Call Me Victoria’ will also be picking up the phones. God help the Conservative Party and God help Kensington.
#bbctbq #lazyborwick
Watch the programme by clicking here (time limited for 29 days).
Lady Borwick on: “Should drugs be treated like alcohol?”
Nicky Campbell: “I know you’re very against drugs, but, of course, George Osborne, David Cameron, Boris Johnson – It didn’t do them any harm did it?”
Lady Borwick: “I am sorry I cannot think of a reason why legalising drugs would be… [Interuption from an audience member] Hang on, I’m not in politics any more… The important point is legalising drugs is not going to make us as a nation healthier.”
Nicky Campbell: “Did you have a drink over Christmas?”
Lady Borwick: “Yes, but not very much.”
Nicky Campbell: “But, then, are you a hypocrite?”
Lady Borwick: “We’re just facing Dry January. We’re telling people they shouldn’t be drinking in January… Why do we want encourage people to get addicted [to drugs]? The most important point is that the drug dealers are not going to go away, they’re not going to give up and tend their own gardens I’m sorry to say. But if you legalise pushing outside our schools… They’ll find some other way of engaging in criminal activity.”
Lady Borwick on: “Is London only for the rich?” and the Grenfell Tower tragedy and gangs
Nicky Campbell: “Well Victoria, you were the MP for [Kensington] and it is a very divided city, London. Most people would agree with that.”
Lady Borwick: “Just a touch. Just a touch. I will touch on Grenfell because you’ve raised that.”
Nicky Campbell: “Can I read out one of your emails because it does concentrate minds on what the problem is.”
Lady Borwick: “I was just going to quickly say, having been to see Grenfell because while… I went to see Grenfell several times. I helped them form a residents’ association because they had some very, very valid concerns. And I of course, I passed on all those concerns to the police. This is no secret. This has been in the Guardian. This has been in the media. But the problem is this is a tragedy and today is all about: ‘Is London too expensive?’ but I think all of us in Kensington, everyone in Kensington and Chelsea, everyone in London appreciates what a tragedy this is and how…”
Nicky Campbell: “But on the subject of the two nations that we are living in in London. Those of us who do and these remarks come from an email [from Lady Borwick]. It’s very interesting because you say: ‘The local community was difficult to help in the aftermath of the disaster because rather like gangs they don’t go into another community.”
Lady Borwick: “I was explaining… I was explaining in a four page email that we need to reach out to them. You cannot expect people to come to you.”
Nicky Campbell: “Why did you say: ‘Like gangs’?”
Lady Borwick: “It’s like communities, groups. It’s just terminology, of you know, saying you’ve got to reach out to people. You’ve not got to expect in life that people are going to come to you. We shouldn’t be judging people. We should be here reaching out. And that’s why when I saw the Grenfell people, I went to see them.”
Audience member: “That’s quite a pejorative term…”
Lady Borwick: “OK, as a group, the people we had to deal with…”
Anna Minton (journalist and academic): “There was an absolute breakdown of relations with the community and local government over Grenfell.”
Lady Borwick: “I agree with that and it’s an absolute tragedy and we must make sure that, that that never, ever happens again… These people had genuine concerns and I went to see them about a whole range of things.”
Alex Proud (restaurateur and gallery owner): “The politicians weren’t interested and aren’t interested. You destroyed the city we live in.”
Lady Borwick: “I’m sorry. I am really sorry. I went and listened to various people and they had genuine, genuine concerns. They weren’t just about those things.”
Nicky Campbell: “Victoria, Victoria… Please… Moving on from Grenfell…”
Lady Borwick: “I don’t want people thinking I didn’t have genuine concerns.”
Lady Borwick on empty housing in London:
Lady Borwick (in response to an audience member saying “housing shouldn’t be about all the investment units in the golden postcodes of Knightsbridge and Kensington”): “We’ve got to have homes that people actually want to live in.”
Nicky Campbell: “Please, Victoria, come on. Let’s have someone else. We’ve got speak to someone else now.”
The studio audience on the BBC’s Big Question were hosted by Nicky Campbell and included Londoner’s pro and anti-drugs and those interested in the city’s housing crisis.
The rabid right-wing journalist Peter Hitchens was also in the studio; later on Twitter the anti-drugs campaigner lamented: “Sometimes it is useful to have had some practice in being a minority of one in a TV studio.”
‘Made in Chelsea’ ‘star’ Andy Jordan pointed out that the reality show did not portray the reality of life in one of the country’s richest boroughs; he also added: “They showed me driving round in a Ferrari. I actually own a white Transit van.”
Lady Borwick plainly hasn’t caught up with the times. She wore a necklace that proclaimed: “Votes for Women” in spite of the fact that women got the vote in Britain 101 years ago in 1918.
“With champagne wishes and caviar dreams” was the famous signoff of London born Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous host Robin Leach. Harrow High School educated, this one-time Daily Mail reporter moved to the US in 1963 with $145 in his pocket and after briefly becoming a shoe salesman founded a music publication named Go Magazine.
After selling up “at considerable profit,” Leach worked for The National Star and CNN before coming up with Lifestyles in 1984. He attributed the show’s popularity to Jimmy Carter exiting the White House and boasted: “[It was] because the Reagans brought in an aura of wealth. Jimmy Carter was too ordinary. So, when Reagan came in, it was time for a show about wealth and success… Hear this: In the course of an hour, I deliver twice as much audio information and visual images as any other show on television. I’m fast and loud on purpose. I cram 10 pounds of caviar into an eight-pound pack.”
“Sensational, not scandalous” in his approach, twice married, father of three Leach’s subjects numbered everyone from Celine Dion to Madonna and Adnan Khashoggi and Donald Trump. As a result this celebrant of wealth and capitalism became a millionaire and pretty famous himself and in 2007, in the Fergie song Glamorous featuring Ludacris, the latter rapped: “Lifestyles so rich and famous, Robin Leach’ll get jealous.” With his passing, most certainly, this much parodied “life of the party” has most definitely moved to the skies.
London has simply become a money park for dodgy money and though ‘McMafia’ reflected elements of that, the truth is far more depressing
Since the 1st January, the nation was engrossed (though many were also totally bored) by the BBC’s eight-part drama series McMafia.
Based on a fictional – though plainly inspired by the likes of the late Boris Berezovsky – Russian mafia family relocated to London, the TV adaptation of this thriller was filmed primarily in Knightsbridge, Mayfair and South Kensington. It showcased what many might consider the extreme wealth of Central London, but, in fact, was presented a little bit amateurishly.
Of the show, Carol Midgley in The Times summed it up well. She remarked: “If this is how miserably the super-rich live, I’d take a semi in Swindon any day” and equally now, if you wander the streets of SW1, SW3, SW7 and W1, you’d not disagree with her.
Recent news that the Fine Art Society is closing in Bond Street after 140 years due to “soaring rents” and “an influx of wealthy international fashion houses” illustrates the effect of the arrival of uncultivated new wealth in that sector, but equally sad is the demise of local restaurants and shops that actually provide things that genuine, full-time residents actually need.
Boarded up in Belgravia this month, after 44 years in operation, the Ebury Wine Bar closed supposedly due to the retirement of its owner, Nigel Windridge. Also gone – aside from the key loss of the much loved La Brasserie in Brompton Cross – are restaurants like Itsu in Walton Street and Racine in Brompton Road. Replaced by shisha bars and other businesses aimed at wealthy Gulfies and oligarchs, the streets of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea are increasingly becoming utterly devoid of character.
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The richest self-made woman in the UK paid herself £217 million in 2016 and is said to have a personal fortune of circa £3.17 billion. A former betting shop cashier, Denise Coates purchased the domain Bet365.com in 2000 and has since grown the operation into one of the world’s largest online gambling companies. A Sheffield University graduate and the daughter of the chairman of Stoke City F.C., this incredibly successful business titan is nicknamed ‘The Patron of the Potteries’ for employing a large number of people in Stoke-on-Trent. She lives surprisingly modestly with her husband and five children in a farmhouse in Cheshire.
Protestors descend on H.R. Owen Ferrari dealership in South Kensington screaming: “Kill the Rich!”
On Saturday afternoon a bunch of protestors held a protest outside the Brompton Road Ferrari dealership H.R. Owen.
Seemingly something to do with rights for cleaners, the assembled ragbag waved Communist flags and shouted: “Kill the rich!” and “Fight back!” Aside from banners about dirt, the mop wielding mob displayed a banner declaring: “Class war: We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live” and proceeded to block the street for over half an hour.
As security guards and officers of the law descended, a near neighbour of the showroom told The Steeple Times: “The police couldn’t do anything as they told me there were not enough of them to stop these despicable people blocking the road. It’s awful and I am afraid that they’ll smash the windows and trash the beautiful cars.”
Elsewhere, on social media, organisers of the gathering shared posts that declared: “Sack us and we’ll shut you down!” and urged participants to: “Bring your noise and anger.”
Long Island mansion with links to ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘The Big Short’ for sale for £13.1 million (or 152% more than it sold for in 2011)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) set his ‘Roaring Twenties’ classic The Great Gatsby in the fictional locations of East Egg and West Egg on Long Island and now one of the homes that inspired him is available for sale.
Owned by Cornwall Capital founder James Mai – a man whose firm ironically made over 80 times its capital by buying credit default swaps on CDOs prior to the 2008 financial crisis – and his wife Chiara since 2011, 235 Middle Neck Road at Sands Point on Long Island’s Gold Coast was built in 1926 and home to the Rumsey-Harriman railroad dynasty from 1929.
Fitzgerald is said to have spent time at the residence learning about “the lifestyle of the moneyed aristocracy of Old Westport, Long Island, and their involvement in the movement of eugenics” from the Rumseys and ironically, James Mai, is also representative of a clash between ‘old’ and ‘new’ money. In 2008, he and his partner are said to have been the ones “screaming about [the coming crash] as loud as they could, but everyone turned a deaf ear.” The character Jamie Shipley, played by Finn Wittrock in the 2015 film The Big Short, is loosely based upon him.
Current owners Chiara and James Mai are said to have spent vast sums on the renovation of the estate
Featuring 11,955 square foot of renovated accommodation that includes formal and informal entertaining spaces, 13 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. There is also a 6-car garage with a 3-bedroom caretaker’s cottage, a 4-bedroom beachside cottage and a boat house.
Outside, on a plot of some 5.3 acres, there is a 391-foot private beach, a tennis court and in spite of its seeming isolation, the property is situated just 29 miles from Downtown Manhattan and 25 minutes by boat.
235 Middle Neck Road is listed by Nava Mitnick of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International. In December 2016, of it, she commented: “Obviously, it’s so imposing – you drive down and see the sweeping views. But when we entered the house, I described it as a ‘glorified cottage’, because it’s so homey.”
‘Sir Shifty’ filmed in debauched incident in Mykonos; he would do better to sip rather than spray his beverages
Sir Philip Green will forever be remembered as a man whose former company, BHS, collapsed with the loss of 11,000 jobs. At that time, in The Steeple Times, the actor and producer Steven Berkoff compared him to both Shylock and Al Capone, but now ‘Badly Behaved Boozy Brit Abroad’ can add be added to this slug-like individual’s roster after he was spotted dousing fellow diners with champagne in Greece.
Filmed by someone named Sarah Nazari and shared on her Instagram page, the minute long clip shows Sir Philip at a beach bar-restaurant named Nammos Mykonos. Alongside other revelers, the business tycoon was pictured hosing other guests down with £109 ($141, €120 or درهم517) per bottle “spraying champagne.” He didn’t look like he had a care in the world and perhaps, just maybe, his daughter’s new jailbird boyfriend, Jeremy Meeks, had provided him with inspiration to behave like a reprobate.
Of antics more befitting of a 20-year old than a 65-year old, an unnamed source told The Times: “You couldn’t be in this club if you aren’t rich, so he wasn’t impressing anyone. He just looked like a sad old man trying to play with the pretty people.” Spot on: ‘Sir Shifty’, at his age, would do well to sip rather than spray.
A rare thing – A Pacific Heights, San Francisco house with a 9-car garage that has been dramatically reduced in price by £1 million
Extending to 7,580 square feet in total and on a corner plot, 2190 Vallejo Street in San Francisco is a detached 5-storey residence with a private garage with space for seven to nine cars.
Built in 1912, the year the Titanic sank, to the designs of Edgar Mathews (1866 – 1946) – an architect responsible for a number of Arts and Crafts style houses in the sought after Pacific Heights area of the city – the property includes 4 reception rooms, 7 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms and a wine cellar. It also has three areas of outdoor decking and a small front garden planted with English roses.
Not many single family residences in any city come with garaging for 9 cars
Presented in good but shell condition and including many period features, 2190 Vallejo Street is effectively a blank canvas. It is listed by Michael King Estates and has recently been reduced in price from £7.5 million to £6.5 million.
Editor of The Steeple TimesMatthew Steeples remarked: “At a time when the San Francisco market continues to boom and median house values are currently listed at £928,000 ($1.2 million) – up 7.2% on last year – in the Bay Area according to Zillow.com, this dramatic reduction is definitely indicative of initial overpricing. Just as in London, buyers at this level are extremely choosy but maybe, just maybe now a seriously rich car lover will choose 2190 Vallejo as the location to house their collection.”
The Numbers – 2190 Vallejo Street
June 2017 – Reduced in price by £963,000 ($1.25 million, €1.06 million or درهم4.59 million) to £6.5 million ($8.5 million, €7.2 million or درهم31.2 million).
May 2017 – Listed for sale for £7.51 million ($9.75 million, €8.23 million or درهم35.81 million).
Trophy house with a “dictator interior” in The Boltons has nearly £10 million sliced off its asking price; iceberg home behind reduced by £5 million
A house in London’s second most expensive street has returned to the market at the much reduced price of £30 million ($38.8 million, €35.5 million or درهم142.6 million) in spite of having an interior that would only appeal to the likes of Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein.
Previously marketed at £39.5 million ($47.1 million, €47.1 million or درهم188.3 million) in 2015 through Russell Simpson and now offered by Knight Frank, semi-detached 6 The Boltons extends to 9,781 square foot and comes with a 2,469 square foot mews house to the rear in Creswell Place.
Both buildings are described as “requiring modernisation throughout” and in total provide 5 reception rooms, 16 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. The main house has a lift to all floors, air conditioning and as well as parking for 5 cars, there is an internal garage and an interconnecting garden.
For those with another £32.5 million ($42.1 million, €38.5 million or درهم154.5 million) to spare, Knight Frank also offer another house adjoining the Cresswell Place mews house. Featured in The Steeple Times last May, that house, Cresswell House, has also had a rather punchy £5 million ($6.5 million, €6 million or درهم23.8 million) sliced off its asking price. A super-compound anyone?
