The Steeple Times

Tag: salad

  • Down The Drain McCann

    Down The Drain McCann

    More money goes down the drain in the Madeleine McCann case on top of the £13.5 million of British taxpayer wonga chucked away on absolutely no results

    This morning – continuing the pointless pattern of the Mirror and MailOnline to “note nothing new” in the case of ‘disappeared’ Madeleine McCann we highlighted last week – The Sun shared an “exclusive” about the investigation that frankly wasn’t worthy of a single column inch.

     

    After beginning with the bashfully bold headline “Madeleine McCann’s parents to find out this year if they’ve won legal battle against ex-cop” Goncalo Amaral – whom currently is owed a “six-figure sum” believed to be circa £750,000 by Gerry and Kate McCann after he beat them in court in February 2017 – the paper then concluded without an actual “when” and the non-news that “the judges will now give a verdict by the end of the year.”

     

    Of this diatribe of drivel, one could say: “Thanks for that,” but more realistically anyone rational would ask of The Sun instead: “Couldn’t you have asked your contributor to instead go looking for a missing person where there is a genuine chance of that person actually being found?”

     

    Meanwhile, on Sunday, the Mirror – a red-top reliable for prattling on about “non-news” about a situation that could have been avoided perhaps if two doctors hadn’t left their toddlers unattended so they could live it up in a restaurant with their mates – shared that the prosecution team that named Christian Brueckner (AKA ‘Christian B’) exactly one year ago just as the British government began their ‘coronavirus distraction technique,’ have actually not spoken to Gerry and Kate McCann once during the ensuing period.

     

    Asked if they had genuinely made any progress in the case, prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters “angrily hit back at critics” and illustrated the weakness of his work in declaring: “I don’t care who believes what… We are missing important important information. We want no stone unturned. Whether there will be an indictment in the end, I cannot foresee at the moment.”

     

    The Mirror concluded: “Brueckner, serving seven years for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia, has not been interviewed,” whilst elsewhere the Daily Record added Wolters pathetically offered: “Our appeal for witnesses still stands.” We respond: “Where on earth do you think these people are given the millions already offered in rewards that have never been claimed?”

     

    Clearly, on top of the £13.5 million of British taxpayer money wasted on this case already, that’s another chunk of change down the drain whilst other families of missing people shamefully get little to no help at all. Enough is enough; it is time to close down the investigation into ‘missing’ Madeleine McCann.

     

    Paedophile Sir Clement Freud, Gerry and Kate McCann running
    Kate McCann – a woman who went running, played tennis and dined on chicken and mushroom risotto and egg and watercress salads washed down with strawberry vodka with the paedophile Sir Clement Freud in the days after her ‘disappeared’ – has a clear touch of the former Meghan Markle about her. Like ‘MeGain,’ whom banged on that “not many people have asked if I’m OK,” Mrs McCann said in 2011: “Officers walked past us as if we weren’t there. Nobody asked how we were doing, whether we were okay. Our child had been stolen and I felt as if I didn’t exist.”
    Elsewhere on social media this weekend, the matter of Kate McCann being photographed with bruises on her wrists in the days after her daughter disappeared was again discussed. This tweet from 2018 was once again referenced.
    Down The Drain McCann 2021 – Millions wasted in McCann case – More money goes down the drain in the Madeleine McCann case on top of the £13.5 million of British taxpayer wonga chucked away on absolutely no results.
    Christian Brueckner (AKA ‘Christian B’, pictured left with his ex-girlfriend Naskcije Miftari) was brought to public attention just as the British government began to suffer “very bad news days” at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic last year. The narrative of him being the evil, paedophile suited Boris Johnson’s government a treat as it helped shift the headlines – for a period – away from their appalling handling of initial lockdowns. This weekend, equally, Johnson has managed to do something similar by marrying his latest ‘baby mama’ Carrie Symonds and in doing so, cynics quite correctly argue that he has used the ‘distraction technique’ to get his bad week courtesy of Dominic Cummings off the front pages. Unsurprisingly, social media manipulated imagery from the wedding by using images such as those pictured (centre and right).
    In December 2017, when £11 million of British taxpayers’ money had been spent towards the search for ‘missing’ Madeleine McCann, 86% of viewers of ITV1’s ‘Loose Women’ said the public purse should cease to fund the investigation. Now, in May 2021, with that sum at £13.5 million (aside from the millions in private money also), it is time to allocate resources to the search for missing people who actually can be found, we would suggest.
  • Custard Cream Gate

    Custard Cream Gate

    After ‘Bingate’ comes ‘Custard Cream Gate’ in ritzy Henley-on-Thames with a red kite attacking a toddler for a custard cream

    It’s all go in posh, leafy Henley-on-Thames: Aside from a binman spotting a wallaby bounding in its vicinity in 2017 and the ongoing battle about bins – as featured in The Steeple Times in January and February this year – the latest drama in the locality comes in the form of a red kite attacking a toddler for a sweet treat.

     

    According to Sky News, 2-year-old Frankie Bird – a little lad with a surname clearly suited to this story – was given a biscuit by his granny outside the town’s Valley Road primary school on 10th May and was then swooped upon by a bird of prey for it.

     

    Speaking to the news channel, the child’s mother, Hannah Bird, remarked:

     

    “My mother-in-law gave Frankie a snack – which was a custard cream – and a red kite came down and took it out of his hand, flinging it to the ground.”

     

    “The bird kept coming at Frankie to try and find the biscuit, not realising it was on the floor, which was quite scary, it just kept coming.”

     

    “We had to take him to the local hospital just to get it checked, because the birds eat all sorts, so we wondered whether we needed to get it cleaned properly. It was quite a shock”

     

    Going further Sky sensibly added: “Hannah added that her son has made a full recovery and that she doesn’t want red kites to get a bad reputation,” before she then continued:

     

    “You know, you need to be able to eat in your garden in peace and my son should be able to have a biscuit snack in his pushchair.”

     

    “I think part of me worries for the birds – if they’re this brazen and they’re not frightened anymore, they are not wild anymore. And what does that mean for them, really?”

     

    Referencing the red kites of Henley-on-Thames in a more humorous manner yesterday, the Guardian’s ‘Pass Note’ column provided further examples of them swooping to share snacks. They reported:

     

    “Ouch! Local resident Anna Howell was eating a salad in her back garden when a kite swooped down and helped itself to a bit of smoked mackerel.”

     

    “There have also been local reports of stolen sausage rolls and hot cross buns, and even steaks lifted off barbecues.”

     

    “The birds were well known as opportunistic thieves in Shakespeare’s time, but in between they were hunted to near extinction.”

     

    “Do say: “Red kite at morning, get under the awning!”

     

    “Don’t say: “Red kite at regatta, talons off my piccata.”

     

    Elsewhere previously, indicating the propensity of red kites to go for sweet treats in June 2016, the Mirror reported on another raptor attempting to steal a cupcake from a 3-year-old, Ava Edgar-Francis, at her outdoor birthday party at Watlington Park, near Stokenchurch.

     

    Speaking of the incident, the girl’s hysterical mother, Debbie Francis, blubbed: “It was such a shock and she is now petrified every time she sees a big bird in the sky.”

     

    Custard Cream Gate 2021 – After ‘Bingate’ comes red kite raiding – After ‘Bingate’ comes ‘Custard Cream Gate’ in ritzy Henley-on-Thames with a red kite attacking a toddler for a custard cream.
    Little Frankie Bird poses for Sky News and shows his injured hand.
    Custard Cream Gate 2021 – After ‘Bingate’ comes red kite raiding – After ‘Bingate’ comes ‘Custard Cream Gate’ in ritzy Henley-on-Thames with a red kite attacking a toddler for a custard cream.
    Frankie Bird suffered scratches as a result of the bird’s attack.
    Custard Cream Gate 2021 – After ‘Bingate’ comes red kite raiding – After ‘Bingate’ comes ‘Custard Cream Gate’ in ritzy Henley-on-Thames with a red kite attacking a toddler for a custard cream.
    According to the RSPB, “magnificently graceful” red kites mainly eat “carrion and worms, but opportunistic and will occasionally take small mammals.” They estimate there to be 4,600 breeding pairs in the UK and of them stealing domestic food, Wikipedia observe: “In the United Kingdom, there have been several unusual instances of red kites stealing food from people in a similar manner to gulls. One such occurrence took place in Marlow, Buckinghamshire (a town near a major reintroduction site for the species in the UK in the nearby village of Stokenchurch), in which Red Kites swooped down to steal sandwiches from people in one of the town’s parks.”
    Custard Cream Gate 2021 – After ‘Bingate’ comes red kite raiding – After ‘Bingate’ comes ‘Custard Cream Gate’ in ritzy Henley-on-Thames with a red kite attacking a toddler for a custard cream.
    The BBC reported on Henley-on-Thames’ roaming wallabies in 2017. Plainly this is a place where wildlife does as it wishes.
  • Mixed Up McGee

    Mixed Up McGee

    Dippy Debbie McGee yet again confirms her status as the ultimate airhead in boasting about her connections to ‘Randy Andy’ and is met with a denial from a royal source

    Right now, most people would keep quiet any connection to Prince Andrew. Aside from his antics in Pizza Express (Woking branch), the disgraced royal is “in financial hot water following the Epstein scandal” according to Tatler’s amusingly named Hope Coke and he’s been “royally dumped” by everyone from Barclays to the University of Huddersfield.

     

    With his dimwit on-off live-in ex-wife forced to take up hawking crappy books yet again to fend off other creditors, Prince Andrew’s woes continue to mount and now ‘The Lovely Debbie McGee’ has gone and stuck her oar into the thick of it. Of course, as always with “a sandwich short of a picnic” Debbie, it wasn’t meant nastily, but, as ever with her, the intervention was anything but relevant.

     

    In this morning’s Daily Mail, a decidedly short-of-real-stories reporter called David Wilkes shared vitally important news that the late Paul Daniels’ wife now has a podcast titled Spill The Tea with Debbie McGee. He also revealed that on it, she’d bragged that Prince Andrew had flown the magician in “one of Her Majesty’s helicopters” from Stoke-on-Trent to Windsor Castle.

     

    “Muggins, Me, McGee” – who also fascinatingly told of how she’d “knocked over a glass of wine last week” and “burnt the edges of her salad leaves the other day” on the podcast too – reported that she did not get to go along for the ride and was instead forced to drive the couple’s car to London. She, thus, luckily avoided an encounter with the Duke of York’s non-sweating hands, but was “sad” that she didn’t get a lift in the Queen’s car – which her husband got to hitch a lift in from Windsor to The Savoy Hotel also.

     

    In response, a “royal source” flatly denied ‘Dim Debbie’s’ claims and remarked: “If this story is true it did not involve one of Her Majesty’s helicopters.” The poor dear plainly conjured up this story from the bottom of her tea leaves, but at least it wasn’t as sordid as when she revealed she put a “disturb mask across her private parts” whilst naked and waiting for her husband to come to bed. Now there’s a sexual story that definitely should not be repeated.

     

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  • Tossed in Tonbridge

    Tossed in Tonbridge

    Kentish salad company Southern Salads tosses 260 jobs to the wolves after going into administration because of Brexit

     

    Illustrations of the likely negative impact of Britain’s decision to leave the UK are coming from far and wide and though Nigel Farage may be crowing over an alleged £60 million film deal – though unsurprisingly no particular studio has actually announced such ‘news’ as ‘truth’ – companies are relocating staff abroad and even closing altogether. Even hardline Brexiteers are being heard to remark: “There’s going to be a heavy price to pay for the complacency… Britain is f***ed” and asking: “What the hell have we done?”

     

    Aside from Bloomberg revealing “London could lose 10,000 banking jobs and 20,000 roles in financial services” to such cities as Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris in an article last month, a more localised illustration of the impact of Theresa May’s appallingly bad handling of this issue was provided yesterday in the form of news that a Tonbridge, Kent based firm, Southern Salads, had gone into administration due to “unprecedented pressure on cash flow in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote.”

     

    Southern Salads, a 30-year old, family run firm which employed 260 people and whose motto was “share the passion”, ceased trading Wednesday and of why it failed, joint administrator Ian Vickers of FRP Advisory told KentLive:

     

    “The sudden decline in sterling was not foreseen by the company, leaving the business grappling with an immediate fall of between 10% and 20% in its purchasing power for overseas-grown salads required for the winter and early spring UK market, which in turn put a severe strain on cash-flow.”

     

    “With insufficient protection from its currency hedging arrangements, pressure increased on cash-flow as the business traded through to this spring.”

     

    “The company was unsuccessful in negotiating any significant changes to its pricing terms with its suppliers in mainland Europe, while also being unable to pass on its cost increases to supermarkets and its other customers.”

     

    “The company relies on European suppliers for fresh vegetables and fruit from the Netherlands and Poland in the north to France, Italy and Spain in the south.”

     

    It’d be fascinating to know what Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Theresa May thinks about that.

     

  • Old and New – Sloanes

    Old and New – Sloanes

    New series contrasting the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ begins with Sloane Rangers

     

    Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lady Diana Spencer used to drink at The Admiral Codrington whilst Sloanes named Perdita and Peregrine downed gin like it was water in The Australian in Milner Street.

     

    Loud braces and yellow cords sold like hot cakes and Peter York was king of all he surveyed. Now, in a new era, this socially elite set of characters have had to evolve and though the majority of Kensington and Chelsea is now colonised by wealthy foreigners, Sloane Rangers are still be found braying in Kings Road, SW3.

     

    Old and New – Sloanes – New series contrasting the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ begins with Sloane Rangers

     

  • A two-course feast

    A two-course feast

    Chelsea restaurant La Brasserie launch new £15.95 set lunch menu (more…)

  • Chicken Divan

    Chicken Divan

    Claire Douglass continues her meal in Wisconsin with a main course of Chicken Divan

     

    Last time I delighted you with a starter of ‘Seven Layer Salad’ and now I’m going to move on to a Wisconsin main, the legendary ‘Chicken Divan’. (more…)

  • Getting Lyrical

    Getting Lyrical

    Review: The Lyric in Soho

     

    Soho is an area that one associates with the likes of pornographer Paul Raymond, gambling addict ‘Soho Pam’ and the legendarily rude landlord Norman Balon. Discovering The Lyric in Great Windmill Street, therefore, was a refreshing revelation. (more…)

  • Cheese in Chelsea

    Cheese in Chelsea

    A review of L’Art du Fromage: paradise for cheese lovers

     

    With the autumn upon us and winter drawing ever closer, many have started to think about the mountains and skiing. On Facebook this week, I noticed a post by a friend who asked: “Who is keen to start planning a skiing holiday?” and it got me thinking about a restaurant I visited earlier this year, L’Art du Fromage in Langton Street, Chelsea. (more…)

  • Diego Bivero-Volpe: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”

    Diego Bivero-Volpe: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”

    The Steeple Times asks nightlife entrepreneur Diego Bivero-Volpe: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”

     

    The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?

    Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a tough battle.

     

    “Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?

    Get there on time.

     

    Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2013?

    Racism and injustice. I travel quite a bit and I am always taken aback by how prevalent both are everywhere in the world.

     

    Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?

    My family. They are all spread out, far away in different corners of the globe. It is difficult to see them often.

     

    What might you swap all your wealth for?

    The wellbeing of my loved ones.

     

    Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank”. What’s your view on the banking crisis?

    I love that quote but sadly it is indicative of how failed the system is. I used to work in the equity derivatives arm of RBS’ investment bank and I can tell you first-hand it is a cowboy’s game, with a lot of cavalier moves being made at the expense of the general public.

     

    What phrase or word do you most loathe?

    Racist slurs.

     

    In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home”. What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?

    This is probably true but I think all humans have a primal desire and need to help each other. I personally support Nordoff Robbins and Kids Company, both charities that help and provide support and protection for children.

     

    The judge in Law Abiding Citizen states: “I can pretty much do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?

    Unfortunately I am incredibly addicted to my Blackberry. Thinking about it, I don’t think it one has ever been more than 5 feet away from my in almost 10 years. That is disturbing.

     

    Diego Bivero-Volpe
    Diego Bivero-Volpe

    If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?

    So many… A random list off the top of my head: All of Led Zeppelin, Marcus Aurelius, Michelangelo, Rodin, Picasso, Piranesi, Buddy Holly, Hobbs, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and maybe Daniel Tosh because he’s hysterical. It would certainly make for quite the journey all around.

     

    If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?

    It’s hard to say, I am a lover of food, but I recently have developed a new obsession with steak, so maybe that and a spinach, avocado and mango salad.  In any case, let’s just hope this situation never happens.

     

    What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?

    The conventional wisdom would dictate after 5pm. If you are on holiday somewhere sunny, a glass of wine or an Aperol Spritz (if in Italy) with lunch is always acceptable.

     

    A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?

    Vodka martini, dry, 3 olives.

     

    Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?

    It’s a toss-up between very close friends and big luxurious bashes thrown by film studios and such. Both have their perks and are fun in different ways.

     

    Who is the most positive person you know?

    I am fortunate enough to have quite a few very positive people in my life.

     

    What’s your most guilty pleasure?

    Lazing about in Tuscany for 2 weeks every summer, doing nothing but eating pasta and tanning.

     

    If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?

    I strongly dislike tattoos.

     

    If you were a car, what marque would you be?

    A classic Ferrari.

     

    Cilla Black presented Surprise, Surprise. Tell us the most surprising thing about you.

    I have a masters in journalism and finance.

     

    What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?

    Lots of pictures of my family, a handmade sculpture made by Amazonian natives and some invites for events this week.

     

    Diego Bivero-Volpe is a partner in Conduit Brands. For more information, go to: http://www.conduitbrands.com
    Follow him on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/DiegoB_V