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.”
Convoy of five yellow Lamborghinis spotted cruising around Kensington and Chelsea
Someone once said: “Work until you feel a Lamborghini is cheap” and plainly the owner of a convoy currently in London has exactly that attitude.
Pictured here on Brompton Road opposite the former premises of La Brasserie, a fleet of five yellow examples of these supercars has been seen driving around Kensington and Chelsea in recent days. Plainly, if indeed the vehicles belong to one owner, here is a man living by the opposite mantra of Oscar Wilde’s: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
Truly, however, most people would argue such a noticeable convoy to be nothing other than ostentatious. Get them parked!
South Kensington house for sale for £4 million in spite of being literally right next to a noisy London Underground line
Estate agents are not known for honesty but Strutt & Parker certainly neglected a key detail when preparing particulars for a £3.95 million ($5.13 million, €4.38 million or درهم18.83 million) property in Pelham Street, SW7.
In a brochure for what is termed a “fabulous five bedroom freehold house situated within a charming terrace of stucco fronted houses, set back behind a private paved garden,” the firm neglect to mention that exactly to the rear of the building is the busy District and Circle line.
The renovated 2,523 square foot terraced house offered spans four floors – and presumably the top floors rattle less than the lower ones – and includes a drawing room, dining kitchen, a cinema room, 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. It has a garden to the front, a roof terrace and the London Underground directly next to it. How charming.
A pioneer of both the Art Deco style and the functionalist Modernist movement, bisexual Irish aristocrat Eileen Gray was best known for designing the Bibendum chair and the E.1027 table. This great tastemaker lived primarily in South Kensington, Paris and the South of France and another of her creations, once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, the ‘Fauteuil aux Dragons’ armchair, sold for £19 million at auction in 2009.
Extremely private, Gray once remarked: “The art of the engineer is not enough… A house is not a machine to live in. It is the shell of man, his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation. Not only its visual harmony but its organisation as a whole, the whole work combined together, make it human in the most profound sense.”
A stunning example of Eileen Gray’s work, an S-bend chair, is on display in Room 135, The Dr. Susan Weber Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Eileen Gray also designed the ‘E.1027’ house at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, overlooking the Bay of Monaco in Franc as a gift for her lover, Jean Badovici, the editor of ‘L’Architecture Vivante’. ‘E’ is for Eileen, ‘10’ for the tenth letter of the alphabet, ‘J’ for Jean, ‘2’ for ‘B’ for Badovici and ‘7’ for ‘G’ for Gray. The building was completed in 1929.
The E-1027 table was designed for the eponymous house in 1927.
Gatecrasher ‘Dr Nastro’ admits defeat and announces he’ll be retiring from the ligging circuit; perhaps Denis Doble, David Pun and Sandra Shevey ought to follow his lead
On Wednesday, we received a message from a known member of London’s ligging community of aging oddballs using the pseudonym ‘Dr Nastro’.
In an email to our main editorial email address and sent from a Yahoo account, this gatecrasher accused Matthew Steeples of effectively being responsible for his being “banned from venues” and suggested that one of the worst of his very own number “had me thrown out of a place. ” also. He added a link to an article on a website named ‘Stop Wine Liggers’ and rather pathetically concluded: “I will not be going to events any more.”
By return, Matthew Steeples responded:
“I have nothing to do with the website you have linked to – I am busy enough with my own work – but have responded to the comments there. If they decide to publish, you will see my thoughts.”
“I do believe the behaviour of the ligging community is unacceptable. You and your friends do not add to events, they subtract and they are a nuisance to organisers. Some of your number are thieves and others are just racist bigots. Plainly, you have offended the person behind the site you mention but what I cannot understand is why you are surprised.”
“As for giving up going, it is probably the wisest decision you’ve made given the chaos you’ve caused previously. Enjoy your retirement.”
In reply, ‘Dr Nastro’ immediately answered: “I just did it for fun the rest are not [sic].”
‘SHIT’ to be sold at Christie’s in South Kensington; it comes at quite a price
A painting which simply depicts the word ‘SHIT’ is to be sold at Christie’s in South Kensington, London this month.
Offered with an estimate of £2,000 to £4,000 ($2,590 to $5,180, €2,260 to €4,520 or درهم9,470 to درهم18,940) in spite of having been painted with household gloss, the work by Kent born, New York based artist and filmmaker Sarah Morris (born 1967) is 153 centimetres by 244 centimetres and simply reads: ‘SHIT’ in capital letters.
Other works by Morris are displayed at Gloucester Road tube station, the V&A and the Tate Modern in London, the Hamburger Bahnholf in Berlin, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Christie’s will auction the work, which is dated 1996 on the reverse, on 19th July. It was acquired by the current owner from Jay Jopling in London.
Sarah Morris with another of her works; she is described as having a style that uses bright color fields and graphic line work, often referencing elements of architecture and taking titles from bureaucratic institutions.
Matthew Steeples takes tea in the delightful courtyard garden at Blakes Hotel in South Kensington, London
Blakes Hotel is synonymous with the now much overused description “boutique hotel” and is generally considered the world’s first. It opened in 1978, is a destination that is popular with the likes of Seal and Sharon Stone and was also the place The Steeple Times chose to launch exactly five years ago in June 2012.
Aside from moving the restaurant of this enchanting South Kensington palace of opulence to the building’s ground floor last year, the hotel’s rear courtyard was transformed by designer Matthew Williamson in mid-2016. Featuring bright colours and such things as a prancing zebra, I recently enjoyed tea there in the summer heat with my friend Ekaterina Fields. I was charmed by not only the most attentive of staff but also the finest small-batch teas by a firm named Lalani & Co.
Available for £12.75 and each paired with éclairs by Maître Choux, Blakes have curated four teas that will take you on a journey through Kyoto, Megalaya and Nepal. They range from the fruity to the chocolaty in taste and accompanied by a glass of prosecco or gin and tonic, one is left asking: “What could be better on a balmy June afternoon?”
Blakes Hotel, 33 Roland Gardens, London SW7 3PF. Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7370 6701.
New Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad fails to join Labour heavyweights showing support for the single market
Prior to her victory, the now newly elected Member of Parliament for Kensington, Emma Dent Coad, clearly and repeatedly said she’d “fight to retain access to the single market”. Yesterday, however, she failed to join a whole array of fellow Labour politicians demanding exactly such and in doing so has left constituents questioning her true commitment to fighting ‘Hard Brexit’.
Aside from the fact that some of the party’s busiest and best known figures – including David Lammy MP, Stella Creasy MP and Chuka Umunna MP – bothered, unlike her, to sign a letter to The Guardian “supporting British membership of the single market after Brexit”, Dent Coad’s previous statement of: “Three in four people in Kensington voted to remain, and I will ensure their voices are heard” is beginning to appear rather hollow.
The electorate of Kensington are primarily ‘Remainers’ and given she also had the backing of Gina Miller’s Best for Britain on her path to power, Dent Coad must now speak up. We understand her priorities at this time must be with supporting the victims of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, but this believer that ‘Hard Brexit’ will lead to “the economy falling off a cliff” could have easily spared a moment to sign a letter that seeks to guide her party’s position on something that will ultimately affect all of her constituents. We join those expressing disappointment in Emma Dent Coad.
Emma Dent Coad’s supposed position on Brexit as set out during the 2017 General Election campaign
The letter sent by Labour heavyweights to The Guardian in full follows:
Jeremy Corbyn has rightly said that Labour’s position on Brexit is to focus on a deal that prioritises jobs first. We are all united behind that goal. For us that means membership of the single market. A country can be a member of the single market without being a member of the EU and we must be clear – “access” to the European single market is both different and inferior to “membership” of the single market. Why? Because if we leave the single market, whatever the level of access is negotiated, working people across Britain will be worse off and revenue to the exchequer will plummet – revenue the next Labour government will need to bring an end to years of damaging Tory austerity.
The single market is not a simple free trade zone. It is, uniquely, a framework of rules that protects people from the worst excesses of globalisation and unfettered capitalism, in addition to easing trade across the continent. If we have mere access to the single market, we are talking about leaving this framework of rules and achieving mere reductions in tariffs for trade with the European Union.
If Britain stays in the single market, we will continue to benefit from EU laws and court judgments that outlaw discrimination in the workplace; deliver vital rights to workers on holiday pay, maternity and paternity leave, the right to join a union, and much more; protect our natural environment from pollution; and keep workers safe through stringent health and safety requirements. Large multinational companies work across borders to maximise their profits to often reduce these protections; the next Labour government, as a member of the single market, can work with other European countries to resist this and advance social justice. If we leave the single market, and ask for mere “access”, we will be compromised in achieving these goals.
This is why so many people in the Labour movement are supporting British membership of the single market after Brexit. Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, has said that “if we leave the single market, working people will end up paying the price. It’d be bad for jobs, for work rights and for our living standards.” The USDAW trade union has warned that leaving the single market “will put at risk hundreds of thousands of jobs”.
And who is leading the charge to junk our membership of the single market? A motley crew of hard-right, pro-Brexit Tories. Michael Gove. Boris Johnson. John Redwood. Iain Duncan Smith. Priti Patel. Theresa May wants us out because her government is totally dominated by its obsession with leaving the single market. They want us to leave precisely because they want to roll back the social protections delivered by single market membership. Redwood authored a plan to cut regulation in Britain by 25%. Patel went one further, calling on the “burden” of EU regulations – those rules that protect working people – to be “halved”. We should not be providing political cover to hard-right Tories who stand diametrically opposed to Labour values.
The argument for leaving the single market is often focused around the need to end the free movement of people. However, we argue, and many experts agree, that changes to our immigration system can be made while keeping us inside it. Within the European treaties, free movement is not unconditional – at the moment we can require EU citizens to leave if they have no job or a prospect of a job three months after their arrival. Restrictions on free movement are explicitly allowed for reasons of “public policy, public security or public health”. Liechtenstein, which is outside the EU but in the single market, perfectly legally imposes quotas on EU migrants. French president Emmanuel Macron’s chief adviser has floated the idea of a “continental partnership” between Britain and the EU that would allow us to restrict free movement.
Another reason often cited for not remaining a member of the single market is that the state aid rules that apply in it stop governments from pursuing active industrial strategies to support their industries. But these have not stopped the likes of Germany having a national investment bank or France and the Netherlands supporting their industries through government procurement spend.
Ultimately, leaving the single market will make it much harder for a Labour government to end these years of Tory austerity. The economic damage it would cause would reduce the tax take, meaning less money could be spent on public services. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has forecast that leaving the single market for a free trade agreement could cause a £31bn hit to the public finances, extending austerity even further.
To win next time, Labour must provide a strong opposition to the Tories, stand up for the values of our voters, and continue to fight for the interests of all – not least young people who have the most to lose from an extreme Tory Brexit and who voted for the first time in 2017 for Labour, thinking we would stop the Tories in their tracks. This has to mean fighting unambiguously for membership of the single market. At the very least we should strongly oppose May’s decision to take membership off the table in these negotiations. An ambitious and confident alternative government – with Corbyn at the helm – should not throw in the towel as May has done, but could seek membership with reforms on immigration and the other matters we seek.
Chuka Umunna MP, Phil Wilson MP, Madeleine Moon MP, Maria Eagle MP, Liz Kendall MP, Stella Creasy MP, Wes Streeting MP, Mike Gapes MP, Kate Green MP, Lord Michael Cashman, Anne Coffey MP, Ian Murray MP, Rushanara Ali MP, Karen Buck MP, Stephen Doughty MP, Stephen Timms MP, Lord Spencer Livermore, Catherine McKinnell MP, Lord Peter Hain, Tulip Siddiq MP, Peter Kyle MP, Ruth Cadbury MP, Bridget Phillipson MP, Pat McFadden MP, Ann Clwyd MP, Thangam Debbonaire MP, Chris Bryant MP, Andy Slaughter MP, Daniel Zeichner MP, Alison McGovern MP, Darren Jones MP, Kerry McCarthy MP, Ben Bradshaw MP, Clare Moody MEP, Seb Dance MEP, Luciana Berger MP, Lord George Foulkes, Catherine Stihler MEP, David Martin MEP, Jude Kirton-Darling MEP, Mary Honeyball MEP, Paul Brannen MEP, Richard Corbett MEP, Julie Ward MEP, Derek Vaughan MEP, Lucy Anderson MEP, David Lammy MP, Lord John Monks, Meg Hillier MP, Adrian Bailey MP and Lady Meta Ramsay
Actor and producer Steven Berkoff suggests Her Majesty The Queen should open up Buckingham Palace to survivors of last week’s Grenfell Tower tragedy
Sir
In these grim times, when the shadow of death is stalking us with bitter regularity, an opportunity presents itself for our beloved Queen to actually do some real service for her tragically wounded people. I think of the survivors from that ghastly tower block fire in Kensington. As per usual, the nation’s wounds have her trolling about, nodding sympathetically as she listens with a furrowed brow, or stands stoutly at attention for a minute’s silence. Then back in the limo to Buckingham Palace.
Then it is left to the goofs and goons of local councils to get swiftly to work and rehouse the pathetic victims. This they seem to do with such ineptitude that it beggars belief. Sending some unfortunate hundreds of miles to distant Northern cities. What an insult to injury.
Now, dear Queen, who we all love dearly (although sadly that love has been waning somewhat). Rather than just be a lump of royal flesh being carted around the country and do little more than give the usual and slightly over familiar kindly looks and nods along with the odd moue, do something that really helps those wounded people. Offer them the sanctuary of Buckingham Palace!
I know that will be a hard call, a very hard call but the outcome would be worldwide recognition that our Royal Family really has soul and you will redeem The Monarchy and most of all your good self for centuries to come. Buck House has seven hundred and seventy five rooms including one hundred and eighty eight staff bedrooms.
Even if you took in only a hundred that would ease the burden enormously and what a magnificent gesture it would be, in fact it would endear you to us all till kingdom come. You have the space and you certainly are not short of the pennies for such a modest gesture.
Modest financially but colossal spiritually.
So lend an ear though I know full well that this might be I nigh on impossible gesture for you to make, so perhaps your enlightened grandchildren can gently persuade you. I know it’s hard to change the habits of a lifetime. But do try.
A saintly gesture is what our nation desperately needs right now. And you do have the space.
Penthouse with tower in prominent Knightsbridge landmark for sale for £8.25 million
A penthouse with a tower in a Grade II listed landmark triangular ‘flat-iron’ building on the border of South Kensington and Knightsbridge has gone on sale for £8.25 million ($10.51 million, €9.39 million or درهم38.62 million).
Created in 1991 to designs by Susan Walker Architects and involving the clever merger of two fourth floor flats as part of a £1.70 million scheme (the equivalent of £3.35 million, $4.27 million, €3.81 million or درهم15.68 million today), the 3,475 square foot apartment offered overlooks the Brompton Oratory and has a vista down the Brompton Road towards Harrods. It is within a building known as Empire House that was itself built between 1909 and 1916 to designs by Paul Hoffmann and was originally used by a German firm, the Continental Tyre Company.
Currently featuring a large reception room, a dining kitchen, 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and a laundry on the building’s fourth floor, a tower with domed reception space from the sixth to the seventh floors and a private roof terrace on its fifth floor, the apartment comes with planning permission for internal rearrangement.
Held on a leasehold basis expiring 2142 and subject to a service charge of £20,550 per annum ($26,187, €23,391 or درهم96,211 per annum) according to agents JLL, a buyer will also have to pay a one-off charge of £12,054 ($15,360, €13,720 or درهم56,434) towards the cost of refurbishing the portered building’s lift.
A stunning example of Eileen Gray’s work, an 
Eileen Gray also designed the 
The E-1027 table was designed for the eponymous house in 1927.
