The Steeple Times

Tag: Westminster

  • Nad's not that Mad

    Matthew Steeples suggests that Nadine Dorries is perhaps right to head for the jungle

     

    Don’t get me wrong: I think Nadine Dorries is an utter loon. For those who haven’t heard of her, she’s the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire and a bit of a mouthpiece. Her entry on our roll call attracted over 8,000 hits yesterday and that alone is clear indication that she, unlike the majority of dimwits that occupy the Houses of Parliament, is an MP who gets noticed.

     

    Nadine Dorries heads for the jungle

    “Gets noticed,” I hear you splutter. Yes, she’s someone who loves the limelight and doesn’t care whom she offends. She’s best known for having described David Cameron and George Osborne as a pair of “arrogant posh boys” who “don’t know the price of milk” and is regularly derided for her “maverick” ways. Here is a woman who gets compared to Ann Widdecombe and Edwina Currie and one that hasn’t let her party tell her what to do.

     

    In the House of Commons she’s achieved little apart from becoming a figure of fun. She’s commonly known as “Mad Nad” and the media reel her out whenever they fancy a bit of sport. Dorries can be relied upon to produce lines such as: “[I’m] not an MP for any other reason other than because God wants me to be” and these indeed are classic examples of her idiocy.

     

    On Tuesday, it was announced that Ms. Dorries, on full parliamentary pay, has headed off to Australia to participate in the ITV1 television series I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! For this, she’s pocketing a fee of circa £40,000 and will, without doubt, rake in a lot more in appearance fees and for interviews on her return. MPs and the media derided this move but I congratulate her.

     

    Martha Payne

    I cannot disagree with those who state that she’d be fired if she were in a normal job and just disappeared for a month, but “Mad Nad” has realised that the Conservative Party is not the place for her. She has plainly come to the conclusion that the House of Commons is nothing other than a chamber full of hot air and that to get things changed, you follow the example of the schoolgirl Martha Payne and use technology and the media to the max. With NeverSeconds, this fearless 9-year old took on the might of a council and improved school dinners. In the meantime, MPs haven’t even been able to come up with an appropriate solution to restore the Houses of Parliament, let alone solve a nation in the midst of economic meltdown.

     

    Frankly, we have too many MPs in this country and they don’t work hard enough. In total, there are 650 and this corresponds to one for every 68,000 parliamentary electors. It would be better to halve this number and double the pay of the remainder. We’d get better quality people applying to be our representatives and people like “Mad Nad” would be a thing of the past. Nadine Dorries isn’t an A-list “celebrity” but she should most certainly stick to the jungle.

     

    Follow Nadine Dorries on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/nadinedorriesmp

  • Gaby Hinsliff

    Gaby Hinsliff

    We’ve got nothing against this respected journalist and writer, but when we heard that the fashion mag Grazia had a “Political Editor at Large” we thought it was April Fool’s Day. Hinsliff also blogs at usedtobesomebody.blogspot.com and states that she resigned as political editor of The Observer to go “in search of a life.” She’s based in Oxfordshire and published her first book, Half A Wife, in 2012. In it, she advises on “how to balance a happy, healthy family life with the demands and rewards of work.” There are plenty out there who ought to pay attention.

  • Picture of the Week: A map with a difference

    Picture of the Week: A map with a difference

    Matthew Steeples discovers a map of London with a difference

     

    On the 16th October, an actor named Adam Lilley Tweeted an image based on a simplified version of a map of the London Underground. The creator had adapted it so that the names of the stations supposedly are indicative of what they believe the area around each station is best summed up by. Plainly it amused as over 4,000 Retweeted it.

     

    A revised version of the London Underground map
    Adam Lilley’s revised London Underground Map has been Retweeted 4,136 times

    Knightsbridge is replaced by “posh shops” and South Kensington is all about “dinosaurs.” Westminster becomes “Big Ben” and Notting Hill Gate is simply “Hugh Grant.” Bethnal Green is replaced with “curry” and Leicester Square, “films.” Somewhere south of the river is simply “XXL” and out in Essex, another station is renamed “skinny jeans.” Irony is the order of the day.

     

    Stephen Walter’s “London Subterranea”
    The section of the map detailing the exploits of “the acid bath murderer”
    And the section all Sloane Rangers should examine more closely

    Altering maps in this manner is nothing new and an especially brilliant one I saw at Christie’s in Old Brompton Road in their 3rd September sale depicted the location of events and discoveries I’d never heard of. In Stephen Walter’s London Subterranea, for example:

     

    –       The basement of 79 Gloucester Road was the location of the discovery of an “acid bath murderer” who killed at least 6 and is suspected of 15 murders. According to the depiction, he killed someone named “McSwan ‘ere and poured the remains down a manhole, reducing his body to sludge.”

    –       Harvey Nichols is shown as a plague pit.

    –       Brompton Oratory is described as aa “MI6 agent meeting place and dead letter office.”

     

    Such maps provide a little light relief and for that reason we make Lilley’s image The Steeple Times picture of the week. We invite readers to submit their very own versions. We shall publish the best.

     

    View Adam Lilley’s website at: http://www.adamlilley.com Follow him on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/adamski1974

     

    Please send your versions to: [email protected]

     

     

  • A Monopolistic mansion

    A Monopolistic mansion

    Could 100 Park Lane become the property that achieves the accolade of being Britain’s highest priced private residence?

     

    Occupied by property giants Hammerson since 1969 as their corporate headquarters, the 44,000 square foot Grade II* listed Dudley House is one of Park Lane’s finest landmark properties. It is supposedly about to come to the market as a single-family residence and a price of up to £250,000,000 could be achieved.

     

    The Park Lane façade of Dudley House, 100 Park Lane, Mayfair, London, W1Y 4AR

     

    Dudley House, the only remaining example of an early Park Lane mansion, is named after the Dudley Ward family and built on the site of an earlier house with stabling. The site was acquired by John, 6th Baron Ward, in 1742 but it wasn’t until 1759 that the 3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward began “judicious alterations” to the house. Having paid £6,510 at auction for his late half-brother’s interests in Dudley House, he added an entrance portico and stained glass windows whilst his successor, an ”eccentric intellectual and politician,” set about turning the building into “the most pleasing object in the vicinity.”

     

    Works by the architect William Atkinson, carried out between 1827 and 1829, included a screen of Ionic columns, fine ceilings and gilded plasterwork. They remain to this day but it is the 1855 alterations of Samuel Whitfield Daukes that are truly impressive. Carried out on the instructions of the 1st Earl of Dudley, these included a magnificent 80ft picture gallery designed to showcase a collection of Italian and Flemish paintings and a vast 50ft ballroom.

     

    The picture gallery at Dudley House

     

    In 1895, Dudley House, which is situated at 100 Park Lane, briefly passed out of the Dudley Ward family and into the ownership of a “hard-headed South African mining magnate” named Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson. Sir John Hubert Ward bought the building back in 1912 for £10,000 and remained there until his death in 1938.

     

    Wartime bombing caused significant damage and this was not repaired until Hammerson took over Dudley House. Having hired Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons as contractors, designs by Sir Basil Spence and Anthony Blee were executed to restore the building.  Hammerson remained there until 2006 when they jointly sold the leasehold interest on the house with freeholders Grosvenor for £37.4 million to Bristol Isles Ltd., a private investment company controlled by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thana, the emir of Qatar.

     

    His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (1952 – )

     

    The ensuing renovation, directed by the designer Alberto Pinto, has been described as “tasteful” and is said to have cost some £75 million. The resulting air-conditioned home features some 17 bedrooms and 14 reception rooms.

     

    It’ll be fascinating to see who “Doesn’t pass go!” and purchases this mammoth mansion (if indeed His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani decides not to move in himself).

     

    For more details on Alberto Pinto, go to: http://www.albertopinto.com

     

    For more information about His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani: http://www.qatarembassy.net/emir.asp