Big Society, Small Military?

Being republican with both a big and a small R the Celtic Sage is hardly an admirer of British militarism or imperialism. How could I be given their history in Ireland and my belief that the people are sovereign – I believe in being a citizen, not a subject? There is still too much unfinished business out there from the days of Empire which indicates that “Perfidious” and “Albion” are still two words which go together. Witness the shameful dispossession of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, the abandonment of their allies against the Japanese the brave Karen people of Burma, their ignoring of the oppression of the Tamils in Sri Lanka since independence and the shabby racist treatment of ex Ghurkha soldiers and their families. Then there were the squalid post-colonial misadventures in Kenya, Aden, Cyprus and Suez to name a few which suggest “Our Boys” as they are known in gender prejudice Tabloid Land have frequently been ill used by politicians. Then there was the Mother of all Illegal Wars, where Britain was not just unconscious of the present in Iraq but apparently also unaware of its shameful past in that country.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/britain-in-iraq.html


Nevertheless if you are not a pacifist you accept that Britain needs Armed Forces which must be properly resourced. You must also accept that there is a special compact to look after members of the Services who are prepared to die or be maimed to defend you and I - The Military Covenant. However I doesn’t recall either the Great Empire Defenders aka The Tories of the Lib Dems who form the Coalition of Opportunism which is grinding the UK back to the Stone Age tell the electors “Elect us and we’ll destroy the Army, Navy and RAF!” Nope, I never heard that before the election, did you?



No siree this was not the election platform but yet the UK’s Armed Forces are being ritually disembowelled on parade grounds around the world as we write. The Flagship of the Royal Navy Carrier Ark Royal and the entire Harrier Jet Force are being scrapped, £4 Bn of Nimrod Spy Planes (ordered by Conservative, Michael Portillo when they were in last time) will never fly and are being cut up. In the most significant changes to Britain’s defences since the post-Suez review of 1957, ministers and officials plan to scrap large parts of the Armed Forces. The Services will lose up to 16,000 personnel, hundreds of tanks, scores of fighter jets and half a dozen ships.


HMS Ark Royal has been sunk! The Flagship of the Navy she was the fifth Royal Navy ship to bear the illustrious name of Queen Elizabeth the First’s flagship which led the defeat of the Spanish Armada.


But the RAF will bear the brunt of the planned cuts. The Air Force will lose 7,000 airmen – almost one sixth of its total staff – and 295 aircraft. The cuts will leave the Force with fewer than 200 fighter planes for the first time since 1914. In addition, the Navy will lose two submarines, three amphibious ships and more than 100 senior officers, along with 2,000 sailors and marines.


Your job is OK Son!

The Army faces a 40 per cent cut to its fleet of 9,700 armoured vehicles and the loss of a 5,000-strong brigade of troops. The defence review scaled back Britain’s Armed Forces over the next decade, leaving the UK with just one operational aircraft carrier, a smaller number of surface ships and a reduction of 42,000 MoD personnel. The dismantling of three existing Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft, which were close to completion at a cost of £4.1 billion, is one of the most embarrassing outcomes of the review.


£4.1 Billion of new Nimrod surveillance aircraft which have never flown being cut up and scrapped

One amazing feature of the Demolition Coalition so far is the compliant press coverage from the Murdoch and Tory Press. When you consider the acerbic and highly personalised disinformation campaign against Labour and its entire works before the May Election the docility of the right wing press in the face of swingeing Defence cuts is both incredible and hypocritical. Remember the highly personalised campaign against former PM Gordon Brown for not supporting “Our Boys.” Now we are told he supported them too much!



Labour’s “Cool Britannia” has been replaced by the LibCon’s “Cruel Britannia.” So the casual cruelty to the Armed Forces continues with career prospects being destroyed, RAF pilots who cost £4 M each to train being sacked with only short flying hours remaining before they get their wings, 100 long serving soldiers being sacked by email, Sea, Air, Rescue being privatised one week and the process abandoned the next and experienced pilots telling David Cameron to his face that he has destroyed their careers.



We have been here before under the Conservatives. Remember saved the cost of one Navy ship they withdrew from the Falkland Islands and it cost us an entire war! The Falklands War cost 255 men, six ships (ten others suffered varying degrees of battle damage), 34 aircraft and £2.778 billion. Another Conservative triumph of economic management! This current disembowelling of the armed forces is even more perverse because it is based on two big lies. One is that we need to replace Trident, the Cold War MAD (mutually assured destruction) system which will cost £34 Bn. And never be used. The other is the lie about the HUGE budget deficit. But the government’s budget projections do not take into account the selloff of the stakes in the banks rescued in the 2008 Credit Crunch at a cost of £37 Bn. For UK PLC’s stake in these banks. The perfidious nature of George Osborne’s projections means these are not included. So the country, including the armed forces is being wrecked to keep an Election Bribe to one side for 2015.


Big Society community based Defence Partnership

It is not just the Armed Forces which are not safe in the hands of the Tory / LibDem Coalition, the whole country is at risk. David Cameron is certainly standing behind "Our Boys and Girls" - in the queue at the Job Centre!

To see what serving members of the Armed Forces think of their treatment by the Government see;

www.roguegunner.com

The Demolition Job

Gideon then

It is amazing how uncritically craven the right wing press is in the face of today’s UK Comprehensive Spending Review – A concerted ideological attack on the poor and on women. Can you imagine the hysterical headlines about “Betraying Our Boys!” If Labour had emasculated the defence Budget the way the Lib Cons have? A gaffe by Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander has revealed that half a million job losses are set to emerge in the upcoming Spending Review - a Government strategy to cut the deficit released by George Osborne today.

The coalition's austerity drive comes despite huge waves of protest across the country from working class postmen, nurses and teachers who presume their jobs are on the line. However, despite this, Chancellor, George, formerly known as Gideon Osborne will outline the 'hard road' ahead as the Government takes on one of the biggest spending cuts in the Western World. The scale of the cuts dwarfs Britain's two most recent austerity drives, after a 1976 IMF bailout and in the 1980s, under the leadership of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.


George now

Alan Johnson MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, has criticised the coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review as a huge gamble from a government with no plan for growth and jobs.


Alan Johnson MP,Shadow Chancellor

Alan Johnson said:

“Today is the day that an abstract debate about spreadsheets and numbers turns into stark reality for people’s jobs and services. Their pensions, their prospects, their homes and their families. It is our firm belief that the rush to cut the deficit endangers the recovery and reduces the prospects for employment in the short term, and prosperity in the longer term.

“We believe we can and should sustain a more gradual reduction. Securing growth. I don’t believe that the Chancellor or the Prime Minster sufficiently understand the worries and concerns of families up and down the country. And I think those worries will have multiplied as a result of the spending review statement today.”

The full text of Alan Johnson’s speech follows:

Mr Speaker, members opposite are cheering the deepest cuts in public expenditure that have taken place in living memory. Today is the day that an abstract debate about spreadsheets and numbers turns into stark reality for people’s jobs and services.



Their pensions, their prospects. Their homes and their families.

The day that the statistics which were sitting so comfortably in the lap of the Chief Secretary yesterday, become uncomfortable reality for hundreds of thousands of families. The deficit deceivers opposite have peddled a series of myths to the British public.

The most incredible is that the biggest global economic crisis since the great depression is the fault of the previous government.

Perhaps the Chancellor will confirm three facts.

Fact one, when the global crisis hit the UK had the second lowest debt of any G7 country.

Fact two, that the last government inherited a debt interest level of 10p in every pound of tax received. And that even after a world recession, bequeathed a figure 15% lower.

Fact three, that the interest rates the UK pays on its debt have been falling since the beginning of the year.



The last CSR was in 2007, when the Chancellor was at this despatch box complaining not that we were spending too much, but that we were spending too little. He complained that we were slowing the growth in health and education expenditure. Indeed his party supported every penny of our spending plans until well after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in America set off a disastrous chain reaction around the world.

The Chancellor described his Emergency Budget in June as unavoidable and fair. It was actually unfair, as the IFS pointed out in a devastating critique within 48 hours. And it was also avoidable.

The deficit has to be paid down. But today’s reckless gamble with people’s livelihoods runs the risk of stifling the fragile recovery. The ridiculous analogy of credit card debt insults the intelligence of the British public.

If countries around the world hadn’t run up debts to sustain their economies people would not have lost their credit cards, they’d have lost their houses, their savings and their jobs. The Liberal Democrats know this. Because it’s what they argued when seeking the support of the electorate. Before the Deputy Prime Minister discovered Greece, in the period between the ballot boxes closing and the door of his ministerial car opening.



They, like us, argued that in the context of reducing the deficit, speed kills. The Chancellor repeats a list of organisations that support his swift cuts. Curiously he fails to mention the opposing views of the other nations that make up the UK – Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Perhaps that’s what he means when he describes himself as a one nation Tory.

And here’s another supportive quote.

"The measures we have taken have been commended by international bodies such as the European Central Bank, the European Commission, the IMF and the OECD. They have also won the approval of the international markets."

That was the Irish Minister of Finance last December, telling the Irish Parliament that his austerity plan was working, just four months before they slid back into recession. After months of overblown rhetoric from the Chancellor, the concerns of those watching his announcement today will be about:

• staying in work,
• staying in their homes
• and staying safe on our streets.

We are told that the expected job losses from this spending review amount to 490,000, in the public sector alone. And a Price Waterhouse Coopers report last week told us that a million jobs are at stake - because the impact on the private sector will be just as severe. Isn’t it the case that, at the same time as they throw people out of work, the government is reducing the support to help people return to the workplace?



They’ve already cancelled the Future Jobs Fund. Now, whilst the Work and Pensions Secretary tells us that the system must ensure that people are better off in work, the changes to Working Tax Credit announced today will have the opposite effect.

Reducing childcare support for working parents adds to the problem. This isn’t a strategy for jobs. It’s a recipe for unemployment.

On housing the Chancellor has announced the retreat of central government from any role in building new affordable homes. So I ask the Chancellor can he tell the House, how many jobs will be lost in the construction sectors as a result of his decision to all but end capital funding for housebuilding?

And on crime which has fallen dramatically over the last 13 years - how on earth can the government think they are in tune with people’s priorities when a substantial cut in the Home Office budget is bound to result in police officers being taken off the streets?

Spending does have to be reduced. But the frontline services on which people rely must be protected. The public do not want to see teacher numbers fall, fewer police officers on their streets, or hospitals short-staffed. So we support moves to protect schools and the NHS.

However, it seems clear that the Deputy Prime Minister has failed to meet his pledge that the pupil premium would not be funded from within the schools budget – a clear case of robbing Michael to pay Liam.

On the NHS, the small re al terms increase will be more than swallowed by the waste of £2 to £3bn on a top down reorganisation they promised in the election not to undertake.



And while we’re on the NHS, will the baseline for the Department of Health resource spending be reflected in the actual 2010/11 budget? Mr Speaker, without growth the job of getting the deficit down becomes impossible. A rising dole queue means a bigger welfare bill. And less tax coming in.

A cost of at least half a billion pounds for every 100,000 people thrown out of work by the government's approach. So to get the deficit down the starting point must be jobs, jobs, jobs. And that is the core of the difference between us and the government.

The Ministry of Justice tells us that they will see 14,000 staff go. Does he agree with the department’s assessment that the vast majority of those, 11,000, will be from the frontline?



Can he confirm that £230m of taxpayers funds have been earmarked for redundancy costs in that department alone? What is the total scale of redundancies expected across the public sector? What will the total redundancy bill be?

Thanks to the Chief Secretary we know that the Treasury has provided him with estimates. He should share them with the House. I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to revisit his plans for capital spending and support for science. The Business Secretary has rightly fought to partially protect the science budget, and to put more money into regional development.

It’s true that he had to switch overnight from opposing any graduate contribution to their education to support for unlimited fees, but such contortions are nothing new for the Rt Hon Member and his colleagues.

But given the warning signs in the UK and global economies, we believe the case for going further on infrastructure is clear.



The banks that benefit from the ending of the bonus tax, and the cut in Corporation Tax, can well afford to take more of the strain. This additional would mean that vital infrastructure projects could go ahead – keeping people in work now, and creating the environment for growth in the years to come. And we call again on the government to change their perverse decision on Sheffield Forgemasters.

It is right that the government looks for savings from the welfare bill. Where changes are fair, proportionate and encourage work we will support them as we have shown in respect of incapacity benefit, a reformed gateway for Disability Living Allowance and on up ratings. We will look at the other changes announced today.
But there is nothing fair about Child Benefit changes that leave a single earner on £45,000 losing thousands of pounds, while a family on £80,000 gets to keep every penny.

As things stand the government is looking for a bigger contribution to reducing the deficit to come from children than from the banks. That can’t be right.

Will the Chancellor confirm that his change to Child Benefit equates to a 6p increase in income tax for a single earner family on £45,000? Perhaps because of the consternation caused on this issue he has dropped plans to remove child Benefit for older children. Can he rule this our completely, or is it still under consideration?

And, while we accept that Housing Benefit should be reformed, how can anyone on the benches opposite suggest that removing 10% of the rent for a family’s home from someone who has been looking for work for 12 months is fair?

Can the Chancellor confirm that the poorest will bear a greater burden than the richest – with the middle squeezed even further? And that women are shouldering three quarters of the cuts? Does he still claim that these measures are progressive and fair?



Mr Speaker. There is an alternative to this slash and burn approach. This Spending Review is not about economic necessity, it’s about political choice. The Chancellor argues that Labour would have done nothing about the deficit. But he goes on to say that his cuts are no worse than ours. He can’t have it both ways. But he’s wrong on both counts.

The government is removing almost twice as much from departmental budgets as we think is wise, before we consider the further welfare reforms he has announced today. It is our firm belief that the rush to cut the deficit endangers the recovery and reduces the prospects for employment in the short term, and prosperity in the longer term. We believe we can and should sustain a more gradual reduction. Securing growth.

I don’t believe that the Chancellor or the Prime Minster sufficiently understand the worries and concerns of families up and down the country. And I think those worries will have multiplied as a result of the spending review statement today.

The Demolition Coalition

There is a huge democratic deficit at the heart of British politics today. The May 2010 General Election resulted in the LibCon Coalition of the Conservative Party who didn’t win the election and the Liberal Democrats who most definitely lost the election and whose promise of changing the “Face of British Politics” turned out to be a busted flush. Since then the public has been treated to a drip, drip, drip of spending cuts and tax raises based on slash and burn policies which were never put to the electorate. It is now clear that under the guise of “fiscal responsibility” what is happening is an ideologically driven attack on State services and the whole concept of “Society.” For David Cameron’s Big Society read Bogus Society.

Since the election the LibCon Coalition has announced so many cuts that it has been renamed the Demolition Coalition – no evidence they can (or want) to build anything but plenty of evidence they are happy to tear the house down. Non-protected departmental Budgets, everything apart from health and International Aid, are going to be cut by 25 percent on average. But Chancellor George Osborne told the House he would hope that the cuts to defence and education would be significantly less than that. The unspoken part of that is that the cuts to some other Budgets will have to be significantly bigger than that. Even then, Britain faces further tax rises even after the Coalition Government imposes deep cuts in public spending, according to a two-year study. An all-party commission has warned that taxes will have to rise to cope with the financial pressures caused by an ageing population; an increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity; combating climate change; closing the gap between rich and poor; abolishing child poverty and improving skills levels in the workforce.



The coalition government's spending cuts to reduce deficit will see unemployment in the UK rise to almost 3 million over the next five years, according to a revised forecast by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). There was no prospect of real wage growth until at least 2015, and the public sector faced sharp pay cuts and job losses, which could total 725,000 by that year. The CIPD warned of a "bleak" outlook for "those individuals and communities already suffering the greatest hardship in society".

So it is not just the raving loonies that warn that the Demolition Coalition have got it wrong. That natural home of extremism, The Association of Police Superintendents has warned that the proposed cuts will lead to civil anarchy. The OECD is worrying that cuts will choke off recovery and the IMF is saying the UK has room for fiscal manoeuvre, so the Demolition Coalition’s arguments looks weaker every day.




Portcullis House

So I was very heartened last night to be in the Macmillan Room at Portcullis House in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster to meet the acting Labour Party Leader Harriet Harman and South East Labour Mp’s, Alan Whitehead, MP and John Denham, MP who represent Southampton, Andrew Smith MP for Oxford East, Fiona McTaggart MP for Slough. There is a real sense that the Labour Leadership campaign is leading to a real debate and renewal which will strengthen the Party. Over 32,000 people have joined the party since the election and disenchantment is rife among former Lib Dem supporters who voted for no VAT rise and against spending reductions.

It was good to see the inside of Portcullis House, a building which went significantly over budget and which has as its foundations, Westminster Tube Station. Portcullis House is built above the dramatic Westminster Tube Station on top of the “Box”, a vast 39m (127ft) void which was excavated underneath the old station to house the escalators, lifts and stairs to the deep-level Jubilee Line platforms, the deepest ever excavation in central London. One of the most difficult problems the engineers faced was to construct the station around the Circle and District line tracks, which continued in service throughout its construction. The tracks had to be lowered by 300mm (1 foot), an operation achieved a few millimetres at a time during the few hours each night that the system was closed. The station was by far the most complex in terms of engineering of any of those on the Jubilee line and it was the last to open, just before Christmas 1999. Nothing of the old station remains. The “box” gives you the impression you are in an Escher engraving and the spray concrete used in the “Austrian Tunnelling Method” is deliberately left exposed to demonstrate how it was constructed.






Westminster Station "The Box" under Portcullis House

The station's cavernous design, by Michael Hopkins & Partners, won it a 2001 Royal Institute of British Architects Award and earned it a place on the shortlist for the RIBA's prestigious Stirling Prize. The architects, Michael Hopkins and Partners, published their design for Portcullis House in 1993 and the existing buildings on the site were demolished in 1994. At the same time, London Underground was building the Jubilee Line Extension, including a new interchange station at Westminster tube station which occupies the same area; the two were thus designed and built as a single unit.



Inside with its dramatic atrium and its separation into Parlimentary and public areas (necessary for security reasons) Portcullis House reeks of long lasting quality and is hugely impressive. But what really impressed me was the fighting spirit of the Labour Party activists, MP’s and acting Leader Harriet Harman. With the Demolition Coalition greatly afraid of the electorates reaction to its slash and burn policies they are trying to Gerrymander the Electoral and Parliamentary systems, pushing through legislation to give Parliament a fixed five year term, postpone the Queen’s Speech (which sets out the Government’s legislative programme) and change the majority needed for a Vote of Confidence. As Harriet Harman pointed out the Labour Party is very much alive and kicking and holding the Demolition Coalition to account and the May Local elections next year will be a real moment of truth.


Acting Labour Leader Harriet Harman, a scion of the Anglo-Irish Harman-King family

One amazing feature of the Demolition Coalition so far is the compliant press coverage from the Murdoch and Tory Press. When you consider the acerbic and highly personalised disinformation campaign against Labour and its entire works before the May Election the docility of the right wing press in the face of, say swingeing Defence cuts is both incredible and hypocritical. The Demolition Coalition and the Labour Leadership Campaign has made the UK electorate realise why Labour is different. With its roots in the struggles for ordinary people’s rights by the Trade Union Movement and mutual self help by the Co-Operative Society it is set apart from the shallow opportunism of other parties and is the only political movement which can bring fairness and growth to Britain. As the outcome of the last election and the destructive experimentation of the Demolition Coalition has shown the Lib Dems were not an alternative to the overweening selfishness of the Tories.


Aaaahhhhhh ........ Nick, The Downing Street Baby

Old Etonian cries “Power to the People”

Everybody here saw PR Dave deliver his vacuous “Power to the People” speech launching the Conservative Manifesto in front of Battersea Power Station. Unfortunately I saw him deliver it in front of a White Elephant bought for £400 M with debt from Irish Banks to Treasury Holdings and which is now owned by that long suffering individual, the Irish Taxpayer.

http://www.propertyweek.com/story.asp?storycode=3154094



The Conservatives launch of their manifesto at Battersea Power Station was just like their policies, nice looking on the outside, and hollow on the inside.
The last Tory launch at Battersea power station was when Margaret Thatcher fired a laser gun to signal the start of a theme park that, in the end, was never built. Worked stopped a year later, in 1989, leaving the building in its current derelict state.





So launches by Tory leaders in Battersea power station seem like a good idea at the time. They tend to have impeccable PR. But costs soon escalate, the foundations decay, and the whole edifice is left in a state of dereliction.

Let us remind ourselves what we must not do;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/03/lest-we-forget.html

Is David Cameron the Leader or the Deputy Leader of the Conservatives?

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/03/lord-cashcroft.html

And of David’s Statesmanship with his blood curdling cry to fight the Russians at Selfridges!

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/09/we-will-fight-them-selfridges.html

Lord Cashcroft

Biggles and his Co-Pilot

Conservative donor and deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft has admitted he does not pay UK tax on earnings outside Britain. His statement ends years of questions from opponents about whether he was "non-domiciled" in the UK for tax. He said he agreed with Tory leader David Cameron's call for anyone in the Lords to be "resident and domiciled".

Labour's Jack Straw accused the Tories of "concealing the truth" for 10 years. The Lib Dems said the Tories had been "bought like a banana republic". BBC political editor Nick Robinson said the 63-year-old, who is estimated to be worth £1.1bn by the Sunday Times Rich List, was one of the biggest ever donors to a political party and was at the centre of the Conservatives' election campaign.


Lord Ashcroft of Tax Exile in the County of Belize

Lord Cashcroft is in a long tradition of Great British Patriots who are too patriotic to pay taxes, such as "Union" Jack Hayward who bankrolled the Tories from the Bahamas! Why do we stand for this nonsense? Have a British Passport or live in Britain, pay British Taxes on your worldwide income, period. That's the way it is in the Good 'Ol U. S of A where you are liable to US Federal Income Tax no matter where you live once you have a US passport. This is why there is no such thing as an American Tax Exile. Who does the Great British legal nonsense of "Domiciled", "Ordinarily Domiciled”, "Resident" and "Resident but non-Domiciled" suit? Certainly not those who earn their living (and pay taxes) on the fruits of honest labour?

Lord Ashcroft was initially rejected for a peerage in 1999 by the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee on the grounds that he spent most of his time abroad in Belize and Florida and conducted almost all of his financial matters overseas. His company Bearwood Corporate Services Limited has been the largest single contributor to the Tories since 2005, although his millions make up less than 5% of their total donations. For a company to make a donation it must be trading in the UK and in February 2009, the Electoral Commission launched a formal investigation to determine whether this was the case.

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham has called for the full details of Lord Ashcroft's status to be made public and criticised "evasive and obfuscatory" replies given by senior politicians on the subject. Ashcroft is the Tory Deputy Chairman and maintains a “private” office at Conservative HQ and he personally bankrolls a campaign to unseat the Labour / Lib-Dem incumbent in 186 target constituencies.
To go back to the American example, there he wouldn’t be allowed make political contributions and would be treated under American Law as “An agent of a Foreign Power.”


Cameron Air

One aspect of Lord Cashcroft’s influence over the Tories is his splendid bankrolling of Cameron Air. Dave “Vote Blue to get Green” Cameron and his chaps travel in style: they go in ‘Lord’ Ashcroft’s Falcon jet ($30 million second hand). Altogether shadow cabinet ministers and aides have flown 184,000 miles on the Ashcroft jet over the last five years with Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, flying 65,453 miles and shadow foreign secretary William Hague flying 49,670 miles. It would be churlish to complain about all this privileged transport, given P.R. Dave’s understandable pride in his privileged background.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/09/we-will-fight-them-selfridges.html

Bledlow Manor Gardens

The Manor House

Having written recently about the gardens at the Manor House Bledlow it was pleasant on this Bank Holiday weekend to head back to Bledlow to see the gardens for the first time in a number of years. Bledlow’s main residence is Bledlow Manor, the family home of Lord Carrington who opens its wonderful grounds and sculpture garden for charity. Opposite the manor is an impressive old Church and beside it the Lyde Garden which is a sunken aquatic garden fed by 14 springs. Lord Carrington generously created this garden from an old quarry and he maintains this lovely enclave and keeps it open to the public at his own expense.

(http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/chiltern-spring.html )


Entrance to The Lyde

Bledlow consists of Bledlow Ridge on the top of the escarpment and then a half mile below the village of Bledlow clumped around the Manor House and Church.

"Bledlow is the most western of the villages which stand on the northern spur of the Chilterns, and one of the most attractive. It is charmingly placed just above the low-lying meadows which stretch across the Thame Valley to Haddenham. A large, straggling village shaded by elms; behind it rises Wain Hill, some of it all woodland, the rest bare down."
[Buckinghamshire, by E. S. Roscoe]

Opposite the church and The Lyde is Bledlow Manor, dating from the 17th century and early 18th century. It has been the family home of the Carringtons since 1800, the present owner being Lord Carrington, the former Conservative cabinet minister. The garden, which can normally be glimpsed only from the outside, is described in the Good Gardens Guide as "an elegant English garden of exceptional quality". The garden is open by written appointment from May to September, and occasionally for charity. The large yet tranquil garden has been in development since 1969. The garden was designed by Robert Adam and contains many individual areas including an impressive vegetable garden. There are long herbaceous borders and, to the east of the house a sculpture garden.


Manor Entrance Front


Patricia Volk "New Renaissance" 1993


Marino Colonna "Primitive Form" 2005

The setting at the manor is exceptional; it is built in an airy position on top of the ridge but has a heightened sense of enclosure from the wonderful mature trees surrounding the house and gardens. Beautifully planted and well maintained, it has all been made on thin chalk soil since 1969. There are four parts: first, the garden 'proper' round the house, enclosed by hedges of beech, hornbeam or yew. Best is the armillary garden, an exercise in topiary with the sphere at its centre, surrounded by four cubes of yew, smaller hedges and labels of box. Next comes the walled garden with a gazebo in the centre whose eight trellised posts are planted with rambling roses. The central grass walk is lined with apple trees trained as spheres around a wire globe: they rise from parterre boxes of teucrium, each planted with a different herb - sage, chives, Greek oregano and so on. The third part of the garden is quite different - 2½ acres of sculpture garden, started in 1991 and already remarkably mature. The land has been contoured to maximise the movement of the surface, and give contrasts of height and depth. Its fluid modern design is a great foil to the formal gardens around the house. The presiding spirit is a life-size gorilla by Michael Cooper.


Michael Cooper "Gorilla" 1993


John Robinson "Immortality" 1992


Peter Randall Page "3 Fruits"

The fourth part of the garden is different again - four acres of water garden, started in 1979 on the site of three old watercress beds. The 14 springs which issue from its sides are the headwaters of the River Lyde, a tributary of the Thames. The steep valley sides are thickly planted with shrubs and herbaceous plants. A wooden walkway, Japanese in style, takes you round the edge of the lakes at the bottom. The muddy banks are planted with candelabra primroses, gunneras, hostas and astilbes. Unlike the rest of the garden, this part is open daily (and free) from dawn to dusk.


Alistair Lambert 1991


Terence Coventry "Avian Form" 1999


William Pye "Coracle" 2001

Peter Carrington was wandering about unobtrusively and indeed when I was getting a cup of tea came up beside me and “asked” if he could steal a biscuit. Shame on him, as a Lord of the Realm he should at least have “stolen” a slice of ginger cake containing a sinful amount of golden syrup! What I can tell you is he looks very well for a man of 89 years going on 90, no doubt helped by the wonderful fresh vegetables and fruit produced in the working kitchen garden. As part of the fundraising efforts for charity teas were being sold, there was a selection of plants from the gardens and also Bledlow Manor honey and beeswax products. Lord Carrington was born in London on the 6th June 1919 and has had a long and distinguished career. He was Secretary of State for Defence 1970 – 4, Foreign Secretary 1979 – 82; Baron (succeeded to title) in 1938. An ancestor, Robert Smith, had been banker and adviser to the younger Pitt at the end of the eighteenth century and was given a peerage. The story is that he complained to William Pitt that he could not keep him company when he rode his horse in Rotten Row in Hyde Park, London as it was restricted to nobles and on that basis he was elevated “upstairs” to the Lords.




Spurge Euphorbia "Lambrook Gold"

Peter Carrington has achieved much in different fields — the military, diplomacy, in government. He was educated at Eton and Sandhurst and inherited his title in 1938. Because of service in the 1939 – 45 war he did not enter the House of Lords until 1945. He was commissioned in the Grenadier Guards and served throughout World War II. He took part in the campaign in France and the Low Countries, reaching the rank of major and being awarded the Military Cross (MC). He ended up as a tank commander and I remember him being asked what his biggest regret was and he replied “Not getting a clear shot at Himmler.” In 1945 his column was approaching Hamburg and Himmler’s convoy crossed in front of him but they could not swing their turrets around quickly enough to shoot him. I’m sure his biggest regret was actually his comrades who never made it back but, like many of his generation, he is too much of a stoic to say so.






Grain store in grounds raised on tapered "stilts" to keep the grain dry and vermin out

At the end of World War II Carrington chose to return to the family's country seat at Bledlow near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, to take a leadership role in reforming British farming practices and to occupy his seat in the House of Lords. His natural instinct for leadership not only led him into positions with the County Council, but also caused him to be made an opposition whip in the House of Lords during the two post-war Labour governments. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, Carrington became a parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. He was, at age 32, one of the youngest members of the government. British farm production was increasingly considered a key task for the government, which was faced with severe balance of payments problems. In 1951 he led the British delegation to the sixth conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. He also served as chairman of the Hill Farming Advisory Committee for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and was a member of the working party on agricultural education set up by the ministry in 1952. He also served a relatively brief stint as parliamentary secretary to the minister of defence after October 1954; he was notable in that position for downgrading traditional shipbuilding in favour of modern electronic naval weaponry. But he made little apparent progress in that regard.


Plans for the Kitchen Garden




Owen Turville 1997 "Vertummus Mural (Archimbaldo)"




The Kitchen Garden

Among his early posts were High Commissioner in Australia, First Lord of the Admiralty (1959 – 63), and leader of the House of Lords (1964 – 70). Carrington became a close friend and political ally of Ted Heath. When the latter formed his government in 1970 Carrington was made Secretary of State for Defence, to which post he added the party chairmanship in 1972 and, briefly, the newly created Energy Department at the time of the energy crisis in early 1974. Carrington was blamed by some Conservatives who thought that the election campaign in February 1974 had been badly managed. The election was forced by the coal miners' strike against the government's statutory pay policy, at a time of acute energy shortage. Carrington was one of those who favoured an early election, earlier than the one that was eventually called.




Garden Sculptures

In Opposition between 1974 and 1979 he had an uneasy relationship with the new party leader, Margaret Thatcher. She respected his experience, contacts, and tactical advice. But he stood for a different kind of conservatism from hers — he was more internationalist and more pro-European abroad and more conciliatory at home. Appointed Foreign Secretary in 1979 he played a key role in the passage to independence of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and in maintaining reasonable relations with the EC; the latter were dominated at the time by Mrs Thatcher's strident insistence on eliminating a good part of Britain's net deficit with the Community.
The work of the Foreign Office on a scheme for the leaseback of the Falkland Islands to Argentina was one among many signals which led the military regime in Argentina to think that Britain would acquiesce in its seizure of the islands. When Argentina did so, opinion in Britain regarded the event as a national humiliation and, following party criticisms, Carrington resigned as Foreign Secretary. This was a step that Mrs Thatcher much regretted. But he was offended by the criticism and his resignation probably helped Mrs Thatcher. Subsequent official inquiries into events leading to the war cleared the Foreign Office and Carrington of any blame in the matter.


Lord Carrington as Chancellor of the Garter Knights at Windsor

After leaving government Carrington continued to play a public role. He was Secretary-General of NATO (1984 – 8), and chaired the peace conference on Yugoslavia (1991 – 2). Carrington represented the aristocracy's tradition of public service. He was regarded as a politician with a sense of proportion, one who was a good diplomat because he respected other points of view and also had a sense of the limits of what politics could achieve.
He published his memoirs, Reflect on Things Past, in 1988.



On this fine day at Bledlow you see a different Peter Carrington. A courteous gentleman who is greatly respected in Buckinghamshire (even by lefties like me) as a person who cares about the area, the countryside and is a good neighbour. It may seem strange that somebody like him opens up his house but he is on a personal level genuinely unpretentious and cares about his community, indeed as a “One Nation” Tory his politics is an extension of his caring for the community. There is no sense that he hides away or cares unduly about security, indeed on a previous occasion when I asked him about this he said he had had a sculpture stolen from the garden the previous weekend! And it is instructive that this wealthy man spends his money on developing the Manor and Farm and encouraging artists with the sculpture pieces he has commissioned over the years. Indeed his feel for this is evident in the sitting of the works where the sculptures act as a foil to the planting and don’t overwhelm. The gardens at Bledlow Manor are worth visiting for their beauty and their ability to delight and are obviously a labour of love for Lord Carrington. We can be grateful that he is happy to share them with us for charity. For this Tory there most definitely is a Society!

For details of gardens open for charity;

The National Gardens Scheme

www.ngs.org.uk