Owen Paterson: Anger as Tory MP avoids suspension in rule shake-up

[nomadking]

Also

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) spokesperson said: 'Charleston has not received any money from the Levelling Up Fund.
'This project was allocated funding from the Getting Building Fund by the South East Local Enterprise Partnership, whose independent evaluators assessed it as offering value for money.
'Charleston is a charity-owned, internationally recognised site of cultural importance, with a museum and art gallery, and this work is estimated to provide a £1.6 million boost to the local economy by creating jobs and increasing visitor numbers.'

Originally Posted by Carth

No shortage of straws to grasp then

---------- Post added at 10:01 ---------- Previous post was at 09:59 ----------

Why couldn't the esteemed gentleman repair his own driveway with his own money?

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Maggy

---------- Post added at 10:01 ---------- Previous post was at 09:59 ----------

Why couldn't the esteemed gentleman repair his own driveway with his own money?

It wasn't his driveway.

'The southern extent of the new track beyond Charleston that services the dairy farm and Estate cottages was funded by Firle Estate.'

Whether the museum is of enough importance to warrant the expenditure is another matter.

Originally Posted by Maggy

---------- Post added at 10:01 ---------- Previous post was at 09:59 ----------

Why couldn't the esteemed gentleman repair his own driveway with his own money?

Lady Nugee has deliberately engineered your confusion by choosing to describe a single-track lane on a private estate a ‘driveway’, thereby insinuating that it’s the viscount’s personal access for getting his car into his garage. That is not the case.

There are certainly questions to answer here but as always, deliberately mischaracterising what has actually happened ensures they won’t be addressed. Such is the state of our politics.

As far as I can gather, the Estate company actually did pay for a substantial portion of the work of repairing the road. Their input paid for the repairs on the section beyond the museum, towards the farms. The museum applied for, and won, a grant to repair the first half-mile of the road, which is used by museum visitors as well as farm vehicles. The question is whether maintenance of that section of road is the tenant’s or the landlord’s responsibility. As I live on a stretch of unadopted country road I can tell you, the answers to those sorts of questions can be extremely complex and often are the reason such roads end up in that sort of condition.

I doubt we will ever learn whether it was actually the museum’s responsibility to maintain that part of the road or whether the estate used the museum as a front to get access to public funds. To be honest it would make little difference if we did. The story is only out there because of its potential sleaze value and everyone hearing it is only likely to become more entrenched in whatever view they already had.

[Mr K]

My drive needs 'levelling up". Might put a claim in.
I have a museum of ancient artefacts in the garage so I should qualify

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Mr K

My drive needs 'levelling up". Might put a claim in.
I have a museum of ancient artefacts in the garage so I should qualify

... as well as the artefacts.

Originally Posted by Mr K

My drive needs 'levelling up". Might put a claim in.
I have a museum of ancient artefacts in the garage so I should qualify

Q.E.D.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

There is a full story on this at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...30k-money.html

Not quite as bad as sentiment would have it, although you'd have to get some way down tor Mail article to reach that conclusion.

No it's not as bad, I still have questions though, like how long has the drive/ track been like that and who used to pay for the upkeep? Are the villages down the track owned or tenants?

---------- Post added at 16:23 ---------- Previous post was at 16:21 ----------

Originally Posted by Chris

Lady Nugee has deliberately engineered your confusion by choosing to describe a single-track lane on a private estate a ‘driveway’, thereby insinuating that it’s the viscount’s personal access for getting his car into his garage. That is not the case.

There are certainly questions to answer here but as always, deliberately mischaracterising what has actually happened ensures they won’t be addressed. Such is the state of our politics.

As far as I can gather, the Estate company actually did pay for a substantial portion of the work of repairing the road. Their input paid for the repairs on the section beyond the museum, towards the farms. The museum applied for, and won, a grant to repair the first half-mile of the road, which is used by museum visitors as well as farm vehicles. The question is whether maintenance of that section of road is the tenant’s or the landlord’s responsibility. As I live on a stretch of unadopted country road I can tell you, the answers to those sorts of questions can be extremely complex and often are the reason such roads end up in that sort of condition.

I doubt we will ever learn whether it was actually the museum’s responsibility to maintain that part of the road or whether the estate used the museum as a front to get access to public funds. To be honest it would make little difference if we did. The story is only out there because of its potential sleaze value and everyone hearing it is only likely to become more entrenched in whatever view they already had.

And that's the really tragic thing

Details .....

The track leads to Charleston Farmhouse, an independently run museum and art gallery within the grounds of his Firle Estate.
The museum applied for the funds, even though the drive itself is owned by the millionaire aristocrat.

The track is over a mile from Lord Gage's £10million Tudor manor Firle Place, but it is not just museum tourists who drive on it.
Agricultural vehicles serving one of the viscount's seven farms use it, as well as locals living in some of the 114 houses he owns in five villages dotted across 7,500 acres of the Sussex Downs

.

[ianch99]

The Peer owns the land and the roadways. The fact that he has allowed a museum to be sited & operated on his land was surely his decision. His land, his road.

A fund setup to level up the poorer areas of the country pays for the upkeep of a private road owned by a multi-millionaire. I'm sorry, you literally could not make this up. There is also a business (Tilton House) that clear benefits from the works and so erodes any (weak) attempt at justification.

This is clearly another sleaze own goal despite the half hearted attempts of some on this forum to explain it away.

[jfman]

I’ve not read much of the detail (as others have noted it won’t change my mind that it’s absolutely corrupt) but I’m rarely aware of occasions where corruption and movement of funds isn’t somehow disguised as a legal activity involving that individual, a third party or a front company. After all those laundrettes didn’t just clean clothes hence the name.

Indeed, Owen Patterson wasn’t paid to lobby and break Parliamentary procedures. Had it not been found out he’d just be declaring away his directorship on the regular reports and nobody any the wiser.

[spiderplant]

For those who do want to read the detail:
https://www.southeastlep.com/project...ier-to-growth/
https://www.southeastlep.com/app/upl...iness-Case.pdf

And if you want to see what is being spent elsewhere:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/getting-building-fund

Originally Posted by spiderplant

For those who do want to read the detail:

As you can see above, the usual suspects have no interest in the actual facts.

From spider’s 2nd link

Page 13

This narrow road provides the only vehicular access into and out of Charleston and access to the dairy farm and cottages and two other businesses.

Whilst the Estate provided £10k worth of gratis Project Management (page 30), surely it would have been more equitable for the Estate to contribute to the funding as it also benefits?

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Hugh

From spider’s 2nd link

Page 13

Whilst the Estate provided £10k worth of gratis Project Management (page 30), surely it would have been more equitable for the Estate to contribute to the funding as it also benefits?

Well I’m sure if you had visibility of all the applications and weighed up all the evidence you’d have come to a decision………and of course welcomed that decision to have been assessed on social media, and if ridiculed, you would have battled that with all the internet memes at your disposal……you are excellent at that.