70 days ago
I have always had a soft spot for wine producer Gusbourne (GUS) as it was founded in Appledore, the Kent village where I spent many a childhood holiday at the retirement home of my father’s parents. The village was also home to the “railway killer”. The investment proposition fifteen years ago was that Kent has the same soil as Champagne but acreage in the garden of England was far cheaper than in Frogland. However, global warming would by now make the temperature in Kent the same as that in Champagne fifteen years ago. But…
1045 days ago
I have happy memories of childhood visits to my father’s parents in Appledore on Romney Marsh. One of thosee was in “helping” grandpa, Sir John Winnifrith, with his garden of which he was immensely proud. Big nets kept the birds away from an incredibly ordered and productive fruit and vegetable patch which he tended carefully keeping the weeds and slugs at bay.
1622 days ago
For seven years I have been recounting various episodes which will have caused my grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, a former Director General of the National Trust, to spin in his grave. Slowly, the organisation he loved is destroying itself but like the frog in slowly heating water it seems oblivious to its fate. For those who run the Trust live in a small liberal and elitist bubble.
2818 days ago
Earlier this week it was his fellow socialist Polly Toynbee arguing for subsidies for farmers and higher food prices for the workers that would have had my late grandfather spinning in his grave. Well Sir John will have had reason tp spin again as the National Trust has joined the 50 year LGBT-fest led by the BBC, in the most ridiculous of ways. This is not to say that Sir John was a homophobe but he was Director General of the Trust.
4274 days ago
My grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, was Director General of the National Trust back in the 1970s. Back then its mission was to preserve old houses and historic rural areas. It got on with the job. And as such it was a body worth supporting. Folks felt the same way about it as they did about the RSPCA. But both bodies have quite simply lost the plot.
I have covered the RSPCA elsewhere (as you can read here) but I am these days as likely to give it my cash as I am to give cash to the NT. And I suspect that many of traditional “core” supporters fell the same way. Having visited two of its properties last week let me explain why.
