SITUATION
BE sure that the ghost of Maundy Gregory, the tout for titles, frets impatient- ly over his pauper's grave in Paris.
For, after three weeks, the "situation vacuum Kigu is t!! aglow over a imique, three-man board whose task it is to ndyke the Prime Minister on the suit- ability of all enndidates for pull- tical homentr.
Its come the Politlent Honours Scrutiny Committee, Lorn pidit- fully sothe 40 years ago as a res of an outery over the Wh scrupulous but highly rewarding skulduggery among the nation's honours of inen lite Mr Oregory.
Vanity
+
THE CHINA MAIL, FRIDAY," OCTOBER 20, 1981.
VACANT
QUALIFICATION:
A
INTELLIGENCE REPORT
The Paper Palace
gets a new tenant
NOSE FOR SCANDAL When a bomb or shell
Attor the First World War the vanity of men caused some to pay these scandalous priece for
hemours" £50,000 for a peer- uge. £35,000 for baronetcy, br Tween £5,000 and £16,000 for a koghthond.
By DONALD SEAMAN
As П result. the Politicat
formed in 1922. Its members there have been certain transae- The vacancy has arisen with must be Privy Councillors, but Blogs, certain sales of something the recent death of Lord Pethick they may not be ineinters of the which I have always been told
i puild put be paid, That Lawrence, that kindly, 80-year-overnment. They receive uld older statesman of the Labour
bonair. Hurly, whe was himself created baron in 1845.
Honours Scrutiny Committee was they got it....I have been told
Soncone will have to be found La for the New Year's Honora List is presented to the Quren.' Jow Matmy Gregory wende have roveted the job! No breath 0 sesta has touched the Hours gts for more than a Quarter of a century. 1st it was not always
ARTIE...
biz-
"Do you hope to paint for poste ity or robbery!"
Lendon Express Service
radary. They cannot put up candidates, nor can they suggest what housur muy-las compterred.
Under fire
What they can do le
prune from the lists names of all per guns they deem "tasuitable It the supreme pritical black- ball.
They work iu complete scerely. No minutes of their meetings are ever published, No questions about their decisions are Wered in the Hmise.
In the early years, the cum- mittee clearly failed to stamp out completely the trade in honours, in spite of the safeguards The sale of tiles was very much a national talking point in the fate
1920's.
Lloyd George had long been under tre by his enates over the funds collected for his party.
Obviously every safeguard had failed to contain Muzly Gregory, the Prince of Fixers. The son of a viear, he claimed on his mother's rogui descent
de while poverty in ag almshouse,
lved in she still
Con- Bruner man, once a small-time netor, he developed a defective agency and einimed to work for the Secret Service in the First World Wor.
1913, when he was charged with Justice caught up with him in
an offence under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act. the first and only person to be so charged in this country.
He was reported the au
said Gregory had asked hita £10,000 for a title.
officer who thorities be retired naval
In July 1987 the Daily Express No one ever knew what other reported that a question was to be put to the Prime Minister Cases might be brought to light, (Baldwin)
"There is
widespread publie dedre that there should be an Inquiry into the granting of honours during the #fetime of the Conlítion Government, "
Fixer
And in 1928, My Ramsay Mae Danaid said: "They (the Libernis) have plenty of money.
Gestapo
But Cregory pleaded guilty, was sentenced to two months and #ned 250 with costs. He fled to Paris Immediately after his re- lease, fearing a murder charge (following the death in suspicious circumstances and exhumation of a wealthy woman friend).
Be
was arrested by
World War, and died penniless
after Ili-treatment at their hands in 1941.
With the death of Lord Pethick-LwTEBET, the two TU- maining members of the scrutiny committlee are Lord Thurso, the great Liberal statesman who served as Air Minister from 1940 to 1945, andt shank.
Viscount Crookshank, formerly Captain Harry Crookshank, Ma for Gainsborough, has served as sinastor-General, Minister of Health, Leader of the Commous, and Lord Privy Seal,
explodes it breaks up
up into a vast number of splinters'
the seventh floor of my palace I watched my employees taking their lunch-time leisure. They were a sleek-looking lot, I must say, the girls showing all that famous French fashion flair, with a touch or two added. Since the humblest typist among them earns the equivalent of £20 a week, perhaps that's to be expected.
But an Englishman then hurried Viscount Crook-
to explain: "You know these salaries ut Unesco here have been Krussly exaggerated.
There in te he and Lord Thurso (better remembered ne Sir Archibald Sinclair do not know of the deeper pools of pollueal life.
Who?
No one yet knows who the third member of this strang". oddly responsible committee will be a Privy Councillor but they Certainly, he will have to
number more than two hundred and fly.
be.
No woman has yel served vạ the committee. Why? nstal Ludy Astor, 25 years ago Sald ler, amid houts sir Euldsvira, thiên Prin alus- of (male) laughter: "No woman would be of any use, as it is not honour- abl service KO much #s dishonourable that is looked for."
Which is where people Bke Alister Maundy Gregory came the in.
→Lundna Express Service),
but officially I do not know how Gestapo in Paris in llic Second
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"Why look at me. I'm a pretty senior official and Pin puid only £4,000 a year. Mind you, that's lax free.
I choked
In an my aperitif sympathy, pear fellow,
Hefty
I had come over to Paris to find out how the people at the palace of the United Nations Educational, Selentiße and Cul- tural Organisation are spending my money. Mine and yours that is which will add up to the pretty hefty lotal of £823,000 in the next two years.
On that day, the 101st nation had just jolid Unesco. All together, these 101 will contri-
bute £11,000,000 to Unesco in
1981 and 1902.
Over
by
DONALD GOMERY
AND IT IS FROM HERE, THE UNESCO BUILDING IN PARIS, THAT MILLIONS ARE SPENT TO PRODUCE THIS
KIND OF WISDOM...
report or to the Indies them- seives for that matter.
My own guess is that all the iterature on the subject ulti- mately found its way into the wastepaper baskets of Beirut,
From
Deluge
Unesco's palaces, In- deed, pours a delige of such paper, sent to every part of the vn almost any subject that the experi here can
world, imagine
One thousand "offetal" ducit=
mentent to the Govern
ments of the world each year an average of 10 copies of each document for each Government, Unesco also aspends £200,000 39 its publications...with a free, copy for every Goveni- ment, of course,
And some countries have ther commissions for own national
und Sa
Unesco, where local experts busy themselves writing reports and booklets on the reports books Paris has sent them. the waste gathers weight.
The ludies of Lebanon? There have been equally rfiliculous projects, like the one under the title: The protec- tion of cultural property in the event of armed conflict" which made this major pronounce- ment: "When a bomb or shell explodes it
Into a breaks up vast number of splinters"
There wus another inquiry which discovered that British irigents to Australia "ara not humble enough" (can you others, hear me, cobber?).
With hundreds of black, white, and yellow, I shot
And on educational Inquiry":
Nonsense
then Buckingham Palace Is Just a dog kennel.
There is the main building, an up and down in lits, wandered which promulgated that "Giving enormous Y-shaped mass of along a few miles of bleak marks in schools has been found glass where the day-to-day work curridors full of jostling, file- to
dishonesty promote
and undesirable traits in children," This flanked by a carrying secretaries, Also I wanted to Inquire what is clone.
fortress which is the conference progress is being made on the building and a smaller glass of quiet
And so on. There was a certain measure fourth palace which Unesco
rejoicing on this dy palace That is the home of the planning a cust est
permanent delegations (Britain Unesco. Perhaps a touch of Irish because Fire had just Jolued £1,000,000.
has not one).. Unesco already has three It goes without
blarney Was the only thing saying that palaces contpleted only
But three the new palace will be taller lacking here?
all this just super- years ago (cost £3,800,000), and than
that Deini nonsense any of the others-10
it would to see these belings for the first storeys as against seven,
But, what actually is done be too ensy to emphasise here in all these little offices by when tite is quite a sight, believe me.
You As I stepped out of my taxi 1 slaggered back in any heels In awe, horror, and amazement at the vasiness of it all.
Bleak
come
It
all these people we help to pay? serious ground that you find the There are, of COUTEC. the biggest wastage of time, money, obvious fatullies perpetrated by and men and the biggest oc- Unesco, There was for one
As with One
of Unesco's
You can warder around Yet no less a person than Mr present seven storeys of Unesco of the Lebanon (I bet you didn't favourite projects, the irriga-
the thing the report on the hariots relations of paper, Malcolm Adiseship, an Indian, all day long if you want to know you had been subscribing tion of the deserts of the world. who is one of the three assistant unless someone stops you. And to reports on the activities of I would guess that enough poper directors-general of Unescu, that is hardly likely for what is these indices, did you?). described the palaces to me another face when
Inter
really."
"rather ramshackle. 1,100 people from If this is ramshackle, working here?
A touch of adventure for 500 men who go to work to turn a £10,000,000 dream into reality. It is a dream that obsesses more than just the time they spend at their jobs. They will live with it, day and night, for three years. La
there are
But question the Secretariat has been put out on this subject 71 nations and you find that no one knows to cover every desert there is.
So I put this question to a just what happened to that member of the Secretariat: "Has all your work since 1948 on this Idea led to the Irriga- tlen of one single square mile of derri anywhere?"
TAKE-OFF: 1964
BY MERRICK WINN
"Well, to be truthful, I was told, "If you put it like that I suppore the answer no."
But mention any project and you will find that all this pro- lteration of paper from the three palaces of Unesco leads
lnost exactly nowhere.
"Curl you," I asked, "name a single Item taken up by Unesco that has led to a successful de complishment?"
There was much seralching of hende before une offlela) süldt "Well, Indla did ask us for advice an selting up public ibraries. We got a mon from London-the English make the suction. Now even this chance test librarians to go there, and does not exist.
he set up a library in Delhi Jock Bryce, 40-year-old Seat which will be middel for and former King's Flight pilot, others."
Space
THEY put their headsets on and flew to Rome cut down on his Weybridge It seemed to Ind that India cockpit, with Instruments blue could easily have asked Britain and the starboard engine caught fire 10 inked on white paper, to tell for this help direct. times, the cockpit filled with smoke, the flaps iced me "When the One-Eleven flies up, and the undercarriage would not come down. in three years time pilbis will
This fantastic flight was a flight in fantasy, in a know how It will behave in plane that is not yet built. But it wasn't a game. The evey emerciky." The test serious men who made this trip were two of Britain's pilot la often thought of ti leading teat pilots: Mr "Jock" G. R. Bryce, chief text sort of wellbei stunt man, lean pilot for the British Aircraft Corporation; and Mr who is called in at the last to needed more
and brave that not responsible. "Mike" J. Lithgow, deputy chief teat pilot for Vickers.
One-
And the unborn plane was Britain's
D.AC. rtow Eleven, 60-seater twin-jet which will
Vis- succeed the count to challenge the world's medium-range alrerafi market. The project is costing £10,- 000,000,
In bits
JOCK BRYCE
TEST PILOT
un the first riska
Mr Adiueshlah, a white haired administrator from Madras, sald obvious that thesco space. "Indeed,
we are moving much too fast
Sald Jock Bryec, putting this for the staff we have," he said. right: "If there were risks Hence, of course, the fourth when a plune Erst fies the test palace.
dune tilo
Yet Unesco, in the beginning plot wouldn't have
when the world was no malier, jub.
was able to do with a singló
lel is 11s headquintiers.
Detail
·
Other members of the Secre tarist spoke to me 'proudly of Uncro's "field workers"-of experts from Europe sent to Japan, for instance, to help ot up rural television there.
"Ho has to be consulted about almost everything, not because ho knows it all but because he
Others spoke of Unesso'n representa the men who will
travelling fellowships-of Cart- have to fly it.
bodians going, for kxample, to The mallest things can be study fishing in Nova Scotia,
How is a How plane bort? You fly it, and while you fly i you build L This is the way
vital.
Always there to this coming arkk the One-Eleven is being bulit,
"Fur Innlance, the Cre
going of people--iedving behind in bila and pieces, at the Eri
In their marked-up Ave-ply their
mani have repecial racks for
En vast trail of reports" like a tinh Aircraft Corporation'N
coffee apkine. cockpit they imagined disasters suunda allly,
This works at Duuttienuuth, Bristol, and dealt with them and learn- spoon
nightmare paper-chiave. But a cuffer Luton, and Weybridge Surrey, ed a great deal, most of it be-
One oficial drew mo naldo among the throttles afterwords and
std: "Onto When it in put together at Bournemouth
there was an ideal hero somb-
could be seriotia."
It Is this magnificent obres-
Expatia
turned inlo
and yond a inyman's understanding 1004, Bles, it will have down, already But they learned this too: that alon with detail wilch allows where. But i's all. got burled fot hundreds of hours in im- the whining-light system, which statisticians to clan that if you under all this pap #girls. Commuitalian With tells the pilot if the plane's were born in a plane and flew art turned into civil servants, the plane's 500 designets will doors ate open or closed, was day and night all your life the civil servants hro
But don't chances are you would live to in-and-out traga, allow then to build up the finni Hot 100 per cent safe,
mention my name--the be 32.
bar. pleture in 17,000 drawinĦS,
Juck Bryco and Mike Lithgow
There are 180 civil test pilots here 16 fuit good?, in Britain and they are hordly The Americans have the best did their tome fight exactly
in the job for money or glamour, way to docetin it all, "Bo Recording to airline schedule.
They are, not as, well und as doodling." The ability to think They took two and a half hairs
This could hath meant, by mieline pilots and there, had lufích, and took the a millonth chance,
the glambir up plenty more work for plenty ag oxista only in young imagina, mure people at plenty more pay. sania Uime Back, golog through hortens being swipi through fans, fortietimes not then.
wer Yesuf-notfsier. every ruuline step,
SK upan door
angina
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