This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2016/feb/04/wentworth-row-eurosceptics-golf-club-uk-sovereignty
The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| Wentworth row shows why some Eurosceptics may end up in the rough | Wentworth row shows why some Eurosceptics may end up in the rough |
| (7 months later) | |
| Have you been following the row over the future of Wentworth, the very grand golf club in affluent Surrey? No, I don’t play golf either, but stick around. The new Chinese owners have plans for the 18-hole course that put silly Eurosceptic talk about asserting British “sovereignty” into a sensible context. | Have you been following the row over the future of Wentworth, the very grand golf club in affluent Surrey? No, I don’t play golf either, but stick around. The new Chinese owners have plans for the 18-hole course that put silly Eurosceptic talk about asserting British “sovereignty” into a sensible context. |
| As the Guardian reported at the time, Wentworth was sold by Richard Caring (the self-made entrepreneur’s cuttings suggests he may deserve Tatler’s snooty “Blofeld” label) to a Chinese consortium misleadingly called Reignwood Investments in 2014. | As the Guardian reported at the time, Wentworth was sold by Richard Caring (the self-made entrepreneur’s cuttings suggests he may deserve Tatler’s snooty “Blofeld” label) to a Chinese consortium misleadingly called Reignwood Investments in 2014. |
| That happens all the time now in an “open for business” country more than usually willing to flog anything that isn’t nailed down, and many things that are. What price the monarchy, eh? It’s a strong brand, bags of property assets that could be sweated harder by private equity owners and it’s been in cautious German hands for too long. | That happens all the time now in an “open for business” country more than usually willing to flog anything that isn’t nailed down, and many things that are. What price the monarchy, eh? It’s a strong brand, bags of property assets that could be sweated harder by private equity owners and it’s been in cautious German hands for too long. |
| A joke? Not entirely. Global oligarchs know only too well how to buy royal influence and already seem to be in permanent occupation of the Royal Courts of Justice to fight their rich and bloody ownership disputes. The Old Bailey deals with the collateral damage. | A joke? Not entirely. Global oligarchs know only too well how to buy royal influence and already seem to be in permanent occupation of the Royal Courts of Justice to fight their rich and bloody ownership disputes. The Old Bailey deals with the collateral damage. |
| Foreign ownership on a vast scale is why successive governments are wary of picking fights with Google, with dodgy oil oligarchs in the Gulf or even with Putin’s Russia despite the alleged murder of Russian exiles with British passports. Alexander Litvinenko was surely not the only one, just the one we managed to detect. Ministers look out of their windows and can count the central London tower blocks that none of us own. | Foreign ownership on a vast scale is why successive governments are wary of picking fights with Google, with dodgy oil oligarchs in the Gulf or even with Putin’s Russia despite the alleged murder of Russian exiles with British passports. Alexander Litvinenko was surely not the only one, just the one we managed to detect. Ministers look out of their windows and can count the central London tower blocks that none of us own. |
| There are upsides to this, as there are to most things, investment that helps modernise neglected parts of the national infrastructure, for example. There may even be an upside at Wentworth where the new owners are promising to invest £20m on an upgrade at the Virginia Water site. It’s the strings attached that tug at the sovereignty problem. | There are upsides to this, as there are to most things, investment that helps modernise neglected parts of the national infrastructure, for example. There may even be an upside at Wentworth where the new owners are promising to invest £20m on an upgrade at the Virginia Water site. It’s the strings attached that tug at the sovereignty problem. |
| As you may have read the 4,500 mainly well-off members of the club, many of them locals who live round the course, were outraged last autumn when they learned they would be the target of an pretty outrageous cull: a plan to cut the membership to just 800 and to do so by the pretty transparent device of making a one-off debenture charge of £100,000 to the lucky 800 and doubling the current £8,000-a-year membership. | As you may have read the 4,500 mainly well-off members of the club, many of them locals who live round the course, were outraged last autumn when they learned they would be the target of an pretty outrageous cull: a plan to cut the membership to just 800 and to do so by the pretty transparent device of making a one-off debenture charge of £100,000 to the lucky 800 and doubling the current £8,000-a-year membership. |
| That’s expensive even by Premiership football standards – it’s Liverpool FC fans turn to be outraged this week – though it’s basically the same idea. Wealthy foreign investor buys up a handy company or sports franchise/club and sweats the asset without regard to tradition and local culture, let alone the poor sods who loyally turn up and make it whatever it is: the customers who are us. | That’s expensive even by Premiership football standards – it’s Liverpool FC fans turn to be outraged this week – though it’s basically the same idea. Wealthy foreign investor buys up a handy company or sports franchise/club and sweats the asset without regard to tradition and local culture, let alone the poor sods who loyally turn up and make it whatever it is: the customers who are us. |
| At the same time they build up their homegrown alternatives: Chinese Super League football clubs clinched three of the four top deals in the global players market before the transfer window closed on Monday. Get used it. Local players resent it (sounds familiar?), but President Xi is a fan. | At the same time they build up their homegrown alternatives: Chinese Super League football clubs clinched three of the four top deals in the global players market before the transfer window closed on Monday. Get used it. Local players resent it (sounds familiar?), but President Xi is a fan. |
| Finchley boy, Richard Caring, who has given money to both Labour and the Tories, is a non-dom for tax purposes. Does he care what happens to his old club? Possibly, he was a seriously good golfer as a young man. But let’s not be sentimental: a deal is a deal and he spent many years in the clothing trade (he supplied shops owned by his pal Phil Green) in Hong Kong. This interview is not attractive . | Finchley boy, Richard Caring, who has given money to both Labour and the Tories, is a non-dom for tax purposes. Does he care what happens to his old club? Possibly, he was a seriously good golfer as a young man. But let’s not be sentimental: a deal is a deal and he spent many years in the clothing trade (he supplied shops owned by his pal Phil Green) in Hong Kong. This interview is not attractive . |
| This week’s Private Eye notes how the Telegraph, owned by the tax-exiled Barclay brothers, played down the Google tax deal, which everyone else – even tax-shy Tweeter, Rupert Murdoch – condemned. Firms such as Google and their emerging Chinese counterparts both bully and seduce. | This week’s Private Eye notes how the Telegraph, owned by the tax-exiled Barclay brothers, played down the Google tax deal, which everyone else – even tax-shy Tweeter, Rupert Murdoch – condemned. Firms such as Google and their emerging Chinese counterparts both bully and seduce. |
| There are several comic aspects to the Wentworth battle that may be worth following. By sheer bad luck the local MP happens to be one Philip Hammond, whose day job as foreign secretary involves a lot of sucking up to foreign moneymen who can do us good (or harm). But to stay foreign secretary he first has to be re-elected, so he seemed cautiously to be “very disappointed” on the voters’ behalf. | There are several comic aspects to the Wentworth battle that may be worth following. By sheer bad luck the local MP happens to be one Philip Hammond, whose day job as foreign secretary involves a lot of sucking up to foreign moneymen who can do us good (or harm). But to stay foreign secretary he first has to be re-elected, so he seemed cautiously to be “very disappointed” on the voters’ behalf. |
| Being well-heeled and well-connected, the locals aren’t taking it lying down. They’re going to the high court, sharing its dingy cafe with Russian oligarchs with cauliflower ears, to challenge the legality of the upgrade as a breach of a 50-year covenant to uphold Wentworth’s character and tradition. The new owner’s chairman is apparently a Thai Chinese influential in two countries where the kind of political muscle Caring so deplores counts for much. He may not be used to uppity natives in Surrey whose distant ancestors wore woad. | Being well-heeled and well-connected, the locals aren’t taking it lying down. They’re going to the high court, sharing its dingy cafe with Russian oligarchs with cauliflower ears, to challenge the legality of the upgrade as a breach of a 50-year covenant to uphold Wentworth’s character and tradition. The new owner’s chairman is apparently a Thai Chinese influential in two countries where the kind of political muscle Caring so deplores counts for much. He may not be used to uppity natives in Surrey whose distant ancestors wore woad. |
| Though he’s a big wheel in the Asian Golf Course Owners Association, he may not be aware that the Chinese Communist party deplores golf (but not football) as western and bourgeois (how long will this last?) and has told its 88 million members – more even than Corbyn-led Labour! – not to join a golf club. | Though he’s a big wheel in the Asian Golf Course Owners Association, he may not be aware that the Chinese Communist party deplores golf (but not football) as western and bourgeois (how long will this last?) and has told its 88 million members – more even than Corbyn-led Labour! – not to join a golf club. |
| Some Wentworth types think this may render the whole deal against Chinese law, but don’t hold your breath. More promising is the local threat to withhold the consent of the Wentworth Estates Roads Committee for road closures needed to stage the BMW PGA tournament – a big event for small round ball fans – in May and for ever after. That sounds a more promising line of defence. | Some Wentworth types think this may render the whole deal against Chinese law, but don’t hold your breath. More promising is the local threat to withhold the consent of the Wentworth Estates Roads Committee for road closures needed to stage the BMW PGA tournament – a big event for small round ball fans – in May and for ever after. That sounds a more promising line of defence. |
| Either way it won’t change your life or mine. But it surely serves as a reminder to the free market crowd that unchecked markets and rampant individualism lead to dangerous inequality and injustices against the poor, but eventually affect even the quite-well-off and moderately rich in the Surrey suburbs. | Either way it won’t change your life or mine. But it surely serves as a reminder to the free market crowd that unchecked markets and rampant individualism lead to dangerous inequality and injustices against the poor, but eventually affect even the quite-well-off and moderately rich in the Surrey suburbs. |
| But, as usual, there’s a balance to be struck. If France is always instinctively protectionist it does harm in the long run, as we can all now see), Margaret Thatcher, deeply naive about markets, took Britain too far in the “anything goes” direction. But even she took steps to protect key defence firms, notably BAE and Rolls-Royce, from foreign threat of takeover (though not Westland helicopters). | But, as usual, there’s a balance to be struck. If France is always instinctively protectionist it does harm in the long run, as we can all now see), Margaret Thatcher, deeply naive about markets, took Britain too far in the “anything goes” direction. But even she took steps to protect key defence firms, notably BAE and Rolls-Royce, from foreign threat of takeover (though not Westland helicopters). |
| Yet the Brexit campaign is split, as it was in 1975’s referendum, between romantics and pessimists. Those who are instinctively globalising free traders, they’re the Vote Leave crowd that includes Ukip maverick, Douglas Carswell MP. Against them are arraigned the darker, more pessimistic instincts of the Leave.UK lobby. It includes Brother Farage and the forces of anti-immigration about which the likes of Carswell are actually quite keen. | Yet the Brexit campaign is split, as it was in 1975’s referendum, between romantics and pessimists. Those who are instinctively globalising free traders, they’re the Vote Leave crowd that includes Ukip maverick, Douglas Carswell MP. Against them are arraigned the darker, more pessimistic instincts of the Leave.UK lobby. It includes Brother Farage and the forces of anti-immigration about which the likes of Carswell are actually quite keen. |
| They’re not quite as convinced that Britain has a brighter future out there as the Hong Kong (or is it Japan?) of the North Atlantic once the shackles of Brussels have been hacked away. They do have a point, several points. But it is that schism in the Brexit varifocal vision that may save the yes camp from its own lukewarm ineptitude. “Stronger in Europe” is dull, but more coherent than “Isolationist or globalised, but sovereign at last.” | They’re not quite as convinced that Britain has a brighter future out there as the Hong Kong (or is it Japan?) of the North Atlantic once the shackles of Brussels have been hacked away. They do have a point, several points. But it is that schism in the Brexit varifocal vision that may save the yes camp from its own lukewarm ineptitude. “Stronger in Europe” is dull, but more coherent than “Isolationist or globalised, but sovereign at last.” |
| In or out, this week’s trickle of globalised economic news that underlines the limited realities of national sovereignty will not be easily changed. | In or out, this week’s trickle of globalised economic news that underlines the limited realities of national sovereignty will not be easily changed. |
| • Outrage at the announcement that the US head of Amazon’s China operations is being recruited as a non-executive board member by the Department for Work and Pensions. | • Outrage at the announcement that the US head of Amazon’s China operations is being recruited as a non-executive board member by the Department for Work and Pensions. |
| • The FT reported that London City airport’s US owners, Global Infrastructure Partners, want to sell it for a hugely inflated price that will push up charges and mire it in debt (shades of Manchester United?). | • The FT reported that London City airport’s US owners, Global Infrastructure Partners, want to sell it for a hugely inflated price that will push up charges and mire it in debt (shades of Manchester United?). |