Nerve 10 - The Grand Old Duke

He's Britain's third richest man. He owns much of Liverpool city centre. He cares about the countryside. Still, some people don't like the grand old Duke of Westminster! But Adam Ford comes to praise Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, not to bury him…

The Grand Old Duke

Hey, listen up! Gerry is a really top bloke, and I won't hear a word against him. No really! He may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but I can't think of anyone who deserves the title 'His Grace' more than him.

After all, he really cares about poor people. That's why he does so much stuff for the armed forces, which are mostly made up of kids from deprived backgrounds. Naturally, you're not going to see him at the front in Iraq or Afghanistan any time soon, but that really isn't the place for leaders. Instead, he likes to provide moral support. He is patron of 'UK4U', who send boxes of 'novelty items' and 'toiletries' to soldiers in war zones at Christmas. In 2005, the fortunate fighters also got 'the chance to enter a free prize draw'!¹ He graciously lends his name to an annual award for 'the most outstanding Cadet'², as well as the 'Medal for Military Literature', which goes to the writer whose book 'makes a notable and original contribution to the study of international and national security and defence'³. Sometimes His Dukeyness visits RAF reservists who have served in Iraq, and has a chat and a bit of a joke with them. There are seemingly no limits to his powers of endurance. For example, his 2004 visit to RAF Marham in Norfolk lasted two gruelling hours!⁴

How could someone put up with those kind of conditions without being graceful?

Ok, so the chap owns a lot of property through his Grosvenor Group, but what do you expect him to do - give it up? Is that what you'd do in his position? Of course not. And his 156,000 acres are put to excellent use, providing residential and office space for some of the country's most important people. For instance, Gerry plays landlord to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Russian oil baron Roman Abramovic, and posh spoon-licker Nigella Lawson amongst other visionaries⁵. Where would we be without people like that? He's even willing to give the US embassy some of his land, if they exchange it for some land confiscated from his ancestors in the American War of Independence⁶.

He's so gracious.

The Duke is really into the countryside too. Yeah, cynics might say that's because he owns a lot of it, but they really just need to get a life. In fact, he generously loaned a seven figure sum to a group of people who bravely stand up to know-nothing townies and defend the rural way of life. A group called the Countryside Alliance⁷. These heroic types have been called every name under the sun, but at the end of the day why shouldn't they be allowed to hunt foxes and shoot birds. They don't try to tell you how to run your life, do they? Well yes, maybe they do sometimes. But then ruling over the lesser members of society is what they've done for generations, so we should probably just sit back and trust the experts, gracious as they are.

Amazing grace.

Now, some losers - like Oxfam⁸ - have the cheek to complain that taxpayers give Gerry £37.33 an hour, day and night, as a subsidy on his vast swathes of farmland. He may possibly have been the 55th richest person in the world last year⁹, and the government might well be attacking the benefits of the most vulnerable in our society at the moment. But what would you prefer? Foreign farmers getting the better of us Brits and the land going to waste? I didn't think so. If you've got a better idea of how to run the world economy I'd like to see the plan!

And then there were those allegations a few months back that he's a serial user of prostitutes. A Lithuanian girl called Zana Brazdek claimed that he went on about knowing where Osama Bin Laden is, and demanded unprotected sex¹⁰. How ridiculous! The Duke gracefully refused to stoop to this woman's level by denying her story. Why should he? Who are you going to believe: someone who openly admits to selling themselves for money or someone who's never had to?

Finally (because I've only got a page to wax lyrical about this guy's achievements, I'd fill the whole mag if I could), let's look at what the fella's doing for the people of Merseyside. The Liverpool One development (or 'the Paradise Project' if you insist on calling it that), which the Grosvenor Group are currently working on in the city centre, will bring £920 million worth of shops to the area¹¹. Maybe a lot of Merseysiders won't be able to afford the prices, but think of all the rich people who are going to come and spend money! Much of that cash will ultimately end up back in Gerry's pockets, but at least you will have the opportunity to see and (if you're lucky) smell wealth at close quarters.

Which reminds me, Grosvenor also own half of a business called Sonae Sierra, who are the sister company of chipboard manufacturers Sonae¹². Their Kirkby plant brought employment to an impoverished area of the city, and local residents should be grateful. There is a slight whiff of formaldehyde in the area, and there have been some cases of the factory breaking the government's environmental regulations. But Sonae did try to close down the Nerve website, so they can't be all bad. After all, Nerve only gave me a page to honour such a great man as Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor!

Not impressed by the man's grace yet? Still not enamoured of his generous spirit and passionate commitment to justice? Pathetic! So what are you going to do, organise as part of your social class and force people like him off their land, before using it for the benefit of all?

Yeah right. You're a disgrace.

‘Mission Statement: To Deliver Festive Cheer to Our Forces Risking Their Lives On Our Behalf At Christmas’, UK4U, www.uk4u.org/Duke.htm
‘Duke of Westminster Award’, Cadet Vocational Qualification Organisation, www.cvqo.org/default.php?category=News&pageName=Duke+of+Westminster+Award
‘Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military Literature’, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, www.rusi.org/westminstermedal
‘The Duke of Westminster Visits RAF Marham Reservists On 17 April 2004’, RAF Marham, www.rafmarham.co.uk/relations/visits/duke-apr-04.htm
‘Belgravia’, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgravia. Accessed 25th March 2007.
‘US embassy faces move to Chelsea’, Guardian, www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2018131,00.html
‘Darkness in the Green’, Huntwatch, www.huntwatch.info/darkness_in_the_green.htm
‘Spotlight on subsidies - Cereal injustice under the CAP in Britain’, Oxfam, www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/bp55_subsidies.htm
‘The World’s Billionaires’, Forbes.com, www.forbes.com/lists/2007/10/07billionaires_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank_3.html
‘The Duke of Westminster: so rich and so very foolish’, Daily Mail, www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=435511&in_page_id=1770
‘Discreet charms of the Cinderella city’, Daily Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/property/main.jhtml?xml=/property/2007/02/01/pliverpool01.xml
‘About Grosvenor’, Grosvenor, www.grosvenor.com/About+Us

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Sorry Comments Closed

Comment left by ZLB on 7th August, 2007 at 19:58
A truly truthful and wonderful writing on one of this countries great institutions, if you lot dontlike him bugger off to the US

Comment left by hvg on 17th December, 2008 at 16:05
sex

Comment left by Annie on 27th January, 2009 at 22:27
Can't believe how juvenile this article is! One can't help wondering whether there is a personal reason for the vindictiveness.

Comment left by Gary DuTeau on 10th January, 2010 at 4:20
Love it. I have been following this story since it broke last year. They drag Elliot Spitzer through the mud on this every other week but the U.S. press has been virtually silent on this guy. I guess the U.S. IS still a colony of "The Crown". I just wish someone would upgrade his Wikipedia profile. I do love the British though, having lived there three years; their writers are good and very funny. We like the Britcoms too. Blackadder, yes. Tally Ho.

Comment left by Michel Mazin on 12th September, 2012 at 9:22
hgv... sex ? I agree, the guy's hot. Annie... very vindictive indeed. After all there must be about a hundred guys in the UK who would more or less correspond to that sarcastic description. Adam Ford and GCG must have a history. Lover's tiff ? Hardly, the latter is ramrod straight. Gary DuTeau, Adam Ford... GCG did answer the client number 6 allegations through his lawyers, stating that he had been out of London on the days referred to. That more or less shut the gutter press up. Plus *if* he hired prostitues he wasn't doing anything illegal and that'd be a completely private business, like going to the loo or watching dirty movies.

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