The World Plumbing Council established in 1990 is an international organisation which seeks to improve plumbing standards across the globe
The World Plumbing Council, established in 1990, is an international organisation which seeks to improve plumbing standards across the globe, for the benefit of the world community.
It is working with the World Health Organisation and is supported by many leading plumbing organisations.Mr Kershaw poses the question “Why Sun City?” and implies that this is an unsuitable venue for our conference. But why not? It has to be somewhere! The 650 delegates at the 1999 conference came from all over the world and Sun City is just as accessible as LondonThe World Plumbing Council is an organisation that has a serious job to do. It has no paid staff but continues its work through the efforts of dedicated volunteers.It is gaining in stature through events like its conference and will pursue its aims through any (legal) means of attracting attention to the plumbing problems which face the world.ANDY WATTSSecretaryWorld Plumbing CouncilHornchurch, Essex. There is a press photograph of a bizarrely cheerful Michael Ancram arriving at Conservative Central Office on Tuesday night A firestorm is raging. He has just called in Scotland Yard to investigate the alleged penetration of Tory bank accounts after the revelation that Michael Ashcroft’s Belize Bank Trust has transferred pounds 666,5000 to them since the summer.
The aftershocks of Lord Archer’s resignation last weekend continue unabated. It is easily the Conservative Party’s worst week since William Hague became leader. And yet, turning from the front door, overcoatless and in a double- breasted suit, to face the camera, the Tory chairman is grinning broadly, rather as if his party had unexpectedly won a by-election in a safe Labour seat. To all appearances, Mr Ancram was pushing his well-deserved reputation for good humour under fire beyond acceptable limits In fact, he had little alternative. He had arrived in Smith Square at the peak of the crisis from his nearby flat only to find the door firmly locked and the night security man deaf to the doorbell, off on his errands deep in the interior of Central Office. The standard shot of the focused man of action, brow furrowed, striding purposefully through the front door to take control, was simply not a possibility.
Knowing he was beaten, Ancram genially agreed to pose for the solitary photographer as he waited patiently for the door to open. And yet the incident – which Ancram described with some hilarity to several colleagues this week – was more revealing than it seems. For Ancram is unflappable, fabled for not losing his temper or raising his voice, for courtesy towards his staff when things go wrong and for cracking jokes at moments of greatest pressure. Prepared to defend his party on television even in the most unfavourable circumstances, he is a calm and adept performer who almost invariably lowers the temperature of political debate.
Which is why it was uncharacteristic of him to raise it quite deliberately this week by announcing that the party had turned to Scotland Yard after The Independent and The Times received detailed information about the Ashcroft payments to the party. On the one hand the two middle-market newspapers, The Express and the Daily Mail, saw the alleged burglary as a bigger issue than the Ashcroft payments. On the other, Ancram’s decision elevated a good story into a sensational one which radio and television could not, as they otherwise might have done, ignore.Part of the explanation, however, lies in the wider political implications of the Ashcroft affair. Ancram, the clubbable Ampleforth- and Christ Church, Oxford-educated son of the 12th Marquess of Lothian, and Michael Ashcroft, the abrasive self-made global multi-millionaire, are not natural soul- mates drawn to each other by mutual chemistry.
But as long as Ashcroft remains both Conservative Party Treasurer and the plaintiff in a libel action against The Times – over allegations that one of his companies was under suspicion of laundering drug money – the party is fully embroiled in his battle. If Ashcroft were to lose, the damage to the party would be incalculable; if The Times were to lose, the damages could be all too calculable – some claim more than pounds 100m if Ashcroft can prove the value of his stocks were reduced by the paper’s allegations. The stakes are therefore high not only for the paper and for Michael Ashcroft, but also for the party, its leader – and its chairman.Ancram was born 54 years ago into the heart of the Scottish aristocracy, but politics was also in the blood. His father, who has family seats on both sides of the border (Melbourne Hall in Derbyshire and a stately home with 20,000 acres at Jedburgh), was a whip in Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s government in the early Sixties and subsequently a Foreign Office minister in Ted Heath’s administration. But his political instincts were, if anything, more nurtured by two formidable women.One was Lady Elliot of Harwood, a close family friend, who was related by marriage to Herbert Asquith and had known Downing Street from the inside as a child But she was, nevertheless, a highly active Conservative. The other woman was Ancram’s devoutly Roman Catholic mother Antonella, “a real Tory matriarch, with class and style oozing from every pore”.Brought up a Roman Catholic – he still is – Ancram went to Ampleforth rather than Eton, then on to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read history He canvassed for the Tories in the 1964 and 1966 elections.
