TADLEY AND DISTRICT U3A Newsletter www.u3asites.org.uk/tadley Issue 5 November 2013 Sir George Young August a month to Malcolm Nelson Lady Carnarvon July speaker relax September speaker October speaker The four months since July’s newsletter seem to have gently drifted past in a never ending summer that appeared unwilling to let go while autumn follows in its footsteps with leaves not yet turned. Meanwhile, and certainly not drifting, our speaker programme reached a high spot with both Sir George Young, Government Chief Whip, and Lady Carnarvon of Highclere Castle (record attendance, 210 members) gracing the stage of Tadley Community Centre. A good time I feel to say thanks to our speaker secretary Roland Higgins for the not inconsiderable amount of time and effort that he expends in organising such an impressive array of speakers. Membership continues its upward rise and this month we broke the 400 barrier, a welcome to all of our new members. While the membership continues to increase the number of groups also continues to grow with the addition of Ballroom and Latin Dancing; Scottish and English Country Dancing; Model Workshop and Travel groups. We now have 36 active groups, so no excuse for sitting at home twiddling your thumbs! Looking forward, the next great event has to be the upcoming Tadley & District U3A Christmas Buffet to be held at the AWE Rec Soc. Those with memories of last year’s event will be happy to hear that this year it has been split into two, 9th and 11th December, to reduce the crush. The entertainment for this year’s gathering will be provided by Festive Jazz. For the next newsletter we would like to introduce a Letters and Features section so if you have a view, opinion, observation, comment…then do send the editor an e-mail for the Letters section. Alternatively if you have an article of general interest, preferably local, suitable for the Features section then likewise e-mail the editor at [email protected] . The Trips & Events programme continues to be busy with trips to Kensington Palace and the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. Monthly Speakers In July a well-attended monthly meeting of 150 members of Tadley & District U3A was pleased to welcome the local MP and Govt Chief Whip to the Commons Sir George Young. Sir George was first elected to Parliament in 1974 as the Conservative member for Ealing and Acton. In 1997 he was elected as the member for North West Hampshire. Sir George became the Leader of the House when the Coalition was elected, then after returning to the back benches for a short while became the Government Chief Whip. Sir George spoke about the function of the Government Chief Whip, a role about which few of us had any real knowledge. He brought with him the Chief Whip’s Wand which was historically used to keep the crowds away from the monarch. His accounts of the processes and problems associated with ensuring that his party’s MPs were present and voted in support of the government were fascinating. Traditionally the role of the Whip has been viewed as that of coercing reluctant MPs to do the Government's bidding, as fictionally portrayed by Francis Urquhart in Colin Dobbs House of Cards, whereas the reality is more to do with the efficient day-to-day running of the business of the Houses of Parliament. The Chief Whip has a number of junior whips reporting to him and between them they each support a number of MPs, referred to as 'flocks'. Sir George's view is that these days Whips perform more of an 'HR' function for MPs using their experience in supporting them in their role as MPs and to ensure that the welfare concerns of MPs were addressed, for example the problems some MPs had with working in London while representing distant constituencies. Sir George's presentation was followed by a Q&A session covering issues such as pairing, working within a coalition, and what to do with obdurate MPs? August was a peaceful month A returning guest was September’s speaker, Malcolm Nelson. Malcolm recently retired from HMRC where he was involved in catching smugglers, training others to catch smugglers and managing those catching smugglers. Malcolm delivers about 100 talks a year which includes 4 or 5 cruises. He is married and currently lives in Reading. He has three daughters and a granddaughter as well as a Border Collie called Daisy. This was his second of about 12 talks that he delivers on the trials and tribulations of catching smugglers. This time he concentrated on the devious methods drug smugglers employed to conceal the drugs and the tricks they employed were nothing short of astonishing. He showed us pictures of actual drug concealments with the real life stories behind the images. As usual Malcolm’s talk was fascinating, interesting and fun and we hope to invite him back again next year for another of his talks. In fact he has seven parts to his “40 Years of Catching Smugglers....” After about eighteen months of discussions we were finally able to arrange for Fiona, Countess Carnarvon, to join us in October to present her talk on The Real Downton Abbey. Her talk was exceptional covering aspects of the filming of the Downton Abbey television series at Highclere Castle, relationships with the actors and crew, the general upheaval, and the fact that the crew always returned the areas used to their original condition. She highlighted the fact that the series had in fact become a valuable income source for the castle upkeep with the very substantial interest from the USA following the series being shown on the American PBS. She then went on to talk about the history of Highclere to include the stories of Lady Almina Carnarvon and then Lady Catherine Carnarvon and their impact as successive chatelaines of the castle. These stories involved the high society world of the time and meetings with royalty including the Duke of Windsor prior to him succeeding to the throne as King Edward VIII. She also gave us the story of the search for the tomb of King Tutankhamun. This was then followed by the life of the Castle during WWII with evacuated children living on the top floor of the castle with their nurses and carers; the grounds of the castle used as training grounds for British and Canadian armies; Bomber Command using part of the estate as a bombing practice range and German bombers targeting lime kilns in the grounds that they mistakenly thought were ammunition dumps. Lady Carnarvon is contemplating writing a book on Bomber Command training including the stories of the crew that was lost when an aircraft crashed on the estate. All in all an extremely interesting and exceptionally well presented talk illustrated with a wealth of pictures from the early days of the family. Lady Carnarvon then took a great number of questions before signing copies of both her books, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey and Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey. We had an audience of 210 U3A members and guests, which is a record for our speaker meetings. Feedback from many of our members indicates that the talk was extremely well received. Up and Coming Over the next few months we continue with a full programme of monthly meetings in the Community Centre, full details below. The Trips & Events programme continues to be busy with two further events for your diary. After visiting Television Centre in Wood Lane days before it closed last year on 22nd February, one year later, 25th February, we are paying a visit to the new studios in Portland Place which should prove to be even more interesting. And now for something totally different, have you ever fancied a day at the races? Well, for those who do the first day of the Royal Ascot Meeting, 17th June, is the date to keep free. As usual Ken and Angie are the people to contact on [email protected] A number of requests for new interest groups have also been received; hopefully some of these requests will come to fruition with the setting up of new groups. See Interest Groups below. If any member has a view, suggestion, criticism on anything associated with Tadley & District U3A then do contact us via the e-mail link [email protected] Please remember that the most up to date information is available on our website http://www.u3asites.org.uk/tadley Dates for your diary All monthly meetings are held in Tadley Community Centre, doors open at 11:00 for a meeting start at 11:15. Monthly Meetings. Date Subject Speaker “The Whitchurch Silk Mill” - The history of 21st November 2013 Dr Geoff Hide the Whitchurch Silk Mill "Follow the Drum" - 26 house moves during Major-General Peter and 16th January 2014 33 years in the Army. Mrs Valerie Chambers 20th February 2014 “Tales of the Opera” Patricia Purcell "From Cadet to Commodore and Beyond" - a 20th March 2014 career from cadet to Commodore on the Commodore Ian Gibb P&O Line. "Portsmouth - Harlots, Dung and Glory" - 17th April 2014 Portsmouth from its early days to the glory Andrew Negus of Trafalgar. "The Joe Lyons Story" - Lyons Teashops, 15th May 2014 Neville Lyons Corner Houses and Lyons Nippies. Interest Groups New Groups Since the last Newsletter a number of new groups have sprung into being: Ballroom and Latin Dancing Model Workshop Scottish and Country Dancing Travel If you are interested in any of these groups then please contact us using the email address [email protected] A full list of interest groups and Group Leader contact details can be found on the website T&D U3A website .