Posted by Tilly
on 11/4/2007, 9:29 am, in reply to "Re: David Lindley is a naughty boy! "
24.119.97.50
I read about what was on the tape. We know it is a staffer but he is implicating Lindley but he is in a position to do so.
It is not illegal to name the Royal outside of GB and while Fox is owned by Rupert (media swami mogul of all time) Fox is a US network and not subject to British liability law, as are Radar and the other websites that have talked about this. Radar is not the only website to have named him. He has a track record for this type of thing.
Lindley should have put a double lock on that closet he kept his little indiscretions in and made dame sure he did not have loose cannon staffers running around with a key. He very well may have to step down from Christy’s and loose a fat salary, prestigious position and his mothers estate sale would have been in vein.
As far as Mummy's estate, the things they sold were very personal and I can assure you in their position that Garrads and or Coutts would have been happy to place the jewelry in any one of their vaults for safe keeping, for a small fee if no fee at all.
Insurance is not a problem as long as the tiara is not on the dresser and you are going to the grocer with it on. You can get 48 hour policies that are not expensive to take them out of storage and wear them. While they are in a bank or jeweler their insurance covers the item and you can work out additional low price coverage through the bank if it is above their ceiling. Just by virtue of it being in a bank vault makes the coverage inexpensive. It is done all the time.
For that matter, I am sure that the Queen herself would have been happy to store some of her sister’s more valuable family heirlooms (gifts from her mother and grandmother) for her niece and nephew. The Queen has a legion of minions, curators and staffers on hand that handle her art and jewelry. A few more tiaras or necklaces are really not going to make too much of a difference.
While I realize that the death taxes in GB are out of this world and Margaret while not having the extensive wealth her sister possessed by virtue of birth was not poor by any means. It was implicated that the Queen wished to keep a sale of royal family goods, so close to the crown off of the auction block and was quite upset about the idea. I feel certain if cash flow was an issue, she would have discreetly worked out something with her banker’s for her sister’s children. Everyone knew Margaret was dieing and I am sure discussions took place well before her passing regarding what course was available.
The problem is Lindley is Chairman of Christy’s Auction House. Christy’s has always been thought to be behind Sotheby’s in auction house pecking order. By pulling off such a spectacular coo it brought a great deal of publicity and free PR no amount of money could by them. I would say Lindley gets paid a decent amount of money to head up that establishment and I would go even further to say that he is making more than anyone before him because of his close tie to the Royal Family and all that comes with it.
That being said, I say bally hoo on not having enough money to pay the taxes. It was no different with the Kennedy Children. They had plenty of money and while I can understand them selling off the jewelry their mother got from Ari and a few things hear and there, most of what they sold in that glorified garage sale was disgraceful. If nothing else they should have donated 3/4th of what went on the block to the Kennedy Library because of its historical ties to the Administration.
Hell Caroline had another sale a year or two ago where she emptied her mother and fathers Hyannis Port home at the compound and sold everything there. She is worth more than 250 million dollars. She got everything after her brother’s death and had an insurance policy that paid off Carolyn and the sister’s mother, in addition to a multi million dollar policy her children where beneficiary to on her brother.
It was said her aunts where furious because a lot of what she sold originally belonged to Rose and they had to go trudging back to Sotheby’s “again” and pay for their mothers things.
I do not think families like the Kennedy’s or the Snowden’s have an excuse for it. But then again Earl Spencer is just as bad, if not worse. He is selling off original estate land to Anthrop and making a living off his dead sister, even though he was not even speaking with her at the time she died. I guess there is no shortage of relatives behaving badly and there never will be.
That is my two cents on this subject…
Message Thread
« Back to index