Word: scarcroft
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Dates: during 1951-1951
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When the Yorkshire Electricity Board was appointed in 1947, the colonel knew just the right spot for its headquarters. With a little remodeling, stately Scarcroft Lodge, a 120-year-old mansion overlooking 160 acres of rolling farmland, would be absolutely top-hole. It was situated well beyond the industrial smog of ugly, workaday Leeds (pop. 510,000). There was a little matter of building permits before Scarcroft could be remodeled, but the colonel soon fixed that. He had a word with the Ministry of Fuel and Power, got permission to spend $112,000 on scarce building materials...
...colonel spared the Ministry of Fuel no expense in redecorating Scarcroft. A spacious new dining room was added, with fluorescent lighting. There was a smart new boardroom, deep red carpeting to cover the floor, a new $1,500 clock in the lodge tower and a $420 television set in the private staff dining room...
Unfortunately for the colonel, workmen's tongues began wagging in Leeds, where 28,000 people were waiting for permits to build homes and where factories are often short of electricity. Their complaints about Scarcroft's blazing floodlights, its elaborate wrought-iron gateway and its superb kitchen reached the receptive ears of Tory Donald Kaberry, M.P. Kaberry denounced Lapper and his board in the House of Commons as "little tsars of the government's creation [who] build their Kremlins . . . and shrink from the wrath of public opinion." The Attorney General ordered an investigation...
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