Saturday, July 31, 2010

Britains narrowest house: Sussex home that used to be a dickey transport strew

Anyone who claims you can"t cram a quart into a pint pot should visit the house owned by Iain and Rachel Boyle. It is only 6ft wide and 21ft from front to back.

Yet in that tiny space is an entrance hall, kitchen and shower room on the ground floor, a first-floor living room and a bedroom in the eaves.

Mr and Mrs Boyle believe that the former donkey-cart shed could beBritain"s narrowest inhabited terrace home and have written to GuinnessWorld Records to ask if they are right.

The slender house, which is sandwiched between two unremarkable houses in the middle of a terrace, is 21ft long and 6ft wide

The slender house, which is sandwiched between two unremarkable houses in the middle of a terrace, is 21ft deep and 6ft wide

The couple, who run a publishing business, bought the building in the Hollingdean area of Brighton for 8,000 12 years ago.

They spent another 15,000 turning it into a stylish pi�d-a-terre and now rent it out.

Iain and Rachel Boyle

Owners Iain and Rachel Boyle, pictured with sons Joe and Charlie, believe it must be Britain"s narrowest inhabited terraced home

Mrs Boyle, 45, said: "There was still straw and bits of cart in the mezzanine storage area, which we have made into the bedroom."

The ground-floor kitchen has a door to the garden, which is the same width as the house and 10ft long.

A normal-sized staircase takes you up to living area, which is just wide enough for a small-two-seater sofa to fit snugly

A normal-sized staircase takes you up to living area, which is just wide enough for a small two-seater sofa to fit snugly

A staircase provides access to the living area - just wide enough for a two-seater sofa to fit snugly - and a wooden loft ladder on a pulley system leads to the bed area.

The couple hope their sons Joe, 14, and Charlie, 11, will one day have a chance to live in the tiny house.

Rachel and Charlie in the kitchen of the 6ft-wide terrace home

Cat-swinging not recommended: Rachel and Charlie in the kitchen of the 6ft-wide terrace home

Mr Boyle, 51, said: "Property is so expensive in Brighton that our tenants have always been thrilled to find a house they can afford with a garden.

"They don"t ever have to switch the heating on - it is so narrow that it is insulated by its neighbours."

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Biden was right: it was a big clamour deal

Analysis: Giles Whittell, Washington & , : {}

The Vice President was right and the White House press secretary was right that he was right. It was a big expletive deal. But there has been no more eloquent confirmation of the scale of the likely impact of the health insurance reform act of 2010 than Republicans desire to prevent it passing.They filed their first lawsuits contesting its constitutionality within seven minutes of the blotter being applied to the presidential signature.

Some in the anti-reform camp represent the genuine concerns of small and medium-sized business owners who will soon be required to offer health insurance to their employees if they have more than 50 of them, or face a $2,000 fine per employee per year.

Some are genuinely more troubled by the governments decision to force individuals to buy insurance - or accept subsidies if they cannot afford it - than by appearing to oppose an extension of basic cover to 95 per cent of the population for the first time in American history. But most of the opponents of these reforms oppose them because of politics.

Had Mr Obama balked and shelved this effort, or pursued only a scaled-down version of it, he would have been the President who promised the earth but failed to deliver: the prince of the teleprompter out of his depth in national government.

Related LinksObama signs health Bill as repeal fight beginsObama and healthcare: the downsideThis debate is far from over

His party would have been in deep trouble at the mid-terms in November, and he would have been acutely vulnerable in 2012.

He is now the President who can not only govern but who delivered what none of his predecessors could. At a stroke, he has given his supporters a record to run on, leaving their opponents to object to the process. Voters may tire of the conservative argument that near-universal healthcare is a bad thing because it was achieved through a Senate process called reconciliation. The signs are that the public is already moving on.

According to a Gallup poll yesterday 49 per cent of Americans think the bill is a good thing, against 40 per cent who dont. Mr Obamas opponents will be hard-put to continue claiming, as they have without pause for the past 14 months, that the American people reject this reform.

They said it was going to be Armageddon, he said of the House Republican leadership. Well, three months from now, six months from now we can check it out. Well see. Even by his own standards, he seemed confident.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

British Army meets the compare as German inlet lovers hindrance training

A timber lark

Allan Hall, Berlin & , : {}

They have faced makeshift bombs, been ambushed by guerrillas and shot at by al-Qaeda. Now, British infantry precision for their subsequent conflict with Afghan insurgents have been foiled by German inlet lovers.

Plans to make ridicule Afghan villages in the heathland of Gütersloh, northwest Germany, to hope for the Army for close-contact crusade were put on hold this week after a German justice ruled in foster of the singular silt lizard and the even rarer blue-winged grasshopper.

They are between those class pronounced to be in jeopardy by the multimillion-pound plan that could right away be put on hold for a year whilst environmentalists lift out tests on water, sound levels and air quality, as well as on the intensity impacts on flora and wildlife.

Gütersloh councillors authorized the plans to set up dual ridicule communities and to reconstruct an existent Potemkin encampment on Feb 19.

Related LinksSiberian tigers starve to genocide at Chinese zooJapanese fishmongers criticism over tuna banDeal could be struck to strengthen class

Army workers had already privileged a large area of undergrowth when the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (Nabu) went to justice in Minden, Germany, on Monday in an try to hindrance construction a whole for at slightest twelve months. Protected biotopes have already been destroyed, pronounced Josef Tumbrinck, the authority of the internal Nabu branch.

In the perspective the preference to concede this construction to go forward was bootleg in the initial place. I am blissful that vigour has led to a stop so far.

We recognize that British soldiers going to Afghanistan contingency embrace optimal training. But because German authorities contingency assent the drop of singular healthy resources in the Senne stays unintelligible to us. In the perspective there are alternatives accessible to the army.

The Military Training Area Senne a unconditional 220 block kilometre tract of heath, moorland and fir tree forests has been personal by the Europarc inlet organization as fulfilling all of the criteria indispensable to be directed towards a inhabitant play ground in the own right.

The European Commission has reliable the stable status.

The Army uses rounded off half of the area for crusade practice. The range is home to 40 class of mammals, 111 class of tact birds, twelve class of fish, fifteen class of amphibians, 1,150 class of butterflies, 1,500 class of beetles, 47 class of dragonflies, twenty-three class of locusts, 800 class of ferns, 1,200 class of mushrooms and 313 opposite sorts of moss.

The meadow pipit is one of the birds on the involved list, the timber whim another. The silt lizard and the blue-winged grasshopper are both in jeopardy whilst the dune tiger beetle is coming the risk zone.

Their predicament has dumbfounded environmentalists far over Germanys shores. The World Habitat Society has called for general protests on the website, claiming: The British Army is on the approach to fall short one of Europes majority profitable inlet reserves.

It pronounced that programmed roads would sign off wildlife and bluster already involved species.

Senior armed forces commanders in Germany and London are murderous by the justice action, that could exceedingly bushel precision plans for the 5,000 British infantry stationed around the Senne area.

One comparison troops officer said: This tumult ignores the elementary actuality that the presence of singular class of healthy hold up on precision areas is attributable to troops make use of and the ostracism of the public. We have saved this land, not despoiled it.

Currently there is a 30-day cooling off duration in outcome as protests are lodged and no construction has begun.

hair wig

Ex-Cazenove partner locked up for twenty-one months

Michael Herman & , : {}

Malcolm Calvert, a former partner in Cazenove, has been condemned to twenty-one months seizure for insider traffic in the shares of 3 UK companies.

Calvert, 65, was condemned by Judge Peter Testar at Southwark Crown Court, where he was convicted of five counts of insider traffic and clear of a serve 7 yesterday.

As he upheld sentence, Judge Testar pronounced that Calvert had a "clear bargain of the earnest of what he was doing" and committed his offences "deliberately, not recklessly".

Judge Testar pronounced that insider traffic was not a victimless crime. It leads to the prejudiced improvement of a couple of at the shortcoming of the open seductiveness and of certainty in a purify and satisfactory market, he said.

Related LinksPartner at Queen"s attorney guilty of insider dealingBroker could collect winners, inside traffic conference toldEx-Cazenove partner will not attest in box

Calvert, wearing a dim blue blazer with bullion buttons and a tie display racehorses, showed no tension as he was jailed.

Calvert was found guilty of obtaining trusted report about stirring takeovers and instructing a friend, Bertie Hatcher, to buy shares.

Once the deals were announced, the shares soared in worth and Mr Hatcher sole them, concealment a 104,000 profit. Calvert picked up his share of the increase in income envelopes that Mr Hatcher left with a bookie at a racecourse.

Mr Hatcher outlayed 502,143 on shares in Vernalis, Johnston Group and South Staffordshire, offered them for 606,026.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA), that brought the case, pronounced that Calvert performed his report about arriving deals from a initial insider inside of Cazenove.

Judge Testar pronounced that nonetheless Calvert was not the initial insider, he was really penetrating or really peaceful to feat the initial insiders crack of duty. He pronounced that Calvert was operative in tandem with the initial insider, with whom he common his profits.

The claim that the initial insider worked at Cazenove was never tested in justice and the decider pronounced he found no error on the piece of any institution.

A conference to establish the total of income to be confiscated from Calvert, and the volume of charge costs he contingency compensate will be hold on Apr 23.

Mr Hatcher was since shield from charge in lapse for similar to attest opposite Calvert.

Calvert late from Cazenove, right away piece of JP Morgan, in 2000 after a 39-year career, carrying assimilated as a youth merchant elderly 16.

His charge was the third successful box brought by the FSA, that took over shortcoming for insider traffic prosecutions in 2000.

Nathan Wilmott, a partner in the law organisation Berwin Leighton Paisner, said: "The FSA will feel that this judgment sends a clever summary to the City that it is honestly committed to clamping down on insider dealing.

It will be quite gratified that it has cumulative a self-assurance even where it was incompetent to brand the source of the trickle of trusted information."

In Mar 2009, the FSA cumulative the initial dual philosophy and prison conditions when Christopher McQuoid, a solicitor, and his father-in-law, James Melbourne, were found guilty of a singular equate of insider dealing. McQuoid was locked up for eight months and Melbourne, who was 75 at the time, perceived the same judgment dangling for a year since of his age.

McQuoid was ubiquitous warn of TTP Communications, a telecoms group, when he sloping off Melbourne that the association was about to be acquired by the US organisation Motorola.

In Dec 2009, the FSA cumulative the philosophy of Neel Uberoi, a dentist, and his son Matthew, an determined stockbroker. Matthew was a work experience tyro at Hoare Govett, the City broker, when he sloping his father about arriving takeovers utilizing coded messages about Chinese food.

Both were found guilty of twelve counts of insider trading, with Neel Uberoi locked up for dual years and Matthew for one year.

hair wig

Monday, July 26, 2010

Why we should fright Kate Moss"s ballet entrance Life and character The Guardian

Kate Moss, Feb 2010

Kate Moss: model, designer; actress and soon-to-be ballet dancer. Photograph: Brian Rasic /Rex Features

What on earth are we to have of Kate Moss"s arriving ballet debut?

Sharon, by email

We are to pretence that the finish is nigh, Sharon. But I"m not sure if headlines that Kate is to crop up in a ballet movie with Mikhail Baryshnikov is some-more or less joyless than the actuality that Baryshnikov was identified in the Daily Mail inform of this headlines eventuality as "Sex and the City star" (Kate, of course, indispensable no introduction). Crikey, if I"d someway concluded to fool around that awful piece of Alexsandr Petrovsky, that wouldn"t even have been the prominence of my career – and, as far as I can remember, I"ve never been the star of the Kirov.

But to the matter. There is something really vapid going on at the moment, and shall I discuss it you what it is? Yes, I shall: it"s this all-too-ubiquitous idea that since a indication can wear a little clothes, she can do a total host of alternative things too. Thus we have Kate dancing and (this one fills me with some-more dread) behaving in a little film; Agyness Deyn conceptualizing clothes; an identical item Jessica Stam. And I"m sure someone, somewhere, is releasing an album, positively featuring a integrate of duets with Beck/Ryan Adams/Jack White etc.

I entirely conclude that a model"s career is all as well short, and that they need to find a approach to fill their time and bank comment after they have upheld the hoary sell-by age of 26. But I"m not unconditionally assured this equates to they should afterwards do things that customarily require, yuh know, years of training, as against to a deceptive recognition of the contention existing.

I could roughly pardon Deyn"s incursion in to garments pattern – right away such a well-charted trail for the indication with gangling time on their hands – if usually the garments she "designed" weren"t so definitely and utterly hideous, together with a tattered jumper and a profoundly fugly – yeah, I pronounced fugly – purple dress. Of course, if they were any great that would hurt my complete evidence and that would be even some-more irritating.

So let"s think instead what these models could do. In the box of Moss, I"d utterly similar to an journal (and am accessible for ghost-writing duties, Mossy – usually for you, babycakes, usually for you). But in the main, the universe seems far improved set up for models with gangling time on their hands than it"s ever been – and I"m not usually articulate about promotion contracts for Marks Spencer, or describing their skincare routines to Sunday publication repository supplements (emphasising the cleanse-tone-moisturise part, of course, as against to the Botox-Botox-Botox part). After all, there"s a universe of placements right away open up to them. Really, one can roughly see these placements as free institutions – similar to abandoned baby hospitals, there to see after the needy and aimless. These placements are, of course, called "reality TV shows".

I"m nonplussed by the ubiquity of a sure kind of men"s scarf: straight stripes in delicate colour shades. On the BBC News at Ten, you infrequently catch a period of reporters wearing them; I once counted 4 in the same bulletin. We competence as well all be Maoists – is no alternative kind of headband allowed? What happened to the red scarf? The usually ones I see these days (apart from my own) are ragged by gentlemen in Jermyn Street.

Ian Jack, by email

How right you are, my gruff, red-scarfed, north-of-the-border co-worker – we competence as well be Maoists. And who would the Mao figure be? Philip Green, that"s who.

Green is the big kahuna of the high street, the shark of the Oxford Street ocean, the man at the back of Topman, and to illustrate the legitimate aim of your ire. The Man de Top right away straddles an appealing sequence in between almost decent-tailoring and charming campness, to illustrate creation it the lucky high-street preference of the in vogue happy man and the immature masculine luminary (and yes, I do realize that those sectors spasmodic overlap).

This, in turn, creates it utterly the trendsetter for those who crop up in the media, ie headlines presenters. The headband of that you verbalise has had utterly a participation in Topman for a little time, and there is something of the unavoidable that it has right away inveigled the approach on to your dear BBC News at Ten.

But hold fast to your outstanding red scarf. As they contend in Withnail I, a stopped time is right twice a day and conform shall pitch your approach again, so afterwards you will have the compensation of never carrying been convinced by the winds of trendiness. Or, for that matter, carrying resembled a headlines presenter.

Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@guardian.co.uk

Sunday, July 25, 2010

BBC presenter Kristian Digby found passed Media The Guardian

Kristian Digby found dead

Kristian Digby, who was found passed at a prosaic in easterly London. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

The BBC radio presenter Kristian Digby, 32, was yesterday found passed at his easterly London home. Police conspicuous the genocide was unexplained, and that the host of daytime radio shows was passed when military and paramedics found him.

Last night tributes were paid to Digby, presenter of programmes such as To Buy Or Not To Buy. He had additionally hosted That Gay Show for the BBC, and came to presenting after starting out at the back of the camera. He had been a gifted immature director.

A BBC orator said: "Kristian was a much-loved and gifted presenter for BBC Daytime. He brought a genuine clarity of appetite and regard to all the shows he presented and will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his family at this really formidable time."

Digby"s representative and crony Jo Wander said: "I am ravaged by the loss. He was a poetic man and a really gifted presenter and director. I will miss him hugely."

Wander"s website described his early guarantee as a movie maker, saying that Digby"s short movie Last Train To Demise won the Melbourne Film legal holiday most appropriate tyro movie in 1998 and Words of Deception won him a youth Bafta.

Digby additionally done income from shopping up poor homes and renovating them and is believed to have had owned a series of properties value we estimate £1m.

He had worked on programmes together with Double Agents, Living In The Sun, House Swap and Buy It, Sell It, Bank It.

A Scotland Yard orator said: "Police were called to reports of a physique of a man in his 30s found at an residence in Richford Road, E15.. Ambulance services attended and hold up was conspicuous extinct. Next of family were sensitive and we await grave identification. "There will be a postmortem at twelve noon at East Ham mortuary."

Detectives are questioning the death.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Gordon Brown: UK still great investment event Business

Gordon Brown

Prime apportion Gordon Brown and commercial operation cabinet member Lord Mandelson arrive at the Saatchi Gallery, London, for the Global Investment Conference. Photograph: Katie Collins/PA

Gordon Brown attempted to convince commercial operation leaders from abroad that Britain is still a great investment opportunity, at a discussion in London today.

The budding apportion told the Global Investment Conference that unfamiliar investors had a critical purpose to fool around in assisting the nation redeem from the deepest retrogression in 60 years.

"We know that for Britain, a moneyed destiny contingency be built not usually on receptive to advice economics, but investment in the industries of the future, and care of the new scholarship and engineering breakthroughs that are currently moulding tomorrow"s world," pronounced Brown.

He additionally voiced a new "investors" charter", that set out the government"s commitments to companies that bottom themselves in the UK. He told his assembly that this enclosed "creating a learned workforce so you have the most appropriate bent on daub – and the broadest probable bent pool to select from".

Around 250 arch executives, entrepreneurs and academics were in attendance the conference, embody Angela Ahrendts, arch senior manager of Burberry, and Canning Fok, handling executive of Hutchison Whampoa. Jonathan Ive, whose group at Apple written the iPod, is additionally due to speak.

Lord Davies, the traffic minister, argued that Britain had a great lane jot down at attracting unfamiliar investment.

"The UK has been hugely successful at attracting unfamiliar approach investment … There are over 75,000 foreign-owned companies in the UK and they comment for around 40% of GDP," he said.

Britain"s deteriorating open finance management have lifted fears that unfamiliar investors might evade the UK. Some commercial operation groups have additionally claimed that the 50p taxation rope and the asset taxation on bankers" bonuses might expostulate commercial operation overseas.

Chancellor Alistair Darling is additionally rising a "tax horizon for business" today, that sets out the beliefs that will guide supervision policy. This is approaching to embody a oath to deliberate large companies prior to creation serve changes to the taxation or regulatory system.