Cricket Comment: T20 shouldn’t end Giles job hope April 1, 2014 FIRST things first: for England professionals to lose to the Netherlands’ team of virtual amateurs by a big margin this week at the World Twenty20 was embarrassing and pathetic. It’s a blow for Ashley Giles’s hopes of landing the Test job, but the players have to carry the can. You can train and motivate but [...]
QPR player in quenelle rap April 1, 2014 QUEENS Park Rangers’ Benoit Assou-Ekotto and Hull’s Yannick Sagbo face fines or bans after being charged by the Football Association for Twitter posts about the “quenelle” gesture. The pair were yesterday charged with improper conduct for posts the FA deemed abusive, insulting or improper and classed as being aggravated by a reference to ethnicity, race [...]
Mourinho probes Paris spending spree April 1, 2014 CHELSEA manager Jose Mourinho says Paris Saint-Germain’s £300m, three-year squad investment raises questions about whether they have broken Financial Fair Play rules. Since the Qatari Investment Authority’s acquisition of the club in 2011 some of Europe’s hottest properties, including striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, have arrived helping to secure a first league title in 19 years last [...]
McCoy ponders Grand National ride April 1, 2014 HORSE RACING: Champion jockey AP McCoy must decide ahead of tomorrow’s declaration whether to ride Colbert Station or Double Seven, both trained by J.P. McManus, in Saturday’s Grand National at Aintree.
Trott struggles in comeback game April 1, 2014 CRICKET: Batsman Jonathan Trott was out for four runs in Warwickshire’s friendly with Gloucestershire yesterday. Trott has not played since England lost the first Ashes Test in November.
Watchdog slams Royal Mail sale March 31, 2014 THE GOVERNMENT was too cautious and massively undervalued Royal Mail at the expense of taxpayers, the spending watchdog has said today, in a highly critical report into the £3.3bn sale of the postal operator. In a damning verdict published this morning, the National Audit Office (NAO) concluded that Vince Cable’s department for business, innovation and [...]
Britain’s biggest bosses see bonuses fall for third year March 31, 2014 BRITAIN’S top executives saw their bonuses fall and their overall pay rise by less than the rate of inflation last year, according to a PwC study out today. Despite perceptions that bosses’ pay has kept on soaring throughout the financial crisis and subsequent slump, the figures show chief executives’ bonuses have in fact fallen in [...]
Hollande hires Blairite PM in French reshuffle March 31, 2014 FRENCH President Francois Hollande reshuffled his government last night in the wake of disastrous local elections which saw the rise of the far right National Front. In a major U-turn the Socialist leader veered away from the left wing of his party, appointing a Blairite moderniser as his new Prime Minister. Manuel Valls had been [...]
Watchdog boss accepts blame for insurance mess March 31, 2014 CITY watchdog chief exec Martin Wheatley yesterday said he accepts responsibility for the sloppy announcement of a new insurance investigation last week. The Financial Conduct Authority is looking into the fees and charges faced by savers with insurance policies dating back to the 1970s. And when this was inadvertently released through a newspaper on Friday, [...]
The days of out of control pay hikes are over for FTSE bosses March 31, 2014 WE all know that bosses keep awarding themselves bigger and bigger pay rises, right? And that FTSE 100 CEOs’ comp keeps on rocketing? Wrong. The facts paint a far more complex picture, and deserve a proper airing. PwC has crunched the numbers, and the outcome is striking. CEOs’ median bonus payouts for 2013 were one [...]
