MINERS DIG DEEP TO AID OLIVIA’S RECOVERY October 9, 2011 IT’S NOT often you see people spending £3,700 on “thin air”. But last Thursday night, the Berkeley Square silver merchant Jim Williams raised his hand to bid on nothing at all to take the Olivia’s Vision auction to the “nice round number” of £80,000. The Arian Silver Corporation’s “huge mining character” was bidding at the [...]
BILL OF THE WEEK October 9, 2011 BACK TO this column’s favourite Kensington haunt Amika for this week’s Bill of the Week, after one Russian businessman decided it was champagne all round on a recent Saturday night out. Dom Perignon all the way, as it turned out, with a magnum followed by a jeroboam followed by a £12,000 bottle of the White [...]
Legal industry shake up is a business opportunity October 9, 2011 THE Legal Services Act has just come into force and it threatens to decimate high street legal firms. For years, in legal seminars across England and Wales, high street lawyers have been crying out against it. The new law hopes to create competition, but many have warned it could squeeze out smaller firms who lack [...]
NO END IN SIGHT: SMALL BUSINESS BANKING WOES October 9, 2011 I RUN a small but fast-growing group of pubs called The Draft House. We’re known for selling a wide range of craft beer, simple food and – I hope – a warm welcome. In 2009, we were days away from opening our second site in Northcote Road, Clapham. We were managing our cash carefully but [...]
ENTREPRENEURS NEWS | IN BRIEF October 9, 2011 ONLINE TRADERS HAVE DOUBLED The number of people earning a second income by trading online has doubled in the last year. A survey by Collect Plus, a parcel delivery and returns service, dubs these online entrepreneurs “e-pportunists”, finding that a third of them earn over £10,000 a year. Over half (59 per cent) of those [...]
The Malaysian chateau where bodysculpting gets serious October 9, 2011 ON ARRIVAL in my spa suite at Malaysia’s new all-organic destination spa, I was pleasantly surprised to find a note on the pillow reading: “Chocolate is an elixir of life. Scientists from Harvard University say that eating a couple of chocolate bars a week could extend your life by almost a year.” By day two, [...]
TRAVEL NOTES October 9, 2011 One Fine Stay: trade a hotel room for a luxury home A new concept for those who want luxury with the personal touch, this clever company allows you to spend nights in some of London’s best homes while the owners are out of town. Prices range from £150 a night for a one bedroom apartment [...]
Why Steve Jobs owes thanks to Ada Lovelace October 9, 2011 The technology world continues to mourn the passing of its iconic leader. Sadness over Steve Jobs’ death has seeped into the mainstream, like a virus, with ordinary people, who don’t know their C from their C++ and probably never played Dungeons & Dragons, leaving £400 iPads outside Apple Stores as a mark of respect. If [...]
Shake it up with London Cocktail Week October 9, 2011 F Scott Fitzgerald did it for me. He immortalised the mint julep in the Great Gatsby and ignited an ongoing appreciation for the craft of the cocktail. This may have been the turning point where I realised there was more to cocktails than kahlua and milk, and that the trusty barometer of sophistication was not [...]
3 OTHER COCKTAILS YOU SHOULD KNOW HOW TO DRINK October 9, 2011 PIMM’S CUP HBO’s lavish series Boardwalk Empire has returned to our screens again on Sky Atlantic. Set in the era of America’s Prohibition, the thrust of the story focuses on bootlegging, politics, women’s lib and, of course, copious drinking. Pimm’s may have been scarce in the 1920s, but you can see the characters arm themselves [...]
