Massow’s back and helping you to save September 11, 2011 FAMED for founding the first company to provide mortgages and life insurance for people in HIV high-risk groups, Ivan Massow’s name used to be all over the papers in the 1990s. He sat on the sofa with Richard and Judy, on a panel on BBC’s Question Time, he was even flatmates with the now education [...]
The New Forest’s star keeps on rising with this new low-key gem September 11, 2011 THE New Forest is having something of a moment. Thanks to one of Britain’s most insightful hoteliers, in late 2009 it gained the glamorous five-star country house hotel and spa Lime Wood, which was bang on the money for today’s metropolitan weekenders; and now its sister hotel The Pig has opened this summer to much [...]
Why read Ulysses when you can shoot a zombie? September 11, 2011 In a meeting last week I bonded with my colleagues over shooting a poison pod into the mouth of a necromorph leviathan in the sixth chapter of Dead Space. We laughed at how I spent nearly two hours running in frustrating circles in an anti-gravity chamber, being splattered to the wind by giant alien tentacles. [...]
Wood Group and 3i drop out of the FTSE 100 September 6, 2011 WOOD Group and 3i were the losers in the FTSE 100 reshuffle yesterday, dropping out of the index and losing out on the benefits bestowed upon companies big enough to eat at the top table. They are likely to be replaced by investment firm Ashmore and equipment supplier Bunzl, pending a final decision later today [...]
FIT IN THE CITY September 5, 2011 FITNESS & DIET EXPERT YOU know those lucky naturally thin people that eat loads? Well, they’ve won a genetic lottery of sorts. Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Lausanne found that around one in 2,000 people have a duplicated gene making them many times more likely to be skinny (23 times more if [...]
China’s answer to Vegas is Eastern gambling paradise September 4, 2011 OF all the improbable consequences of China’s headlong rush into beating capitalism at its own game, Macau is the weirdest.In common with nearby Hong Kong, the former Portuguese colony returned to Chinese ownership in 1999, but remains largely self-determining. As a result, gambling is legal. And not just legal: Macau is known as the Vegas [...]
America’s very own slice of the Caribbean, plus plenty of rum August 29, 2011 WELCOME to the United States of America,” says a groundsman as I land on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, introducing me to the first of many contradictions here. The island is, I find, a cocktail of the tropical Caribbean, American high rise (it is a commonwealth of the USA) all mixed with a huge [...]
Google TV hopes US failure won’t put us off August 29, 2011 The roll-call of keynote speakers at The James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival reads like a who’s who of the industry. Rupert Murdoch, Mark Thompson, Jeremy Paxman, John Humphrys, Greg Dyke, Michael Grade, Tony Ball. (The list is only slightly sullied by the appearance of Janet Street-Porter’s name, which I assumed was [...]
UK GDP growth confirmed at 0.2pc August 26, 2011 The economy grew at 0.2 per cent in second quarter of this year, confirming last month’s first estimate. The Office for National Statistics also confirmed the annual growth of 0.7 per cent, as analysts had forecast. The dominant services sector was the main driver of growth in the second quarter, but output fell by 0.1 [...]
FOOD & BOOZE NEWS August 22, 2011 BIGGEST FOOD EVENT OF THE YEAR: FRENCH LAUNDRY TO COME TO HARRODS Before Noma and the Fat Duck, the restaurant that usually vied with El Bulli for the “world’s best” title was California’s French Laundry. It’s still seen as one of the greatest places to eat on the planet (by the few who’ve managed to [...]