The Leisure Review: World of Leisure

Wednesday 1 August
A study by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London suggests a firm link between stressful working conditions and poor mental health. The Scout Association celebrates its centenary with a commemorative camp at Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour; three hundred were there and another 28 million scouts around the world also marked the occasion. Durham is planning a £3m lighting scheme to reclaim the city from street lighting designed for motor traffic. “People will once again be able to see the stars,” says Mark Major, the lighting architect on the case. The Cyclists’ Touring Club notes that the government’s annual budget for cycling equates to 0.5% of the cost of widening 51 miles of motorway, while the City of Manchester’s leisure budget has a large hole in it owing to a some £800,000 that the council says it is owed by Manchester City FC. A UK Sport report finds that the Tour de France brought a £115m boost to tourism and the Scottish Football Association is to issue retrospective yellow cards for players found to have dived by a panel watching television footage of their Premier League games. The Italian government announces the imminent return of forty objects from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Ian Robinson, head of rugby at Merchant Taylors’ school in Crosby, is drowned in a rafting accident during a school trip in Australia.

Thursday 2 August
Covent Garden, once known as ‘the larder of London’, hosts the first of five weekly night food markets during August. Newcastle’s latest gentleman player, Joey Barton, is charged with assault following “a training ground incident” in May that put his team mate, Ousmane Dabo, in hospital. His Royal Purpleness, Prince, emerges though a trap door in the stage at the O2 Arena (the Dome to the rest of us) to begin a 21-night residency. Professional tennis could be facing a match-fixing scandal when Betfair suspend all wagers on the match between Nikolay Davydenko against Martin Vassallo Aguello.

Friday 3 August
The Coastguard warns of the dangers of tombstoning, following a number of fatalities over the summer. RoSPA notes that between 1997 and 2004 106 people died after diving or jumping into the water, seven of which were at coastal locations. Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire opens to the public for the first time in five hundred years after English Heritage spends £4m on restoring it. The house will go on the market next year. Prime Minister Broon begins his summer holiday in Dorset. “Britain is the best place in the world to go on holiday,” he says, checking his change. The Football League transfers the ‘golden share’ to Leeds United, allowing Mr Bates’s latest football project to start the season, but adds a fifteen-point deduction to the mix. Prompted by an investigation into ‘irregular betting patterns’ regarding a tennis match, sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe, suggests that new legislation could be introduced to make cheating in sport a criminal offence.

Saturday 4 August
Reports of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Surrey means the PM’s summer holiday is cut drastically short. He drops his choc ice and heads back to London double quick. The England rugby team beats Wales at Twickenham and immediately turn themselves into potential world cup winners, according to some hysterical sports reports. Police report an incident in the pool at the Doncaster Dome in which a five-year-old girl drowns.

Sunday 5 August
Lewis Hamilton continues the annus mirabilis of his inaugural season, winning the Hungarian grand prix and upsetting his team mate Fernando Alonso into the bargain. Manchester United beat Chelsea in the Charity Shield, although to the surprise of no one all the talk is of penalties and injuries rather than charity. Contrite and reformed drug cheat cyclist David Millar wins the English national road race championship. Meanwhile, on a baseball diamond in San Diego, Barry Bonds, similarly accused and far from contrite, breaks Hank Aaron’s home run record. Four priceless works, including a Monet, are stolen from the Musee des Beaux Arts in Nice.

Monday 6 August
Images of culled cattle make the front pages, reawakening fears for the immediate future of the UK’s agriculture and tourism industries. Russia’s plans to import building materials for the 2014 winter Olympics from an independent state that is technically part of Georgia sparks a diplomatic row. Russia plans to spend some £6bn on the event. How much will the snow cost by 2014? To the surprise of no one sitting in the stands of third- and fourth-division sides, a report from accountancy firm PKF Football Group suggests that even with all the new money sloshing around the English Premier League many clubs are at risk of insolvency.

Tuesday 7 August
Famous names are notable by their absence on the Man Booker prize long list. The Highways Agency is under the impression that spending £2.5bn to widen fifty miles of the M1 motorway to ten lanes is a good idea. Have they not heard of the Olympic Price Watch? Er, no they haven’t. The BBC spent £20m on bonuses last year, a period during which 6,000 jobs were scheduled for disposal. The Edinburgh international film festival is to move to from August to June from next year in order to find some space in the city’s busy cultural calendar. A team of Israeli scientists publish a paper suggesting that have calculated how a time machine could work but not for a while yet. Apparently they’re serious.

Wednesday 8 August
Cornwall’s great white shark, a continual presence on the front page of The Sun over the summer, was in fact photographed in South Africa by Kevin Keeble while he was on holiday. He thought it would be a good gag but the Newquay chamber of commerce was not amused. “The people who did this should know better,” they say, pulling that face you get when you know you’re in trouble. However, the Cornwall Tourist Board thought it had brought some good publicity for the area. Chief veterinary officer, Debby Reynolds, lifts the ban on moving animals outside the immediate foot and mouth surveillance zone in Surrey. Ai Weiwei, the artist who came up with the design concept for Beijing’s Olympic ‘bird’s nest’ stadium, says he wants nothing to do with the government propaganda surrounding the 2008 Games. Hairline cracks have appeared in Berlin’s Holocaust memorial and experts are pondering the application of plastic resin. Laing O’Rourke, the construction company leading the delivery of the 2012 Olympic park, announces a 40% rise in profits. A portrait of Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in London is damaged by a man with a hammer. Mark Paton is arrested at the scene and any quips about him being framed were carefully avoided.

Thursday 9 August
Oh joy. You can now get Frank Lampard’s personal TV channel streamed to your mobile. Laugh along as he quibbles over a £120,000 a week. Mayor Ken confirms he’s looking closely at the Parisian bike hire experiment, a project which has apparently gone down a storm around the arrondissements. The Royal Parks Authority’s concerns regarding advertising on les bicyclettes could be one of the negotiating points for London’s version. Edinburgh needs more funding support if it is to remain the predominant festival city. “There are encouraging signs but what happens over the next twelve months is crucial,” says director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, John Leighton. The CCPR is concerned that new equality legislation could threaten veteran sports competitions.

Friday 10 August
The Underage festival kicks off in east London. The refreshing message on the door is, “If you’re over eighteen you’re not coming in.” Bath and North East Somerset District Council is apparently only firing up the burners at its crematorium when there are sufficient number of ‘customers’ to be efficient. Needless to say, there’s some disquiet. Willard Wigan from Birmingham completes his microsculpture of the Mad Hatter’s tea party, having had to replace Alice when he inhaled it a little while ago. David Lloyd recently bought Mr Wigan’s complete works for £11m but how does he know he got it all? Bristol’s 29th balloon festival takes to the air and Christchurch in Dorset is found to be the seaside town with the highest quality of life. You’d never believe it was August, would you? Tony Wilson, Manchester’s very own cultural guru, dies at the age of 57.

Saturday 11 August
The big kick-off comes round again to fill the airwaves with detailed explanations of why someone’s team isn’t much good yet. Svennis starts his new job with a win, so that’s nice. A leading microbiologist suggests that the foot and mouth outbreak could be over if there are no new cases over the next week. In the world league table of life expectancy, the USA has dropped from 11th to 42nd place in twenty years. Obesity and expensive health care (45m Americans have no health insurance) are thought to be the main reasons for the decline.

Sunday 12 August
The Glorious Twelfth, the traditional opening of the grouse season, starts without a bang as apparently one doesn’t kill things on Sundays. Steve McClaren swallows something hard and jagged as Wayne Rooney breaks a bone in his foot for the third time in as many years. Tiger Woods wins the US PGA tournament, his thirteenth major; now he’s only five behind Jack Nicklaus’s record. The Institute for European Environmental Policy has found that when a family gets a car the time family members spend walking halves, suggesting that cars rather than food could be behind the obesity problem.

Monday 13 August
Biranchi Das, coach of Budhia Singh, the six-year-old Indian boy who has set endurance running records, is arrested by Indian authorities and charged with torturing the child. Jasmine Willis finishes her shift as a waitress in her dad’s County Durham sandwich shop in hospital after overdosing on coffee. Seven double espressi was enough to do it. “My nerves were all over the place,” she said. The Institute for European Environmental Policy published a report suggesting that cars should be banned from the school run to combat obesity in children and their parents. In a similar vein, residents of Varallo Sesia, a small town in the foothills of the Italian Alps, are being offered €50 by their mayor if they can lose 3kg in a month and another €100 if they can keep it off for the next five months. The RSPB reports the poisoning of a golden eagle, one of Britain’s rarest birds, near the grouse moors of the Scottish borders. As it’s August surveys proliferate: Income Data Services show the UK at the bottom of the EU league for taking holidays and another one finds that 20% of parents surveyed were never home before their children were in bed.

Tuesday 14 August
Severe weather does for this year’s Fastnet race as ninety boats abandon. Black Watch, the play about Scottish soldiers in Iraq that was a great success at the 2005 Edinburgh festival, is at last to be staged in London; the Barbican will put it on next June. A farm in Kent is sealed pending investigation of a possible foot and mouth case. Research into the last 2,000 expeditions to Everest suggests that climbers over sixty are three times more likely to die than younger climbers.

Wednesday 15 August
The annual Harden guide reports that in the past twelve months 158 restaurants opened in London, 13% up on last year. However, 89 restaurants closed in the same period, a rate of attrition 30% higher than the previous year. The government is apparently planning measures to curb the habit, prevalent among British youngsters, of getting regularly ratted. Peter Fahy, Cheshire’s own Chief Inspector Knacker, knows what the problem is: “Alcohol is too cheap and too readily available and is too strong.” With such perspicacity the people of the North West can sleep more soundly in their beds. The town of Raploch in Stirling is trying a new scheme of intensive musical training for young people. Based on the Venezuelan model, the scheme uses music to get young people off the streets. Brian Mikkelson, Denmark’s culture minister, apologises to the people of Ireland for the destruction visited upon them by his Viking ancestors. Inspired by Cornwall’s recent success and in an effort to make things easy for local headline writers, authorities in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, warn members of the public against the very small risk of shark attacks. With the clock still ticking, planning consent is recommended for approval for the Olympic Park site in London.

Thursday 16 August
The recommendation that everybody should take thirty minutes of gentle exercise a day is ‘clarified’ by the international team of scientists that originally devised the guidance. Writing in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, they say that vigorous exercise should be explicitly recommended. Audience figures show that twelve million people in the UK now listen to radio digitally. Stonehenge tops the list of the UK’s most disappointing tourist attraction, according to a panel of 1,267 sad individuals. A survey of smokers finds that half of smokers say they are smoking less since the smoking ban. A scheme in which mosquito nets were distributed free of charge in Kenya has almost halved deaths from malaria among children, prompting the World Health Organisation to recommend that mosquito nets are routinely given away in the developing world. Apparently selling nets is common practice, meaning not many children have one. Like, derr!

Friday 17 August
Beijing tests its Olympic air quality plans by banning a third of all vehicles from the city’s roads for a day. Birdfare, the birder’s answer to Glastonbury, opens on the shores of Rutland Water, with 20,000 visitors expected over the three days. Speculation that Tim Henman’s retirement is imminent increases as he pulls out of a tournament in New Haven.

Saturday 18 August
The late Peter Barkworth, the actor and writer who died in October, has left his huge art collection to the National Trust. Meryl Streep arrives in Northern Ireland to help raise funds for the arts. She hopes her presence will help to raise £16.5m for a new arts centre in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.

Sunday 19 August
It seems that black officers in the British military may be called upon to work with young people at risk of being immersed in the inner city gang culture. Norfolk police confiscate a sound system and one hundred irate would-be ravers surround Great Yarmouth nick and pelt it with bottles and cans. Protourisme, the French tourist agency, says that visitor numbers for July and August this year are down by 3% on the same time last year. Poor weather is to blame, they suggest. Meanwhile, an online travel company reckons that the unseasonably strong pound has deterred Americans from visiting Blighty. While millionaire footballers bicker about who pushed whom and whose ball it is, international cycling superstar Nicole Cooke wins the women’s national road race championship for the eighth time in nine years. Ms Cooke is 24 and Welsh.

Monday 20 August
A scheduled seaplane service between the River Clyde and the islands of Scotland’s west coast opens for business. The British Library reveals the short list in a competition to demonstrate the quality of the treasures held by our regional libraries; medieval manuscripts and eighteenth century atlases are among those in the proverbial frame. A new maritime museum in Derry could feature part of the Nazi u-boat fleet if they can work out how to salvage U-778, scuttled sixteen miles off Malin Head. US scientists (funny that) think they have found a link between a virus that causes throat infections and obesity. Tony Wilson’s funeral takes place in Manchester. Justice secretary Jack Straw thinks the plans for black military officers to serve as mentors for young people is a good idea. Beijing’s four-day experiment to improve air quality by banning a proportion of motor traffic is an overwhelming failure. With the august bank holiday looming, the Office of National Statistics reveals that 8.1 million tourists came to the UK between April and June this year, 3% fewer than in the previous quarter.

Tuesday 21 August
Members of the Terracotta Army arrive at the British Museum in readiness for the coming exhibition. Sixty thousand tickets have already been sold. Lord Coe and Sergei Bubka are recommended for vice-presidential posts on the IAAF by the president of European Athletics, while Sir Bill Morris is, it seems, to stand as candidate for the post of chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Wednesday 22 August
Amy Winehouse, wherever she may be, is among nominations for the MOBO awards. Five thousand French children are taken on a seaside holiday to Kent, enjoying all that the traditional British seaside has to offer, including the refreshing drizzle. Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel giggle their way through the England-Germany game at Wembley, both, presumably, delighted with the result.

Thursday 23 August
The International Slavery Museum opens in Liverpool and a survey commissioned by Visa, sponsors of the UK School Games, finds that 88% of British children regularly include sport and leisure in their out-of-school activities. Seb Coe is confirmed as IAAF vice-president and the Metropolitan Black Police Association is backing a new Btec qualification, Young Leaders for Safer Cities. The British Library finds that it has a sketch by John Constable of which it was unaware. Ken Livingstone marks the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade with an emotional apology on behalf of the city of London. During July a total of 21.8 million people went to the cinema in the UK. Tim Henman confirms that he is to retire from professional tennis next month. “This is as good as I could have been,” he says.

Friday 24 August
A book describing a year with French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is published by French playwright Yasmina Reza, author of Art, a hit in London’s West End. M. Sarkozy asked Mme Reza to do the book in an effort to boost his standing with the arts world. With typical Gallic insouciance, he told her at the outset of the project, “Even if you demolish me, you will make me bigger.” Coming soon: Jennifer Saunders on Gordon Brown. In the Thankful for Small Cultural Mercies Department, Channel 4 announces that Celebrity Big Brother will not grace its schedules in 2008. It’s part of their “creative renewal” process, apparently. Also renewed, it seems, is Roy “the ball was there – I think” Keane, who suggests that referees are put under too much pressure by players. Everton FC claim a mandate for a move to a new stadium in Kirkby after a vote by fans. Why don’t they move to Anfield when it becomes vacant? With the prospect of medals for the UK athletics squad bleak at the forthcoming world championships, John Regis blames lack of desire among British athletes for a lack of success. “Our sport is so rich financially that it has bridged the gap of hunger,” he says.

Saturday 25 August
The sun shines on a British bank holiday at last and hordes of people rush to visit their local motorway. Sir Alex Ferguson (sic) doesn’t like Michel Platini’s proposals to give a Champions (sic) League place to the FA Cup winners. “It’s totally ridiculous,” says the master of all things fair and reasonable.

Sunday 26 August
Kelly Sotherton wins Britain’s first medal at the athletics world championships: a bronze in the heptathlon. A report commissioned by various UK film organisations, titled Stately Attraction: How Film and Television Programmes Promote Tourism in the UK, reveals examples of the impact films have had on visitor numbers for some of our heritage sites: Alnwick Castle up 120% after Harry Potter popped in; Lyme Park, home of Mr Darcy on the TV version of Pride and Prej, up by almost 300% in the year after the series aired. The Australian horse racing industry is thrown into turmoil by an outbreak of equine flu. Middlesbrough’s Egyptian striker, Mido, takes a load of anti-Islamic abuse from Newcastle supporters. “I don’t know why they do it,” Mido says after the game. “I think they were maybe taking the piss.” The FA strike fear into the hearts of racists and miscreants across the land by announcing they will “certainly be looking into it”. Expect an impressive display of inaction sometime never.

Monday 27 August
Olympic Price Watch swings into action with calculations that City bonuses this year have totalled £14 billion. Concern from smaller charities about access to places in the London marathon, which is now a well established feature of the fund-raising calendar. Lincoln Cathedral will bring in £100,000 from serving as Westminster Abbey in Martin Scorcese’ film The Young Victoria. A survey to find Britain’s favourite biscuit surprises no one by putting the custard cream in poll position. Llanwrtyd Wells in Powys hosts the world bog snorkelling championships as part of a bank holiday festival of fun. China continues to highlight the ethical issues of sport with the arrival of an eight-year-old girl in Beijing after a run of 2,212 miles in 55 days. The aim was to celebrate the 2008 Olympics, apparently. “She loves running,” says her father.

Tuesday 28 August
Nelson Mandela tells an audience of black celebrities and cultural leaders that they must help to tackle inner-city under-achievement. Museum and gallery retail offerings could be revolutionised by research from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam which shows that Van Gogh had done some of his later works on old tea towels. Alistair Campbell’s Diary is the book most likely to be left behind in hotel rooms, according to the Travelodge chain. The heritage sector voices fears that heritage projects will have its funding for major projects reduced by £60m in the rush for London 2012. The world’s biggest casino, The Venetian, opens in Macau, China. The £1.2bn build cost will be recouped in five years, according to the owner. In New York Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGB’s, the only venue to be seen rocking out back in the day, dies at the age of 75.

Wednesday 29 August
Christine Ohuruogu wins world championship gold for Britain with a storming run in the 400m, drawing yet more attention to her appeal to the British Olympic Authority to overturn her ban for missing out-of-competition tests. Nicola Sanders grabs the silver for Britain in the same race. Coroner Anne Pember recommends that schoolchildren going on adventure holidays should have to pass a swimming test before embarkation. Her comments were made in the context of an inquest into the death of Aaron Goss who drowned on a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition in South America last year. The directors of the five main Edinburgh festivals call for greater public investment to combat competition from festivals around the world. Nelson Mandela takes his place, in effigy and in person, in Parliament Square for the unveiling of a nine-foot statue. Russian rowing comes under the spotlight when three rowers from two crews test positive at the world championships in Munich.

Thursday 30 August
Eighty percent of travel in the UK is undertaken by private motoring according to the latest Department of Transport annual travel survey. It also found that nearly 25% of all car journeys are less than two miles. The NHS is set to underspend by £1bn this year following last year’s £500m deficit, according to Mr Broon. William Jeffreys celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of his artificial hip, fitted after he collided with a sniper’s bullet in Burma in 1944. No doubt inspired by this story, 38-year-old Jansher Khan says he’ll be out of retirement and onto the squash court this October. It seems that Michel Platini is to get his way with proposals to give a Champions (sic) League place to the winner of the domestic cup competition. “We need to ensure football is more balanced so that the rich do not become much richer,” says the obviously dangerously out of control Monsieur P. The UK ready-meal market is now worth £2bn. Blimey!

Friday 31 August
Olympic Price Watch latest: the Foreign Office reckons members of the Kenyan ruling elite have had it away with over £1bn. Lord Morris withdraws from the race for the chair of the ECB after failing to gain the necessary support.