Saturday 1 September 2007
The Gambling Act comes into force today and sportsmen are reminded that they could be prosecuted if they are involved in manipulating results. The Mr Gay UK competition arrives in Brighton for the weekend and, same time, same town, the world finals of the beard and moustache championships. Secretary of state for children, schools and families, Mr Balls, reveals that almost half of children in the UK will be obese by 2050.

Sunday 2 September
British diving is in crisis following its high point (ahem) of a silver medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004. Apparently 90% of the diving boards in London have been removed in the past thirty years and there are only six Olympic ten-metre board in the UK. West Ham’s new owner, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, tells the papers that he feels “almost semi-English”, putting minds at rest in Soho Square, who probably have other things to worry about than the state of the nation’s national game. Great Britain’s athletics team finishes the world championships with five medals after the men’s 4x100 and women’s 4x400 grab bronze.

Monday 3 September
Children too young to be prosecuted were suspects in almost 3,000 crimes last year, according to police statistics. Mr W Bush shows the full extent of his cultural passions, revealing to an interviewer that one of his plans for post-White House life is “getting bored”. Given his intellectual capacity, we think it could take him some time. Charlton Community Trust has stepped in to set up a £120,000 rescue package for Charlton Athletic’s women’s team after their parent club stopped their funding. The trust is independent of the men’s professional team, who cast the women adrift a little while ago.

Tuesday 4 September
While the Eurostar blasted through the Kent countryside on the correct side of 200mph, delighting tourism officers both sides of La Manche with the sub-two hour and four minute trip between capitals, TLR’s grumpy old Olympic Price Watch correspondent notes that it has cost the government £5.8bn to shave twenty minutes off an international train journey. Jane Tomlinson, cancer victim and endurance athlete extraordinaire, dies at the age of 43. Lundy Island needs £250,000 to repair its only road and scientists in Sydney says research shows dog walking has a negative impact on sensitive ecological areas; bird diversity and abundance are affected by the presence of pets. The Federation of Tour Operators loses its challenge to the legality of the government’s air passenger duty. Jay Jay Okocha moves from Bolton Wanderers to Hull and tells us that God made him do it, thus presumably alleviating the dangers of any supporter backlash against sub-standard performances.

Wednesday 5 September
The Food Standards Agency confirms that putting chemical crap in food and giving it to children can affect their behaviour. Teachers around the country are stunned and await official news of papal religious preferences and confirmation of habitual ursine defecation locations. With no one remotely near him, Jonny Wilkinson manages to pick up an injury that could see him miss the rugby world cup, which starts this weekend. He can spend some time with one Mr A Flintoff, who also has a dodgy ankle. News creeping out of Canary Wharf suggests that another major sponsor for the 2012 jamboree of sport could be about to get on board, joining Lloyds TSB and EDF Energy who already have cheque books at the ready.

Thursday 6 September
Pavarotti takes his final curtain call in Modena at the age of 72. The Man Booker short list is announced and includes Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. Only two authors have won the prize twice and Mr M could be a third, which sends several people in Bloomsbury potty with excitement. Someone’s caught the cultural zeitgeist with the creation of the first stretch Ferrari, an eight-seat 360 Modena that will still do 166mph. The DCMS braces itself for more Olympic disquiet with news that Channel 4’s Dispatches programme is to stir some muddy waters. A copyright dispute between the major press organisations and the International Rugby Board sees a press boycott of accredited events on the day before the opening of the rugby world cup. Will they sort it out before anyone finds another world cup to watch? In other news of idiotic sports administration, Ken Bates has banned the BBC from Elland Road because they have upset him. Or something. He joins Sir Alex Ferguson (sic), Big Sam and Harry Rednapp on the list of people the BBC really should themselves boycott.

Friday 7 September
Routine family screening could prevent 40% of heart attacks says a study in the British Medical Journal. Not to be outdone in the battle of the medical mags, The Lancet publishes a study that suggests depression can do more physical damage than a number of long-term. Not to be outdone by anyone, Holiday Which? has noticed that solo travellers often have to pay supplements and they aren’t happy about it. Teenagers should be allowed into pubs in order to allow them to learn to drink responsibly says (wait for it) the chief executive of a massive pub chain. Woolies does its bit to ease the 2012 budget problems by announcing a £5 bottle of champagne. It says ‘Worth it’ on the label and we bet it is.

Saturday 8 September
To the pot and kettle department where we find Damian Hirst saying that the Turner prize is a “media circus”. “Turner would be turning in his grave,” he says, obviously unperturbed by the clumsy sentence construction. Then straight on to Muppet Labs, which has set up shop at the rugby world cup and announced a new shirt that improves performance by including negative ions in the material. State media in Beijing announce a ban on new golf courses, race tracks and ski slopes in order to save land for housing. The QEII breaks down off the Croatian coast with 1,750 passengers on board. It’s in its final year of service and has broken down before once or twice.

Sunday 9 September
Plans surface to give all expectant mothers a one-off payment of £120 to spend on vegetables. No, really. Mountaineering and outdoor organisations will be issuing additional warnings to inexperienced climbers heading for Scotland’s mountains this winter following last winter’s high number of deaths. England’s men win a footy game for once, while England’s women get ready for their world cup in China. Actor Rupert Everett becomes a Venetian hero by taking on the illegal practice of charging for the use of the Lido, the city’s (possibly the world’s) most famous beach. More ructions at Harold Fern House, the architectural gem that is home to the Amateur Swimming Association, as Sharron Davies takes a swipe at the retreating figure of Bill Sweetenham, branding the soon-to-be-ex-performance director of British Swimming a coward for leaving in the year before the Olympics. Asafa Powell brings the 100m world record down to 9.74 seconds and puts his success down to listening to the advice of his coach. It will never catch on.

Monday 10 September
The Campaign for Better Transport warns that the result of another six million cars on the UK’s road by 2031 will bring “traffic hell”. Plus ça change. Tourism officials reckon that the summer’s floods have cost £70m in lost receipts for tourism-related businesses. Channel 4’s Dispatches goes to air with claims that a number of people, not least Milord Coe, have done quite well out of their association with the 2012 campaign. Cue strenuous denials and legal consultations all round. The National Trust warns that any visitor centre constructed at the Giant’s Causeway would threaten the world heritage site status of the landmark basalt column thingy. A team from Sheffield Hallam has worked out that making friends online isn’t the same as doing it in person and figures from nine Scottish hospitals show a 17% reduction in admissions related to heart attacks since the smoking ban was introduced; previously there had been a 3% reduction in similar admissions each year of the last decade. Ofcom has censured the BBC for showing a clip of the animated 2012 logo that could have triggered epilepsy, while the news for Leeds United supporters just keeps getting better: Ken Bates says he won’t sell the club to that beacon of probity and decorum, Freddie Shepherd, but he might have him on the board.

Tuesday 11 September
Sir Derek Wanless is apparently to tell The Broon that the £43bn spent on the NHS over the last five years could have been spent more effectively. In what may be the final victory in the footballing class war, it seems a bell is to be rung at Wembley to encourage the corporate match-goers back to their seats at the end of the interval, some say half-time. Rumours from the 2012 Olympic board, which meets today, suggest that there is still some debate about whether all the spectators in the Olympic stadium will have a roof over their heads. Let’s go the whole hog and have some standing room.

Wednesday 12 September
Health secretary Alan Johnson announces plans to make healthier lifestyles his department’s top priority. London is now the most expensive place in the world to eat out, according to the restaurant guide Zagat.  The average cost of a meal in London is now £39.09, although you can do it a bit cheaper if you know where to go (look for places where the various set breakfasts can be ordered by number is our tip). And still in London, the England football team has now won two matches in a week so a second star above the badge on the shirt can’t be far away. So too have Scotland and, even better, they have beaten France in Paris but the celebrations could seriously affect the long-term health figures. Talking of long-term health, Led Zeppelin are to play a one-off charity gig at the Dome in November. Jason Bonham, son of the late, great John, will be wielding the sticks and no doubt hordes of grey-haired punters will be wielding their credit cards. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children reveals that only 2.5% of children get the recommended daily hour of exercise. With the months ticking away until Liverpool becomes the European city of culture, Phil Redmond has been brought onto a “new, slimmer board” to bring a “Scouse edge” to proceedings. Angela Hartnett at the Connaught, one of Gordon Ramsay’s stable of restaurant ventures, will no longer be there when the Connaught reopens in December after a £60m refurb, prompting speculation that Gordon may “have done a Linda Barker” and over-exposed himself.

Thursday 13 September
A couple of nasty sporting defeats for France have sent a nation looking for a scapegoat. President Sarkozy and his Resistance-era letter reading are among the front runners. British scientists (working, we fervently hope, in a shed) have come up with a non-stick chewing gum, a simple thing that could save local authorities the £150m a year they currently spend on cleaning the sticky stuff off the pavements. The Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations publishes a study which shows lifestyle diseases, including heart disease, stroke and diabetes, have gone hand in hand with the Indian economy’s growth. In a development that should surely have the Football Association thinking about its disciplinary procedures, the McLaren-Mercedes Formula One team is fined £50m for its choice of reading matter following an enquiry by the sport’s (sic) governing body.

Friday 14 September
Nike’s double-page ad featuring the England rugby team on the cliffs of Dover with the copy line “Not without  a fight” sends a bizarre message of romantic aggression and wistful hopelessness to the rest of the teams in the rugby world cup. The latter is proved to be the most appropriate as they take one hell of a thrashing at the hands of South Africa. London fashion week begins with a burst of flash guns and a chorus of tantrums. After the collapse of Metronet, the government’s PFI partner on the Tube, Transport for London has warned that the £9bn Crossrail project could put the long-term future of the existing underground network in jeopardy. Jimmy McGovern’s next project is a musical titled King Cotton, based on the Lancashire cotton famine of 1861-65.

Saturday 15 September
An unperformed and previously unknown Noel Coward play has been discovered in the British Library by two Welsh scholars. Oxford Economics, the forecasting fellows, estimate that the UK tourism industry could benefit from the 2012 Olympics to the tune of £2.1bn, £1.27bn of which could come after the event. Few of us ever thought we would actually feel sorry for Steve McClaren but with the news that Emile Heskey, the newly discovered ageing wunderkind of the England team, has broken his foot, thus keeping him out of England’s next Euro 2008 qualifier, you do begin to wonder if the Fates have got it in for the manager. Perhaps Clotho, Lachesis and Antropos could make amends by playing across the front line?

Sunday 16 September
Defra thinks that the latest foot and mouth outbreak has been contained but warns that “vigilance is of paramount importance”. France cheers itself up a bit when its rugby team scores 87 points against Namibia. Pastis all round, je pense. Just up the road in Paris it seems that Nicola Sarkozy, president of France, is talking to leading architects to advise him on how to leave a lasting cultural legacy. Helen Mirren, Ricky Gervais and Prime Suspect, which is shown in the States on the not-for-profit Public Broadcast Service, pick up Emmys (the TV equivalent of the Oscar) in Los Angeles. A few hours drive away and OJ Simpson is being arrested in Vegas for stealing sporting memorabilia, some of which literally had his name on it.

Monday 17 September
Les Miserables, which has been running in London for 21 years, is off to China, says Cameron Mackintosh. Cycling England publishes a report which shows how a £70m investment in cycling could save the Treasury £520m. A regular cyclist apparently saves the NHS £28.30 a year. Meanwhile, the world of sport’s response to the news that the UK is to establish the world’s first large-scale wave farm to generate electricity off the Cornish coast comes from the surfing community. Their general point seems to be that the prospect of renewable energy and the future of mankind is all very well but if the boom spoils a gnarly break we’re, like, not into it, dude. Olympic Price Watch notices that the cost of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft is £4.43bn. Luckily the Saudis are more than happy to cough the cash – for the planes, not the Games. The Departments of Communities and Local Government, and Culture, Media and Sport are named by the Commission for Racial Equality in the list of government departments that have failed to comply with the race equality legislation. More than 6,900 photographs have been submitted to the National Portrait Gallery for its photographic portrait award, a record entry. Setting a record for predictability, the Sex Pistols surprise no one by announcing a one-off comeback in November. Alisher Usmanov, the eighteenth-richest man in Russia (which these days, in contrast to a generation or two ago, involves quite a lot of money), scuppers a planned auction of the late Mstislav Rostropovich’s art collection by buying the lot in advance for around £25m. The collection will be returned to Russia. Venice is to ban the throwing of rice at weddings in an effort to get rid of the pigeons. “Every new-born Venetian is lumbered with an annual tax of €275 to clean up after pigeons,” says an exasperated Venetian spokesperson. Virgin sells its music store division, severing Richard Branson’s links with the business in which he made his name.

Tuesday 18 September
A survey of children finds that around half of them assume someone to be poor if they don’t have a mobile phone. Ofcom and the BBC Trust give the green light for the development of a BBC high definition television channel later this year. A third foot and mouth case is confirmed in Surrey. Unintended Olympic Price Watch: the demand for metals from booming economies in China, India and Dubai has pushed up prices and brought insurance claims from newly deroofed churches totalling £3.5m, according to Ecclesiastical Insurance. This means that China’s Olympic building boom may indirectly fund London’s Olympics as long as Lord Coe doesn’t get caught with lead up his jumper.

Wednesday 19 September
A UK Gambling Commission report finds that problem gamblers constitute only a small proportion of the gambling whole. So that’s alright then. Further sighs of relief as Amy Winehouse is spotted on stage and coherent when she performs at the Mobo awards and collects an award or two. Professional football demonstrates just how far it has fallen when the Football League congratulates Nottingham Forest for sporting behaviour. Forest deliberately conceded a goal in the replay of a cup game that was originally abandoned when a player was rushed to hospital at half-time; they were one-nil down at the time.

Thursday 20 September
Ryedale District Council apologise to Gwyneth Coles after Mrs Coles was locked in a public toilet overnight in Pickering, North Yorkshire. The great-grandmother commented, “I think it’s hilarious now, although it was pretty traumatic at the time.” The Tate reveals visitor figures of 7.7 million across its four galleries between April 2006 and April 2007. Whether the Tibetans like it or not (they won’t), it seems that Coubertin’s symbol of peace and fraternity is to be taken into the Death Zone. It seems that the Chinese will take the Olympic torch to the top of Everest, according to the Xinhua news agency. However, the IOC announces that the torch won’t go through Taiwan as the bickering between Beijing and Taipei just got too dull. Chelsea FC confirm that they have parted company with the Special One “by mutual consent”, which translates into about thirteen million quid. Speculation begins as to whether Sebastian Coe, a noted Stamford Bridge regular, might snap up Mr Mourinho for a position in the 2012 machine. After years of prevarication, excuses and self-righteousness, the world’s major professional golf tours introduce drug testing programmes. This raises the horrible prospect that watching golf could get even duller and a? counter-campaign for compulsory drug-taking for professional golfers can’t be far away.

Friday 21 September
England’s campaign in the women’s football world cup comes unstuck against the USA. Meanwhile, with slightly taller posts on the pitch, the England rugby team’s world cup campaign begins to piece itself together with a victory over Samoa. With the county championship building nicely, Mark Ramprakash knocks 130 at the Oval, scoring 2,000 first-class runs in a season for the second year on the trot and becomes the first player in the history of the championship to average over 100 over consecutive summers. And he can do the foxtrot.

Saturday 22 September
If foot and mouth wasn’t enough, a case of bluetongue disease is confirmed in the UK. Tim Henman ends his professional tennis career by steering Britain’s Davis Cup team to victory over Croatia. Endless debate about just how good he was and how much we’ll miss him begins immediately. Elsewhere Sussex win the county championship in an exciting (no, really) end to the cricket season.

Sunday 23 September
Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, pleads for the preservation of standards, and the funding that makes high standards possible, at the library. “I don’t want to run a second-rate organisation,” she says. Marcel Marceau, the mime artist’s mime artist, dies at the age of 84. The Raindance Film Festival in London will screen its films and show them on the web simultaneously, the first time a film festival has achieved this impressive technological feat. Moving pictures of a slightly different kind as Bury Council sells a Lowry for £1.25m at auction.

Monday 24 September
The Nou Camp marks its fiftieth anniversary by announcing that Lord Foster is to lead the design team that will give Barcelona’s home a €250m facelift. Instead of looking longingly to the mid-west of the USA, UK-based storm chasers rush to southern England as Kent and Northampton turn into Tornado Alley. Tate Britain’s Millais exhibition stakes its claim for greatness with some good old fashioned trash talk. “This is a far more unusual exhibition than the terracotta warriors,” says the Tate’s Alison Smith. “Anyone can hop on a plane to China to see the figures there but most of these haven’t been seen in London since 1898.” We look forward to a photo call with Stephen Deuchar standing nose to nose with Neil MacGregor for the official stare-down. A third of workers now spend about half a day a week working from home, according to a survey. India win the first Twenty20 world cup while Arsenal announce figures showing a £200m turnover and match day income of £90m every game. The LTA suspend two junior players after allegations of “unprofessional lifestyles”. “They’ve either got to behave like professional athletes or go and do something else,” says the ever-pragmatic and no doubt wholly abstemious Roger Draper. And speaking of saintly individuals, the Blessed Thomas Holford College in Altrincham will let the England football team use their pitch in advance of England’s visit to Russia. The school’s artificial turf pitch, featuring real ‘lots of bits of rubber’ technology, is the closest we’ve got to the Russian pitch.

Tuesday 25 September
The China National Grand Theatre, Beijing’s new arts complex, opens with a performance of The Red Detachment of Women ballet. Halo 3, the sine qua non of computer games, is launched in London. Launched in the US yesterday, the game has already racked up $125m of sales. Another case of the bluetongue virus is found in Suffolk, raising fears that the disease is spreading. Folkestone announces its triennial, a public art project that will take its bow next summer and, they hope, put the Kent town on the international artistic map. Tracey Emin is among the artists who will be involved in the festival. Police remove a Nan Goldin photograph from an exhibition at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead on the grounds that, in the opinion of noted art expert Inspector Knacker, it might constitute child pornography.

Wednesday 26 September
Oxford’s Bodleian library is granted planning permission for a new £29m book depository in Osney, the part of the city that suffered flooding earlier this year. Danish researchers publish a study of 90,000 pregnant women that suggests a link between high-impact exercise early in pregnancy and increased risk of miscarriage.

Thursday 27 September
The National Portrait Gallery has bought David Hockney’s Self Portrait with Charlie with funds from gift aid receipts. It is the first painting they have acquired using this source of revenue and it will go on show on 11 October. Some of the highlights for Liverpool’s year as the European capital of culture are unveiled and to no one’s surprise Paul McCartney announces via a video link that he will be back next year to perform in his home town. That’s Liverpool, his old home town, not Brighton, his new one. And he’s had a new haircut to mark the occasion. Nothing can now go wrong. In the Conservation Awards, sponsored by Sir Paul himself, top prizes went to Durham University, for its paper conservation skills project, and to Tuula Pardoe, of the Scottish Conservation Studio, and Sue Payne, from Perth Museum, for the restoration of the 400-year-old wardrobe of a Jacobean gentleman. One of the UK’s two drug-testing laboratories is stripped of its international accreditation by WADA, the world anti-doping agency.

Friday 28 September
It seems that punters in the UK will lose £10 billion next year (between them, not each), a rise of 50% since 1999. Culture secretary James Purnell does what is surely known as ‘a reverse Trotsky’ by being air-brushed into a photo, causing much spluttering, dudgeon and affront. It seems he arrived late at a hospital for the photo call so someone just ‘shopped him in’, as it is definitely known in the graphic design trade. Oh, and they did it rather badly, so everyone noticed. Sports retailer JJB announces a spectacular 40% drop in first-half profits. Dependence on replica football kit is to blame, say their top bods, rather too late in the day. England’s rugby team wins again, leaving them with a world cup quarter-final against Australia. Golf professional Marc Warren ends up in hospital after swinging his five iron in his hotel suite and bringing down the chandelier on top of him. Luckily he was only wearing a towel at the time so medics could quickly get to the nasty wound on his stomach to stitch it when he arrived at the hospital. His mum will no doubt have told him a million times not to play in the house but did he listen?

Saturday 29 September
Kensington and Chelsea are considering piloting the ‘naked street’ approach to road design by removing all traffic lights and road signs on some of its roads. It seems that Camelot is to stop funding the Camelot Foundation, the grant-giving charity it has very proudly trumpeted on numerous occasions in the past.

Sunday 30 September
In what may be a large-scale example of what the Americans call ‘entrapment’, two members of the Derry police ‘nightlife patrol’ are injured in the early hours of the morning when a crowd of clubbers, drinkers and nightlife aficionados decide to attack them. A leaked e-mail from within the Treasury suggests that spending £4bn on two new aircraft carriers will mean some belt-tightening for the navy elsewhere. Perhaps we could have a flag day or something to help them out? Blocks of marble fall from the Ducal Palace in Venice, causing concerns among the city’s officials and something a bit stronger than concern among the visitors who narrowly missed ending up underneath the large lumps of stone. Chelsea warns its supporters that the anti-semitic abuse of its manager Avram Grant must stop. Germany beat Brazil in the women’s world cup

 

 

last month

archive

other news

 

home

news

features

comment

letters

advertise

subscribe

about us

contact us