A London restaurant is running its very own day at the races on Sunday June 23.
The Plough Bar and Kitchen in Clapham, will show all the races on a big screen, from 2.30-5.30pm
So dust off your best suit, fasten your fascinators and jockey for a prime position to watch the dramatic climax, the Diamond Jubilee Stakes, through a pair of Veuve Clicquot sunglasses - free with every bottle of bubbly bought.
Call 020 7585 1844, email ploughevents@youngs.co.uk, or see theploughstjohnshill.co.uk.
ADD mystery to a camping trip by booking one of the new Wild Comfort mobile camping sites in Devon – whose locations are kept secret.
The luxury sites pop up at various locations in the South Hams and exact addresses are only given when booking.
But they are all close to beaches and rivers, the wilds of Dartmoor and the charming towns of Totnes, Kingsbridge, Dartmouth and Salcombe.
They are made up of five sleeping tents, one living room tent, kitchen and hot showers – and you can ask for the kitchen to be stocked on arrival. Prices are from £650 for eight people for one week with short breaks also available from £500. See oneoffplaces.co.uk.
BRITS driving abroad show a worrying lack of regard for road safety.
Twenty-seven per cent are less concerned about breaking speed limits, and 18 per cent take drink-driving less seriously than at home, according to an AXA poll.
And only 49 per cent slap a GB sticker on their vehicle abroad, even though it is required.
IF you need vaccines when abroad. it pays to shop around for the best deal.
There were some large differences in prices at clinics nationwide, when
the appointment and administration fees were added in, research by Airport Parking & Hotels (APH.com) found.
Across the seven clinics surveyed, Doctor Today was the dearest – charging £105 for the cholera inoculation and £63 for rabies.
In contrast, Well-Travelled Clinics charges £30.95 and £61.99 respectively.
The Hospital for Tropical Diseases had the cheapest rabies vaccine of those polled, at just £42.
For a full list of costs see aph.com/travelvaccines.
VISITORS to London will soon be able to get wi-fi while on the Tube.
London Underground have teamed up with Virgin Media to get 120 stations connected by the end of the year.
The first batch of stations are set to get online in July and include Oxford Circus, Camden Town, London Bridge and King’s Cross.
DESPITE the best efforts of the various UK tourist boards this year, it seems as though the days of the staycation could be over.
Research by M&S Money reveals staying in the UK can be 25 per cent more expensive than going abroad.
The cost of a week in London, for those wanting to celebrate the Jubilee and the Olympics in the capital, will set Brits back £1,631, compared with an average £1,298 for a sunny holiday overseas.
Stats from online travel agent On The Beach back up the findings – they have seen a massive increase in bookings for this summer with Spain again leading the way.
Tenerife topped the list of destinations with a year-on-year boost in bookings of 60 per cent, closely followed by Majorca which has increased by 90 per cent.
With hoteliers in Greece slashing prices by some 15 per cent and the low rate of the euro, bookings to the crisis-torn country have risen by 55 per cent. Alistair Daly, marketing director at On The Beach said: “With Britain focusing on the Queen’s Jubilee and the Olympics the UK will be saturated with tourists.
“Our data shows that Brits have chosen to avoid these crowds and take advantage of the reduction on family holidays and guarantee themselves a bit of sun.
“Staycations have taken a back seat in 2012.”
A NEW travel tribe is on the rise – OATs, or Old Age Travellers.
Gatwick Airport polled 1,000 travellers over the age of 70 and found 56 per cent were travelling more now than they did when they were younger.
The airport has now launched a search to find Britain’s oldest traveller.
If you think that’s you, or want to nominate someone, email proof of date of birth, a photo and a line about a favourite travel experience to ukoldesttraveller@gatwick-airport.com before June 29.
Source: www.thesun.co.uk
London 2012: GB fencers targeting Olympic final, says Anna Bentley - BBC News
Three-time British champion Anna Bentley has said a top-eight finish would constitute a successful Olympics for Team GB's foil squad.
Norwich's Bentley, 31, will be joined by Natalia Sheppard and Sophie Troiano in Britain's foil line-up for London.
Anna Bentley“In terms of real money I'm just surviving as it were. It's a big commitment and you're not guaranteed success at the end of it. But it's finally come good for me”
"The aim for the team is to make the Olympic final, which is the top eight teams," she told BBC Radio Norfolk.
"It would be incredible to make it and we have a good chance. Everything we do is focused on making sure we perform."
Medal expectations are low for GB, with eight of the 10-strong squad selected as wildcards.
But Bentley is hoping to cross swords with fencing's top nations - and possibly come up against three-time Olympic gold medallist Valentina Vezalli.
"The Italians are the ones to beat. Valentina Vezalli is not only the most successful fencer ever, she's probably one of the best female Olympians ever too," said Aberdeen-born Bentley, who finished 31st at this week's European Championships.
"We may have to face the Italians in the team event and that will be pretty amazing. The Russians are always strong, as are the Japanese.
"It's more of a global sport than it was 20 yeas ago when it was dominated by Europe."
The former Norwich High School for Girls pupil, who has been in the sport for 20 years, was not assured of selection for London 2012 and even bought tickets for the athletics in case she was overlooked.
"In 2005, I was in Trafalgar Square when it was announced London would be having the Games," she said.
"I was already competing then so that made me decide I was going to go for it.
"A year ago I didn't know how it would play out and if I was going to make it so I got myself tickets for the athletics. I'd be glued to the television if I wasn't there.
"It's been very hard from a financial aspect. I have pretty much given up working, apart from a couple of hours coaching in London.
"In terms of real money, I'm just surviving as it were. It's a big commitment and you're not guaranteed success at the end of it. But it's finally come good for me."
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Canada criticized for weak draft plan at environment summit - CBC
The bad blood between Ottawa and environmentalists was on display before the entire world Tuesday as negotiators from more than 100 countries signed a draft blueprint for sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro.
After months of trying to boil down proposals, environmental officials at the Rio+20 conference in Brazil this week finally compromised and delivered a 283-point "vision" for leaders and politicians to ratify later this week.
In the draft, the countries pledge to work with civil society to "renew our commitment to sustainable development, and to ensure the promotion of economically, socially and environmentally sustainable future for our planet and for present and future generations."
The plan would commit countries to fight climate change with "urgent and ambitious action," increase their aid for developing countries, and work out a global set of long-term sustainable development goals to alleviate poverty and prevent global warming.
Critics say the draft is weak on timelines and firm commitments, and lacks heft when it comes to overseeing the state of the world's oceans.
"The text is extremely weak, and as it stands represents a sellout of people and the planet," Cameron Fenton, director of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, said in an email from Rio.
"Canada's role has been at its best not engaging in the process, and at worst acting to weaken ambitious language and delete commitments."
Oxfam Canada's Mark Fried noted the official text did not contain any new commitments, and even modest proposals — such as improving smallholder farmers' access to resources — were dropped.
"The Rio+20 summit was never going to save the world," Fried said in an email from Rio. "But it should mark a decisive turning point in our ambition to do so."
'These are beginnings, not completions'
Environment Minister Peter Kent, who arrived in Rio late Tuesday afternoon, said the environmentalists' criticism was "unwarranted" and "trivializes" the enormity of the task before negotiators.
"The non-governmental organizations....they know better," Kent said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "Canada takes these things very seriously."
The Rio conference is meant to kickstart action and discussion down the road, not come up with "snap" agreements that are not properly thought out and could well have unintended consequences on sovereignty and domestic policy if adopted without proper scrutiny, Kent said.
"These are beginnings, not completions."
About 50,000 delegates and activists have descended on the Brazilian city for the week. Dozens of heads of state will meet Wednesday and Thursday, although many industrialized countries, like Canada, are sending ministers instead of leaders.
Kent was set to meet with provincial delegations Tuesday night. Premiers from Quebec and Manitoba are both in Rio, along with officials and ministers from some other provinces.
Agreement to talk more, decide later
Environmentalists blamed Canada, in part, for arguing against a new agreement that would better protect the biodiversity of the high seas, where no country has any firm control.
Europe and some developing countries, as well as many environmental groups, had hoped to see leaders commit to forging a new agreement that would protect marine habitat and keep an eye on deep-sea mining.
Instead, negotiators agreed to talk some more, and decide later.
"It's a big failure of Rio, especially since this was talked about as the 'summit of the seas,"' said Susanna Fuller, marine conservation co-ordinator for the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax who was in the negotiating room in Rio.
While regional agreements and fishing accords do control some aspects of biodiversity in some parts of the world's oceans, there are many gaps that beg a global agreement in order to prevent destruction of habitat and ocean pollution, she said.
Developing countries in particular had hoped to have a biodiversity pact so that any benefits derived from marine genetics are shared for the common good, added Greenpeace Canada's ocean campaigner, Charles Latimer.
But Fuller said Canada, the United States, Russia and Venezuela worked together to make sure there would be no new agreement.
That's because Canada is already part of a United Nations ad hoc process to protect the high seas, and creating another agreement would be "duplicative," a spokesman for Kent countered.
Kent said Ottawa is engaged in several different efforts to protect marine habitat, creating conservation areas in domestic waters and participating in global talks to protect international waters.
But critics say there is more to Canada's opposition than that. Canada's companies have an interest in deep-sea mining that might be fettered by a new high-seas biodiversity agreement, they say.
Ottawa has been in an escalating public-opinion battle with environmentalists for months to the point where there is virtually no common ground between the government and even moderate research-based environmental groups.
In the lead-up to the budget, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver chastised environmentalists for taking foreign funding. Protests against federal policy have been growing louder and louder, targeting the budget and its emphasis on "responsible resource management", and most recently the omnibus budget bill that overhauls environmental assessment regimes and the Fisheries Act.
Source: www.cbc.ca
London loses second key legacy figure - NBC Sports
LONDON (Reuters) - A second senior figure in charge of regenerating London's Olympic Park once next month's Games are over is set to step down.
American Andrew Altman, chief executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), will leave on August 15, hot on the heels of former chairman Margaret Ford who left this month.
The softly-spoken Altman worked on transforming the seven billion pounds ($11 billion) publicly funded park in a previously run-down part of east London.
Over the past three years Altman and Ford helped secure tenants for most of the Olympic venues on the 500-acre site including the aquatics centre and handball arena.
But they faced criticism when the deal to award the main stadium to West Ham United Football Club collapsed amid legal wrangling.
The LLDC, previously known as the Olympic Park Legacy Company, is also looking for a tenant for the media centre.
Dennis Hone, chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority which has been responsible for constructing the Games venues, will work as interim LLDC chief executive on a part-time basis.
"I am proud to have been able to set the table with a clear vision, resources and commercial investment," Altman said in a statement.
"It is now the perfect time to transition the project to one focused on construction so there will no disruption after the Games in implementing the legacy vision we have crafted."
The Park, which will be known as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park once the Games are over, will have five new neighborhoods including 7,000 homes.
($1 = 0.6364 British pounds) (Reporting by Avril Ormsby; editing by Tony Jimenez)
Source: nbcsports.msnbc.com
London 2012: Diagnosis boost for Sanya Richards-Ross - BBC News
Five years ago, Sanya Richards-Ross emerged from the US national trials beaten, confused and diagnosed.
The reigning Female World Athlete of the Year, Richards-Ross went to Indianapolis as most experts' first name on the American team sheet for the 2007 World Championships. But the US trials are notoriously tense, and favourites do falter, particularly when they are not in peak condition.
That was certainly the case for Richards-Ross. What was unusual - and frightening for the Jamaican-born sprinter herself - was the nature of her problem.
This was no muscle strain, the world's best 400m runner was covered in skin lesions, her joints ached and the inside of her mouth was so ulcerated that it hurt to drink water. To make matters worse, a deep fatigue set in as she progressed from the qualifying round to semi-final to final.
Richards-Ross on Ohuruogu
I think it's a rivalry. Christine Ohuruogu won the big one. If I won 10 and she's won one, she's won the one that matters the most - I think that carries enough weight to make it a rivalry. She's a very talented athlete and shows up when it counts. That puts a lot of pressure on everybody else in the field as you never know what race she's going to come with. I'm looking forward to racing her again and I know she's looking forward to it too - it will be great for the fans.
That she managed to come fourth, missing qualification for the individual event by one place, is a testament to her consistency over the one-lap distance. But Richards-Ross could not wait to get out of the trials and find out why she was afflicted with these mysterious symptoms.
A new doctor provided the answer, treatment started and things improved. As a result, she was able to take her place in the 4x400m team at the Worlds, adding a second relay gold to the one claimed as an 18-year-old in 2003.
Richards-Ross was running fast again but she was now officially a Behcets syndrome sufferer.
A rare, chronic disease that involves the inflammation of blood vessels all over the body, Behcets can cause serious skin problems, arthritis and meningitis: it can also affect memory, speech and movement.
Richards-Ross never made much of her struggles with it - she wore long sleeves and body make-up when the lesions appeared - but she would occasionally be too tired to train.
Despite this, she did not want to use the condition as an excuse for her failures to turn season-long domination of the 400m into individual gold medals at the year's biggest championships: those 2007 Worlds, the 2008 Olympics and again at the Worlds in 2011.
"As an athlete you never want to blame anything other than saying you didn't execute well on that day," the 27-year-old told me in Dallas last month.
"But if there was ever a time when it affected my performance it was at (the trials) in 2007, I just didn't feel right. I got worse from round to round and I left straight after to see a doctor because I felt so bad. That's when I got diagnosed.
"But after that I felt I had it pretty much under control. There might have been a few times when I couldn't prepare as well as I might have but for the most part it was just not executing on the day, the pressure, or wanting it too badly. I blame those things more than the disease."
There was one other reason why Richards-Ross was reluctant to blame Behcets: she did not believe she really had it.
As a leading light in track and field, and being married to NFL star Aaron Ross, Richards-Ross was arguably the most famous American afflicted with the disease, so she was often approached by other sufferers.
"A lot of people with Behcets reached out to me, and when we talked about our symptoms I felt I didn't have what they had," she explained.
"And the more research I did, the more I thought 'this can't be right, it doesn't fit'.
"So I kept searching until this year I started working with a new doctor, and he doesn't think I have it.
"He thinks it's a treatable skin disease and I've been doing a lot better. I don't get the fatigue or joint pains nearly as much and the lesions and ulcers are better too.
"I'm excited that it's behind me, but it was definitely a tough time."
To say Richards-Ross is "doing a lot better" on the track is hard to measure until we see how she deals with the extra demands that a major championship places on body and mind. The 27-year-old has been churning out world-leading times since 2005 but only had one individual gold medal to show for it - the 2009 Worlds - before this season.
And while few current athletes have won so many one-off races on the annual circuit, it is defeats to the likes of Bahamas' Tonique Williams-Darling at the 2005 Worlds, Britain's Christine Ohuruogu at the 2008 Olympics and last year's seventh-place finish in Daegu that stand out.
This year's Richards-Ross does look different, though.
Once again, she tops the time charts for 400m, but she is also quickest over 200m, setting a personal best of 22.09 in New York earlier this month.
And she added another individual gold medal to her tally in March, winning the 400m at the World Indoors. This revealed a new approach to a championship season, as she had not even run an indoor 400m for the previous six campaigns.
So, one of sport's most dominant athletes looks set, once more, to translate her undeniable class into something truly memorable. She will return to the US national trials on Sunday, once again looking to establish herself as the best in the world this summer. This time, however, she is healthy.
The women's 400m race at London 2012 could be the most delayed coronation in recent track and field history.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
'David and Victoria were extraordinary': Gordon Ramsay praises the Beckhams' support during rift with father-in-law - Daily Mail
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They've been friends for years and have even spent Christmases together.
But Gordon Ramsay insists his friendship with David and Victoria Beckham is the real deal and says he leaned on them for support during his rift with his father-in-law.
Gordon's wife Tana was devastated when her father Chris Hutcheson fell out with the chef, with her mother Greta standing by her husband.
Fighting back: Gordon Ramsay, pictured at New York's JFK Airport yesterday, is looking forward to the future
As well as fighting with his father-in-law, who was his former business partner, Gordon also had to deal with financial problems at his restaurant empire.
Reflecting on the stressful 18 months, the Scot, 45, said he and his wife, 36, have 'never been so close before' and are looking forward to the future.
He credited his friends David and Victoria will being a pillar of strength for the couple when they were struggling to deal with strain.
Supportive: Gordon said David and Victoria Beckham are two of the few people they can trust
He told the Daily Mirror: 'David and Victoria were just extraordinary in terms of the help and support during this time.
'They really were great. People thought we were going to escape the UK and go and live in LA permanently.
'But I’m a fighter and there was no chance of me giving up and going there.'
Gordon praised his wife for putting the feud with her family behind her and channelling her energies into setting up her All About The Girl beauty salon in Battersea, South London.
Feud: Chris Hutcheson and his wife Greta no longer speak to Gordon and Tana
He added: 'Boys, like me and Chris, are always going to fight, but to have your mum ignore you, well that was hard... Tana and I have never been so close before.'
The problems started when Gordon sacked Chris, 63, in October 2010, with the latter branding the chef a celebrity-obsessed 'monster'.
Gordon ended up writing a public letter revealing he had employed private detectives to investigate Chris and his 'complex personal life'.
It was later revealed Chris had been living a second, secret life for three decades with mistress Frances Collins and two children.
Chris initially sued Gordon for unfair dismissal and unpaid wages, before reaching a 2million settlement in February this year - which includes payment for a 30 per cent share in Gordon Ramsay Holdings.
Last December, Gordon was awarded 250,000 costs after a judge ruled that Chris, Tana's sister Orlanda Butland and her brother Adam were liable for breach of confidence after hacking into personal emails and company computers.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
London's take on Stonehenge for Summer Solstice - ITN
The iconic megaliths of Stonehenge have been recreated in central London ahead of the Summer Solstice on Wednesday evening.
Citihenge is a giant sculpture made from scrap cars and, unlike its neolithic name-sake, it is surrounded by urban landmarks rather than rural tranquility.
Each of the six, three-car henges is five metres wide and more than five metres high, and the whole thing weighs 36 tonnes.
It was designed by sculptor Tommy Gun over a three-month period.
He said: "It is made entirely from old car parts, which taps into my own childhood growing up on a farm where I used to love building and creating things with pieces of discarded machinery."
Citihenge will remain in London for two days before touring the UK, appearing at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex from June 28 to July 1.
Source: www.itn.co.uk
Gordon if they are your friends, you wouldn't keep using them to stay in the public eye. Don't you have any other friends? Business must be bad to drag this old hat story up again, and the Beckham name.
- My view, Milk and Beans, 20/6/2012 11:05
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