However Hall, 20, is an extremely fast swimmer and is believed to be the only UK triathlete capable of setting a fast first-leg pace to help break up the pack early on and drag Jenkins to the cycle leg in an even more prominent lead.
The second woman, Vicky Holland, appears to have been selected on form.
The selection of the third male in the Olympic team has also created a storm among triathletes. Hayes is a strong cyclist and he will be expected to push the front of any bicycle pack to save the legs of the Brownlees, both of whom are exceptional runners.
Tim Don appears not to have appealed against his non-selection, although he would have been forefront of many of the selector’s minds.
But Clarke, who has Beijing Olympic experience and who finished eighth at the Sydney world series race and 20th at the recent San Diego event was not happy with the selection policy, telling the BBC recently: “I think [the selection policy] is really harsh, I can’t see a reason why athletes finishing eighth, 10th or higher can’t be right up there on the day.Everyone knows anything can happen, people do big things on the day.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
I don't anymore: Apps to help with the details of divorce - Contra Costa Times
Although June is often a good month for weddings, there really is no good time for divorce. And it always comes at a cost -- emotionally and financially.
There are several apps to help you prepare and manage the business of divorce. However, no app will take the place of a skilled attorney.
Each state has its own specific laws and equations for financial support and custody, and many law firms from California to Illinois to New York have free or low-fee apps to walk you through the process before you set foot in a meeting with a lawyer both for the iPhone and Android devices.
In California, you can get a sense of what a divorce will cost you in monthly support with a free iPhone calculator from Dishon & Block that's based on the formulas used by the California Family Code and other rules of the court. That's all is does -- give you a ballpark figure for monthly spousal and child support.
Though most of the calculators in Apple's (AAPL) App Store appear to be state-specific, a free one in the Google (GOOG) Play market covers all states. The Child Support Calculator is based on the various statutory guidelines, though there are
other factors that play into the final number. And the court has the final authority over the amount awarded.One app actually in the iTunes and Android markets that really focuses on divorce in New Jersey does have broader applications for those beyond Hoboken. The app from Stark & Stark can help you do an inventory of the marital assets -- that's mine, this was his -- in preparation for formalizing the process.
It has a Divorce Journal to store personal notes about your divorce and, for physically abusive relationships, it helps you to collect audio and photographic evidence of the abuse -- and contact the authorities for New Jerseyites.
Once your marital ties are dissolved, keeping track of things from email exchanges to child exchanges is often imperative to keep the peace -- or at least legal balance. Divorce Log for Android and iPhone lets you track child support, alimony, time with your children, expenses and correspondence. Entries can be emailed as HTML or text to your attorney or child support office.
The $4.99 app will calculate your expenses and you can paste copies of text messages and emails in the correspondence part of the application.
It's much more fun, obviously, to plan a wedding than it is to plan a divorce. But the apps at least help inform and organize you.
I'm not sure you can say that Windows Phone owners stay married longer, but only the Microsoft Marketplace has no apps on how to divorce -- just how to stay married.
Source: www.contracostatimes.com
The Shard, London, view described as awesome! Defying vertigo, Robert Hardman climbed to the top of the highest building in Europe - Daily Mail
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The only other human beings any higher than me anywhere in Britain - or Europe for that matter - are in aircraft or up mountains. I really am the king of the castle up here.
In fact, I can see a castle down below but it looks so puny that its toy soldiers are invisible. It’s just the teeny-weeny Tower of London.
It’s a pity that haze has descended, because visibility today is down to just seven or eight miles. So I can see London’s Olympic stadium to the east, Hampstead Heath to the north. But on a really good day, you can see as far as Southend and the North Sea in one direction, Berkshire in the other.
This is the best view in Britain for those without helicopters. From up here, it really is the London of a Lilliputian miniature village
In a year or so, everyone will be able to come up here to the 72nd floor of The Shard, the European Union's tallest building, and look down on the capital of the UK
Sometimes, of course, this place is just too tall for its own good. During much of Sunday’s Thames Jubilee pageant, for example, it had its head in the clouds. Literally.
In a year or so, everyone will be able to come up here to the 72nd floor of The Shard, the European Union’s tallest building, and look down on the capital of the United Kingdom. For now, though, it is still work in progress.
Some poor soul has yet to clamber out and dismantle the crane which has just finished attaching the last steel girder to the top of this 1,016ft stalagmite. Inside its glass walls, a thousand workers are still beetling away on the wiring and plumbing.
But the outside is virtually finished. And a month from now, the red carpet will be unfurled for a grand royal inauguration. The Duke of York is coming to do the honours, along with the Prime Minister of Qatar, the tiny Gulf emirate which is busy buying London as a second home (the Stock Exchange, Harrods, the Olympic Village . . .).
The outside is virtually finished. And a month from now, the red carpet will be unfurled for a grand royal inauguration
This is the best view in Britain for those without helicopters. From up here, it really is the London of a Lilliputian miniature village.
You can stare at an empty road and see how quickly congestion breaks out. It only takes one van driver doing a spot of unloading. Who’d have thought that the metamorphosis of a traffic jam could be so absorbing?
At this altitude, you realise what a lot of boat traffic there is on the River Thames, how much green space there is in South London, how lots of red buses aren’t red on top.
The tranquillity is astonishing. The viewing deck is open to the elements, yet it sounds like the countryside — without birds. The pigeons don’t venture this high. Train-spotters and model railway enthusiasts will be glued to the comings and goings on the rail-sprawl below.
True, this thing would not greatly impress the average New Yorker. Plonk it in Manhattan and it would be just another face in the crowd. But, in Britain, it is monumentally different. It isn’t even finished and already has the ‘iconic’ tag slapped on it for evermore. You need only write ‘The Shard’ on an envelope and your letter will get here.
Considering the size of it — 32 acres of floorspace protruding from an area smaller than a football pitch — one might have expected more controversy. This is by far the most prominent landmark London has ever seen. There were certainly angry voices during the planning stages a decade back.
But while organisations like English Heritage argued that The Shard would diminish the dominance of other historic buildings, public opposition has never really taken off.
The Prince of Wales, who is not without views on architectural matters, has confined himself to the observation that it looks like ‘an enormous salt cellar’. ‘He hasn’t had much to say about us really,’ says Irvine Sellar, the man behind it. ‘But his brother, the Duke of York, has always been a great supporter.’
Sellar, 72, has been eating and breathing this project for 14 years now. He is the veteran property developer who bought Southwark Towers, an unprepossessing office block on the south bank of the Thames, in 1998.
And then he had a spot of luck. Within weeks, the Blair Government decided on a new policy of encouraging major new developments attached to transport hubs. And Sellar’s new building was slap bang on top of London Bridge Railway Station.
He decided not to go big, but huge. And he soon had the backing of the new Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.
‘Luck is an evenly dispersed commodity, but you have to make the most of your opportunities,’ he says. As someone who built up one property empire and lost the lot — in the early Nineties — and then built another, Sellar knows about risk. ‘Back then, I had the Rolls-Royce, the plane, the big house and it was a long fall,’ he says. ‘But I had a few loyal friends, I got lucky with a couple of deals and if you have bad news and you’re fit and healthy, then you just have to say: “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life”.’
Sellar’s first fortune was born out of Carnaby Street fashion in the Sixties and Seventies (his wife, Elizabeth, is a former model). His second fortune, rooted in commercial property, puts him in 395th place in the latest Rich List with an estimated worth of 190 million. London-born and bred, he divides his time between homes in London, Surrey and the Sussex coast. No bolthole overseas in the sun? ‘I’d never go there enough. It’s a waste of time.’
A tennis-mad grandfather who does not even include his birthday in the slimmest of Who’s Who entries, he doesn’t do politics and says London has been ‘very lucky’ to have both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson as mayor. But he is no fan of the coalition system. ‘We need strong leadership,’ he says.
Having bought his plot at London Bridge, he wanted to plant something distinctive and historic on the skyline. But he says that, from the outset, aesthetics rather than size was the dominant factor. So, he recruited the distinguished Italian architect, Renzo Piano, an odd choice, perhaps, since Piano disliked tall buildings, finding them ‘arrogant’ and inaccessible.
But Piano saw the opportunity to do something new. The Shard is not a City skyscraper. It peers down on the bankers from across the water in the relatively deprived South London borough of Southwark. Piano took his inspiration from ships which used to populate the Thames and from the profusion of churches dotting the old London skyline. He wanted to create a new spire, but this one would be full of light.
Modern skyscrapers are rather like celebrities, always in sunglasses whatever the weather. This building would not be clothed in dark, reflective glass. The Shard would remove the shades.
In an early Press conference, while struggling to find the mot juste, Renzo Piano likened his vision to a ‘shard of glass’. The name stuck.
‘I wanted to call it LBT — London Bridge Tower,’ says Sellar. ‘But the marketing people talked me round. They said: “The Shard’s a great nickname. Let’s keep it”.’
London's world famous Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament overlook the river, with giant Waterloo station on the southern side
Landmarks: The London Eye is clearly visible from the top of the Shard, as is the vast expanse of Waterloo Station adjacent to it
The BT Tower stands tall in front of Regent's Park in the background and the bright green domed roof of the British Museum in the foreground
Sellar says he wanted to build a ‘vertical town’ as opposed to an office block. The average skyscraper is all about cramming in the optimum number of worker bees. But if you set out to build something which includes offices, restaurants, a hotel and some very grand apartments, then each section will have different needs.
Hotel guests and residents need to look out of the window in a way that office workers don’t. Therefore, you make the residential floors smaller so that everyone is nearer the outside. Office grunts can stare at the wall. That’s why this thing tapers from a large base to a pointy top.
The fatter, lower section is all offices until three floors of restaurant space kick in from floors 31 to 33. Above that, it is a five-star Shangri-La hotel all the way to the 53rd floor. The upper section will be among the most expensive and unusual apartments in Europe — each with an estimated price of more than 30 million and a 360-degree view of the metropolis.
But the residents will still have the likes of you and me clomping around above them. Because floors 68 to 72 will be observation decks like the one I am on now. The uppermost levels (rising to the equivalent of a 95th storey) will house plant and machinery in what surely constitutes Britain’s most spectacular attic.
The very top consists of several shards of glass which simply taper off into thin air. This a clever optical illusion, since it fools the human eye into carrying on upwards, suggesting that the Shard is even taller than it actually is.
Robert Hardman experiences life on the 72nd floor of the highest building in Europe, The Shard in South London
Some poor soul has yet to clamber out and dismantle the crane which has just finished attaching the last steel girder to the top of this 1,016ft stalagmite
And so it would have been, had it not been for the Civil Aviation Authority. The original plan was for something 1,400ft tall, but the custodians of Britain’s skies decided this represented a hazard to air traffic. Piano’s plan was cut back to 1,000ft.
Needless to say, the process was not straightforward. Sellar was preparing his initial planning application when terrorists brought down the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Suddenly, no one was keen on new skyscrapers. When he finally got his planning permissions, there were strings attached — not least a requirement to give the paying public the viewing platform on which I am now standing.
A full decade after Sellar had bought the site, he had not even started building when the 2008 banking collapse stopped the project in its tracks. Along came the Qataris with their bottomless shopping trolley and ended up with 80 per cent of the equity.
Even now, it is unclear who is going to rent all this office space or pay 30 million for a flat in Southwark. But London has plenty of bored trillionaire non-doms. The hotel portion of the tower has already been leased and there are said to be several takers for the various restaurant spaces.
It is self-evidently a bold addition to the London skyline. I like its originality. And it is an eloquent riposte to those dreary modernists who spent all last weekend moaning that Britain is stuck in the past. But there will be some people who hate it, just as many people regarded, say, St Paul’s Cathedral as an eyesore when it opened.
They might care to follow the example of the French writer, Guy de Maupassant, who hated the Eiffel Tower so much that he ate in its restaurant every day. When asked why, he explained that it was the only place in Paris where he didn’t have to look at it.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
London 2012 Olympics: Aaron Cook's Games dream over as BOA ratifies nomination of Lutalo Muhammad - Daily Telegraph
“The results are plain for everyone to see, he is world No 1, European champion and has beaten 10 of the top 15 athletes in the Olympic rankings in his most recent fights. It makes a mockery of the taekwondo -80kg competition in the London Olympics.”
Cook would have been selected if the criteria was on performance, one of the GB Taekwondo selectors, Dr Steve Peters, said. Peters sat in all three meetings but did not vote because he said his role was as an ‘athlete advocate’.
“We all agreed that if world ranking and success in tournaments were the only selection criteria, then Aaron would be selected as he’s an outstanding athlete who could get gold at the Olympics,” said Peters. “All we’re saying is that there are two athletes who can achieve this.”
Peters said Muhammad was ultimately chosen several compelling reasons: he was improving at a rapid rate, including a victory over Cook (although Cook beat his rival soon afterwards) and that his height and flexibility give him an advantage to double tap and earn extra points for headshots in fights.
“People have been confusing the issue, thinking there is something secret or underhand or another agenda and it is nonsense. The fact Aaron is working outside of the academy has never come into the meeting, it is not an issue,” said Peters.
However the BOA has reserved the right to reconsider Muhammad’s selection – an unlikely situation – subject to the findings of an inquiry instigated by the World Taekwondo Federation. Last night Cook was considering his legal options.
The BOA chief executive Andy Hunt said: “After a thorough review, the panel is now sufficiently satisfied that the agreed selection procedures have been followed, and it is on that basis we are ratifying the nomination.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
London 2012: counterfeit Olympics merchandise seized - BBC News
Fake gym bags and cigarette lighters were found in a container from China
Thousands of counterfeit versions of official London 2012 merchandise have been seized by customs teams.
The largest haul was of 7,000 Olympic bags and 540 cigarette lighters at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk.
More than 400 vests were seized at Dover, 100 polo shirts and football tops were found in Coventry and plastic ticket holders found at Heathrow.
The organisers of London 2012 said counterfeiting undermined their ability to raise funds to stage the Olympics.
The seizures were made between March and May.
The shirts were found at Coventry's international postal hub, while the ticket holders found at Heathrow Airport were found packed in boxes and weighed 220lb (100kg).
'Inferior quality'Kevin Sayer, a Border Force officer at Felixstowe, said: "Some of the indicators in the way the shipping was organised made it worth us having a look and opening the doors of the container.
"It was right at the back of the container among a load of other goods - some of them illicit, some not."
Chris Townsend, commercial director for the London Organising Committee of the Olympics and Paralympic Games (Locog), said the fake goods undermined their ability to raise funds.
He added: "The fake goods themselves are likely to be of inferior quality and not meet the stringent safety and sustainability standards that all official products must meet."
Locog said all official merchandise bears a hologram which, when tilted, shows the London 2012 logo rotating.
The Border Force said it would not be bringing any criminal charges in these cases, as it was up to the rights holders to bring a private prosecution against the importers of any counterfeit goods.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Joint credit cards don't dissolve with divorce - CreditCards.com
Joint credit cards don't dissolve with divorce
Removing one person from a jointly held card typically isn't done
By Sally Herigstad
Dear To Her Credit,
How can I remove my husband from my Bank of America Visa
credit card that we have jointly? The bank says to close it and re-apply. We
have been married 17 years. We are getting divorced.
This was my card, and I added him to it years ago. I don't want to start over because I need the credit and credit rating. It also has a lot of mileage rewards on it. Besides, I don't make much money now, so I may not even qualify. Both my husband and I have very good credit scores with no outstanding debts. -- Teresa
Dear Teresa,
The bank has the last word on this one, I'm afraid.
If your soon-to-be ex were only an authorized user on this card, it would be easy to drop him. As a joint account holder, however, the bank is counting on both of you to pay off any debts on this card. Despite the fact that it was your card originally, they have been extending credit with two people responsible for paying it and can choose not to let one of them off the hook.
Divorce court can't help much, either. Divorce settlements commonly specify which spouse gets a credit card and the accompanying debt. But the bank is not party to the divorce, and the divorce court cannot change terms of the credit card contract. Between divorce law, contract law and a couple of ex-spouses still stinging from a recent divorce, you can see how leftover joint accounts can turn into nothing but trouble. Closing the account down and starting over starts to sound like a good idea!
You shouldn't have to lose your mileage points, however. One option, of course, is to use them before you close the account. That's what you've been saving them for, right? If you can't do that, you may be able to transfer them to your new account or gift them to family or friends. You can even donate your miles to charity, either directly to organizations like the Red Cross, or through MileDonor.com, an online connection point between charities that need mileage points and donors. Be sure to transfer or donate your miles before you close your account.
If the account has a balance, try to get it paid off with assets from the divorce. The credit card company can and will try to collect from both of you, regardless of who ran up the bill or who the divorce court said should pay it. This is true even if the account is "closed," but still has a balance.
With your good credit, you should be able to get a credit card on your own even with a reduced income level. The amount you can borrow will probably be much less than your previous limit, but that can work to your advantage. Credit cards are great payment tools. They make lousy long-term loans. A card with a low limit gives you all the advantages of plastic without the temptation to let the balance build up -- as almost everyone who has had a credit card has experienced at one time or another.
You won't lose your credit history from this card by closing it. Just as you cannot erase bad credit by closing an account, you don't lose your history of being a good customer, either. You may have less available credit, which can adversely affect your credit score, but if you keep your debt balances close to zero, this shouldn't be a huge issue.
Another thing to remember about your credit score is that it only matters when you use it; for example, when you apply for a loan or credit card, try to get into an apartment or sometimes when you apply for a job. It's not affected by your income level, and it's not a judgment of you as a person. Take your time building it up as a single person. The best way to improve a credit score is slowly and steadily over the years. Good luck, and take care of your credit!
See related: Where you live impacts debt liability in divorce
Sally Herigstad answers questions about credit every week for CreditCards.com. Herigstad is a certified public accountant, author and speaker. She also writes regularly for MSN Money, Interest.com, Bankrate.com and RedPlum.com, and has been a guest on Martha Stewart radio and other programs. You can read more about personal finance and download free budgeting worksheets at her website: www.sallyherigstad.com
To Her Credit answers a question about a debt or credit issue from a CreditCards.com reader each week. Send your question to Sally.
Published: January 27, 2012
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Source: www.creditcards.com
Goldsmith and Rothschild dynasties head for divorce - Daily Telegraph
Rothschild’s family is reported to be ''worried sick’’ about her new relationship. ''Her mother and all her family are very concerned that Kate is going off the rails,’’ another source said. ''Kate and Alice are talking, but most of the family are not on speaking terms with her at the moment. The whole situation is very sad.’’
So just how did this union descend into a debacle worthy of the Jeremy Kyle show?
Rothschild, who began her relationship with Goldsmith when she was 17, has been enjoying rather different interests of late to the family’s usual society pursuits. Her fledgling music career with Roundtable Records led to an ''increasingly nocturnal’’ lifestyle. Her husband’s fears were realised when, a friend says, he “found texts and email messages” between Rothschild and Jay Electronica, who is one of her clients. Worse still, “they were very intense messages planning sexual liaisons”. The “passionate” affair had reportedly been going on for a year. In the confrontation that followed, 31-year-old Goldsmith was arrested at the couple’s £20 million home in Kensington, on suspicion of actual bodily harm. He was said to have slapped his wife and kicked a toy at her, at which point she called the police. He was released without charge after accepting a caution, before taking their three children on holiday with his mother, Lady Annabel.
That, aside from the lawyers’ fees, could have been that, but for the couple taking to Twitter – an extraordinary act for a family that values privacy as much as the Goldsmiths do. Rothschild, 29, claimed she had been cheated on ''several times’’ and even posted a picture of the children, Iris, eight, Frankie, seven, and Isaac, four, being returned to her on a private jet, alongside a series of bitter and increasingly hysterical posts.
Goldsmith branded her behaviour ''appalling’’ and lapped up commiserating messages from the Twitterati. After reports that she had hired a PR firm to manage the crisis, he posted: ''A bit late surely? How about focusing on her devastated children?’’
Ten years ago, Goldsmith was named Britain’s most eligible bachelor by Tatler. Known as Ben-Ben by his family and born when his mother was 46, Goldsmith provided solace for Lady Annabel when her first-born son, Rupert [by first husband Mark Birley], disappeared off the coast of West Africa while swimming in 1986.
Kate comes from an equally illustrious line, her father from the Rothschild banking clan, and her mother from the reputedly cursed Guinness brewing heirs. She grew up at the family pile, Rushbrooke Hall, Bury St Edmunds and went to school at Bryanston, Dorset, where she had a reputation as a “party animal”.
It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to deem whether Goldsmith or Rothschild is richer. Goldsmith’s money is tied up in family trusts, which are so convoluted that his father boasted they could never be unravelled. When Sir James died, he left assets worth about £1.2 billion and each of his children was estimated to have received £10 million in spending money. The founder of a green investment business, Goldsmith is said to be now worth £300 million. He has invested in the concierge business quintessentially.com, set up by Ben Elliot, nephew of the Duchess of Cornwall. He also backed Marco Pierre White’s private dining club, Drones.
For her part, Rothschild shared an £18 million inheritance when her father, Amschel, killed himself in a Paris hotel room in 1996 at the age of 41. He had joined the family firm only nine years before, taking his place in what has been described as ''the closest thing to a Jewish Royal Family in exile’’. The half brother of Lord (Jacob) Rothschild, he was being groomed to take over the family bank, NM Rothschild, from his second cousin Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. He was found hanged after a business meeting, and his death, when Kate was 14, remains unexplained.
Rothschild is expected to gain custody of the couple’s children, unless her husband can prove that she is an unfit mother. The pair will divide the proceeds of the family home, bought for £5 million in June 2002, through a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Two days ago, Rothschild posted emotional late-night tweets: ''To all the vultures harassing and taunting me, the people calling me a whore and a bad mother, the threatening emailers and callers: I have been with my husband since I was 17, my whole life from then until now has been dedicated to him and our children. Ben in a rational mood would be the first to say that my devotion to my children is unshakeable. I am with them now, as I always am.
''Our marriage went bad a few years ago and none of you have any idea what I went through along with my husband. Then we separated for a while… anger and bitterness following that time led to a very one-sided story being released in order to shame and hurt me.
''I am not here to tell tales, I am not here for sympathy, or even to put my side across – this is a personal matter and none of your business. I am simply here to say that there is of course another side that would stop you all in your tracks, as with every break-up.’’
She added: ''I love my husband. He he is a brilliant and incredible man. We grew up together and I miss him painfully, but relationships go wrong.
''As for Jay Electronica... he saved my life in many ways and I am eternally grateful to him and hope that I can repay him by helping him, as his manager and friend.’’
In response to a flurry of criticism on the internet, she posted: ''This is the darkest time of my life; a weaker woman would be broken by your cruel, ignorant condemnations.’’
Jay Electronica, born Timothy Elpadaro Thedford and known for his sexually explicit lyrics, weighed in to post ''#LoveIsOnTheWay’’ as he returned to Britain from America, where he had been at his grandmother’s funeral.
Yesterday, in a belated attempt at dignity, Goldsmith and Rothschild issued a joint statement: “We are both deeply saddened that our marriage has ended after nine years. It is a matter of regret to us that, at a time when our emotions and those of our friends have run high, things have been said in public which should have been kept private. We accept our full share of responsibility for this. Contrary to what has been publicly stated, neither of us anticipates any major issues of contention to arise in the divorce, in which the interests of our children will come first. There will be no further comment, directly or indirectly, from us on any aspect of our family’s private life.”
Goldsmith and Rothschild have deleted many of their Twitter messages and both families appear to be battening down the hatches. Contacted yesterday, Lady Annabel said: ''I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t want to make any comment whatsoever.”
Jemima Khan responded via her BlackBerry: ''Sorry – I can’t discuss this. Hope you understand.’’
But with such public airing of dirty linen, the damage has already been done.
Additional Reporting: Martin Beckford
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Hume: London Mayor Boris Johnson says bikes civilize cities - Toronto Star
The Lord Mayor of London, England, Boris Johnson, wants to make it clear that until Friday morning, he had never been to Toronto, and never heard of Rob Ford.
With that out of the way, the great apostle of urban bicycling does have a message for Toronto.
“Bicycles,” declares the man who rides one to work every day, “civilize cities. Closing bike lanes; that’s not what we’re doing in London. In fact, I’m very proud that bicycle use went up 15 percent last year. Bicycles put the village back in the city. It’s not a war on motorists. I’m a motorist, too. We’re going to keep going, extending bicycle routes all the way out to the suburbs of London.”
In town to flog his latest book, Johnson’s Life of London (Harper Press), the shaggy-haired blonde is, by his own account, having the time of his life. Fresh from an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman — “How long have you been cutting your own hair?” — Johnson likes what he has sees.
“Toronto looks beautiful,” he enthuses, with apparent sincerity. “You have some lovely old buildings. The quality of life is obviously very potentially high.”
Johnson smiles nervously. As the use of the word, “potentially,” indicates, he knows things are seldom what they seem. Still, he insists, cities are where nations will succeed or fail:
“I keep on telling the government that if it wants the economy of the U.K. to grow and grow fast, it has to invest in London. We should be investing where it creates jobs. In Britain, for example, things are pretty sharply divided; there’s what’s happening in London and what’s happening everywhere else.
“My general view is that cities are where the world’s going to be in the future. I believe in cities. People who live in cities live longer, they have better health and they are better educated. Only in cities can we find the praise we all seek. Cities are where we find other people to impress. Cities are fame’s echo chamber …”
Suddenly, a bright red London double-decker bus drives by and Johnson falls momentarily silent.
“My God,” he splutters. “There’s an old Routemaster. They only made about 6,000 of those buses between 1956 and 1970, but they’re everywhere.”
“I’m also a believer in mass transit,” says Johnson, who points to the recent royal celebrations in the British capital and the changes unfolding in London’s East End due to the summer Olympics. “The Jubilee went well. We ticked a lot of boxes there. The crowd was huge, about 1.3 million, but transit worked well. We have a new LRT in East London, new train lines and thousands of new houses.”
In Toronto, Johnson would be dismissed by some as just another Don Cherry-style bike-riding pinko. But keep in mind he is a former Tory MP and a disciple of what he calls “compassionate conservatism.” He attended Eton and Oxford — on scholarship, mind you — and could easily be mistaken for a pillar of the British establishment.
He is also an author. Johnson’s Life of London, his sixth book, tells the story of the “City That Made the World,” from Roman times to the present, Emperor Hadrian to Keith Richards. Like the man, it is clever and quick, learned but not stuffy.
Then Johnson, a former journalist, has a few questions of his own. He wants to know about municipal politics in Toronto, federal politics under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the “cottages” to which Torontonians escape every weekend.
Oh, yes, and one more thing: “Do you have bears here?” he asks. Not in the city, comes the answer, but up north, behind the cottage.
Christopher Hume can be reached at chume@thestar.ca
Source: www.thestar.com
London mayor urges Toronto to 'go for' 2024 Olympics - Calgary Herald
TORONTO - A surprise city council decision Friday to consider bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics was given a solid thumbs up from the mayor of London, whose own city is set to stage one of the world's greatest sports spectacles next month.
Boris Johnson said the Games leave lasting value, something he said will happen in his city.
"I think that's a great move," Johnson told The Canadian Press.
"Go for it, Toronto. You won't regret it if you get it."
Toronto has twice before thrown its hat into the Olympic ring - in 1996 and 2008 - only to be disappointed. It did not try for the 2020 event.
If a decision is made to try to land the Games in 2024, Johnson urged the city to "make a case" for staging them to the International Olympic Committee that goes well beyond the athletics.
"What the IOC wants to hear is that this is something that will be transformative for the life chances of people in your city," Johnson said.
"They want to feel that the arrival of the Olympics will be a great thing, not just for sport and for international sports bureaucrats and the global TV audiences, they want to hear about how it will be of huge social benefit in Toronto."
The games have already proven to be a benefit to people in London and will continue to be so in the future in terms of the economic investment and the impact of that investment, Johnson asserted.
"My job is now to get the yield, to get the return, to get the legacy value from that investment."
That legacy value is "jobs, jobs, jobs, homes, growth - that's what we're going to produce," he said.
The hope is also for the creation for a thriving new district around the Stratford Olympic Park and that regeneration will drive further investment in the Docklands area, he said.
The Summer Olympics formally open in London July 27 amid concern about moving the huge crush of people expected to attend around a city already known for its traffic jams.
Johnson said he was optimistic, however, the city would be ready to deal with the crowds, saying this month's Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations showed that to be the case.
"London is going to be as ready as we can make it," Johnson said.
"We're really looking forward to welcoming Canadians and the world in just a few weeks time now."
Johnson, who was in Toronto as part of a tour for his recently published book, said he would not have a chance to meet Mayor Rob Ford, who was not previously enthralled at the idea of bidding for the Games but backed council's motion on Friday.
Council's decision is preliminary, only instructing staff to examine the pros and cons of making a bid and report back next spring.
Source: www.canada.com
I think this building is amazing, and I can't wait to see the view from the top! And I know the 'poor soul' who owns the crane, have seen pics he's taken from up there, and obviously not a vertigo sufferer!
- Sarah, Stowmarket, 09/6/2012 06:05
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