Disgraced former MP David Chaytor admits expenses fiddle

Posted by on Dec 3, 2010 in Blog, News | 6 comments At least disgraced former MP David Chaytor will be home for Christmas as he faces jail in the New Year after admitting thee charges of falsely accounting his Parliamentary expenses totalling just over £20,000.  It carries a sentence of up to seven years, though leniency is expected to be given for his guilty plea. It’s a sad day for politics, but a good day for justice, and the public...
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Russia 1, England 0

Posted by on Dec 2, 2010 in Blog, News | 6 comments Russia is desperate to prove to the world that it is a new nation which has shrugged off its past reputation, though there are still no answers about the mysterious deaths of Alexander Litvinenko and Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Why did FIFA turn a blind eye to this in choosing Russia to host the 2018 World Cup? Our own Winston Churchill was quoted in their presentation to demonstrate how...
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Tuition fees and student unrest

Posted by on Nov 25, 2010 in Blog, university | 5 comments My grave concern about tripling university tuition fees is that it is a flawed business plan. A bank would not lend thousands of pounds on the pretext that it might be paid back ONLY IF the students secures a job with a salary of £21,000. With the proposed changes mature students, for example, can take out a loan to pursue their own academic interests and have no intention of working afterwards....
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Nick Clegg cornered by Oxford graduate over soaring tuition fees

Posted by on Nov 17, 2010 in Blog, university | 9 comments A week after violent protests by students over the proposed tripling of university tuition fees, Nick Clegg was cornered by Oxford graduate Portia Murray who asked him to defend the promise Liberal Democrats made not to increase fees in their 2010 election manifesto. He gives his answer on this video, appearing uncomfortable at times, and states that as his party is not in power, they are unable...
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Prince William and Kate to be married

Posted by on Nov 16, 2010 in Blog, News | 13 comments So Waity Katy has bagged her Prince Charming and will one day be our Queen following today’s announcement that the couple plan to marry next year. We are told that they became engaged last month during a private holiday in Kenya after dating for eight years. I observed from this recent photo of them taken at a friend’s wedding that she seemed to radiate an inner glow which came from...
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The Chandlers are freed by Somalian pirates

Posted by on Nov 14, 2010 in Blog, News | 11 comments What a breathtaking weekend for releases from captivity. First, the Burmese demure pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was freed yesterday by her country’s dictators after spending more than 15 years under house arrest. And now British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler have been released by Somalian pirates after spending over a year in captivity. I thought everyone had forgotten about this...
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Is a “mercy killing” murder?

Posted by on Nov 12, 2010 in Blog, News | 10 comments We need an urgent political debate in this country about “mercy killings” following a decision by the Court of Appeal today rejecting a mother’s conviction of murder after she fatally injected her brain-inured son with a heroin injection to end his “living hell”. Why wasn’t it reduced to manslaughter? Frances Inglis, 58, of Dagenham, was jailed for life at the...
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Will you buy the new Sinclair electric vehicle?

Posted by on Nov 11, 2010 in Blog, News | 4 comments Sir Clive Sinclair has designed a new electric vehicle following his C5 battery model which flopped after it was launched in 1985. It had a top speed of 15 miles per hour and was intended to transform the way people travelled, but ended up losing its inventor £6 million. Undeterred, the entrepreneur has unveiled his the X-1, which is similar to a battery-powered bicycle with a battery that is...
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Lembit Opik and Ann Widdicombe would make great jungle partners

Posted by on Nov 10, 2010 in News | 5 comments Defeated Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik is joined by a host of oddballs in the latest screening of “I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!“. I’m not sure why actor Nigel Havers is included as I considered him quite sane. I can only suspect that Lembit tried, and was rejected, to appear on the more glamorous Strictly Come Dancing show where his former political rival Ann...
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Could you run a bed and breakfast?

Posted by on Nov 9, 2010 in News | 8 comments If you have a spare bedroom or two, would you use it to bring in extra income and run a bed and breakfast? This article in Lady magazine describes what happens when one couple decide to do just his – and they even boast their own “boutique piglets”, which I find hilarious, but not an attraction. However, their base in Suffolk’s Constable Country, a favourite walking area...
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Seed Cathedral blows me away!

Posted by on Nov 1, 2010 in News | 3 comments This is the most bizarre and eccentric creation I have ever seen. Yet it is pure genius. Known as the “Seed Cathedral” – or the “Dandelion” for its radiating sprays of rods – this space-age flower power building has won the top award for the finest pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, the biggest world fair on record, where it attracted eight million visitors over...
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The Queen’s diamond jubilee Blue Peter competition

Posted by on Oct 31, 2010 in News | 4 comments The Queen has asked young Blue Peter viewers to design the official logo for her diamond jubilee in 2012.  It’s a canny way of engaging with today’s young people who may not have strong royalist views. And it made me think of my husband’s Blue Peter moment which nearly ended in disaster. Perhaps Her Majesty is keen to be presented with her own highly coveted Blue Peter badge,...
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The great value of university alumni

Posted by on Oct 30, 2010 in university | 10 comments They say it’s not what you know, but who you know, and never has this been more essential than now for our troubled universities facing huge uncertainties over future funding. It means they actively need the support of any influential and glittering alumni – and preferably very rich ones – to act as their ambassadors and generously support fund-raising campaigns, as well as...
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An inspirational woman sold for £20

Posted by on Oct 25, 2010 in university | 4 comments I learned about a very special woman last week during a visit to Girton College, Cambridge.  This was established as the UK’s first woman’s college in 1869 and located two miles north of the city centre to discourage “marauding male” undergraduates and it wasn’t until 1979 that males were admitted. The college has a glittering alumni, including Arianna Huffington,...
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Is Wayne Rooney worth £50 million?

Posted by on Oct 22, 2010 in News | 12 comments Wayne Rooney brilliantly played Alex Ferguson and Manchester United with his sure footed manoeuvres to score his best victory yet - reportedly doubling his £90,000 a week salary following lame threats to join Manchester City. This has been calculated to equate to £936 per hour!!! Rooney’s walk-out threats led to extraordinary scenes outside his home last night by militant United fans who...
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A stabbing, uni visit and ferris wheel ride in Sheffield

Posted by on Oct 19, 2010 in university | 2 comments My younger son James wanted to visit Sheffield Hallam University’s open day to have some back-up in case he fails to get into his first choice, which is Nottingham Trent, a firm favourite with many students I speak to, and well oversubscribed. As we approached the university, I found myself driving down a nearby backstreet as I wasn’t sure where my sat nav was directing me – and...
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Made in Dagenham – the real women behind it

Posted by on Oct 15, 2010 in News | 3 comments I was confused when I saw Made in Dagenham last week as at the end it included some black and white news clippings from the 1960s showing older women on strike, while the film used much younger women. The successful and inspiring film is a dramatisation of the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant where female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination over pay. But how...
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Camp Hope – The Great Escape

Posted by on Oct 13, 2010 in News | 6 comments I had planned to stay up and watch the first Chilean miner being brought to the surface – ending 69 agonising days beneath the earth’s surface. I had wanted to share their exhilaration and see their faces as they were reunited with their loved ones. I’m afraid I nodded off as this didn’t happen until 4am, but I immediately switched on to Sky News first thing this morning...
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Some questions for Lord Browne over soaring university tuition fees

Posted by on Oct 12, 2010 in university, updates | 2 comments The radical review of university tuition fees by Lord Browne will allow universities to charge unlimited fees. It proposes a free market in fees, though universities charging more than £6,000 a year would lose a proportion of the fee to help cover the cost of student borrowing. Not only does this sound complicated, it will also deter many poorer students from applying, and even “middle...
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Johnny Depp school visit – if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Posted by on Oct 8, 2010 in News | 5 comments The surprise visit of Hollywood hearthrob Johnny Depp to a primary school after being sent a letter by a nine-year-old schoolgirl asking him to help her classmates “mutiny” against the teachers just proves that if you don’t ask, you don’t get, and nothing is impossible. Shocked staff at the school in Greenwich had only 10 minutes notice that the world’s most famous...
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Chilean miners could be free within days

Posted by on Oct 6, 2010 in News | 4 comments The countdown has begun for the release of 33 Chilean miners trapped 2,300ft in a tunnel since 5 August – everybody’s worst nightmare. It is hoped that rescuers will reach the trapped men with the next two days, and that they could be free within days. Just last week, rescuers estimated a late-October pullout from the shelter. Now President Sebastian Pinera has changed the expected ...
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Did Onassis have Bobby Kennedy killed?

Posted by on Oct 5, 2010 in News, updates | 2 comments I’ve booked  tickets to see the new West End play Onassis starring Robert Lindsay. But I am perturbed that the storyline is based on a book which essentially claims that the Greek shipping magnate arranged the murder of  Bobby Kennedy which has never been proven. But then neither has the writer Peter Evans been gagged from making these astonishing allegations in his book Nemesis,...
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Congratulations to Nobel Prize winner Prof Robert Edwards

Posted by on Oct 4, 2010 in News, updates | 7 comments Congratulations to scientist Prof Robert Edwards on being awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. But why has it taken so long for him to achieve this worldwide recognition? The pioneering IVF treatment he developed with  Dr Patrick Steptoe at Bourn Hall Clinic, near Cambridge (he died in 1988) – resulted in test tube babies as we know them – and more than 4 million babies have been...
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The day I met Ronnie Barker’s mother

Posted by on Oct 1, 2010 in News | 6 comments Very few actors – let alone comedians – are honoured with a bronze statue as a legacy. Ronnie Barker, who was a firm household favourite, is one such man who has been immortalised this way, except I’m not too sure about the likeness. Like most great men, he has a Cambridge connection. I discovered it when I was sent out as a local reporter by my news editor to work off-diary,...
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Universities and business

Posted by on Sep 24, 2010 in university | 2 comments This weekend I’m attending the first of four university open days being held over the next few weeks with my younger son. He wants to study Business & Marketing and has shown an entrepreneurial flair from a young age by selling golf balls on his school bus, as well as sweets when they were banned, but I soon put a stop to that. Even his driving instructor became a customer and bought a...
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