Going nowhere
Sport A summer of speculation was brought to an end on Wednesday when
the Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo, pictured above, announced that he
would stay with Manchester United and spurn a record-breaking transfer fee
offered by the Spanish club Real Madrid. Although the 23-year-old apologised
for causing friction between the two clubs, he was clear about his motives.
“I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think,” he
told the Portuguese newspaper Publico. “I have a dream of playing at Real
and I thought it was time to move on. People can’t be upset about me
fulfilling a childhood dream.”
Now the drama’s resolved, Ronaldo has vowed to put his heart and soul into
playing for Man Utd. For his part Ferguson is all sympathy. “The fans have
got to understand that a young boy can be tempted by all this money.
Particularly a young lad from Madeira. His father died three years ago and
he’s had to look after his mother, sister and brother,” he said. Whether the
club’s fans share the mood of sweetness and light remains to be seen.
Buried in sand
Coastguard A teenager died last week when a sand tunnel he and his
friends had spent the day building on the beach collapsed on top of him.
Craig Owen, 16, who had been staying with his family at a caravan site near
Llanelli, in Wales, dug two holes 15ft apart with a tunnel connecting them.
At 7pm on Sunday the roof of the tunnel caved in, burying him under two tons
of sand. His father made frantic efforts to dig him out, but by the time the
emergency services freed him 20 minutes later, he had suffocated.
Afterwards, coastguards warned holidaymakers to keep a close eye on their
children. Dave Hughes, coastguard manager for Swansea, said: “With school
holidays in full swing, we want to warn families to be aware of the dangers
. . . sand is unstable and heavy and can collapse at any time.”
It doesn’t add up
Education One child in five is leaving primary school without the
basics in reading, writing and maths, it was revealed on Monday. More than
120,000 11-year-olds are unable to read, write or add up properly, according
to the results of national tests in maths and English, and will move up to
secondary school without mastering the “three Rs” well enough to cope.
The true scale of failure is likely to be even worse. Children face being
reexamined next month when they start secondary school because many head
teachers – who allocate children to classes according to ability – do not
believe the results of the primary school tests. Not only has the American
company contracted to mark the tests been dogged by claims of inaccuracy and
late results, but many children were heavily coached for the Key Stage 2
tests, inflating the standards.
One head of science said: “It’s like they’ve been prepared for an MOT – you
can pass on the day but not the day after.”
Hospital bugs
Hospitals Rats, maggots, cockroaches, fleas, bedbugs – it turns out
vermin are no strangers to some National Health Service hospital wards. More
than a third of NHS trusts have had to call in pest controllers 50 times or
more in two years, according to information revealed on Wednesday by the
Conservative party, using the Freedom of Information Act. One hospital
reported rats in a maternity unit; an unlucky patient at another found
maggots in her slippers.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust had most pests, with 1,070 cases in
the two years to March, while five other trusts reported more than 800
incidents.
The Department of Health insists that insect infestations will not spread
disease among patients.
Jolie expensive
Family A British magazine paid a record £7m for the world’s most
expensive baby pictures last week. Hello! in the UK and People magazine in
the US won a bidding war to print photographs of Angelina Jolie and Brad
Pitt with their four-week-old twins, Knox and Vivienne, pictured below. The
publications will split the bill and the actors are expected to donate the
proceeds to their charity foundation.
Killer’s pub ban
Courts For killing your wife, I sentence you to . . . aone-year pub
ban. On Monday a judge barred Edward Flaherty, 74, from frequenting any pub
between 11am and 11pm, after he was convicted of strangling his wife, Ina,
69, with a tie. Flaherty, from Glasgow, who suffers from dementia, had
claimed that he killed his wife of 52 years because she would not give him
money to go drinking. Lord Matthews told Flaherty: “I am anxious to impose a
sentence that restricts your liberty. Not being able to go to the pub will
be more meaningful than a prison sentence.”
The government has also announced plans to reform the law for domestic
violence cases. A man will no longer be able to plead provocation caused by
a spouse’s nagging or infidelity.
Family affair
Crime Who says crime doesn’t pay? On Friday it was revealed that
British crime bosses rule a £40 billion underworld, with more than 27 Mr
Bigs running empires direct from their prison cells.
A police intelligence map pinpointing 1,000 criminal networks shows that
British families dominate gangland and are far more powerful than immigrant
gangs from eastern Europe and Asia. Deputy Chief Constable Jon Murphy told
The Times: “British gangs are quite unlike the Italian mafia model or the
Turkish groups. There are no set ranks, rules and structures. They are more
fluid, flexible and opportunist.”
Five members of one British crime family – the Johnsons – were jailed last
week for a total of 49 years. They were known as the scourge of the
aristocracy as they specialised in breaking into stately homes and stealing
arts and antiques. The Johnsons – travellers who lived on caravan sites –
hid their loot in a bunker outside Stratford-upon-Avon, where antiquities
were found in black bins, pictured above. In 2005 Ricky Johnson, the head of
the family, took part in a documentary in which he boasted: “I feel I have
got the right to rob the lords, the sirs and the ladies.”
Chef’s bane
Food What’s green, free and tasty in salads? A plant called henbane,
Antony Worrall Thompson said in a magazine interview. Encouraging foodies to
forage for wild herbs, the television cook suggested using henbane, a little
known plant, as a salad ingredient. Henbane is in fact a relative of deadly
nightshade.
Kate Collyns, editor of Healthy & Organic Living, which published Worrall
Thompson’s cooking tips, wrote a hasty letter to subscribers: “Henbane is a
Schedule III poison under the Medicines Act. Please discount Antony’s
suggestion.”
Worrall Thompson said he had meant to recommend a wild plant called fat hen,
“but of course I’ve ended up killing half the nation instead” .
Alistair’s duty
Housing The property market is on its knees, and nobody knows what the
future holds – least of all, it seems, the government. On Tuesday it came up
with a wheeze to encourage buyers: a stamp duty “holiday”, in which people
would be able to defer payment of the 1% duty on the sale of properties
valued at up to £250,000.
The Treasury swiftly moved to damp down such speculation after estate agents
warned of a potential collapse in the property market brought about by
uncertainty over the tax. “These stories are based on speculation,” said a
spokesman for Alistair Darling, the chancellor, on Thursday. “There are a
number of options we need to consider to help businesses and people through
what is undoubtedly a difficult time.”
Stamp duty starts at 1% and rises to 4% for the most expensive homes. The levy
has added £31.5 billion to Treasury coffers over the past 10 years.
Dirty tricks
Politics A former Tory parliamentary candidate took the political cut
and thrust to new extremes when he told his Liberal Democrat rival: “Go back
to Cambridge, you evil bitch”, sent her lesbian magazines and made nuisance
phone calls to her home. On Tuesday Ian Oakley, 31, pleaded guilty to a
two-year hate campaign against the Lib Dems, admitting seven offences and
asking for 68 other offences to be taken into consideration. One of Oakley’s
main targets was Sal Brinton, his Lib Dem opponent for the Labour seat of
Watford. Oakley, a Durham graduate, will be sentenced next month.
