The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced a probe into the online ticket rip-offs common for popular live events.

Some of the tickets traded by touts were originally sold on the basis that they could not be sold to a third party. When the tickets do not display this condition, third parties paying substantial sums for them could find them invalid when presented at the venue.

The CMA is also concerned that other important details, such as the original ticket price, and the seat location are not being revealed to buyers before they buy.

Those welcoming the reopening of the Fabric London nightclub will not include the relatives and friends of the two young men who died there last year from drug-related causes. Nor do they include those of us who are not persuaded, despite all the protestations from those who make money from nightclubs, that these enterprises are world-class nightlife vital to London’s survival as a 24-hour major player on the world stage, rather than just dying, drug-friendly places where some of the young and foolish can hear music, dance and do their substance of choice. Continue reading →

Always tricky, these – look at the gloomy forecasts for Brexit – but nevertheless Buying Business Travel magazine has taken a punt on a few fairly safe bets for the meetings sector, as follows.

• Costs per attendee per day will remain flat in Europe, with modest increases in North America and Asia Pacific.
• Average group size will stay the same in Latin America, but rise by 3-6% everywhere else.
• UK event organisers will book more of their meetings in the UK due to the devalued pound, rather than now more expensive Europe.
• European organisers will also book more of their meetings in the UK, due to the devalued pound.
• Buyers will face a 6.9% rise in accommodation rates at UK venues.

Looks like 2017 could be a bonanza year for UK venues and other suppliers to the events industry, as a result of Brexit.

A curmudgeonly piece in the Telegraph Travel section amusingly listed a number of “inventions that ruined travel” that will chime with some.

High on the list are Segway “mobility scooters” which, along with paddle boerds, road trains for city tours and the “narcissistic weapon of Satan” selfie stick make their users look like “stupid tourists”, with the only benefit being to “make normal people feel pleasantly superior”. Continue reading →

Critics say that, in partnership with director Anthony Mann James Stewart helped change the very nature of the western. For this film fan the late, great Jimmy Stewart always played the great Jimmy Stewart, decent, amiable and vulnerable, with a hard streak of violence that made him someone not to cross, and he did it all so believably. Continue reading →

This sensual painting, by Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton depicts a languorous long-limbed female beauty barely clothed in sheer see-through orange and curled up asleep on a couch drenched by the rays of the setting Mediterranean sun.

It is one of the most memorable and reproduced images in the history of British art, was painted by Leighton in 1895 and sold during the 1970’s, a very bad time to sell Victorian art, to an art gallery in Puerto Rico for around £900. Today it would sell for millions.

Flaming June is featured in an exhibition of five of Leighton’s paintings – Flaming June: the Making of an Icon – which runs at Leighton’s studio and residence in Holland Park, London, now the Leighton House Museum, until April 2.