The Lush Bar in Magaluf, where a British teenager claimed to have been egged on by bar staff as he drank 75 Sambuca and caramel vodka shots, is being charged with illegally supplying alcohol to a customer who was obviously drunk, a law that also applies in the UK. The teenager, an 18 year-old man from the Midlands collapsed in the street and was treated in hospital for alcohol poisoning. Continue reading
EasyJet passengers arriving at the security check with less than half an hour before their flight leaves will not be allowed to board.
The new policy, which is similar to that of BA at Heathrow Terminals three and five, will please all those who always allow plenty of time for the irritating but essential security checks but annoy those types who like to cut it fine with just hand luggage to carry on and who are often to be seen jumping the queues to make their flights. These passengers can pay EasyJet an extra £7.50 “missed flight cover” and then be entitled to a full refund, or a booking on the next available flight, without paying the normal £80 for switching flights.
The famous Glastonbury Festival could be moving 15 miles west, from Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset to Longleat, Wiltshire in 2019.
The organisers, who only own part of the site say that this makes the future of the show less certain, and that there are concerns that a mains gas pipe that runs through the site could be fractured under the strain of 250,000 revellers. Continue reading
To the Hilton London Metropole hotel, Edgware Road, one of Europe’s largest with 1,059 bedrooms, dining space for up to 2,000 and conference space for up to 3,000.
Bedrooms are modern, comfortable and stylish, and all at Guest Room grade (274) have air-conditioning, mini-bars, tea and coffee making facilities, laptop safes, telephones and LCD satellite TVs, hairdryers, irons and ironing boards, 24hour in-room dining, work stations and wireless internet for which charges may apply. Deluxe Rooms (239) are on the higher floors with city views and Superior Rooms (307) are larger, with Family Superior Rooms (45) offering two queen-size beds, sofa and two TVs. Executive Rooms (170) and Suites (20) offer free access to the Executive Lounge for a complimentary continental breakfast and alcohols and snacks. The Executive Rooms have a large work station with an ergonomic chair and a bathroom with a separate shower stall. Suites offer a lounge, bedroom and bathroom, with Studio Suites (4) also incorporating a fully fitted kitchen for self-catering and longer stays. Continue reading
o Twelve guests were rescued by fire crews at the 22-bedroom three-star Rushmore Hotel in Trebovir Road Earls Court, when a blaze broke out on the second floor there on Sunday June 5. Ten fire engines and 72 firefighters were at the scene and 150 people were evacuated from nearby buildings. The cause of the fire is unknown and being investigated.
o BLOC Hotels, which currently has a unit in Birmingham and one in Gatwick, is planning its second hotel in Birmingham. (Business Desk) This will be a 25 storey tower building housing 238 bedrooms and will be located close to New Street Station and the Grand Central shopping area.
o The St Regis Hotel, Dubai has opened the Sir Winston Churchill Suite. This is 9,828 square feet in area (913 square metres) and features a huge living area, a study, a dining room seating twelve around the table, three bedrooms, a large majlis or Arabic meeting room, a spiral staircase leading up to a rooftop plunge pool with views over the city and another dining area, reproductions of fifteen of Winnies 500 paintings and one of his Cuban cigars. Oh and a rate of £13,950 a night, which may or may not include breakfast…
It could be argued that when Italian film director Bernardo Bertolucci made “Twentieth Century” forty years ago in 1976, his memorable five-hour art-house epic about the rise of facism in Italy in the first half of the last century, he benefitted from a dream team of acting talents at the peak of their powers.
The film chronicles the lives of two men from different sides of the tracks who grow up together. Alfredo Berlingheri, who inherits his father’s farm is played by American actor Robert de Niro when he was 33 and in the same year he was Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, two years after playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II in 1974 and before being Michael Vronsky in The Deerhunter (1978) and Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980). His friend is Olno Dalco, an illiterate peasant who works on the farm and is played by the 28 year old French character actor Gerard Depardieu, near the beginning of a career spanning 170 films. Continue reading
The secretive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement between the large corporations of the USA and the EU is fast becoming a major consideration for those wondering if they should trust the EU enough to want to stay in.
After all this appallingly obvious USA anti-consumer money-grab, with secretive corporate courts deciding on compensation grabbed from a country’s taxpayers for laws passed by their governments that adversely affect the profits of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco et al has already secured the backing of two thirds of the unelected MEPs, so can you trust people who make such ill-advised decisions? Leaked documents have also indicted that the MEPs are also in favour of the questionably corporate-friendly US way of regulating products, whereby a product is only banned if it is proved to be dangerous – people becoming ill or dying is a good indicator – rather than only allowing it onto the market when it is proved safe. Continue reading
Good to see that Michael O’Blarney’s bullying Ryanair was rapped over the knuckles earlier this year by the courts for one of its ludicrously unfair terms and conditions.
Ryanair demanded £320 from Lucas Marshall to print out boarding passes to check his family in on a flight back from the Canary Islands last year when he had been unable to print them out himself before travelling. The terms and conditions drafted by Ryanair’s crack legal team give them the right to make a charge of some kind for this service, though this should, of course be fair. Continue reading
Two men convicted and imprisoned over a massive “boiler room” share fraud have been ordered to pay back a total of £11 million to the victims they scammed. (The Business Desk)
Jeffrey Revell-Reade, who masterminded the fraud was ordered to pay £10,751,000 and an accomplice, Anthony May was ordered to pay £250,000. The fraud was one of the largest ever uncovered by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and stole around £70 million from investors between 2003 and 2007. According to the SFO the fraudsters used the money to fund extravagant lifestyles for themselves, which included luxury yachts, overseas properties and wine collections. Continue reading
An HIV clinic run by Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust has been fined £180,000 for accidentally emailing its list of 781 patient’s email addresses, 730 of which contained its patient’s names.
The breach of Data Protection rules at the 56, Dean Street clinic was caused by the emails being sent to the “To” field, rather than the “Bcc” (Blind carbon copy), an error by a member of staff that caused “a great deal of upset”, according to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) which levied the fine. The ICO investigation revealed that one of the nine complainants claimed they were “extremely worried” that they would “suffer discrimination at work” from having their HIV status revealed. The ICO found a similar, though smaller breach had occurred in 2010, with the clinic sending out 17 emails with the list of recipients.