GO LARGE IN COPENHAGEN

Those running, or looking at running events in Denmark will need to know about the modern Bella Center, and the adjacent Bella Sky Comwell Hotel, Copenhagen.

The centre is Scandinavia’s largest and was completed in 1975 on what was then a greenfield site at Orestad, conveniently located between Copenhagen city centre and its airport and now linked within ten minutes of both by the nearby Metro. It has a total capacity of 20,000 delegates, with more than 100 meeting rooms and auditoria for all sizes of groups, the largest accommodating 12,000 delegates theatre-style. Continue reading

OASIS AT HEATHROW

Those wanting to run an event near Heathrow Airport will want to include the Marriott London Heathrow hotel in the list of options.

This modern property on the Bath Road offers 393 comfortable en-suite bedrooms, with tea and coffee facilities, air-conditioning, mini-bar, large work areas, Sky TV, internet access, safes for lap-tops and good in-bed reading lighting. There are 13 Executive rooms that offer access to the complimentary snacks and drinks in the relaxing Executive Lounge. There are 20 accessible bedrooms, and 30 where guests can smoke. Continue reading

TEA FOR TWO FOR ONE

Patisserie Valerie, the continental-style cafe and cake-shop chain, is to offer traditional English afternoon tea at its branches. This is for a charge of £12.95 per person, or around a half of that charged by most hotels, or a third of the charge at some top London hotels.

The move follows a successful trial in cafes in Soho, Marble Arch and Knightsbridge in London, the Bullring in Birmingham, and York, Nottingham and Cambridge. Continue reading

DESTINATION SHOWCASE

Featuring a range of 50 hotels, hotel groups, convention bureaux and DMC’s from 20 countries the Moulden Marketing B2B Destination Showcase takes place at the Radisson Blu Portman Hotel, 22 Portman Square, London on Thursday Jan 29, 2015.

Entrance is free to event organisers, who can book up to twelve 15-minute appointments, with others on an ad-hoc basis. Countries represented by suppliers there include the UK, Republic of Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UAE, Korea, Estonia, Canary Islands, Greece, India, Greenland, Iceland, Antarctica and the Caribbean.

Tel: +44 1628 532020 email: [email protected]

SHOAH

Shoah, a nine-hour, ten-minute documentary detailing the horrors of the Holocaust from interviews with survivors and perpetrators is not easy to watch, but it is important to watch it, to understand that it was the ugly racism of ordinary folk, and the connivance of German industry for a profit, that made the unprecedented murder on an industrial scale possible.

Director Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years tracking down more than fifty eye-witnesses, and producing 350 hours of interviews that he took five years to distil down to the final film. As the terrible truths unfold it is the facial expressions and tones, and sometimes the breakdowns, that convey as much as the words, giving a unique film document of the brutal and systematic extermination of millions of men, women and their children, who died choking in the dark on exhaust-fumes in the gas-vans, or on cyanide gas in the chambers at the death-camps. Continue reading

CYBER SICKNESS

The NSPCC, in conjunction with the Royal College of GPs (RCGPs) has issued guidelines to doctors to help them spot signs of cyber-bullying, as well as trafficking and female genital mutilation (FGM).

The move comes as a doubling in the number of children experiencing cyber-bullying, up to 35% from 16% last year, is suggested by a poll of 2,000 11-17 year olds and 2,000 adults by internet security company McAfee. Just as worrying is that 67% of children went online unsupervised and that only 27% of parents said they were worried about their children becoming victims. Continue reading

FLAWED POLITICIANS

World Animal Protection have launched a campaign to end bear baiting in Pakistan.

This illegal entertainment involves tethering a bear that has had its teeth and claws removed to render it helpless, and having it attacked by trained fighting dogs. Like illegal dog fighting and illegal fox and stag hunting in the UK, and legal bull fighting in Spain the point of it is for those who optimistically classify themselves as human beings to take pleasure from something being hurt and/or killed. Continue reading

GIVE MONEY FOR MURDER?

The Aid Convoy charity, based in London’s East End, has boasted of raising more than £1 million of aid amidst fears that it, and others, is a cover for foreign fighters to enter Syria and for financial support to jihadists.

It is one of four charities being investigated by the Charity Commission, and the police, for terrorist connections. Another is Al Fatiha Global, the charity with which Alan Henning travelled to Syria before being taken hostage and murdered by Isis.

TRIUMPHS FOR CHARITY

Greenpeace has won two major lobbying campaigns.

o They persuaded LEGO not to renew its contract with Arctic oil driller Shell whereby LEGO toys were given away at Shell petrol stations in more than 30 countries, and LEGO sold toy brick sets in the shape of petrol stations and drilling rigs with Shell logos on.

The tie-up was seen as a way for Shell to whitewash its image, both with parents and children and has been running for 50 years.

 

o The chief scientific adviser to the European Commission, Professor Anne Glover has been dropped after Greenpeace and other groups objected to her support for the growing of GM crops.

According to Glover, who held a position of considerable influence, opposing GM crops was “a form of madness”

TICKING BOMB?

The Howard League for Penal Reform has warned that prisons in England and Wales are in crisis after losing 9,830 (41%) of their officers due to cuts in the last four years, coinciding with prison overcrowding and a worrying increase in the number of prisoner suicides.

The figure includes the loss of 1,375 officers (5.7%) when 15 jails were closed. However the Ministry of Justice contests the figures, saying that the actual reduction in officers in the four year period is only 6,480 (27%).