A boycott of Merlin Entertainment brands has been called for by the Captive Animals Protection Society (CAPS) over Merlin’s running of Sea Life aquaria, which dominate this sector in the UK (Ethical Consumer).

As well as Sea Life centres the called-for boycott by those who care about animal welfare also includes Merlin’s UK theme parks Alton Towers, which recently admitted responsibility for a serious accident on its Smiler extreme roller-coaster, Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures and Legoland, as well as attractions such as Warwick Castle, Madame Tussauds, The Dungeons, Blackpool Tower and the London Eye, along with other big wheels in other parts of the UK. In addition Merlin brands in Germany, Italy and Australia are included. Continue reading →

Transport For London (TFL) are launching a night tube service for Friday and Saturday nights.

Commencing in the wee hours of Saturday September 12th the service will run trains every 10 or 15 minutes on Saturday and Sunday mornings, until 04.30. Initially offered on the whole of the popular Jubilee and Victoria lines, the Piccadilly line from Cockfosters to Heathrow Terminal 5 and long lengths of the Central and Northern lines, the service will extend in future to parts of the Circle, District, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan lines. Continue reading →

o The Radisson Blu hotel in Leeds is spending £3.5 million on a revamp, due to be completed in 2016. Half of the hotel’s 147 bedrooms have been refurbished, along with the meeting spaces, and a cocktail bar and grill restaurant have been added. (The Business Desk)

o Bredbury Hall Hotel and Country Club, near Stockport, has been bought out of administration after 15 months by a Bangladeshi investor who plans to spend an initial £1 million on it. This is to refurbish the 147 bedrooms, along with the nightclub, central lounge and reception, and planned for 2016 are new leisure and spa facilities. (The Business Desk)

One of the best-placed five-star hotels in Lisbon is the Altis Grand, a business and conference property located between two Metro stations just off the North end of the Avenue da Liberdade, the city’s upscale Champs-Elysees artery that runs several kilometres down to the atmospheric Baixa Old City and port. The city is built on seven hills and ladies not catching taxis everywhere will need to choose their footwear with care however, given the very steep slopes around the Altis, and uneven and broken pavements that could spell trouble for those in high heels. Continue reading →

Fans of Hilton hotels looking for the group’s high levels of comfort in Brussels won’t be disappointed with the Hilton Brussels Grand Place, until last November Le Meridien.

Like many luxury hotels these days this one presents itself as a four-star, to get and keep the highly-lucrative business from pharmaceutical companies that are strongly discouraged, on ethical grounds, from using five-star facilities to incentivise doctors and others buying or prescribing their products. Comfort levels, however, we judged as definitely top drawer on a recent two night stay there. Continue reading →

The free one-day conference for event organisers, clic+ 2015, is taking place at Robinson College, Cambridge, on Thursday October 1st.

This commences with breakfast at 08.30 and concludes with drinks at 17.30, incorporating a range of educational sessions and a networking lunch.

Some accommodation is available and there is also a fundraising dinner on the night of Wednesday September 30th in aid of the Muscle Help Foundation, tickets price £50 plus VAT

Those who enjoy whoopingly feel-good musicals with exuberant vocal gymnastics and great dancing will be truly sorry if they don’t catch MEMPHIS, the story of the rise of “nigger music” in 1950’s segregated America, before it finishes in the West End in October.

Originating in California and Massachusetts in 2003 the show ran on Broadway for nearly three years between 2009 and 2012, picking up a Tony award for Best Musical and a Drama Desk award for Outstanding Musical in 2010, along with a crop of awards and nominations for the orchestration, the original score, the performances and the choreography. It is loosely based on the life and times of pioneering white Memphis radio DJ Dewey “Daddy-O” Phillips, a big fan of rock n’ roll, jazz, boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues and country music. Phillips was one of the first to play the “race music” of the black community to America’s young white community. He was also the first to play the Sun Record’s 1954 debut of a white boy singing like a black one on upbeat versions of “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, lorry-driver Elvis Presley. Continue reading →

Those who enjoy Mike Leigh’s intelligent and bitter-sweet dissections of humanity will enjoy Life of Riley, the last film made by the famed French “New Wave” film maker Alain Resnais, who died suddenly on 1 March this year, aged 91. In a career spanning more than 60 years and nearly 50 films the highly-rated works he left – and some were too irritatingly ambiguous for some tastes – include Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) in which archive footage of the horrors of the bomb is juxtaposed with scenes of a French film star enjoying the caresses of her Japanese lover, while recalling a previous affair with a German lover, and Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1955), a painful but poetic and utterly memorable 30-minute documentary about Auschwitz. Later films celebrated the similarities between film and theatre, as did his last. Continue reading →

Alongside the news that a serious malfunction and crash on the extreme Smiler roller-coaster at Alton Towers theme park on Tuesday June 2 has left four young people in their teens and twenties with serious and potentially life-changing injuries, the advertorial for theme parks published in this month’s issue of Mash Media’s Conference News – “Paul Colston joins the roller-coaster”- makes unintentionally grim and thought-provoking reading.

This advises readers that “The UK theme parks and major attractions are geared up for corporate events like never before” and features Alton Tower’s head of trade and corporate sales Rachael Cotton asking “Where else can you ride the world’s most inverted roller-coaster before crashing (a prescient choice of word there by Ms Cotton) for the night in a giant hot air balloon?” She also opines that her firm’s “newly launched adrenaline add-on packages are the perfect way to wake delegates up during a corporate fun day” Well you would certainly have problems falling asleep if the roller-coaster car you were travelling in smashed into a stationary empty one at more than 50 miles an hour, we’d agree. Perhaps the much-quoted and sought-after WOW factor should stand for Why Oh Why? Continue reading →