Train operating companies in the UK are trousering more than £100 million of the £167 million given to them by Network Rail (NR) as compensation for delays and cancellations caused by failures of the track, signals and other parts of the NR infrastructure.

Only an estimated £50 million of the £167 million is actually paid out to train passengers as compensation for delays and cancellations. Continue reading →

Organisers may wish to review how they cater for vegetarians and vegans at their events.

A recent survey by research firm Mintel indicates that 12% of adults now follow vegetarian/vegan diets, and that 12% of all new food and drink products launched in the UK this year carry the description “suitable for vegetarians” compared with 6% five years ago. Continue reading →

Driverless tube trains are unlikely to be a feature of London Transport until 2030, if at all.

The system is currently operated on London’s Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and on the Paris Metro and is enthusiastically supported by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who would like to see it in use over the whole Tube network by 2020.

However the concept is just as enthusiastically opposed by train drivers unions Aslef and RMT, which are both planning to prevent it happening.

Best news for passengers is that, driverless or not, the new train carriages on the way will have air-conditioning to prevent journeys in the summer heat being a deeply unpleasant experience, as is currently the case.

o A man and a woman died preparing fireworks for a display at a wedding celebration in Ecclerigg, Cunbria, after an explosion and fire in a shed where the fireworks were stored.

Firework technician Andrew Coates, 41, and Polly Connor,46, died in the accident on Saturday August 30 at an event to mark the wedding of John Simpson, 61, an insurance broker who had a licence to store up to a ton of fireworks.

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The four-star Marriott Worsley Park Hotel and Country Club is located close to J13 of the M60 at Worsley, seven miles north-west of Central Manchester and a short drive from Manchester’s airport.

The modern country-house style property sits in 200 acres of parkland, which includes a 6,611-yard, par 71, 18-hole Championship golf course, designed to include a wealth of natural features, including seven water hazards to avoid. For those looking to run client or company golf days there are specialist Golf Event Organisers on site to help. Continue reading →

For organisers with cultured delegates the world-class Manchester Art Gallery in Mosley Street offers more than 25,000 works of art, including around 2,000 oil paintings, and included in these are famed examples of Pre-Raphaelite works by Millais, Maddox Brown and Holman Hunt as well as paintings by Constable, Turner, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Waterhouse, Hughes, Etty, Lowry, Bacon, Freud, Hockney, Nash and Moore.

The fame of these aside however it is frequently the case at galleries that works by less-known artists can be more memorable for some, and for this observer’s money there are at least three that fell into this category on a recent visit. The Chariot Race (1882) by Alexander von Wagner depicts, on a huge canvas, this cruel and suicidal sport of Roman times, and places the viewer almost under the flailing hooves of the lashed and frantic horses and dangerously close to a chariot that has started to disintegrate. Continue reading →

Those who are interested in the era of silent film, and perhaps a very few who are old enough to remember it, will have heard of such femme fatale icons as Clara Bow, Colleen Moore and the feisty “it” girl from Kansas, Louise Brooks.

Unlike Bow and Moore “Brooksie” didn’t do so well in Hollywood, despite her considerable sexual and androgynous beauty, and her acting ability, as well as her jet-black bobbed hair and alabaster complexion filming perfectly in black and white. But Brooksie really came of age as a screen legend at 23 when she waved goodbye to Tinsel Town to relocate in Weimar Berlin and play the lead in two 1929 films by director G. W. Pabst. Continue reading →