Connolly wants home-grown Australian coach for Wallabies
The News Review:
- Connolly wants home-grown Australian coach for Wallabies
- Quangos: the runaway gravy train
- Manchester City refuse to throw in towel
- Nasdaq stages a tactical withdrawal
- No escape route from relentless Eriksson
- Crowds have V good time at festival
Connolly wants home-grown Australian coach for Wallabies
Stuff.co.nz - Aug 20, 2007
Connolly intends to step down after the World Cup in October and he wants a local to succeed him. “I would support whatever decision the ARU made. But personally, I would like to see an Aussie get the job,” Connolly said. “I was offered the Ireland job in 1996 and I knocked it back because the interest is not the same coaching another country.
Quangos: the runaway gravy train
Telegraph.co.uk - Aug 20, 2007
The “Q” word, in the 1980s and 1990s, came to symbolise unaccountable, box-ticking bureaucrats, who trousered vast salaries at the taxpayer’s expense, only landing their cushy numbers thanks to the old boys’ network. The name - an acronym for Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation - covers a host of public bodies such as regulators, trade bodies, advisory panels, museums and art galleries as well as wackily-named institutions such as the British Potato Council, the Human Tissue Authority and the Home-Grown Cereals Authority. Talk of “bonfires” and “culls” sent jitters through thousands of offices across the county. But 10 years on, for many quangos and their well-paid bosses, things - to echo Labour’s 1997 election anthem - have only got better. The ERC’s research shows that spending at many agencies has rocketed under New Labour, with the pay of some quangocrats rising by several hundred per cent. There has certainly been no cull at the Milk Development Council, a communications and marketing agency that has the twin aims of making drinking milk more attractive to consumers and spreading the word about new techniques to Britain’s 15,000 dairy farmers… It spends £7 million a year extracted from dairy farmers, plus a further £5 million from taxpayers and businesses. The most visible manifestation of the council’s work is a high-profile, long-running advertisement campaign featuring celebrities sporting milk moustaches. The model Nell McAndrew, the tennis player Andy Murray and the teen pop band McFly have all featured in its adverts. The posters are part of the MDC’s market development work, which is, apparently “all about making people feel good about milk, putting milk back on the agenda and in a positive light”. A substantial part of the council’s job is to give advice about breeding. “It only takes a minute to breed a cow,” the MDC’s website proclaims, “but a lifetime to breed out a poor mating decision. ” Farmers have also been bombarded with advice and visits from the MDC’s staff.
Manchester City refuse to throw in towel
Telegraph.co.uk - Aug 20, 2007
City have risen to the peak of the Premier League because warriors, like Dunne and Richards, have risen to every challenge. It was Johnson who launched City on the way to their surprise first-half goal, feeding Elano, who released Geovanni to score. The lead secured, Dunne and Richards fought like tigers to defend the points. City being unable to change their DNA, the home supporters’ nerves were inevitably shredded by the end, as the team clung on, pushed to the very limit by Scholes, Carlos Tevez and company. At the final whistle, the roar of relief and joy was almost visceral in its emotion.
Nasdaq stages a tactical withdrawal
MSN Money - Aug 20, 2007
While the LSE will acquire a derivatives platform with Borsa Italiana, it is relatively small and heavily retail-oriented. Deutsche Börse, itself once a contender for the LSE, has agreed to buy US-based International Securities Exchange, an options exchange, and is thought to be interested mostly in expanding its derivatives business rather than its cash equities trading platform. And the LSE itself will face home-grown competition in equities trading and in the sale of data products as new entrants take advantage of European legislation, known as Mifid, designed to encourage it. Indeed, there is a final irony in Nasdaq’s move. If the disposal of its LSE stake enables it to complete its bid for OMX, it will own the technology provider to the single greatest threat to the LSE’s market share equities. A group of nine European investment banks, the biggest customers of the region’s exchanges, have formed Project Turquoise to compete with those exchanges and have vowed to slash tariffs. Its chosen technology provider is OMX.
No escape route from relentless Eriksson
dailymail.co.uk - Aug 20, 2007
Now it’s Ferguson’s turn to have the raised heel on his throat. The concept of irrepressibility was surely invented for Eriksson. His supermarket sweep of experienced Euro pros has enhanced City’sbase of home-grown talent: chiefly, the 19-year-old Micah Richards,who was colossal yesterday at centre half, and midfielder MichaelJohnson, whose coolness and elegance shone through once he hadrecovered from the shock of having to deal with Paul Scholes andOwen Hargreaves. Unlike Ferguson, who built his empire from the ground up,Eriksson constructs from the top down, with other people’s money,but he earns high coaching marks for spotting that City had becomerobotic and intolerant of creativity. Easier to solve when your boss is an ex-Thai prime ministereager to splash the cash to buy his way into mainstream westerncapitalism (and thereby safety?), and when you have a had a yearoff on Football Association money with which to watch games andconsider the recommendations of agents. But already we can say the conversion of Richards from rightbackto stopper, and the promotion of Johnson to a starring role,suggest a strategic aptitude not always apparent in Eriksson’sEngland years. Already he has coached this City side from thetouchlines more than he did the England team in five anti-climacticyears.
Crowds have V good time at festival
East Anglian Daily Times - Aug 20, 2007
Having started in 1996, the festival is held at two venues simultaneously - at Weston Park in Staffordshire and Hylands Park, Chelmsford. The Essex crowd of around 75,000 were certainly not disappointed over the two days thanks to a strong US presence in the form of The Killers, Foo Fighters, The Goo Goo Dolls, Pink and Kanye West. Home-grown talent came in the likes of Brit Award winners Kasabian, KT Tunstall, James Morrison and The Fratellis, as well as James, The Proclaimers, Snow Patrol and Editors. Amy Winehouse, despite being on the bill, had to pull out of the festival just a day before, due to health reasons, and her place was taken by the Happy Mondays. Plenty of festival-goers arrived on Friday night to pitch tents and start the partying early, with blockbuster films screened in the Virgin Media film tent until the early hours as well as dance music in the Strongbow Cider House. By midday on Saturday the park was fit to burst with music fans from across the country, packing the areas around the four main stages. Even the rain, which arrived Saturday evening, did little to dampen the spirits of the crowds… Amy Winehouse, despite being on the bill, had to pull out of the festival just a day before, due to health reasons, and her place was taken by the Happy Mondays. Plenty of festival-goers arrived on Friday night to pitch tents and start the partying early, with blockbuster films screened in the Virgin Media film tent until the early hours as well as dance music in the Strongbow Cider House. By midday on Saturday the park was fit to burst with music fans from across the country, packing the areas around the four main stages. Even the rain, which arrived Saturday evening, did little to dampen the spirits of the crowds. Girls were dressed in the usual festival uniform of micro denim shorts and colourful Wellingtons, with the boys less decorative in casual jeans or three-quarter length shorts (though one party of men was spotted all wearing matching pink pyjamas and fur-lined pink Stetsons). Just Jack got proceedings under way on the main V stage, ending his set with the crowd pleasing Stars in their Eyes, for which all the group donned star-shaped spectacles. Later on in the JJB arena, British soul queen Beverly Knight got a sizable crowd rocking, opening her set with the upbeat, feel-good Greatest Day, as well as more recent hits such as Coulda Woulda Shoulda.