The Transylvanian castle of Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, is on sale for £40 million.
Bran Castle, near the historic city of Brasov, in central Romania, is one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations because of its association with 15th-century Prince Vlad Tepes III, also known as the Impaler for his favoured method of executing opponents. According to varied accounts, Vlad either spent several days in the castle or was briefly incarcerated in its dungeons.
The impressive 14th-century fortress last belonged to Queen Victoria’s granddaughter Queen Marie of Romania, but in 1956 it was seized by the Communist authorities, who turned it into a museum.
Seven months ago the castle was given back to Queen Marie’s grandson, Dominic von Habsburg, of the former House of Habsburg. The conditions of the restitution agreement included a pledge to keep the castle open as a state-run museum for three years, even if the property was resold.
Mr von Habsburg, 68, a US-based graphic designer, lived in the castle as a child until his family were expelled by the Communist regime in 1948. In a recent interview with The Times he claimed an emotional attachment to his old home, but has now decided to put it on the market for more than £40 million.
Corin Trandafir, his lawyer in Bucharest, said the asking price was realistic, and that the owners would like to see the castle returned to the local community. The local council of Brasov has been given first refusal on the property.
“The castle is one of Romania’s biggest attractions and its value will drastically multiply when the country joins the European Union this January. There is no organised tour of Romania that doesn’t include Bran Castle,” he said.
“The price is by no means exaggerated. The estate includes about seven acres of forest and three smaller buildings. Once the three-year period expires and the museum management becomes private, it will turn into a lucrative source of income for the new owners.
Mr Trandafir said that Mr von Habsburg wanted the castle to be owned by local people, which was why he had offered it to the council. “They have 30 days to review our offer, and then the property will be put on the market,” he added.
Aristotel Cancescu, the council president, confirmed that the local authorities were very interested in acquiring Bran Castle because it was part of Romania’s cultural heritage. “This castle is a major tourist attraction and a great asset for our region, and we need to seriously think about buying it,” he said.
Doors, doors, locked and bolted
“Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky . . . The castle is on the very edge of a terrific precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm.
Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests. But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view, I explored further. Doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit. The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!”
Monday, January 8, 2007
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Cheer up, girls – antidepressant pill could be a female Viagra
TRIALS have begun on a sex drug that works directly on the pleasure zones of a woman’s brain to restore flagging libido.
If successful, flibanserin — developed by the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim — could become the “female Viagra”.
Its effect was discovered by accident when it was being tested as an anti-depressant. Participants in the trials reported that their depression was no better but that they had experienced a boost in sexual desire.
The company is conducting four trials on 5,000 women in 220 locations and hopes for approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2009.
The company is not yet sure exactly how flibanserin works, but Dr Charles de Wet, Boehringer Ingelheim’s medical director for the UK, said: “As many as two out of every 10 women describe some degree of decreased sexual desire. Female sexual dysfunction is not just related to blood flow, but also affected by stimulation of certain brain areas dealing with sexual stimuli.”
He added: “The aim of flibanserin is to return women’s sexual desire to a normal state — no excessive sexual effects have been reported from the treatment in any clinical trial.”
Flibanserin pills stimulate parts of the brain associated with emotions and pleasure, including a circuit that appears to control desire and sexual arousal.
Viagra, which dominates the £1 billion worldwide market for men’s sex drugs, is frequently used to increase the sexual enjoyment of men without a medical condition. Flibanserin takes several weeks for a significant effect to build up in the brain, meaning that, unlike Viagra, it cannot be “popped” in advance of an evening out.
Paula Hall, a sex therapist for the charity Relate, said she was doubtful whether such a drug would deal with the root problems of poor sex lives.
“The biggest cause of low sexual desire is relationship problems,” she said. “Many women with low sexual desire have no problem with sexual excitement. The desire is there, but they are blocking it.”
Shortcuts to arousal
# A nasal spray drug called bremelanotide is intended to stimulate nerve pathways linked to sexual arousal and has the same effect on men and women
# A drug named Intrinsa, developed by Procter & Gamble, is aimed at increasing female libido by boosting levels of the “male” hormone testosterone
# Viagra, designed to help men with erectile dysfunction, was tested by Pfizer as a sex drug for women. It produced greater pelvic blood flow but failed to increase female libido
If successful, flibanserin — developed by the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim — could become the “female Viagra”.
Its effect was discovered by accident when it was being tested as an anti-depressant. Participants in the trials reported that their depression was no better but that they had experienced a boost in sexual desire.
The company is conducting four trials on 5,000 women in 220 locations and hopes for approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2009.
The company is not yet sure exactly how flibanserin works, but Dr Charles de Wet, Boehringer Ingelheim’s medical director for the UK, said: “As many as two out of every 10 women describe some degree of decreased sexual desire. Female sexual dysfunction is not just related to blood flow, but also affected by stimulation of certain brain areas dealing with sexual stimuli.”
He added: “The aim of flibanserin is to return women’s sexual desire to a normal state — no excessive sexual effects have been reported from the treatment in any clinical trial.”
Flibanserin pills stimulate parts of the brain associated with emotions and pleasure, including a circuit that appears to control desire and sexual arousal.
Viagra, which dominates the £1 billion worldwide market for men’s sex drugs, is frequently used to increase the sexual enjoyment of men without a medical condition. Flibanserin takes several weeks for a significant effect to build up in the brain, meaning that, unlike Viagra, it cannot be “popped” in advance of an evening out.
Paula Hall, a sex therapist for the charity Relate, said she was doubtful whether such a drug would deal with the root problems of poor sex lives.
“The biggest cause of low sexual desire is relationship problems,” she said. “Many women with low sexual desire have no problem with sexual excitement. The desire is there, but they are blocking it.”
Shortcuts to arousal
# A nasal spray drug called bremelanotide is intended to stimulate nerve pathways linked to sexual arousal and has the same effect on men and women
# A drug named Intrinsa, developed by Procter & Gamble, is aimed at increasing female libido by boosting levels of the “male” hormone testosterone
# Viagra, designed to help men with erectile dysfunction, was tested by Pfizer as a sex drug for women. It produced greater pelvic blood flow but failed to increase female libido
Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
SRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.
Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.
“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.
The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.
Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said.
Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.
Some analysts warned that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.
Israel has identified three prime targets south of Tehran which are believed to be involved in Iran’s nuclear programme:
# Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges are being installed for uranium enrichment
# A uranium conversion facility near Isfahan where, according to a statement by an Iranian vice-president last week, 250 tons of gas for the enrichment process have been stored in tunnels
# A heavy water reactor at Arak, which may in future produce enough plutonium for a bomb
Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran’s nuclear programme indefinitely and prevent them from having to live in fear of a “second Holocaust”.
The Israeli government has warned repeatedly that it will never allow nuclear weapons to be made in Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has declared that “Israel must be wiped off the map”.
Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, has described military action against Iran as a “last resort”, leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike.
Israeli pilots have flown to Gibraltar in recent weeks to train for the 2,000-mile round trip to the Iranian targets. Three possible routes have been mapped out, including one over Turkey.
Air force squadrons based at Hatzerim in the Negev desert and Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, have trained to use Israel’s tactical nuclear weapons on the mission. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, commander of the Israeli air force.
Sources close to the Pentagon said the United States was highly unlikely to give approval for tactical nuclear weapons to be used. One source said Israel would have to seek approval “after the event”, as it did when it crippled Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak with airstrikes in 1981.
Scientists have calculated that although contamination from the bunker-busters could be limited, tons of radioactive uranium compounds would be released.
The Israelis believe that Iran’s retaliation would be constrained by fear of a second strike if it were to launch its Shehab-3 ballistic missiles at Israel.
However, American experts warned of repercussions, including widespread protests that could destabilise parts of the Islamic world friendly to the West.
Colonel Sam Gardiner, a Pentagon adviser, said Iran could try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the route for 20% of the world’s oil.
Some sources in Washington said they doubted if Israel would have the nerve to attack Iran. However, Dr Ephraim Sneh, the deputy Israeli defence minister, said last month: “The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran.”
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.
Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.
“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.
The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.
Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said.
Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.
Some analysts warned that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.
Israel has identified three prime targets south of Tehran which are believed to be involved in Iran’s nuclear programme:
# Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges are being installed for uranium enrichment
# A uranium conversion facility near Isfahan where, according to a statement by an Iranian vice-president last week, 250 tons of gas for the enrichment process have been stored in tunnels
# A heavy water reactor at Arak, which may in future produce enough plutonium for a bomb
Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran’s nuclear programme indefinitely and prevent them from having to live in fear of a “second Holocaust”.
The Israeli government has warned repeatedly that it will never allow nuclear weapons to be made in Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has declared that “Israel must be wiped off the map”.
Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, has described military action against Iran as a “last resort”, leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike.
Israeli pilots have flown to Gibraltar in recent weeks to train for the 2,000-mile round trip to the Iranian targets. Three possible routes have been mapped out, including one over Turkey.
Air force squadrons based at Hatzerim in the Negev desert and Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, have trained to use Israel’s tactical nuclear weapons on the mission. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, commander of the Israeli air force.
Sources close to the Pentagon said the United States was highly unlikely to give approval for tactical nuclear weapons to be used. One source said Israel would have to seek approval “after the event”, as it did when it crippled Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak with airstrikes in 1981.
Scientists have calculated that although contamination from the bunker-busters could be limited, tons of radioactive uranium compounds would be released.
The Israelis believe that Iran’s retaliation would be constrained by fear of a second strike if it were to launch its Shehab-3 ballistic missiles at Israel.
However, American experts warned of repercussions, including widespread protests that could destabilise parts of the Islamic world friendly to the West.
Colonel Sam Gardiner, a Pentagon adviser, said Iran could try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the route for 20% of the world’s oil.
Some sources in Washington said they doubted if Israel would have the nerve to attack Iran. However, Dr Ephraim Sneh, the deputy Israeli defence minister, said last month: “The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran.”
Saturday, January 6, 2007
How to increase fuel efficiency when you drive
The UK government announced last year that they would be including fuel efficient driving skills as part of the driving test. Some continental European countries, like Germany, already have this.
The reason this is being introduced is that people waste a lot of fuel when driving. How often do you see people racing towards red traffic lights and then braking sharply? Why do they accelerate, when they know they are going to have to brake? Apart from being hard on the brake pads, it also wastes fuel.
Here are some tips to improve fuel efficiency:
1. When you reach a red traffic light, instead of braking, take your foot off the accelerator and let the car slow down to reach the traffic lights. I'm aware that sometimes the car behind might not be aware you are slowing down, so lightly touch the brake to flash the brake lights, and then take your foot off the brake, accelerator and clutch and simply let the car glide to a stop.
2. Don't speed. The faster you go, the more fuel you use in to cover the same distance. Every car has an optimal speed where the engine is at it's most efficient. Go to the manufacturer's web-site and find out the optimal efficient speed for your car and stick to it. It's dangerous going over 30mph in a city environment anyway, so don't. On a motorway, just because the speed limit is 70mph, you don't have to drive at that fast. Stick to about 50-60mph and sit on the inside lane with the lorries, and ignore all the people speeding past you. If they are happy to literally burn money, let them. This will need some planning, as driving at a lower speed means that the journey will take longer, so you may need to leave the house earlier.
3. Get your car serviced - dirty air filters and oil that hasn't been changed reduces fuel efficiency.
4. Make sure your tire pressure is correct, check it regularly. The lower your tire pressure, the more the engine has to work to drag the car along.
5. Don't carry heavy loads. The lighter the car, the less fuel it uses. Spend some time clearing junk from the car. Don't keep roof-racks on if you don't need them.
6. Air conditioning decreases fuel efficiency. Unfortunately leaving your windows down creates drag that also reduces fuel efficiency. The only way to get round this is to try not to drive in the hottest parts of the day, when your air conditioning needs will be highest. Park in cool spots to keep the car cool (shaded multi-story car-parks are the best bet in summer as the car won't heat up at all).
7. Drive in the correct gear, if you are using a manual car.
8. Some people tend to have their foot always over the clutch lightly depressing it which driving. Don't. Only depress the clutch when your foot is off the accelerator.
9. Make fewer journeys - instead of popping to the supermarket every couple of days, do big shops occasionally. This too demands prior organisation.
10. When you come to replacing your car, look for a more fuel efficient car. The smaller and lighter the car, the less fuel it will use (it's the same principle as using much more energy and effort to move a heavy object than a light one). The newer the car, the more fuel efficient it is, as newer fuel efficiency technology is incorporated.
The following are a list of fuel efficient cars (based on British Imperial gallons, not American ones):
Honda Insight 2 seater (petrol) 80.0 mpg
Citroen C1 1398 M5 (diesel) 68.9 mpg
Toyota Aygo 1.4 D-4D 3 & 5 door (diesel) 68.9 mpg
Citroen C2 1398 M5 (diesel) 65.7 mpg
Citroen C3 1398 A5 (diesel) 65.7 mpg
FIAT Panda 1248 M5 (diesel) 65.7 mpg
Toyota Prius 1.5 VVT-i Hybrid (petrol) 65.7 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa 1248 MTA5 (diesel) 65.6 mpg
Audi A2 1422 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
FORD Fiesta 1560 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Smart Forfour 1493 S/A6 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Peugeot 206 1398 M5 (diesel) 64.1 mpg
Renault Clio 1461 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Citroen C3 1560 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa 1248 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Hyundai Getz 1493 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Fiat Grande Punto 1248 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Ford Fiesta 1399 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Ford Fusion 1399 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Ford Fusion 1560 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Toyota Yaris 1364 5MT or Multi5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Renault Modus 1461 A5 or M5 (diesel) 62.6 mpg
Peugeot 206 SW 1398 M5 (diesel) 62.7 mpg
Peugeot 207 1398 M5 (diesel) 62.7 mpg
Peugeot 207 1560 M5 diesel) 62.7 mpg
Renault Megane 1461 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Citroen C1 998 M5 (petrol) 61.4 mpg
Toyota Aygo 998 M5 or Multi5 (petrol) 61.4 mpg
Toyota Aygo 1.0 VVT-i 3 & 5 door (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Peugeot 107 1.0 (petrol) 61.3 mpg
Renault Modus 1.5 dCi 80 (JP0D05) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Mitsubishi Colt 1.5 AMT (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Skoda Fabia Hatch 1.4 TDI PD (75 bhp) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Skoda Fabia Estate 1.4 TDI PD (75 bhp) (diesel)61.4 mpg
Renault Clio MY 20061.5 dCi (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Ford Fusion 1.6 Duratorq TDCi (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Seat New Ibiza 1.4 TDI (80 PS) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
VW Polo 1.4 TDI PD (80 PS) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Nissan Micra 1.5 3/5 door (65 PS) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Honda Civic Hybrid 1.4 IMA ES (petrol) 61.4 mpg
Suzuki Swift 1.3 GLZ 3 door DDiS (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa MY2005 1.3CDTi 16v5Door (diesel)61.4 mpg
Vauxhall Astra MY2005 1.7CDTi 16v 5Door(diesel)61.4 mpg
Smart Fortwo 698 SM6 (petrol) 60.1 mpg
Daihatsu Charade 989 M5 (petrol) 58.9 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa Corsa 998 MTA5 (petrol) 58.8 mpg
Smart Roadster 698 A6 (petrol) 57.6 mpg
Daihatsu Sirion 998 M5 (petrol) 56.5 mpg
The reason this is being introduced is that people waste a lot of fuel when driving. How often do you see people racing towards red traffic lights and then braking sharply? Why do they accelerate, when they know they are going to have to brake? Apart from being hard on the brake pads, it also wastes fuel.
Here are some tips to improve fuel efficiency:
1. When you reach a red traffic light, instead of braking, take your foot off the accelerator and let the car slow down to reach the traffic lights. I'm aware that sometimes the car behind might not be aware you are slowing down, so lightly touch the brake to flash the brake lights, and then take your foot off the brake, accelerator and clutch and simply let the car glide to a stop.
2. Don't speed. The faster you go, the more fuel you use in to cover the same distance. Every car has an optimal speed where the engine is at it's most efficient. Go to the manufacturer's web-site and find out the optimal efficient speed for your car and stick to it. It's dangerous going over 30mph in a city environment anyway, so don't. On a motorway, just because the speed limit is 70mph, you don't have to drive at that fast. Stick to about 50-60mph and sit on the inside lane with the lorries, and ignore all the people speeding past you. If they are happy to literally burn money, let them. This will need some planning, as driving at a lower speed means that the journey will take longer, so you may need to leave the house earlier.
3. Get your car serviced - dirty air filters and oil that hasn't been changed reduces fuel efficiency.
4. Make sure your tire pressure is correct, check it regularly. The lower your tire pressure, the more the engine has to work to drag the car along.
5. Don't carry heavy loads. The lighter the car, the less fuel it uses. Spend some time clearing junk from the car. Don't keep roof-racks on if you don't need them.
6. Air conditioning decreases fuel efficiency. Unfortunately leaving your windows down creates drag that also reduces fuel efficiency. The only way to get round this is to try not to drive in the hottest parts of the day, when your air conditioning needs will be highest. Park in cool spots to keep the car cool (shaded multi-story car-parks are the best bet in summer as the car won't heat up at all).
7. Drive in the correct gear, if you are using a manual car.
8. Some people tend to have their foot always over the clutch lightly depressing it which driving. Don't. Only depress the clutch when your foot is off the accelerator.
9. Make fewer journeys - instead of popping to the supermarket every couple of days, do big shops occasionally. This too demands prior organisation.
10. When you come to replacing your car, look for a more fuel efficient car. The smaller and lighter the car, the less fuel it will use (it's the same principle as using much more energy and effort to move a heavy object than a light one). The newer the car, the more fuel efficient it is, as newer fuel efficiency technology is incorporated.
The following are a list of fuel efficient cars (based on British Imperial gallons, not American ones):
Honda Insight 2 seater (petrol) 80.0 mpg
Citroen C1 1398 M5 (diesel) 68.9 mpg
Toyota Aygo 1.4 D-4D 3 & 5 door (diesel) 68.9 mpg
Citroen C2 1398 M5 (diesel) 65.7 mpg
Citroen C3 1398 A5 (diesel) 65.7 mpg
FIAT Panda 1248 M5 (diesel) 65.7 mpg
Toyota Prius 1.5 VVT-i Hybrid (petrol) 65.7 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa 1248 MTA5 (diesel) 65.6 mpg
Audi A2 1422 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
FORD Fiesta 1560 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Smart Forfour 1493 S/A6 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Peugeot 206 1398 M5 (diesel) 64.1 mpg
Renault Clio 1461 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Citroen C3 1560 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa 1248 M5 (diesel) 64.2 mpg
Hyundai Getz 1493 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Fiat Grande Punto 1248 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Ford Fiesta 1399 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Ford Fusion 1399 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Ford Fusion 1560 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Toyota Yaris 1364 5MT or Multi5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Renault Modus 1461 A5 or M5 (diesel) 62.6 mpg
Peugeot 206 SW 1398 M5 (diesel) 62.7 mpg
Peugeot 207 1398 M5 (diesel) 62.7 mpg
Peugeot 207 1560 M5 diesel) 62.7 mpg
Renault Megane 1461 M5 (diesel) 62.8 mpg
Citroen C1 998 M5 (petrol) 61.4 mpg
Toyota Aygo 998 M5 or Multi5 (petrol) 61.4 mpg
Toyota Aygo 1.0 VVT-i 3 & 5 door (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Peugeot 107 1.0 (petrol) 61.3 mpg
Renault Modus 1.5 dCi 80 (JP0D05) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Mitsubishi Colt 1.5 AMT (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Skoda Fabia Hatch 1.4 TDI PD (75 bhp) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Skoda Fabia Estate 1.4 TDI PD (75 bhp) (diesel)61.4 mpg
Renault Clio MY 20061.5 dCi (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Ford Fusion 1.6 Duratorq TDCi (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Seat New Ibiza 1.4 TDI (80 PS) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
VW Polo 1.4 TDI PD (80 PS) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Nissan Micra 1.5 3/5 door (65 PS) (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Honda Civic Hybrid 1.4 IMA ES (petrol) 61.4 mpg
Suzuki Swift 1.3 GLZ 3 door DDiS (diesel) 61.4 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa MY2005 1.3CDTi 16v5Door (diesel)61.4 mpg
Vauxhall Astra MY2005 1.7CDTi 16v 5Door(diesel)61.4 mpg
Smart Fortwo 698 SM6 (petrol) 60.1 mpg
Daihatsu Charade 989 M5 (petrol) 58.9 mpg
Vauxhall Corsa Corsa 998 MTA5 (petrol) 58.8 mpg
Smart Roadster 698 A6 (petrol) 57.6 mpg
Daihatsu Sirion 998 M5 (petrol) 56.5 mpg
THE MAN WHO DIED 31 TIMES
A MAN who had a series of heart attacks was brought back to life 31 times in an hour by paramedics.
Derek Jones, 55, from Hellesdon, Norfolk, was on his way to work as an electrician when he felt ill. He said: "I had chest pain and felt hot. A friend at work took one look at me and called 999."
During the 27-mile ambulance ride to Norwich and Norfolk University Hospital Derek suffered an attack every minute and was revived again and again with a defibrillator. Most patients don't survive after two or three shocks and paramedic Toby Reid: "I've never seen anything like it."
Derek is now recovering at home. He said: "I've had plenty of electric shocks at work but nothing like this. I can't thank the paramedics enough."
Derek Jones, 55, from Hellesdon, Norfolk, was on his way to work as an electrician when he felt ill. He said: "I had chest pain and felt hot. A friend at work took one look at me and called 999."
During the 27-mile ambulance ride to Norwich and Norfolk University Hospital Derek suffered an attack every minute and was revived again and again with a defibrillator. Most patients don't survive after two or three shocks and paramedic Toby Reid: "I've never seen anything like it."
Derek is now recovering at home. He said: "I've had plenty of electric shocks at work but nothing like this. I can't thank the paramedics enough."
Album Covers:A Lost Art
We get it. The Beatles didn’t suck. Neither did Pink Floyd or the Rolling Stones and so on and so forth. But, after reading a recent UK poll that named Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s iconic cover the best album image of all time (with Dark Side of the Moon and Sticky Fingers coming in closely behind) we had to stand up for OUR generation. Are there really NO albums released in the last say, ten or twenty years that can compete with the same classic album covers that win the same awards every year since our mom and dads got their drivers licenses…and herpes? We know that CD packaging, followed by digital music sales have really rendered the making of cool covers kind of a lost art, but we know there are SOME out there worth mentioning from the post-punk generation. So, which album covers from the last 20 years would you rank at top of your visual hit list?
American Roulette
A couple of weeks back, out in Omaha, I happened to share a ride to the airport with a pair of United pilots. Both were classics of the type—trim, square-jawed, silver-haired, twangy-voiced white men, one wearing a leather jacket. Sam Shepard or Paul Newman could’ve played them. They spent the entire trip sputtering and whining—about being baited and switched when their employee ownership of the airline had been evaporated by its bankruptcy, about the default of their pension plan, about their CEO’s 40 percent pay raise, about the company to which they’d devoted their whole careers and now didn’t trust a bit, and, in effect, about turning from right-stuff demigods who worked hard and played by the rules into disrespected, sputtering, whining losers. The next morning back in New York, I read the news about the record-setting bonuses on Wall Street, an aggregate amount 1,100 percent higher than in the go-go year of 1986. The 2006 revenues at just one bank, Goldman Sachs, were larger than the GNPs of two-thirds of the countries on Earth—a treasure chest from which the firm was disbursing $53.4 million to its CEO and an average of $623,000 to everybody who works at the place.
Ordinarily, I would shrug and move on with New Yorkerly indifference—the pilots are still flying, their reduced pensions notwithstanding, and I wouldn’t trade my life for any banker’s. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about my jump-cut visions of those defeated pilots and the megabonused Wall Street guys shopping for $15 million apartments. And as a result, this holiday fortnight has felt to me fully Dickensian—the jolly bourgeois bustle and glow, as usual, but also in the foreground the conceited, unattractive rich, our Dombeys and Bounderbys and unredeemed Scrooges.
A month ago, I was ragging on CNN for presenting Lou Dobbs’s hour of pissed-off populism as if it were a traditional nightly news show, and I still think it has a serious truth-in-packaging problem. But (like Dickens’s Mr. Gradgrind, with his epiphany about the poor in Hard Times) I now get Dobbs’s and his followers’ anger and disgust about the ongoing breaches of the social contract, an American economic system that seems more and more rigged in favor of the extremely fortunate.
I know capitalism is all about creative destruction, that the pain of globalization must be endured and flexible labor markets are good; inequality is endemic; life is uncertain and unfair, sure, yeah, of course. We’re all Reaganites now—or at least no longer socialists by instinct. But during the past two decades we’ve not only let economic uncertainty and unfairness grow to grotesque extremes, we’ve also inured ourselves to the spectacle. As America has become a lot more like Pottersville than Bedford Falls, those of us closer to the top of the heap have shrugged and moved on.
The asymmetry between the Goldman boss’s compensation and that of his average employee—85 times as big—is virtually Ben-and-Jerry’s-like these days: An average CEO now gets paid several hundred times the salary of his average worker, a gap that’s an order of magnitude larger than it was in the seventies. In Japan, the ratio is just 11-to-1, and in Britain 22-to-1.
This is not the America in which we grew up.
Back before the Second World War, in the teens and twenties, the richest one-half of one percent of Americans received 11 to 15 percent of all income, but from the fifties through the seventies, the income share of the superrich was reasonably cut back, by more than half. The rich were still plenty rich, and American capitalism worked fine.
Starting in the late eighties, however, the piece of the income pie taken each year by the rich has once again become as hugely disproportionate as it was in the twenties. Meanwhile, the median household income has gone up a measly 15 percent during the past quarter-century—and for the last five years it has actually dropped.
It used to be that when the economy thrived and productivity grew, pay for working people rose accordingly. Yet as the Times reported this past summer, the first six years of the 21st century look to be “the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.”
People have put up with all this because it happened so quickly and for the same reason that the great mass of losers in casinos put up with odds that favor the house: The spectacle of a few ecstatic big winners encourages the losers to believe that, hey, they might get lucky and win, too. We have, in effect, turned the U.S. into a winner-take-all casino economy, substituting the gambling hall for the factory floor as our governing economic metaphor, an assembly of individual strangers whose fortunes depend overwhelmingly on random luck rather than collective hard work. And it’s been unwitting synergy, not unrelated coincidence, that actual casino gambling has become ubiquitous in America at the same time.
I don’t know about you, but I find casinos, for all their adrenaline and glitz, pretty depressing places.
Risk-taking is fabulous, central to the American ethos—but not when it’s involuntary. Too many Americans have been too suddenly herded into our new national economic casino, and without debate turned into the suckers whose losses become the elite’s winnings.
That’s the central argument of Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker’s valuable new book, The Great Risk Shift. Beyond our recent reversion to extreme, twenties-style income inequality, he presents data explaining the new sense of economic dread hanging over Americans. We all know that in this globalized, ultracompetitive age, job security has been beggared, but Hacker attaches startling numbers to the national anxiety. In short, people’s incomes are swinging wildly—like winnings in a casino. In 1970, a family in any given year had a one-in-fourteen chance of its income dropping by half; today, the chance is one in six. No wonder mortgage foreclosures and personal bankruptcies have quintupled during the same period. Middle-class Americans live more and more with the kind of gnawing existential uncertainty that used to be mainly a problem of the poor.
The Great Society programs of the mid-sixties—Food Stamps, Head Start, Medicaid, Medicare—were the final flowering of a social-welfare era that began with FDR’s New Deal 30 years earlier. The countervailing rightward pendulum swing—deregulation and tax cuts under Reagan, welfare reform under Clinton, still more tax cuts under Bush—has dominated our political economy for nearly the past 30 years.
In other words, the time seems to be ripening for a transformative surge of new passion and policy and political traction around the idea of economic fairness. Blaming illegal Mexican immigrants and dollar-an-hour Chinese workers for our troubles is an easy way to vent, but Lou Dobbs’s other regular targets are pretty much on the mark: corporate greedheads and their craven enablers in the political class.
For more than a generation, the Republicans have pitched themselves as the good-old-days party, appealing to the nostalgic hunger for the wholesome, coherent society and culture of mid-century, before life went crazy around 1968. What the Democrats can do now is the same thing, only different—that is, appeal to the nostalgic hunger for the sense of basic economic security and fairness that prevailed before life went crazy around 1986.
Just as Republicans depicted Democrats as insanely freewheeling social experimenters determined to lavish money on the undeserving poor, the caricature can be convincingly reversed: Now the GOP is the party of arrogant, reckless risk-takers—invading Iraq, denying climate change, privatizing Social Security—determined to lavish money on the undeserving rich.
Populism has gotten a bad odor, and not just among plutocrats—for most of the political chattering class, it is at least faintly pejorative. But I think that’s about to change: When economic hope shrivels and the rich become cartoons of swinish privilege, why shouldn’t the middle class become populists? What Professor Hacker calls “office-park populism” will be a main engine of any new cyclical progressive renaissance. The question is whether we’ll elect steady, visionary FDR-like national leaders—Bloomberg? Obama?—who can manage to keep populism’s nativist, Luddite tendencies in check.
I think practical-minded political majorities can be brought together to fix the big, important things that have nothing to do with religious faith or sex. In polls, between 60 and 70 percent of people now think “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health-care coverage” “even if taxes must be raised.” Universal health coverage, protecting everyone against the mammoth downside economic risk of illness, would empower people to take constructive economic risks, freeing them to move to new jobs or start new businesses. We could enact de facto compensation caps for top executives, either by limiting the tax deductibility of CEO pay or, as in Britain, by making CEO pay subject to a shareholder vote every year. We can raise—and certainly not further reduce—taxes on the extremely well-to-do.
We’ve had a bracing, invigorating run of pedal-to-the-metal hypercapitalism, but now it’s time to ease up and share the wealth some. We can afford to make life a little more fair and a lot less scary for most people. It’s not only a matter of virtue and national self-image. Because the future that frightens me isn’t so much a too-Hispanic U.S. caused by unchecked Mexican immigration, but a Latin Americanized society with a high-living, blithely callous oligarchy gated off from a growing mass of screwed-over peons. I think we need to put up with the Republicans’ complaining about “class war!” now in order to avoid a real one later.
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