Quilts at the V&A: Liberation for the prisoners who reap as they stitch

By Sarah Crompton 620PM GMT twenty-three March 2010

An designation by artist Tracey Emin at the V&A Photo PA

I am the lady who usually can"t sew. A symbol represents a challenge; a zip necessitates a outing to the cleaner"s. The thought of essentially origination or embroidering something brings me out in a cold sweat. I censure an unfortunate mental recall of the nightdress I never accomplished at school.

So you competence think that the V&A"s Quilts 1700-2010 would be an muster for me to avoid, relishing, as it does, the painstaking, back-breaking work of stitching something really intricate, really slowly. But as I walked round, I found myself riveted by the "hidden histories" at the back of these unsentimental coverlets.

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My favourites were those where the celebrity of the makers arise majority strongly. The thought of Priscilla Redding, daughter of a Baptist preacher, straining her eyes by candlelight in the 1690s to have a brightly phony cot cover for her initial innate is forever touching. I desired the unknown embroiderer who, around 1803, clinging herself to the origination of a coverlet that places scenes of naval life, with sea captains with robust red silk plumes, to one side miniatures of her own existence.

It wasn"t usually a entertainment for women. I was taken by the bold, blokey impression of one John Monro, a master tailor and part of of the fortitude transformation who, in the 1830s and "40s, clinging years to origination an inlaid patchwork of British sea scenes to show "what calm and stability could accomplish" and to urge immature men "to rehearse those virtues".

A complicated version of his truth underlies the majority distinguished � la mode square in the show, a coverlet done by the inmates of Wandsworth Prison, that mixes scenes of jail hold up with festooned images that exhibit the psychology a rope of men using with the word "freedom" over their heads, a restrained crouched in despondency on the building of his cell.

This relocating and absolute work was done underneath the auspices of a charity, Fine Cell Work, that encourages prisoners to stitch both to give them new skills and something on that to opening their frustrations. The really thoroughness of sewing the thing that so defeats me becomes a ransom given it gives men with zero but time on their hands a creative, helpful focus. They afterwards sell their work and take a third of the cost of any square sold. It"s such a inestimable cause, it"s roughly sufficient to have me collect up a needle.

...

What is it with internal councils and paving? Or is it usually my internal legislature Lambeth that is spooky with laying slabs over immeasurable tracts of land? Every day, as I travel by Brockwell Park, I feel a peep of exasperation that, in the face of substantial internal opposition, a cube of immature space has been shaved off to have approach for an bleach white cement that has no perceivable equates to of drainage and is fatal to negotiate. In Brixton, the legislature has narrowed the roads and transposed tarmac with paving written to emanate a sort of European seating area outward the Ritzy cinema. At the moment, the usually conspicuous outcome has been to enlarge congestion. Happily, we European cement dwellers will have a undiluted perspective of this given majority of the chairs supposing for us are bound confronting the traffic.

...

Reading aloud to your young kids is a illusory approach of rediscovering books that were once review aloud to you and that you have forgotten. I am now in the center of Robert Louis Stevenson"s Treasure Island with my 10-year-old. The denunciation is utterly archaic, generally when Long John Silver is in full flow. But Stevenson describes each item of impression and place so fairly that, as you listen, you find yourself in the stage with him. The approach he writes is similar to a compendium clarification of the word vivid.

Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh writes minute to decider for drug-smuggling cousin

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent 440PM GMT twenty-three March 2010

Money... but does it have you happy? Photo PA

Siobhain McDonagh wrote a minute for Peter Moran, her second cousin, that was upheld to a decider yesterday by his lawyers prior to he is condemned for importing roughly �70 million value of "skunk" cannabis in to Britain.

It offered, in mitigation, sum of the "terribly tragic" family resources he had suffered in new years.

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The Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden pronounced that she wrote the anxiety but asking what he was indicted of, and pronounced it had been a "great shock" to her family when the astringency of his crimes emerged in court.

In dual years Moran, 37, and dual alternative drug bosses organized at slightest 88 shipments of skunk dark in boxes of flowering plants from Holland - bringing in sufficient of the drug for 225,000 travel deals per week - creation them the greatest cannabis importers in Britain.

The squad leaders were so impressed with their increase they could not refine the income fast sufficient and large bundles of money were left in skips to go mouldy.

They are all confronting prison carrying been pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court, to swindling to import tranquil drug and swindling to refine the deduction of crime.

It has given emerged that Miss McDonagh was the second cousin of Moran and used to be his babysitter.

The MP told The Daily"I did not know what he was charged with. I was approached by members of my family to insist the comfortless resources around Peters family and that is what I have done.

"Peters silent and father died in intolerable resources inside of 6 months of each alternative twelve years ago. After that Peter cared for his sister who has suffered from mental health problems. That is all my minute said."

Miss McDonagh one after another "I have not seen Peter for 3 years. I knew him comparatively well when he was a small child and I used to babysit occasionally.

"I can assure you I was utterly unknowingly of the impasse with the squad and hold that he never had a rapist record.

"I have got an endless Irish family, we are really Catholic, and it is a good shock to the family."

Moran, who lived in Fulham, west London, invested his gain from drug bootlegging in construction a formidable of oppulance villas in the Spanish legal holiday island of Lanzarote.

His attorney Peter Griffiths, QC, upheld the MPs minute to Judge Gregory Stone, QC. It was not review to the court.

Moran will be condemned with associate ringleaders Mark Kinnimont, 40, and Terrence Bowler, 40, and 9 lower-level squad members on Thursday at Southwark Crown Court.

Families face eviction as ministers plunge into seventeen billion let bill

Jill Sherman, Whitehall Editor & , : {}

Ministers are to crack down on extreme housing good payments in a array of reforms written to quell the augmenting �17 billion annual let bill.

Yvette Cooper, the Work and Pensions Secretary, plans to tip the tip rates paid to in isolation landlords as majority as �1,800 a week to stop family groups on good vital in magnificent homes at the taxpayers expense, The Times has learnt.

The reforms, to be voiced in the run up to subsequent months Budget, are approaching to save hundreds of millions of pounds a year, but could outcome in hundreds of family groups being evicted from costly place to live with 6 months notice.

The move is a reply to a flourishing series of cases, quite in London and alternative cities, where internal councils have been forced to compensate in isolation rents for family groups in five-bedroom mansions value some-more than �1 million since of the necessity of befitting legislature housing.

Related LinksFamily receives jot down �279,000 housing benefitHigh housing good rates pulling up rent

The housing good bill, that covers rents in the in isolation and amicable sector, has jumped from �11 billion in 1998 to �17.4 billion in 2008-09 and goes to 4.5 million claimants. The Treasury has foresee that this will climb to �20 billion by 2011 since of the recession, rising in isolation rents and a vicious necessity of amicable housing. The normal rent in amicable housing is usually �72 a week opposite �108 in the in isolation sector.

Roughly 100 family groups are right away reception some-more than �1,000 a week in rent up to a extent of �1,800. But the complaint is flourishing opposite the nation as landlords take value of inexhaustible good limits. Thousands of households are reception payments of �500 a week or �26,000 a year to live in homes over the reach of majority operative families.

Councils have to residence any one who has been without a country for 6 months, but they additionally have to compensate housing good for any one already reception such payments who moves from a opposite area. In these cases the family can move in to any residence and the legislature is thankful to cover the payment.

Last week it emerged that Essma Marjam, a singular mom with 6 children, had changed in to a �2 million residence in Maida Vale, costing the taxpayer �1,600 a week in rent.

Ms Cooper has right away motionless to bar the tip 5-10 per cent of in isolation rents when creation housing good calculations. This could possibly be finished nationally, penalising London properties most, or regionally, that would save some-more money.

Helen Goodman, the Benefits Minister, told The Times yesterday that a informal intrigue could save hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

The tip rents could come down by some-more than �1,000 a month and normal rents could tumble by at slightest �100 a month underneath the new calculations.

Ms Goodman certified that the new tip could outcome in evictions but hoped these would be minimal. The arching housing good check is mostly due to a vicious necessity of amicable housing that has led to a larger faith on in isolation zone homes. The Government probably stopped construction amicable housing in the late 1990s and the retrogression is preventing Gordon Brown from creation majority swell on his aspiration to set up 3 million homes by 2020, together with scarcely one million amicable houses.

Recent total from the National Housing Federation likely that usually 45,000 amicable homes would be built in 2009/10.

High rents were initial addressed in 2008 when the Government introduced a regulation for working out extent payments. Under the new complement of internal housing allowances the Valuation Office Agency links extent good rates with weekly normal in isolation rents for different-sized homes in over a hundred zones.

James Purnell, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, put a an additional adhering smear on the complaint in Oct 2008 when he put a 5-bed extent on housing good claims. The target was to stop bigger family groups with 6 or 7 young kids vital in mortar mansions. That unsuccessful too.

Supersized Last Supper mirrors increases in appetites and food portions

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent 1208PM GMT twenty-three March 2010

Previous of Images Next Details of the investigate will be published in the Apr issue of the International Journal of Obesity Photo IAN JONES The Last Supper by Tiepolo c1745-7 Photo ALAMY

The food portions decorated in paintings of the biblical eventuality have grown incomparable over the last 1,000 years in an e.g. of art imitating life.

Since the beginning well known drawings done in 1000AD to now, they found the main courses, bread and plates put prior to Jesus and his disciples have progressively grown by up to two-thirds.

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The Cornell University group in New York complicated 52 of the majority important paintings of the Biblical stage over the millennium and scrutinised the distance of the feast.

Using a computer, they compared the distance of the food to the distance of the heads in the depictions of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their last image prior to his death.

The distance of the main image grew 69 per cent, the image by 66 per cent and the bread by twenty-three per cent, in between the years 1000 and 2000.

Supersizing is deliberate a complicated phenomenon, but "what we see not prolonged ago might be only a some-more conspicuous piece of a unequivocally prolonged trend," pronounced Professor Brian Wansink, a food poise scientist at Cornell University in New York.

"The last thousand years have witnessed thespian increases in the production, availability, safety, contentment and affordability of food.

"The last thousand years have witnessed thespian increases in the production, availability, safety, contentment and affordability of food.

"We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history"s majority important dinner."

He says the anticipating suggests that the materialisation of apportionment bigger portions on incomparable plates has occurred progressively over the millennium.

The Bible says the Last Supper took place on a Passover dusk but gives small item on specific dishes on top of bread and wine.

There"s zero else mentioned, Prof Wansink said. "They don"t contend there"s a ripened offspring crater or carrot cake, though alternative dishes such as fish, eel, lamb and even pig have appeared in paintings by the years," he added.

For the study, he used paintings featured in the book "Last Supper," published in 2000 by Phaidon Press. They embody important portrayals of the meal, by Duccio, El Greco, Leonardo da Vinci, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Rubens

His group used computer-aided pattern record to indicate and work out the relations measurements of equipment in the paintings, in any case of their orientation.

Based on the arrogance that the breadth of an normal fritter of bread from the time should be twice that of the normal disciple"s head, the researchers plotted the distance of the Passover dusk dishes.

The sharpest increases were seen in paintings finished after 1500 and up to 1900AD.

Professor Craig Wansink, co-author and a eremite studies expert, pronounced the changes in apportionment sizes is probably a thoughtfulness of enlightenment rather than theology.

"There is no eremite reason because the dishes got bigger," he said. "It might be that dishes unequivocally did grow, or that people only became some-more meddlesome in food."

But Martin Binks, a behavioural health clergyman and a expert at Duke University Medical Centre, pronounced the investigate is "not unequivocally suggestive science".

"We have genuine hold up examples of the enlarge in apportionment distance - all you have to do is see at what"s being sole at fast-food restaurants," he added.

The investigate is published in the International Journal of Obesity,

Roger Draper: Give LTA time and we will offer up British success at the chosen level

By Roger Draper, arch senior manager of the LTA 730AM GMT twenty-three March 2010

Comments 7 |

Waiting diversion Roger Draper says it is usually a make a disproportion of time prior to the LTA delivers success for Britain at the tip turn of tennis Photo GETTY IMAGES

When you run a sport, you have to be rebuilt to take criticism. You have to know when to talk, and when to listen. Since that unpleasant Davis Cup better to Lithuania, I"ve taken a lot of criticism, as has British tennis, and I have been you do a lot of listening. Listening to the recommendation of people concerned in all aspects of British tennis. Taking in the views and opinions of supporters and opponents alike.

This week, I"ll be articulate to the All-Party Parliamentary Tennis Group at Westminster. I"ve since my commitment, both to them and to the sports minister, to keep those discussions private, so I won"t go in to sum here.

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But it will be a genuine event to put the box for all the great things that are going on in British tennis. To mount up for the genuine swell being finished by coaches, volunteers, players and relatives opposite the country. These are people who merit apply oneself and acclaim, whose achievements are borne out by the facts.

More than half a million adults fool around tennis at slightest once a week. That series is rising year on year. That is a Government statistic.

More young kids are competing, and some-more income is being invested in the weed roots of the sport. Every couple of years, a discuss about the destiny of British tennis is reignited.

The Davis Cup better supposing that spark, but majority of the questions haven"t changed. And because would they? Getting some-more people playing, some-more young kids involved, and creation the competition some-more permitted these are all elemental to the prolonged tenure wealth of the sport. The disproportion is that we are starting to plunge in to those issues.

We are investing some-more in places to fool around tennis scarcely �10 million a year, interjection in piece to the await of Sport England.

We are targeting the await to clubs that recognize the need to open their doors to the wider community. More than 600 clubs have right afar warranted Clubmark status, that commits them to on condition that youth programmes and fostering links with internal schools.

The AEGON Schools programme has additionally finished a genuine impact. Through it, the Tennis Foundation has introduced the competition to scarcely 4,000 initial schools and since out some-more than 120,000 free tennis rackets in only over a year.

There have been alternative questions raised, about the purpose of the National Tennis Centre for example. We right afar have a centre of tennis value that any nation in the universe would envy, and no open income went in to construction it.

Since it non-stop 3 years ago, we"ve lerned 2,000 coaches at the NTC and hundreds of internal young kids make use of it each month. But not all revolves around the NTC. We"re ancillary a network of twenty High Performance Centres around the country. And any player who chooses to sight afar from the NTC will still get only the same turn of await from the Lawn Tennis Association. To a little who disagree about centralisation we have decentralised some-more than ever before.

Others have lifted concerns about the series of unfamiliar coaches concerned in British tennis. There is a identical discuss going on in majority sports, but we"ve invested millions of pounds in ancillary British coaches, and we"re unapproachable of the peculiarity of the coaches.

Is all perfect? No. The Davis Cup better has shone a sheer light on the men"s opening side. We knew 4 years ago that it was going to be difficult to fill the opening left when Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski late that we knew would shortly be around the corner. But swell hasn"t been as fast as we hoped on bringing by the majority appropriate masculine players.

That"s because I"ve asked Steven Martens to examination men"s tennis. To attend to players, coaches, and alternative experienced tennis people, and settle how we can urge in the majority high form piece of the game.

We are starting to see genuine signs of progress, in the women"s diversion in particular. When Anne Keothavong pennyless in to the tip 100 in 2008, she became the initial British lady in 9 years to do so. Since then, 3 alternative British women have damaged by that barrier. That is covenant to the new proceed we have taken and all the people involved.

The juniors additionally see promising, but we have to accept that a prolonged tenure plan is only that. A prolonged tenure plan to broach prolonged tenure success for the sport.

As Chief Executive, I"m obliged for the gratification of British tennis. That includes the men"s Davis Cup team, but it is about so most more.

And I will not concede what went wrong in Lithuania to remove the glorious work that has been finished behind home.

We should be unapproachable of the efforts of tens of thousands of coaches, parents, and volunteers, who are transforming the sport.

With their assistance we are removing some-more people personification tennis, and enjoying it.

With their await we will broach success at the chosen turn too.

Frank Bruno really dissapoint at genocide of genuine crony Harry Carpenter

1013AM GMT twenty-three March 2010

Real crony Harry Carpenter and Frank Bruno common singular down payment Photo PA

Carpenter died elderly 84 on Saturday at King"s College Hospital, London.

During his extensive career he became closely identified with Bruno, whose catchphrase "Know what I mean, "arry?" featured in their post-fight interviews.

Tribute to the "Arry Harry Carpenter, voice of fighting Harry Carpenter RIP Harry Carpenter his majority noted quotes Harry Carpenter the "voice of British boxing" dies at 84 Harry Carpenter dies

Bruno"s representative pronounced the former warrior was "very upset" at the news.

He pronounced "When I told him, he pronounced it was "terrible, unhappy news".

"Frank has most acquaintances but not most genuine friends. Harry Carpenter was a friend."

Carpenter famously appeared to momentarily lose his neutral position during Bruno"s universe pretension quarrel opposite Mike Tyson in Las Vegas in 1989, as he pronounced "Go on... get in there, Frank."

He worked as a sports contributor on inhabitant newspapers prior to fasten the BBC and commentated on vital sporting events together with Wimbledon and the university vessel race.

But it was as the open face - and voice - of the corporation"s fighting coverage that he became most appropriate known.

Another former heavyweight champion, George Foreman, felt Carpenter was a grand operator, with the broadcaster carrying lonesome Foreman"s 1974 strife with Muhammad Ali in Zaire - the mythological Rumble in the Jungle.

Foreman told BBC Radio Five Live "We all knew if there was going to be a little category in boxing, someone who unequivocally brought out fighting and the human being probably, it would be Harry - good Harry.

"We were all in the habit of to fighting people busy in and arguing but Harry was a genuine grand human being. Always a good smile, adhering right to the point as though he longed for to give the open a bird"s eye perspective of the human being and of the boxer."

Former universe hold up Barry McGuigan pronounced his memories of Carpenter went behind to a little of his beginning pledge fights.

He pronounced "If Harry was there, you knew there was genuine seductiveness in the fight.

"He was a lovely, still man. A genuine gentleman.

"He knew so most about the sport. He was an catalogue of fighting and it was regularly a wish to encounter him."

Another former universe champion, John Conteh, paid reverence to his special bargain of boxing.

He pronounced "He had the sort of suggestion and passion for the competition that everybody concerned could feel."

Boxing upholder Frank Maloney pronounced Carpenter was "the voice of boxing".

He pronounced "He was probably one of the biggest commentators of all time.

"His voice was so particular and I recollect all those Ali fights and Bruno fights he commentated on.

"It"s similar to a square of fighting story has been taken away."

Former universe heavyweight pretension challenger Sir Henry Cooper praised Carpenter"s work as a journalist.

He pronounced "If you were good afterwards he"d give you a good press review and if not, he told you one or dual truths. All in all I regularly found him a satisfactory guy. I regularly enjoyed his association and enjoyed articulate to him. And he knew the game.

"He was a poetic man and it"s a good shame."

His counsel David Wills pronounced he had been indisposed given last summer when he suffered a teenager heart attack.

Carpenter leaves a widow and one son. A family orator pronounced a in isolation wake would be followed by a commemorative use in London.

Dating after 40: shrewd ways to urge your prospects

By Casilda Grigg 1200PM GMT nineteen March 2010

Lady in red Paula Rosdol binds one-on-one coaching sessions written to urge dating prospects Photo ANDREW CROWLEY

In a new Woman"s Hour programme on primary date etiquette, spaghetti, oysters and lobster were only a little of the dishes described as understanding breakers. Men were questionable of women who systematic salad ("heavy communication competence take place with the refrigerator after on") or displayed sincere fervour ("if she flies at the food, she competence fly at alternative things"). Women disliked men who were bold to waiters, or showed no aptitude for the art of conversation.

Yet the Radio 4 programme finished no anxiety to the thousands of people for whom dates are similar to needles in haystacks. If you can"t recollect when someone last asked you out, it isn"t the minefield of how to handle in a grill that causes anguish, it"s securing a date in the primary place.

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Former corporate high-flier Paula Rosdol, a London-based American, specialises in assisting women in midlife and over relaunch themselves onto the dating scene. "I wish women to feel they"re fascinating and hot," says Paula, who is 51 but looks younger. "It"s all about giving goal to women who feel they"re on the throw heap."

With this in mind, one-to-one sessions are set up in the tea bedrooms of the capital"s tip hotels. Current clients all womanlike embody release officers, psychotherapists and investment bankers (age range 30-70), who find her recommendation on all from how to piquancy up their internet form to how to handle on a primary date. Her approach, formed on selling techniques gleaned from years operative in big corporations, isn"t romantic, but she"s assured it works.

""You"ve got to see at yourself as a product," she says, tucking one impeccably well-spoken leg underneath the other. "You"re competing in a unequivocally swarming marketplace full of alternative singular women. But if you on all sides and package yourself appropriately, the contingency will work in your favour, rather than opposite you."

As someone who antiquated some-more than 100 men in 10 countries prior to she met her soulmate an English divorc called Paul Paula feels some-more than competent to suggest others. Experience has taught her to worth her trait and femininity, and she is penetrating to pass this summary on. ""Women do themselves a antipathy by charity to separate the cheque,"" she warns. Nor should we jump in to bed with any man who asks. Sex triggers a fastening hormone called oxytocin, she says, and this can fool around massacre with the womanlike psyche. ""If you have sex prior to you"ve turn intimate, you put yourself in a unequivocally exposed position."

"The greatest inapplicable designation women make," Paula adds, "is in meditative men are similar to women. They contend "Why can"t a man love me for who I am?" But men are visible creatures. They"re drawn to beauty and youth. It"s all about evolutionary psychology."

Bad headlines for women over 40? Not at all, she says. You only need to outlay a bit of income on yourself. Often it"s a elementary box of tooth whitening (""it knocks off five years""), Botox to well-spoken scowl lines or unchanging trips to the beautician to censor the grey roots. She additionally recommends switching to subtly graceful make-up brands, such as Bobbi Brown or Mac.

She is, she says, rebuilt to make use of "tough love" when the incident calls for it. A new customer was "fat with corky hair", for example. "But once I"d restyled her," she says, "she was a goddess."

The subsequent jump is some-more wily how to equivocate scaring men off. "One complaint is that women have to rely on masculine appetite to get on in the world," Paula says. "They"ve finished well in their careers and they"ve lost hold with their femininity. But men cite women who are not confrontational or shrill and who have a soft lilt to their voice."

No disbelief she"s right, but such constructed stratagems go opposite a sure Anglo Saxon straightforwardness and there"s something uncomfortably Stepford about all that bathing and pearly dentistry. Paula"s proceed is additionally brash, focused and formula driven, when British women lend towards to cite subtle, banterish and elliptical. But if it helps women find love, when all else has failed, does it unequivocally matter? Clients contingency arrangement a steely finalise in their office of Mr Right by taking advantage of multi-pronged dating "strategies" rather than sitting at home watchful mournfully for the phone to ring. "Use each channel," she urges.

Whether it"s the internet, key agencies, singles events, special seductiveness groups such as Classical Partners, charitable/church organisations, or commercial operation networking, no mill contingency be left unturned. Reluctant friends contingency be dragooned in to wheeling out singular men. It might receptive to advice burdensome and maybe even humiliating, but it worked for Paula, who is right away happily married.

"It"s all about carrying joie de vivre, being light and feeling that hold up is fun," says Paula, who believes that no lady is over hope. ""You"re never as well old to love and to be loved.""

Paula Rosdol (0779 499 6414; paularosdol.com) charges �85 for a one-hour conference (an primary fifteen mins is free) and has clients via the UK.