ASK A Pekinger to name all the English cities he knows, and he may manage four or five. Books are for planes, and the last was a biography by Robert Harvey of Clive of India I hadn’t realised what an important figure he was. I think, if he had then been given the job he should have been, which was to sort out the United States, history might have been very different.Do you have any heroes?I was never much of a one for heroes, who are people you would like to be. You can admire or defer to people, but I am happy in my own skin.Is there any unfulfilled ambition?The America’s Cup I was Britain’s last skipper in 1986-87. I have no immediate plans, but it is unfinished business.Interview by Stuart Alexander. And I tend to be a collector of people and moments.What book did you read recently?I read all the time, a couple of hours a day, but mainly magazines and newspapers. Many things are related to ambience, like walking in the hills and coming across a vista.

Both my wife Lauren and I like rambling together, it brings us together again. It could just be a beautiful sunset.And a private passion?Much the same really. Losing King Harald of Norway’s yacht almost outside my front door off Cowes We ran aground and pushed the keel up through the bottom. I had to ring him up and tell him the boat was sunk.What is your greatest indulgence?That occasional rush of happiness, which is different to a sense of well being, and which is part of what is already a good day. We lost our rudder and I went home in a helicopter.And the most embarrassing?That’s easy. It seems always that one of your first wins is the best one.What is the worst?The Fastnet Race of 1979, when I was sailing for Ireland on Golden Apple of the Sun. We went into that race as leading team and with a clear advantage only to see 15 people lose their lives and two of our three boats did not finish.

Would you rather be sailing this week instead of managing the British team?

In many ways, yes I don’t find managing as satisfying. But, the reality of age and skills dictates that I do this job and the younger ones do the sailing.
What is your best memory?Winning my first world championship in a half-tonner in Trieste in 1976. After the war it was applied to cars: the Sunday Times referred in 1959 to “the grisly enormities of American stock car racing, with an hysterical ghoul of a commentator who revelled in every prang.”. MICHAEL SCHUMACHER’S British Grand Prix came to a premature end yesterday when he crashed on the first lap. The word is almost certainly onomatopeoic, first appearing in the Middle Ages (the OED cites Baret from 1580: “The noise of a thing that is broken”), probably from such Scandinavian words as the Icelandic krassa, though there is a German word krach.
“Prang” was RAF slang (etymology unknown), originally with wider applications – it also meant to bomb from the air, as well as to fall from it, and also to stand someone up. “But your whole career does change when you win a major.”Most of the players will go in there [this week] to make the cut, have a good tournament and get out of there with a good finish.

Up the hill to Maggots and through the left- right-left of Beckett’s and Chapel the two Ferraris sped as if tied together by a rubber rope, Schumacher jinking from side to side as he tried to find a way past his team-mate.As they went down Hangar Straight at 185mph, the sight of the two Ferraris duelling with each other instead of with the enemy evoked thoughts of the increasing rivalry between the two men. Before it was winched down from the breakdown truck outside the Ferrari garage, the mangled carcass was carefully shrouded with a red satin dust-sheet. Later a Ferrari spokesman announced that the cause of the accident appeared to be a problem with the rear brakes, adding that the car would be taken back to the team’s headquarters at Maranello today for extensive analysis.No amount of analysis ever managed to establish the cause of Senna’s accident, and the visual evidence of Schumacher’s crash was equally inconclusive. Nor had the wide gravel trap, positioned between the track and the wall, succeeded in slowing the car significantly once Schumacher had lost control.While an ambulance was taking the driver to the circuit’s medical centre, his car was returning to pits, its damaged nose hidden under an improvised cover of plastic awnings. The barrier held together but failed to stop the front of the car’s carbon-fibre monocoque – known as the survival cell – hitting the concrete retaining wall and breaking off.

And, even with today’s precautions, the double world champion can count himself lucky. An accident which began at around 170mph ended with the nose of his car piercing a barrier of used tyres at about 100mph. Damon Hill finished fifth, behind his Jordan team-mate, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, and afterwards refused to make an announcement about his future.If Hill and his wife, Georgie, had needed any further stimulus to thoughts of imminent retirement, Schumacher’s crash certainly provided it. Professor Sid Watkins, Formula One’s medical delegate, said last night that Schumacher will probably be out of action for six weeks, a period which includes the races in Austria, Germany and Hungary.
Schumacher may be comforted by the memory of 1994, when he won his first world championship despite missing two races through suspension, and by the news that his principal rival, Mika Hakkinen, also failed to score points at Silverstone yesterday after losing a wheel on his McLaren.The race was won by David Coulthard, Hakkinen’s team-mate, ahead of Eddie Irvine in the second Ferrari and Ralf Schumacher, Michael’s younger brother, in a Williams. Last night Schumacher was in Northampton General Hospital undergoing surgery to begin the repair of a broken tibia and fibula in his right leg Otherwise, his team declared, he had survived unscathed. The accident deals a severe blow to his attempt to bring Ferrari a first drivers’ world championship in a long and often anguished 20 years for motor racing’s most revered team.

The safety precautions brought into Formula One as a result of Senna’s fatal crash undoubtedly saved Schumacher’s own life yesterday, when his Ferrari plunged off the track halfway round the first lap of the British Grand Prix and ran head-on into a barrier. FIVE YEARS ago, Michael Schumacher was following Ayrton Senna through a 190mph curve at Imola when the great Brazilian’s car mysteriously left the track and smashed into a wall. But by the 1580s, as the international scene darkened, her guilt or innocence was no longer relevant. Protestant England, feeling increasingly threatened from within and without, could no longer contain her.

A gallery of between 300 and 400 enjoyed watching the Swede collect nine birdies and only one bogey.”It was nice to be watched by people who know the game and applaud your shots when they deserve it. The 32-year-old finished 57th at Loch Lomond on Saturday and then drove across the country and walked the Montrose course that evening.”I had not seen the course before and maybe I should do it that way in future,” he said. A player the current crop of Swedes admire as a pioneering force for golf in their country, Forsbrand can produce horrendous scores when he loses confidence in his swing. Once, at a French Open at Paris National, he would not have broken 100 had he not run out of balls playing the last hole.Johansson played in the last two winning European Ryder Cup teams but has not won a tournament for two years.

He said: `Thank you, it is not your fault’.”Forsbrand, 38, has won six times on the European tour in a mixed career. Forsbrand hit, or attempted to hit the ball 11 times and had three penalty shots, one for the out-of-bounds and two when the ball moved while he was identifying it.”It was a breach of rule 18 not to replace the ball,” said the Royal and Ancient rules official Colin Strachan, “but he took it very well. His fourth shot (the second with his second ball) landed in the gorse that runs up the left-hand side. As he tried to identify the ball, it moved downwards but, rather than replace the ball, Forsbrand took a hack at it where it was.And another, and another, and so on. The hole measures 416 yards but there is no margin for error in a lateral direction. That was 17 strokes behind Johansson’s new course record of 63, later equalled by New Zealand’s Michael Long.
Forsbrand was progressing steadily enough, if not in the spectacular fashion of his countryman, when he took a 14 at the 17th hole. From one under par, he was now nine over.It all went wrong from the tee as he pushed his drive out of bounds.

FEAR OF the impact that a millennium bug computer crash could have on their business has driven companies to channel three-quarters of capital investment into IT equipment, a report says today. For example, research by Phillips & Drew emphasises the fact that the growth of the US economy depends on share prices continuing to rise because the expansion is built on declining private saving.Capital gains make households feel rich enough to spend more than they earn, but without the gains they will stop. Without the economic growth, corporate profits will collapse, which could in turn trigger the Wall Street crash.The final verdict ought to go to one of the gurus of finance theory, however.Burton Malkiel, the Princeton professor who wrote the classic A Random Walk Down Wall Street, concluded last year: “I don’t think it’s possible for even the Almighty to know whether a market is over- or under-valued.”. The equity risk premium is about as low as it has ever been and is unlikely to fall further.

It might rise, and anyway returns are likely to revert to their long-run trend, he concludes.Bigger pessimists take a different approach. This suggests that there is no real rationale for an equity risk premium at all. And since the late Fifties, when equity yields famously started to yield more than bonds instead of less, the case has strengthened. The risk of world war looks remote, communism has collapsed, policymakers have learnt how to react to financial crises, inflation is low and growth may be more stable than in the past.Demographic change could be helping too: if ageing western populations are saving more for their retirement there is higher demand for equities from investors.The trouble is that all these arguments must be true in order to explain why the apparent risk premium on US equities – although not shares elsewhere in the world – has dropped to zero.On cautious assumptions it is actually slightly negative.Michael Hughes, the head of strategy for ING Asset Management, says: “There will not necessarily be a crash but if you are a long term investor you will be better off elsewhere because you are not being paid anything at all to take equity risk.”Mr Wadwhani was equally cautious in his paper.

Jeremy Siegel’s research also established that, since 1802, equities have outperformed bonds more than two-thirds of the time over five-year holding periods and 99.4 per cent of the time over 30-year holding periods.Over one year, returns on equity are three times more volatile than returns on bonds but over 20 years slightly less volatile. The parallel is the 40-year bull run of the mid-19th century, he suggests.Optimists have another argument, namely that the equity risk premium required by investors has declined. Shares are not the most overvalued they have ever been by comparison with this long-run trend, but they are getting close.Jonathan Wilmot from CSFB notes in a recent report, however, that stockmarket disasters have always resulted from some external shock such as war, the Opec price shock, or the extended policy failures of the Thirties.Without another shock, real returns on equities will slow towards trend but may be able to sustain that trend for another 20 years or more. The same is true in the UK back into the 19th century, according to CSFB’s Gilt-Equity study, and the bank has also confirmed it for Japan and Germany this century, although with dislocations like the hyperinflation of the Twenties in the latter case.Although there is no obvious theoretical reason why the number should be 7 per cent, the striking evidence suggests that any period of outperformance will be followed by a period of underperformance.With the compound rate of real returns on US shares over 13 per cent since 1982, this seems to indicate pessimism about Wall Street is well- founded.

WHEN EUROPE’S culture ministers assemble at an opera festival this weekend, one seat will be conspicuously vacant. “But when we look at them, we see Serbs.”t Two members of the Kosovo Liberation Army shot dead by British peace- keeping soldiers on 2 July, during celebrations of Kosovo’s rebellion against Serb rule, were buried yesterday.. Whether this will dilute Albanian animosity remains to be seen. “They say that they come here as peace-keepers,” says Mr Dermaku.

There were shootings at the weekend and a Serb man was taken to hospital with gunshot wounds.The plan is that soldiers of the two militaries – Russian and American – will patrol together, and that exclusively Russian operations will be avoided. “Russians, Americans – we make no difference between them,” one old Serb woman said. “We welcome anyone who is human.”The situation in the area is tense, and there is real peace-keeping work to be done. The prospect of Kalashnikov-bearing Orthodox Slav soldiers brought thousands of demonstrators out onto the streets of Orahovac last week; there are rumours of a protest in Kamenica todayThe Albanians are alarmed by reports that Russian mercenaries fought with Serb paramilitaries during the Nato bombing campaign. KLA officers say they have seen Russian identity cards on the bodies of dead paramilitaries.”That’s the biggest reason the Russian forces are not welcome,” says Mr Arifi. “They make us think there might be more conflict.”Even local Serbs do not appear particularly excited by the Russian arrivals.

Rising land prices, per se, do not increase national productivity and do not enhance standards of living.Most of these myths are harmless enough but some are not. Physical characteristics of houses do not change when prices rise sharply in a boom and it is those characteristics that are valuable. Big regional house price gaps help this process.Myth 9: “Prices just can’t keep going up.”Fixed supply of land, rising incomes … say no more.Myth 10: “As house prices go up the value of the UK’s stock of wealth goes up and we are, nationally, better off.”The problem with this is that UK houses are, overwhelmingly, lived in and owned by current and future UK households. People should be encouraged to move to less crowded areas where houses are empty. The South-east of England is already too crowded and transport systems are cracking.

But to talk about “shortages” is misleading, unhelpful and probably harmful.Myth 8: “House price differences between regions in the UK are far too great and are bad for labour mobility.”On the contrary, house price differences are likely to alleviate crowding in densely crowded areas by encouraging firms and workers to move to areas where the cost of living is lower. If you want to encourage divorce, speed up family breakdown and reduce green space then by all means build more houses. Encouraging faster growth in household formation is largely a euphemism for encouraging divorce and family breakdown. If we want to stop real house prices rising as fast as they otherwise would, building lots of houses will achieve this and will encourage faster household formation rates.

Unless Ffion Hague can come up with a multiple birth, the Tories are permanently snookered.But this particular propaganda coup will not be without its potentially serious bouts of infant croup. For, while the nation rightfully rejoices (or at least feels a passing warm glow) what lies ahead for Cherie Booth is a totally new double challenge – and perhaps her toughest yet.The first issue to be faced is the physical demand of pregnancy at 45; a doddle one might guess if her present levels of energy are any guide. The second and far trickier feat will be in forging a fresh role for herself as the mother of a new baby who also has a career to which she is committed – a QC with ambitions to become a judge. For the past two years, after the nightie on the doorstep incident (when she was photographed opening the front door first thing in the morning and in a rather dishevelled state), she has risen as a phoenix from the flannelette ashes, to turn herself into the silent clothes horse at her husband’s side.This Fifties fixation with acting as your spouse’s adornment is something that I, amongst others, initially found highly irritating – not least because Cherie is a barrister and a mother of three with, presumably, better things to do. Then it was pointed out to me by someone rather close to her, that this was the lesser of two evils. Appearing as a walking wardrobe (lots of photo opportunities) was wiser than opening her mouth in interviews and finding herself accused of pillow talk or, worse, holding opinions rather to the left of the PM (Old Labour’s nightmare, torture by tabloids). Besides, according to one friend, it isn’t so much that she needs him – as he needs her in his far-flung corner of the world.Pregnancy and motherhood in the late Nineties, however, requires a completely different set of tools.

Over the next year or so and beyond, Cherie will have to move from wardrobe to wet wipes. She will no longer be judged by what she wears or how adoringly she gazes on Tony – what will matter most is how she (and her husband) behave as parents of a newborn.A sensitivity to this has already been revealed by the announcement that Baby Blair will be delivered in an NHS hospital. To quote the feminist slogan, “The personal is political”, but never more than when it burps, comes in nappies and is labelled the Prime Minister’s child.”When the Blairs had their first three children, we lived in different times, the family was invisible in the workplace and it was up to the mother to cope as best she could ,” says one Labour MP.”Now, more women are in employment, and more dads want involvement with their kids. My constituents tell me they’d like more recognition of the dilemmas they face – and more government action.

Tourist info: 00 39 0436 3231.JACKSON HOLE, USAJackson Hole, in Wyoming, is one of the last wild frontiers of macho mountainside, with an unprecedented five colour codings for the degree of difficulty of its ski trails. Rendezvous Mountain, with mostly black runs, steep chutes and unlimited off-piste, features one of the longest continual vertical drops in the USA. Snow-users either stay in Teton Village at Jackson Hole, or commute from the town of Jackson, 20 minutes away by ski bus. The latter is a genuine Wild West town, complete with boardwalks, wooden shop fronts and tough bars.Lifts: 9 Pistes: 2,500 acres. Tourist info: 001 307 733 2292.SMUGGLER’S NOTCH, USA”Smuggs”, as the locals call it, regularly wins awards for its child- friendly facilities – in fact, you would feel out of place here without children.

The skiing is mainly benign, interspersed with mogul slopes to keep parents happy. Teaching features tailored courses where parent and child are taught together, with the emphasis on picking up useful tips to teach your child yourself. Off-piste, too, restaurants, accommodation and entertainment are geared towards families, with tobogganing and karaoke evenings, torchlight parades, fireworks and dance parties for children of all ages. Little ones can spend their days at Alice’s Wonderland Child Care Centre, while more proficient children can give the timed Nastar giant slalom course a try.Lifts: 7. Pistes: 70.Tourist info: 0800 897159 (freephone).AVORIAZ, FRANCEOf the 13 resorts in the Portes du Soleil, only Avoriaz is a snow-sure base, and it is at this end of the circuit that the slopes are the most challenging.

Avoriaz was the first resort in Europe to build a half-pipe, and is now recognised as the world’s snowboard capital. Designated areas around Arare are set aside for a half-pipe and a slalom run, with a reduced-price restricted-area pass giving access to these facilities. The funpark is situated on the Bleu du Lac run, while for alpine riders, the Arare piste is hard to beat for high-speed carving. Avoriaz also boasts the International Ski School (ESI) and the French Ski School (ESF), both of which teach snowboarding.Lifts: 39 in Avoriaz; 212 in Portes du Soleil.Pistes: 150km in Avoriaz; 650km in Portes du Soleil. Tourist info: 00 33 4 50 74 02 11.MEGeVE, FRANCEA combination of extensive gentle skiing, excellent child facilities and good hotels and restaurants, all in an atmospheric Alpine village setting, is attracting a new generation of skiers The resort abounds in green slopes and gentle blues. From Mont Joux, long easy runs descend to Les Communailles near Le Bettex, while the runs into Megeve itself are mostly wide and easy and include a long green piste.

There is a drag-lift in the trees at the top-station of Le Jaillet that gives access to mild, pleasant runs suited mainly to novices and early intermediates. Megeve’s ski schools have fine reputations, particularly for beginners.Lifts: 80 Pistes: 300km. Tourist info: 00 33 4 50 21 27 28.KITZBuHEL, AUSTRIAKitzbuhel is a walled, medieval settlement in which fur-clad Germans mix with younger, often more financially challenged skiers from Britain, Holland and Italy to form an alpine social melting pot. Apart from Innsbruck (see No 25), this is the one resort in the Tyrol that is really suitable for skiers and non-skiers alike.

We had no difficulty arranging exactly the ceremony we wanted. The funeral director suggested a Humanist ceremony as soon as we said Dad was vehemently atheist, and an officiant from the British Humanist Society in Sheffield worked closely with us (three daughters in different parts of the country) to compose the text he would read. This reflected Dad’s life and character, and we chose exactly the music Dad liked and the readings we wanted. No prayers, no hymns, no po-faced sanctimony.
I would encourage anyone with a dislike of the mawkishness Peter Stanford experienced to choose a Humanist funeral. It gave us the opportunity to go through this important rite without compromising Dad’s feelings or our own.SHAY PARSONSBradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. WHEN THE political history of this week is written, it will not be Cherie’s baby or Ken’s candidacy that is remembered; rather, at least if the members of the Ulster Unionist Council vote yes next week, historians will be praising the successful completion of Senator George Mitchell’s review of the Good Friday Agreement. Yesterday, David Trimble spoke out directly in favour of the compromise on decommissioning which he will be recommending to his party, saying that he was confident that “we have here the mechanism that will achieve that”.

We are already getting used to hearing such positive expressions of trust in the good faith of the IRA from Mr Trimble, but the importance of this development cannot be overstated. This is FW de Klerk coming to trust Nelson Mandela, it’s Ronald Reagan working on disarmament with Mikhail Gorbachev. Senator Mitchell’s contribution to this process is a quintessential example of the art of deal-making, something Washington politicians, with their experience of continual legislative gridlock, must get plenty of chances to practice. Looking forward, beyond the establishment of a power-sharing executive at Stormont, to its actual workings, we can see that Northern Ireland’s politicians, too, will have to get used to working fruitfully with their sworn opponents. The first action of the Assembly, which could have power transferred to it within days of the Unionists voting to accept the Mitchell deal, will be to appoint members of the executive. There will be ministers from the Unionists, from the SDLP, from Sinn Fein, and even two from Ian Paisley’s DUP sharing out portfolios among themselves.
The day power-sharing commences will also see the appointment of an “interlocutor” from the IRA to liaise with Canadian General John de Chastelain’s commission on disarmament. Opponents of the Mitchell deal point out that as Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein is already a representative of the republican movement to that commission, and no weapons have yet been handed over, there is no guarantee that IRA disarmament will follow this new appointment.

These critics fear that once the executive has got underway, and the cross- border bodies have been staffed and begun operation, it is unlikely that a reluctance of the IRA to hand over its guns will lead to the promised suspension of the Assembly.On the other hand, the fuss that would accompany the complete failure to hand in any weapons at all would deprive Sinn Fein of credibility, and the even worse situation of the IRA setting off a bomb somewhere would lead to the almost certain eviction of its political representatives from the executive. A beneficial consequence of giving Sinn Fein a place in the government of Northern Ireland would be to put paid forever to the strategy of “the ballot box in one hand and the Armalite in the other”.Although decommissioning has come to be a totem for Unionists of the republican commitment to peace and democratic politics, this is partly due to there not having been any other available measurement. Once Sinn Fein ministers begin to take responsibility for, say, housing or education or industry in Northern Ireland, there will be new issues to absorb the attention of the politically engaged. And if, against the obvious impediments, Mr Trimble and Mr Adams continue to work in the spirit of trust they seem to have established, their example could herald a welcome new age in Ulster..

The National Post
CanadaAT LEAST three Canadian hockey teams have announced they will no longer play Gary Glitter Rock and Roll, Part Two at home games Now, we oppose child porn as much as anyone But banning Glitter’s anthem from hockey games is overkill Glitter may have some disturbing and illegal habits. But, unless we are missing something, he does not advocate them in Rock and Roll, Part Two. And where does this precedent lead? What would happen if networks made programming judgments on the basis of how child TV actors behaved in their adult lives. Viewers would be denied reruns of many shows.Daily MailUKGARY GLITTER wept as he went to prison He wept for himself He wept because he’d been found out. He wept, no doubt, because he knows his career is totally over.

He didn’t weep out of guilt or shame or for the tragic, degraded children. He downloaded images of children being forced to indulge in oral sex, children being beaten, children being sexually molested He created his own vile bestial pornographic library It’s the kind of perversion most of us can’t comprehend.. British verdicts on the way the Labour Party has handled shortlisting candidates for the London Mayoralty

Evening Standard
THE MAYORAL saga thus far has been a political shambles for both major parties. Labour has now taken belated action to save its London party from outright ridicule and shame. Blair’s high-profile assault is risky, and could well backfire.

The battle for the Labour nomination now promises to be ruthless, bitter, exciting and embarrassing to the party. We have campaigned fiercely for Mr Livingstone to be allowed to stand. But we share Mr Blair’s view that it is strongly in the interests of every Londoner that he should not become Mayor.The Daily TelegraphTHE DEEPER significance of the Livingstone phenomenon, though, is its impact on the Prime Minister’s prestige His machine can function only for as long as it is feared. One of the few figures in the Parliamentary Labour Party who owes nothing to Mr Blair has thrown down a challenge to his entire project Mr Blair has picked up Mr Livingstone’s gauntlet. The prize is the office of London’s first elected mayor, Labour’s hold on the capital and the mystique of Blairite invincibility.