Cold and rain puts a spring in holiday firms’ step
Travel agents reporting a last-minute surge in bookings as wet summer drives Britons to seek sun, sea and surf, reports Claire SmithLIKE a lot of other businesses, the travel industry had been hit hard...
View ArticleWhat travellers say they really want from their tour operators – the top ten
Top ten things holidaymakers look for in their tour operatorsSafe and secure accommodation (83%) People are keen to check that their hotel has been properly vetted and is run by a company they can...
View ArticleiPhone 5 batteried by Samsung
THE battery life of the latest iPhone is shorter than that of its predecessor when browsing the internet, tests have shown.Research carried out by consumer champion Which? found the battery in the new...
View ArticleWatchdog raps Homebase over misleading adverts
THE advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint against DIY chain Homebase that one of its promotional campaigns was misleading.The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) agreed with the complainant...
View ArticleHouse market hopes grow as mortgage lending hits high
MORTGAGE lending to homebuyers has hit a two-year high, triggering new hope that schemes designed to boost the housing market are proving successful.About 55,300 loans were advanced for house purchase...
View ArticleClaire Smith: Travel agents show the world how to have a party!
YOU haven’t lived until you’ve seen several hundred travel agents bouncing around on a palm tree fringed outdoor dancefloor to Boney M’s One Way Ticket.This week I’ve been at the ABTA annual travel...
View Article‘Music lessons in school are about so much more than how to play’ - Janice...
Introducing an extract from her memoirs, author Janice Galloway explains how free instrument tuition unlocked her creativity and why she’s backing our campaignSTARING wistfully into shop windows is a...
View ArticleFordyce Maxwell: Introduction of zealous traffic wardens has not helped the...
FACT: no one likes parking restrictions. Fact: no one likes parking charges. Fact: both are part of town and city life as we know it and that is unlikely to change.Why the homily? Because as a topic...
View ArticleClaire Black: People don’t speak out when they know what they’re saying won’t...
THERE’S a difference between not saying something and not being heard, isn’t there? I only ask because in recent days I’ve been beginning to wonder whether it’s a distinction that’s always understood....
View Article‘From adultery to arson, from deception to drug dealing, the soap has seen it...
As Emmerdale celebrates its 40th anniversary, Dani Garavelli looks back at the many explosive storylines that have given the iconic soap its sudsONCE upon a time, when Emmerdale Farm was inhabited by...
View ArticleAndrew Eaton-Lewis: Want to kickstart the economy? Give money to artists, not...
WHAT should we do about arts funding in a recession? The answer is simple – increase it. Not only that, we should stop telling artists what to do with the money and just let them get on with making...
View ArticleBook review: Laura Lamont’s Life In Pictures, by Emma Straub
ONE for those hipster girls who use vintage powder compacts and do their hair in victory rolls, this gentle novel of Old Hollywood follows the heady rise and… well, gentle levelling-off of a studio...
View ArticleBook review: Total Recall: My Unbelievable True Life Story, by Arnold...
LET’S get the scandalous stuff out of the way, because Schwarzenegger certainly wants to. About the son he conceived with the family housekeeper, Mildred Baena, in 1996, he says only this: that he had...
View ArticleAlbum review: Jason Lytle - Debt Of Disappearance
The second solo album since Lytle folded his band Grandaddy six years ago is 50 glorious minutes of meticulous melody and homespun charm.Jason Lytle Dept Of Disappearance Epitaph £12.99Star rating: * *...
View ArticleAlbum reviews: Bellowhead | Bat For Lashes | Jazz | Classical
OUR music critics review the rest of this week’s longplayer releasesFOLKBellowhead Broadside Proper, £12.99Star rating: * * * The folk wheel is not easily re-invented, but this is a roadworthy effort...
View Article‘They said they felt sorry for us because Glasgow was a terrible place. I...
AMAL Azzudin remembers, with the etched clarity of sharp pain, the Sunday morning seven years ago when immigration officers came to take her school friend away.“I got a phone call saying Agnesa had...
View ArticleBook review: May We Be Forgiven, by A M Homes
ONE of the most difficult tasks for the novelist is the depiction of moral change. On the whole, literature has been relatively successful in representing the baby steps towards wickedness; such as...
View ArticleBook review: Stalin’s Legacy: The Soviet War On Nature, by Struan Stevenson
A GLASS jar in the museum of Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, holds the body of a boy born to a Soviet pilot and his wife. With a single eye in the centre of his forehead – a perfect Cyclops – he was born...
View ArticleInterview: George Wyllie’s daughter on her father’s impact on Scottish art
In a year of events celebrating George Wyllie’s art, Moira Jeffrey meets his daughter, and finds a house full of quizzical reminders of the mark he left on the art worldWHEN I drive down to Gourock to...
View ArticleFilm review: Frankenweenie
THERE is one theme Tim Burton returns to again and again: that of the imaginative misfit trying to deal with the squares who misunderstand him. Frankenweenie (PG)Director: Tim BurtonRunning time: 88...
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