However, figures showed that nearly half of those who spent a short break in England stayed with friends and relatives, limiting the benefit to the British economy.The changing holiday habits have come as a boost to the English seaside, which the report said benefited from 18.5 million visits last year: “Four in ten of all holiday trips in England are taken by the coast,” Adele Biss, chairwoman of the ETB, said.And despite the near extinction faced by the seaside special trains, the board estimated that more than 110 million day-trips were made last year to the seaside. The report shows that the seaside is England’s biggest single source of revenue for the domestic tourist industry.The ETB is planning to capture the imagination of the UK holidaymaker with an extension of its existing advertising programme for British holidays: “This year we are predicting steady growth, predominantly in short holidays.” Mr East said.The ETB will concentrate on encouraging the increase in short breaks, and the increase in spending by UK tourists when they are on holiday. They will also try to encourage people with more ”leisure time” to take more day trips.Mr East said the board would be spending pounds 2m on 50 new projects this year, from supporting narrowboat and farm holidays to preparing to welcome thousands of European football fans to England for Euro ‘96.The ETB has also disclosed it will bid for more than pounds 25m from the lottery Millenium Fund to revitalise and improve access to Britain’s coast.THE BRITISH ON HOLIDAYThe report showed that in 1994:8 Britons took 18.5 million seaside holidays in England, spending pounds 3.2bn;8 Seaside holidays accounted for nearly two in five of all holiday trips in England;8 The West Country received the most UK tourists last year with more than 15 million trips being taken and pounds 2.45bn being spent;8 Southern England saw the second biggest number of visitors with 10.6 million trips being made there and pounds 1.14bn being spent;8 Yorkshire and Humberside experienced the largest increase in trips (41%) followed by the Heart of England (39%) and the South-east (32%);8 Trips to England of one to three nights duration actually outstripped those of four nights or more;8 Total spending by Britons in England was pounds 11.65bn and by Britons in the UK was pounds 14.49bn.. The satirical magazine Scallywag is back on sale after Conservative Central Office effectively closed it down last February when it issued libel writs against newsagents, printers and distributors for handling it. Makeshift black-and-white copies of the publication, which two years ago made allegations about John Major’s private life, yesterday began to land on the desks of MPs and in newspaper offices, saying on its cover that it is “fighting back against Tory dirty tricks”.
Inside it carries details of a Cabinet minister’s alleged trip to Morocco and what he may have got up to with the locals, how leading Tories supposedly ran a dirty tricks campaign to destroy Owen Oyston, the socialist millionaire, and a profile of Julian Lewis, the Tory party’s deputy director of research.It was Mr Lewis who issued the writs earlier this year against printers, distributors and newsagents after Scallywag carried a story alleging another Conservative dirty tricks campaign, that time against Labour.Angus James, who has co-edited Scallywag with Simon Regan since its launch in October 1991, said yesterday that the 4,000 copies would be distributed by hand. “It takes a lot more than Julian Lewis or the Conservative Party to stop us.”.

A priceless water-colour painting by JMW Turner has been discovered hidden underneath another of his famous works. Conservationists at the National Museum of Wales were restoring Turner’s Llandeilo Bridge and Dynevor Castle when they found a second canvas sealed under the original. The new picture also depicts the bridge and castle, but from a slightly different angle.
Ian Warrell, assistant keeper of the British Turner Collection at the Tate Gallery, which with more than 20,000 Turner works is the largest collection in the world, said: “It adds to what we already know about him, rather than being a complete revelation. It’s very interesting and it’s something that with other research going on here gives a fuller picture of the artist.”Mr Warrell, who studied and authenticated the museum’s discovery in the spring, believed the water-colour might have been a draft then used as a trace for the picture that was eventually completed. He said that the artist had reached an advanced stage before evidently becoming unhappy with the result.

“What’s interesting is that it shows how Turner worked in a broader fashion before he introduced details and light effects. At that stage he was quite a young artist still experimenting to see how he could use colour to create different effects, so he would often abandon work halfway through,” he said.Turner undertook five major sketching and painting tours of Wales between 1792 and 1799. He discovered Llandeilo Bridge and Dynevor Castle in 1795 and completed his painting of the hilltop castle the following year. The new Turner, which is immaculately preserved, is currently being shown alongside three of his other water-colours in an exhibition touring Wales.. The man at the heart of the health reforms of the former prime minister, Baroness Thatcher, spun a web of deceit to hide his chronic heroin addiction, the General Medical Council’s professional conduct committee was told yesterday. But the doctors’ professional conduct committee decided that Clive Froggatt should not be struck off the medical register, and instead referred his case to the GMC health committee.
The committee will decide whether his fitness to practise has been seriously impaired by his self-confessed drug-taking and he will have to submit to a full medical examination.The committee could suspend him for a year or impose practise restrictions for up to three years, but it does not have the power to strike him off.Froggatt had claimed that he was secretly obtaining diamorphine through forged prescriptions from chemists to conceal the fact that he was treating the late MP for Cheltenham, Sir Charles Irving.In fact, the barrister, Rosalind Foster, said, Froggatt, 47, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was getting 66 to 166mg of the drug a day on a long-term basis to satisfy his own addiction.Ms Foster said that Froggatt, who was at the centre of Lady Thatcher’s “privatisation” of the National Health Service, appeared at Bristol Crown Court on 28 April this year where he pleaded guilty to eight specimen charges of obtaining drugs by deception and was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.At the peak of the doctor’s deception, he was visiting up to four different chemists in one day. In October 1993, for example, he presented a total of 4,710 prescriptions for 151 patients, Ms Foster said.

He had used the names of people long since dead and of close friends, without their knowledge, to obtain the drugs.Ms Foster said that during interviews with police, Froggatt had lied extensively, although he eventually admitted his addiction, claiming, amongst other things, that he had taken to cocaine, followed by heroin, after his failure to be elected president of the Royal College of General Practitioners. His heavy involvement in the NHS reforms and consequent unpopularity among sections of the health service had also contributed.His excuse that he was covering up for obtaining drugs for the late Sir Charles was largely exploded as a myth when the MP was interviewed by police and said he had never received diamorphine from the doctor.Ms Foster told the committee that the doctor’s massive heroin addiction must have posed a serious threat to his patients.There were several other extremely serious aspects to the case, she said, not least of which were the huge amounts of drugs involved and the fact that the NHS had been deprived of funds.Anthony Arlidge QC, representing Froggatt, who was admitted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1970, said that one of the reasons he had started taking cocaine and heroin was the abuse he received because of his major role in the NHS reforms.. A born-again Christian who ran a bogus marriage racket, paying British men and women to marry immigrants, was sent to prison for three years yesterday. Charles Dickson, 39, was working as a JobCentre official when he paid poor and unemployed people up to pounds 1,000 a time to marry foreigners – mainly from his native Ghana – in order to deceive the Home Office into granting them rights of residence in Britain.
He had originally denied nine specimen charges of conspiracy to defraud, but a week later changed his plea to one of guilty on seven counts spanning two years from September 1991.He has admitted arranging a total of 15 bogus marriages.Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC, told Southwark Crown Court: ”This was in my judgment a very serious fraud and only a sentence of imprisonment is appropriate for you. It is plain from all the evidence that I have heard in this case that this type of fraud is widespread …”The court had been told that Dickson’s racket had proved so popular that word soon spread through the unemployed community and in one case a mother, her two daughters, two sons and two close friends went through with the fake matches.Dickson, of Abbey Wood, south-east London, arrived in Britain in the 1980s and worked at the Department of Social Security and at a JobCentre in Catford while operating the swindle.Applicants, who were given a pounds 200 down-payment when they initially came forward, were encouraged to get to know their future spouses in order to convince the registrar and other officials of the genuine nature of the nuptials, the court was told. Dickson, who is legally married, would wait outside during the ceremony – which usually took place at Greenwich Register office – while photographs were taken of the couple before handing over the rest of the money.Police have been to track many of the illegal immigrants, who face automatic deportation.Although police had been unable to find evidence of profit being made by Dickson, who intends to enter the ministry, Judge Rivlin said it was an “inevitable common-sense inference that you were making some money for yourself”.. The Croatian army inflicted a major defeat on the secessionist Serb forces of Bosnia and Croatia yesterday, driving a wedge along the border between the allied Serb armies and seizing two key towns south of the Bosnian enclave of Bihac.