The Royal College of Nursing has warned that the country could face a nursing crisis as many nurses are being lured abroad by offers of better pay and benefits. It also said that the nursing population was ageing very rapidly and that adequate measures must be taken to make sure that the NHS does not suffer another nursing crisis similar to the one in the 1990s.

The main issue for foreign nurses who settled here is the low pay scales that are offered that are offered on the NHS. Josie Irwin, head of employment relations at the RCN said that many nurses are now looking at better opportunities abroad, “We have Filipino and Indian nurses who may have come to the UK via Saudi Arabia and the Emirates some time ago, who are now looking to move onto other countries. They are tempted by offers from America and Australia, who are recruiting staff aggressively,” she said. The problem is especially acute in Scotland where the average age of an experienced nurse is 50, according to the RCN Labour Market Review.

RCN Scotland warned that over the next decade this problem would be compounded by the fact that many nurses will head into retirement and that the home grown nurses are being enticed by better opportunities abroad. “Our ageing nursing workforce will inevitably lead to more and more nurses leaving the NHS in the next 10 years as they reach retirement age,” said Jane McCready, chairwoman of the RCN Scotland board. She added that employers needed to start planning for the future.

“We should also remember that older nurses who do continue to work are less likely to work full-time. The NHS needs to be flexible enough to encourage them to stay on,” Ms McCready said. She said that these nurses had much more to offer and that every measure should be taken to encourage them to stay on.

Scottish Health Minister Andy Kerr promised to look into the situation, “We’ve got an issue in terms of the retiring profile of the nurse cohort at the moment but we can work with that and do things which will keep them on,” he said.

LONDON: Partridge Fine Arts, one of the most respected antique dealers in the world, is being offered to a consortium, Amor Holdings Ltd, set up by porcelain dealer Mark Law specifically to bid for the company. Amor has the financial backing of auction house Christie’s.

Besides Law, Amor Holdings has on its board former British culture secretary David Mellor.

John Partridge, 76-year-old chairman of the family-run company, had put it on the block in February as he found it difficult to run it for want of funds. As he made a formal offer to Amor, he said he had “no attractive alternative” to accepting a lowly 4 million pounds for the company as it is running out of cash.

Amor said it would pay an initial 35.4 pence per share, or about 4 million pounds, for 51 per cent holding in the company, a price well below Partridge’s closing price of 55-1/2p on Thursday. However, it said it will pay more, as per an agreed formula, if an auction of some of Partridge’s antique properties fetched over 4 million pounds. It also has an option to buy the remaining shareholders through a deferred offer in four years.

The buyout will end the Partridge family control of the store, set up way back in 1902, primarily to acquire antiques for Queen Mary. John Partridge, grandson of the founder, will relinquish his 47 years of chairmanship of the firm, though he will continue in an advisory capacity for two years. Law will be the new head of the company. Mellor and Lady Cobham, a former board member of the Victoria & Albert Museum, will join the board of the company as non-executive directors.

Partridge is known for having built the famous collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, and some of its clientele include the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Rijks museum in Amsterdam and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Located in New Bond Street, London, it has a stock of more than 1,000 items at any given point of time in its 70 galleries. Some of the antique pieces in its possession include 18th century English and French furniture, Old Master paintings and English and Continental silverware.

The company maintains photographs of every item sold by it since World War II.

The Partridge family members will share 75 per cent of the price among themselves, with the balance going to some 350 private and institutional shareholders.

Law said Amor’s offer is better than minority shareholders would have received had the company been liquidated. Amor will immediately bring in 500,000 pounds in cash to tide over financial difficulties. It will also proceed to cancel the listing of the company.

TUNIS, Tunisia – A hand-cranked laptop expected to cost $100 was unveiled by the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia today. The laptop is expected to be widely available for schoolchildren in poor countries by the end of 2006.

The prototype of the green machine was exhibited for the first time by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte. Mr. Annan called the innovation “inspiring”. He said that the initiative of MIT was an expression of global solidarity, “Children will be able to learn by doing, not just through instruction – they will be able to open up new fronts for their education, particularly peer-to-peer learning,” he observed.

The machine is a wind-up crank and uses very less power to start up. It also allows children to interact with each other while they are learning, thus promoting greater understanding of the subject.

“The idea is that it fulfils many roles. It is the whole theory that learning is seamless,” said Professor Negroponte. “Studies have shown that kids take up computers much more easily in the comfort of warm, well-lit rich country living rooms, but also in the slums and remote areas all around the developing world.” Mr. Negroponte is the man behind the non-profit One Laptop Per Child initiative that envisages a laptop per child in poor countries so that the kids can be imparted a seamless education. The machine was showcased at the summit, which aims to lessen the technological gap between the rich and the poor.

Many countries have already shown great interest in buying the machine, which is expected to roll out in February next year. Negroponte said that Thailand and Brazil had shown the maximum interest and although nothing had been finalized yet, had indicated that they would like to be a part of the deal. “We are launching with six countries initially, then six months later, as many countries as possible,” said Negroponte.

Google and media mogul Rupert Murdoch have already indicated their support for the initiative. “The digital divide is a learning divide – digital is the means through which children learn leaning. This is, we believe, the way to do it,” Negroponte concluded.

SYDNEY: Australia’s budget airline Virgin Blue Holdings Ltd reported a drop in its net profits for the year ended September to A$105.2 million from A$157 million a year ago. The airline has been struggling against high fuel costs — a 76 per cent increase during the year, which a hedging plan and fuel surcharge on tickets could not help neutralise — and the result was largely in line with the guidance.

The company is fighting a A$4.6 billion takeover attempt by transportation company Toll Holdings Ltd. It is 62.4 per cent owned by port operator Patrick Corp Ltd. It the acquisition goes through, Toll is planning to offer part of Patrick’s stake to existing shareholders.

This will help the other key shareholder, British airline operator Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, increase its holding to 40.5 per cent from the current 25.1 per cent.

Virgin Blue said it hoped gain more revenue from the business travel market to grow earnings. It also announced a maiden A$0.25 a share final dividend, paying out A$262 million.

Chief executive Brett Godfrey said the airline had been in the process of consolidation. It had cut on costs and increased productivity, withdrawn from loss-making routes and invested in business traveller strategy. “We are now well positioned to take advantage of the size, scale, and frequency achieved in our 2003-2004 expansion,” he said.

The company said increase in the fuel price had pushed its cost per available seat kilometer to AD 0.0784 from AD 0.0747 a year earlier. Operating costs rose 22.2 per cent to AD1.60 billion.

Launched four years ago, Virgin Blue now has roughly one third of Australia’s domestic airline market. But, it faces competition from national carrier, Qantas, which also has its own budget airline, Jetstar.

It is believed that the dividend payment, more than double the company’s annual profit, affords company chairman Chris Corrigan’s Patrick Corp. some A$164 million in cash to fight the hostile takeover by Toll.

Baugur, an Icelandic investment group, has decided to buy Mappin & Webb, the UK jewellers whose clientele include among others the Queen. The 32-outlet chain of Mappin & Webb (MW) will be merged with the Goldsmiths chain of jewellers which Baugur had bought in May 2004. This consolidated group is expected to become the “leading high-end jeweller” of the UK.

Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank, will advise Baugur in this acquisition deal worth around 20 million pounds. MW Group will be sold by European Acquisition Capital (EAC), the private equity company that owns about 75 per cent of the stake. Nick Evans, the chief executive, along with other senior managers holds the remainder stake.

Baugur and EAC are supposed to have beaten rivals like the American chain Tourneau and private-equity groups to bag this deal. Mappin & Webb was advertised for sale in June this year by its largest investor by private equity group European Acquisition Capital.

According to Companies House, MW Group made an operating profit of £1.6m in the year ending March 2004.

Mappin & Webb was founded in 1774. Its scale of operations is smaller than that of Goldsmiths. Apart from the jewellery chain, it also owns the Watches of Switzerland business and runs the Rolex and Patek Phillippe stores housed on London’s Bond Street along with luxury goods such as Georg Jensen jewellery and Jaeger Le-Coultre watches.

Among its other assets are the grocer Iceland, Hamleys the toy shop. In French Connection, it is the second-largest shareholder. Mappin & Webb is also a silversmith to the Queen and the Prince of Wales.

Baugur is expected to buy a stake of around 40%. The chairman and chief executive of Goldsmiths, Jurek Piasecki, is also said to be investing along with Icelandic investment bank Straumur.

The acquisition will make Baugur a jewellery behemoth with 200 stores churning out an annual turnover of £275m. Baugur is expected to defer its acquisition till the New Year, as it wants Mappin and Webb to concentrate on its Christmas selling.

LONDON: Online casino and poker operators who release advertisements that violate law will be prosecuted. Secretary of state for culture, media and sport Tessa Jowell told the British Casino Association’s annual general meeting that action will be taken if the advertisements break existing laws. She said there will be a crack down on advertisers and publishers who knowingly break the law.

Jowell said subject to consultation, no more applications for certificates of consent to run new casinos will be entertained after April 2006, mainly with a view to avoid proliferation of smaller casinos.

All the online casinos and poker sites operate offshore. These offshore companies take bets from punters in the U.K. but, unlike land-based casinos, are allowed to advertise because they are outside the jurisdiction of British law.

The Gambling Act 2005 has provisions allowing them to operate from Great Britain for the first time.

Jowell said the plan is to disallow gambling firms advertising free entry to online tournaments or indicating the value of prizes. Casinos are allowed to promote their brands, but they cannot offer inducements to gamble. She said she finds that advertisements in newspapers and on London Metro platforms had flouted rules.

The proposed crackdown could act as a further blow to online gaming, which has suffered from lack of investor confidence and falling share prices.

Internet gambling company Partygaming, however, welcomed the action saying it supports such measures. The company’s director John Shepherd said his company is fully compliant with the law, and it is very strict about it.

Jowell said her department, jointly with the regulator Gambling Commission, would send letters to advertisers, publishers and gambling firms, warning them against violating the existing norms. The letter will clarify the legal status on the issue and violators are liable for fines of up to 5000 pounds and jail terms extending up to two years.

There is going to be a tax on properties with scenic views according to reports. The Labour government is proposing to tax homes with sea views, or those located in serene surroundings like hills, mountains, lakes or rivers. Even a golf course in the vicinity would attract the tax.

The additional tax will become applicable to homes with a specified number of rooms than the usual average, with large gardens, roof terraces or balconies. The proposal is expected to be part of a revaluation of each of the properties in England, the first after such a revaluation done 1991. Officials undertaking the groundwork for the revaluation have been instructed to get data on these aspects.

It is understood that deputy prime minister John Prescott’s office has prepared documentation on the proposal. Media reports indicated that the Valuation Office Agency has a “new computer-assisted mass appraisal system” to help officials obtain specific details on every property in England.

MeanWhile, the Conservatives have criticised the plan. Caroline Spelman, Conservative local government spokesman, alleged that the government is preparing a stealth tax on the middle classes. She revealed that the plan has “value significance codes” covering 66 features and the government had spent 45 million pounds on the computer system.

The government had postponed the revaluation, which was due in 2007 to 2010 because it feared a backlash over higher council tax bills. The M.P.s are now discussing plans for the revaluation.

According to the proposal, factors like a sea view will have a bearing if these have a significant influence on the overall value of the property. A swimming pool or tennis court along with views of the sea, hills, mountains, lakes or rivers, may attract the proposed tax, according to sources.

The council tax is now structured on eight bands, with the top-rung H band property holders paying twice as much as people on D band. A study of a revaluation exercise done in Wales last year will suggest that owners of D band property in England may be levied an extra 267 pounds on their bill if they go up one band and 534 pounds if they go up two bands.

The 1991 valuation fixed the value of a D band property at between 68,001 pounds and 88,000 pounds. Homes in other bands get bills, which are proportionately higher or lower.

LONDON – The Government has rejected speculation that consumers looking to sell their homes would have to shell out £1,000 on Home Information Packs. These packs are being introduced in 2007 as a part of the Government’s initiative to change the way a property is brought and sold.

Homeowners will have to put these packs out detailing a professional survey of the property, evidence of ownership and local authority searches before they can sell their home. The Government said that these packs would cost a total of £635 and not £1,000 as is speculated.

Critics say that the introduction of these packs would spawn fake inspectors who would have little knowledge of the property concerned. “Home information packs will be a breeding ground for cowboys, happy to ignore problems or, worse, not qualified to identify them. Most buyers will simply not trust the report of a home inspector paid by the seller and will end up paying for their own survey,” said Liberal Democrat spokesman Sarah Teather.
There are now widespread concerns that no insurance company will want to provide cover for these property inspectors and consumers would be burdened with the legal bills if the inspector’s report were found to be false. “Labour’s sellers’ packs will simply put up the cost of selling a home, create more red tape and ultimately undermine a fragile market,” said Caroline Spelman, a Tory spokeswoman.

But Yvette Cooper, the housing minister defended the introduction of these packs saying that they would save over £1 million each day that consumers spend in surveys, legal fees and searches, “Buying a home is stressful enough without losing hundreds of pounds on legal fees or valuations for properties that then fall through. It is crazy that over £1 million a day is wasted like this. Home Information Packs will save money and cut waste in buying and selling homes.”

LONDON – A former producer of the rap group So Solid Crew has been awarded a life sentence for murdering a love rival. Carl Morgan, 24 shot dead Colin Scarlett after the two got into a wrangle over Morgan’s former girlfriend Elisha McFarlane, who also happens to be the mother of his two children.

Morgan had been troubling McFarlane over her new relationship with Scarlett. Furious with the turn of events Colin Scarlett and two of his cronies looked up Morgan and beat him in front of his sister and his Elisha McFarlane. Morgan felt humiliated and in revenge shot Scarlett near Wandsworth, south London.

“You have taken a young life. You have used firearms in a situation, which is all too familiar, with the inevitable results that many lives have been ruined. Gun use is the scourge of our streets and causes misery and distress. The message must be that it will not be tolerated,” Judge Brian Barker told Morgan at the time of sentencing.

Dwayne Vincent, the band’s lead singer has also been charged with murder, but the jury failed to reach a verdict and consequently he faces retrial next month.

In his defense Morgan said that he did not seek Scarlett to exact revenge, but only wanted to know what they were fighting about, “I wanted to ask him what was this morning about because I didn’t have any problem with him at all. My only concern is the kids,” he told the jury adding that a third unknown gunman had shot Scarlett.

Richard Horwell, prosecuting alleged that Morgan had turned the streets of London violent ones resembling the wild west days, “It was a scene more reminiscent of the Wild West,” said Mr. Horwell.

LONDON: Dominant telecoms company BT Group PLC, yesterday announced it would start a television service by next autumn in a deal with Philips who would make the required set top boxes.

The new service will offer free-to-air television channels picked up via a traditional aerial, which means there will be no TV subscription charges unlike in cable or Sky TV services. It will also provide content on-demand, such as movies as well as a “catch-up” TV service that would provide content from an archive of recent programmes.

These services will be charged for. The installation will include a digital personal video recorder (PVR), with an 80-hour storage capacity. This PVR will be made by Dutch company Philips.

BT’s offering will basically be a broadband connection integrated with a freeview decoder that will pick up digital terrestrial television signal. It will be aimed at the huge market – 12 to 13 million households that are reluctant to take up pay-television.

BT is expected to charge no more than £25 a month – the typical fees for a low-end television package. BT may find it difficult to convince people that what they are selling is actually a form of pay TV.

The “converged TV service” will initially be available only to BT’s 2 million broadband customers.

BT’s planned entry into the television market is seen as a reaction to BskyB’s announcement that it would make a foray into the telecoms market some time next year. Sky had earlier announced its intention to offer a bundled TV-Internet service aiming to get the broadband customers of BT and others.

Until recently, both Sky TV and BT have been working as allies reselling each other’s products to create an offering that will match that of NTL and Telewest. BT terminated this partnership after Sky’s announcement to enter the telecoms market.

Sky TV is yet to announce a launch date for its video-on-demand service.

BT also said that it would not bid again for rights to televise Premier League football matches for which competitor Sky is also a bidder.