Plenty of people are busy trying to fleece rich foreigners in the run-up to next summer's Olympics, and the owners of Leeds Castle in Kent don't want to miss out. The castle is owned by a trust and, according to The Sunday Times, the trustees are looking for someone prepared to spend at least £1m to "shut [it] down for private use", as a source puts it. The 12th-century moated castle, remodelled by Henry VIII as a home for Catherine of Aragon, has 40 bedchambers, a maze, a nine-hole golf course and a helipad. Victoria Wallace, the castle's chief executive, says the money will go towards the £14m cost of restoring its Ragstone walls. "We're completely flexible as to how the castle might be used," she says. You bet: £1m for 17 days or so is a tidy sum, whoever's paying.
Like Leeds Castle, the owners of five-star hotels and superyacht marinas near London are all out to cash in too. Berths at Canary Wharf and the Royal Docks, for example, have already been taken, says The Sunday Times, at prices ranging from £2,000 to £11,000 a day based on a minimum three-week stay. Mark Upton, director of the yacht advisory company MGMT, says he is offering round-the-clock butler services for yachts and private homes. "We have Michelin-starred chefs who can come and cook for you, plus personal shoppers, helicopters, tailors and jewellers on stand-by. A speedboat service will take you straight to the Olympic Park." I'm all for entrepreneurs making as much out of the Olympics as possible. I'd be doing the same myself, if I could just so long as I didn't have to go anywhere near the actual Games.
The £1m-a-year bailiff
A former model has become Britain's first £1m-a-year bailiff. I guessed the bailiff business must be booming with more and more people in debt, but not that debt collecting had become quite such a lucrative business. Julie Green-Jones, says The Sunday Times, was paid a £225,000 salary and dividends of £844,000 for the year ending in January 2010, and £904,732 for the following year. Green-Jones runs a firm called Rossendales, with 200 bailiffs on its books. It's paid by local authorities to pursue householders for unpaid council tax and parking fines. Rossendales is one of five bailiff firms that last year made combined revenues of more than £60m.
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The Sunday Times says that the behaviour of bailiffs has prompted a growing number of complaints. In one case, Loretta Tucker, 62, was confronted by two from Rossendales over missing council tax payments when she moved to Handcross, West Sussex. The bailiffs charged a £130 waiting fee and a £130 van attendance fee. Tucker agreed to pay to make them go away without seizing property. Is more regulation required to stop overcharging and aggressive enforcement of debts and fines? Green-Jones admits it is, but says her industry is needed to pursue those who play the system. "The public would be shocked if they knew the sheer number of people out there that blatantly refuse to pay."
Tabloid money Ken Clarke should apologise for the euro
Andrew Gowers, as editor, once used the Financial Times as a battering ram for Brussels, says Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun. Not any more. "All of us paid too little attention to the arguments of those who opposed the project and worried about its viability,' he confessed last week. What makes this all the more humiliating is that we should have seen it coming.' At least he's had the guts to say sorry. Will Ken Clarke now follow suit?"
James Bond's watch with a magnet that can unzip a dress failed to attract a buyer with deep enough pockets when it was auctioned in Switzerland this week, says the Daily Express. But the Rolex Submariner worn by Roger Moore in the 1973 film Live and Let Die was later sold privately for €177,390.
"Labour peer Baroness Uddin is being allowed to return to the House of Lords," says Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, "even though she has not repaid the £125,000 she swindled out of taxpayers through bogus expenses claims. Never mind her 18-month suspension from the Lords, she should have spent the past 18 months behind bars."
"In a lavishly romantic gesture, multi-millionaire property developer Christian Candy whisked his wife Emily and 30 of her closest friends to Paris on an all-expenses paid trip for her 30th birthday," says Richard Kay in the Daily Mail. Christian, who, with his brother Nick, owns One Hyde Park among other luxurious properties, included a private tour of the Louvre in the celebrations.
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