They knew he was clocking tremendously fast times, and I think that swayed them into the trap start to give the dog an advantage.” Sleight, dressed in jeans, a checked shirt and green jacket, gives me a knowing look over the top of his pint.How does he respond to Capaldi’s accusation of cheating? “I just tried to assist Speckled Jim’s start,” he says firmly. “He won’t need shoving this time.”Indeed, for 10 days they have been training the pigeon to fly out of a trap in the pub car park, cheered on by the bird’s supporters’ club. Sleight and Calder, who put on animal demonstrations for a living, are keen to show his progress. At one end of the car park is the Transit van, its open door revealing a cage in which the long-suffering Mrs Jim waits. This time, the pair will have been kept apart for three weeks instead of six (Speckled Jim disgraced himself further at Wimbledon by chasing the pigeons on the stadium roof after the race).At the other end is a single dog trap, borrowed from the local track. Chloe places the bird inside and Sleight springs it open, but Speckled Jim turns the wrong way round He finally cottons on and flies towards the van. “We’ve still got a week to work on this bird, so we’re not too worried, but at least he’s not hitting the ground when he comes out,” says Sleight, hastily.Speckled Jim is put back into the trap.
It springs open again and he makes an immediate dash for his charming consort. Sleight beams, turns to Chloe, and says: “It will be that greyhound man from down south who will be crying this time, not you.”As well as practising the trap starts, Speckled Jim, who is being fed high protein racing corn, has been speed-training in a field across the road. “We’ve had him chase the van up the dual carriageway early in the morning, and we’ve clocked him at his best at 85mph,” says Sleight. “We’re super confident.” “Er, 70mph,” coughs Calder, mindful of the speed limit.In the interests of fair play, I mention Capaldi’s Plan B involving the sniper. “That’s typical of a greyhound man, particularly a southern greyhound man!” says Sleight “They’re very, very bad losers. We took our defeat graciously at Wimbledon, and I would hope that Brett takes his in the same light when he comes up here Obviously they’re worried. They’re scaremongering.”The bookmakers William Hill, the race sponsor, has Athea Storm as 1-3 favourite, with Speckled Jim at 2-1.
Their spokesman David Hood says: “I reckon it will be a lot closer this time. In solo trials at Belle Vue Stadium, the open sides of the track provided the pigeon with a strong tailwind. That could nearly double his speed.”If a beak does cross the finishing line first, both sides have already agreed to a best of three. But by that time, Mrs Jim may well be demanding a divorce.The race takes place this evening at Belle Vue Stadium, Manchester, at 7.50pm. A chef on the QE2 who vanished from his cabin in the middle of the night was yesterday feared drowned after an air and sea search off the Irish coast failed to find him. A chef on the QE2 who vanished from his cabin in the middle of the night was yesterday feared drowned after an air and sea search off the Irish coast failed to find him.
A rescue operation was launched after the 27-year-old Indian national was reported missing at midday as the luxury liner approached Britain at the end of a six-day cruise from New York to Southampton.The missing man, a breakfast chef on the liner, was last seen by his roommate at around 1.30am but failed to turn up for his shift at 4am.The man, who is described as “quiet and a non-drinker”, had been in a good mood as he socialised with colleagues until 10.30pm the previous night, said a spokesman for Cunard, owners of the ship.Although he disappeared in the early hours, there was a delay in reporting the incident to the local coastguard as the captain first ordered a painstaking search of the 1,000ft ship, with its 12 decks and warren-like structure, for the missing man.A senior ship’s officer alerted the Falmouth Coastguard via telex of a possible man overboard as the liner was travelling 200 miles west of the Isles of Scilly.A Cunard spokesman said because the man’s chances of survival were “very poor” the ship, carrying 1,000 crew and 1,500 passengers, continued on its way to Southampton after the Falmouth coastguard had been contacted.Three aircraft from RAF Kinloss and a Dublin-based fisheries patrol plane from the Irish Air Corps joined in the search and coastguards issued an alert to commercial and leisure craft in the area.An RAF Nimrod from Kinloss was in the area and joined another aircraft tracking the ship’s route over previous hours to see if they could spot the man in the water.According to the coastguard the man could be expected to survive for up to six hours in 16C waters, but early optimism evaporated as sea conditions worsened during the day with reports of force six winds and a heavy sea swell.The task was made more difficult because the man could have gone overboard at any point of a 200-mile stretch of the Atlantic before he was reported missing.Peter Bullard, watch manager at Falmouth coastguard, said: “During the early hours of this morning the vessel covered nearly 200 miles which is a huge area to search.”When you are looking for a person in the water in those weather conditions, even sighting someone in Falmouth bay would be difficult.
Out in the middle of the Atlantic it is a very long hope unfortunately.”The Cunard spokesman said the missing man had last been seen asleep in his bunk.He added: “His non-appearance at work was reported at 8am and a thorough search of the ship was made.”The Cunard spokesman added that the ship, which is due to dock in Southampton at 7am today, was searched a second time last night.The missing man, who is single, will not be named until all searches are called off and his relatives have been informed.. The Government has accused some farmers of replacing equipment and machinery with money meant to be used for curbing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. The Government has accused some farmers of replacing equipment and machinery with money meant to be used for curbing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says it has evidence to suggest that some farmers have misused money designated for cleaning and disinfecting – spending it instead on the repair of dilapidated buildings or the purchase of new machinery.Tony Blair has now ordered a halt to the clean-up process pending a review of its cost, which is running at £2m a day and could eventually top £800m.The Prime Minister ordered the moratorium after being advised that the average clean-up payment to each affected farm in England and Wales was about £100,000, compared to the £30,000 it cost to disinfect a typical farm in Scotland.A spokeswoman for Defra said the costs appeared to include, in some cases, repairs and replacement that went beyond the scope of what was required for an effective clean-up. So far 1,685 farms have received money for disinfecting.”We suspect we are being charged for things like repairs to dilapidated buildings or excessive cleaning costs or replacement costs to things that could be cleaned,” the spokeswoman said.”I believe there are cases where some machinery has been replaced instead of being repaired or disinfected and indeed this is one of the issues we’ve been looking at.”The issue centres on the “secondary” disinfection of farm premises affected by foot-and-mouth which can take place at the farmers’ convenience after the initial primary clean-up, when carcasses and other obvious sources of infection are removed.Buildings, floors and equipment are first steam-cleaned and then degreased using a detergent so that surfaces can be sprayed with a citric acid solution, an effective disinfectant against the virus.The procedure is monitored by a vet and equipment and machinery is left in situ if at all possible rather than moved and dismantled, the Defra spokeswoman said.About half the contractors who carry out the work are the farmers themselves, who are paid £15 an hour from public funds to finish a job that should take no more than a few weeks.However, it is apparent that in some cases the clean-up is taking months rather than weeks, leading the Government to believe that it is being overcharged.A leaked memo issued last week from the Government’s joint co-ordination centre dealing with the epidemic made it clear that Mr Blair was not happy about the costs being incurred in what should be a straightforward business of cleaning and disinfecting.”The Prime Minister has indicated that six-figure sums per farm are unacceptable. This is based on information from other European countries where the requirements of the directive are being met without incurring anything like this expenditure,” the memo states.”In some cases requirements are being met at 10 per cent of the estimated costs of the UK operation. Our own costing information is far from complete and we are seeking to rectify this.”Farmers and countryside groups hit back at the Government saying that the decision to halt the clean-up operation while the review is in progress could deal a fatal, final blow to farms struggling to survive.A Downing Street spokesman said the hold-up would only last weeks and was justified to ensure the Government was getting value for its money. But a spokeswoman for the National Farmers’ Union said: “This will leave hundreds of farmers in limbo, unable to plan restocking and rebuild their businesses.”It also sends a very bad message to the farming industry when the emphasis should be on disease-control measures.”"Cleansing and disinfection is an integral part of fighting the disease but a part which farmers simply cannot afford on their own.”This review must now be carried out very quickly so we can get on with the job of picking up the pieces after foot-and-mouth,” the spokeswoman added.The Food minister, Lord Whitty, said: “We need to ensure we are not taken for a ride by some of the contractors who are alleged to have been overcharging for the final cleaning.
We have a responsibility to ensure money is well spent – but none of this undermines the urgency we have in stopping this disease.”The Conservative leader, William Hague, described the decision as a “cruel blow” to the country’s farmers. He said: “The Government should have had those costs under control in the first place and should have been able to bring them under control without holding up the clean-up process.”* A foot-and-mouth slaughterman yesterday denied murdering a colleague by shooting him in the head with a bolt gun as they both killed infected sheep at the Great Orton disposal site in Cumbria.Keith Hubbard, 37, of Atherstone, Warwickshire, appeared at Carlisle Crown Court and pleaded not guilty to murdering Stephen Smart, 27, of St Leonards, East Sussex, in April Mr Hubbard was granted £10,000 bail.. At the gate of his farm in the Ribble Valley at Newham, near Clitheroe, Lancashire, where a deafening silence telegraphs the fact that his entire flock of 3,000 healthy sheep and lambs have been culled, Thomas Binns was musing over a final ignominy yesterday: being forced to pay out for the subsequent cleaning and disinfection of his premises. At the gate of his farm in the Ribble Valley at Newham, near Clitheroe, Lancashire, where a deafening silence telegraphs the fact that his entire flock of 3,000 healthy sheep and lambs have been culled, Thomas Binns was musing over a final ignominy yesterday: being forced to pay out for the subsequent cleaning and disinfection of his premises.There is an abysmal sense of timing, here, to the hint by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that a ceiling may be placed on the cost to the public purse of each clean-up, forcing farmers to find the rest. Mr Binns’ Hecklin farm, underwent its regulation first cleaning – a misting of disinfectant that immediately follows each cull – and he had met the Defra case officer appointed to supervise the more thorough, second disinfection last Friday.It may have been a day too late: Mr Blair’s memo, ordering the the suspension of all secondary disinfections not started, was issued on Thursday. “It amazes me that they examine the costs after five months, when cleaning and disinfecting has been going on for four of them,” Mr Binns said.
