Drive across Sweden marks centenary - harboroughmail.co.uk
A VINTAGE car enthusiast took part in 1,000km drive across Sweden in a 100-year-old Vauxhall.
Andrew Duerden, of Great Glen, took part in the event which saw the Vauxhall Prince Henry model driven from Gothenburg to Stockholm and back to mark the centenary of the Swedish Reliability Trial.
Mr Duerden, who is Vauxhall’s archivist, shared the driving with Alisdaire Lockhart, the owner of the car.
Kay Mordza, of the Swedish Vauxhall Owners Club, who arranged the journey, partnered them on the event.
Mr Duerden said: “The car never missed a beat and averaged over 40mph for the entire event, cruising at 55mph on open roads, and achieving 30miles per gallon.”
The journey traced the route taken by Percy Kidner in 1912.
Driving the same Prince Henry vehicle, Kidner, who was Vauxhall’s managing director, was the fastest entrant in the event. He even incurred penalty points by arriving too early at checkpoints.
The 2012 team were able to visit many of the points from the original route during their journey.
Mr Duerden said the team’s long and painstaking reconstruction of the car to the same specification as the 1912 vehicle paid dividends during the event, with a reliable and speedy performance. He also paid testament to Kidner’s 1912 endeavours.
“We were lucky to have decent, asphalt roads and good weather. Kidner had snow covered surfaces with extremely chilly conditions which make his achievements even more astonishing.”
Email to a friend
Print this pageLondon 2012: Liam Phillips wants Olympic medal despite crash - BBC News
BMX rider Liam Phillips believes he can still win an Olympic medal at London 2012 despite breaking his collarbone at last month's World Championships.
Phillips, 23, was officially named to Team GB last week despite major surgery after the crash three weeks ago.
"There are seven weeks until the first day of the competition, I should have quite a lot of time," said Phillips.
"I should be in fine form. I put myself in the bracket of five or six riders looking to go there and medal."
Phillips on his broken collarbone
"It's quite strange - it's not like any injury I've had in the past. I've had it plated and the collarbone feels normal. You go to pick up your bag of shopping and then remember your collarbone is still broken, so you have to be careful doing general day-to-day things. But it's allowed me to continue my training as planned, sleep well and doing everything that's expected this close to an Olympic Games."
Somerset's Phillips sustained the second collarbone break of his career on day two of the World Championships in Birmingham, having won time trial silver the previous night.
"For the first 15 minutes or so after I crashed, I was keeping my fingers crossed that it was just a broken collarbone - which does sound rather strange now," he told BBC Sport.
"But I understand that a collarbone can be healed. I had surgery and it was plated, which means I can get back to training almost immediately.
"I've been focusing on the London Olympics for a very long time. An injury 10 weeks out isn't ideal, but I've done so much work over the last few years that I'm not going to let an injury ruin it."
Phillips is currently ranked 48th in the world having spent most of 2011 inside the Manchester velodrome rather than on the BMX circuit.
He made the switch to track cycling in part because it eliminated many of the injury risks, but returned to BMX later that year.
"I do feel cursed [with injuries] but I race BMX bikes. I'm not going to look for any pity from anybody else," he said.
"Training with the track team was fantastic, spending seven months with some of the best riders in the world, but I missed the BMX.
"I overlooked the buzz I get from riding my bike each day and I soon learnt I was going to miss it more than I could ever have imagined."
Having made his comeback, Phillips looked to be in excellent shape at the World Championships inside Birmingham's National Indoor Arena at the end of May, but the crash wiped out his chances of a second medal - and of sampling the home atmosphere.
"That was the frustrating thing, it was a massive race in the UK and that's not something we get to experience very often," he said.
"It was surreal, it was fantastic to be there and have the crowd on your side. I'm looking forward to experiencing that again in London, seeing as I didn't get to experience too much at the World Championships."
London stung by U.S. attack on bank regulation record - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - Calling London a haven of regulatory loopholes that spawns financial trading disasters could make it harder to align new transatlantic rules, figures in London's financial and legal circles said on Wednesday.
Responding to attacks in Congress on London's regulatory record, European policymakers, analysts and industry officials called the American comments ill-advised and politically driven.
"As the old saying goes, it is like the pot calling the kettle black," analysts at Mediobanca said.
A hearing in Congress - on how supervisors failed to spot the buildup of $2 billion (1.27 billion pounds) in derivatives losses at a London unit of U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase & Co - heard a top regulator and MPs describe London as offering a loophole American banks eagerly exploit.
"It seems to be that every big trading disaster happens in London," Carolyn Maloney, a Democratic lawmaker told Tuesday's hearing.
Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates derivatives, added that U.S. firms, such as the JPMorgan branch in London, were set up abroad to find "lower regulatory regimes".
AIG, the U.S. insurer rescued by U.S. taxpayers, and CitiGroup's special purpose investment vehicle, which kept huge holdings of debt off the bank's balance sheet, were both in London and could put American taxpayers on the hook, Gensler said.
"So often it comes right back here, crashing to our shores," Gensler said, putting London on a par with other offshore centres like the Cayman Islands, a home to some hedge funds.
Yet Britain's Financial Services Authority has repeatedly said JPMorgan operates as a branch in London that is mainly regulated by the U.S. authorities, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency having five of its examiners based in JPMorgan's London building.
The FSA has long admitted its "light touch" pre-crisis regime failed and says it has become one of the toughest regulators in the world. Its top banking supervisor has seen no UK regulatory breaches for now at JPMorgan.
The UK watchdog declined to comment on Tuesday's remarks in Congress.
Mark Boleat, policy committee chairman at the City of London, home to a big chunk of the UK financial services sector, said the comments bring heat but no light and that each country needed to put its regulatory house in order.
"What we need to do, however, is avoid political jousting and to work together to ensure that international regulation is congruent," Boleat said.
NO TOUCH
Anthony Belchambers, chief executive of the Futures and Options Association, said the outburst was extraordinary after the financial crisis was sparked by a "no touch" U.S. regulatory regime towards derivatives and mortgage selling.
Defaults on U.S. home loans in 2007 triggered a global market meltdown, fuelled by the collapse of U.S. bank Lehman Brothers the following year.
"It is simply not helpful to wag fingers at other jurisdictions at a time when we must be thinking of how to establish a coherent framework for regulations across borders," Belchambers said.
The accusations came on the day world leaders met in neighbouring Mexico to congratulate themselves on how well their globally coordinated financial reforms were falling into place.
JPMorgan's losses not only embarrassed the bank but also regulators like the CFTC, which was already under the gun for failing to spot the financial crisis and faces a Congress-inspired budget cut.
The bank's losses coincide with a shift to implementing new rules at a time when there are already suspicions that some countries may try to row back on the detail.
"You would hope that regulators would be working in a more cooperative spirit and that is difficult where there is any lack of trust," said Richard Reid, director of research at the International Centre for Financial Regulation.
This lack of trust has already prompted the financial industry to call on the G20 to redouble efforts to mesh their national rules to avoid extra costs.
Some regulatory over-reach beyond local borders looks unavoidable, as Gensler openly linked concerns about London with his commission's push to get approval for new derivatives rules.
Leaving out the London branches of U.S. banks from the rules would be another loophole and a retreat from reform, Gensler said.
"I hope that the commission will vote ... to get public comment this Thursday so that we don't in essence create another London loophole," Gensler said.
The European Union has been slammed for doing likewise with its new markets and derivatives rules, saying that U.S. firms who want to do business in the 27-country bloc should be complying with "equivalent" rules back home.
"This is just another manifestation of the iron curtain which financial services regulators are raising across the Atlantic," said Simon Gleeson, a partner at law firm Clifford Chance.
(Editing by David Holmes)
0 Responses to "Drive across Sweden marks centenary - harboroughmail.co.uk"
Post a Comment