- 60k KTM X-Bow - one of only 30 made - with Kuwaiti number plate was spotted in Knightsbridge
- The area has become the racing car playground of rich Middle Eastern motorists
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This bizarre looking sports car wouldn't look amiss on the set of the latest Batman movie.
But while Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale were filming scenes for Knight of Cups in Venice, California, a mystery man was driving this 'batmobile' around London.
Wearing a Black helmet and full leathers, the driver of this black KTM with a Kuwaiti licence plate seemed very keen to keep his identity a secret as he drove through Hyde Park to Knightsbridge in London earlier today.
Day rider: A mystery man dressed in black was pictured taking this odd looking car for a spin around London
Far from home: The KTM sports car, which generally have a price tage of well over 60,000, has a Kuwait licence plate
The KTM car appears to be an X-Bow model - one of only 30 made, which cost more than 60,000 each.
The completely roofless super car is stripped to the bare basics and aimed at driving purists. It can do 0-60mph in 3.7 seconds and can reach a top speed of 137mph.
Onlooker Justin Thomas, 28, from London, happened to be riding his bike home when he spotted the bizarre contraption and quickly took some snaps of the car as it whizzed past.
He said: 'I just spotted this ridiculous looking car and thought I have to get a photo of it otherwise people won't believe I saw it.
'It was like something out of Knight Rider or Batman. The car would have looked more at home on the set of an action movie rather than in the middle of central London.
Jubilee celebrations: This Lamborghini LP640, emblazoned with the Omani flag on the roof and side, had a picture of the Queen on the front in honour of the monarch's 60 years on the throne
Reckless: An Iraqi playboy has been slammed for driving this Ferrari 599 at up to 120mph around central London streets
'After taking the photo I gave the driver a thumbs up before he revved the engine and sped off.
'Despite having no roof, the driver must have been quite hot as he appeared to be dressed head to toe in black leather.'
Super cars are often spotted in Knightsbridge, the London playground for the rich and famous, and many have customised and decorated individually.
In the run-up to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, one driver even emblazoned a picture of the Royal family on their Lamborghini.
Meanwhile, many Knightsbridge residents have complained about super racing around London streets at top speeds.
It comes after an Iraqi millionaire was filmed recklessly driving his 200mph super car around London in footage posted on YouTube.
The millionaire show-off was seen speeding through Knightsbridge in his turquoise Ferrari 599 without any regard for the safety of pedestrians and other motorists.
Residents have forged a campaign group and aired their grievances to Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, claiming that police and council have failed to act over these super car racers.
Strangely familiar:The real Batmobile at the Batman Begins premiere in Leicester Square, London
On set: Cate Blanchett and Christian Bale filming scenes for the new Batman film in California
London’s Olympians at work - Financial Times
June 14, 2012 7:20 pm
London 2012 Olympics will come in under budget, government says - The Guardian
The government has promised the Olympics will come in under budget – at a cost of less than £9bn to taxpayers – but will spend extra money within that on crowd control measures in light of a bigger-than-expected turnout for the jubilee celebrations and the torch relay.
The sports and Olympics minister, Hugh Robertson, admitted that organisers had underestimated by around a third the amount that would be required to pay for signage, stewarding and crowd control measures such as crush barriers and temporary bridges that will ease congestion in Greenwich and Hyde Park.
It is expected that larger than expected crowds could throng the capital in the three days before the opening ceremony as the torch enters central London and will turn out in huge numbers for the marathon and the cycling road race, which finish on the Mall.
"There is a certain amount of this that you assess as the thing develops and these costs emerge. As a government, you're caught here. The first responsibility of a government is the safety and security of its people," he said.
"We have to do everything we can reasonably do to ensure the safety and security of the very many people, judging by the jubilee, who will attend. There is an element of managing success here."
An extra £19m will be added to the budget for crowd-control measures and managing central London, taking it to £76m. Overall, there was an increase of £29m in the money released to Locog over the most recent quarter, including £8m for putting in concessions and toilets around the Olympic venues.
That will take the total that the London organising committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog) has received from the public funding package to £736m, including a security budget to cover guards within Olympic venues that almost doubled to £553m.
Robertson said that the crowds who lined the river during the jubliee river pageant despite the inclement weather, estimated at around 1.2 million, and the popularity of the torch relay showed that numbers attending might be even higher than expected.
"We knew this would be the moment when people suddenly got this. But we have been pleasantly surprised by the sheer scale of it. If you consider that the torch is coming down the Thames [on July 27] the capacity for lots and lots of people to come and see it is increased," he said.
The additional investment was an insurance policy to ensure that London could cope with the influx, he said.
"London is going to be the place this summer, if the rain holds off, to come and have a party. It is very difficult to estimate how many people will take the car, the train or the ferry and come here for a party with a rucksack on their back."
Transport for London is planning on the basis that there will be 1 million extra people in the capital, although that could be offset by a decline in non-Olympic tourists.
Critics have claimed that Locog, which has a privately raised budget of £2bn to stage the Games but has now received £736m in public money on top of that, should be subject to greater scrutiny. But the government argues that all the public money that has flowed to the organising committee is either for pre-agreed elements of the budget such as security or is for new tasks that it has taken over from the Olympic Delivery Authority.
With the project 98% complete, there is £476m of contingency funding remaining, and Robertson said he could now be confident that it would come in under £9bn.
The National Audit Office had warned there was a real risk that the budget would be bust, but the Department for Culture and Media and Sport and the Government Olympic Executive have continued to insist that they would come in below £9.3bn.
The original bid estimated the cost of the Games at £2.4bn but didn't include VAT or security costs.
The Labour government, chastened by the experience of the Millennium Dome and Wembley, built in a huge contingency fund of £2.7bn when the current funding package of £9.3bn was set in March 2007. The huge increase was justified on the back of the regeneration of east London and other claimed legacy benefits.
Robertson said that the large contingency was a wise move because it allowed the project to weather the economic downturn, bearing the cost of building the Olympic Village and the International Broadcast Centre from public funds before selling them back to the private sector.
Much of the credit for coming in on time and on budget will go to the Olympic Delivery Authority, which came in more than £500m below its baseline budget through savings made during the construction process. Delivering the venues on time, despite the ongoing debate about the future of the £428m stadium, meant that it avoided the prospect of escalating costs as contractors rushed to finish venues.
Robertson said the publicly funded budget had delivered value for money: "I have been a cheerleader for this process right from the beginning. There was a recognition right from the word go the original figure would have to change dramatically. Everybody's eyes were opened to the possibility that this gave us once we had won the bid."
Attention is now likely to turn to the use of a surplus of more than £400m. Despite lobbying from some sports organisations, Robertson said there was no chance that it would remain within sport and would instead flow back to the Treasury.
But campaigners said that would "verge on money laundering", because lottery money that was partly used to fund the Games was diverted from other causes.
"It will be an utter outrage – and verging on money laundering – if lottery revenues raided by the government to fund the Olympics go back to the Treasury," said Jay Kennedy, the head of policy at the Directory of Social Change.
"This money was taken away from supporting vulnerable people and communities across this country at a time when they needed it most. Government needs to keep its promises and do the right thing – any underspend must be used to refund the Lottery as soon as possible."
London men stake their place in the fashion spending arena - fashion.telegraph.co.uk
Notable rises in male spending have been reported ahead of London's first men's fashion week, London Collections: Men.
BY Alice Newbold | 14 June 2012
Burberry men's live stream Photo: REX
The reputation of menswear has long been shackled by the image of begrudging males sitting outside female changing rooms on endless, uninspiring weekend quests to department stores. Or the stalwart socks and tie or socks and knitwear combo invariably bought for fathers and grandfathers across the British nation for birthdays and holidays, alike.
Tarnishing the notion that men remain only excited about football, Rihanna and varieties of lager are the American Express Business Insights team. Ahead of London Collections: Men, which launches today, the banking sector conducted a study assessing the aggregated spending behaviour of millions of card members. The trend that emerged was, ironically (and pun-worthy), men's fashion.
READ: London to get its own Men's Fashion Week(end)
The data analytics arm of America Express found that males born after 1982 - "Generation Y" - increased their overall spending on fashion faster than all other generations. Shopping at a heightened rate of 4% year on year, 2011 over 2010, Generation Y whipped out their plastic at twice the rate of the next fastest generation, the "Baby Boomers" (those born between 1945 and 1964).
Tagging the male mentality towards fashion as a basic "famine or feast approach", men, it appears, resist high street splurges in favour of luxury goods, spending 24% more per transaction, though less often, than their female counterparts.
Commenting on Burberry's announcement last month that they had experienced a 26% increase in menswear sales, chief executive of the British heritage brand, Angela Ahrendts said: "In this economic environment, men want to look better, they want to look sharper."
READ: Burberry's Angela Ahrendts: men want to look smart
While Burberry's tailoring and enhanced ranges drove a 26% rise in their menswear sales, the overall year-on-year spending on luxury fashion increased by 5.7% in Generation Y men and 1% in all males. British male shoppers subsequently snubbed mainstream lines decreasing their spending by 1.2%, while women lapped up the high street, spending 0.7% less on luxury goods and 5.7% more on high street fashion fixes.
"There is a reason that London is hosting its first men's fashion week: men in the city are clearly staking their place in the fashion spending arena," affirms Sujata Bhatia, vice president of International Business Insights at American Express.
Vauxhall sponsor England but stop workers from watching the Euros - The Sun
Bosses showed the red card to car factory staff who asked to watch tomorrow’s vital match against Sweden on TV sets.
The gaffers said it would breach “strict health and safety regulations”. They also barred scores of workers at Vauxhall’s plants in Luton, Beds, and Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, from seeing the 1-1 draw with France on Monday.
Outraged staff only saw the result after clocking off.
Ironically, production line workers feature along with England stars like Steven Gerrard and Joe Hart in a glitzy TV ad made by Vauxhall for the Euros.
The firm’s logo is on team jerseys. And the squad visited the Luton factory before the tourney.
Excited staff put up banners saying: “Good luck England from all at Vauxhall.”
One Luton worker angered by the TV ban said yesterday: “Our company is the main sponsor for England yet when it comes to matches we aren’t even allowed to watch.
“We work hard for the company. We’re gutted.”
Scott Boutwood, 35 - whose family worked at Vauxhall for over 50 years - said: "What an own goal. They'll have to reconsider."
Vauxhall said it was “proud” to sponsor England in a deal thought to be worth £6million a year.
But it added: “Strict health and safety regulations do not permit employees working on the production line to be distracted by matches shown on screens. And lines cannot simply be stopped to accommodate match times.”
Nissan has a similar ban at its Sunderland plant.
Occupy London Eviction Begins At Finsbury Square Site - huffingtonpost.co.uk
An eviction is under way to move Occupy London protesters from their seven-month occupation of a square in the capital.
The clear out of Finsbury Square in north London was organised by Islington Council after successful court action by the authority to move the group.
The camp, which is made up of around 135 tents and a wooden structure, was set up on the public land of the square in October, as an extension of the Occupy movement's protest in St Paul's Churchyard - which ended in eviction in February.
Two weeks ago a judge heard the protest had caused £20,000 damage to the land, cost the council £26,000 on security, and lost it £12,000 in rent plus income from the square's restaurant which had to close.
There had been an adverse impact on local business and complaints about anti-social behaviour from the camp, which increasingly became a focus for the homeless, and which had no running water or sufficient toilet facilities.
Councillor Paul Convery, Islington Council's executive member for community safety, said: "Finsbury Square is public space for the people of Islington, one of Britain's most deprived boroughs.
"We're returning the square to community use, and it is being cleaned and will soon be reopened to the public for the summer.
"Today's enforcement action was peaceful and low-key, and I'd like to thank the police, our street outreach team, and other partner organisations for their help.
"A number of vulnerable and homeless people have been living in the square. We have been speaking to them and offering advice and support to those who need assistance."
London 2012: How Zara Phillips reached the Olympics - again - BBC News
In the latest part of our weekly #olympicthursday series on leading British hopes, BBC Olympic sports reporter Ollie Williams profiles eventer Zara Phillips.
"It's not even a conversation that will take place. Zara's on the team, the team are staying in the village, end of story."
Zara Phillips is in line for her Olympic debut at long last, representing Great Britain from a room in the Olympic village - not representing the Royal Family from exclusive lodgings.
"Zara is absolutely a team player," continues Will Connell, performance director for British equestrian sport.
"She doesn't seek the limelight - it's never Zara stirring up the media frenzy, she lets her results do the talking. There's no denying who her mother and grandmother are but she is, first and foremost, an elite equestrian athlete."
Phillips, now 31, has spent a decade proving her talent. A former world champion, she has twice been in contention for the Olympic Games and twice missed out through injury to her horse, Toytown.
This week, she earned nomination to the British Olympic Association as one of five riders in the eventing team for London 2012.
Her third Olympic nomination in succession caps a resurgent 12 months. For a time, it had looked as though carrying the Olympic torch at Cheltenham racecourse was as close to the Games as she might get.
Phillips spent her twenties enjoying remarkable success with Toytown, winning eventing's world title in 2006 and the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award later that year.
But after missing Beijing 2008, Toytown's age began to show. A horse can only go on at the top level for so long and Phillips, tears in her eyes, gave Toytown a public retirement at Gatcombe last year.
"In our sport you're very lucky to find a horse of a lifetime and I found mine relatively early," she told the Daily Telegraph in 2010. "[Toytown] has done everything for me and I owe him the world. Even talking about that horse makes me well up."
With Toytown out of the picture, Phillips had to prove she was no one-horse wonder by finding another challenger and getting them to the top level in time for Olympic selection.
She managed it, in the nick of time, with a horse named High Kingdom - taking him from the most basic of introductory events in Wiltshire five years ago to third place at last week's Bramham horse trials, her last chance to prove the pair had what it takes for the Olympic Games.
"She's been with High Kingdom a long time," says Connell. "She's always been diligent in working hard when it isn't necessarily going right with a horse - she perseveres. She plugged away with him and has done a fantastic job to bring him all the way up through the grades.
"Together, they finished 10th at Burghley last autumn and perhaps that's when he really burst onto the scene. Burghley was probably the result that, to the wider audience, said Zara has a horse that could go to London.
"This is an up-and-coming horse, a horse whose star is in the ascendancy, and [in terms of Olympic selection] that's probably what tipped it over the edge."
After Bramham, Phillips told BBC Sport: "Last year was a big year. He improved massively and came up with the goods [at Burghley]. He's still improving this year and he's a great, fun horse."
Phillips still faces the formality of having the British Olympic Association rubber-stamp her selection to Team GB but, once that happens, she can expect unique challenges as an Olympic team member.
Alongside all the usual pressures athletes place on themselves, the phenomenon of a British Royal competing at a London Olympic Games will inevitably draw intense scrutiny from the media at home and abroad.
"Zara attracts a massive amount of media attention and the challenge will come around that," says Connell.
"The media could impact on Zara's medal-winning chances. It really wouldn't be fair if every time Zara trained, there were a hundred cameramen, and when [German eventing star] Michael Jung's training, there aren't. But that's something Zara's had to cope with throughout her career.
"Part of what makes her successful is her ability to ignore all that. When she won the individual world title, she had to go into an arena with over 50,000 spectators and jump after the Germans had clinched team gold. The pressure and noise were incredible, but she's very cool under pressure. She has a proven championship record."
Asked if her Royal status was a help or hindrance, Phillips once told ITV: "It's a hindrance. People think it was all given to me on a plate and it definitely wasn't.
"But everyone in the sport is good to me. Everyone gets on with it."
Phillips' parents, both Olympic eventers themselves, must know how their daughter feels. The Princess Royal competed at Montreal 1976 and Captain Mark Phillips won team gold at Munich 1972 before returning to win team silver 16 years later in Seoul.
"They very much support me," said Phillips in the same interview. "They've never pushed me but when I started they very much backed me up.
"They're both very knowledgeable, unfortunately. They give me lots of advice - and criticism. But our sport is very different now to when they were competing, which I keep telling them."
There is now an anxious wait to see if Phillips can finally follow in the family footsteps. Will injury strike a third time?
"This is a great challenge we face in equestrian sport," explains Connell. "If a human athlete wakes up one morning and say they're feeling tight in a tendon or whatever, you can tweak the training programme.
"The horse doesn't know the most important competition of its life is coming up, and that introduces a different dynamic. It can't tell you the same things.
"But if they are to win medals in London, the horses have to be very fit and competition-aware. They can't just be put away in a stable now and pulled out at the Games. They will all compete again and that brings the inevitable risk of a slight injury."
As Phillips said ahead of Beijing 2008, before Toytown's second injury nightmare: "To go with all the other sports would be a great dream, but you still have to get there. One step at a time."
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