Vauxhall Employees Keep East Anglian Air Ambulance Flying - The Auto Chanel
LUTON, UNITED KINGDOM – June 26, 2012: Vauxhall Employees collected an impressive 3922 for the East Anglian Air Ambulance organising fund raising events at Namco Bowling Station and Crawley Working Men’s Club.
Teams from different Vauxhall departments made up of 80 Vauxhall employees were battling each other last month at Namco Bowling Station, Luton - eager to win the trophy whilst raising much needed funds for the Air Ambulance.
In addition, Vauxhall employees, their families and friends partied into the night at Crawley Working Men’s Club in Stopsley, Luton, joined by East Anglian Air Ambulance’s trusty friend, “Trauma Ted”. Everyone involved dipped deep in their pockets for donations and a raffle was drawn on the night: One lucky winner took home an England Football Shirt signed by the England team players.
Emily Howlett a Support Consultant for Vauxhall said, “Employees had a really good time but were mindful of why they were there and gave generously. To raise so much in just two evenings is a fantastic achievement.”
Paul Airton, Area Fundraising Manager for East Anglian Air Ambulance said, “We would like to thank the Vauxhall Employees for their active support and generosity. Vauxhall Motors is one of our sponsors and we are currently using a Vauxhall Astra Van loaned to us by the company which we use in support of our valuable work. You may see it travelling on our local roads emblazoned with the bright yellow helicopter. I was impressed to see Vauxhall employees also getting together in our support.”
East Anglian Air Ambulance flies 365 days a year in the Bedford, Cambridge, Peterborough, Norfolk & Suffolk areas to provide valuable medical treatment. Should the ambulance attend an incident where a child is involved, the child will be consoled by one of the Ambulance’s cuddly bears dressed in flight gear, called ‘Trauma Ted’. It has been proven that when a child is given a bear to hug it helps with shock and trauma situations.
Olympics-London businesses fret about disruption - Reuters
LONDON, June 27 |
LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) - Almost half of London businesses remain concerned about the impact of the Olympics on their operations only a month before the Games begin, a survey showed on Wednesday.
Most of the more than 250 London firms surveyed by the Confederation of British Industry said they were looking forward to the Olympics which London will host from July 27-August 12.
However, only 37 percent said they were confident about dealing with transport and logistic issues, against 46 percent who said they were nervous.
"The 2012 Games will help showcase London around the world and will be good for the economy," said Sara Parker, CBI London Director.
"But with only a month to go, the scale of the challenge is becoming clear and some businesses are still nervous about their levels of preparedness," she added.
Businesses are being urged to encourage staff to change their working hours and get more people to work from home to help ease the overcrowding on London's transport network during the Games.
There are also fears that traffic jams and road closures could disrupt deliveries, while other surveys have pointed to the risk of absenteeism during the Olympics.
The government is hoping that hosting the Games will provide a showcase for British business and help to pull the economy out of recession.
There was some good news in the survey. Almost all businesses said the Olympics and Paralympics would help to promote London internationally and more than three-quarters forecast a boost to tourism.
(Reporting by Keith Weir; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
London 2012 Olympics: Jacques Rogge relaxed about his final Games - The Guardian
With exactly a month to go until the opening ceremony of a London Games that will be his last as International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge is in relaxed mood. But then it is hard to tell when the gnomic Belgian is not.
Amid all the UK scrutiny of the £9.3bn budget, the security fears, the danger of transport meltdown, the sponsors and the Games lanes, it is easy to forget that for Rogge and the IOC the preparations for London 2012 have been pretty stress‑free.
There has been none of the last‑minute construction panic of Athens or the human-rights protests ahead of Beijing. Rogge, the former Olympic sailor who has been a calm hand on the tiller of the Lausanne-based organisation since his 2001 appointment, is effusive in his praise for Lord Coe's organising committee.
On recent inspection visits to London, the IOC and Locog have been in lockstep. The IOC needs the London Games to be a success, not only to prove that hosting them is a risk worth taking but to show that all the promises around legacy, around a "compact Games", around putting athletes first, were more than just rhetoric.
"Organising the Games is always a difficult logistical challenge and you can have unforeseen circumstances to which you have to adapt. They are in budget and some of the contingency will remain, which is a good thing. And we have seen a lot of creativity. They know sport, they love sport and they have this added layer of creativity on top," says Rogge, who will stand down as president in September 2013. He is amused to note that Danny Boyle plans to bring village cricketers to the Olympic opening ceremony in his "green and pleasant" opening tableaux, and enthuses about the public reaction to the torch relay.
So confident is Rogge that his only concern is the same topic that will obsess much of the country for the next month. "Every drop of rain that falls now is good news," he says, in the hope of getting the worst of the British summer out of the way before 27 July.
Rogge identifies three factors that he believes will turn a good Games into a great Games. "Good organisation with good weather, the performance of the home team and gold medals up front." As such, he says, he will be cheering Mark Cavendish down the Mall – assuming he is not being challenged by a Belgian cyclist. "The Canadians waited five days to get their first gold medal in Vancouver and then you get a sea change. People went to the streets, partying, having fun."
The final key ingredient, says Rogge, is iconic performances by iconic athletes – in other words, Usain Bolt needs to be on top of his game.
Not everyone is yet sold on the vision for London's Games, however. There are those who find the £9.3bn taxpayer‑funded budget unpalatable in austere times and there are those who believe the modern Games is a heavily branded corporate monster, devouring a city in which it is staged before moving on to the next.
It is a charge that Rogge is well used to defending. "We are often interrogated about the fact the Games should be commercialism free and shouldn't be sponsored. I always argue that would take us back to the unfair and elitist atmosphere of the Olympic Games before the 1960s," says Rogge.
"There was no sponsorship, no TV rights. The result was that only the rich countries could send athletes, developing countries did not send one athlete."
Rogge, once a keen rugby player who also became a big cricket fan after spending time with relatives in Cornwall in his youth, says the explosion in value of sponsorship and broadcasting rights has been used towards the staging of the Games (a third of Locog's £2bn privately raised budget comes from the IOC) and underpinning the global groth of the Olympic movement.With weary resignation, he admits that the Olympics have become a lightning rod for protest. "We are supposed to cure all the ills of society and the world, every problem. We've been addressed for many, many problems – animal rights, social rights," he says. "People say the IOC has to take a position on everything. We are a sports organisation. We are not autonomous from society, we are part of society. We reflect society, the good points and the bad points."
Another spectre that has haunted successive Games has been thrust back into the spotlight. The court of arbitration for sport verdicts against IOC and British Olympic Association rules that provided for an "additional sanction" for drug cheats, but were incompatible with the global anti‑doping code, mean that the spotlight will be on the likes of LaShawn Merritt and Dwain Chambers.
"If I cross paths with Dwain Chambers and he wants to shake hands, I will shake hands and wish him well. You have to treat him normally, that's the rule of law," says Rogge, who is hopeful that the new 2013 Wada code will reintroduce the ability to ban athletes for two years plus the following Olympic Games.
On another contentious issue, he is also confident that Saudi Arabia will become the final country to ensure gender equality and send male and female athletes to the Games. There are believed to be two women in line for places, with the IOC awaiting confirmation of their nomination from the National Olympic Committee.
"We believe if there is a woman participating that will be a big symbolic event. You can't expect a country to change overnight its cultural, social, political fabric. Whether we like it or not, this is a fact of life. It will take time, but this is the first step," says Rogge.
London was also supposed to provide a template for reducing the cost of staging the Games, but the public cost has still risen to £9.3bn. Rome's decision to pull out of the race to host the 2020 Games raised fears that it would be increasingly difficult to find cities prepared to take the gamble. Rogge disagrees, insisting the three contenders for 2020 - Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo - are strong ones, after the IOC decided Baku and Doha should not make the shortlist.
"We made good progress. The first thing I did in 2002 after my election was to put a cap on the number of athletes and to put a cap on the number of sports. We took more than 100 different measures to reduce the cost of the Games. This has resulted in a positive result in the worst economic crisis since 1930. We still had six countries reduced to five after Rome pulled out. And we still had five countries that we reduced to three with the shortlist. If you look at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, you have six candidate cities [including Glasgow]. Already I hear for 2022, that Oslo is a candidate, that Switzerland will have a candidate, that the Americans are considering. Overall, the size of the Games is OK," he says. Baku and Doha were simply "not ready", he says. The 70-year-old has built his reputation on being an anti-Sepp Blatter, cleaning up the IOC's reputation in the wake of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal and attempting to guard against excessive expansion – putting a cap on the number of athletes (10,500) and sports (26) included in the Games.
That reputation, however, has come under renewed threat amid allegations that for some confirm existing prejudices about the closeted world of the global sporting "blazerati". Though keen to emphasise that the national Olympic committees from 54 countries implicated in selling tickets on the black market are technically independent of the IOC, Rogge recognises that is not a distinction the public will make.
He says he cannot prejudge the outcome of the IOC's ethics commission but is "determined the affair will not be swept under the carpet" and insists "those found guilty will be heavily punished".
Regardless, he is sure that once the Olympic circus has left London the doubters will be convinced, pointing to research conducted either side of the 2008 Beijing Games.
"The difference between appreciation before and after was unbelievable. The people who have seen the Games say: 'This is valuable.' The ones who are against it in the UK will definitely change after the Games. There is no doubt about that."
Rogge is equally upbeat on the controversial legacy commitments made by London to secure the Games. He says there is already a regeneration legacy, even before the opening ceremony, and is "very optimistic" there will be a legacy for sports participation too – despite serious doubts over the ability of an Olympics to inspire people off their sofa and into the pool.
"You need a lot of things to have sports participation. You need the responsibility of parents, there is no kid that will go alone to a sports club at 10 or 11. You need a good sports policy from the public authorities and, for me, you also need another approach to sport from the sports clubs," he says. "They need to compete against the internet, against computer games, against Facebook and Twitter. They have to attract and retain people. But the Games are definitely a big boost to that. There will be a good legacy in terms of youth sport, the awakening of interest among young people."
As for his own legacy, Rogge usually refuses to engage in the question. But contemplating the end of his tenure, he appears minded to muse on his contribution.
"I will be happy if after London the athletes who have participated in the Olympic Games on my watch will say: 'These were good Games.' This is our core business. I think young athletes will in future be happy with the Youth Olympic Games and I think they will be very important for the development of the Olympics. I hope the athletes will say he did a good job in the fighting against doping and match fixing, because this is becoming a major threat," he says.
"I hope my colleagues in international federations, NOCs and organising committees will be able to say we raised good revenues that were distributed to them. We have also invested a lot in terms of general development. We have built a network of centres in Africa, a Sport for Hope organisation. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling: 'If you are a tired president, my son.'"
A better deal for female drivers - Daily Telegraph
“That opened my eyes,” she says. “I discovered the industry wasn’t regulated and mechanics didn’t have to be qualified. I was outraged. If you happened to pick the wrong garage you could be totally ripped off or, worse, your car could be unsafe.”
As Savill, who worked in marketing at the time, spoke to friends and started collecting stories, she realised many women – and men – felt uncomfortable when visiting garages. An idea started to form. Three years later, in 2004, she and her husband set up the Foxy Lady Drivers Club.
“We discovered women often felt uncomfortable and patronised in such a male-dominated industry,” says Savill. “They were concerned about garages overcharging and selling them things they didn’t want.”
The club works as a support network, offering motoring advice to female drivers. Members can email or call with queries – anything from a second opinion when buying a car to problematic insurance claims. They’ve even been known to call if their car engine is making a noise they don’t like, with the help desk trying to identify the noise down the line.
Membership has grown steadily to about 12,000, and Savill aims to keep fees low to make the club as accessible as possible. The club was also recently incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation. Life membership costs £23 due to the service mainly being funded through sister company and site Foxy Choice (foxychoice.com), a female-friendly garage network where garages pay a subscription to be promoted to members.
The list of approved businesses is free for anyone to access online and garages are asked to sign the Foxy Promise to “never overcharge, patronise or sell women services they don’t need”. A garage can also earn brownie points by offering “superior amenities”, having women in customer-facing roles and organising ladies’ evenings. And if a business isn’t doing a good job and receives negative feedback online, it can be delisted.
“There’s no easy way to do it,” says Savill. “Businesses need to work at it and demonstrate they really are female friendly.”
One member who cannot recommend the club highly enough is Mandy Hughes from near Inverness, who discovered it after having problems with a local mechanic who she’d asked to do work on her car. Hughes, 52, says: “I’d asked him not to do any work before telling me how much it was going to cost. A cylinder head gasket had blown and I wanted it fixed but I didn’t want it to bankrupt me.
“In the end, I was without my car for five months – and I live a mile down a farm track, so I need a car – and I got a bill for more than £1,700. I’m a widow, and being absolutely alone I had no one to ask for advice about cars.”
On Savill’s advice, Hughes eventually went to the Small Claims Court and the matter was settled out of court.
“The whole thing took months and was very emotionally draining,” explains Hughes. “Without Steph’s support there’s no way I would’ve fought it. She backed me the whole way with lots of supportive emails and confidence-boosting messages.”
And the benefits aren’t exclusively for women. “If someone’s prepared to share their membership number with a family member like their husband, that’s absolutely fine,” says Savill. “They can call the helpline and we’ll do our best to advise them.”
Members also receive a monthly e-newsletter, including motoring tips, plus offers and discounts for non-motoring products and services.
One important part of Foxy’s role is lobbying for women drivers’ rights on topical issues. The biggest is currently the forthcoming changes to insurance companies using gender to calculate premiums. Savill would also like to see the garage industry regulated, an industry standard introduced for used cars, and more women in the industry in general – in car showrooms as well as the boardroom.
“The whole industry needs a total makeover, but the minute you raise your head above the gender parapet you get all sorts of comments,” says Savill.
“This is a business case, women buy 50 per cent of cars and we’re often organising garage visits for children and partners. Businesses need to get their service right for women. If they get it wrong, the ladies will come back and tell us.
“We’re trying to make a difference and to give vulnerable females the equivalent of a motoring friend to call on. We want to stand up for drivers where the industry just hasn’t been getting it right – for both men and women.”
'That's what going to a garage should be like'
Another Foxy fan is Sue Earlam, 31, who became a member after a bad experience with a car dealership near Manchester.
“I bought a brand new Nissan Qashqai and of course they were really nice at the time of the sale,” says Earlam. “But soon afterwards, the side of the car got keyed and I took it back to get fixed. They tried to charge me a stupid amount of money for the job and also for using metallic paint, which I didn’t need.
“I came home and looked up female-friendly garages on the internet, and discovered Foxy.
“I went to one of their recommended garages and they couldn’t have been nicer. They even gave me a lift to the nearby Trafford Centre, putting my young daughter’s child seat in the back of their car, so I could do some shopping while they worked on the car. That’s what going to a garage should be like.”
New Cars values drop up to 64% in 3 years, French makes fall most - Journalism.co.uk
New Cars values drop up to 64% in 3 years, French makes fall most
French car makes like Peugeot and Renault lose their value fastest, with English brands like Vauxhall just behind, according to research from Classifieds Search Engine Adzuna.co.uk. The new study also reveals that Bristol is the cheapest city in the UK to buy a used car, while Cambridge is the most expensive.
The research, conducted in June 2012, analyses over 500,000 used car ads on Adzuna across over 100 UK locations, extracting asking prices for the most popular models. This data was then benchmarked against new car prices from 2009, resulting in a "depreciation score" for every car. Because Adzuna’s dataset combines all ads placed in the market on any car website, whether by dealers or private individuals, this is the first time it has been possible to get such a comprehensive picture of current used car prices.
French cars come bottom of the Euro value league overall, losing 52% of their worth over three years, with English just behind on 50%, not helped by a disappointing performance by national football team sponsors Vauxhall. German and Italian cars, falling just 38% and 39% respectively, perform much better. The average car in the UK depreciates 44% over three years.
The fastest-depreciating car models in the UK are Renault Meganes and Peugeot 206s, worth much less than half their new price after three years, while models like Volkswagen Polo and Ford KA lose less than 30% of their value. Popular Italian 'supercars' retain their value better than most, with the Ferrari California and Lamborghini Gallardo dropping less than 25% over 3 years, along with the Audi R8.
When motors are grouped into Adzuna’s "Car Personality" categories, 'Midlife Crisis' cars depreciate the least over time whereas 'Hairdresser' and 'Boy Racer' wheels depreciate the most. 'Hairdresser' cars like the Mazda MX-5, Renault Megane and Audi TT and 'Boy Racer' cars such as the Vauxhall Astra sit at the bottom of the value table, suggesting that the reputations of their drivers damage second-hand values.
Bristol is the cheapest city in the UK to buy a used car with the average popular motor £350 cheaper than other UK cities. Cambridge is the most expensive, with the average list price of used cars in the city over £15,000. The study also shows that buying a used car in England will cost you 5% more on average than if you bought exactly the same car in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Andrew Hunter, Co-Founder of Adzuna, said "Listing every used car for sale in the UK in our search engine enables us to gain unique insights into the motors market. In financially difficult times, Britons need to be smart about buying cars which will retain value over time, and to be willing to travel to find bargains."
Top 10 Cars with the least depreciation over time
Car Model
New Price
*2009
Actual Value 2012
Depreciation %
Ferrari California
£140,285
£116,577
16.9%
Lamborghini Gallardo
£139,710
£115,261
17.5%
Volkswagen Polo
£8,685
£6,601
24.0%
Volkswagen Golf
£14,170
£10,316
27.2%
Audi R8
£79,825
£58,033
27.3%
Nissan Qashqai
£14,100
£9,715
31.1%
Ferrari F430
£168,967
£112,025
33.7%
Ford KA
£7,945
£5,228
34.2%
Ford Fiesta
£10,295
£6,774
34.2%
Honda Jazz
£10,990
£7,133
35.1%
Top 10 car models with the greatest depreciation over time
Car Model
New Price (2009)*
2012
Depreciation (%)
Renault Megane
£17,135
£6,169
64.0%
Jaguar XJ
£43,752
£16,101
63.2%
Peugeot 206
£10,500
£4,263
59.4%
Peugeot 308
£14,900
£6,094
59.1%
Land Rover Freelander
£34,657
£14,452
58.3%
Renault Scenic
£14,560
£6,159
57.7%
BMW 5 Series
£29,060
£12,554
56.8%
Toyota Avensis
£17,595
£7,689
56.3%
Vauxhall Zafira
£14,000
£6,132
56.2%
Vauxhall Astra
£12,560
£5,627
55.2%
Ford Mondeo
£16,600
£7,520
54.7%
Bargain Cities: the cities with the most cars under £1000 and £500
City
Number of cars under £1000
Number of cars under £500
London
5,757
1,248
Birmingham
1,353
338
Bristol
1,197
305
Manchester
800
209
Glasgow
732
143
Cardiff
691
99
Average depreciation per country of make
Country
%
France
52.4
England
50.4
Japan
42.3
USA
41.5
Czech
39.6
Italy
38.9
Germany
38.7
Notes to the Editor
Adzuna.co.uk is a search engine for classified ads which makes it easier for users to find the right car, property, or job locally. We search thousands of websites so you don't have to, bring together millions of ads so you can find them all in one place, and organize them with useful features so that you can easily find what you need.
Adzuna.co.uk was founded in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, formerly of eBay, Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla and is backed by leading Venture Capital firms Passion Capital, The Accelerator Group and Index Ventures.
*Data for new car prices was sourced from Parkers Car Valuations.
For more information please contact Andrew Hunter at andrew@adzuna.com +44 (0)7957 324720.
- Contact Name:
- Flora Lowther
- Role:
- Marketing Executive
- Company:
- Adzuna
- Contact Email:
- click to reveal e-mail
- Contact Phone:
- 447921670478
- Company Website:
- http://cars.adzuna.co.uk/
London 2012: Antony James joy at Olympic selection - BBC News
Plymouth swimmer Antony James says selection for this summer's Olympics has still not sunk in.
The 22-year-old initially thought he would not be going to London 2012 after missing out on the qualifying time for the 100m butterfly by 0.1 seconds at last week's National Championships.
But he was chosen by the selectors at a meeting after the event.
"It still hasn't sunk in, it's all a bit surreal at the moment," James told BBC Radio Devon.
Antony James“It's like living in a dream world, but in a few weeks' time I'll realise I'm racing at the Olympics”
"It's like living in a dream world, but in a few weeks' time I'll realise I'm racing at the Olympics.
"It's been such a rollercoaster year for me, failing at the first trials, then coming back and training again, at least it's good that I've ended on a high."
James will now have three weeks of intense training before the final Great Britain training camp in Edinburgh as he prepares for the Olympics.
The Plymouth Leander swimmer says he hopes his inclusion at London 2012 will inspire young people from the city to take up the sport.
"Training at the new Life Centre at Plymouth has given us such a boost," he added.
"We've got such a good group of us now training together and it all helps to elevate everyone's performance.
"As long as anything I do in the pool can help sport in the South West and Plymouth, raise the profile of sport and get more kids involved, I'll see it as a job well done."
London Metal Exchange CEO expects bid vote approval - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - The London Metal Exchange's (LME) chief executive is confident that its shareholders, with some persuasion, will approve a $2.2 billion offer by the Hong Kong stock exchange for the world's biggest marketplace for industrial metals.
"I think we will (get shareholder approval)," Martin Abbott said on the sidelines of the IDX International Derivatives Expo in London.
"It's a board recommendation and we wouldn't have recommended something we weren't confident about. But it doesn't mean it's a done deal. We have to get out there and talk to shareholders."
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) said on June 15 it had agreed to pay 1.4 billion pounds.
The LME board unanimously backed the bid but the deal is still subject to approval by LME shareholders.
Many shareholder members who own and use the exchange had feared a sale might alter its low fees and unique, complex structure of futures trading in copper, aluminium, lead, zinc, tin, nickel and other metals.
But the mood appears to be shifting in favour of the HKEx deal, shareholders have said over the past week.
Due to the lopsided spread of shareholdings between large and small members, the deal could fail if many small shareholders oppose the bid, which has to be approved by 75 percent of shares and 50 percent of shareholders.
Abbott said the LME was aiming for a shareholder vote to take place next month.
Sources close to the process have told Reuters the vote will take place in mid-July.
RIVAL EXCHANGES
HKEx beat U.S. commodities bourse InterContinental Exchange in the final stages of a contest that began in September with around 15 expressions of interest. CME Group, which had been on the short list, dropped out of the process in May.
ICE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Sprecher, also attending the IDX Expo in London, did not comment directly on losing the bid, but said there were plenty of other potential targets.
Sprecher said in a panel discussion that regulatory changes meant "there's a whole array of potential acquisitions for exchanges which exist around the over-the-counter markets."
The CME's CEO Phupinder Gill, also attending the event, declined to comment on the LME.
Abbott told the panel discussion the Hong Kong bid had been compelling because it took the LME closer to China, the world's biggest metals buyer.
"Asia is the next great growth story and also the biggest threat. When asked what was keeping me awake at night the answer was always the threat to us in Asia; that's where our business was tilted," he said.
"If the constraints come off the Chinese domestic exchanges they will be a very, very serious force globally and we needed to step up our game to be ready to compete with them."
China accounts for 40 percent of copper consumption.
Abbott downplayed worries about possible Chinese government meddling.
"We are confident the Hong Kong exchange operates as an independent exchange," he said.
The Hong Kong government has a 5.8 percent holding in HKEx. Beijing has no stake in the company.
(Writing by Susan Thomas; Editing by Anthony Barker)
London property heads for price plateau - Financial Times
The boom in London’s high-end housing market is showing signs of petering out as the impact of the government’s tough stamp duty measures begin to set in.
Prices for London’s prime property – the top 5 per cent of the market by value – will plateau for the next 18 months, according to research by Savills, the upmarket estate agent, which specialises in high-value property transactions.
Three London hospitals put into a form of administration as another 20 NHS trusts face serious financial difficulties - The Independent
Yesterday the Department of Health said it considered 21 hospitals to be "clinically and financially unsustainable" and in need of radical restructuring.
However, the list did not include another five foundation hospitals – run independently of the Department of Health – which are also considered to be failing financially. A further five foundation hospitals also have severe financial problems.
On Monday, Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, announced plans to put three London hospitals into a form of financial administration after they ran up debts of £150m over the past three years.
South London Healthcare NHS Trust, which is losing £1m a week, is likely now to be run by a special administrator tasked with putting it on a viable footing.
The trust, which runs Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich and the Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley is likely to face cuts to services and jobs in an attempt to reduce costs.
Department of Health sources suggested it was possible that other hospitals could also be put into administration. Those at greatest risk are understood to be Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust.
Four trusts, including South London, require bailouts because their PFI deals are unsustainable, while others may have to reconfigure their services, which could lead to job cuts. It is also possible that some hospitals could be taken over by new management.
Earlier this year the private healthcare group Circle took over Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire, which had debts of £40m. Circle says it is confident that it can turn the trust around. The Department of Health said the changes were not about cutting services but providing better healthcare. They pointed out Circle had increased investment in Hinchingbrooke.
However ministers accept they will face resistance to the changes from patients.
Many of the problems faced by the affected hospitals are historical. Some have been burdened with prohibitively expensive PFI debts which they are struggling to service, while others are providing services which are now uneconomical.
Some hospitals are also trying to provide a full range of hospital services to relatively small but isolated communities and finding there are not the economies of scale to stay within budget.
"We have got a 19th-century system of hospitals which are no longer fit for the needs of 21st-century healthcare," said one source who could not be named as they are involved in hospital regulation.
"It is difficult for the public to accept when they see things like their local A&E or maternity unit closing but we must move to a position where what is important is the quality of treatment you get rather than where you are treated."
This position was backed by Chris Ham, chief executive of the King's Fund think-tank. He said: "For some of these hospitals, the usual solutions, such as appointing a new management team or merging with another provider, will not solve their problems. Governments have ducked these issues for too long so this announcement is an important signal of intent."
Andy Burnham, Labour's shadow Health Secretary, said while some PFI deals had represented poor value for money that was not the full picture.
"Overall, PFI helped us rebuild the fabric of the NHS and that helped us improve standards of patient care. This hospital has been making real improvements in recent years on quality, safety and on waiting times. The Government has been talking down the National Health Service."
Sue Slipman, chief executive of the Foundation Trust Network, said she was pleased the Government was confronting some long-standing problems. "There is no doubt that there will have to be more changes in the health service in order to make the savings necessary to invest in new patterns of healthcare.
The NHS Confederation deputy chief executive David Stout said: "We welcome the Secretary of State's actions as a sign the Government is beginning to grasp the nettle on some difficult issues."
Leyton stabbing Good Samaritan sought by police - BBC News
Police are trying to trace a man who came to the aid of a 28-year-old fatally stabbed in east London.
Marvin Hogan was stabbed in the chest in Thornhill Gardens, Leyton, on 4 June. He died in hospital in the early hours of the next day.
Officers want to trace a white man carrying a rucksack which he placed under the victim's head until help arrived.
The victim, from Leyton, was in his car on Windsor Road when he was confronted.
During the incident the victim's keyring was taken and police hope to find it.
It had a Vauxhall Astra car key, an electronic fob for entry into the victim's flat, a red piece of plastic and a silver cross which is black on one side.
The first suspect was a black man in his early 20s, about 5ft 9ins tall.
He was wearing a red baseball cap with a logo on the front and a black body-warmer with a six-inch red band on the front.
The second suspect was a black man in his early 20s, about 5ft 9ins tall with a oval-shaped, chubby face and hair in cane rows.
Answer 'in community'He wore a quilted Barbour-style jacket with silver on it.
The third attacker was a black man in his early 20s, who was wearing dark clothing.
Det Ch Insp Graeme Gwyn said: "We are appealing for any witness or anyone with information to please contact us as soon as possible.
"The answer to solving this murder lies within the local community and we would ask people to come forward.
"Do you recognise the description of the suspects? Are you the man with the rucksack who came to the victim's aid?"
Four men arrested over the killing have been bailed.
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