Thursday, 6 February 2025
Austin Healey 3000 MK III - VÍDEO - Classic review / Turn the subtitles on !
Monday, 3 February 2025
Sunday, 2 February 2025
Prince Andrew caught in a lie over contact with Epstein / Prince Andrew adviser’s letter to alleged China spy reveals closeness of ties
Prince
Andrew adviser’s letter to alleged China spy reveals closeness of ties
Two-page
document praises loyalty of Yang Tengbo and says he is ‘at very top of tree’
within Duke of York’s network
Dan Sabbagh
Defence and security editor
Fri 31 Jan
2025 17.07 GMT
The full
text of a gushing letter written by Prince Andrew’s adviser to alleged Chinese
spy Yang Tengbo reveals how intimate the relationship between the two had
become in the aftermath of the prince’s disastrous 2019 interview with the BBC.
Extracts
from the correspondence were quoted in a judgment upholding a decision to
exclude Yang from the UK last month, but the two-page letter written by Dominic
Hampshire at the end of March 2020 is eye-catching for its tone.
The letter
had been relied on by the Home Office to demonstrate that Tengbo was able to
generate relationships between prominent UK figures and Chinese officials.
Hampshire, a
senior adviser to the Duke of York, complains in the letter – subsequently
recovered by police from Yang’s laptop – that he had “watched numerous people
disappear from his [the Duke’s] network” and that the prince had been
surrounded by “red carpet chasers”.
But he goes
on to to praise Yang as being one of “a very small number” of people previously
connected to Andrew who had continued “to show total support and loyalty,” amid
fierce criticism in the wake of the 2019 interview of the prince’s friendship
with abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
The letter
is among dozens of documents released by the immigration court on Friday, and
has already been partially quoted in its judgment last month. Hampshire had
assured Yang “you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would
like to be on”.
The prince’s
aide goes on to write that Yang was fortunate to attend a celebration of
Andrew’s 60th birthday at Windsor the month before, which had been scaled down
at the Queen’s request after he struggled to answer questions from the BBC’s
Emily Maitlis over his friendship with Epstein.
“I also hope
you fully understand what your invitation to his birthday party meant; this was
not an engagement or an exclusive dinner. This was strictly his and his
family’s personal life that very, very few people have the privilege to ever be
part of,” Hampshire wrote.
“Moreover,
remember that you were originally invited to their house and therefore on the
much smaller original guest list. Despite press reports to the contrary, I know
for a fact that there were very few people who were not able to make it.”
In the 2019
interview with the BBC, Andrew had said he cut off contact with Epstein in
December 2010, but emails disclosed in a separate legal action have now
revealed they were still exchanging messages in late February 2011.
Epstein
suggested the Duke might see banker Jes Staley, and after a back and forth,
Andrew wrote: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”
Yang, a
Chinese-born entrepreneur who had lived in the UK, was excluded from the UK by
then home secretary, Suella Braverman, in March 2023 on the advice of MI5, and
the court concluded that she “was entitled to conclude that the applicant
represented a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom”.
He maintains
the allegations against him are “entirely unfounded”. On Friday, he said he was
seeking permission to appeal against the court’s decision in a statement.
A witness
statement from Yang provided to the immigration court said that he first met
Hampshire after he had been sat next to Andrew during a VIP dinner hosted by
Buckingham Palace in October 2019 and he was advised by the prince to contact
him. “The duke wrote Dominic’s number down on a piece of paper,” Yang said.
Hampshire’s
letter describes how rapidly their relationship developed after meeting at the
Corinthia hotel in London on 23 October. “Immediately, I learned of a whole new
level of obsessive confidentiality and a slightly different way of
communicating,” a sentence partly quoted in the court’s judgment.
“We have
dealt with the aftermath of a hugely ill-advised and unsuccessful television
interview; we have wisely navigated our way around former private secretaries
and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don’t
completely trust,” he added, using language that has been partly quoted by the
court.
Hampshire, a
former Scots guard and long-time friend and fixer for the duke, heaps praise on
Yang’s punctuality: “You bring a completely new level to timekeeping – I aim to
be at every meeting at least 15 minutes before it starts and without exception,
you are already there!”.
The purpose
of the letter, Hampshire says, is “a personal note from me to you” and
apologises for its length, which he says is “very British”. It nevertheless
emphasises the closeness of their relationship: “After this short amount of
time, I feel an unusual bond of friendship, trust, support and loyalty.”
Seven months
later, another letter from Hampshire says that Yang is authorised to act on
behalf of an investment scheme called the Eurasian fund in China. It says he
has the authority to act on behalf of Andrew “in engagements with potential
partners and investors in China” but also asks that “this relationship remains
confidential”.
Saturday, 1 February 2025
‘We won’t come again’: dazed visitors fed up with overcrowded Louvre
‘We won’t
come again’: dazed visitors fed up with overcrowded Louvre
Paris
attraction in need of overhaul amid complaints of leaks, long waits, lack of
signage – and too many people
Angelique
Chrisafis
Angelique
Chrisafis in Paris
Tue 28 Jan
2025 06.00 CET
As the
crowds poured out of the Louvre, the look of dazed exhaustion on many faces
confirmed what the museum’s director had warned last week: a trip to Paris’s
biggest cultural attraction has become a “physical ordeal”.
Myriam, 65,
a former secondary school science teacher had driven from Belgium with her
husband to show their 12-year-old granddaughter the Mona Lisa. They left
disappointed. “I think the Louvre is a victim of its own success,” she said.
“We won’t come again.”
They had
squeezed through huge crowds on Monday to try to catch a glimpse of Leonardo da
Vinci’s masterpiece, but found the room badly designed and with no proper flow
of people. They had been baffled by the lack of signage in the vast wings.
“There are
so many people. Lots of rooms aren’t numbered. The staff are very friendly, but
you feel they’re more there to show people the way than to protect the
paintings,” said Myriam. “Then there’s the wait to get in – we had time-slot
tickets but still had to wait 45 minutes outside. I hadn’t realised we needed
separate tickets to the temporary exhibition and it was sold out.”
On Tuesday,
the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will deliver a speech at the Louvre in
which he is expected to unveil details of new investment, which could involve
major overhaul – even a potential additional entrance. But the work required is
vast and the government is facing severe budget constraints.
One of the
largest arts centres on the planet and the world’s most visited museum, the
Louvre attracts more than 8 million people a year. When it was modernised in
the 1980s, it was designed to welcome 4 million visitors a year, yet now
handles more than double that number and is increasingly stressing out its
visitors.
On Monday, a
74-year-old clinical psychologist from Paris, who said she had been a regular
visitor to the Louvre for 40 years, exited the popular temporary exhibition,
Figures of the Fool, feeling battered.
The Louvre
is the most popular museum in the world, and a major cultural hub in Paris.
Photograph: Blondet Eliot/Abaca/Rex/Shutterstock
“I’m leaving
in a state of extreme fatigue and I’ve vowed never to visit again,” she said,
declining to give her name. “The noise is so unbearable under the glass
pyramid; it’s like a public swimming pool. Even with a timed ticket, there’s an
hour to wait outside. I can’t do it anymore. Museums are supposed to be fun,
but it’s no fun anymore. There’s no pleasure in coming here anymore. And to get
out you’re made to walk the length of a shopping arcade to force people to buy
things – commercial interests have taken over everything.”
The Louvre’s
director, Laurence des Cars, warned in a damning note to the culture minister
this month that the facilities were below international standards, the visits
were not easy and involved long waits, and the building was in poor repair,
including leaks and poor temperature controls. Despite investment in new
outposts of the Louvre, including in the northern former coalmining town of
Lens and in Abu Dhabi, the vast Paris museum has not had a significant
structural overhaul in decades.
Macron, who
chose the Louvre as the backdrop to his presidential victory speech in 2017,
has decided to personally address the crisis. After the recent renovation of
Notre Dame cathedral five years after it was damaged by fire, the Louvre could
be Macron’s next legacy project, as he seeks to focus on issues that could
unite the deeply divided political class and voters. “The Louvre is the
most-visited museum in world, it deserves all our care,” said one Élysée
official.
Another
Élysée source said: “The situation is urgent and the Louvre is our shared
heritage. France’s power in the coming years is its capacity to show its
independence on a range of issues, particularly as a cultural exception.”
The Louvre,
which has been used for diplomacy and soft power by several presidents, is seen
as too important for its image to be tarnished.
Nurperi, 40,
a physiotherapist from Ankara in Turkey, who had visited with her children,
enjoyed the Islamic art and braved the crowds for the Mona Lisa. “The art works
were beautiful,” she said, but conceded there could have been better
information and signage, more toilets and, ideally, less queuing.
Véronique, a
retired administrator from Paris said: “The Louvre is just so huge. I went to
the Musée d’Orsay recently and, although it’s also popular, it seemed more
accessible, and more human – much less crazy than the Louvre.”
