JD Wetherspoon the cheap and cheerful pub chain known for its strict no-music and no-television

JD Wetherspoon, the cheap and cheerful pub chain known for its strict no-music and no-television policy, is to break with tradition by introducing TV sets across its estate. Wetherspoon pubs do not have juke boxes and only a handful, mainly those at airports, currently have TVs. But the group has now decided that every pub in the 640-strong estate will be fitted with two plasma screens, at a cost of around £2,500 per outlet.
The decision comes just a week after Wetherspoon warned that the World Cup would hit sales in June and July, as it expected punters to desert its pubs for bars showing England games.But chief executive John Hutson insisted that the chain was not seeking to cash in on the tournament “They are not being put in for the World Cup,” he said “It’s more to do with the extended hours. The free service, being co-ordinated by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) in conjunction with the Engineering Employers’ Federation and trade unions, was given the backing of the Department for Work and Pensions last week and will begin later this year..

Teams of financial advisers will be sent into offices and factories to encourage workers to join their company pension schemes and save more for retirement, under a government initiative being launched tomorrow. US companies have long been the largest investors in the UK and Think London feels it needs to get to them earlier in the decision-making process to win deals.The Beijing bureau is to be run jointly with the Mayor of London’s office and will be opened by the Major, Ken Livingstone, when he visits the Chinese capital in April.Opening in Beijing will enable Think London to see how the Chinese are using the 2008 Olympics to stimulate investment and how having the 2012 games in London could help the capital.Think London is jointly funded by the Mayor’s Office and London First, a lobby group backed by 300 businesses based in the capital.. Think London, the body set up to promote investment in the capital, is to open its first overseas offices in New York and Beijing this spring. The move is part of a strenthening of Think London’s activities and is a reaction to the increased competition for foreign direct investment, which has seen the UK losing out to the likes of Ireland, India and Eastern Europe over recent years.
Michael Charlton, the head of Think London, said that rivals are infringing on traditional areas where the UK has led the world, such as financial services, pharmaceuticals research and creative industries.”In the past London was flavour of the month, but many of the investments that would have naturally chosen London are now contestable,” he said.The New York office is due to open in March. Bin Laden has already achieved what he set out to do, by creating al-Qa’ida. As an ideology, it is far more dangerous than a single group of conspirators..

The frontier runs 1,530 miles through some of the most rugged terrain on earth, and is inhabited by fearsome tribesmen who have no love for any outside interference from Kabul or Islamabad, let alone America.For all the speculation that bin Laden might be sheltering in a Pakistani city, which is where other senior al-Qa’ida figures have been captured, or could have escaped by boat to Yemen or Saudi Arabia, his safety seems best assured by staying in an area where neither American nor Pakistani troops dare venture.Even if he is finally hunted down, by this stage it would have little strategic impact. Both of them were heard from last week.So where are they? As this month’s missile strike shows, the assumption is that they are still in the lawless border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet between them, he and Zawahiri have issued at least 28 video and audiotapes from hiding. If “intelligence sources” are to be believed, he has not even shown up on America’s electronic surveillance network Not a satellite phone call Not an email.