Blogscrape

Though his official biographer tends to deny it, there is a very noticeable gap between Lucian Freud's present style and the way he painted at the outset of his phenomenal career.

Plans to vet millions of people working with children and vulnerable adults are to be scaled back to “common sense” levels, the Government announced today

9.40 BST On a January morning 38 years ago, 14 protesters died at the hands of British paratroopers. For many of their relatives, the years since have been dominated by the search for truth about what happened during 25 chaotic minutes of firing in central Londonderry.

A total of £100 million, more than half the costs of the Bloody Sunday inquiry, established in 1998, has gone on legal fees.

The Royal Family and the Royal Household were exempted from direct requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The Royal Household was not included in the Act’s definition of a public authority, so members of the public are unable to access information held in the Royal Archives. Public bodies can be asked to release information that may include details about the Royal Family, but protection also covers communications between public bodies, such as government departments, and the Royal Family or Royal Household.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, has been invited to attend a Buckingham Palace garden party hosted by the Queen, The Times has learnt.

We have Harold Wilson to blame for the search for connections between the World Cup and the fortunes of the nation.

Fifteen directors of BP, including Tony Hayward, the chief executive, and Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman, are being sued personally by two US pension funds for their role in the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

The economy, more damaged by the banking crisis than previously admitted, will grow more weakly and may never fully recover, the new Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said yesterday.

Two men had the job of signing off Alistair Darling’s growth and borrowing forecasts, which have now been revised by the independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility: Sir Nick Macpherson, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Dave Ramsden, Chief Economic Adviser.

As the ball skimmed his glove and rolled into the back of the net, it was a moment of head-in-hands calamity for the England goalkeeper Robert Green. For scientists, the USA’s equaliser on Saturday evening may simply have confirmed the discovery that our mental representation of our hands is about two thirds wider than they really are.

Behind a thundering dual carriageway on the A4 out of London is an unlikely site to have inspired the rolling parkland of the English country garden.

The suicidal subject matter is far from uplifting and it is unlikely to become a World Cup theme tune any time soon.

Oh dear. Asking Radio 3 listeners for a Top Ten of Britain’s favourite arias is a bit like asking the Bullingdon Club to supply a list of the nation’s favourite tipples. It would include rare vintages, but not what they shift by the tankload at Bargain Booze.

The elderly mother of Derrick Bird is determined to send letters of condolence to the families of each of her son’s 12 victims, it has emerged.

George Osborne faced a fresh blow over capital gains tax yesterday after it emerged it is due to raise £1.5 billion less than expected.

David Cameron warned yesterday that there would be more British deaths in Afghanistan this summer but said that the threat to Britain of an al-Qaeda attack from the region had dropped.

On the edge of the Bogside in Londonderry stands a granite monument to the 14 men “murdered by British paratroopers on Bloody Sunday”. The simple signs at its foot proclaim: “Hope for Truth.”

In these times of austerity, it is the royal tour that gives value for money: two princes for the price of one. Prince William and Prince Harry’s tour of Africa — a six-day, three-country dash that began yesterday and will take in England’s next World Cup match in Cape Town — is the first time the prin-ces have embarked on a joint tour.

Witnesses in the Chelsea Barracks case “concocted an untrue story” to cover up the involvement of the Prince of Wales and the Emir of Qatar in the cancellation of an £81 million modernist housing project, the High Court was told yesterday.