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The observatory, which was built in 1866 and is a Grade II listed building,
was used by the Natural Environment Research Council until 2004.

A spokeswoman for Merseyside Police said: “Officers are appealing to
anyone who may have seen anyone acting suspiciously on Bidston Hill over the
last few days to come forward.”

20 May 2012
Last updated at 13:52 GMT

David Cameron likes to smash balls served up by a machine called “the Clegger”, a book claims

A senior cabinet colleague has defended David Cameron’s work ethic after a book said his weekend relaxations included tennis, karaoke and drinking wine.

Justice Secretary Ken Clarke insisted leaders needed to remain “part of the human race” while dealing with the “grindstone” of life in government.

He told Sky News the prime minister had to be a “workaholic” to do his job and deserved some “light relief”.

But Labour’s Ed Balls said Mr Cameron was often “not on top of issues”.

Extracts from a biography of the prime minister by journalists Francis Elliott and James Hanning suggest he “chillaxes” during weekends at his official country residence, Chequers, by singing karaoke, playing tennis against a machine dubbed “the Clegger”, playing games on his iPad and partaking of several glasses of wine at Sunday lunch.

‘Different metabolism’

Questioned on Sky News’ Murnaghan programme, Mr Clarke said: “Well, you have to have a little light relief in politics and that’s light relief. Everybody has to have some time on their own.”

He added: “I don’t want to stand here on behalf of the trade union of minister of the United Kingdom and the western world, but you have to be a workaholic to do it,” he went on.

The justice secretary sometimes lights up with a cigar on late shifts

“Particularly if you are prime minister and you cover the whole scene, you really have to put the work in.”

Mr Clarke, famed for his love of birdwatching, jazz, beer, cricket, football and cigars, added: “David has a quite different metabolism to me. He appears to get up at the crack of dawn and I hear him referring to people on [BBC Radio 4's] Farming Today [which starts at 05:45 BST]…

“I have not listened to Farming Today for many years, but you might find me with a brandy and a cigar at one o’clock in the morning working on my papers.”

“It is not possible to survive in politics by skiving,” he added. “But it’s very useful to remain a member of the human race and you do have a family, you do have other things to just remind you what life is about.”

Mr Clarke pointed out that Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had time to read long novels when in power from 1957 to 1963, but added: “Modern government is more demanding than that, and David Cameron is doing a more-than-full-time job.”

For Labour, shadow chancellor Ed Balls said: “I don’t want to be too pompous about this. It is a good thing at the weekend to have a bit of time.”

But he added: “I often feel in the House of Commons he is not on top of the issues.”

When interviewed about his workload on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme last month, Mr Cameron said being “completely fried and exhausted” led to bad judgements.

He added: “It’s got to be possible to be a decent husband, a good father and a good prime minister at the same time.”

Supermarket giants are going head to head in a fuel price war with huge cuts on the forecourts tomorrow.

Morrisons is slashing prices by 12p a litre for shoppers who spend £60 at the checkout and ­Sainsbury’s will reduce the cost by 3p a litre at its 266 outlets.

Sainsbury’s is backing its 3p-a-litre cut with a promotion that offers a further 5p-off-per-litre voucher for customers spending £50 in store.

Asda, Tesco and Morrisons have all announced cuts in the price of fuel over recent weeks. Morrisons says that its Fuel ­Britannia deal means petrol will drop to around 121p a litre while diesel will cost 127p a litre. The week-long discount will apply to shoppers who spend £60 or more on groceries.

Under the deal, which lasts until May 27, customers will get a voucher redeemable at its 300 forecourts until June 3.

Across the UK, the average price for petrol is 137p a litre – down from its mid-April peak of 142p a ­litre.

But experts say wholesale costs have fallen by $200 a tonne since then – enough to cut 10p a litre off pump prices.

The AA’s Luke Bosdet said: “There is little ­pressure on UK retailers to bring down prices. We would have expected prices to fall from 142p a litre to 132p a litre by now.”

? Raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph would cost ­motorists nearly £1billion more on fuel a year and kill or injure 125 more people, according to ­a study by ­campaign group No to 80.

(UKPA)
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22 minutes ago 

The Lockerbie bomber has died, nearly three years after he was released from jail on compassionate grounds.

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison for the 1988 bombing of a US airliner over the Scottish town which claimed 270 lives. The former Libyan intelligence officer was later diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and controversially released from prison in August 2009 with an estimated three months to live.

The decision, by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, to free the only man ever convicted of the atrocity provoked an international storm. His death in Tripoli, at the age of 60, was announced by his son, Khaled.

The news divided opinion. The mother of one passenger said she hoped the convicted terrorist suffered a “painful, horrible” death, while a spokesman for some of Megrahi’s British victims said his death was “deeply regretted”.

The bombing of Pan Am flight 103, travelling from London to New York four days before Christmas, killed all 259 people on board. Eleven residents of the Dumfries and Galloway town also died after the plane crashed down on their homes in Britain’s biggest terrorist atrocity.

After protracted international pressure, Megrahi was put on trial in the Netherlands. He was found guilty in 2001 of mass murder and was ordered to serve a minimum of 27 years behind bars.

Despite claims that he could not have worked alone and the lingering suspicion by some that he was innocent, Megrahi was the only man ever brought to justice over the terrorist attack.

Mr MacAskill’s subsequent decision to release him from Greenock prison and allow him to return home to die in Libya drew international condemnation. Scottish ministers have always insisted the move was made in good faith, on compassionate grounds alone and followed the due process of Scots law. But many strongly opposed the decision.

US families were among the most vocal critics, along with US president Barack Obama. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton branded the move “absolutely wrong”. American fury was compounded by the hero’s welcome Megrahi received in Tripoli upon his return.

Susan Cohen, whose daughter Theodora, 20, was on the flight bound for John F Kennedy airport, said she believed Megrahi should have received the death penalty. But David Ben-Ayreah, a spokesman for some of the British families who lost loved ones, described Megrahi as the “271st victim of Lockerbie”.

Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

If “chillaxing” was an Olympic sport then David Cameron, would win a gold medal, according to a new biography of the prime minister.

His ability to separate his private life from his professional life is seen as an asset by some friends, and by others as a sign of complacency in the midst of a double dip recession.

The book, Cameron: Practically a Conservative, describes how on a weekend Cameron may practice his game with a tennis machine he calls “the Clegger”, after the deputy prime minister. Later on, he would cook dinner, have a few glasses of wine and sing My Way on his personal karaoke machine.

But the prime minister’s ability to relax can cause problems, such as when last year’s riots intruded upon his summer holiday in Tuscany and he was slow to realise the enormity of the situation.

With Britain in recession and the Conservatives falling in the polls, Cameron’s leisure habits have increasingly been criticised by both his Conservative and Labour opponents as a sign of complacency.

Authors, Francis Elliot and James Hanning also chart the loss of faith in Cameron’s relationship with his chief policy guru, Steve Hilton, who has just taken a year’s sabbatical from his work at Downing Street to teach at a California university.

Cameron and Hilton have been friends for 20 years but as the concepts they worked on, such as the “big society”, have failed to make an impact, so their professional attachment has waned, the authors write.

Hilton, who has been much satirised for his unconventional approach and use of jargon, believes Cameron has become too focused on power rather than pushing through radical change, according to the book, which is being serialised in the Times.

In their detailed portrait of the prime minister at work and leisure, the authors also detail how Cameron maintains an even temper when infuriated by pen-clicking, phone checking and transport delays. If he does lose his temper, he is quick to apologise, according to the biography.

The prime minister’s relaxed appearance is not arrived at easily, according to the biography.

The book quotes an ally describing Cameron’s ability to chill out and relax. “If there was an Olympic gold medal for ‘chillaxing’, he would win it. He is capable of switching off in a way that almost no other politician I know of can. The political mind is still working. He tends to get up early, look at the Sunday papers, check a few things online, the phone might ring and he’ll deal with that.

“But then he doesn’t go back to obsessively checking the computer or rewriting the speech, or worrying about what [rightwing journalist Matthew d'Ancona] really means. It’s: ‘I have absorbed the information, I have taken an action, I have asked Ed Llewellyn to do such and such, I will now go into the vegetable patch, watch a crap film on telly, play with the children, cook, have three or four glasses of wine with my lunch, have an afternoon nap, play tennis’.”

For Michael Gove, the education minister and a close friend of Cameron, the prime minister’s ability to relax is a rare quality. “He is the model of how to have a clear divide between the world of work and then relaxation, so you can clear your mind. There are very few people who have such a finely developed capacity to do that,” he is quoted as saying.

The book also claims that while New Labour was seen to rely to heavily on political pollsters, Cameron has a predilection for political betting websites. The authors write that he does not bet but enjoys examining politics through the eyes of bookmakers.

Labour backbencher John Mann said: “People across the country will be concerned that while Britain was heading for a recession made in Downing Street, David Cameron was concentrating on ‘chillaxing’.

“The prime minister should be totally focused on a plan for jobs and growth rather than playing computer games on his iPad.”