Tributes paid to Alexander McQueen as London Fashion Week opens

Published: 8:00AM GMT 20 Feb 2010

Previous of Images Next British Fashion Council chairman Harold Tillman spoke of the designer"s "extraordinary impact" on the international fashion industry Photo: AFP/GETTY McQueen was one of Britain"s most feted fashion exports Photo: REUTERS

The 40-year-old British designer was found hanged in his wardrobe at his Mayfair home on the eve of his mother Joyce"s funeral.

While McQueen had not attended London Fashion Week since 2001, he was one of Britain"s most feted fashion exports.

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His parent company PPR announced yesterday the McQueen label will continue despite his death.

Launching the event at Somerset House, British Fashion Council (BFC) chairman Harold Tillman spoke of the designer"s ""extraordinary impact"" on the international fashion industry.

He called for a minute"s silence to remember ""this great talent"".

He said: ""I ask you to join me in sharing both respect and reverence for the passing of one of our greatest British designers Lee McQueen.

"His impact on London and this international fashion industry has been extraordinary. And he will be sorely missed.

""I know that we will all remember his incredible achievements and what he did for fashion here in London.""

Praising McQueen"s talent, he added: ""He proved that this industry and this city is one of opportunity. He left school with one O-Level and with a good mix of determination, hard work and genius, he became and will remain one of London"s leading lights.

""To ensure London, his home city, continues to grow as a global fashion centre will be a fitting tribute to this brilliant man.""

Prime Minister Gordon Brown"s wife Sarah Brown said: ""I have no doubt this will be a creative and inspiring London Fashion Week and also a reflective time with the passing of Lee McQueen.""

Fashion journalists, buyers and designers from around the globe will descend on London for the series of catwalk shows which are to run until February 24.

Dublin-born Paul Costelloe was the first designer unveiling his new collection at the bi-annual event.

He drew on the ""Assassination of Jesse James"" as his defining inspiration with his collection featuring tweed, leather and period-inspired silhouettes.

London Fashion Week guests have the opportunity to pin messages to a board at the main venue at Somerset House, which will be placed in a book at the end of the week and presented to McQueen"s family.

One tribute, from Clara Mercer of the British Fashion Council, read: "So many memorable moments a real British hero."

Another from Marigay McKee, fashion and beauty director at Harrods, read: "My favourite McQueen creations are his skull clutches and scarves which fuse contemporary edginess and ladylike chic. His sculptured dresses are also an art form."

Rosanna Falconer of the British Fashion Council wrote: "I have never seen another show hit the theatrical heights of McQueen"s. We have lost an awe-inspiring talent."

An additional tribute will consist of a display wall at Victoria House embedded with 40 iPod touches, each holding images from McQueen collections.

For the first time this season the event will stream shows live online.

The BFC is launching an area on its website where visitors can view shows as they take place at Somerset House and other London locations.

High profile designers due to unveil their new collections over the next week include Julien Macdonald, Matthew Williamson, Paul Smith and Vivienne Westwood.

Google Buzz prompts legal action by US woman

By Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent Published: 4:00PM GMT 18 Feb 2010

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Google invites Microsoft to tell it what went wrong with Buzz Photo: REUTERS

Eva Hibnick, a woman from Florida, instructed her US law firm yesterday to file the complaint against Google in San Joses federal court, alleging that the company had broken the law by using the new tool to share her personal data without her consent.

The complaint claims that Google has broken several electronic communications laws. Hibnick is seeking an unspecified amount of financial compensation and also an injunction to prevent Google from being able to take similar actions in the future.

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A Google spokesperson told The Telegraph: "We haven"t yet been served and won"t be able to comment until we"ve had a chance to review the complaint."

Google Buzz, which allows Gmail users to update their status for other Gmail users to see and easily share content from YouTube and Picasa, is being seen as Google"s attempt to compete more closely with Facebook and Twitter. However, since its launch last week, Google has faced a barrage of privacy complaints.

Earlier this week Google bowed to public pressure and diasbled particularly controversial features -one of which gave users a ready-made circle of friends based on their most frequent email and chat contacts in Gmail.

The Google feature was heavily criticised because users who did not change their default settings, automatically ended up "following" the people they emailed most, and this list was then made public. Many also did not want contacts whom they emailed regularly for work purposes to be included in their online social circle.

Buzz will now only suggest who users may like to include as their friends.

Buzz also no longer automatically connects Buzz to Picasa photo albums and Google Reader items.

However, only two days after Google announced the changes, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging the company had violated consumer protection laws.

EPIC wants the FTC to ensure that Google is barred from using Gmail address book contacts to compile social networking lists.

"This is a significant breach of consumers" expectations of privacy," EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in a statement. "Google should not be allowed to push users" personal information into a social network they never requested."

In response to the EPIC complaint, Google said it already has made some changes to Buzz based on user feedback and has "more improvements in the works."

Yesterday, Canadas privacy commissioner joined the ever-growing number of Google Buzz critics, accusing the company of breaching privacy laws.

"We have seen a storm of protest and outrage over alleged privacy violations and my office also has questions about how Google Buzz has met the requirements of privacy laws in Canada," Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a statement.

Separately Google has acquired reMail a mobile email search service which was available, until the deal, through the Apple App Store. The app has now been removed to tech enthusiasts dismay and no plans for how the service will be integrated into Gmail have been revealed by Google.

Using Facebook or Twitter could raise your insurance premiums by 10pc

By Richard Evans Published: 4:20PM GMT 19 Feb 2010

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Services such as Twitter, FaceBook, Foursquare and Buzz can alert criminals when users are not home, according to Confused.com

Services such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Buzz can alert criminals when users are not home, according to Confused.com, the price comparison service. Foursquare, for example, shows that people are in a specific spot and, more importantly, that the user is definitely not at home, Confused.com added.

It predicted that the new wave in social media could eventually lead to big rises in home insurance premiums.

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Darren Black, the head of home insurance at Confused.com, said: "I wouldn"t be surprised if, as social media grow in popularity and more location-based applications come to fore, insurance providers consider these in their pricing of an individual"s risk. We could see rises of up to 10pc for people who use these sites.

"Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering, even using Google Earth and Streetview to plan their burglaries with military precision. Insurance providers are starting to take this into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent."

The company offered the following advice to users of social networking websites:

1. Never post your home address or other personal information such as your home phone number on social networking sites

2. Don"t follow people you don"t know on social networks and use block others from seeing your profile if you don"t know them

3. Turn off location-based services on Twitter and Facebook unless you absolutely need to use them

British films: why dont we go to see them?

By David Gritten Published: 1:19PM GMT 19 Feb 2010

Britain"s best: Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish in Bright Star

This Sunday, the leading lights of the British film industry will pour themselves into glamorous evening clothes and repair to the Royal Opera House, where they will tread the red carpet before making their way into the Bafta awards ceremony. There they will present each other with awards and bask in an atmosphere of mutual backslapping before a watching television audience.

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I only hope that none of them looks too smug while theyre about it. The fact is, the last year has been a pretty good one for British films, with almost a dozen genuinely worthwhile titles in release. But its been disappointing in the sense that the British cinemagoing public has not turned out en masse to see them.

Even those titles singled out by the Baftas as representing the best our industry has to offer have performed indifferently at British box-offices. There truly hasnt been a breakout hit among them. And for people living in vast swathes of this country, away from urban centres, there have been few chances to see interesting British films.

This is nothing new. Only a year ago, we were celebrating the extraordinary success of Slumdog Millionaire, a huge hit here and throughout the world while some were wondering if the British industry might benefit from its momentum.

Theres a recurring motif here that goes way back to Four Weddings and a Funeral, through The Full Monty, Billy Elliot, right up to Mamma Mia! and Slumdog. Once every few years, a British film (often about the triumph of little underdogs) captures the global imagination, and otherwise rational people start speculating that here, finally, is a bright new dawn for our film industry.

It never happens, of course, and it certainly didnt after Slumdog. Instead, the industry fell into its familiar pattern of boom and bust. Indeed Film Four, the production company that launched Slumdog on the world, found itself in financially straitened circumstances.

In a sense, then, Sundays Baftas will be surveying a year that has found British films in default mode: that is to say, not reaching sizeable audiences.

Youd never know this from the upbeat press releases issued by the UK Film Council, the quango that, among other things, offers completion funding from the public purse to those British films that tick the right boxes. The UKFC never tires of telling us how well our films and the talent in them are performing. Look, heres a Britflick (or a British actor) nominated for an Oscar! Look, British independent films have never been more popular!

One sometimes wonders if the UKFC (which does actually perform several valuable functions) feels the need to indulge in this happy-clappy propaganda to shore up its own comfortable existence and withstand close political scrutiny.

In truth, there is a massive disconnect between the British film industry and the audiences it is meant to serve. Consider Baftas five nominees this year for Outstanding British Film: In the Loop, An Education, Nowhere Boy, Moon and Fish Tank. None has been a sizeable hit, except by the low standards of the industry.

In the Loop and An Education (both also Oscar-nominated) both grossed £2.2 million in British cinemas during the course of their entire run, over several weeks. That sounds fine till you consider that Valentines Day, a mundane Hollywood romcom, just grossed £3.7 million here on its opening weekend.

Nowhere Boy and Moon have grossed some £1.3 million, and Fish Tank only £600,000. To put the fortunes of the last film in perspective, it means that fewer than 110,000 people have paid to see it. Not many, is it?

Its not as if bad notices by British critics, the most popular excuse for failure employed by our film producers, played any part. These five titles were largely reviewed positively. Personally, Id rate all of them, plus the neglected Bright Star (which seems to me the best of all), among my 20 favourite titles of the past 12 months.

So can it be that we simply dont like British films?

Not necessarily. Valentines Day, like so many heavily marketed and advertised Hollywood films in Britain, opened last week on a massive number of screens 432. Fish Tank opened last September on just 47. What hope did it have? At that time, I met its director Andrea Arnold, who told me plaintively that she believed lots of people would like her film if only they got the chance to see it.

But they dont. Some weeks back, I alluded to this in a Saturday Telegraph column, and a reader wrote to confirm that her friends were "not aware of this type of (British) film, whereas they know all about American releases". Popcorn movies, she added, could be seen "anywhere, at all times, but anything else is restricted viewing as far as my two local cinemas are concerned".

Now this was someone with not one but two local cinemas. And she lives within 20 miles of London. If she feels excluded from British films, imagine how someone living in Cumbria or Cornwall must feel.

Still, in fairness, its not as if there were lines around the block to see these British films on the relatively few screens on which they played. Im not quite convinced Fish Tank, with its gritty, uncompromising subject matter, would have found a large audience had it been distributed more widely.

As to whether "we" like British films, it depends who you mean by "we". Tastes have changed, audiences have become progressively younger, and Hollywood simply caters to them more effectively. Id guess that, for example, An Education and Bright Star attracted mainly older crowds, and they alone do not create hit movies.

Still, its a sad reflection if potential audiences are denied the chance to see the best films the British film industry can offer.

Our cinema chains are partly to blame. Is there another country in Europe that so willingly rolls over for the big studios, and allows Hollywood product, so much of it indifferent, to exclude our own films? Over the years, when in France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, Ive been struck by the prominence of domestic films in cinemas.

There will be people at the Baftas on Sunday who have the power to change this state of affairs. Its about time they started. British film-makers and those who fund them should start by asking themselves if their films genuinely appeal to our film-going public. As it is, an awful lot of television viewers on Sunday may be wondering if this isnt just an insular industry thats talking to itself.

HOW THEY PERFORMED

HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Critical reaction: "At once loud and boring, like watching paint dry while being hit over the head with a frying pan." Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian

Number of UK screens on opening: 516

UK box office gross: £26 million.

BRITISH FILM

Bright Star

Critical reaction: "It feels special without being at all precious" Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph.

Number of UK screens on opening: 118

UK box office gross: £1.05 million.

Pictured: amazing ant that carries 100 times its body weight

By Andrew Hough Published: 8:00AM GMT 20 Feb 2010

An Asian Weaver ant, upside down on a smooth surface, and carrying a weight in its jaws.

The amazing picture was snapped by scientists at Cambridge University by a team in the department of zoology investigating the extraordinary sticky feet of ants and other insects.

The image, taken by Dr Thomas Endlein, shows an Asian weaver ant, upside down on a smooth surface, carrying a 500mg weight in its jaws.

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Other pictures in the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) science photo competition included a crow using a stick to fish food, a killer whale and a salmon caught in a net.

"It won first prize because it was a beautiful image and managed to convey complex science," said the BBSRC.

Weaver ants use their feet and their legs to achieve their sticky feats.

Dr Endelin: said: "Ants can change the size and shape of the pads on their feet depending on the load they are carrying. If they have to carry heavy loads they increase the contact area, and when they need to run they decrease it."

The ants" legs also play a part in the insects" stickiness by making clever use of what scientists call "peeling forces".

"If you think about peeling off sticky tape from a surface, it"s easiest when you peel at a steep, rather than a shallow, angle.

"Ants use the same mechanism: when they want to stick, they keep their legs at a shallow angle relative to the surface, and when they want to release their legs they increase this angle and peel off easily," he added.