In only the second minute, he took a knock creating a chance for Oyvind Leonhardsen and had to retreat to the dressing-room. Barely five minutes after returning, he was perfectly positioned to beat Maik Taylor as Teddy Sheringham set him up with a typically deft flick. Fulham’s opportunities were less clear-cut, and fewer than Tigana would have liked, stemming in the main from Ledley King’s unexpected susceptibility to passes played in behind him. Barry Hayles, clean through, and Luis Boa Morte failed to take advantage, but, right at the end of the first half, Bunjevcevic and Chris Perry lost Hayles, who stole in between them to slide home a header from Steve Finnan’s cross.Emboldened by the goal, Fulham moved forward with greater conviction after the interval and after an hour even deigned to send on another of the “A” team in Steed Malbranque. The passing improved, reaching a level closer to Tigana’s high standards, though the finishing remained below them, Boa Morte shooting wastefully high after being played in by Malbranque.Although Tottenham had lost much of their zing, Sheringham led one dangerous counter-attack, forcing Taylor into a fine save with his jab from close in as Rebrov crossed low from the right.

Then, four minutes from the end, Darren Anderton’s free-kick was neatly headed back by King for Davies to hit a low drive past Taylor for the winning goal. Fulham (4-4-2): Taylor; Finnan, Ouaddou, Goma, Harley; Goldbaek (Malbranque, 61), Davis, Clark, Collins; Hayles, Boa Morte (Saha, 78). Substitutes not used: Van der Sar (gk), Brevett, Melville.Tottenham Hotspur (3-5-2): Sullivan; Perry, Bunjevcevic, King; Davies, Anderton, Freund, Leonhardsen (Thatcher, 85), Ziege; Sheringham, Rebrov. Substitutes not used: Kelly (gk), Iversen, Thelwell, Piercy.Referee: M Halsey (Welwyn Garden City).. Robbie Fowler spent yesterday undergoing a series of stringent medical tests, with Leeds United preparing to announce the completion of the striker’s £11m transfer from Liverpool formally this morning. Robbie Fowler will complete his £11m move to Leeds United today after passing a medical at Elland Road last night.

The England striker’s £11m transfer from Liverpool will be formally announced at a noon press conference in West Yorkshire today The medical took more time than anticipated. “Things have taken a little longer than envisaged,” the club spokesman, David Walker, admitted He declined to elaborate. Fowler quickly agreed personal terms with Leeds on Wednesday and is expected to sign a four-and-a-half year contract today, ending his 15-year association with Liverpool, his home-town club.Fowler could well be in the Leeds line-up that takes the field at Fulham on Sunday. The Elland Road club were yesterday assessing the casualties of their tempestuous 2-0 defeat to Chelsea in the Worthington Cup on Wednesday. Eirik Bakke, Stephen McPhail, Dominic Matteo and Alan Smith all picked up injuries.Crystal Palace will admit to one of the worst-kept secrets in the game by officially appointing Trevor Francis as their new manager today.The Palace chairman, Simon Jordan, has called a morning press conference to unveil Francis along with the coaches Steve Kember and Terry Bullivant as his backroom team. Francis will replace Steve Bruce, who has been put on “gardening leave” after attempting to resign in order to join Birmingham City.Francis’s arrival will not mean a swift end to the Bruce saga and his move to Birmingham may be delayed again. Palace do not want Bruce to be in charge at St Andrew’s when the clubs meet in a rescheduled First Division match on 11 December ­ and that will be a proviso in any agreement over compensation..

“We are not out of the woods yet in a financial sense and we are still working under a sensible budget as far as wages and recruitment are concerned,” their chairman, Mark Harris, said. “The FA Cup monies, which we obviously have not budgeted for, will be used to continue the reduction of the liabilities of the club.”Altrincham can boast a proud history of FA Cup triumphs in the 1970s and 80s, when they were one of the best non-League clubs in the country. In 1986 they won 2-1 at Birmingham City, then in the old First Division Draws were achieved at both Everton and Tottenham Hotspur. Crewe Alexandra, Scunthorpe United, Sheffield United, York City, Rochdale, Blackpool, Hartlepool United, Lincoln City and Halifax Town were all beaten in FA Cup ties at Moss Lane in those two decades.Tomorrow, though, Altrincham must turn their attention to a competition in which they have twice been victorious in Wembley finals.

They are away to another UniBond Premier side, Accrington Stanley, in the second round of the FA Umbro Trophy. The prize-money for victory will be only £900 but, given Alty’s recent history, every pound helps.Elsewhere in the Trophy, Whitby Town, who went down to a brave 3-2 defeat in their FA Cup replay at Plymouth Argyle on Tuesday, entertain Blyth Spartans at the Turnbull Ground. Whitby’s former England schoolboy striker Jamie Burt, a native of Blyth, has been linked with both Carlisle United and Plymouth following good displays against the Pilgrims in the two Cup games.. Paolo Di Canio, the footballer who turned arguing with referees into a contact sport, has won an international award for fair play. Di Canio was in a good position to score against Everton when he caught the ball to stop the game and allow the Everton goalkeeper, Paul Gerrard, to receive treatment for what appeared to be a serious knee injury.Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, congratulated Di Canio at the time “on behalf of Fifa and all fair-minded football fans for this splendid gesture made in the true spirit of fair play”.. Mark Wright is quitting as the Oxford United manager – before a hearing into his “race row” suspension. Wright had been suspended following a Football Association fine and ban for comments made to the referee Joe Ross.

They will never vote for tax rises.Take a look at the section that deals with environmental issues in this week’s publication of the annual survey of British Social Attitudes. We were all told, a decade ago, that protecting the environment was the flavour of the month. But after high-profile issues such as genetically modified food, BSE in cattle and the transport crisis created by problems on the railways, people are less willing than ever to pay higher prices. According to the survey the number of people prepared to pay higher prices has fallen from 46 per cent in 1993 to 43 per cent today.

Those willing to pay “much higher taxes” has fallen from 37 per cent to 31 per cent.It is true that the public may be willing to reject tax cuts (as they did when they rejected the Tories’ offer of £8bn) But tax rises are quite another matter. Mr Howard was simply shaking the previous Hague-Portillo regime’s mud from his boots. Everyone could see the lack of logic in a policy of cutting tax while claiming to support increases in public expenditure. And Mr Howard may well be right that tax cuts are, today, off the public’s agenda. But by the time of the next election he should reserve his position and be prepared to address the fact that the public simply will not wear tax rises.At the recent general election even Mr Blair and Mr Brown went out of their way, in the Labour manifesto, to re-state that there were no plans to increase the basic or top rate of tax. Any hint that they might have been contemplating increasing National Insurance contributions was met with resistance and denial – even though it may have been in their mind. But all these promises look dangerously compromised by this week’s announcement.

Estimates of the cost of Mr Brown’s proposals range from the equivalent of 5p to 13p on the standard rate. And the options of sneaky stealth taxes bring their own political whirlwinds – as we saw during the protests against fuel tax.Of course, it is quite possible that Mr Brown may be exaggerating the implications of his pre-Budget report. Chancellors are sometimes adept at creating the impression that the pain of their decisions will be worse than the actual outcome. It is entirely possible that he does not actually intend to give as much to the health service as he seems to be implying. But on this occasion I doubt it and I do not think he is playing games.

A government that will not submit to open scrutiny is not a government that deserves to be trusted.. What is Iain Duncan Smith for? The leader of the Opposition is in the United States, disloyally disagreeing with government policy in prosecuting the war against terrorism – precisely the kind of crime of which the Conservatives used to accuse Labour when the ministerial boot was on the other foot. As Oliver Letwin, Mr Duncan Smith’s home affairs spokesman, admits, the Conservatives are “nowhere near” persuading the voters to trust them. Mr Duncan Smith’s unique selling point before he became leader, two days after 11 September, was his closeness to the US.

Tony Blair has trumped that, and trying to be more hawkish on Iraq is not going to win the trick back.The Tory leader may be right to draw attention to the threat from Saddam Hussein, but to open a second front against an Arab country would destroy the coalition against al-Qa’ida. In any case, the sensible policy would be to lift sanctions against Iraq in exchange for the return of UN inspectors charged with preventing Saddam acquiring weapons of mass destruction.His pointless trip to Washington is only the most recent missed opportunity to have left the Conservative Party looking just as trapped by the poisonous legacy of its past as ever it was under William Hague.And Mr Duncan Smith does not even have Mr Hague’s natural command of the Chamber of the House of Commons. That skill was clearly not enough, but its absence could damage his successor. Already the mockery of Mr Duncan Smith’s voice and his nervous cough has begun, and, once ridicule gains a hold, it can be difficult to shake off.To be fair to Mr Duncan Smith – and to his surprise choice as shadow Chancellor, Michael Howard – the Conservatives have made the right and necessary strategic decision to abandon the sterile focus on the euro.

There had been similar incidents but no action had been taken.Paul Emberley, a spokesman for Yarm Road, apologised to the families.The Health and Safety Executive said it had written to Britain’s top 150 companies, asking them to publish their health and safety records in their annual reports.. The man accused of causing the Selby rail disaster could see the faces of the passengers on board the GNER train as it ploughed into his stranded Land Rover, Leeds Crown Court was told yesterday. It was hit by a southbound GNER express train travelling at 117mph, which then collided with a train carrying 1,600 tonnes of coal. Six commuters and four railway staff died.Yesterday, Mr Stagg described the account given by Mr Hart, 37.

“I had one hand on the bottom of the wheel and was driving on auto-pilot,” he was quoted as having said at his wife’s home in Lincolnshire on 3 March. “I heard a bang from somewhere at the back of the Land Rover I put both hands on the wheel. Instantly the Land Rover went across to the side of the road. As soon as I hit the verge, I bumped along and then I listed 45 degrees.”I thought I was going to go to the bottom of the embankment I levelled off then I thought I was in a field Then it went black and quiet I went straight down.

The making of Performance thus represents the high watermark of satanic influence in English pop culture. Jagger’s consort Marianne Faithfull also co-starred in a re-working of Lucifer Rising (Cammell was cast as Osiris), which was being filmed at the same time as Performance. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin – another Crowley devotee, whom Anger met at an auction of Crowley’s books, when Page outbid him – was commissioned to write the soundtrack, but he proved so tardy that Anger returned to Bobby Beausoleil, who produced (from prison) the version now in circulation.All this material is the stuff of hoary rock legend, and its perennial appeal is primarily to do with the addition of transgressive magic (or magick), and perhaps what Susan Sontag called “fascinating fascism”, to the reliable recipe of sex, drugs and rock’n'roll. But to go back to Scorpio Rising, which has more than its fair share of swastikas, what Anger did with the pulp fiction of popular songs remains a quite remarkable tribute to the potency of cheap music (there’s even a theory that No?Coward was a Crowley devotee, but let’s not go into that here).More than half of Anger’s budget for Scorpio Rising went on purchasing the rights to the songs, performed by Ricky Nelson, Little Peggy March, The Angels, Bobby Vinton, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, The Crystals, The Ron-Dells, Kris Jensen, Claudine Clark, Gene McDaniels and The Surfaris. The liberties he took with them are still shocking today, including inter-cutting the often bland teeny-bopper fluff with blasphemous or sexually charged images. What Anger did with Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” would make even David Lynch blush.Ironically, Anger – who’s now 71 years old – doesn’t really like pop music, especially the noisy variety.

His early films all used classical sources, including works by Scriabin, Respighi and Vivaldi, and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome of 1954 was originally meant to have a soundtrack by the eccentric avant-garde composer Harry Partch, who then withdrew the permission to use it. “It’s true that Anger doesn’t like noisy pop music”, says Jon Ausbrooks, who is helping to organise the tribute events. “He has quite a classical sensibility, not only in terms of classical music, but also because he feels that much contemporary music is derivative. But when he’s exposed to something he likes, he’ll say ‘Mmmm’”.Ausbrooks is hoping to attract funding for a British tour next year, and has a wish-list of artists he would like to have involved.

“There’s Radiohead, as I believe Thom Yorke has an interest in Gnosticism, and Bj?, he says. “Kenneth has given his blessing to musicians working with his films, and we hope to have him attend future events. In times past he’s been loathe to be recognised as the godfather of music video, partly because he’s never been given the credit he deserves within American cinema, apart from by Martin Scorsese and David Lynch MTV has also been unwilling to acknowledge his influence. But he’s got to a point in his life where he wants every opportunity to do new work, and one of the ways would be an acknowledgement of his influence on pop culture. There are also proposals for directing music videos, provided that he likes the music”.”We met Anger in New York a few weeks ago and went out to dinner together,” says Lupine Howl’s Sean Cook. “We had a good meeting, but to be honest I sensed he wasn’t exactly au fait with modern music. He’s guided by his manager, who is keen to make his work more accessible to a younger generation.

Her championship of the local market has created a lifeline for a number of local producers.Women are involved in other new revenue streams, including a fierce new push for farm tourism, through the Northern Uplands Farm Tourism Initiative. At Longtown, in north Cumbria, a small co-operative of farmers’ wives supported by the Initiative are marketing special-interest holidays – mid-life motorbiking and rug-making – to help spread the new revenues out.Two of them, Margaret Sisson and Georgina Elwen, lost their families’ entire herds to foot-and-mouth disease but are prepared to use the disease to any slim advantage they can find. A marketing push for the co-operatives’ product is planned for next February, coinciding with the anniversary of the first outbreak.Gerald Powley’s tourism initiative is even more curious. Having decided to pack up farming after losing his entire herd to foot-and-mouth disease, he has joined up with a local genealogist, Christine Craghill, to attract back for visits the descendants of the hundreds of Cumbrian iron ore mining workers who left for South Africa, Canada and Australia in the early 20th century.

They are eyeing next year’s Commonwealth Games, to be held in Manchester, as a means of cranking up the business.”We’ll accommodate those who’ve already done their research on Cumbria and those in the early stages,” said Ms Craghill. “We want to communicate the social and economic structures of this area.”Other new business propositions include plans for a micro-brewery, to be created out of a farm building in Kendal, which the Lake District National Park Authority is considering.Soon the county will know the true psychological toll exacted by the disease: its director of public health, Dr Peter Tiplady, was recently awarded a £250,000 grant to examine the mental consequences which he says are “the single most damaging effect of this crisis”.But for now, Mr Dunning is just waiting for the postman to march up his drive again – his letters still have to be left in a plastic box beside the disinfectant bucket. The “no entry” signs for vehicles are testament to the residual nervousness around the Penrith Spur, where one of the most virulent of the disease’s second-phase outbreaks flared up in June.The next task is to repair the damage done to the community not just by the outbreaks but also by the government compensation payments to farmers which have caused as much division as relief.”There is a spirit,” said Mr Dunning. “We should have had our carol service earlier this week but the church is in an infected area so we just had the mince pies in the pub instead. There were twice as many people as ever, so you might call it a start.”.

The Government was accused yesterday of imposing a double squeeze on middle income earners after it was revealed that the Treasury plans to cut child tax allowances for up to 1.4 million families. Mr Brown has long been tempted to tax child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers but dropped the plan because it was seen as too controversial. “We have found another way of doing it,” one ally said yesterday.Child benefit will be maintained for all families, including the very rich. Mr Brown now faces criticism from some Labour MPs, who argue that it would be fairer to tax the benefit for higher-rate taxpayers than squeeze people on middle incomes.At present, child tax credit (CTC), worth up to £520 a year, is based on individual incomes. This means that couples with a child under 16 living with them can qualify if neither partner is a higher rate taxpayer but their combined taxable income is above the higher rate tax threshold (£33,935).

“New Zealand are the only side in the world that we could never expect to beat. But despite our fear, we will try to play the game at our own pace and rhythm and attempt to pressurise their less experienced players.”One New Zealander who will find himself under a whole heap of pressure fairly soon is the former Test coach, Wayne Smith. He flies to the East Midlands tomorrow to take charge of Northampton, who have been in free-fall for most of the season. “Wayne has a strong commitment to New Zealand rugby and this overseas stint will give him a new perspective on coaching, which can only be good for us,” David Rutherford, the chief executive of the NZRFU, said.. The Australian Davis Cup-winning team of 1999 included a fiery 18-year-old called Lleyton Hewitt who wore a baseball cap backwards and pumped his fist between points. Hewitt was just a sideshow in the triumph against France, losing to Cedric Pioline and Sebastien Grosjean in his two singles matches in the final in Nice.Today the two nations meet again in the final, but with a very different Hewitt meeting Nicolas Escude on the opening day in Melbourne.

Then he was a talented rookie whose temper threatened to get in the way of his tennis. Now he is the US Open champion and World No 1, the youngest player to end the year at the summit.
It has been a sensational few months for the 20-year-old from Adelaide, who lifted his first Grand Slam trophy at Flushing Meadows in September, going on to win the Masters Cup tournament in Sydney a fortnight ago, defeating his compatriot Patrick Rafter.A passionate member of the Davis Cup team, Hewitt’s most ardent desire is to round off the year by helping Australia to win on the newly-laid grass surface at the Rod Laver Arena – particularly since victory would satisfy a lifelong ambition for Rafter, who plans to take an indefinite break from tennis afterwards.Hewitt still wears his shorts baggy and his cap back-to-front, but has matured beyond recognition since Nice. The career plan, as hatched with his long-time coach, Darren Cahill, was for him to be in a position to win Grand Slams by the age of 23 or 24. It has all happened much faster than anticipated.”He’s amazing,” says Todd Woodbridge, who was in the 1999 team and will partner Wayne Arthurs in tomorrow’s doubles match against Pioline and Fabrice Santoro. “It comes down to his self-belief and confidence when he’s out on the court.

The experience he has gained in those two years is going to be very, very crucial come the weekend.” So will the mental toughness that, together with his speed and phenomenal return of serve, makes Hewitt such a formidable player. That iron nerve has been especially evident at Davis Cup ties over the past 12 months.At last year’s final in Barcelona, he defied a hostile Spanish crowd to win a gruelling five-setter against Albert Costa. In this year’s quarter-finals, he beat Brazil virtually single-handed, winning two singles and one doubles match and defeating the world’s best clay-courter, Gustavo Kuerten, in his home town of Florianopolis.But it may be the 2001 US Open that will come to be regarded as the turning-point for Hewitt. It was there that he finally achieved his youthful promise, dispatching Pete Sampras in straight sets, and it was there that he became embroiled in the most damaging row of a career that has rarely been free of controversy. The ferocity of public reaction to his outburst against a black linesman whom he claimed was favouring his African-American opponent, James Blake, appears to have had a sobering effect. Since then, he has steered clear of the on-court histrionics that alienated many admirers of his tennis, and his game is none the worse for it.John Newcombe, the former Davis Cup captain, believes that Hewitt has come of age as a person and a player. After he won the Masters Cup, his sixth title this year, Newcombe said he was becoming as tough to beat as Bjorn Borg and Mats Wilander at their peak.”His graph has been consistently upwards,” he said.

It is just there, massively.But, in many ways, it is just awful. It is amazingly humourless, and Tolkien knows it – over and over again, he writes ” ‘Come, master Pippin!’ Gandalf laughed” – a very bad sign, all those laughing wizards. You don’t have to be politically correct to be mildly alarmed by some aspects of it. Apart from Eowyn, the women in it are not madly significant, or allowed to do anything much. There is Galadriel, who stays at home being Wise; there are Goldberry or Rose, who stay at home being Patient Helpmeets; there are Lobelia Sackville Baggins and Shelob, who stay at home being completely ghastly.It is an appallingly na? fantasy of good and evil races; mostly, the good people are tall and blond and speak Nordic or Celtic languages, and the bad ones are dark and hairy and talk a sort of Persian – those guttural dwarves are allowed a sort of virtue, but it is rather grudging in tone.

Sam Gamgee is a loyal retainer of the most frightful variety, still “Mr Frodo-ing” away and knowing his place 1,000 pages in; basically, he is Dickens’s Sam Weller, and Tolkien couldn’t even be bothered to change his name.Tolkien probably knew as much about language as anyone, but it would be fair to say that his interest stopped at grammatical inflection. The Lord of the Rings, by ordinary standards, is just badly written. Great swathes of it are in a sort of Ben-Hur biblical: “And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed And he sang to them… until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords…”There are endless mock subtleties of the “It seemed to Sam that he saw…” variety.

Those using child pornography should, instead of being assured by the legal system that their participation is passive, be left in no doubt that they are very much implicated in every step of the development of the images.While Judge MacRae, in the Wonderland case, considered that the men who received the lightest sentences were doing no more than looking, they were all members of an organisation whose membership owned no less than 10,000 images. Further, international investigation has yielded the identities of only 16 of more than 1,000 children pictured within the seized material. But one of these was a Portuguese boy who disappeared on the way home from school and is now presumed dead.Looking at pictures of this child did not kill him. But part of the sickness and immorality of looking at pornographic pictures of children is the abdication, or outright denial, of responsibility for the suffering behind them.

This is a kind of passivity that should receive censure rather than sympathy.By the same token, it should also be remembered that a paedophile is capable of seeing the most innocent pictures of children as pornographic. Hysteria is not helpful to the clear-sighted negotiation of how to deal with such a “thought crime”. The police raid on the Saatchi Gallery, for example, when it was showing photography by Tierney Gearon of her six- and four-year-old children, was wrong.We cannot criminalise the production of naked pictures of children, nor the consumption of them. In both production and consumption, at some level, pornography is defined by intent That makes for an uneasy, blurry definition. This is why, when people are found to be deliberately accessing internet pictures defined by their producers as child pornography, the intent is a given. In a difficult area, these people are caught red-handed, full of intent.How far that intent may lead them is another question.