He criticised the handling of the trial at Manchester Crown Court, during which the judge had to deal with a race problem among the jury.His case will be that the fact of the racism, and the way it was tackled by judge and lawyers, led to an unfair trial in breach of guarantees of impartiality enshrined in the Human Rights Convention, to which Britain is a signatory.. ANDREW MARSHALL

French ski instructors may lack a little of their usual sang-froid this year as they whiz down the slopes in their oh-so-tight red ski suits.
The European Commission has decided that France may be breaking European law by keeping out instructors from other countries, and is threatening to get tough with Paris.In particular, France has been charged with keeping out instructors from Britain – a country that has a claim to have invented downhill skiing.”Ski instructors who have qualified in other member states have encountered a persistent refusal by the French authorities to recognise their diplomas,” the European Commission said in a statement yesterday.”The commission considers that French regulations concerning sport are too restrictive regarding the access of professionals with qualifications gained in other member states.”It has opened the second stage of infringement proceedings against Paris, and could go to the European Court if life does not become easier for instructors from abroad.. He said that he had suspected that the practice was widespread because of the number of letters he had received.John Monks, general secretary of the TUC, said that the Burger King case exposed the myth that low pay was a problem only in small and struggling firms. “It shows that workers in large as well as small firms need the protection of a minimum wage,” he said.Owned by the Grand Metropolitan group, Burger King has told its managers that the practice of telling staff to clock off during quiet periods is not acceptable.John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB general union, said: “We are delighted that the company have opened their wallets to recompense for their bad practice.”We will be watching like hawks to wipe out this practice from British workplaces.”Mr McCartney, welcoming the payout, said: “Scrooge has backed down just in time for Christmas.”. While it minimises labour costs for the employer, possibly at the expense of the employee, there is no law to prevent any employer using these arrangements.Mr McCartney said the payout was a complete vindication of the party’s campaign against such conditions of employment. Mr McCartney has led the campaign against zero-hours contracts and says that a future Labour government would make them unlawful.The letter to Mr McCartney, from Craig Bushey, managing director (Western Europe) of Burger King, said: “The back pay was calculated on the difference between the hours that employees were scheduled to work and those for which they received payment, irrespective of whether they volunteered to go home.”Because it was not possible to identify those occasions where people stopped work on a voluntary basis, we decided to compensate all staff who worked less hours than they had been scheduled,” he wrote.Mr Bushey pointed out that the number of employees who had received compensation was therefore larger than those who had been affected by the “misuse of rostering”.He expressed the hope that “the action taken by Burger King puts this issue to rest and demonstrates our commitment to equitable employment practices”.The practice of offering zero- hours contracts is increasingly widespread in the service sector, especially in hotels and restaurants. BARRIE CLEMENT

Labour Editor
The fast-food chain Burger King has paid out pounds 106,000 in compensation to staff employed on controversial “zero-hours” contracts.The 900 employees, who received average back pay of pounds 118 for the six months to September, had been made to stand around, unpaid, in the burger restaurants until business picked up.One Glasgow student said that he had received pounds 1 for a five-hour stint, and another employee in Cardiff claimed she was paid nothing after she had worked a shift.The Labour Party, together with the unions, had campaigned for Burger King to pay compensation after it was revealed that staff were being told to clock off for unpaid breaks.In a letter to Ian McCartney, Labour’s employment spokesman, the company insisted that such scheduling did not constitute company policy and that the practice was not widespread.

However, the Methodist Church, which had been the more enthusiastic suitor, seems to have lost some of the passion it once brought to the cause.In common with the Roman Catholics, both churches have been losing members since the most serious unity discussions were under way: the Church of England, with 176,060 people on its electoral rolls, is now down to 70 per cent of its 1975 membership, and the Methodists, with 420,836 members, are at 73 per cent of the 1975 strength.But in both churches there is considerable enthusiasm for informal co- operation at local level, especially in the countryside. The growth in such informal co-operation is probably the greatest success of the ecumenical movement, which is otherwise in retreat all around the world at the moment.Hopes of reconciliation between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, which Anglican opponents of union with the Methodists would have preferred, have been blasted by the way in which the ordination of women exposed completely irreconcilable attitudes to authority between the churches.. The battle against women priests was led in Synod by the then Bishop of London, Dr Graham Leonard, who, as Bishop of Truro, had led the fight against earlier schemes for union with the Methodists. The Methodists emerged as a separate denomination from the Church of England gradually and almost by accident towards the end of the 18th century, though their founder, John Wesley, remained an Anglican priest.The organised Anglo-Catholic party in Synod has now been weakened by the ordination of Anglican women priests.

But none of the participants hopes for much concrete progress from these talks about talks.Two earlier schemes for reunion foundered in the Church of England’s General Synod, largely as a result of Anglo-Catholic fears that Anglican bishops would be devalued if Methodists were recognised as their equals. He will not know until then that his rival has had to pull out.Mr Mear is physically in good shape but “very disappointed” not to have succeeded. He is was “more convinced than ever” that a solo unsupported crossing is possible.. ANDREW BROWN

Religious Affairs Correspondent
The Methodist Church and the Church of England will today issue a bulletin on the latest in a series of discussions on unification which have proceeded with fluctuating enthusiasm since 1955. I knew that if my tent was destroyed I could not survive for long.

When things go wrong, Antarctica is one of the cruellest, most unforgiving places on earth and it would have been foolhardy to go on.”The way is now clear for the 33-year-old Norwegian Borge Ousland to complete what Ernest Shackleton in 1914 described as “the last great land journey on earth”.The 1,657-mile coast-to-coast crossing has never been done solo or unsupported by mechanical means or air drops.In the winter of 1992-93, Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Mike Stroud broke the key barriers but were airlifted off the Ross Ice Shelf suffering from severe frostbite and weight loss, still 346 miles short of their original objective, Scott Base. An experienced solo traveller, Mr Ousland set off from Patriot Hills a week after Mr Mear and, given fair weather, should reach the South Pole by Christmas.The American base at the Pole is the psychological half-way point of the crossing Mr Ousland is on target to reach it in record time. He was on the edge of the polar plateau where temperatures even in the present Antarctic summer can plunge to -50C.”I was in a vulnerable position in an area where winds can reach up to 100 mph. STEPHEN GOODWIN

The British polar explorer, Roger Mear, yesterday described the “unforgiving” conditions which forced him to send out a distress call and abandon his attempt to become the first person to ski solo across Antarctica.
Speaking from Punta Arenas, on the southern tip of Chile, Mr Mear blamed “unforeseen serious problems” with the tracking of the sledge he had been pulling for six weeks loaded with 450lb of supplies.Realising he could not complete the crossing before his food ran out, the 45-year-old mountain guide from Derbyshire decided to head back to Patriot Hills, his starting point, nearly 400 miles away.But conditions became “extremely perilous”.

Farnell told police who were called to the scene: “We are neighbours and it was all over a dog.”We had a huge argument. I was already uptight and I just flipped and hit him over the head.”He later said he had not intended to cause Mr Pottage any harm, saying he had felt intimidated by the Pottages, who were both about 6ft tall.Mr Sayers said the defence would argue that Farnell had not intended really serious harm and put forward a case for diminished responsibility.The trial continues today.. As Mr Pottage fell, he banged his head on the road.When his aghast wife said “Look what you have done”, Farnell replied “Do you want some?”Mr Pottage died in hospital four days later His right jaw and the back of his skull had been fractured. A man killed his neighbour with a crowbar in a row over a barking dog, a jury was told yesterday.