“Luckily, our clientele have got a little bit of grey matter between their ears and they know it has been blown out of all proportion,” he said. “They buy 90 per cent of their food from supermarkets.”Similar fears surfaced in Kent in 1997 but were discounted by Edinburgh’s CJD Surveillance Centre last year, it should be said, and Dr Philip Monk, consultant in communicable diseases at Leicestershire Health Authority, yesterday said it was unlikely that his county’s cases were “linked geographically” either. Rather, “it was the victims’ genetic susceptibility”, he said.But Professor Roy Anderson, epidemiologist in infectious disease at Imperial College, London, said the cluster threatened to push the number of vCJD cases to a new annual high, despite an encouraging fall to 14 last year after a gradual rise from three to 18 cases between 1995 and 1999.”This epidemic is just starting,” he said. “It could be a small one but this disease has such a long incubation period [after] exposure .. in the 1980s.

There’s an analogy with HIV and Aids [with its] 10-year incubation. This is even more difficult because incubation is even longer – 10, 20, 30 years.”As the Community Health Council called for a public inquiry, Steve Pownall, a 17-year-old villager cycling home at lunchtime with a 12oz steak he had bought from the butcher’s for his supper, was phlegmatic.He had vaguely known Stacey Robinson from schooldays and worked as a “cleaning lad” in the butcher’s There was “no problem at all”, he said “Life has to go on.”. Pick and click for detailsBest specialistRough TradeUltima ThuleMr BongoSmall FishSoul Jazz/Sounds of the UniverseMalcolm and Annette GallowayMinus ZeroSterns African Record CentreThese RecordsThe PanelJohn Kennedy, XFM DJ, presenter of X-Posure, Mon-Thur 11pm-1am, Sun 10pm-1am. Martin James, managing editor of weekly dance magazine 7, and sometime Independent contributor Andrew Clarke, classical editor of The Information Helen McLaughlin, Matador Records. Tim Perry, co-author of Fodor’s Rock’n'Roll Traveller series.

Roger Beaujolais, jazz vibraphone player and record shop habitu?B: Details were checked at the time of going to press, but are liable to change. The United States ambassador, Philip Lader, has accused Hollywood film-makers of damaging Anglo-American relations by falsely portraying British soldiers as evil and vicious in the film The Patriot. The United States ambassador, Philip Lader, has accused Hollywood film-makers of damaging Anglo-American relations by falsely portraying British soldiers as evil and vicious in the film The Patriot.
Mr Lader said the box-office hit about the American Wars of Independence in the mid-1770s, which opened yesterday and stars Mel Gibson, peddled inaccurate myths about the behaviour of British officers and exaggerated other historical events.He said the furious British reaction to the movie would certainly “complicate” his life as ambassador and that its inaccuracies were “contrary to the best interests of both countries”. He added: “The perpetuation of myths and of stories doesn’t serve either of our two nations well.”In the movie, which is directed by Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day and currently third at the US box office, British officers are shown as barbaric, murdering women and children, burning churches packed with civilians, and shooting Gibson’s on-screen son in cold blood.His remarks support complaints about the film’s accuracy from historians. Local MPs and councillors in Liverpool have also asked the film-makers to apologise for portraying General Banastre Tarleton, a local dignitary, as a sadistic child killer.They will also fuel the growing debate over recent Hollywood treatments of historical events. It is the third movie this year to provoke criticism, after war veterans and academics attacked the films U-571 for writing out the British role in the the capture of an Enigma code machine, and plans for a remake of the Colditz story.Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Spike Lee, the radical American film-maker, said British critics were right to be annoyed.

The Patriot also ignored or played down the role of the slave-trade and native Americans in the wars. “You guys should be upset because the British are portrayed like the Gestapo, like SS stormtroopers. I would definitely be upset if I was English,” he said.Mr Lee, director of She’s Got To Have It, Malcolm X and Do The Right Thing, said he “despised” the film.”This is another of a long line which represents what’s wrong about Hollywood This is nothing but Hollywood propaganda, plain and simple It’s once again what Hollywood does best. It rewrites history and it omits history.”Mr Lader, also speaking on Today, said the film’s reviews suggested Mr Lee was “exactly right” to say British officers were portrayed wrongly as Nazis. “We should see this as myth not as history,” he said.”I believe any schoolchild knows that 18th-century soldiers played more by the rules than their modern counterparts This is a great deal of mythology and exaggeration. Mel Gibson and the producers sought essentially to tiptoe through some lines and around history.”I would hope this would cause citizens on both sides of the Atlantic to look more clearly at what the real facts were.”He said he was not “necessarily inclined” to see the movie.