Sir Tom Hunter confirms he paid for Alex Salmond’s body to be flown home
Sir Tom Hunter, one of Scotland’s wealthiest men, has confirmed he has paid for Alex Salmond’s body to be flown home from the Balkans.Hunter, a multimillionaire investor and philanthropist, was ambivalent about Scottish independence and was often critical of Scottish government policy but said Salmond had “devoted his life to Scotland”.Speculation was rife about who had privately funded the charter flight due to bring Salmond’s body home from North Macedonia on Friday, after he died suddenly at a lunch on Saturday.Officials in the former first minister’s party, Alba, believed the donor wanted to remain anonymous until Salmond’s funeral, which is expected to take place in private in his home village of Strichen, Aberdeenshire.Hunter, who donated £100,000 to the Labour party in 2001, said he wanted to end the speculation after significant media inquiries.
“While he and I disagreed on some of his ambitions, Alex Salmond devoted his life to Scotland and the Scottish people and as such he, and importantly his family, deserved the dignity and privacy of a private return to the home of his birth,” he said in a short statement,“Our deepest sympathy and thoughts are with his family at this time,To be clear, I remain resolutely apolitical,”Hunter, best known latterly for setting up the Hunter Foundation, which supports social enterprises, entrepreneurship and fundraising appeals such as Band Aid and STV’s annual children’s appeal, made his money from founding the retailer Sports Division and then property investment,In 2001, he set up the investment firm West Coast Capital and took stakes in the theme parks company Merlin, the retirement homes developer McCarthy & Stone, Travelodge, and Dobbies garden centres.
Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionThat allowed him to claim the crown as Scotland’s first homegrown billionaire in 2007, according to the Sunday Times rich list; the financial crisis in 2008 and onwards sliced a reputed £250m off that wealth.He is now estimated to be worth £729m.
Jerry Seinfeld says he was ‘wrong’ to blame ‘extreme left’ for killing comedy
Jerry Seinfeld has backtracked on comments he made earlier this year blaming the “extreme left and PC crap” for negatively affecting comedy, saying he now believes “it is not true”.The 70-year-old comedian told the New Yorker in April that he believed television comedy was suffering because “people [are] worrying so much about offending other people”.“Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it,” he said
Kimmel on Trump’s latest attacks: ‘When they go low, they go really low’
Late-night hosts looked back at Donald Trump’s most recent, unhinged rallies and at the damage that some of his more harmful comments have had.On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host said that it “feels like the longest election campaign of all time” with just a few weeks left. He joked that we are now in the “somebody please put Trump in a home stretch”.Kimmel said that at this stage “it’s hard to believe that anybody is going along with” the former president given his recent behaviour.Trump recently visited Aurora, Colorado, a city he has demonised by claiming that Venezuelan immigrants have turned it into a war zone
Calls for ACCC investigation into live music industry amid warnings artists may be getting ‘ripped off’
Calls are mounting for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to investigate business practices in the live music industry, as the ABC prepares to air a Four Corners report scrutinising the Australian arm of the live entertainment behemoth Live Nation.The public broadcaster began promoting the Monday night program late last week, alleging monopolistic behaviour and “maximising profits at the expense of both consumers and artists”.The 30-second screen promo includes Midnight Oil frontman and former Labor arts minister Peter Garrett accusing Live Nation of “misusing its market power” and “calling the shots” at the expense of artists and consumers.Before the program aired, Live Nation issued a statement, saying that based on the promotional material it had seen the company was expecting an “inaccurate and unbalanced” story.“The program was obviously fully formed without any input from Live Nation,” the statement said
‘It’s quite a thing to do a show here and openly use the word looting’: artist Hew Locke on decolonising the British Museum
After his triumphant Tate installation, The Procession, the artist is preparing a radical exhibition tackling Britain’s imperial past. He talks about why we must return plundered artefacts and rethink attitudes to heritageWithin the oak-panelled walls and glass display cases of the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum – a long, impossibly high-ceilinged room that is a temple to the gods of reason and imperialism – there is a little unmarked secret door, leading backstage or who knows where. You would never spot it unless you were looking. But for the rest of the autumn – for the first time in its 200-year history – that door will be symbolically flung open and three raucous figures will be emerging from it, invading the hushed space of marble busts and dinosaur fossils and leather-bound books. Leading the charge will be a young child of indeterminate heritage, in rags and patches, calling the others on
Sculpture by the Sea 2024: giant melanoma on Sydney beach to deliver ‘message that will be hard to ignore’
Sculpture has a knack of provoking debate. The medium’s ability to divide viewers on the aesthetics of a work – and often its cost to the public purse – can make sculpture a polarising subject. But it’s rare for a work to claim it may save lives.Working in the field of advertising, Sydney creative Andrew Hankin is not above hyperbole. But his team’s entry into this year’s Sculpture by the Sea could very well save a life or lives, as visitors to Tamarama gaze down in horror/awe/morbid fascination at a gargantuan sculpture resembling a melanoma
Melissa Leong: ‘The weirdest thing I’ve done for love? Live on an abattoir’
The food personality and Dessert Masters judge raves about meat, Michelle Yeoh and macho moviesYou’re a judge on this year’s Dessert Masters. What are you secretly the master of?I am the master of dodging a question. I feel like the last couple of years have been a good time to flex my media training. You don’t always want to, as human beings, share everything of who you are. I feel like I can say what I want to say, but keep a little bit for myself
ECB cuts interest rates to support flagging eurozone economy
Hike in capital gains tax will spark tech exodus from UK, investor says
ECB’s Lagarde: ‘We’re breaking the neck of inflation’ after cutting interest rates – as it happened
This woodworker perfected her craft during a summer of racial justice protest
Paul Johnson to leave influential IFS economics thinktank
US group Advent International ‘preparing bid for Tate & Lyle’