Birmingham - Top City

Birmingham has been named one of the top 10 cities in the world by Rough Guide.

The UK city, which is as famous for spawning the likes of Ocean Colour Scene, Duran Duran, UB40 and Black Sabbath as it is for its 'balti triangle', has beaten Paris, Rome and Milan to make it on to the travel handbook company's list of best cities.

Its 'creative hotspots' get a particular namecheck - from the old industrial district of Digbeth, where vintage shops and street food stalls have begun to appear alongside Victorian buildings, to the Bird’s Custard Factory, with its vintage kilo sales and live music performances.

But it's also famed for having the largest public library in Europe, for being the youngest city in Europe and for having more canals than Venice - which didn't make it onto the list.

The travel handbook company says that this year is "the ideal time to make a trip", with a nod to Birmingham New Street station reopening in 2015 after a much-needed renovation.

The city is also described as having cultural variety, excellent shopping and a buzzing live music scene and joins Johannesburg, New Orleans and Wellington as one of the "best places to travel in 2015".

The guide warns: "There's no pretending that Birmingham is packed with interesting sights - it isn't - but, along with its first-rate restaurant scene and nightlife, it's well worth at least a couple of days."

But it maintains that Birmingham has "long outgrown the squalor and misery of its boom years", and is now one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Britain.

What's more, it is the only UK location on the list.

Take that, London.

World's top ten cities:

• Birmingham, UK
• Wellington, New Zealand
• Malaga, Spain
• New Orleans, USA
• Johannesburg, South Africa
• Hamburg, Germany
• Nizwa, Oman
• Belgrade, Serbia
• Salta, Argentina
• Yangon, Myanmar

St Ives Wins....

St Ives, the idyllic seaside town in Cornwall, has been voted the ‘most ideal’ place to live, according to research conducted by Rightmove.

The town, population of around 11,000, and was this year named the most expensive seaside resort in Britain, has now topped the list of 10 most ideal places to live in the UK.

St Ives was closely followed by seaside towns Poole and Brighton, the historic cities Edinburgh and York, and then Liverpool, Harrogate, Bristol, Cardiff and Dartmouth.

The report found that if money were no object, the majority of people would choose to live in a three bedroom house with two living rooms and two bathrooms, with the majority of people opting for a practical utility room over more luxury add-ons to features, such as a conservatory or a walk in wardrobe.

Only around one per cent of the 2,606 respondents would choose to live in a castle.

While living close to good transport links has long been classed as a staple of an ideal area to live, a new ‘ideal’ has topped the list of desirable qualities for a home: being within walking distance of a pub. This was outlined by respondents as more important than a home being close to a park, a supermarket or a restaurant.

Computer Failure News Air Traffic Control

Earlier this week, the BBC reported as follows:

Airports around the UK are returning to normal, although almost 40 flights have been cancelled at Heathrow, the day after a computer failure at the national air traffic control centre.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) said a technical fault in the flight data system at its Swanwick centre, in Hampshire, had caused the problem.

This resulted in widespread disruption at airports around the UK on Friday.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said the situation was "unacceptable".

The Swanwick centre was restored to "full operational capacity" by Friday afternoon, Nats said.

Heathrow Airport has warned of knock-on effects on Saturday and urged passengers to check their flight status.

It said 38 flights due to arrive or take off before 09:30 GMT had been cancelled.

A Heathrow spokesman said the flights could not be rescheduled because the airport ran at 98% capacity. He said passengers would be rebooked on other services.

British Airways said there may be "some disruption" to its flights on Saturday and also advised passengers to check the status of their flight before leaving for the airport.

Gatwick Airport says it will be operating a full service on Saturday.

Many other airports are also due to run their scheduled Saturday flights on time, according to their websites.

Cause undefined

The glitch caused many delays at Heathrow and Gatwick on Friday, where departing flights were grounded for a time.

Dozens of arrivals and departures at airports across southern England, and as far north as Aberdeen and Edinburgh, were also delayed and cancelled.

Many passengers have had to stay in hotels overnight because of rescheduled flights.

The problems came a year after a telephone failure at the Hampshire control room caused huge disruption - one of a number of technical hitches to hit the part-privatised Nats since the centre opened in 2002.

Swanwick air traffic control centre

Swanwick controls the 200,000 square miles of airspace above England and Wales, cost £623m to build, and employs about 1,300 controllers.

But the facility, which handles 5,000 flights every 24 hours, has had a troubled history.

It opened in 2002, six years after its planned commissioning date - a delay which Nats said was due to problems with the software used to power its systems.

Almost a year after it opened, a senior air traffic controller raised concerns with the BBC about health and safety standards and complications with radio communications - which he said cut out erratically.

Technical problems and computer faults hit flights in 2008 and again last summer. And, in December 2013, problems with the internal telephone system then caused further delays.

Nats said on Friday evening that a "thorough investigation" was being carried out to "identify the root cause" of the disruption.

Managing director Martin Rolfe has ruled out both a computer hack and a power outage as possible causes, but says the precise cause of the problem has yet to be established.

He said the error occurred in the flight data part of the system, where flight plans are stored.

BBC correspondent Andy Moore, at Heathrow, said the issue only lasted for between 30 minutes and one hour but caused chaos because the UK's air traffic control system runs at 99% capacity, giving little scope for managing disruption.

Mr McLoughlin said any disruption to the nation's aviation system was a matter of the utmost concern "especially at this time of year in the run-up to the holiday season".

"Disruption on this scale is simply unacceptable and I have asked Nats for a full explanation... I also want to know what steps will be taken to prevent this happening again."

The RAF - which has its own air traffic control systems - said the UK military had been unaffected.

The Independent's travel editor, Simon Calder, said it would be an expensive incident for the airlines, estimating they would pay £2m to £5m in compensation.

"It all depends how much they have to hand back to passengers. If a flight is delayed, even if it's nothing to do with the airline that's caused it, the airline is responsible for looking after the passengers."

Windowless

Fancy this.....?

A UK aerospace firm has released images of its windowless plane concept in which display screens show the environment outside the plane as well as films and video conferencing. 

Windowless planes could revolutionise air travel as airlines seek to reduce their spending on fuel and new supersonic aircraft are developed. 

A French design agency released renderings in August showing its proposed design for a private jet completely devoid of windows in its fuselage.

Instead, the cabin would be lined with thin screens that could display surrounding vistas or screen films and work presentations.

Technicon Design says that removing windows from aircrafts will reduce their weight, thus reducing fuel and maintenance costs and giving designers greater opportunities to enhance and beautify their interiors. 

Gareth Davies, chief designer at Technicon Design, the company behind the concept, said: 

"Certain elements are already possible...such as the flexible displays. 

"The idea is to push the boundaries."

He added that future technology would hopefully allow people to display whatever images they wanted, the content only being "limited by your imagination."

For now, though, the technology remains only in the reach of the super-rich, but with the world's first commercial windowless plane already in the pipeline, it may be only a matter of time before the concept is adapted. 

US engineering firm Spike Aerospace is planning to launch a windowless cabin on board its luxury Spike S-512 Supersonic Jet in 2018, which the company says will also feature display screen technology.

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