There was a misconception, both at the time and currently, that you could win or lose at no cost to you. This is not so because when a person entered into a no win no fee, or conditional fee arrangement, the solicitor acting for them would take on the case if he considered that there was a good likelihood of success, for an agreed fee, usually an aftermarket insurance premium. If they won their claim, the solicitor acting for them earns their fee and usually a success fee (bonus) from the opposing party, typically an insurance company. The winning party should also keep 100% of any compensation sum awarded to them!

The legal system changed after the no win no fee system came into being in 1995 with the end of the legal aid system being available for Personal Injury cases. This stopped the process of having to apply for means tested access to legal help for personal injury claims and it is now at the discretion of your chosen solicitor whether they take your case on a conditional fee arrangement or CFA basis. CFA’s have levelled the playing field regarding access to the compensation and changed the legal system for all, rich and poor!

It’s extremely important to take extra care when driving in snowy and icy conditions by taking the following steps:

Taking it Slow – Heavy snow and ice will severely increase braking distances and your ability to stop on a hill. In order to remain in control you should keep in a low gear and give yourself a lot more time to stop, by slowing the car down gradually. If you begin to skid don’t keep your foot on the break, release it and reapply whilst steering into the skid to try and correct the way you’re going.

Run down through the gears to slow rather relying so much on your breaks.

Pulling Away – can be difficult, if you’re on a hill or it has snowed around your car overnight. Pulling away is a major cause of car accidents and can cause serious personal injuries. When pulling away use second gear instead of first. If you are stuck, try reversing up/rolling back and then pulling away. Keep a shovel in your boot in case you need to dig yourself out to get traction.

Going around corners can be non-existent in snowy and icy conditions. When travelling too fast your car is likely to slide sideways without any control which could easily result in a dangerous accident. It’s important to slow right down for corners whilst remaining well focused removing the need for sudden braking which usually makes skids worse.

Be aware of other vehicles, as you can’t expect that everyone is going to be as cautious as you are. The opposite is far more likely. Be aware that other vehicles may not be able to stop. It’s also important to be aware of pedestrians as it becomes much easier to run someone over in these bad weather conditions.

Most importantly – remain vigilant by turning of your stereo and giving the road your full concentration, preventing the need for no win no fee personal injury claims or worst case – a fatal accident.

The Lost Property Office finds more than 184,000 lost items each year and manager Julie Haley told press that returning the lost items to their owners is a great feeling. She said: “returning even the smallest of items can make a big difference.”

Adding that, “I know some people think if they have lost something on public transport they will never get it back, but I would like to encourage them to give us a call. You never know – we might just have it here.”

Ms Haley also talked about the most popular item handed in at the office saying, “In the 1960s, the most popular thing we would get was umbrellas. We would get over 90,000 in a typical year. The number handed in today is around 7,000.”

Cruising. Just kicking it back in the Caribbean with a colourful cocktail, listening to some jerk from Florida tell you how he picked his trophy wife while a band plays foxtrot versions of Coldplay’s latest 45 in the background as the soundtrack to the last weeks of a rich old chick’s final romance with a heartless scoundrel with his eye on an inheritance. Sounds idyllic, right? Yeah – that’s until Poseidon, God of Oceans, turns up to kick your ass. He doesn’t care how big your boat is, you’re disturbing his watery slumbers and must pay. IN BLOOD. Or at least by suffering some violent lateral motion.

The Oceanos

So you’re chillin’ out maxin, relaxin’ real cool when the ship starts to tip to the left faster than Hugo Chavez. At first you think it’s just those cool, cool margeritas you chugged down while trying to catch the eye of the pretty greek waitress. Then all of a sudden you find yourself dangling from the railings and you realise this goes way beyond drunk. In fact, you’re aboard the Oceanos. And not only is the ship sinking, but the crew and captain have already absconded without telling you. Unbelievably, this is what the passengers of the ship found themselves facing in 1999 when Captain Arvanas and his crew got off the ship even before many of the passengers were alerted. Luckily for the passengers, nobody died after merchant shipping and helicopters were alerted to the unfolding disaster. Unluckily for Captain Arvanas he was found guilty of negligence by the Greek Maritime Board.

The Titanic

Yeah yeah. Not only are going to drown in the inky black waters of the arctic circle, but one day a long necked Canadian’s going to rape your memory in song. The prototype of the shitty cruise, The Titanic’s maiden voyage had it all – unimaginable luxury, fur coats, diamonds, Kate Winslet nude and various ethnic minorities to wait hand and foot on your white ass. But Evil Capitalist Pigs decreed that spending money on luxuries like, you know, lifeboats and stuff . We think that even Rupert Murdoch might blanch at a dick move of that magnitude.

The Sapphire Princess Impales a Whale

Everyone likes kebabs, right? OK so they taste better after a beer or three but putting meat on a spike is the eating style of the future (you heard it here first). There’s always some douche looking to go one better than the next guy, and there’s no bigger douche than the captain of the Sapphire Princess cruise ship, who hauled into Vancouver with a sperm whale speared on the front of his boat. We like to think he leapt ashore and triumphantly urinated on the quayside, but there’s no evidence that that ever happened.

Your bet has been cancelled…

Casinos are pretty sharp operators. After Clooney and Pitt cleaned them out 3 times in the last decade, they’ve tightened up procedures and have a host of new ways to scam customers out of their hard-earned. This was taken to its logical conclusion aboard the Crown Princess. When some cardshark started winning big, the captain turned his ship into a monster wave in the ultimate dick move – almost tipping the ship over. Despite the many broken limbs, croupiers were said to be ‘relieved’.

Grand Voyager

We don’t care how good your “sea legs” are – in weather like this, you’re going to be hurling chunks

Tom Cruise

Did you see what we did there? Did you? Har-di-har!

Campaigners and health experts condemned the high-strength beer on its release, stating that it could cause as much damage as drinking excessive amounts of alcohol; this was refuted by the brewery, which said that their Tokyo* beer could help tackle binge-drinking because its rich taste and £9.99 price tag would mean customers would drink it in smaller quantities.

BrewDog’s sales director Richard McLelland said: “We are very responsible retailers. People in the UK want to buy beer based on flavour not on alcohol content and BrewDog creates bold, dramatic, flavoursome beers.”

And describing the new ale as, “mild imperial ale containing more hops per barrel than any other beer ever brewed in the UK.”

Adding that, “It is an extraordinary little ale, jammed full of all the brewer’s favourite hops, giving it as much body and mouth feel as possible, ensuring that low strength does not translate into reduced flavour.”

The Nanny State Ale has such a low-alcohol content that it is not classed as a beer by the government and thus is not subject to beer duty. It will be available in limited quantities online for around £2.49 a bottle.

Dr Karen Boyle, who works at the Greater Baltimore Medical Centre said: “When the woman had her ultrasound initially they saw one sack, one baby developing, and that baby had a certain gestational age”.

She went on to say, “Then they noticed a second heartbeat in a child that was much, much younger developmentally. It does really sound like this is a true case of different conception times for these children.”

Julia Grovenburg, the mum-to-be is thought to have conceived the second baby two and a half weeks after the first conception but it can only be confirmed after the births. Mrs Grovenburg’s obstetrician, Dr Michael Muylaert said: “This is an unusual and rare condition but the possibility is real. It can only be confirmed after delivery by chromosomal and metabolic studies on the babies.”

Although Superfoetation can be unsafe for the younger baby, experts say that the small gap of only two and a half weeks should not lead to any complications.

The teenagers handed the money to the police after they told their mother and gaining legal advice. Turntable Creek where the boys had been fishing, has been affected by flooding over the past few months and police think the bundle could have come from a number of streams in the area, known as the Northern Rivers region.

A police spokesman said that they were investigating if the meny was crime-related, saying “That’s obviously one line of inquiry we’re looking at, it could be proceeds of ill-gotten gains but at this stage we’re certainly keeping an open mind.”

The spokesman also said that if no one claimed the money, that the teenage boys might be able to claim it.

so here we are at starting from the bottom.

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Here are a few tips to help avoid a nasty accident

1: Try and take some lessons before you go on your skiing holiday

2: Take a rest day on your 3rd day of your Ski holiday as this is when your likely to feel tired

3: Don’t exceed your comfort zone by skiing above your abilities

Reports state that the beast, described by local as ‘Gollum’ emerged from the lake and headed towards the teenagers “as if to attack them”. The four teenagers aged between 14 and 16 threw rocks at the beast to kill it before running away. They later returned to take pictures of it, which they passed onto Panama’s Telemetro television station.

The strange hairless beast has already been likened to the ‘Montauk Monster’ an unidentified creature that washed up on a Long Island beach last year.

Men and women who sign up to the service will experience a new style of speed dating, with some of the rollercoasters reaching speeds of up to 62mph and another lasting under a minute. Sales director for the park Morwenna Angove said: “We pride ourselves on offering our visitors the ultimate day out or short break and have an amazing combination of adrenalin-inducing rides and attractions”.

Adding that, “We’re confident that combining such thrilling experiences with the added exhilaration of meeting a potential new partner will ensure the most memorable date ever.”

The speed dating scheme will be trailed throughout September.

Glasgow’s Sheriff Court heard accounts on how Mr Mulhearn distracted the 57 year old shop assistant as Mr Adams made off with cash, mobile top-up cards, stamps and electricity cards. The shop assistant had been working on her own when Mr Mulhearn entered the shop asking for help in purchasing light bulbs that were situated at the rear of the shop.

Mr Adams then entered the shop and removed the goods while the assistant was distracted. The shop assistant later called the police when she realised that the goods were missing. Police later found £700 cash and mobile phone top-up cards in Mr Mulhearn’s living room.

The two pensioners have been released on bail awaiting sentence.

Until fairly recently, the deaf were the forgotten users of the web. By contrast, great hullabaloos were made over the course of the last decade and a half about the needs of the visually impaired. Browser software began to enact zooming features and on-the-fly text-size alteration, and screen readers such as

If you’re looking for information about ‘accessibility’ for the internet then chances you’ll find that most information is about the needs of those with visual problems – closely followed by those with motor difficulties. As a result, there are a raft of conventions and technologies out there for anyone wishing to make their content accessible to the blind, and almost nothing about the deaf.

At first pass, you could be forgiven for thinking that the internet is actually the perfect medium for deaf people. Largely based on textual communication, there seemed to be little requirement to take into account the needs of the deaf.

But that was the old web. The web of usenet and forums and blogs. The web where the word was king. But today, streaming media has finally become reality. From YouTube to Spotify, Joost to Hulu, content is increasingly being served as audio and video. The attractions are manifest and obvious. We do our best communication face to face, and the nuances of extemporised speech make points in a way that only the best of writers can emulate in text. When Google decided to start answering questions from its users, the format it chose was spoken-to-camera video on their popular Webmasters YouTube channel. And when President Obama called Kanye a ‘jackass’ the story only really went into hyperdrive with the release of the audio which turned dry reportage into something real and immediate.

Suddenly, a new frontier in web accessibility is opening up – and the deaf are on the wrong side of that gulf.

Does the answer lie with the BBC?

Currently, there is very little in the way of provision for the deaf to interact with video content in particular. As video blogging takes off, the problem is only going to get greater. Whilst lip-reading on television or in person might be second nature to many deaf people, the relatively poor resolution of much video content makes it unclear how well this ability will help deaf listeners. And of course in the case where voiceover narration is used to contextualise the imagery, lip-reading will be no use at all.

Now the BBC has announced that it’s own in-house video player – the iPlayer – will be almost fully subtitled by the end of this year, with further improvements mooted for 2010. This includes live streaming content. The aim is ambitious, as the Beeb concede:

“Improved live subtitle synchronisation – live subtitles on iPlayer, at present, are based on those from broadcast TV and we are still working on ensuring that the time-lag between speech and subtitles, which is a limitation of the current live subtitling broadcast process and the current online repurposing process, is reduced as much as reasonably possible to improve the experience of watching live subtitles online”

Now this technology is proprietary and currently only available to UK television license payers who watch BBC TV, but an important watermark has been reached: it is technically feasible to bring video content to deaf people online.

Will this cross over into the mainstream and become an automated service on sites like YouTube? The answer is probably “yes”, but not for a long time. Deciphering audio into text has proven to be a very difficult hurdle for technologists to bridge, although there are plenty of companies developing solutions as we speak.

So while the gulf has finally been acknowledged, and technology is coming up to speed in some ways, but we are a long way from utopia. But with the weight of organisations like the BBC behind it, the solution is tantalisingly close to making a truly accessible web for all.

The original licensing agreement ended in December and after failing to reach an agreement, YouTube, which is owned by Google decided to block thousands of music videos to UK users.

The PRS, which has now been rebranded PRS for Music, collects and pays royalties to its members when a piece of music is sold, broadcast or performed in public as well as being made available online.

Google has agreed to pay the PRS a large lump sum, which will be backdated to January and cover official music videos as well as user generated content and music played in the background on TV shows.

A spokesman for YouTube said that the blocked videos will start to appear again in the next couple of days.

The government project is levelling several hills in the area to pave the way for new homes, but when Qu Liming and his family refused to leave the workers dug round them. Talking to the Chineese press, Mr Liming said; “My son drove his car in front of the house to stop the bulldozers from digging the soil, but unexpectedly, they dug out all the soil around the car, leaving the car perched on top of an isolated island”.

The family cannot move their car and have to climb a vertical cliff to reach their home. Mr Liming added, “Each day we really have to climb into the house, since the soil has been removed, and it’s a vertical cliff for us”.

The project owners and village officials have refused to comment on the situation.

Apple, who manufactures the iPhone confirmed that they are aware of the reports and are waiting for the faulty devices from customers so they can test them. Head of European Communications for Apple, Alan Hely said, “We are waiting to receive the iPhones from the customers,”

Adding that: “Until we have the full details, we don’t have anything further to add.”

It has been reported that the cause of the problem could be the devices lithium batteries, which could overheat.

Last week, a 26 year old security guard from France claimed he was hit in the face and eye with glass when his iPhone screen cracked when he was using it. The unnamed man has said he will seek a full refund and sue for damages.

Apple has sold over 26 million iPhones worldwide since its release in 2007 from its exclusive network deals, which can be obtained straight from the network or through mobile phone comparison sites.