An Indian restaurant owner has purchased a 49-foot Hawker Siddeley HS125 jet for 500 curries and 1,000 poppadoms. Shajahan Chowdhury bartered with the spicy fare to get his hands on the shell of the plane which he now plans to turn into a restaurant. Aviation salvage company GJD Services were only too happy to swap the ex-charter jet for 150 vindaloos, 150 Bombay Aloos, 100 onion bhajis and a cockpit full of poppadoms. A promise of a further 200 tasty treats will follow on...

A nurse who raised serious concerns about patient and staff safety is about to be sacked and is now staging a hunger strike outside the Department of Health. Jade Taylor, 46, has also been sleeping outside the government office, decided she had to speak out after her own parents were allegedly mistreated at Mid Staffordshire NHS foundation trust. She was so angry about the poor treatment she bravely spoke out but feels she became a target by senior staff, and...

Sport News 24/7 It’s not every season that Leeds United reach the second international break of the season with the same manager in situ as started the season. Well, it’s not every season under Massimo Cellino’s stewardship that they do, anyway. In that regard, phase one of Garry Monk’s mission is complete. He flirted with the sack after an insipid start but this is, after all, a results business and results came good. So, what then, is phase two of...

Labour has finally got its mojo back, well a tiny bit, and have asked the government 170 questions on Brexit, one for each day before Theresa May has declared she will invoke Article 50 and begin the withdrawal from the EU. Emily Thornberry, Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Keir Starmer, Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union wrote an open latter to David Davis, Brexit Secretary. If he could answer one question each day, like an xmas advent...

Sterling slumped to a 168-low last night selling at $1.2117 in late US trading. According to a trade-weighted index measuring sterling against a basket of its trading peers, the pound has now slumped to its lowest on record, even stretching beyond the introduction of free-floating exchange rates in the 1970s, according to data compiled by the Bank of England reported in the Financial Times. The pound’s effective exchange rate slipped to lows of 29.27 on Tuesday – weaker than the depths...

If you’re stepping out of the smoke for the weekend and you’re in search of something gorgeous and filthy (food I’m talking about), you’ll do well to beat Smokey's American Grill restaurant and takeaway in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Since opening in 2014 Smokeys has already scooped up the Wiltshire Restaurant of the Year 2015 award (voted for by Wiltshire Times newspaper readers), and is eagerly waiting to hear if it has won Britain’s Best Takeaway 2016 award after making it into the...

When it comes to buying a house, there are many things that top the ‘must have’ list - off-street parking, a decent garden, a bathroom suite that isn’t avocado to name a few. But, it’s not just about what’s on the inside that counts, the outside matters too. We’re talking about views, and anyone who’s ever lived in a home with windows looking straight out onto next door’s brick wall will know, you can’t really put a price tag on...

Brexit has already proved hugely divisive - to the point where the unity of the United Kingdom is once again in question - but it is also presenting golden opportunities for those able to position themselves on the right side of history. It is, however, hard to see how metropolitan London - as a global finance and business hub - is going to gain from the sort of ‘hard’ Brexit that is currently being championed by the hard-liners to Theresa...

We used to walk, well run, to school being chased by the bigger boys, but in Eastern Thailand you get a much bigger companion to accompany you to school. The bullies wouldn’t have messed we us, if we had these animals taking us to double maths. These two kids walk to school with their two pet elephants, an animal revered in Thailand. Nong, seven and Ong, five take a mile long walk cradling the young elephants ear with the older...