Todays Times shows two great Masterpieces that may come upon the open Market.

Titians Diana and Actaeon (pictured) and Diana and Callisto have been offered to the government by the Duke of Sutherland for a mere £50 million each. 

I am sure that they are worth every penny, but there is no way that any government should pay out so much for a masterpiece like this. With the economy getting slowly worse there are more pressing concerns.

The present Culture minister Andy Burnham has allegedly asked the treasury for between £10 and £20 million. With the rest of the money coming from the Heritage fund.

I think that this should be left to the open market.

  Blessed with some of the UK’s most beautiful scenery, the county of Powys stretches from the Brecons in the south to the borders of Snowdonia in the north.  According to the study from the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, its inhabitants are happier than all other Britons.

Happiness and well-being is mapped in 273 districts in England, Scotland and Wales using the authoritative British Household Panel Survey.

Cleethorpes Resort manager Robert Chalmers was delighted with the result - but not at all surprised.

He said: “It is fantastic for the resort and North East Lincolnshire Council and it demonstrates how well we are developing the area.

“The resort is taking care of people who are making the most of the weather and the places to visit.

“Everything is in place for the resort to continue to be a happy place.

“All different departments in the council are working with local businesses to keep the resort busy and everybody happy.

“We are making Cleethorpes a happy place to visit and live in.”

You may be interested to know that N E Lincolnshire was rated the 11th happiest place in the UK, ahead of Hull in 156th place, Scunthorpe 225th, Sheffield 241st, and Doncaster 271st.

The full list is on http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1050157/Britains-happiest-places-list.html

CLEAN up your own mess - or pay up.

That is the stark warning going out to vandals from council chiefs today.  Anybody caught daubing graffiti on buildings in North East Lincolnshire now has the option to clean it off themselves, rather than pay a fine. 

Although the on-the-spot fines currently stand at £50, if the case ends up in court, the figure can rise into thousands of pounds, and can even lead to a prison term in the most extreme cases. 

Together with a £10,000 bill to clean up the offending artwork, the council spends nearly £30,000 on a graffiti clearance task force per year, and the total bill for ridding the borough of unsightly scribblings can be as high as £50,000 annually.  The money collected from the fines will go towards this total, in particular the chemicals to clean it off. 

The money collected from the fines will go towards this total, in particular the chemicals to clean it off, which are costly.

Councillor Steve Beasant, portfolio holder for communities and neighbourhoods, said: “I am pleased that the people who seem intent on making a mess on our streets are the ones being told to clean it up. “Hopefully this will act as a deterrent to other like-minded vandals - we are watching and we will take strong action to rid the community of unsightly daubs and scribbles.”    

The Leader of the Council, Councillor Andrew De Freitas, said: “Graffiti blights our communities and is an example of anti-social behaviour at its worst.

“I am fully in support of this action by the neighbourhood community wardens, and hope it teaches the perpetrators a valuable lesson about respecting property that belongs to others.”

Tthree 14-year-old girls from Grimsby’s Nunsthorpe estate - were caught out, and opted to clean up their act.They spent yesterday scrubbing their scribblings off walls around Grimsby as punishment. The young people concerned cannot be identified for legal reasons, but one told the Grimsby Evening Telegraph, and said: “It’s something to do because there’s nothing to do around here. I don’t think I’ll do it again though, it does look scruffy.

  The Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) claims that the amount of tax paid on flights, fuels and cars is far more than that needed just to offset the cost of the country’s carbon emissions.

Every family in Britain is paying nearly £800 a year in a ‘dishonest’ green tax grab, a shocking report said last night.

Hard-pressed households are forking out the staggering sum on flights, fuel and for their cars even though it is ‘unnecessary’, said low tax campaigners.

‘With the credit crunch squeezing household budgets, people can ill afford this extra tax grab. It’s dishonest and unjust for politicians to wrap revenue raising tax hikes in a green banner.

‘The Government are talking about raising taxes even further, but our conclusions show that green taxes should be kept as they are or cut.’

The total cost of green taxes and charges was £24.2bn in 2007/08 - even though the social cost of the UK’s entire output of greenhouse gases was  only £4.6bn, according to estimates made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This suggested households in Britain were being forced to pay £19.6billion a year too much in levies on airline tickets, petrol and to run their cars. This works out at £783 per family.

Even taking the Government’s estimate that the cost of greenhouse gas emissions was £16.3billion last year would mean green taxes were still £7.9billion - or £315 per household - too high, said the TPA.

Matthew Sinclair, TPA policy analyst, said: “Green taxes are set far higher than is necessary to pay for our carbon footprint, which loads an unfair burden onto hard pressed British families and businesses.

“With the credit crunch squeezing household budgets, people can ill afford this extra tax grab. It’s dishonest and unjust for politicians to wrap revenue raising tax hikes in a green banner.

“The Government are talking about raising taxes even further, but our conclusions show that green taxes should be kept as they are or cut.”

Households and industry are charged green taxes in the form of fuel duty, vehicle excise duty, landfill tax, the Climate Change Levy and the Renewables Obligation.

The eco-tax burden also varies significantly between suburban areas and urban districts, the TPA said.

A TPA spokesman said: “Excessive green taxes hit poorer people hardest, hurt the competitiveness of British firms, cause Britain to export emissions and fall disproportionately on residents of rural and suburban areas.”

However, Dave Timms, Friends of the Earth’s economics campaigner  “The Government has fuelled public scepticism by failing to use tax breaks and public spending to make it cheaper and easier to go green. If green taxes are to work the Government must also invest in greener alternatives such as public transport.”

A Treasury spokesman said: “The estimate of green taxes is wrong as it includes taxes used to fund core public services, rather than simply offsetting the cost of CO2.

“For example, while fuel duty recognises the environmental costs of driving, it also pays for important public services, including new roads and public transport and efforts to tackle child poverty