These included 26 drawings of Sir Steve Redgrave by Dryden Goodwin for £25000 and a
These included 26 drawings of Sir Steve Redgrave by Dryden Goodwin for £25,000, and a painting of Rupert Murdoch by Jonathan Yeo for £11,750.Stuart Pearson Wright was paid £32,900 for a series of 10 drawings of prominent actors, including Jeremy Irons.The cost of the gallery’s other high-profile recent commissions are also contained in the FOI disclosure. Sam Taylor Wood’s video of David Beckham sleeping was bought in 2004 for £61,100.A portrait of Dame Judi Dench by Alessandro Raho cost £19,975 in 2004, while two Pearson Wright drawings of JK Rowling were purchased for £4,100. The gallery had previously accepted a three-year grant from the Vodafone UK Foundation.The National Portrait Gallery denies this relationship affected its decision to acquire the portraits. But critics say that several figures on the list, below, wouldn’t usually be of sufficient importance to merit inclusion in the permanent collection.”These people are obscure and unimportant, and to include them in the National Portrait Gallery does not make sense,” said Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckist group of artists, who campaign for openness in gallery acquisitions.”When people look back in 100 years, they will consider, from the gallery’s collection, that the leading lights of today’s society are a bunch of cellphone salesmen.”It stinks, for two reasons. The National Portrait Gallery has been accused of cronyism and a conflict of interests after paying more than £20,000 for photographs of a future trustee and several businessmen linked to donors from the telecom industry. Critics have called for an overhaul of Charity Commission guidelines following the gallery’s decision to add 19 photographs, including a portrait of David Ross, the deputy chairman of The Carphone Warehouse, to its permanent collection.
The portraits, by South African photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, were commissioned last year at a cost of £21,150 and formally acquired by the National Portrait Gallery earlier this year.In addition to Ross, who joined the NPG’s board in February, they portray Charles Dunstone, a co-founder of The Carphone Warehouse, and five current or former Vodafone executives.
Figures released last month by the ONS showed that the population of the whole of the United Kingdom passed 60 million for the first time in 2005. Two thirds of the 375,000-strong increase in people living in the UK last year was attributed to international migration, while a third was a result of “natural change” – more births and fewer deaths.A Home Office spokesman said: “This country needs migration; tourists, students and migrant workers who make a valuable contribution.”The UK has many highly skilled migrants working in the finance and IT sectors as well as skilled professionals like nurses, doctors and teachers in our key public services.”In response to claims that the influx of migrant workers, particularly from eastern Europe, was leading to rising unemployment and falling wages, the spokesman said: “Research has found no evidence that migration as a whole has a significant adverse effect on the employment rates or wages of the existing population.”He added that population increase in London and the South-east was the consequence of a free market economy and a flexible labour market, with more than 600,000 job vacancies in the UK, many of them in London and the South-east.. In 2004, 3.8 million residents were aged 75 or over; by 2029, 6.3 million people will be in that age group. By contrast, a much more modest increase in the number of children within the English population will occur over the next 20 years, from 2.8 million under-fours in 2004 to 3.04 million.Population growth will be slower in regions such as the North-west, at 7.4 per cent, and the West Midlands, 7.8 per cent. But it will be almost double those rates in Yorkshire and Humberside, where the number of residents is expected to increase by more than 13 per cent over the period to 5.7 million people.A larger than average increase will also be experienced in the East, of 14.9 per cent, from 5.4 million in 2004 to a 2029 estimate of 6.3 million.Much of the predicted increase in England’s population will come from immigration. The estimates are based on the assumption that current population trends continue for the next 20 years.They also show how rates of growth vary widely between the different areas of England.
Predictions for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not yet available. Population growth will be slowest in the North-east, where the number of residents will rise by 3.7 per cent to an estimated 2.6 million.Outside London, the fastest growth will be seen in the South-west, where the number of people will rise by 16.4 per cent to almost six million. Demographers say the population growth in the region will stem from the continuing trend for people to retire to Devon, Cornwall and other rural counties and a growing desire to escape urban pressures for a life in the countryside.The trends are also being fuelled by the ageing population of the country. The predictions underline the need for a rapid increase in house-building in London and the South-east.
According to ONS analysis, the number of people living in England as a whole will increase by 12.7 per cent, from 50,093,100 in 2004 to 56,456,600 in 2029. Dhiren Barot, 34, a Muslim convert from Willesden, north London, has become the first person in the United Kingdom to be convicted of conspiracy to murder in relation to a terrorist offence..