Latest news with #Yorkshire
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Sport
- Telegraph
English boxing referee suspended after pestering woman for threesome
An England Boxing referee was suspended by the sport after inviting a woman on a course he was running to have a threesome with him. Paul Rosendale, a well-known figure in the amateur sport, admitted pestering the fellow official for sex on social media following a conversation the previous night. Following Rosendale's suspension in March, a disciplinary panel ruled that his actions were 'serious and fundamentally inconsistent with the work of England Boxing in seeking to encourage more females to become involved in boxing, coaching and officiating'. Rosendale, who is in his 40s, had previously been a commended referee, having been nominated for awards for training 'in excess of 80 new and existing officials from the East Midlands, Yorkshire and Royal Air Force associations'. 'In fact, his contribution has led to the RAF Boxing Association having more officials than ever before,' said a 2023 citation for England Boxing official of the year. Rosendale became an IBA three-star referee and judge in November 2022 – the highest certification possible – but he was suspended from duty when authorities were told of his inappropriate conduct. Kathryn Hovington and Mark Harper KC, who sat on a disciplinary panel for England Boxing against Rosendale, suspended him 'for a period of 10 weeks commencing on 14 March 2025'. The panel recorded that following a course in September 2022 and 'following the verbal request', Rosendale made a 'request again for the female official to join a threesome with him' via social media. 'The panel did consider whether Mr Rosendale should be required to attend some form of training as it was concerned that Mr Rosendale was of the view that how a female acts (or is perceived to act) should determine what is/is not appropriate to say/send to her and that the appropriateness or otherwise of communications should be determined by the absence (apparent or otherwise) of offence on the part of the recipient,' their report says. 'Having given it due consideration, the panel was of the view that this would not be necessary as it expected that the experience of dealing with the charges, his remorse and the steps he was taking to address his underlying behaviours coupled with this decision, should be sufficient.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Agreement reached' – Leeds United set to sign Bundesliga midfielder
Leeds United Reach Agreement with Hoffenheim's Anton Stach Midfield Reinforcements Identified at Elland Road Leeds United's ambition to return to the Premier League with purpose and poise appears to have taken a decisive step forward. According to Sky Sports Germany, the club have reached a 'basic agreement' with Anton Stach, the Hoffenheim midfielder, over a move to Yorkshire. Photo IMAGO The 26-year-old German international is reportedly keen to test himself in English football. Discussions between the two clubs are ongoing, with Hoffenheim demanding €20 million plus potential add-ons. Leeds face competition for his signature, but their intent appears clear. Bundesliga Backbone Suits Leeds Approach Stach, who is under contract until 2027, has played 71 competitive matches for Hoffenheim, contributing four goals and six assists. He is a combative, intelligent presence in central midfield, adept at shielding the back four while initiating transitions. His profile fits a modern midfield brief. Leeds, who continue to rebuild under Daniel Farke, are targeting players with character and top-level experience. Stach's stature, tactical discipline and international pedigree match those requirements. Premier League Beckons for Another German Talent Should the deal go through, Stach would join a growing contingent of German talent in England, including Wirtz, Havertz, Gündogan and Leno. His move would be another example of Leeds leaning into the technical and mental toughness that defines successful promotion pushes. Our View – EPL Index Analysis Anton Stach brings a level of class, composure and experience that Leeds desperately need if they want to compete and stay in the Premier League. His time in the Bundesliga, playing at a high tactical level, makes him more than ready for English football. The midfield has lacked steel and control in recent years. Stach offers both. He can break up play, dictate tempo and provide protection for the back line. More importantly, he is a German international. That kind of pedigree matters in a dressing room striving for belief and consistency. Daniel Farke knows the German market better than most. This is not a panic buy, it is a plan.
The Irish Sun
3 hours ago
- Business
- The Irish Sun
The stunning ‘oasis' five-bed home minutes from busy town on market for €1.7million with sunroom & landscaped gardens
AN oasis-styled five-bedroom home has just hit the Irish market for €1.75 million – and it comes with extensive landscaped gardens and a sunroom. This bespoke family home is located in Brookwood, a secluded development near Crosshaven town in 7 This stunning pad is located near Crosshaven in Co Cork Credit: 7 And it is now on the Irish market for €1.75 million Credit: 7 The home was built in 1997 and has been kept in fantastic condition Credit: 7 It features modern and luxurious fixtures throughout Credit: Sitting on 1.4 acres of mature landscaped grounds, the property is just a short drive from Carrigaline town and the beautiful Crosshaven coastline. The detached five-bed, five-bath The listing reads: 'Built in 1997 by its one and only owner this five-bedroomed detached family home known as Bramble Lodge is bespoke in every way.' Known as one of Cork's most stunning homes, the property features cathedral ceilings, multiple fireplaces and a sun-filled sunroom overlooking the READ MORE IN MONEY The breathtaking property has a B3 energy rating and includes a wraparound deck, redbrick pathways, and a private balcony with views over the Cork countryside. It is also equipped with electric gates, outdoor lighting and a standalone barn-style garage with loft storage and carport. This beautiful home is in a prime location, just minutes from Crosshaven and Carrigaline town along with being only a short drive from Cork city. There are also a wide variety of primary and secondary schools nearby, making it an ideal location for MOST READ IN MONEY Upon entering the ground floor of the home, guests are welcomed by a stunning reception hall with a cathedral ceiling, redbrick fireplace and a gallery above. Moving further into the pad, there is a spacious lounge room with triple aspect glazing, reclaimed wood floors and a handcrafted Yorkshire brick inglenook fireplace. Inside three bed family home on Irish market for €170k on 'generous site,' in 'desirable location' The property also features an open-plan kitchen and family room with bespoke pine cabinetry, quartz floors, a Belfast sink and a black Stanley Alpha range cooker. CHARMING KITCHEN The kitchen is set at the heart of the The family room features another inglenook fireplace that's painted white and French doors leading directly to the rear deck. A bright and airy dining space sits off the kitchen with space for an eight-seater table, along with built-in cabinetry, wine rack and American-style fridge freezer. Double doors open from the dining area into a beautifully designed sunroom with brick and whitewashed walls, deep-set Velux roof windows and casement doors to both gardens. This fabulous room features tiled floors, hanging lanterns and access to the deck and pond outside. FIRST FLOOR OFFERINGS Upstairs, the main bedroom is bright and spacious with a cathedral ceiling, exposed beams and triple aspect windows offering garden views. It includes extensive wardrobes, walk-in closets and an ensuite with a Jacuzzi bath, and a vanity unit. The second bedroom is located over the back wing of the home and offers complete privacy, wide plank floors, mirrored wardrobes and The third and fourth bedrooms are also spacious with exposed beams, fitted storage and dormer windows, while the fifth bedroom features a redbrick wall, timber floors and walk-in storage. EXCEPTIONAL OUTDOORS Outside, the mature gardens stretch across a whopping 1.4 acres. Redbrick pathways wind through flower beds filled with hydrangeas, rhododendrons and Japanese maples. And there's even a stunning area enclosed by a beech hedge that includes a detached garden shed and a greenhouse that can be converted. The property is listed by Patricia Stokes Auctioneers & Valuers on 7 The pad includes a spacious sunroom Credit: 7 There are five stunning bedrooms in the property Credit: 7 It sits on 1.4 acres of mature landscaped grounds Credit:
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
‘I gave up 100-hour work weeks to be an HMO landlord earning 17pc yields'
For most of her life, Kim Opszala's plan was to climb the corporate ladder. But when she got there, she rapidly discovered the view from the top is not quite as idyllic as she had imagined. So Opszala pivoted her plans. Fed up of working 100-hour weeks and never seeing her family, she decided to scale back her career as a lawyer. This would mean taking a hefty pay cut. To make up the difference, she has built up a sideline property portfolio, picking one of the most lucrative rental sectors. Shared houses – officially known as a house in multiple occupation (HMO), and defined as a property rented out to at least three individual tenants sharing amenities like kitchens and bathrooms – provide landlords with significantly richer pickings than regular privately rented homes. Recent research by Paragon Bank shows British landlords currently make an average rental yield of 7.1pc. In England, they range from a high of 7.9pc in Yorkshire and Humberside to a low of 5.8pc in Greater London. But HMOs can deliver far higher returns – sometimes three or four times as much, according to estate agent Hamptons. It found that the highest gross profits are in the North East and North West, with Stockton-on-Tees, Burnley and Rochdale landlords recording gross yields of 19.6pc, 19.1pc, and 18.6pc respectively. The East Midlands is also a good bet, with South Derbyshire, Ashfield and Mansfield all recording gross yields of 17pc to 18pc. Even in the South, where high buying prices cut into profits, HMO yields are comfortably twice the overall average. 'We wanted to replace my salary, so we picked HMOs' Opszala's first experience of HMOs was living in one as a student in Aberystwyth, Wales. 'It was awful, very tired, the furniture was all old and mismatched, and there were six of us and just one shower and one bath,' she recalls. 'It was great living with friends, but the accommodation was very substandard.' In 2018, Opszala, 40, and her husband Mike, 44, bought an HMO in Milton Keynes, where they were living at the time. The couple, who now live in a village in Staffordshire with their five-year-old, now own eight properties, mostly in Milton Keynes and Northampton. They collectively house more than 50 people, and run KoMo Properties. They are in the process of adding two more shared houses to their portfolio. 'Why did we concentrate on HMOs? It was for cash flow reasons,' says Opszala, who as a lawyer specialises in mergers and acquisitions. 'HMOs have a much better return. When we started, I was working at one of the largest law firms in the world, and Mike was working nights as a chef. We were like ships that passed in the night. It wasn't sustainable. We wanted to replace my salary so that I wouldn't have to work like that.' That first HMO currently earns the couple a yield of almost 17pc. KoMo's income has allowed Opszala to stop working full time. She takes law contracts for three to six months per year, and Mike quit cheffing in 2022 to work on the business full time. Like the couple, many landlords prefer to invest close to home for the sense of safety, plus the possibility of managing their rental property themselves. Although the highest yields are in the North, southerners can also find pockets of opportunity. The highest yields are to be found in King's Lynn, West Norfolk, Ipswich and Somerset, which are all around 16pc according to Hamptons. The average price of an HMO in these areas hovers around £200,000. In London, your best bet is to look in the suburbs. In Havering, an average HMO costs £414,400, and returns gross yields of 12.8pc. Other HMO hotspots in the capital are in Sutton and Barking and Dagenham. The university cities with the best gross yields are led by Derby (15.5pc; average price £182,000), followed by Leicester and Kingston upon Hull. The small print But before you rush to invest, bear in mind that there are downsides beyond HMOs' headline figures. Howard Levy, of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, warns landlords who want to follow in Opszala's footsteps to pay attention to the small print. Interest rates for HMOs tend to be slightly higher than on standard buy-to-lets. Like-for-like examples are tricky, but for five-year fixes, the cheapest standard landlord mortgage is on offer with Birmingham Midshires at 3.71pc, plus a 3pc fee. For an HMO mortgage, Vida Bank offers one at 4.2pc, with a 7pc fee. Insurance premiums are also likely to be higher. There are also legal hurdles to overcome before you can launch your HMO in the first place. Some of the Opszalas' houses were already designated as HMOs when they bought them. Others were not, and in many locations, including both Milton Keynes and Northampton, this means applying for planning permission. Last month, Opszala found herself addressing a council meeting which was deciding on her application to use a house as a new seven-bedroom HMO, in the face of almost 200 local objections. 'It was al,: 'They are going to house criminals, there will be no parking, there will be rubbish on the streets, the whole area will go down',' she says. 'I was able to explain why HMOs are needed, and how we run them, and it was approved. But it is a risk, quite stressful and time consuming.' When up and running, HMO landlords also need to meet higher safety standards. According to the British Landlords Association, this means fitting half-hour fire doors and, as with all private rentals, gas safety checks must be conducted annually. HMO electrics need to be checked every five years. Other private landlords need to commit only to making sure the electrical system and appliances are safe, with no regular inspection programme. All rental properties must be fitted with smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, but large HMOs also need fire alarms and extinguishers. HMOs also need to be licenced by the local council, and costs can be in excess of £2,000 per year depending on location. Most of the Opszalas' tenants are graduates and students fresh out of halls of residence. This means that a certain degree of hand-holding is required, she says. 'It is generally things like using the washing machine and the dryers, or a lightbulb will go and we will have to educate them on how to change it.' The compensation for the couple is freedom. They have been able to indulge their passion for travelling too, taking regular family campervan trips around Europe while running the company remotely. Swapping a pension for HMOs Neil France got into the HMO business because he is self-employed – the 68-year-old runs international leadership training programmes – and was concerned about what could happen to him should he ever become too unwell to work. He was also deeply disappointed in the performance of the pension he had dutifully been paying into for years. In 2009, he stopped those payments, and instead bought a house on the Wirral which had belonged to his wife's aunt, renting it out to a succession of families in the year that followed. He then bought three more properties there. But by 2013, he reviewed his portfolio and decided that 'normal' rental properties weren't making enough profit – their gross yield is 5pc or 6pc. So he bought three HMO properties close to his home in Chelmsford, Essex, which make 10pc to 12pc. France doesn't find his HMO tenants – who are mainly young professionals – any more or less likely to cause trouble than his private renters, and has found that a system of 'ruthless referencing' helps weed out bad apples. But HMOs do inevitably generate more work, what feels to France like an endless, wearying flow of weekend calls requesting assistance for everything from slow-running Wi-Fi to leaky showers to fights over bathroom cleanliness. Over the past 16 years, he has continued with his day job, resulting in a good amount of equity in his portfolio. In the same period, times have grown tougher for landlords – notably thanks to the successive increases in stamp duty in 2014 and 2016 and the end of tax relief on their mortgage interest payments from 2017. 'We have been made pariahs by successive governments,' says France. But with four grown-up children to consider, he is resisting the temptation to sell up. Instead, he is taking equity out of his houses and gifting it to his children, in the hope that he can lower their eventual inheritance tax bill. 'I'm not sure it is worth the hassle' Another HMO malcontent is Xavier Archibold, who began investing in rental properties when he received an inheritance in 2016. He now has 20 of them – 16 regular properties and four HMOs, each with four or five bedrooms. All are close to his home in Leeds, chosen partly because Archibold, 52, a consultant in the transport logistics industry, does a lot of the management himself. 'And the North is doing very well in terms of price growth,' he says. His advice to others is that, as with all rental properties, choosing the right HMO is essential. They need to have good public transport links and be close to amenities, and the bedrooms need to be spacious and, ideally, en suite. 'The number of people who turn their noses up at a shared bathroom is unbelievable,' he says. Xavier says his HMOs earn good money – each room is charged at between £450 and almost £800 per month, depending on location, size and amenities – bringing in a gross yield of around 10pc to 12pc, compared to 5pc to 6pc for his regular rentals. Despite this, he is considering selling off his HMOs after growing tired of refereeing arguments about washing up, doing constant maintenance and dealing with personal problems from job losses to mental health crises. 'It is constant little things,' he says. 'I'm not sure if it is worth the hassle. You have got five tenants for the price of one – and one of them is bound to be difficult. Even if they are fine, if one person moves out it takes time to replace them, and that is all your profit gone for that month.'
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Railway Children review – a real steam train is the spectacular star
This site-specific experience begins with a ride on a stream train. Audiences travel to a purpose-built auditorium inside an engine shed at Oxenhope station. It is a delightful mood-setter to Mike Kenny's adaptation of E Nesbit's 1905 novel, which premiered in 2008. It is back on the road, this time chugging its way along the same five-mile line comprising the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway on which the Green Dragon travelled in Lionel Jeffries' iconic 1970 film. Inside the shed, the impressive stagecraft arrests the senses over the story of Roberta (Farah Ashraf), Peter (Raj Digva) and Phyllis (Jessica Kaur), the children forced out of their well-to-do London home and into a shambling house by the tracks in Yorkshire, after their father (Paul Hawkyard) is wrongly imprisoned. They take to waving at passengers on the Green Dragon, an invisible locomotive here conjured through a wonderful concoction of steam, sounds (designed by Craig Vear) and crackles of light (designed by Richard G Jones). That is, until a real-life steam train enters the auditorium – a sight to behold. Scenes on Joanna Scotcher's stupendous set design are deftly executed on mobile platforms. It gives the period dress production a heady sense of motion as the children take off on their adventures. But for all these excitements, it is initially too tame in its storytelling and anodyne in its emotional drama. A framing device in which adult versions of Roberta, Peter and Phyllis reflect back on their childhood selves, and enact the story in retrospect, feels under-used. Conceived and directed by Damian Cruden, the children are Anglo-Indian; their father met their mother (Asha Kingsley) in the British Raj. It is an interesting twist, rather like that in last year's production of The Secret Garden. But little is done with this introduced theme of imperialism and mixed heritage identity beyond the cosmetic: Mother wears an ethnic shawl; one of the children dreams of having an elephant. The siblings speak in cheery tones and appear more like a reduced version of the Famous Five than young people trying to turn their pain into resilience. It is all a little chocolate-box – a quintessential, idealised version of Englishness. Thankfully, it is brought back on track after the interval. The humour sparks alive and there are charming meta flourishes to the siblings' memories. 'You'll have to use your imaginations for this part,' Roberta implores us at one point, and later we become the waving strangers on the train. It shines in these collaborative moments. The emotional life of the play gains weight, too, however schmaltzy the story may be. By the time the final scene comes round, with Father's return, this show has become irresistible. At Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, until 7 September.
