DEREK LAWRENSON: Nick Faldo reignites the argument with TV snap at Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie

They are the two most recognisable faces in British golf. And right now, they cant stand one another.

It is never pretty when two egos clash and the simmering feud between Colin Montgomerie and Sir Nick Faldo lest we forget, the present and immediate pastcaptains of Europes Ryder Cup team is threatening to turn really unpleasant.

Monty and Faldo have history when it comes to bickering with their fellow pros, so perhaps it was inevitable that at some point they would turn on each other.

Enemies: Ryder Cup captain Montgomerie and Nick Faldo do not see eye-to-eye

Here is a brief history of their contretemps.

Monty has been chipping away at Faldos hopeless captaincy almost from the moment the last match finished at Oakland Hills.

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He was upset with some justification, it should be said at how he was treated in the long run-up to that match and it was as much as he could do, for the sake of team unity, to keep his views to himself.

Once the match had taken place, however, he wasted no time in venting his feelings, and has upped the ante in recent interviews by making it clear he would not be seeking Faldos advice.

Naturally, someone with the Englishmans self-regard could not allow that to pass without comment.

On CBS television in America on Saturday, the self-styled SNick used his position as chief analyst to get his own back.

Faldo was telling viewers about how Ian Poulter got into golf after watching him play in the 1993 Ryder Cup.

;He also got a signed ball from Monty, Jim Nantz, his fellow commentator, pointed out.

Oh dear. Nantz was clearly unaware that the worst thing you could do to Faldo when he is basking in his own glory is to bring up Monty.

;Cant have everything in life, I suppose, said Faldo. As Nantz tried to steer the conversation into less controversial waters, Faldo reached for the stilleto.

;Montys too busy these days cutting my head off to try to make himself look taller, he added.

I suspect we have not heard the last of this one.

Refs cut up rough on rule dunces

It has always struck me as ridiculous that so many players do not know the rules of the game they play. Yes, golfs rules book is right up there with watching paint dry and grass grow. But if it was your livelihood, wouldnt you make an effort?

Some players have got into a habit of just calling on a referee to explain even the most basic decisions, which hardly squares with what was intended as a self-regulatory game. Now the referees are fighting back.

Tired of being called over yon valley and several fairways to point out rules that some players, if they were not so lazy, should know with their eyes shut, European Tour chief referee John Paramor and his able deputy Andy McFee have developed a rules DVD.

Any player calling on them to make what they consider a ;frivolous ruling will be made to attend a seminar.

If they do not attend it within three events they will be barred from entry to the next tournament.

Sounds to me like a rule we can all agree on.

Quote of the week

;I do plan to return to golf one day, I just dont know when that day will be. I do not rule out that it will be this year.

Speaking out: Shamed world No 1 Tiger Woods addresses the world last Friday

Just a thought, but if the latest intelligence suggesting Tiger Woods will be back as soon as the Masters is right, where does that leave his quote above? Wouldnt it be adding grist to the mill of his opponents who thought last Fridays speech a fraud?

Perhaps it was just as well that American Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin was playing in a US Senior Tour event last week. It would have spared him watching his boys getting a spanking at the Accenture Match Play Championship.

While Colin Montgomerie must have been watching with a smile getting broader with every putt holed by the likes of Ian Poulter, Paul Casey and Sergio Garcia, what was there to encourage Pavin?

In the only event staged all year that mirrors the Ryder Cups 18-hole format, a DVD made up for Pavin comprising the weeks highlights from his perspective would have lasted about as long as a television commercial.

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China warns US not to politicise Google row (contains video)

Jane Macartney, Beijing, and Mike Harvey, San Francisco & , : {}

Googles hopes of retaining a foothold in China remained intact yesterday after the Chinese Government played down its row with the company over censorship.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Googles closure of its search engine on mainland China should not damage wider Sino-US relations. Googles other web services in China, such as Gmail, maps and a popular music search feature, remained unblocked.

The statement from Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, was more modulated in tone than an earlier angry tirade from the State Council Information Office and appeared to leave the door open for Google to continue operating in the country.

Mr Qin said that the Government would handle the Google case according to the law and any repercussions would not damage ties between China and the United States, which are already strained amid a currency dispute.

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Google has moved its Chinese search service to Hong Kong, where it is not required to censor results. The company believes that this loophole allows it to legally carry out its threat made two months ago that it would quit the mainland market if it were required to continue to submit to censorship after cyberattacks originating in China.

The move to Hong Kong was an early obvious solution, people close to the negotiations between Google and China told The Times. The move shifts responsibility for censorship from Googles China operation to the Chinese authorities.

Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China Ltd, a technology market research firm, said: Its a balancing act. They are trying to leave but not leave, stay but not stay. Users in China of the google.cn site are automatically redirected to the Hong Kong service, which offers results in the simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China, as well as the traditional characters favoured in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

However, searches for sensitive topics are blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Searches from Beijing for Dalai Lama and Tiananmen Square Massacre cannot be displayed and the computer freezes.

Googles move rewinds the status quo to before 2006, when Google opened its google.cn search site in China, agreeing to provide its own censored results. But Beijing may yet run out of patience with Googles solution. Googles strategy leaves the google.com.hk search engine vulnerable to a total blockade. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which is owned by Google, are completely shut out of the mainland.

Scandal rubbish and waffle of EU tact George Walden

George Walden & , : {}

Poor Cathy Ashton, the EU High Representative, whose appointment is commencement to see suspiciously similar to a masculine conspiracy. Currently she is being blamed for tardiness in formulating an EU tactful service. Those who, similar to myself, have the EUs interests at heart will goal the Baroness suffers no inexperienced stroke of cunning and efficiency.

With the wholly remaining and hugely costly unfamiliar use the EU has written a appurtenance for kicking itself in the pants, an institutionalised liaison that will run and run and one day shake up the foundations of the community.

Europe wants to lift the voice in the world. To do that the envoys need something to say. At home tactful instructions are negotiated in in in between FCO ministers and polite servants, afterwards in in in between the FCO and (say) the Ministry of Defence, afterwards in assorted committees and eventually with No 10. Dilution, in the meantime, is not unknown. In the EU that routine will be double probably to infinity, as will the dilution. And as we see from those laugh-or-cry TV images of the musical-chair leaders, there is no one to take decisions positively no one to mount prior to a mike and urge them.

Imagine that the United Nations set up tactful missions via the world, and the General Assembly had to discuss instructions to the ambassadors, and you get a little thought of the general imitation that is shortly to be played out prior to the eyes.

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On the ground, what will happen? If the Russians wish to receptive to advice out Europes intentions on Iran will they serve the Irishwoman/Frenchman/ Luxemburger who has wangled the pursuit of EU ambassador? Unless they are changed by personal or inhabitant factors to blow up unwisely far some-more expected in a multilateral use they will contend the usually thing they can but upsetting one or multiform of the twenty-seven EU members: that all things considered, in Iran as in alternative uneasy regions of the world, the EU favours a peaceful, negotiated solution. But what if the theme is Gazproms vital designs in Western Europe? Diplomacy is not all shy waffle, and infrequently you contingency take a stand.

Relationships in in in between inhabitant British or Spanish or Belgian ambassadors and their EU cher collègue will be interesting, in a Peter Ustinov sort of way. Think prestige. What distance and have of car is suitable for an attach� representing not one but twenty-seven countries? Security, too, could be fun. Where will the loyalties of a worldly staff lie? And what currencies or powders competence find their way, as in sure Third World missions, in to the tactful bag, due to a little brash appointment between the youth staff, maybe by an attach� with a checkered background?

And think of the expense. At a time of poverty at home the EU gravy-train will turn airborne. Rumanian/ Czech/Netherlandish spouses will never leave their ambassadorial alternative halves in assent compartment those appalling curtains, that demeaning car or ill-located chateau is transposed by something some-more extravagant, and the representational costs stipend ambassadorial consorts need to skirt nicely, dont they? is increased.

I verbalise from experience, and have reason to hold EU experience will be vastly worse, since bath plugs notwithstanding, this nation stays less hurtful than most. Think of the parliamentary losses liaison on a worldwide scale. The tabloids will go ape, and the tabloids will be right.

I am astounded feminists have not leapt to the counterclaim of Cathy Ashton, since the charge with that she has been lumbered is not usually daunting, it is impossible. Turning a quangocrat in to a yarn Baroness, afterwards in to a figure of forged tellurian energy and management seems to me a cynical, common movement of masculine condescension.

Give the lady a destroyed assignment, watch her have a pigs ear of it, and keep unfamiliar process in inhabitant hands. But no need to be unpleasant, in personal terms. Hence the synthetically understanding difference we listen to from Brussels. Of what man has it been said, as an EU government official has of Ashton, that he might not be up to most but he has a heart of gold?

The difficulty is we are stranded with it now, and so is she. Her usually cool march of movement would be to contend that on serve care the complete plan is misconceived, and resign. The risk is not usually of a muffled, discredited voice for Europe, it is that the inhabitant voice will be reduced, too, at just the impulse when that of the US is abating and those of Russia and China are rising. We contingency display the responsibility and obstinate unsteadiness of this tactful unsteadiness relentlessly, move it in to the shame it will merit and direct that it should cease.

George Walden, a former shrewd person and MP, worked for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1962-83

hair wig

Britain loses hold on energy as last tip post is vacated

James Bone, New York & , : {}

Britains loss change at the United Nations is set to collapse even offer with the depart of the last superfluous British central in the tip echelons of the universe body.

Sir John Holmes, the UN charitable chief, has told The Times that he plans to step down after this year in a move that could leave Britain with no illustration in in between tip officials at UN headquarters.

Sir John, right afar co-ordinating the general reply to the Haiti earthquake, insisted that his depart was months afar and refused to divulge what he would do next.

The Times has learnt, however, that he is to take over as executive of the Ditchley Foundation, that runs general affairs conferences at the lifelike Ditchley Park estate in Oxfordshire.

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Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the foundations stream head and a former British Ambassador to Iraq, plans to retire in the autumn.

As in the European Union, tip posts at the UN are an critical pitch of inhabitant prestige. Although the UN is ostensible to be run by a neutral general polite service, the tip jobs have regularly been common out in in between the assorted energy blocs in the 192-nation organisation.

All five veto-bearing powers Britain, France, China, Russia and the US traditionally lay explain to at slightest one under-secretary-general post at UN headquarters.

Britains change has discontinued given the attainment of Ban Ki Moon, a former South Korean Foreign Minister who became UN Secretary-General in 2007 after a understanding in in between the US and China.

Under Mr Bans predecessor, Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, Britain enjoyed a excavation of tip UN jobs. At one point Mr Annan had 3 high-ranking British officials on his staff: a British emissary in Mark Malloch Brown, after Lord Malloch Brown; a British domestic potentate in Sir Kieran Prendergast, and a British security arch in Sir David Veness, Scotland Yards former tip anti-terror officer.

Sir John is right afar the usually Briton left with the arrange of under-secretary-general at UN headquarters.

When Mr Ban took over the organisation, Britain petitioned him to have Sir John the UNs domestic arch a supportive post that gives a nation change over the sum progression of UN negotiations.

The domestic post has been hold by a array of Britons given Sir Brian Urquhart, the long-serving central well known as Mr UN, hold the pursuit from 1971-1985. But after Sir Kieran was forced out in 2005 in a row over Iraq, the post went to Ibrahim Gambari, a Nigerian.

Sir John, a former British Ambassador to Paris, was intensely well competent to offer as the UNs arch domestic officer, carrying been in isolation cabinet member and tactful confidant to dual budding ministers John Major and Tony Blair.

Mr Ban deserted his candidacy for the domestic post in what appeared to be a distributed tactful impugn in reply to Britains half hearted await for his debate to turn UN chief.

Instead, Mr Ban allocated an American, Lynn Pascoe, as his tip domestic confidant and declared Sir John as the UNs charitable arch a less absolute job.

The appointment lifted eyebrows given of Sir Johns roughly sum miss of charitable experience. Many questioned the knowledge of putting a adult of a vital Western energy in the post given of the difficulties he would have operative in such places as Sudan. Sir John has been forced to sense on the job, opposed the continual disasters that succeed the world.

In new weeks he has taken assign of service efforts in Haiti following the harmful trembler that claimed an estimated 230,000 lives.

Sir John not long ago uttered beating with the UN reply in an inner e-mail that was leaked to Foreign Policy magazine. This is a vital exam for all of us and we cannot means to fail. So I ask you all to take a uninformed tough see at what you are means to do in the key areas, and aspire to a most some-more assertive proceed to assembly the needs, he wrote.

British diplomats have told colleagues that London is doubtful to put brazen an additional claimant to reinstate Sir John as the UN charitable chief. Instead, Britain is approaching to run Mr Ban for an additional comparison post, such as the domestic post of UN arch of staff. The new Government will have an event to press Britains box when the Queen meets Mr Ban in a revisit on Jul 6 to broach her initial residence to the UN General Assembly given 1957.

Bank rates solid to symbol year at jot down low

Ian King, Deputy Business Editor & , : {}

The Bank of Englands Monetary Policy Committee left seductiveness rates unvaried at 0.5 per cent yesterday and additionally hold behind from any increases to the item squeeze programme.

The preference equates to that the rate, by the time of the Banks subsequent monthly meeting, will have remained at 0.5 per cent for thirteen months. Today outlines the initial anniversary of the Bank slicing the main process rate from 1 per cent to the benefaction jot down low.

There had been conjecture in the City that the infirmity of the liberation could outcome in a resumption in the programme of quantitative easing (QE) and Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank, indicated last month that the Bank was ready, if necessary, to magnify QE on that it has outlayed 200 billion.

Stephen Boyle, head of organisation economics for Royal Bank of Scotland, said: No headlines is great news. The MPC didnt magnify QE, definition the economy doesnt need an additional shot in the arm, for the impulse at least. But a diseased liberation will need the one after another await of monetary policymakers as households, firms, and shortly the Government, try to get their houses in order.

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However, commercial operation organisations urged the Bank to cruise serve increases in QE in entrance months.

Ian McCafferty, the CBIs arch mercantile adviser, said: As the mercantile liberation has intensely shoal roots, the Bank should mount ready to go on with the quantitative easing programme, as required.

The Bank done no proclamation after the decision, serve sum of that will arise when mins of the assembly are published on Mar 17.

Sterling was mostly unvaried on the news, rising from $1.5073 rught away prior to the preference to $1.5104 afterwards, but after slipping behind to the $1.5030 level. Against the euro, the bruise rose from €1.1018 to €1.1072.

• The European Central Bank motionless to hold the benchmark seductiveness rate at a jot down low of 1 per cent, but pronounced it was phasing out a little of the puncture await it put in place during the monetary crisis. It will go on lending as most income as banks need on a weekly and monthly basement at the benchmark rate until Oct 12, but banks wishing to steal on a three-monthly basement contingency bid for the supports they need at auctions, as was the box prior to the crisis.