Ok, its taken me some time to find the bag I wanted, but this is it. Its a real snug fit with plenty of padding and extra pockets - love it!

Features:

Totally Campus - the latest range from Eastpak that combines urban designs with functionality and durability. The Freshman messenger bag is a smart laptop bag with an internal padded sleeve for books, 17″ laptop…

ROCKERS REVOLT is a brand new record label brought to you by UK reggae creators Pama Intl. Inspired by the great independent labels; Stax, Studio One, 2 Tone, Stiff and a deep-rooted DIY philosophy. What
started out as being the outlet for Pama Intl’s own material, has grown
into a burgeoning home for the finest soul-fueled reggae, ska,
rocksteady, dub & roots artists from the UK and abroad…

http://www.rockersrevolt.com/

Re:Align:Design to build ROCKERS REVOLT. The brand spanking new record label brought to you by UK ska & reggae sensation Pama Intl. Releasing the finest soul-fuelled reggae-dub-roots-lovers-rocksteady-steppas-ska, modern day classics.

http://www.rockersrevolt.com/ 

In an institutional buyout, mid-market private equity firm LDC is backing the management team which built the La Tasca chain in their latest business venture - the rollout of Mediterranean-style restaurant group Ego.

Established in 1997, Ego offers an eclectic mix of dishes from all over the Mediterranean, cooked using predominantly fresh and locally sourced produce. It currently operates five restaurants across the North West, with a sixth scheduled to open in the Midlands in late April.

Led by Executive Chairman James Horler, the five-strong management team at Ego has acquired a significant minority stake in the business. The same team has opened approximately 120 restaurants in the UK since 1996, comprising 57 La Tasca units and 63 Frankie & Benny’s units.

In 2001 the team completed the £27million IBO of Spanish-themed chain La Tasca, and increased profits four fold before selling the business in 2007.

LDC, which has taken a majority stake in the business, will invest up to £9.1million to fund the initial acquisition and the rollout of 36 new outlets.

The buyout, which provides a full exit for Ego’s founders Jason Ellison and Jonathan Poole, was led by Craig Armour, Senior Director in LDC’s Edinburgh office. John Barnes and Ian Edward join the business as non-executive directors.

Barnes acquired Harry Ramsdens in 1988, led the IPO in 1989 and completed the £20million sale to Compass in 1999. Edward is a former non executive of Duke Street Capital and recently advised Paramount on the acquisition of Cafe Uno and Loch Fyne on the sale to Greene King Plc.

James Horler, Executive Chairman of Ego, said: “Many suburban areas in the Midlands and North West are under-provided for in terms of quality casual dining and Ego is well placed to make excellent inroads into this area.

“The concept has already proved popular in key locations across the North. We’ve acquired a well-run chain which will act as a solid platform from which to develop the business and execute a successful rollout.

“In LDC we’ve secured the backing of a leading investor which understands our approach and will provide the financial and strategic support required to establish Ego as a successful restaurant brand.”

Craig Armour, Senior Director at LDC, said: “The casual dining sector is set to continue to grow as eating out is such an integral part of people’s lifestyles.

“We’re backing a management team which has worked together since 1995 and which has a track record of using their complementary skills to create significant shareholder value.”

ENDS 28 March 2008
Press Release by http://www.citypress.co.uk/

The former management team of La Tasca, the Spanish tapas bar chain, has secured private equity funding to buy Ego, a Mediterranean restaurant concept, and develop it into a national chain.

James Horler, who quit as chief executive of La Tasca after its sale to Robert Tchenguiz a year ago for about £136 million, is leading the buy-in of Ego, which is based in northwest England.

LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds TSB, is supplying £9.1 million of equity and loan stock in return for a 58 per cent stake.

The money will fund acquisition of the fledgeling chain from its founders, Jason Ellison and Jonathan Poole, and the rollout of a further 38 outlets over the next four years.

Mr Horler, who becomes executive chairman of Ego, and five colleagues will take a combined 42 per cent stake by investing some of the money that they made from the La Tasca sale.

John Barnes, the former chairman of La Tasca, becomes a non-executive director.

Mr Horler, who also ran the Frankie & Benny’s chain for The Restaurant Group, said that Ego would initially focus on suburban areas in the North and Midlands, including Nottingham and Leeds.

He said: “There is a lack of quality casual dining, table-service restaurants in suburban locations. These are places that the big national brands haven’t got to and probably won’t get to.”

Ego, which has an average net spend per head of £19, was aimed at the over-40s “who don’t want to have to go into the city centre to find a decent restaurant”.

It has five outlets in the North West — in Chester, Liverpool, Heswall, Stockton Heath and Bramhall — and will soon open its first in the Midlands, in Lichfield.

Mr Horler said that once the group reached ten sites it would seek to raise debt funding, and that he was confident the business would be able to ride out a fall in consumer spending, arguing that restaurants were “a reasonably safe bet”.

Craig Armour, senior director at LDC, is handling the deal. In his previous job at Penta Capital he backed Mr Horler and Mr Barnes in the £27.2 million buyout of La Tasca in 2001. Four years later, it floated with an enterprise value of £71 million.

Originally published by The Times - view full article?

The Ego website was built by Re:Align:Design Ltd, you can view it online @
http://www.egorestaurants.co.uk/

Thursday 27th March 2008 saw the brand new Ego Restaurants Website relaunched by Re:Align:Design. With the emphasis on clean, crisp design the new Ego website will change seasonally to reflect the core brand and ethos of the company.

Take a look for yourself at:

http://www.egorestaurants.co.uk/

Today, Re:Align:Design Ltd (nee Sammyco Consultancy Ltd) ran by Sam Hutchinson is five years old, no mean feat when you consider the below article from http://www.bytestart.co.uk/

BUSINESS START-UPS AND CLOSURES SURGE

New statistics released by Barclays show that a record 471,500 new businesses were started up in 2007 - an increase of 3% on 2006.

Looking at these numbers, you might conclude that entrepreneurship is thriving in the UK. However, the figures released by Barclays also highlight a more worrying trend.

The number of businesses that closed down in 2007 surged to 498,900 - an 8% increase on 2006. At this level, the business closure rate is 17%, which is very high by historical standards. In fact, the only time the rate of business closures has been higher was in 1992, when they hit 18%.

The statistics highlight the perilous nature of launching a business. But, when we set out in business, we know that the odds are stacked against us.

According to the statistics, half of all new businesses will fold within the first 3 years. But if we allowed the fear failure grip us, we would never break out of the 9 to 5 grind, and never experience the thrills and spills of running our own business.

article taken from…
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1262

There’s been one nagging question about Internet Explorer (IE) 8 about which I can’t stop wondering: Once it finally ships, will it break the Web?

It’s not just because I’m an unabashed Microsoft skeptic that I am puzzling over this. It’s also because right up until Microsoft decided to go whole-hog and — as many developers and customers wanted — by making “super-standards” mode the IE 8 default, Microsoft officials claimed that going the full-fledged standards route would “break the Web.” What, if anything, changed, making Microsoft willing to assume that risk?

After all, just a month before announcing it was going to make super-standards mode the IE 8 default, IE Platform Architect Chris Wilson blogged:

“We started from a simple statement of ‘enable (and encourage) interoperable web development, but don’t force IE to break pages that work properly in IE today.’ I think we all want to converge to a world where a web developer doesn’t have to spend much time at all testing and recoding their site for different browsers. At the same time, we can’t break the web experience on current sites for users like my mom, even for as good a reason as improving standards compliance. With all the great styling and layout changes we’re working on in our new engine for IE8 to be much more standards compliant, that’s a lot of potential breakage.”

Did Microsoft cut some of the IE 8 features to make it less likely to break sites, pages and applications that adhered to IE-7-specific rules? Or were Microsoft execs guilty of crying wolf, knowing full-well that moving to standards mode wouldn’t really wreak the havoc they claimed?

I put this question to Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of the IE team, last week in Las Vegas at the Microsoft Mix ‘08 conference. Hachamovitch said neither of my theories was correct.

“In the past with IE 7, developers weren’t as proactive (about adhering to standards) as they could have been,” Hachamovitch said. “We took that as a strong data point, regarding how quickly devs will respond to anything that we change in IE.”

He continued: “But this time, the community seems to have shifted. They say they will be more responsive. We are giving developers a much easier way to choose their own timeline (for moving to the fully-standardized IE 8)…. Long term, we know this is the right thing for the Web.”

My interpretation: Microsoft is giving developers more leeway regarding how, when and if they will use the full standards mode in IE 8, but isn’t overly worried about compatibility issues arising because it expects the majority of developers to give super-standards mode more lip service than rapid support.

Hachamovitch also noted that Microsoft was going out on a limb, to an extent, by promising IE 8 would adhere to a number of Web standards that are still evolving, like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.1 and HTML 5. He said that Microsoft was not going to wait for the set-in-stone final versions of these standards, if the standardization process dragged on. Hachamovitch said if the standards changed substantially after Microsoft ships IE 8, the company would have to come up with a plan to deal with that fact.

“We will ship when we are ready to ship,” Hachamovitch said, noting that Microsoft cares more about the “installed base of Web sites,” than the “installed base of browsers” when figuring out how and if it would need to revise IE 8 if it ended up not being compliant with certain, currently unfinished Web standards.

So I’m back to square one. I think Microsoft’s official stance is that it’s done the “right thing” by making standards mode the default for IE 8, but it doesn’t expect many developers to actually rush out and redo their applications and pages to take advantage of this new mode.

What’s your take? Even though Microsoft is getting love for going the standards route now, whenver IE 8 is finally released (Beta 2 is due this summer), do you think the Redmondians will end up roundly criticized for “breaking the Web”?

taken from…
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1262

From the damp heaths of mid Wales comes the delightfully tight ska of
Smoke Like a Fish. Hardly akin to the adolescent skater music pumped
into the American mainstream in the mid ’90s, this is the genuine
article. In the tradition of The Specials and Toasters, Smoke’s juicy
guitars and round horn stabs frolic in the parallel universe of the
upbeat.