The Queen is about to unveil a raft of new legislation to herald the start of Labour's second term of government.
She has arrived at the Palace of Westminster amid much pageantry to perform the ceremony of the state opening of parliament in the House of Lords.
Accompanied by Prince Philip, the Queen arrived by horse-drawn carriage at the Sovereign's entrance of the palace shortly before 1115 BST (1015GMT).
As a giant Royal Standard fluttered from the flagpole above the parliament building, peers gathered in the Upper Chamber to await her arrival.
By tradition, MPs stayed in the Commons chamber, waiting to be summoned to hear the speech in the Lords by Black Rod.
Reforming public services and boosting business and enterprise are expected to form the centrepiece of her speech outlining the government's programme for the next five years.
But other vote-catching manifesto promises - including a ban on tobacco advertising and the relaxing of licensing laws - are likely to be left out.
A new law is expected to make price-fixing by big business cartels a criminal offence, which could in theory mean bosses receiving a prison sentence.
The measures already highlighted by Chancellor Gordon Brown would also see new bankruptcy and insolvency laws to make it easier to start up firms after projects have failed.
Rules on cross-media ownership could also be changed, making it easier for mergers to take place - with the aim of allowing Britain to keep pace with the global media explosion.
Key pledges
Also predicted are measures to reform schools and hospitals - Labour's key pledge in the election.
Laws which would help the private sector to provide NHS services could be announced along with an increase in specialist secondary schools.
On crime, a bill is likely to tackle persistent offenders, give victims a new charter of rights and seize the cash from drug dealers.
One omission when the Queen takes her seat, however, is thought to be any attempt at reform of the Upper House itself.
Speculation continues as to whether a Bill banning hunting with dogs will be among the first measures announced.
Three options are expected to be put before MPs in a free vote - no change, an outright ban and self-regulation, believed to be favoured by Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Labour MPs returning to Westminster after their second landslide victory gave the government a 167-seat majority over all other parties will be anxious to see signs of Mr Blair's promised "radical" agenda.
Tory policies?
But shadow cabinet office minister Andrew Lansley accused the government of copying many Tory policies on public service delivery.
He said that the electorate had given Labour a second chance and "the excuses have really fallen away now".
"We might be forgiven for just pointing out the irony that many of the things the Labour government are now proposing to do are in effect to adopt some of the Conservative policies," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
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Sophie finds the going heavy in neon stripes (UK Times)
BY STEFANIE MARSH
WAS Bertie Bassett weaving his way through the crowds yesterday or was it a large slice of Neapolitan ice cream? No, it was the Countess of Wessex in an array of some of this season’s neon colours topped by what could have been a fluffy meringue, but was a hat. An unfortunate combination.
Even taken individually there was not much justification for her choice. Let’s start with the stripes. Horizontal. Unwise for any woman the wrong side of 8 stone, especially one who agonised over her engagement photographs, thinking herself too generously proportioned to be a future member of the Royal Family. She apparently dieted, gave up alcohol, underwent strange slimming treatments with seaweed and shed a stone in time for the wedding. But apparently no one told her about stripes and the devilish effect that they can have on a girl’s girth.
Then there were the colours. Neon might be brightening some designers’ lives but that is because most are more interested in how their clothes look on models barely out of their teens.
Nobody older than 20 should be seen in neon unless they are riding a bike. In the dark. Twinned with the Countess’s rosy complexion, the acid colours turned a home counties girl into a Florida Housewife. On to the tassles. If there has been a Mexican revival in fashion circles, the Countess is the first to know. The fringed stripes sliced her into unmanageable parts. As for the jewellery, true there was a “trash chic” edge to gold this winter but the combination of so much glitz with so much glare was more Miami Beach than Ascot.
The Countess seemed cheerfully oblivious to what any one might have to say, and, unlike the majority of those casting critical glances, genuinely did not seem to care.
Zara Phillips, on the other hand, was turning heads for all the right reasons. Her dress, a sleek but simple number, could easily have come from the shelves of the fashionable high street store that bears her name.
Her accessories were kept to a minimum save for some pearl earrings (very “now”) and a pair of shades that she had wisely decided not to prop on top of her head — a look that causes instant fashion death because of its associations with a certain kind of Euro-trash.
Instead Zara wore a matching lace hat. While not perhaps at the height of fashion, its lacey texture is a nod to the vintage movement that is sweeping the nation.
Anyone who doubts her status as Britain’s most fashionable royal should look at her pashmina, tucked where it should be — almost out of sight in her handbag.
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Zara makes her Ascot fashion debut(Electronic Telegraph)
By Caroline Davies
ZARA PHILLIPS made her fashion debut at Royal Ascot yesterday with a winning combination of lilac lace hat and pale green floral dress.
The 20-year-old daughter of the Princess Royal made a low-key entrance with her boyfriend, the jockey Richard Johnson, 22. The couple chose not to arrive with other members of the Royal party, and initially headed for the area set aside for owners and trainers.
Miss Phillips, an accomplished three-day eventer who is currently undertaking a sports massage course at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, was 12 when she last attended the meeting. Yesterday she chose a £400 hat by up-and-coming milliner Tara O'Callaghan, based in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
The Queen's grand-daughter, who is tenth in line to the throne, had seen Miss O'Callaghan's designs at a polo match fashion show. Miss O'Callaghan, 28, said yesterday: "Zara is so pretty she would look good in any hat." Miss Phillips and Mr Johnson spent much of the day wandering hand-in-hand. But, when she finally decided to enter the Royal Enclosure, she was not instantly recognised by officials.
She was stopped for not wearing a badge, and was admitted only when she held up her handbag to show the badge attached to it. It was an echo of a moment in 1993 when her mother was initially barred from the same enclosure for not carrying her badge.
For the first time in 30 years the Royal Procession by carriage was cancelled, because of today's State Opening of Parliament. All the Queen's horses, and many of her men, it seemed, were needed back in London for a rehearsal. So the Royal Party, which included the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and the Queen Mother, who celebrates her 101st birthday in August, arrived by car.
The Queen was wearing a beige and white spotted silk dress worn under a cream wool coat, both by Hardy Amies, and set off with a beige straw hat with cream trim by Freddie Fox. The Royal Procession will be back on Thursday and Friday.
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A tale of Noodles the bongo and the Prince of Wales's inflatable cow
ALAN COREN
The Devil makes work for idle hacks. Not that I had intended to be idle last Saturday, I had intended to go to the tennis at the Queen’s Club to cheer on Tiny Tim, but — for all that God blesses us, every one — the Devil had been up to his old tricks there, too, and the rain was drumming on the covers so thunderously that even if Queen’s had been staging the Stella Artois Water Polo Tournament, it would have been called off. So I stayed home and switched on Trooping the Colour, where the poor bloody infantry were yomping up and down in four acres of knee-high puddle, bringing on the unsettling thought that if one of them fainted, as they are sometimes wont to do, the torrent might take his rigid supine form and wash it right out of Horseguard’s Parade, down the Mall, and into some Whitehall drain, just like Hans Christian Andersen’s constant tin soldier; and because this image not surprisingly brought a tear to my eye, and I’d had quite enough superfluous water for one day, I switched off the box. Whereupon the Devil saw to it that I picked up The Times.
Which, on page four, carried a photograph of a new-born bongo. However, despite being the greatest newspaper in the world, The Times did not say what a bongo was. It said only that the new bongo was called Noodles, and that its father, an old bongo, also shown in the photograph, was called Ali. This, as the Devil knew it would, irritated me no end: not only did I not know what a bongo was, other than that it was an animal of some kind, any fool could see that, I did not know why the London Zoo, where the new one was born three weeks ago, should have christened it Noodles. I could, of course, take a shy at why the zoo had christened its father Ali, because I recalled a great magician called Ali Bongo whom I had seen with my own father, not called Ali, at the Finsbury Park Empire in 1947, where he wore a fez, not my father, and, among other things, vanished a girl with terrific legs from his wardrobe, possibly because Mrs Bongo had just walked in downstairs, I can’t tell you for sure, I was only nine, so I assume that whoever is in charge of christenings at the London Zoo saw the act, too, and charmingly wished to pay Mr Bongo the homage he so richly deserves. Noodles Bongo is, however, another matter entirely. Is it, perhaps, a gourmet dish in its native land — wherever that is when it isn’t Regent’s Park — in which case the Christening Dept. has a pretty tacky sense of humour? Or could it be that Ali Bongo, the other one, the one in the fez, had a son called Noodles, and the zoo was simply being consistent? I stared out of the window. The rain came down. Time passed. And eventually, of course, the Devil said: go on, phone.
So I did, and after pushing a lot of star buttons and listening to a lot of compelling stuff about foot-and-mouth and banqueting and cut-price videos and how to adopt a pelican, I finally made contact with a human being in a peaked cap (you can tell, I swear) and I said: “I believe you have a new bongo”, and he said: “Yes, we have”, and I said: “Can I come and see it?” and he said: “Yes, you’ll find it in the Old Cattle House”, so at least I now knew, roughly, what a bongo was, though why Noodles wasn’t in the New Cattle House I couldn’t imagine, unless it was because bongos like to stay with their dads for a bit, until they are old enough to be told what to do if they find a good-looking female bongo in their wardrobe.
Now, the London Zoo is just a toddle from where I live, now that I have left the Old Cricklewood House, so I put my brolly up and sloshed across the park, and I paid my tenner, and I sought out the Old Cattle House, and there were the bongos, père et fils. There was also a keeper. “Is that Noodles?” I said. “Yes,” he said. We were both, by the way, grown men. “Why is it called Noodles?” I asked. “Hard to say,” he replied. “There’s a committee.” So I came home again.
But the Devil had not yet finished with me. When I picked up The Times once more to check on the bongos — to whom I had now grown close — I spotted that the self-same page contained this short item: “The Prince of Wales attended one of the country’s only agricultural shows to be held this summer, but because of foot-and-mouth disease there were no cattle at the East of England Show in Peterborough. The only cow was a giant inflatable canvas one which collapsed in the wind.” Is it not at times like this that one’s heart truly goes out to HRH? All the way to Peterborough in the pouring rain just to see a canvas cow go bang, when you and I, unbound by the exigencies of duty and high office, can stroll across Regent’s Park any old time we like, and see a living bongo.