"He's very steady, never loses his cool, he's a dedicated family man. "They think there's a profit to be made, but don't expect them to tell you how. They trust no-one but themselves."All three brothers have been handed careers by their father, each of them working at some stage as a vice-president of Glazer Snr's First Allied Corporation, a property firm that makes its money in investments ranging from trailer parks to shopping malls. Since 1995, Joel and Bryan have been vice-presidents of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the National Football League franchise they have run together since.
A spokesperson for UK Athletics confirmed that McConnell had attempted only one race over the hurdles, in Deffau, Germany last month, and had fallen after stumbling over the eighth hurdle."I know I need to race to justify this selection," McConnell said after the announcement of the women's team that will seek to make amends for its relegation from the Super League last year and the men's team chasing a sixth victory in Florence from 17-19 June. Britain's selectors confirmed two safe bets yesterday when they named Kelly Holmes and Paula Radcliffe in the women's team that will seek to make an immediate return to the top flight of the European Cup on 18-19 June - but elsewhere in the programme they have taken a big gamble by selecting an athlete for an event in which she has never previously completed. Shell says details of the deal are secret but says it and its partners Mitsubishi and Mitsui are shouldering all the risk in a difficult frontier project.To make matters worse, last year President Vladimir Putin seized control of local resource revenues for Moscow. With no safeguards, the region's governor, Ivan Malakhov, believes Sakhalin will lose out on the benefit of the oil and gas to the tune of 1.5bn roubles (£300m) a year.A more direct political challenge is coming from Gennadii Zlivko, the newly elected mayor of Korsakov, the town closest to Shell's new gas plant. Not all PR systems are the same: some of them are quite good.DERYCK LAMINGEXETER,DEVONSir: Chee Hoong Chung (letter, 6 June) states that Oxford University has taken the lead with regard to a "none of the above" option through its inclusion of the "candidate","RON", an acronym for "reopen nominations", on student ballot forms. However, this is not unique to Oxford: both the Guild of Students at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the students' union at the University of Wales, Lampeter, and presumably others, offer a "RON" option for each position in their elections.JAMES BARKERABERYSTWYTH CEREDIGIONSir: It is incorrect to say, as Chee Hoong Chung does, that Oxford University has taken the lead in including "RON" on student ballot forms: this practice was also common at York University in the early 1990s and has almost certainly been widespread elsewhere for some time.ANDREW RICHARDSLONDON SE19Sir: Perhaps Tony Blair should give us a referendum on electoral reform.
He could offer us a choice of maintaining the current system and a large number of other options such as various forms of proportional representation. Unfortunately, I suspect we would only get the chance to vote for one of the options and the first would win with less than half the vote.MATTHEW MINORWORCESTER Let's hear it for Africa Sir: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is absolutely right ("Bob Geldof and the white man's burden", Opinion, 6 June) Bob Geldof misses Andy Kershaw's point. A multi-racial mix of bands would introduce voices and music to the rest of the world that we might never hear otherwise. The world should hear Africa in its glory not just its woe.ADRIENNE FITZWILLIAMTUNBRIDGE WELLS, KENT Extreme reaction Sir: I noted with interest your warning that "extremists" might be intent on causing trouble at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles (report, 1 June) I can only assume that you mean the police.