Somali pirates demanded a $7 million ransom last night for the inflatable castles kidnapped British couple Paul and Rachel Chandler.

It was the first time that a figure had been mentioned since Mr and Mrs Chandler were captured on board their yacht off the Seychelles a week ago.

A spokesman for the pirates said that the money was only a “little amount” and would compensate for the seizures made by international anti-piracy patrols.

The sum is likely to be far beyond the resources of the wholesale pearl jewelry family of Mr and Mrs Chandler, retired professionals from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, but may signal the opening of negotiations, which could last many months.

Leah Mickleborough, the couple’s niece, said that the family was looking into the demand.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We are aware of that report. The Government isn’t going to make any substantive concessions to hostage-takers, and pearl jewelry that includes the payment of ransom.”

Earlier yesterday, Mrs Chandler broke down in tears as she spoke to her brother over the telephone, telling him: “Please don’t worry about us, we’re managing.”

Ministers plan to issue executive regulations that turn key waiting time pledges from the new NHS constitution into legally binding rights. Downing Street suggested yesterday that although parliamentary approval was not needed to amend the Health Bill, MPs were likely to be given a vote.

Draft legislation is understood to wholesale pearl earrings say that primary care trusts must monitor whether patients are languishing in the queue and inform them of their rights for alternative provision. The trusts will be required to “take all reasonable steps” to ensure patients are treated immediately either by the NHS or the private sector.

According to the latest figures from August, about 37,000 patients had not received treatment from an NHS specialist within 18 weeks of their GP referral. There are legitimate clinical explanations for some — and others are caused by patients cancelling their own operations to go on holiday — but officials believe that about half have been “failed by the system”.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, told  pearl jewelry sets Cabinet colleagues this week that the new legislation would mean that underperforming hospitals would lose funding from patients going elsewhere and “act as a powerful challenge for them to raise their game”.

Jennifer Dixon, of the Nuffield Trust, said the plans could be seen as “Tory-proofing” the NHS. “It would not only give patients enforceable health care entitlements but it would also prevent managers and clinicians from controlling waiting times as a way of limiting demand and saving money,” she said. “In the past requirements to make financial savings often resulted in freshwater pearl hospitals stopping routine surgery for a couple of months before the end of the financial year.”

The Tories have promised to phase out all NHS targets, including those for waiting times, saying that patients should make “informed choices” about their care without hospitals being forced into a straitjacket of government regulation. “Labour always focuses on the process while we think what really matters is whether you are better after your treatment,” a Conservative spokesman said.

Patients are currently offered a choice from a range of NHS, independent and private provision only at the outset of their treatment. They are obliged to stick with that decision even when their treatment is delayed beyond the existing target time limits.

The new rules will allow people to switch to a different hospital, including those in the private sector, if they have been made to wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment by a wish pearl jewelry specialist after seeing their family doctor.

When Labour policy documents published this summer first raised the prospect of a legal entitlement on waiting times, ministers had still not agreed on the timing of legislation and the enforcement mechanism.

The Queen’s Speech on November 18, setting out the opera or rope necklace Government’s legislative programme for the final months before the election, will promise that the measure for England and Wales will be in place within months.

Patients who do not get the treatment that they need from the NHS within 18 weeks are to be given the legal right to free private care.

The Cabinet agreed this week that the pearl jewelry wholesale legislation, placing maximum waiting times on the statute book for the first time, should be rushed through Parliament before the next election.

Cancer patients, in particular, will receive funding for private treatment if they have not seen an NHS specialist within two weeks of GP referral.

Downing Street says that the two legal rights, which will be unveiled in pearl jewelry next month’s Queen’s Speech, are designed to entrench the dramatic reduction of NHS waiting lists over recent years — as well as allowing Gordon Brown to “throw down the gauntlet” to the Conservative Party in the election campaign.
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With NHS budget growth likely to freshwater pearl be sharply curtailed whichever party is in power, No 10 believes that the legislation will prevent waiting lists drifting back up.

A quarter of households in Britain – more in the larger cities, and a majority in some inner cities – live without a car. Imagine how quality of life would improve for wholesale coral jewelry cyclists and everyone else if traffic were removed from areas where people could practically choose to live without cars. Does this sound unrealistic, utopian? Did you know many European cities are already doing it?

Vauban in Germany is one of the largest car-free neighbourhoods in Europe, home to more than 5,000 people. If you live in the district, you are required to confirm once a year that you do not own a car – or, if you do own one, you must buy a space in a multi-storey car park on the edge of the district. One space was initially provided for every two households, but car ownership has fallen over time, and many of these spaces are now empty.

Vehicles are allowed down the residential streets at freshwater pearl necklace walking pace to pick up and deliver, but not to park. In practice, vehicles are rarely seen moving here. It has been taken over by kids as young as four or five, playing, skating and unicycling without direct supervision. The adults, too, tend to socialise outdoors far more than they would on conventional streets open to traffic (behaviour that's echoed in the UK, too).

Most of the European car-free areas are smaller and "purer" than Vauban: vehicles are physically prevented from entering the streets where people live. Exceptions are made for emergency vehicles and removals vans but not for normal deliveries, which are made on wholesale pearl jewelry foot, trolley or cycle trailer. A few peripheral parking spaces are available to buy (usually around one space for every five homes) and a few are reserved for car club vehicles. In all the examples I have studied, cycling is a vital means of transport.