He worries that his payments to a rent boy might look far worse in the press "than a heterosexual man paying a prostitute".Another tale begins: "Little was real about Kenny." Kenny is a conman in a spurious Guards tie who survives by sticking to the letter of the law And little is credible about this book. In fact, nothing about it rings so true as the author's strange compulsion to plunder his own headlines - fair or unfair - for the details of scams that generally turn out well. Not invariably, though: the tale of the cash-stuffed envelope almost ends very nastily indeed.. More than one-quarter of the national vocational qualifications set up in the 1990s have not been completed by a single student, the Government's exams regulator says. More than one-quarter of the national vocational qualifications set up in the 1990s have not been completed by a single student, the Government's exams regulator says. Statistics published by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority showed nearly 250 of the 870 National Vocational Qualifications available had never been finished.

Many more have been completed by a handful of people, according to the report, based on all awards made before September last year.Among the least popular National Vocational Qualifications are amenity horticulture (cemetery and graveyard maintenance), launched in 1997 but never completed; fish husbandry, launched in 1996; and demolition, first offered in 1995.Level-two aircraft engineering maintenance and level- two wood preserving, both roughly equivalent to five GCSEs, failed to find students, while level-three qualifications in paper manufacturing and telesales, each broadly corresponding to A-levels, are also among those not yet awarded, according to the statistics.But some qualifications have been highly successful, with about 250,000 passing in hairdressing and more than 200,000 people gaining NVQs in administration.Since their launch in 1990, millions of pounds have been spent developing and promoting the qualifications, which were designed to encourage on-the-job training.They are based on measuring candidates' ability to carry out particular jobs rather than being awarded at the end of a formal college course.Overall, 2.6 million NVQ certificates have been awarded since the qualification was launched by the Conservatives as a central plank of theirgovernment's efforts to improve the training of Britain's workforce.More than 400,000 awards were made during the last academic year. A spokesman for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said the decision whether to run individual qualifications rested with each exam board but predicted widespread rationalisation later this year.All NVQs must be submitted to exam regulators for approval later this year as part of a programme to overhaul each of the country's thousands of workrelated courses.The review is part of efforts to cut the number of other vocational qualifications now available, estimated to exceed 16,000. Scores of unpopular NVQs have already been scrapped under a programme of regular reviews.Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Liverpool University, said redundant qualifications wasted money and confused students. "We are still left with a lot of qualifications which no one has completed ...

lot of these qualifications have been created, even though there seems not to be a lot of demand from employers. The trouble with this inflated list of qualifications is not only that you have the development costs and the cost of keeping the qualifications on the books but it is not clear to trainees which [ones are] well-regarded by employers.". John Prescott's controversial plan to part-privatise air traffic control was facing the threat yesterday of legal action by the European Commission. John Prescott's controversial plan to part-privatise air traffic control was facing the threat yesterday of legal action by the European Commission. Brussels is considering whether to block the sale of 51 per cent of National Air Traffic Services (Nats) on the basis that it breaches competition law. Leaders of air traffic controllers have told the commission that the creation of a state-owned "golden share" in the new enterprise, designed to veto an undesired takeover bid, and a cap of 15 per cent on any single share holding infringes a previous ruling by Brussels.Last year the commission said that the privatisation of the British Airports Authority in 1987 was unlawful because it contained such provisions.In a letter to the commission, Paul Noon, general secretary of IPMS, the controllers' union, says the status of Brussels would be undermined if the Deputy Prime Minister was allowed to "flout" its opinions by pressing ahead with the Nats sell-off.

The letter points out that the commission's deliberations over the airports authority took 12 years and called for "urgency" in the case of air traffic control because the legislation was currently before Parliament.Speaking at the launch of an e-mail campaign against the sell-off, Mr Noon said: "Apart from the safety implications of privatisation, there is little doubt in my mind that the Government's proposals are unlawful and that the sell-off should be abandoned."A spokesman for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions argued that European law allows for mechanisms such as golden shares where national security was involved, as was the case in this instance.. Defence officials were criticised by a Commons committee yesterday for overspending their budget by more than £37m last year. Defence officials were criticised by a Commons committee yesterday for overspending their budget by more than £37m last year. The Ministry of Defence had overspent for four years, the Public Accounts Committee said. Last year its permanent under-secretary, Kevin Tebbit, apologised to the committee for overspending and said changes had been made to prevent it happening again.The repeat of the problemwas caused in part by the knock-on effect of a cut in the Nato budget and by a failure to collect money owed to the department.Yesterday's report said the committee was "extremely concerned" and pointed out that parliamentary grants were spending limits, not targets.

"The committee views every excess vote as a serious matter as they always represent some failure in control," it said. The MoD's repeated transgressions suggested "a failure to recognise the overriding importance of having parliamentary authority for all expenditure".Three other departments - the Lord Chancellor's Department, the Serious Fraud Office and the Office for National Statistics - also spent more than they were allotted by Parliament in 1998-99.The Lord Chancellor's Department overspent by £1.1m after money was credited to its accounts for the wrong yearThe Serious Fraud Office faced £159,628 in damages against it after the courts quashed search warrants it had obtained in a case involving US authorities, and also made a mistake in the calculation of VAT receipts, taking its overspend to £740,000.The Office for National Statistics overspent by £5.1m because of an error in the wording of its authority to spend All but £1,000 was recovered.. Tony Blair agrees Britain is suffering from a north-south divide, in a U-turn aimed at stemming the disillusion with the Government in Labour's traditional heartlands. Tony Blair agrees Britain is suffering from a north-south divide, in a U-turn aimed at stemming the disillusion with the Government in Labour's traditional heartlands. The Prime Minister has privately conceded he provoked a backlash among Labour voters by playing down Britain's regional divide. In December he attacked the stereotypes of the "downtrodden North and the prosperous South" and declared: "The greater divide which exists in every region is between the haves and the have-nots."Now Mr Blair has told The Journal in Newcastle : "It's an important debate to have, but the North-South divide exists, and I never said it doesn't."Mr Blair is spearheading a Cabinet "charm offensive" in the North amid growing alarm in the Labour hierarchy that mass abstentions by party supporters could severely damage Labour's prospects at the next general election.Mr Blair and other ministers have launched a media blitz in the North to reassure the region the Government is standing up for its interests. Their conciliatory approach in a series of regional media interviews is markedly different to Downing Street's more cautious message to the London-based national media, which is designed not to alienate middle-class voters.Mr Blair, one of six Cabinet ministers who represent Parliamentary seats in the north- east, said the Government was putting a "disproportionate" amount of money into the region to tackle unemployment, 50 per cent more than justified by the area's population.Mr Blair spent last weekend in his Sedgefield constituency, and the north-east has also seen high-profile visits in the past two weeks by John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor Gordon Brown and the Industry Secretary Stephen Byers.Mr Brown told regional newspapers his Budget on 21 March would help hard-pressed areas of Britain."I want to make sure all the regions share in the nation's prosperity, particularly areas that have suffered from historically high unemployment," he said. "I want to see more enterprise initiatives, more small businesses starting up and more matching of skills to jobs."Today David Blunkett, the Education and Employment Secretary, will announce that 50,000 jobless people in 15 unemployment blackspots will qualify for a "personal job account" worth up to £5,000 to help them with training and finding work.The new "employment zones" in his £112m scheme will include one in Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland.