Paper round: Poles return home while Taj Mahal gets mud bath

Tide turns as Poles end great migration

For the first time in four years more Polish workers are returning to their homeland from the UK than there are entering Britain, the Times claims to have established. The paper said on Saturday that only 38,680 Poles signed up to the government’s register of migrant workers in the third quarter of 07, a slump of 18% from the previous year.

Taj Mahal gets a mud bath

The Independent reports that archaeologists have applied a mud layer to the Taj Mahal's exterios in an attempt to restore its gleam. The mud will stay on the walls for two to three days and will then be washed off with distilled water.

Drop in new builds disappoints advisor

The Government’s key advisor on housebuilding described news of a sharp drop in the construction of new homes as “disappointing”, reported the Daily Telegraph on Saturday. Steve Nickell, a former Bank of England policymaker who chairs the government-backed National Housing and Planning Advice Unit, was speaking after official figures revealed a major fall in the number of housing starts in 2007.

A waste of space at the heart of government

The amount of vacant government property has doubled in the past year, said the Sunday Telegraph. Angela Eagle, the Treasury minister, told MPs that the total unused floor space amounted to 78 acres. This compares with 39 a year ago.

LandSecs to sell OFT site

Land Securities, the demerging property group, has quietly put a £100m chunk of its flagship Fleet Street estate up for sale, said the Sunday Telegraph. The move includes offloading Fleetbank House, the headquarters to the Office of Fair Trading, which LandSecs bought in 1986 and applied for planning on last year.

Green homes in power struggle

Eight streets named Green are to compete to see which can save the most energy in the course of a year, according to the Guardian on Saturday. 64 households from Colton Mains Green in Edinburgh to Green Park Rd in Plymouth will battle it out to see how much power each can save.

GPs’ leader condemns plans for ‘super clinics’ as wasteful

A leading GP has criticised government plans for a series of ‘super clinics’, says the Observer. Dr Richard Vautrey of the British Medical Association says the plans, which will see a network of large PFI surgeries built across the country, are “potentially going to waste hundreds of millions of pounds of scarce NHS resources.”

Plutocrat's perfect pad: pots of gold and nothing of value

The Independent on Sunday analyses the villa of late Georgian oligarch, Bedri Patarkatsishvili, in Surrey and finds its make-up little inspiring