The build-up to Friday's second Wimbledon semi-final was all about Briton Andy Murray but the man of the hour was the fearless American Andy Roddick.

Sat on a packed and sunny Centre Court, the prospect of Murray's party being gate-crashed did not take long to dawn on a crowd who did not seem sure who they should be cheering for.

Roddick never stopped playing like a man on a mission, contesting every point while Murray's more subtle, patient approach was not coming to fruition as many had predicted.

Murray produced glimpses of magic and he stood up bravely to return many of Roddick's meteoric serves, which hit a staggering speed of 143MPH, but his own first serve let him down too often and the passing shots he regularly makes went amiss.

On paper, this was a match Murray was meant to win, but in reality the world number three was outplayed by sixth seed Roddick whose recent good form has coincided with a much fitter physique.

At 22-years-old, a grand slam semi-final still represents progress for Murray and the defeat will by no means damage his confidence or reputation -- British fans will just have to wait a little longer for a homegrown Wimbledon finalist. After all it has been 71 years already.

However, tennis fans will not begrudge Roddick, a former world number one and the 2003 U.S. Open champion, another chance to renew his rivalry with defending champion and overwhelming favourite Roger Federer in Sunday's final.

If Roddick serves like he did on Friday, he has a chance, don't you reckon?

ANDY 1: Andy Roddick seems scarcely able to believe his won over Andy Murray in their semi-final at Wimbledon, July 3, 2009. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

ANDY 2: Murray's expression says it all. REUTERS/Toby Melville

How big a crime is lying to try and get your child into a good school?

Plenty of parents have tried it by falsely claiming they live in the school’s catchment area or by suddenly getting religion but the worst that happens up till now is that they get found out and their child is turned away.

Now Harrow Council in London wants to go further and prosecute them. It had to withdraw a test case for fraud against the mother of a five-year-old it accused of  lying about her address on the school application form but it wants new powers to enable it to take such parents to court.

“This is not a question of persecuting individuals,” said Council leader David Ashton. “We took the view we should prosecute, because we have to ensure there is a level playing field for all parents.”

Do you believe parents should be hauled before a court simply for wanting the best for their children?

London's transport bosses are telling travellers on the tube system to beat the heat by carrying a bottle of water with them when they venture underground.

But how many of us are refilling our bottles with tap water rather than pouring money down the tube -- not to mention the cost of recycling the plastic bottles -- by buying a new bottle of water each day?

Cue the National Hydration Council whose eye-catching advertising campaign to encourage people to buy more "naturally sourced bottled water" -- on health grounds -- featured prominently on the underground network earlier this year.

The worrying thing for the bottled water lobby is not that people are doing what would appear to be the most sensible thing and refilling their bottles from the tap, but that Britons are replacing bottled water with sugary drinks instead.

We're told that sales of bottled water fell by 7 percent last year, with 71 percent of that decline the result of people buying sweet drinks instead. Good news for the soft drinks industry perhaps, but a worry for health officials.

Meanwhile, beneath the streets of London, the hot and flustered faces of fellow tube passengers shows just how dire it is on board the capital's underground trains when the mercury rises.

With a decent air-conditioning system on most lines a distant prospect, Transport for London (TfL) could show it cares by offering each of its cash-strapped passengers a free TfL water bottle and the opportunity to refill them at its stations.

And they say romance is dead…

The Court of Appeal has ruled that a pre-nuptial agreement made overseas is still valid in Britain — a decision that legal experts say could have far-reaching implications for divorcing couples.

The high-profile case involves German heiress Katrin Radmacher and Frenchman Nicolas Granatino, who married in 1998 and divorced in 2006. The couple signed a pre-nup a few months before marrying and agreed that Granatino would be entitled to nothing should the marriage break down.

Radmacher has assets worth 54 million pounds and is expected to inherit 100 million pounds from her father’s paper industry.

Granatino had originally been awarded 5.9 million pounds, but Lord Justice Thorpe overturned the decision and said that such contracts should be taken into account when dividing assets.

Divorce lawyers say the decision could lead to a rise in the number of pre-nuptial agreements and that the financially disadvantaged party should think very carefully about their rights before agreeing to sign one.

What do you think? Would you sign a pre-nup? Would you ask your partner to sign one?

Has German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck finally said what many world leaders think but are afraid to say? That the British government won't sign up to meaningful reform of financial markets because it is too worried about what it would mean for the country’s most famous cash cow, the City of London.

The City, which accounts for around 35 percent of global foreign exchange turnover, has been a popular target for critics of capitalism for years. But it has rarely been singled out so bluntly as a problem by one of Britain’s close allies.

Even for a man not known for holding his tongue, Steinbrueck’s remark on Wednesday that Downing Street was impeding reform because it had “practically aligned” its interests with the City, was unusually undiplomatic. Just days before global leaders meet at a Group of Eight summit in Italy, Steinbrueck suggested the British government was plotting a “restoration” of the pre-crisis order to protect its own interests. The United States, by contrast, was now open to reform, he said.

Rather than attempting to smooth ruffled feathers when she addressed parliament on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel picked up the thread, saying she would not tolerate efforts to stall reform at the G8 summit, though she did not name Britain.

Steinbrueck’s comments generated a strong response on German websites. Though he belongs to the centre-left Social Democrats, many readers of conservative daily Die Welt wrote in to praise him. “Finally the truth”, “genius” and “backbone” were some of the remarks his stance provoked. Across the channel, the most popular reader’s comment posted online in an article by Eurosceptic British newspaper the Daily Mail also backed the 62-year-old. “I’m with the German finance minister,” it begins.

Whether one agrees with his approach or not, Steinbrueck knows he is not talking into a vacuum. Large swathes of the commentariat believe not enough has been done to stabilise financial markets over the long term. Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, wrote on Wednesday that without radical changes, another banking crisis is inevitable.

PHOTO: German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck addresses a news conference in Berlin, May 13, 2009. Steinbrueck said on Wednesday Germany's interbank lending sector was still suffering from weak confidence. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

To the surprise of many, not least the newspapers and TV channels that were telling us right up until Wednesday afternoon that his release was imminent, Ronnie Biggs has been refused parole.

Reason — a bad attitude. 

The 79-year-old Great Train Robber may be physically frail but is clearly unwilling to show the required amount of remorse that would get him out of jail and could now spend the rest of his days behind bars.

All the other 11 members of the gang that held up the Glasgow to London night mail, coshed the driver and made off with 2.6 million pounds served just a third of their sentences. Biggs wasn’t even on the train on that notorious night in 1963. He was down on the embankment.

His son Michael says Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s decision is devastating, his lawyer calls the decision to keep Biggs in jail “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Yet the original crime was audacious and huge. Biggs’ cheeky hop over the walls of Wandsworth prison and his subsequent two-fingers to justice from the safety of Brazil clearly rankled with the British establishment. If he had been released, he would probably have become a magnet for old lags all over the country, as far as his physical condition allowed.

Do you think he should have been allowed parole?

Andy Murray's brutal straight sets victory over Juan Carlos Ferrero took him through to the semi-finals at Wimbledon for the first time in his career on Wednesday but while the centre court fans and the Henman Hill mob did their Mexican waves one man was singularly unimpressed by the Murraymania.

Murray himself is doing his best to let the media frenzy pass him by. He may have received notes of encouragement from the Queen, Sean Connery and Cliff Richard, and he knows he will be all over the front and back pages of the newspapers again on Thursday, but to say the Scot is staying cool would be a massive understatement. Here's what he said after the 7-5 6-3 6-2 win over Ferrero:

"It doesn't make any difference the way you perform, the hype. If you spend the whole time, if you work in the media and spend a lot of time reading the papers, watching everything on the TV, getting said all the things that are getting said on the radio, then you get caught up in it.

If you ignore it you don't realize it's happening. You don't take anything that's being said about you. You know, I don't read it because 90% of the stuff's gonna be pretty much untrue anyway."

Ouch.

Murray didn't sound too impressed to hear that Kate Winslet had been in the crowd either, although he did concede it might be good for the sport.

"I think it's good for tennis any time you get, you know, big stars or celebrities coming to watch. It makes it, I guess, cooler for kids and stuff, which is important in this country."

PHOTO: Andy Murray returns the ball to Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain during their quarter-final at Wimbledon, July 1, 2009. REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

Royal Bank of Scotland is not best known for backing winners.

So the Scottish bank must be savouring Andy Murray's run at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

World number three Murray is one of the "sports personalities of present and past" sponsored by RBS during the heady days of Sir Fred Goodwin.

Murray must count as one of Sir Fred's more inspired investments. Murray's play has literally gone from strength to strength -- all the time with the RBS logo emblazoned on his shirt sleeve.

Stephen Hester, Goodwin's successor as chief executive of RBS, must be hoping Murray maintains his winning streak and goes all the way to the Wimbledon men's final.

It's about time RBS employees -- and shareholders including the British government -- had something to cheer about.

No doubt British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will also be willing fellow Scot Murray to victory -- they could both do with the "feel-good" factor of a British Wimbledon win.

Marks & Spencer is finally getting to grips with the recession, first-quarter results from the bellwether retailer show. But it needs to sort out a row over management if its shares are to enjoy the full benefit.

Many investors are still up in arms over M&S’s decision last year to elevate the charismatic Stuart Rose to executive chairman — combining the roles of chairman and chief executive against corporate governance guidelines.

Rose survived a rebellion last year and must be hoping that forecast-beating first-quarter sales will draw the sting from opponents ahead of next Wednesday’s annual shareholder meeting.

But anger seems unlikely to die down. Three shareholder advisory groups — Glass Lewis, Pirc and RiskMetrics — have urged investors to back a rebel resolution which calls on M&S to appoint an independent chairman by July 2010.

The resolution, from local authority pension funds, is cleverly worded as it supports Rose’s re-election and so, unlike last year’s protest, is a clear vote on the principles of corporate governance and not on the man himself.

Anxious to avoid a fresh battle, Rose recently waived a third of shares awarded to him under a performance plan which some investors said was too generous.

To end the constant sniping that must be a distraction from running the business, Rose may have to compromise again.

As Scotland prepares to celebrate 10 years of devolution on July 1, the question of whether the nation should gain full independence from the Union refuses to go away.

An opinion poll has found that 58 percent of Scots support the Scottish government’s wish to hold a referendum on independence in 2010.

This does not mean that the people of Scotland actually want to break free, however. The poll, carried out by ICM for the BBC, also showed that only 38 percent of the 1,010 respondents said they were in favour of Scotland becoming an independent country, while 54 percent said they would vote against the idea.

Respondents were also asked if they believed it was likely or unlikely Scotland would become a completely independent nation within 20 years, with 10 percent saying they thought it was likely and 28 percent quite likely. A larger proportion were not as convinced — 34 percent said it was quite unlikely and 24 percent said it was very unlikely.

The issue of Scottish independence is a hot topic south of the border too. Many feel that Scottish MPs should not be allowed to vote on laws that affect only England, while the multi-billion pound annual subsidy Scotland received from the Treasury also gets many people hot under the collar.

What do you think? Should Scotland separate itself from the United Kingdom? Would it be able to manage on its own?