TONY K PIDGLEY (left) is set to pocket pounds 15m from the sale of his company to Berkeley group, the housebuilder founded and headed by his father, Tony W Pidgley. The 29-year-old entrepreneur yesterday announced the sale of his luxury housebuilder Thirlstone to Berkeley for pounds 4m in cash and pounds 11m in Berkeley shares.

Ian Hislop, 38, alias Lord Gnome, is the editor of Private Eye. He has written scripts for Dawn French, Harry Enfield and Chums and Spitting Image and appears on Have I Got News For You. He recently presented two Channel 4 documentaries about education and the NHS, School Rules and Pennies from Bevan.

Laing sale

ALFRED MCALPINE, the civil engineer and housebuilder, yesterday said the group would be hit by Government curbs on new road building as it announced a doubling of pre-tax profits to pounds 24.1m.

BEAZER, the UK's third largest housebuilder, has a right to feel peeved that its share price fell 9.5p to 214p yesterday even though it announced a 32 per cent rise in pre-tax profits to pounds 31.4m for the six months to December.

Anglian Water could be about to face a bid by Bechtel, the privately owned US civil engineering giant, to buy the utility's loss-making international businesses. As Chris Godsmark, Business Correspondent, reports, Bechtel's interest could see Anglian become the latest privatised water company to abandon its overseas expansion plans.

Age: 164.

Sir: Gareth Durling (letter, 21 January) is right to identify the problem of vehicles parking on pavements. Not only pedestrians, but pram pushers and wheelchair users can be forced to divert into the road, making a mockery of investment put into dropped kerbs for people with impaired mobility.

What is wrong with housebuilders? Here's a sector that generated double-digit earnings growth last year, and is widely expected to repeat the trick in the coming year. Yet investors, who normally love a good growth story, continue to value the majority of the construction sector at a level normally reserved for the most bombed-out conglomerates. In the past 12 months, the sector has underperformed the rest of the stock market by almost a fifth.

Christmas View

New technology will dramatically cut road deaths and solve transport congestion problems, says a report out today. By 2020, pedestrians could even be equipped to photograph an attacker and relay the picture to the police.

Bovis Homes is pushing ahead with its flotation despite the volatility in the stock market. P&O, owner of Bovis, admitted yesterday that it considered postponing the flotation last week when world markets were on the verge of collapse.

Signs that housebuyers may be resisting higher prices has failed to dampen optimism as three of the building industry's biggest groups reported record profits.

Sir: Polly Toynbee ("The battle of incinerators vs recyclers", 15 September) may feel the Government's target of recycling 25 per cent of household waste by 2000 is too low. However, it is worth noting that if the UK were to reach a recycling level of 40 per cent over the next 10-20 years, comparable with the best results ever achieved, this would still leave 60 per cent of our waste to be dealt with, amounting to 12 million tonnes per annum.