Food companies have failed to commit to healthy eating scheme, claims Which?

There's a bit more cheer than usual down at JD Wetherspoon. The pub chain has just settled a long-running fraud case against property agent Paul Ferrari.

A 64-year-old man died after he and his wife were tied up with tape and threatened with a gun during a burglary at their bungalow.

Given the overall state of the economy, pub chains generally are so far reporting reasonable results, and that includes JD Wetherspoon, which said yesterday that sales rose by almost 10 per cent last year, with a rise of 3.6 per cent in the three months to 15 January. But that does not mean that Wetherspoon's chairman, Tim Martin, does not have a point when he complains about the disparity between prices in supermarkets and prices in pubs.

The man with the mullet?

The pub chain JD Wetherspoon is creating 650 jobs in a £20m expansion involving 14 new pubs. The additional outlets, which are due to open in the next month, will take the chain to 822 pubs.

JD Wetherspoon's profits dropped by 11 per cent in the first half and the company is warning of imminent price rises as Britain's pubs struggle with rising commodity costs and "a pernicious combination" of increasing taxes and regulations.

Good to see Tim Martin, the chairman of Wetherspoon, sticking to his guns in the latest issue of Wetherspoon News (we're big fans of the pub group's magazine here). Mr Martin answers readers' letters personally and is delighted with the support he is receiving from Mrs Maggs, a Hampshire resident, who complains about opposition to a new Wetherspoon pub in genteel Lymington. "People are often afraid of change," he says. "For example, in Royal Tunbridge Wells, a hunger striker set up stall outside our prospective pub." That particular hostelry won design awards and is still going strong, but sadly Mr Martin offers no news of the hunger striker's fate.

A surprise management shake-up at JD Wetherspoon triggered speculation about a boardroom split over the pub group's strategy last night.

It is not often you are greeted by a man in a top hat and waistcoat when alighting from a train. But perhaps it should be no surprise that the station master at Lymington is dressed as grandly as the Fat Controller. After all, this is the place with the reputation of being "too posh for Argos".

There is a fine line between good taste and snobbery. To possess the former is to invite general admiration while to be accused of the latter is social death. As we report today, the people of Lymington in Hampshire are aware of this dilemma. After seeing off attempts, first by Argos and then by Wetherspoon, to gain footholds in their village, they fear their motives for doing so could be misinterpreted as snobbish nimbyism.