One of India’s most successful and respected businessmen has made a blistering attack on the complacency of British managers as one of his companies announced plans to dismiss up to 1,500 people in the North East of England. In an interview with The Times, Ratan Tata, an Indian tycoon who runs Tata Group, the biggest manufacturing employer in Britain, and who is also an adviser to David Cameron, compared Britain’s work ethic unfavourably with that of India. He suggested that British managers did not “go the extra mile”, while those in India were working in “a war-like situation”. The Mumbai-born businessman, 73, who was educated at Harvard, recounted his astonishment at the attitude of managers at the two flagship British companies, Corus, the steelmaker, and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the car manufacturer, which he bought in 2006 and 2008 respectively. Yesterday Corus said that it was cutting 1,500 jobs in what unions described as a “devastating blow” to industry in the North East. “It’s a work ethic issue,” Mr Tata said. “In my experience, in both Corus and JLR, nobody is willing to go the extra mile, nobody. I feel if you have come from Bombay to have a meeting and the meeting goes till 6pm, I would expect that you won’t, at 5 o’clock, say, ‘Sorry, I have my train to catch. I have to go home.’ Friday, from 3.30pm, you can’t find anybody in their office.” In India, he added: “If you are in a crisis, if it means working to

After four days in one of America’s toughest jails, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released last night and taken to temporary living quarters in Lower Manhattan while his wife seeks a New York apartment in which the financier can live under house arrest. The former head of the International Monetary Fund who is awaiting trial for the attempted rape of a hotel chambermaid had been expected to take up residence in a luxurious block in a wealthy neighbourhood near Central Park. His wife was reported to have rented two apartments in the building and his lawyer told a judge on Thursday that the private security firm that would guard Mr Strauss-Kahn around the clock had “scoped out” the residence and was preparing to install CCTV cameras and a 24-hour armed guard. But these plans appeared to have fallen through yesterday, after the company which manages the buil

A Premier League footballer has lodged the first legal action against Twitter over alleged breaching of a privacy order, as Britain’s most senior judge called for controls and sanctions against people who “peddle lies” on the internet. The man is suing the microblogging site after it purported to reveal the name of the player who allegedly had an affair with the model and Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas. The footballer has one of the 35 privacy injunctions obtained in the past two years by the rich and famous to protect details of their private lives. The news emerged within hours of comments by Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, saying that he hoped that ways could be found to “curtail the misuse of modern technology”, which was totally “out of control”. There was “no doubt”, Lord Judge said, that the internet added to the difficulties of enforcing privacy orders. But he added: “I