text:
General Motors streetcar conspiracy

The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to the convictions of General Motors (GM) and related companies that were involved in the monopolizing of the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and subsidiaries, as well as to the allegations that the defendants conspired to own or control transit systems, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This suit created lingering suspicions that the defendants had in fact plotted to dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation.

Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities. Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.

The story as an urban legend has been written about by Martha Bianco, Scott Bottles, Sy Adler, Jonathan Richmond, Cliff Slater, and Robert Post. It has been depicted several times in print, film, and other media, notably in the fictional film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, documentary films such as Taken for a Ride and The End of Suburbia and the book Internal Combustion.

Only a handful of U.S. cities, including San Francisco, New Orleans, Newark, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Boston, have surviving legacy rail urban transport systems based on streetcars, although their systems are significantly smaller than they once were. Other cities, such as Washington DC, and Norfolk, have re-introduced streetcars.

Background
In the latter half of the 19th century, transit systems were generally rail, first horse-drawn streetcars, and later electric powered streetcars and cable cars. Rail was more comfortable and had less rolling resistance than street traffic on granite block or macadam and horse-drawn streetcars were generally a step up from the horsebus. Electric traction was faster, more sanitary, and cheaper to run; with the cost, excreta, epizootic risk, and carcass disposal of horses eliminated entirely. Streetcars were later seen as obstructions to traffic, but for nearly 20 years they had the highest power-to-weight ratio of anything commonly found on the road, and the lowest rolling resistance.

Streetcars paid ordinary business and property taxes, but also generally paid franchise fees, maintained at least the shared right-of-way, and provided street sweeping and snow clearance. They were also required to maintain minimal service levels. Many franchise fees were fixed or based on gross (v. net); such arrangements, when combined with fixed fares, created gradual impossible financial pressures. Early electric cars generally had a two-man crew, a holdover from horsecar days, which created financial problems in later years as salaries outpaced revenues.

Many electric lines—especially in the West—were tied into other real estate or transportation enterprises. The Pacific Electric and the Los Angeles Railway were especially so, in essence loss leaders for property development and long haul shipping.

By 1918, half of US streetcar mileage was in bankruptcy.

Early years

John D. Hertz, better remembered for his car rental business, was also an early motorbus manufacturer and operator. In 1917 he founded the Chicago Motor Coach Company, which operated buses in Chicago, and in 1923, he founded the Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company, a manufacturer of buses. He then formed The Omnibus Corporation in 1926 with "plans embracing the extension of motor coach operation to urban and rural communities in every part of the United States" that then purchased the Fifth Avenue Coach Company in New York. The same year, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company acquired a majority of the stock in the struggling New York Railways Corporation (which had been bankrupted and reorganized at least twice). In 1926, General Motors acquired a controlling share of the Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company and appointed Hertz as a main board director. Hertz's bus lines, however, were not in direct competition with any streetcars, and his core business was the higher-priced "motor coach".

By 1930, most streetcar systems were aging and losing money. Service to the public was suffering; the Great Depression compounded this. Yellow Coach tried to persuade transit companies to replace streetcars with buses, but could not persuade the power companies that owned the streetcar operations to motorize. GM decided to form a new subsidiary—United Cities Motor Transport (UCMT)—to finance the conversion of streetcar systems to buses in small cities. The new subsidiary made investments in small transit systems in Kalamazoo and Saginaw, Michigan, and in Springfield, Ohio, where they were successful in conversion to buses. UCMT then approached the Portland, Oregon, system with a similar proposal. The UCMT was censured by the American Transit Association and dissolved in 1935.

The New York Railways Corporation began conversion to buses in 1935, with the new bus services being operated by the New York City Omnibus Corporation, which shared management with The Omnibus Corporation. During this period, GM worked with Public Service Transportation in New Jersey to develop the "All-Service Vehicle", a bus also capable of working as a trackless trolley, allowing off-wire passenger collection in areas too lightly populated to pay for wire infrastructure.

Opposition to traction interests and their influence on politicians was growing. For example, in 1922, New York Supreme Court Justice John Ford came out in favor of William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate, for mayor of New York, complaining that Al Smith was too close to the "traction interests". In 1925, Hearst complained about Smith in a similar way. In the 1941 film Citizen Kane, the lead character, who was loosely based on Hearst and Samuel Insull, complains about the influence of the '"traction interests".

The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which made it illegal for a single private business to both provide public transport and supply electricity to other parties, forced electricity generator companies to divest from trolley, streetcar, electric suburban, and interurban transit operators that they used to cross-subsidize in order to increase the basis of their limited return on investment.

National City Lines, Pacific City Lines, American City Lines
In 1936, National City Lines (NCL), which had been started in 1920 as a minor bus operation by E. Roy Fitzgerald and his brother, was reorganized "for the purpose of taking over the controlling interest in certain operating companies engaged in city bus transportation and overland bus transportation" with loans from the suppliers and manufacturers. In 1939, Roy Fitzgerald, president of NCL, approached Yellow Coach Manufacturing, requesting additional financing for expansion. In the 1940s, NCL raised funds for expansion from Firestone Tire, Federal Engineering, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron Corporation), Phillips Petroleum (now part of ConocoPhillips), GM, and Mack Trucks (now a subsidiary of Volvo). Pacific City Lines (PCL), formed as a subsidiary of NCL in 1938, was to purchase streetcar systems in the western United States. PCL merged with NCL in 1948. American City Lines (ACL), which had been organized to acquire local transportation systems in the larger metropolitan areas in various parts of the country in 1943, was merged with NCL in 1946. The federal government investigated some aspects of NCL's financial arrangements in 1941 (which calls into question the conspiracy myths' centrality of Quinby's 1946 letter). By 1947, NCL owned or controlled 46 systems in 45 cities in 16 states.

From 1939 through 1940, NCL or PCL attempted a hostile takeover of the Key System, which operated electric trains and streetcars in Oakland, California. The attempt was temporarily blocked by a syndicate of Key System insiders, with controlling interest secured on January 8, 1941. By 1946, PCL had acquired 64% of the stock in the Key System.

Beginning in the 1940s, NCL and PCL slowly took control of Los Angeles' two streetcar systems: Pacific Electric Railway (known as the "Red Cars") and Los Angeles Railway (known as the "Yellow Cars"). In 1940, PCL acquired Pacific Electric's operations in Glendale, Burbank, and Pasadena. Lines to San Bernardino were phased out in 1941 and the Hollywood Subway, which ran lines from Burbank, Glendale, and the San Fernando Valley, closed in 1955. In 1945, ACL acquired Los Angeles Railway at a price of about $13,000,000. Soon after, the company announced it would scrap all but three of the existing Yellow Car lines.

In 1953, the remainder of Pacific Electric's network was sold to Metropolitan City Lines, a subsidiary of PCL. Subsequently, the remaining assets of the original Pacific Electric system and the original Los Angeles Railway system were sold by Metropolitan City Lines and Los Angeles Transit Lines, respectively, to the newly formed Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. Under the new public authority, the final remaining streetcars in Los Angeles were phased out, with the final Red Car (Los Angeles to Long Beach Line) making its last service on April 9, 1961 and the last Yellow Car (V Line) on March 31, 1963.

Edwin J. Quinby
In 1946, Edwin Jenyss Quinby, an activated reserve commander, founder of the Electric Railroaders' Association in 1934 (which lobbied on behalf of rail users and services), and former employee of North Jersey Rapid Transit (which operated into New York State), published a 24-page "expose" on the ownership of National City Lines addressed to "The Mayors; The City Manager; The City Transit Engineer; The members of The Committee on Mass-Transportation and The Tax-Payers and The Riding Citizens of Your Community". It began, "This is an urgent warning to each and every one of you that there is a careful, deliberately planned campaign to swindle you out of your most important and valuable public utilities–your Electric Railway System". His activism may have led Federal authorities to prosecute GM and the other companies.

He also questioned who was behind the creation of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which had caused such difficulty for streetcar operations, He was later to write a history of North Jersey Rapid Transit.

Court cases, conviction, and fines
On April 9, 1947, nine corporations and seven individuals (officers and directors of certain of the corporate defendants) were indicted in the Federal District Court of Southern California on counts of "conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monopoly" and "conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines" In 1948, the venue was changed from the Federal District Court of Southern California to the Federal District Court in Northern Illinois following an appeal to the United States Supreme Court (in United States v. National City Lines Inc.) which felt that there was evidence of conspiracy to monopolize the supply of buses and supplies.

In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM, and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by NCL; they were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the ownership of these companies. The verdicts were upheld on appeal in 1951. GM was fined US$5,000 and GM treasurer H.C. Grossman was fined $1. The trial judge said "I am very frank to admit to counsel that after a very exhaustive review of the entire transcript in this case, and of the exhibits that were offered and received in evidence, that I might not have come to the same conclusion as the jury came to were I trying this case without a jury," explicitly noting that he might not himself have convicted in a bench trial.

In 1948, the San Diego Electric Railway was sold to Western Transit Company, owned by J. L. Haugh, for $5.5 million. Haugh was also president of the Key System, and later was involved in Metropolitan Coach Line's purchase of the passenger operations of the Pacific Electric Railway. The last San Diego streetcars were converted to buses by 1949. Haugh sold the bus-based San Diego system to the city in 1966.

The Baltimore Streetcar system operated by the Baltimore Transit Company was purchased by NCL in 1948 and started converting the system to buses. Overall Baltimore Transit ridership then plummeted by double digits in each of the following three years. The Pacific Electric Railway's struggling passenger operations were purchased by Metropolitan Coach Lines in 1953 and were taken into public ownership in 1958 after which the last routes were converted to bus operation.

Urban Mass Transportation Act and 1974 Antitrust hearings
The Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 (UMTA) created the Urban Mass Transit Administration with a remit to "conserve and enhance values in existing urban areas" noting that "our national welfare therefore requires the provision of good urban transportation, with the properly balanced use of private vehicles and modern mass transport to help shape as well as serve urban growth". Funding for transit was increased with the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1970 and further extended by the National Mass Transportation Assistance Act (1974) which allowed funds to support transit operating costs as well as capital construction costs.

In 1970, Harvard Law student Robert Eldridge Hicks began working on the Ralph Nader Study Group Report on Land Use in California, alleging a wider conspiracy to dismantle U.S. streetcar systems, first published in Politics of Land: Ralph Nader's Study Group Report on Land Use in California.

During 1973, Bradford Snell, an attorney with Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro and formerly, for a brief time, a scholar with the Brookings Institution, prepared a controversial and disputed paper titled "American ground transport: a proposal for restructuring the automobile, truck, bus, and rail industries." The paper, which was funded by the Stern Fund, was later described as the centerpiece of the hearings. In it, Snell said that General Motors was "a sovereign economic state" and said that the company played a major role in the displacement of rail and bus transportation by buses and trucks.

This paper was distributed in Senate binding together with an accompanying statement in February 1974, implying that the contents were the considered views of the Senate. The chair of the committee later apologized for this error. Adding to the confusion, Snell had already joined the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly as a staff member.

At the hearings in April 1974, San Francisco mayor and antitrust attorney Joseph Alioto testified that "General Motors and the automobile industry generally exhibit a kind of monopoly evil", adding that GM "has carried on a deliberate concerted action with the oil companies and tire companies...for the purpose of destroying a vital form of competition; namely, electric rapid transit". Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley also testified, saying that GM, through its subsidiaries (namely PCL), "scrapped the Pacific Electric and Los Angeles streetcar systems leaving the electric train system totally destroyed". Neither mayor, nor Snell himself, pointed out that the two cities were major parties to a lawsuit against GM which Snell himself had been "instrumental in bringing"; all had a direct or indirect financial interest. (The lawsuit was eventually dropped, the plaintiffs conceding they had no chance of winning.)

However, George Hilton, a professor of economics at UCLA and noted transit scholar rejected Snell's view, stating, "I would argue that these [Snell's] interpretations are not correct, and, further, that they couldn't possibly be correct, because major conversions in society of this character—from rail to free wheel urban transportation, and from steam to diesel railroad propulsion—are the sort of conversions which could come about only as a result of public preferences, technological change, the relative abundance of natural resources, and other impersonal phenomena or influence, rather than the machinations of a monopolist."

GM published a rebuttal the same year titled "The Truth About American Ground Transport". The Senate subcommittee printed GM's work in tandem with Snell's as an appendix to the hearings transcript. GM explicitly did not address the specific allegations that were sub judice.

Role in decline of the streetcars
Quinby and Snell held that the destruction of streetcar systems was integral to a larger strategy to push the United States into automobile dependency. Most transit scholars disagree, suggesting that transit system changes were brought about by other factors; economic, social, and political factors such as unrealistic capitalization, fixed fares during inflation, changes in paving and automotive technology, the Great Depression, antitrust action, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, labor unrest, market forces including declining industries' difficulty in attracting capital, rapidly increasing traffic congestion, the Good Roads Movement, urban sprawl, tax policies favoring private vehicle ownership, taxation of fixed infrastructure, franchise repair costs for co-located property, wide diffusion of driving skills, automatic transmission buses, and general enthusiasm for the automobile.

The accuracy of significant elements of Snell's 1974 testimony was challenged in an article published in Transportation Quarterly in 1997 by Cliff Slater. A significant rebuttal to Slater's article was published about one year later in the 1998 Transportation Quarterly finding that, without GM and other companies' efforts, the streetcar would not "have been driven to the verge of extinction by 1968".

Recent journalistic analysis question the idea that GM had a significant impact on the decline of streetcars, suggesting rather that they were setting themselves up to take advantage of the decline as it occurred. Guy Span suggested that Snell and others fell into simplistic conspiracy theory thinking, bordering on paranoid delusions stating,

"Clearly, GM waged a war on electric traction. It was indeed an all out assault, but by no means the single reason for the failure of rapid transit. Also, it is just as clear that actions and inactions by government contributed significantly to the elimination of electric traction.'"

In 2010, CBS's Mark Henricks reported:

"There is no question that a GM-controlled entity called National City Lines did buy a number of municipal trolley car systems. And it's beyond doubt that, before too many years went by, those street car operations were closed down. It's also true that GM was convicted in a post-war trial of conspiring to monopolize the market for transportation equipment and supplies sold to local bus companies. What's not true is that the explanation for these events is a nefarious plot to trade private corporate profits for viable public transportation."

Other factors
Other factors have been cited as reasons for the general decline of streetcars and public transport in the United States. Robert Post notes that the ultimate reach of GM's alleged conspiracy extended to only about 10% of American transit systems. Guy Span said that actions and inaction by government was one of many contributing factors in the elimination of electric traction. Cliff Slater suggested that the regulatory framework in the US actually protected the electric streetcars for longer than would have been the case if there was less regulation.

Some regulations and regulatory changes have been linked directly to the decline of the streetcars:
 * Difficult labor relations and tight regulation of fares, routes, and schedules took their toll on city streetcar systems.
 * The streetcars' contracts in many cities required them to keep the pavement on the roads surrounding the tracks in good shape. Such conditions, previously agreed to in exchange for the explicit right to operate as a monopoly in that city, became an expensive burden.
 * The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 prohibited regulated electric utilities from operating unregulated businesses, which included most streetcar lines. The act also placed restrictions on services operating across state lines. Many holding companies operated both streetcars and electric utilities across several states; those that owned both types of businesses were forced to sell off one. Declining streetcar business was often somewhat less valuable than the growing consumer electric business, resulting in many streetcar systems being put up for sale. The independent lines, no longer associated with an electric utility holding company, had to purchase electricity at full price from their former parents, further shaving their already thin margins. The Great Depression then left many streetcar operators short of funds for maintenance and capital improvements.
 * In New York City, and other North American cities, the presence of restrictive legal agreements such as the Dual Contracts, signed by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation of the New York City Subway, restricted the ability of private mass transit operators to increase fares at a time of high inflation, allowed the city to take over them, or to operate competing subsidized transit.

Different funding models have also been highlighted:
 * Streetcar lines were built using funds from private investors and were required to pay numerous taxes and dividends. By contrast, new roads were constructed and maintained by the government from tax income.
 * By 1916, street railroads nationwide were wearing out their equipment faster than they were replacing it. While operating expenses were generally recovered, money for long-term investment was generally diverted elsewhere.
 * The U.S. government responded to the Great Depression with massive subsidies for road construction.
 * Later construction of the Interstate Highway System was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 which approved the expenditure of $25 billion of public money for the creation of a new 41,000 miles (66,000 km) interstate road network. Streetcar operators were occasionally required to pay for the reinstatement of their lines following the construction of the freeways.
 * Federal fuel taxes, introduced in 1956, were paid into a new Highway Trust Fund which could only fund highway construction (until 1983 when some 10% was diverted into a new Mass Transit Account).

Other issues which made it harder to operate viable streetcar services include:
 * Suburbanization and urban sprawl, exacerbated in the US by white flight, created low-density land use patterns which are not easily served by streetcars, or indeed by any public transport, to this day.
 * Increased traffic congestion often reduced service speeds and thereby increased their operational costs and made the services less attractive to the remaining users.
 * More recently it has been suggested that the provision of free parking facilities at destinations and in the center of cities loads all users with the cost of facilities enjoyed only by motorists, creating additional traffic congestion and significantly affects the viability of other transport modes.

Counterarguments
Some of the specific allegations which have been argued over the years include:
 * According to Snell's testimony, the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (NH) in New York and Connecticut was profitable until it was acquired and converted to diesel trains. The New Haven's main line between New York City and New Haven, Connecticut, remained electrified, and continues as such under Metro-North Railroad and Amtrak. In reality, the line was in financial difficulty for years and filed for bankruptcy in 1935.
 * "GM killed the New York street cars": In reality, the New York Railways Company entered receivership in 1919, six years before it was bought by the New York Railways Corporation.
 * "GM Killed the Red cars in Los Angeles": Pacific Electric Railway (which operated the "red cars") was hemorrhaging routes as traffic congestion worsened with growing car ownership levels after the end of World War II.
 * The Salt Lake City system is mentioned in the 1949 court papers. However, the city's system was purchased by National City Lines in 1944 when all but one route had already been withdrawn, and the withdrawal of this last line had been approved three years earlier.

title: General Motors streetcar conspiracy


text:
Charles Ingram

Charles William Ingram (born 6 August 1963) is an English fraudster, novelist and former British Army major who gained fame for his appearance on the ITV television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? In episodes recorded in September 2001, Ingram correctly answered fifteen questions to win the show's maximum prize of £1 million, becoming the third recorded contestant to ever do so. However, he was denied the winnings due to suspicion of cheating.

Following a lengthy trial at Southwark Crown Court, Ingram was convicted on a single count of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception. He was subsequently convicted of an unrelated offence involving insurance fraud in 2003 and ordered to resign his commission as a major by the Army Board.

Early life
Charles William Ingram was born on 6 August 1963 in Shardlow, Derbyshire, the son of retired Royal Air Force Wing Commander John Ingram and his wife Susan, a theatre set designer. His father's Wellington bomber, operating with 103 Squadron from RAF Elsham Wolds, had been shot down in late September 1941; he was taken as a prisoner of war while two of his crew were killed.

Ingram's parents divorced when he was young and he spent most of his education years boarding privately at Oswestry School in Oswestry, Shropshire. There he was a member of the Combined Cadet Force and completed the Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. He went on to obtain a BSc in civil engineering from Kingston University.

Military career
In 1987, Ingram trained for the British Army at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Engineers. He was promoted to the rank of captain in 1990 and major in 1995. In 1999, Ingram was sent to Banja Luka in Bosnia for six months on United Nations peacekeeping duties. He graduated from Cranfield University with a master's degree in corporate management in August 2000. He was ordered by the Army Board via letter to resign his commission on 20 August 2003 and to give up his rank of major. It is widely disputed whether or not he was dishonourably discharged.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? scandal
On 9 September 2001, Ingram became a contestant on the ITV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, following his wife Diana and her brother Adrian Pollock, each of whom had won £32,000 as contestants on the show. To prepare, Ingram practised for about twenty minutes per day on a homemade "Fastest Finger First" machine. Ingram got into the "hot seat" but used two lifelines early, ending the day at £4,000 and with only the 50/50 lifeline remaining. The production team did not expect him to proceed much further, but he ended up making it all the way to the £1 million prize on the second day of recording.

Throughout Ingram's run, the production team were increasingly suspicious of him. He was taking brazen risks and playing the game in an unusual manner. One of the questions Ingram got during the run was "Who had a hit UK album with Born to Do It released in 2000?" After using his 50/50 the two remaining answers were A1 (what he believed the answer to be) and Craig David, who he said he had never heard of. After nearly locking in A1 as his final answer, he backed off and later said "80% of the time I'm wrong when I guess, so you know what—I'll go Craig David." He then locked in the correct answer of Craig David. At the penultimate question, worth £500,000, Ingram was asked: "Baron Haussmann is best known for his planning of which city?" Among the options were Berlin and Paris, the former of which he immediately assumed as the right answer due to his belief that Baron Haussmann is a German name. However, after some time he said "there's a possibility that it's Paris" before eventually deciding to lock in Paris as his final answer. This got Ingram to the £1 million question—"A number one followed by one hundred zeros is known by what name?"—to which he thought the answer was nanomole and initially said he did not know what a googol is. However, he eventually decided to lock in "googol" as his final answer which won him the £1 million prize. Of Ingram's unusual behaviour while playing for the final question, and after the scandal had become public knowledge, Rod Taylor, an executive producer, said, "It became obvious that he wasn't under the pressure that he should have been, somehow... He should have been very, very careful, and very certain. And he certainly wasn't [either of those]."

After Ingram had won the £1 million, producers were suspicious enough that a search was performed on him. His hair, clothing, and shoes were searched; however, the method of cheating used meant that nothing incriminating was found on his person. After he left the set, the show's production company, Celador, were tipped off by the show's producers of the assumed irregularities occurring within the quiz and suspended the jackpot payout to investigate the matter. At the same time, the show's presenter, Chris Tarrant, overheard that the Ingrams had been arguing, despite Ingram's success, moments before Tarrant joined them in their dressing room for champagne; another member of the production team also noted a similar thought about the couple's behaviour. While reviewing the recording, the production team made a connection between Ingram's answers and coughs coming from one of the waiting contestants, Tecwen Whittock; for one question, the coughing came from Ingram's wife Diana while she was in the audience. Based on this evidence, all three were accused of cheating, and the matter handed over to police to investigate further. Whittock and the Ingrams were eventually charged with "procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception".

Trial
Following a trial at Southwark Crown Court lasting four weeks (including jury deliberation for three and a half days), Ingram, his wife and Whittock were convicted by a majority verdict of their offences on 7 April 2003. Both of the Ingrams and Whittock were given prison sentences, suspended for two years—the Ingrams were sentenced to eighteen months; Whittock was sentenced to twelve months—and each fined £15,000 and ordered to pay £10,000 towards prosecution costs. Within two months of the verdict and sentence, the trial's judge ordered the Ingrams to pay additional defence costs, which left them repaying a total of £115,000.

On 19 August 2003, the Army Board ordered Ingram to resign his commission as a major after sixteen years of service, but stated that this would not affect his pension entitlements.

On 19 May 2004, the Court of Appeal denied Ingram leave to appeal against his conviction and upheld his sentence but agreed to quash his wife's fine and prosecution costs. On 5 October, the House of Lords denied Ingram leave to appeal against his fine and prosecution costs, and he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. On 20 October, the original trial judge reduced Ingram's defence costs order to £25,000 and Diana's defence costs order to £5,000. Ingram's defence costs were later further reduced to £5,000 on appeal.

In 2006, journalist Jon Ronson, who covered the case at the time for The Guardian, wrote that he believed the Ingrams might be innocent. Ronson, who attended every day of the trial, had observed that when the word "cough" was mentioned, pensioners in the public gallery had coughed. Chess grandmaster James Plaskett, who had appeared in the Fastest Finger First round several times before winning £250,000 in January 2006, argued this was an example of coughs caused by unconscious triggers; Whittock or others had simply coughed involuntarily upon hearing the correct answer. Whittock was also accused of having coughed after Ingram mentioned an incorrect option to his penultimate question and swiftly following that up with a smothered "no". However, Plaskett, who had sat in that very same seat, argued that someone might have audibly said it in response to an incorrect option in the same way that other waiting contestants have been known to whisper "no".

Recorded evidence
In court, Ingram claimed the videotape of his appearance on Millionaire was "unrepresentative of what I heard", and he continues to assert that it was "unfairly manipulated". A video recording, with coughing amplified relative to other sounds, including Ingram's and Tarrant's voices, was prepared by Celador's editors (Editworks) for the prosecution and "for the benefit of the jury" during the trial (and later for viewers in television broadcasts). Ingram claims that he neither "listened for, encouraged, nor noticed any coughing". The prosecution alleged that, of the 192 coughs recorded during his second-night performance, 32 were recorded from the ten Fastest Finger First contestants, and that 19 of the 32 coughs heard on the video tape were "significant". The prosecution asserted that these "significant" coughs were by Whittock when the correct answer had been spoken. During the trial, Tarrant also denied hearing any coughing throughout the episode, claiming he was too busy to notice.

Testimony of Larry Whitehurst
Larry Whitehurst, another contestant who had appeared on the show as a Fastest Finger First contestant on four occasions, was adamant that he had known the answers to Ingram's questions. He told the court that he had been able to detect a pattern of coughing, and that he was entirely convinced that coughing had helped Ingram.

Testimony of Tecwen Whittock
Whittock claims to have suffered a persistent cough for his entire life, insisted that he had a genuine cough caused by a combination of hay fever and a dust allergy, and that it was only coincidence that his throat problem coincided with the right answers. During the trial, however, the jury heard evidence that once Whittock himself earned the right to sit in the hot seat, his throat problems disappeared. Whittock later testified that he drank several glasses of water before he went in front of the cameras. Whittock also insisted that he had not known the answers to three of the questions he allegedly helped with. However, the police found the answer to the twelfth question, regarding the artist who painted The Ambassadors, in a hand-written general knowledge book at Whittock's home.

Davies, the floor manager on Millionaire, said that as soon as the coughing came to his notice during the recording he decided to find out who was responsible. "The loudest coughing was coming from Tecwen in seat number three", he said. "He was talking to the person to his left when I was observing him, and then he turned towards the set and the hot seat to cough"—and while Davies described this as "bizarre", Whittock remarked during the trial, "You do not cough into someone's face".

During the trial, Whittock portrayed himself as a "serial quiz show loser" because he had been eliminated in round one of Channel 4's Fifteen to One, had also failed on ITV's The People Versus and had been able to win only an atlas on his appearance on ITV's Sale of the Century. He had also done poorly on Beat the Bong, although he did reach the semi-final stage of the BBC radio quiz show Brain of Britain.

Books
Since leaving the Army, Ingram has written two novels: The Network (2006) and Deep Siege (2007).

TV appearances
Following his appearance on Millionaire, Ingram has appeared on various other television shows, including Channel 4's The Games, the BBC's The Weakest Link, and Channel 4's Wife Swap, featuring alongside his wife in the latter two.

On The Weakest Link, Anne Robinson jokingly referred to the "dashing young major with a throat infection", regarding his Millionaire appearance. A question was also posed concerning, "In classical music what 'C' is the act of throat clearing which members of the audience are asked to try to avoid?", the answer being "coughing".

Ingram also narrowly lost to Paul Daniels on the short-lived Channel 5 game show 19 Keys in November 2003.

Insurance fraud case
In late 2003, Ingram and his wife were charged with further fraud offences. On 28 October, Ingram was found guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, and of a second charge of deception, having attempted to claim on an insurance policy after an alleged burglary at his home. Ingram had failed to tell Direct Line Insurance about claims he had made in the three years before he took out the policy in July 2001. However a spokesman for Wiltshire Constabulary, David Taylor, said those offences were "not fraud". The court was told that Ingram had been a "habitual claimant" with Norwich Union after suffering "unfortunate" losses of private possessions.

Christopher Parker, prosecuting, said Ingram switched insurers to Zurich Insurance Group in 1997, after Norwich Union reduced a burglary claim from £19,000 to £9,000, and in 2000 switched again to Direct Line. "He has been ineluctably dishonest," Parker said. "He went to Direct Line and didn't make a disclosure about his claims history, because he knew he wouldn't have been insured. It might not have started off as the most monstrous piece of villainy but these things tend to snowball and it all came to a sticky end when he claimed for £30,000." Staff at Direct Line were already "suspicious" about Ingram's £30,000 burglary claim but decided to investigate only after reading newspaper coverage about his questionable win on Millionaire.

Ingram was given a conditional discharge on the charge of fraudulently claiming £30,000 on insurance. The judge told Ingram he took into account "the punishment [Ingram had] brought upon [himself] and [his] dire financial state" and rejected an alternative option of community service after Ingram told a probation officer he feared other criminals would bully him.

In popular culture
A book covering the case, Bad Show: The Quiz, The Cough, The Millionaire Major, by Bob Woffinden and James Plaskett, was published in January 2015.

Quiz, a play written by James Graham that re-examines the events and subsequent conviction of the Ingrams and Whittock, opened at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, on 3 November 2017, running until 9 December 2017. The play transferred to the West End, playing at the Noël Coward Theatre from 31 March 2018 to 16 June 2018. In 2019, Graham adapted his play into a serial drama for ITV that was broadcast in April 2020 in three parts. Ingram was portrayed in the series by Matthew Macfadyen. The series also aired on AMC and BBC America in the United States in June 2020 and on RTÉ One in Ireland in February 2021.

Personal life
Ingram met his wife, Diana, while she was training to be a teacher at Barry College in Wales. The two became engaged during his first posting with the Royal Engineers in Germany. They were married in November 1989 and have three children.

In 2010, Ingram lost three toes on his left foot in an accident involving a lawnmower.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Charles Ingram


text:
Millionaire

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire. Many national currencies have, or have had at various times, a low unit value, in many cases due to past inflation. It is much easier and less significant to be a millionaire in those currencies, thus a millionaire (in the local currency) in Hong Kong or Taiwan, for example, may be merely averagely wealthy, or perhaps less wealthy than average. A millionaire in Zimbabwe in 2007 could have been extremely poor. Because of this, the term 'millionaire' generally refers to those whose assets total at least one million units of a high-value currency, such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling.

, there were estimated to be just over 16 million dollar millionaires in the world according to the World's Wealthiest Cities Report 2024 by Henley & Partners. The United States had the highest number of millionaires (5.5 million) of any country, whilst New York is the wealthiest city with 349,500 millionaires.

In countries that use the short scale number naming system, a billionaire is someone who has at least a thousand times a million dollars, euros or pounds.

Terminology
The word "millionaire" was apparently coined in French in 1719 to describe speculators in the Mississippi Bubble who earned millions of livres in weeks before the bubble burst. (The standard French spelling is now millionnaire, though the earliest reference uses a single n. ) The word was first used (as millionnaire, double "n") in French in 1719 by Steven Fentiman, and is first recorded in English (millionaire, as a French term) in a letter of Lord Byron of 1816, then in print in Vivian Grey, a novel of 1826 by Benjamin Disraeli. Earlier English writers also mention the French word, including Sir William Mildmay in 1764. The OED's first print citation is Benjamin Disraeli's 1826 novel Vivian Grey, The anglicisation millionary was used in 1786 by Thomas Jefferson while serving as Minister to France; he wrote: "The poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary".

While statistics regarding financial assets and net worth are presented by household, the term is also often used to describe only the individual who has amassed the assets as millionaire. That is, even though the term statistically refers only to households, common usage is often about an individual.

Net worth vs. financial assets
There are multiple approaches to determining a person's status as a millionaire. One of the two most commonly used measurements is net worth, which counts the total value of all property owned by a household minus the household's debts. According to this definition, a household owning an $800,000 home, $50,000 of furnishings, two cars worth $60,000, a $60,000 retirement savings account, $45,000 in mutual funds, and a $325,000 vacation home with a $250,000 mortgage, $40,000 in car loans, and $25,000 in credit card debt would be worth about $1,025,000; and every individual in this household would thus be a millionaire. However, according to the net financial assets measurement used for some specific applications (such as evaluating an investor's expected tolerance for risk for stockbroker ethics), equity in one's principal residence is excluded, as are lifestyle assets, such as the car and furniture. Therefore, the above example household would only have net financial assets of $115,000. Another term used is "net investable assets" or working capital. These practitioners may use the term "millionaire" to mean somebody free to invest a million units of currency through them as broker. For similar reasons, those who market goods, services and investments to HNWIs are careful to specify a net worth "not counting principal residence". At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the United States, while at the same time there were 11 million millionaires in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households, including those 5.1 million HNWIs.

In the real estate bubble up to 2007, average house prices in some U.S. regions exceeded $1 million, but many homeowners owed large amounts to banks holding mortgages on their homes. For this reason, there are many people in million-dollar homes whose net worth is far short of a million—in some cases, the net worth is actually negative.

Influence
While millionaires constitute only a small percentage of the population, they hold substantial control over economic resources, with the most powerful and prominent individuals usually ranking among them. The total amount of money held by millionaires can equal the amount of money held by a far higher number of poor people. The Gini coefficient, and other measures in economics, estimated for each country, are useful for determining how many of the poorest people have the equivalent total wealth of the few richest in the country. Forbes and Fortune magazines maintain lists of people based on their net worth and are generally considered authorities on the subject. Forbes listed 1,645 dollar billionaires in 2014, with an aggregate net worth of $6.4 trillion, an increase from $5.4 trillion the previous year. (see US-dollar billionaires in the world). According to a report by Hurun, a market research firm based in China, the global billionaire population stood at 3,381 in 2022.

Sixteen percent of millionaires inherited their fortunes. Forty-seven percent of millionaires are business owners. Twenty-three percent of the world's millionaires got that way through paid work, consisting mostly of skilled professionals or managers. Millionaires are, on average, 61 years old with $3.05 million in assets.

Historical worth
Depending on how it is calculated, a million US dollars in 1900 is equivalent to $ (in ).

 * $24.8 million using the consumer price index,
 * $61.4 million using the gold price

Thus one would need to have almost thirty million dollars today to have the purchasing power of a US millionaire in 1900, or more than 100 million dollars to have the same impact on the US economy.

Multimillionaire
Dated ways of describing someone worth n millions are "n-fold millionaire" and "millionaire n times over". Still commonly used is multimillionaire, which refers to individuals with net assets of 2 million or more of a currency. There are approximately 584,000 US$ multimillionaires who have net assets of $10M+ worldwide in 2017. Roughly 1.5% of US$ millionaires are "ultra-high-net-worth individuals" (ultra-HNWIs), defined as those with a net worth or wealth of $30 million or more. There are approximately 226,000 ultra-HNWIs in the world in 2017, according to Wealth-X. The rising prevalence of people possessing ever increasing quantities of wealth has given rise to additional terms to further differentiate millionaires. Individuals with net assets of 100 million or more of a currency are commonly termed centimillionaires, or more rarely hectomillionaires.

HNWI population
High-net-worth individuals (those with financial assets, not including the residence, greater than a million US dollars).

Global cities with the most super-wealthy millionaires per capita (higher than $30 million)
According to wealth research group Wealth-X that released its latest UHNW Cities report, showing the residential footprint of the world's top ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individual cities.

Excluding Monaco – which has very high UHNWI density – Geneva has the highest density of super-wealthy people per capita in the world. The city is known as the most compact metropolitan area, and also enjoys a concentration of affluence. Singapore has the second-highest concentration, followed by San Jose, the center of Silicon Valley, and the largest city in Northern California. While New York City leads in terms of overall UHNW footprint, London has a similar number of UHNW "second homers" despite a considerably smaller population. Paris features as the second-highest European city, after London, Wealth-X said. Among suburbs and smaller towns, Beverly Hills has the highest overall number of UHNW residents, and Aspen has the highest concentration on a per capita basis, the report showed. Ultra-high net worth individuals are defined by Wealth-X as those whose total net worth is higher than $30 million (R400 million).

Number of UHNWIs per country
The following is a list of the countries with the most Ultra high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) as of 2023 as per the 2024 Knight Frank's Wealth Report.

Countries by number and percentage of millionaires
* indicates "Economy of LOCATION" links.

Number of millionaires by city
, New York is the wealthiest city in the world with 340,000 HNWIs according to the World's Wealthiest Cities Report 2023 by Henley & Partners. The amount of wealth held by people in New York City is nearly $3 trillion.

Some places have a sharp, quantitative increase in seasonal wealthy residents including cities like Paris and Miami, Rocky Mountains ski towns like Aspen, and various beachfront towns of the French Riviera like Cannes.

Disparity in United States
There is a wide disparity in the estimates of the number of millionaires residing in the United States. A quarterly report prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Barclays Wealth in 2007 estimated that there were 16.6 million millionaires in the US. At the end of 2011, there were around 5.1 million HNWIs in the US, while at the same time, there were 11 million millionaires in a total of 3.5 million millionaire households, including those 5.1 million HNWIs.

According to TNS Financial Services, as reported by CNN Money, 2 million households in the US alone had a net worth of at least $1 million excluding primary residences in 2005. According to TNS, in mid-2006 the number of millionaire US households was 9.3 million, with an increase of half a million since 2005. The study found that half of all millionaire households in the US were headed by retirees. In 2004 the United States saw a "33 percent increase over the 6.2 million households that met that criteria [sic] in 2003", fueled largely by the country's real estate boom.

A report by Capgemini for Merrill Lynch on the other hand stated that in 2007 there were approximately 3,028,000 households in the United States who held at least US$1 million in financial assets, excluding collectibles, consumables, consumer durables and primary residences.

According to TNS Financial Services, Los Angeles County, California, had the highest number of millionaires, totalling over 262,800 households in mid-2006.

title: Millionaire


text:
Scotch egg

A Scotch egg is a boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, coated in breadcrumbs and baked or deep-fried.

Origin
Various origin stories exist. The Oxford Companion to Food gives the first instance of the name as of 1809, in an edition of Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery. They did not, at that time, have a breadcrumb layer, although by 1861 Isabella Beeton suggested this as an option. According to the Oxford Companion to Food, food historian Annette Hope speculated in 1987 that the inspiration may have been Indian koftas such as the Mughlai dish called nargisi kofta ("Narcissus meatballs"), in which a boiled egg is encased in a seasoned ground-meat mixture and then fried.

Other claims include the item having been invented at Fortnums & Mason at Piccadilly in 1738. According to Culinary Delights of Yorkshire, they originated in Whitby, Yorkshire, England, in the 19th century, and were originally covered in fish paste rather than sausage meat. They were supposedly named after William J. Scott & Sons, a well-known eatery which sold them.

It has also been suggested that they were originally called "scorch" eggs, as they were cooked over an open flame, though according to surviving recipes they were deep-fried in lard. 'Scotching' as a culinary process is also sometimes cited as the origin, though what 'scotching' was is open to interpretation, from the inclusion of anchovies to simply mincing meat. Further confusion is added by the large trade in eggs from Scotland in the 19th century, which sometimes involved dipping eggs in a lime powder to preserve them, a process possibly also known as 'scotching'.

Preparation and serving
Scotch eggs are prepared by hard- or soft-boiling an egg, wrapping it in sausage meat, and deep-frying it. It is often eaten in pubs or as a cold snack at picnics. In the Netherlands and Belgium, Scotch eggs may also be called vogelnestje ("little bird's nest"), because they contain an egg. One 1880s Scottish recipe also calls them birds' nests.

Regional variation
The Manchester egg consists of a pickled egg wrapped in a mixture of pork meat and Lancashire black pudding.

Vegetarian versions have also been made. In 2022, Guinness World Records certified a 8.341 kg vegetarian Scotch egg as the world's largest. It used an ostrich egg in the center, with a coating made of peas and cheddar cheese. The Harwood Arms, a Michelin-starred restaurant in London, started selling a vegetarian Scotch egg that uses a plant-based meat alternative in 2020, and the next year, the supermarket chain Tesco started selling a vegan version.

Nutrition
A fatty food, a typical sausage-coated Scotch egg has about 200 mg dietary cholesterol per 100 grams.

title: Scotch egg


text:
Mineral water

Mineral water is water from a mineral spring that contains various minerals, such as salts and sulfur compounds. It is usually still, but may be sparkling (carbonated/effervescent).

Traditionally, mineral waters were used or consumed at their spring sources, often referred to as "taking the waters" or "taking the cure," at places such as spas, baths and wells.

Today, it is far more common for mineral water to be bottled at the source for distributed consumption. Travelling to the mineral water site for direct access to the water is now uncommon, and in many cases not possible because of exclusive commercial ownership rights. More than 4,000 brands of mineral water are commercially available worldwide.

In many places the term "mineral water" is colloquially used to mean any bottled carbonated water or soda water, as opposed to tap water.

Composition
The more calcium and magnesium ions that are dissolved in water, the harder it is said to be; water with few dissolved calcium and magnesium ions is described as being soft.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration classifies mineral water as water containing at least 250 parts per million total dissolved solids (TDS), originating from a geologically and physically protected underground water source. No minerals may be added to this water.

In the European Union, bottled water may be called mineral water when it is bottled at the source and has undergone no or minimal treatment. Permitted is the removal of iron, manganese, sulfur and arsenic through decantation, filtration or treatment with ozone-enriched air, insofar as this treatment does not alter the composition of the water as regards to the essential constituents which give it its properties. No additions are permitted except for carbon dioxide, which may be added, removed or re-introduced by exclusively physical methods. No disinfection treatment is permitted, nor is the addition of any bacteriostatic agents.

Health impact
A review by the World Health Organization found slightly reduced cardiovascular disease mortality from consuming harder water with higher mineral amounts, with magnesium and possibly calcium being the most likely contributors.

However, mineral amounts vary greatly among different brands of mineral water, and tap water can contain similar or greater amounts of minerals. One study found that the median mineral content of North American mineral waters was lower than for tap water, though values varied widely among both groups. Additionally, other dietary sources of minerals are available and may be more cost effective and less environmentally impactful than bottled mineral water.

title: Mineral water