THE BRITISH THREAD II

Former Cabinet minister and veteran left-wing campaigner Tony Benn has died at home, his family has said.

The 88-year-old former Labour MP had been seriously ill.

Mr Benn became an MP in November 1950 and served in the Cabinet under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

A major figure on the left of the party, he narrowly missed out on the deputy leadership in 1981 and went on to be a popular public speaker, anti-war campaigner and political diarist.

In a statement his children Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua said Mr Benn died peacefully early this morning at his home in west London surrounded by his family.

Supermarket giant Tesco has been forced to scrap a national advertising campaign after it used the wrong breed of cow in one of its milk adverts.

The posters, designed to highlight a drop in the price of a four-pint bottle of milk, displayed pictures of a type of cattle used exclusively for meat.

The mistake has led to people on the social-networking site Twitter venting their beef with the supermarket.

A spokesman for Tesco said the adverts were being replaced.

The mistake was first spotted by farmers, who pointed out that the cows on show were a Hereford cross cow - farmed for beef production rather than milk.

Farmer Richard Yates, who has a herd of 100 Friesian cows near Bridgnorth, told the Shropshire Star that Tesco was using cows that "would never have been milked in their lives".

"That shows how out of touch they are and what they think of dairy farmers."

Elsewhere, greengrocer Kevin Brackenbury, 50, of Chester told the BBC: "I saw the advert, and coming from a background of working in supermarkets for more than 30 years, I find things like this most amusing.

"But the price of milk for farmers is a serious issue, and I'm sure some won't take kindly to this sort of thing."

Still most people were well chuffed overall, apart from the Greeks.