The successful creation of a new European Defence Agency could be undermined because of a lack of political will and adequate funding, the heads of Europe’s three biggest defence companies warned yesterday. “Sometimes modern art is too much about the idea and not enough about the art,” she said.Maddy Pritchard, 40, on a day trip from Stafford, found it all “bewildering”.”And he won’t be interested if the cow hasn’t got a football jersey on,” she said, with a knowing nod towards her husband.She was introduced to the Cow Locator map and directed to just the beast she needed: Daisy Beckham, complete with goatee beard and No 7 England jersey, who was quietly familiarising himself with a quiet corner of the Arndale shopping centre.. The artists are paid £750 apiece and the Polish-made cows produced for each parade are auctioned off for charity, leaving organisers to make money from merchandising.Anusca Ferrari, 28, a local Italian teacher, was examining Lord Foster’s cow at lunchtime yesterday – the fourth she had seen. But she concluded, with some justification, that Manchester airport’s hand-created mosaic MAGiCow, created with the help of local schoolchildren, was a far superior beast. Vivienne Westwood’s vivid orange Cowture – based on an original fabric design from a 1981 collection – grazes serenely in St Ann’s Square with a Vivienne safety pin through her snout; Jarvis Cocker’s Jersey Cow, covered in jerseys and bobble hats, has a shady spot in the Malmaison hotel foyer; while the architect Lord Foster’s Urban Cow must settle for the chaotic Piccadilly railway concourse.Each cow is sponsored by a business, with some paying for an association with a particular artist. The herd in London two years ago was well done but organisers now agree that for sheer ingenuity of design and municipal enthusiasm for the cause, no group of people can decorate a blank fibreglass cow quite like the Mancunians.

“As an overall herd, it’s the best we’ve had,” said Charles Langhorne, managing director of CowParade Europe.The city issued a “Cow Locator” map, launched two city-wide design-a-cow competitions and even adopted cow puns as part of the local vernacular.Celebrity cows were among them, too. Sir Richard is supplementing his fleet of 250 limousines with three Aquadas to ferry customers from London to Heathrow. “On a busy day when the traffic’s bad in London we could take up to an hour off the journey time,” he said.The vehicle, which is built by Gibbs Technologies in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, is on sale to the public The price? £75,000.. Manchester, which has never been slow to milk its tourist attractions, introduced 150 fibreglass cows to its streets yesterday.
The bovine newcomers are the city’s version of CowParade, the world’s largest public art project which has seen 5,000 painted cows set up in cities from New York and Tokyo to London and Sydney and auctioned for charity over the past six years. One of its jets flew over the white cliffs of Dover as he set off.The Aquada, described as the ultimate “boy’s toy”, propels itself by sucking up water and spewing it out of the back of the vehicle. He said he thought he had taken the Aquada to speeds approaching its maximum of 30mph.

But for much of the crossing the vehicle glided across the calm surface of the Channel at 20mph as a flotilla of other vessels, including an RNLI lifeboat, accompanied the vessel. It drives fantastically well on land and then it turns into the most remarkable boat on water.”Sir Richard, whose record-setting escapades have most famously centred on hot-air ballooning, set a transatlantic speedboat record in 1986. A Gibbs engineer sat in the passenger seat of the vehicle, which had been adapted to cope with the sea conditions, with a strong pump installed to remove excess water.The previous fastest amphibious crossing had been made in the 1960s by two Frenchmen, whose six-hour trip in an “amphicar” wrested the record of seven hours and 33 minutes from Ben Carlin, an Englishman.Yesterday’s stunt was part of celebrations to mark the 20th anniversary of Sir Richard’s airline, Virgin Atlantic. “A couple of waves caused by some ferries went straight over the top of us but otherwise it went really well,” he said “It is a great beast. An adjudicator from Guinness World Records gave the official time – measured from the moment he hit the water in Dover to the vehicle touching land in France – as one hour, 40 minutes and six seconds.Ever since Roger Moore used an “underwater Lotus” in the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, amphibious cars have held a fascination for wealthy adventurers.Yesterday, conditions in the Channel were far from challenging, with slight seas and light winds, although Sir Richard was forced occasionally to use the windscreen wipers to remove sea spray that impaired his view. Its transformation from sports car to speedboat takes seconds: the driver presses a button and the wheels pull into the side of the car. It does a creditable 100mph on land but an even more impressive 30mph on water It took 70 engineers and designers seven years to build.

Fittingly, on the day after English football was humiliated by the French, he took the record from two Frenchmen with a time more than four hours quicker.Never short of an eye-catching picture opportunity, Sir Richard completed the journey in a dinner jacket and bow tie. When he rolled on to wooden ramps placed on the beach at Calais, he crossed a finish line on the promenade to be greeted by the town’s mayor. The advances it has made in these elections mean it can argue that it is becoming a credible leader of an alternative coalition government.Mr Ahern’s government did, however, score a comfortable victory in last week’s referendum on Irish citizenship, with a 79 per cent vote in favour of his government’s call for new restrictions. There would be a major cabinet re-shuffle in September, he announced.The result was a boost for Fine Gael, the major opposition party, which has been struggling for several years and which yesterday claimed it had turned a corner.