To celebrate the opening of the UK's favourite theme park this February half term, the Alton Towers Resort is looking for romantic couples to renew their vows on the intense vertical drop rollercoaster, Oblivion.

Aiming to set a world record for the most couples renewing vows on a theme park ride, the Alton Towers Resort will host the record-breaking attempt to launch the start of half term opening between 11-19th February. The attempt will take place on Thursday 9th February at 1pm and it would be great to see gay couples attending!

To break the record, the Resort needs 25 couples to take part who are willing to hold their special moment at 60 meters high on 9th February! Katherine Duckworth, head of consumer marketing at the Alton Towers Resort, comments, "As Valentine's Day falls within the February Half Term holiday, we wanted to get couples involved and mark our first opening of 2012 in a fun way! Anyone wanting to take part should head over to altontowers.com to register and help get us off to a record-breaking start this February half term!"

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Security Service MI5 has secured a position, for the first time, on the Top 100 gay friendly employers as published by Stonewall.

Ernst & Young tops the list. In second place is the Home Office and Barclays comes third.

The 2012 Index was revised with the most demanding criteria to date, introducing new weighting for global employers that recognises worldwide support for LGB equality.

Accenture wins the award for Employee Network Group of the Year and the Department of Energy and Climate Change is named Most Improved Employer. Bill Payne, former Chief Executive of Metropolitan Housing Partnership, was named Individual Champion of the Year.

Full results of the 2012 Stonewall Top Employers list will be announced tonight (January 11) at a ceremony hosted in London by Ernst & Young where the Top Employer award will be presented by Minister for Equalities, Lynne Featherstone, MP.

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Gay mathematician, Alan Turing, convicted of gross indecency in 1952 is to be celebrated by the Royal Mail in 2012.

The UK gay Humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) has warmly welcomed the news that the famous mathematician and second world war code breaker Alan Turing is to be celebrated on a special stamp as an online petition calls for a posthumous pardon to quash his conviction for gross indecency.

Turing who is also recognised as the father of the computer, is one of 10 prominent people chosen for the Royal Mail’s “Britons of Distinction” stamps to be launched in February 2012, which includes the allied war heroine Odette Hallowes of the Special Operations Executive and composer Frederick Delius.

Turing played a key role in the team that cracked the German Enigma Code at Bletchley Park during World War II and he went on to help create the world’s first computer. This year marks the centenary of his birth.

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Independent LGBT business “Pants” has made it to the finals of the Local Business Accelerators.

Local Business Accelerators is a ground-breaking national initiative, backed by Prime Minister David Cameron and Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden that harnesses the power of local newspapers to give a much-needed boost to local businesses and economies.

The nationwide campaign, launched in October by regional and local newspapers across the country will see 1,500 firms receive £15M of free advertising to help boost their businesses in 2012.

MEN Media, which publishes regional and local news across the North West and Greater Manchester is one of the publishers backing the scheme and they received scores of entries from across the region. A panel of judges whittled down the entries to just 10 finalists, which includes LGBT independent small business Pants.

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The Mr Gay UK 2011 competition is almost over. After much pushing and prodding for votes, the final five have now been revealed.

They are Charlie Drummond (Bristol - 24), Samuel Kneen (Cardiff- 22), Greg Lumley (Middlesbrough- 27), Nik Chapman (Newcastle– 25), and John Wheeld on (Leeds– 28).

Mr Gay UK is a British annual beauty contest for gay men,with regional heats held in gay nightclubs with a grand final usually at a gay venue. In 1984, the competition name was changed from Mr. Hardware to Mr Gay UK. Since then, the event has been recorded for video release (1993), featured on a Channel 4 series, Passengers (1994) and the event itself was broadcast on Five in 1998 and 1999.

Mr Gay UK returned this year after a three year absence,with a twist. Finalists needed the votes of the public: people could vote on the website www.mrgayuk.co.uk,‘like’ the official Facebook page, vote using twitter or call and text for the guy they thought had the cutest face, hottest bod and nicest bum.

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