But since then, the anti-trust directorate in Brussels has been inundated with sporting cases due to the ever-developing financial relationships between broadcasters and sports organisations. Until the Bosman judgment four years ago - when the European Court of Justice ruled that the transfer system run by European football's ruling body, UEFA, was illegal - the Commission has stayed out of sport. KAREL VAN MIERT, the European Union's competition commissioner, will draw the line between sport and business when he tells the European Commission on Wednesday in which areas he believes EU anti-trust regulators should intervene. Because he was a German, and had stood up to the Americans in the past, no one could seemingly accuse him of being an American stooge.Except for the fact Washington - and anyone else who knows the personalities dominating the international financial scene - was aware that Tiet- meyer doesn't believe in market intervention.

He doesn't even believe in bailouts for stricken emerging markets, or the banks lending to stricken emerging markets' governments.Washington knew that when Tietmeyer reported a do-nothing response to last autumn's financial crisis - as he did yesterday - it would get what it wanted That's premier league news management.. At the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank last October, right after the collapse of Long Term Capital Management really did push the global financial system to the brink, G7 ministers had to respond.So they set up a study group to consider steps to guarantee greater international financial stability Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer was put in charge. This clash appeared to come to a head at yesterday's meeting of G7 finance ministers in Bonn.But the Washington fix was in. Consider how Washington has played the what-shall-the-Group-of- Seven-do-in-the-wake- of-the-brush-with-melt-down-last-autumn story.Washington wanted virtually nothing done.

Germany, France, and Japan have all been making noises about reforms to limit exchange-rate volatility and international capital flows. But the Government doctors remain amateurs compared with the old pros in Washington. Biotech is like information technology, telecoms, and the creative industries - an environmentally clean industry with tremendous growth potential.It runs the risk of being tarnished with the GM brush.Second, news management New Labour loves spin. However, the process leading to that happy moment is proving Old Labour - old everything, indeed - in terms of transparency. Hasn't the Government called for greater transparency in other contexts?Wilkinson, I'm serious Thai kickboxing Three, five, or 10 rounds, your choice.TWO postscripts First, on GM foods. I don't understand why Blair and Campbell have not done a better job of drawing a distinction between biotech as GM food production and biotech in all its other guises - pharmaceutical research, for example.

Perhaps the Rover deal will quieten the sceptics who argue that the Third Way is empty rhetoric. Is the term a gloss on on the ancient notion of forcing workers fearful of losing their jobs to buckle under? Or are there new Third Way policies in the works to genuinely get more out of less at Longbridge?Perhaps I'm being impatient. Perhaps in due course the Government will use Rover to demonstrate its flying colours. The challenge facing us all is to make more of less.Key to the Rover deal, however, will be what productivity improvements mean.