is a small boy'), bonfires, snowballs, clocks and other portentous impediments. The ludicrous award of dollars 27.5m ( pounds 19m) to Butch Reynolds by an Ohio court is the worst case, but it is by no means only an American disease. If that's right, then Wingrave observes the equivocal endgame of so many Britten operas where the central character - Grimes, Budd, Aschenbach, Lucretia - seems to have surrendered to a pointless fate but might, just might, have found redemption. NORTH of the border it is being put in the same league as the coal crisis: thousands of jobs are under threat from seemingly obscure changes in the way the Government taxes North Sea oil profits. A pounds 347,000 sum for care attendants in the same period could have bought Greenwich 36,400 man- hours. 'We would have expected to see an increase in exports,' a spokesman said, 'but the collapse in European steel prices eroded any advantage from devaluation.'British Aerospace, the biggest exporter of all ( pounds 4.62bn in 1991) found a little help for its Rover subsidiary and virtually no effect on aerospace operations, where both finished products and parts are priced in dollars.But again, the realities of business intrude. The conduct of political parties in the Commons should be reformed in much the same way as the unions have been reformed in the past 10 years.

William Arthur Stephenson, racehorse trainer and farmer, born Leasingthorne County Durham 7 April 1920, married 1948 Nancy Wood (one son, two daughters), died Middlesbrough 3 December 1992. But a future Labour government would be under pressure to show itself even nicer to Irish nationalists than the Tories have been. The German army, it is true, suffered decisive defeat in midwinter (Stalingrad), but defeat pursued it throughout the following summer, until it, too, was 'seen off' Russian territory. Yours faithfully,K FITZLYONLondon, W4. Mr Clinton's Kiev stop, arranged at the last minute, hints at a possible nuclear-weapons agreement between the US, Russia and Ukraine.Mr Clinton travels to Moscow on Thursday to meet Boris Yeltsin and will stay until Saturday, when he heads for the Belarus capital, Minsk, to meet President Stanislav Shushkevich.

And it is tough going for foreigners to get even a precursory glimpse inside the society. However hybrid they will eventually become, that connection is an important one.'Despite this resistance, many Asians do participate in Christmas activities. When their four-year, pounds 7m deal with British Athletics ends in March, ITV are committing themselves to screening just four outdoor meetings next season, which will be worth an estimated pounds 800,000. It's an odd one this - a durable, very popular fixture in the schedules which has never quite managed to achieve household-name status, either with the chattering classes (like Morse) or the family audience (like Lovejoy). Until a decision had been given, they could not begin to apply to be reunited with their wives and dependent children. They are Wuhan's educational elite, China's future middle class.

During January, for the first time in many months, there was a surge in the number of people out looking at houses.The buzz was everywhere. An exhaustive assessment of research was published last month, grading university departments on a scale of quality as judged by peer review. Croatian citizens have begun frantically digging through their own and other people's biographies in case they find an undesirable blot. World trade is the only way we are going to solve the negative growth problem in the developed world and the massive problems of developing economies.'He said that big companies would be worst affected, because they trade most, but small companies would be hit as the Uruguay Round unravelled. Yet both Channel 4 and the BBC have been spicing up their coverage of three-day events. The good parts have in any case been salvaged under different management.