It might help if our capital could pass a single month without suffering some calamitous transport breakdown. Of course, there's no reason why London should not match Athens, as long as we construct a new airport and motorway ring-road, along with a dual carriageway and Tube line from the centre of the city to the proposed Olympic site in east London Oh, and we should also reduce the population by two-thirds Do that and London would be a shoo-in.. Stereotyping can be a problem because it allows us very easily to treat individuals as group members who possess a given set of traits, rather than as individuals to be judged on their own merits. British businesses have proved peculiarly poor at moving on from successful family firms to good public ones and, in the case of Sainsbury's and Marks, both have been hamstrung by periods of powerful one-man leaders (under John Sainsbury and Marcus Sieff) which did not allow their successors to grow.New management at Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, WH Smith and Boots have all declared that they have found the new elixir of service economy success It is responsiveness to the customer.

How else do you explain the collapse not just of Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer but so many other outlets, such as WH Smith as well.There are, no doubt, all sorts of particular reasons why these companies should be brought so low. Telecommunications, power and rail have all been privatised, yet the anecdotal evidence continues to be of services that are just never delivered on time, without trouble, whoever the supplier.The philosophy of almost deliberate ignorance of customer service and market tastes, which brought British manufacturing to its knees in the Seventies and Eighties, now seems to have been transferred to the retail sector as well. According to this scenario, there is good reason to believe that Mrs Hassan will be released, like the two Italian aid workers who were taken hostage recently Mrs Hassan's gender also affords a glimmer of hope. Most female hostages in Iraq have been spared.If it turns out that Mrs Hassan was targeted specifically because she is British, the outlook is bleaker.

Everyone's worst fear must be that she will be used, like Ken Bigley, to put pressure on the British government and that we will see a repeat of that awful episode. Happily, there are signs that Leeds University has been trying to do this by appointing a dedicated community liaison officer and introducing schemes to mitigate the damaging effects caused by large numbers of students moving in and out at certain times of the year. Forthcoming conferences on the subject, one tomorrow, another next month, show that universities as a whole are also starting to take the matter seriously. It may be too late to turn the clock back in Headingley, but it is not too late for universities to ensure that the degradation that has happened in areas of Leeds does not happen elsewhere.Students, as any parent knows, are a mixed blessing.

They bring many benefits - money, ideas and cultural activity - but they also bring noise, litter and a rootlessness that is antithetical to a stable, prosperous community. The vice-chancellors of both universities in Leeds should make it their job to reach out to local people and to make sure that their students do so, too.. Economic growth has swept all sorts of ills under the carpet, of course. Time was when the media were full of the cries about the failings of British companies and the responsibility of management and unions for them. Not any longer. In the present climate of political obeisance to business (just look at Tony Blair's speech this week desperately trying to reassure the CBI about educational changes), it doesn't do to discuss the qualities of British management as an issue of debate. If George Bush is defeated in the presidential election, that would be a victory for the terrorists.

For stability, for democracy, for operational necessity, re-elect George Bush!simoncarr75 hotmail More from Simon Carr. He was only able to say that "not all the 130,000 American troops are fit for this purpose". Whatever the purpose is, that we can't be told.Operational reasons can include the need to keep coalition morale up by reducing uncertainty in the command structure. What are operational reasons, exactly? Mr Blair refused to elaborate That would be to help the terrorists That would create anxiety among families of the Black Watch That would be to betray the national interest That would be to give the game away entirely.