The Italian designer Gianfranco Ferre showed his last haute couture collection for the House of Dior yesterday in Paris. His successor has yet to be announced, but the house that Christian Dior founded with his controversial New Look collection in 1947, looks set to be revamped in the style of Givenchy, where John Galliano has generated massive publicity and blown away the cobwebs. Dior and Givenchy are both owned by Louis Vuitton/Moet Hennessy. The "giant haystack" designer was given a standing ovation by the audience. "Following on from that is the question of how confidence in judicial independence and impartiality could be maintained, and whether their appointment should be subjected to political scrutiny".The Lord Chancellor said the convention allowed exceptions to the rights protected so far as this was "necessary" in a democratic society.

His insistence in a speech to the Citizenship Foundation that incorporation would draw judges too far into the political arena is at direct odds with the views of Lord Bingham, the recently appointed Lord Chief Justice, who was in the audience. Lord Woolf, the Master of the Rolls, and Lord Irvine, the shadow Lord Chancellor, have likewise backed incorporation of the convention, which would remove the need for applicants to take complaints that fundamental rights have been breached to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.But Lord Mackay insisted that using the convention as the "yardstick" by which Acts of Parliament would be measured "would inevitably draw judges into making decisions of a far more political nature, measuring policy against abstract principles with possible implications for the development of broad social and economic policy which is and has been accepted by the judiciary to be properly the preserve of Parliament".He rejected suggestions by some senior judges that "there exists a higher order of law comprising basic or fundamental principles against which the judiciary may measure Acts of Parliament and if necessary strike them down".Ruling out change without "close and careful consideration of the established principles on which our constitutional machinery operates", he said British judges approached their function on the basis of a collaborative approach with Parliament, "employing techniques of adjudication which limit them to the individual case".Introducing a political element by incorporating the convention would raise the question of whether judges ought to be selected according to their political stance as well as their ability to decide cases on their individual facts, he insisted. Winter moths, frost, and a mysterious degenerative condition affecting oaks in the south and east of England in the early 1990s are to blame.. One in nine is missing at least half of the leaves of a tree in peak condition, and just over two-thirds are missing at least a quarter. The most recent Department of Environment report on the impact of climate change in Britain, released last week, makes no mention of the implications of afforestation.Given the economic and aesthetic benefits of planting forests, any potential water shortages should be dealt with by an "emphasis on reducing leakage and reducing demand, rather than altering vegetation," says Dr Tom Nisbet, a hydrologist at the commission.Our national tree, the oak, is the baldest in the country, according to the latest Forestry Commission survey of tree condition. In one forest, recharge to the underground chalk aquifer was found to be reduced by 40 per cent, according to Dr Ian Calder, a hydrologist. "Planting forests now might significantly affect water resources in the long term, particularly if climate change becomes a reality," he says.Few policy-makers appear to have recognised the implications of the combined effects of tree planting and global warming. But during dry spells, they take up water from the soil at far higher rates than grassland or crops.Recent research by the centre suggests that water use of some broad-leaved species may be significantly higher than previously thought.

Just as clothes peg-ged onto a line dry more quickly than those lying on the ground, tall trees with many leaves are better evaporation surfaces than grass or crops. Studies of upland evergreen forests by scientists at the Government's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford have found an increase in evaporation rates in forested areas of up to 100 per cent compared with treeless catchments. These and other policies came together last autumn when the Government announced that it wanted a doubling of England's forest cover by 2045.Most of the new trees in the lowlands are broad-leaved species which drop their leaves in autumn, so they evaporate less water through the winter than coniferous trees. ''Community forests'' are being planted on the edge of big cities, a large new National Forest has begun to grow in the Midlands and "energy plantations" of coppiced woodland are being considered. In some upland areas of Scotland, researchers have found this leads to a 20 per cent reduction in run-off to reservoirs.Now hydrologists are concerned about the impact on water supplies of the likely large increase in lowland woodlands over the next few decades. Government plans to double the amount of forest cover in England over the next 50 years may worsen droughts, scientists are warning. They have found that trees decrease the amount of rainfall reaching rivers, reservoirs and underground aquifers.

He bitterly opposes the privatisation of British Rail, but believes fragmentation of the industry could help push up drivers' wages. Leaves on trees intercept rain before it hits the ground, allowing it to evaporate back into the atmosphere at much higher rates than from short vegetation. A former Labour councillor, he was an outspoken critic of Tony Blair's campaign to abolish the party's Clause IV.. His leadership of the British Airline Pilots' Association could be seen as ironic given his past in the Communist Party and his present politics, described as "left of centre" Labour.Mr Darke, aged 46, has proven himself as a union professional rather than a political radical in his 26 years as a full-time union officer. A fashionable dresser and an amateur pilot, Mr Darke began as an apprentice with GEC in Birmingham and became a design engineer at Lucas.Lew Adams, 56, is very much a traditional trade unionist wedded to the old-fashioned ethos of the Associated Society of Locomotives, Engineering and Firemen - of which he became General Secretary nearly three years ago He started work as an engine cleaner when he was 15 In the Seventies he led a series of train drivers' strikes.