But he assured MPs yesterday: ‘I can give a complete assurance in no way would we countenance the BR pension fund being used for purposes other than paying BR pensions.’There had been fears that half of the pension fund would be taken by the Treasury, along with money from the pension funds of other privatised utilities, including some of the pounds 8bn in the Post Office fund and part of the pounds 12bn in British Coal’s fund.Mr MacGregor called on Mr Prescott to join with him in ‘trying to stop these mischievous scare stories which I met at Swindon on Friday. .11
AS Lancashire have given such unqualified support to the County Championship, it would have been ungracious, if not downright rude, were they to have been denied a ticket for the closing ceremony at Twickenham on 17 April.For when the last post is sounded, to signal the end of what has become an outdated and increasingly irrelevant competition, no other county can claim to have embraced the original spirit of the tournament so wholeheartedly.Despite the Championship’s declining purpose in recent years, Lancashire have always taken their participation seriously; even though last season they were able to lift their 15th title by fielding a second-choice team.By narrowly beating Middlesex at Edge Hall Road, Lancashire qualified for their 22nd final; and should they defeat their tribal adversaries Yorkshire, Lancashire will move ahead of Gloucestershire with most wins in the competition’s 104-year history.Meeting Yorkshire in what will be the 100th Roses’ championship match, and the first final involving the Pennine counties, will hopefully generate greater incentive and produce more constructive rugby than was on offer in this disjointed, albeit keenly contested, semi-final.Had Middlesex been able to execute their game plan, Lancashire’s celebrations would have ended at source. If their resistance was low at the beginning it was almost non-existent by the close when Northampton were contemplating pushover tries from a range of fully 30 yards. Invented for the novelty value of having a female antagonist to pit against the early Batman, she started life as a pet shop owner by day and cat burglar by night, styled after the actress Hedy Lamarr. But I have grown allergic to the predictable twists and turns of Hindemith’s sinuous tunes (the second movement’s grey dirge is a classic instance), the stodgy fugues and canons, the over-earnest counterpoints.As for the overture to Hindemith’s ‘comic’ opera Neues vom Tage, I think it’s safe to say the jokes could only get better after that. Manet liked smart uniforms (the cute boy Piper, also in the show, being another case in point).

To achieve the right tone, the marketing department must clearly define its goals.This is a view shared by Mandy Wheeler, managing director of Mandy Wheeler Sound Productions, a UK radio production company involved in a series of regional roadshows staged by the RAB to improve awareness among advertisers.’Many clients still think of radio as an audio Yellow Pages – load it with facts and turn it into an announcement,’ she says. ‘Many citizens of some of the Western countries, including many Americans, were aghast that England would try to lock up children so young for murder. De La Rue, the printing group, fell 6p to 984p, Tarmac 1.5p to 203p and NFC, the old National Freight Corporation, 2p to 262p.Forte was at one time 5p higher at 273p as rumours swirled again that it planned to buy the French Meridien hotel chain The shares closed at 270p. Services from Waterloo to the West Country were badly hit.A spokesman for Network SouthEast said: ‘The main cause of the difficulties was problems with points.

Randy Shilts, journalist and author: born Davenport, Iowa 8 August 1951; died Guerneville, California 17 February 1994. Computer scientists believed that while an optimal solution would never be possible, there could be approximate solutions that came within 99 per cent of the minimum amount of material.The research in the US has proved that such programs do not exist for large classes of NP-complete problems – and that such problems will almost certainly be incapable of being computerised. .39Fall: 1-19 2-31 3-32.To bat: R T Latham, * K R Rutherford, C Z Harris, D N Patel, M L Su’a, M B Owens.. According to Telefonica the suspension was temporary, until new rules can be worked out to regulate such telephone services..

They also claim the school failed to appoint an excellent candidate for the headship because he was Asian. When he was finally out, caught at mid-wicket hoiking the left-arm spinner Phillip, he had batted nearly four hours and faced 191 balls.This match, apart from being the first first-class game of the tour, is an important one for both sides and the West Indies selectors are here, in particular to watch is the Leewards acting captain and opening bat, Stuart Williams. I felt just like those Ivy League types in the TV ad – it made me want to wear cords and sports jackets.’ ‘Very good, but very expensive,’ commented Yvette.(Photograph omitted). ‘If he had heard them he would have given his gun up,’ he said.. Perhaps you should share the taxi.8.00-11.00pm: Play with the children, have supper, a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit, a nightcap and go to bed.Children’s picture books are zero-rated as is the food for your supper except the chocolate biscuit. Unlike many in the business, Sandy seemed totally unthreatening; she was also untypical in being quietly spoken, extremely hard- working and, as I was to learn gradually, loyal and almost austerely principled. There is no sense that even by doing good – educating and ordering – the French may have been doing wrong, cutting the natives off from their culture.

But others say they are also keen to help the scheme gain fresh momentum.However, bankers point out that the scheme only really works at the margin, since it helps those companies that cannot gain other finance, because they lack either security or a track record. ON 1 JULY 1991 the telephones suddenly stopped ringing in Washington, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and San Francisco Just like that, the lines went down on 12 million people. GEORGE SOROS, the financier who claims to have made dollars 1bn ( pounds 650m) selling sterling on Black Wednesday, has been a large-scale seller of the French franc in the last week. Between 1991 and 1995 the state has earmarked 6bn yuan (pounds 728m) for converting more military enterprises to civilian production.All this has a direct impact on the true level of defence expenditure in China. Not a good dress rehearsal.But with sobriety restored, Mr Reagan in the end received a respectful, sometimes enthusiastic, hearing as he spelt out what he considered to be wrong with the world ‘Let us be frank.