This should enable it to repay the pounds 58m convertible bond issue which falls due in November.The chairman said much of the fall in Ratners’ sales was due to adverse publicity after Gerald Ratner’s description of one of his store’s products as ‘total crap’.(Photograph omitted). The result has been a strong boost to M3 growth.The massive European currency interventions of last month mean that M3 growth in September will show an abnormal spurt. But a bland motion to adjourn the House, while avoiding a split and possible government defeat, would open the Prime Minister to the charge that he was afraid of his back bench.Five ministers are said by colleagues to have been against a substantive motion: Peter Lilley, the Secretary of State for Social Security; Gillian Shephard, Secretary of State for Employment; Norman Lamont, Chancellor; Michael Howard, Secretary of State for the Environment; and Michael Portillo, Chief Secretary to the Treasury.Ministers who wanted a substantive motion to face down the rebels included Kenneth Clarke, Home Secretary; Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade; David Hunt, Secretary of State for Wales; and Tristan Garel-Jones, the foreign minister who was standing in for Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary.Some junior ministers went into the Commons for the normally routine session of business questions to hear the outcome from Tony Newton, the Leader of the Commons. Whitbread ‘A’, as SG Warburg suggested a switch into Bass, dipped 7p to 445p. But Wingrave turned out not to have a future; and apart from a semi-pro production at Cambridge University three years ago, I didn’t hear it again until the 46th Aldeburgh Festival opened last weekend with a concert performance in the same Snape Maltings where the piece was born. We know this because the said inspectorate is one of 70-odd enforcement agencies covered by a new code of conduct published yesterday under the Prime Minister’s deregulation initiative. RCTHERE is absolutely nothing forced about these performances.

I was in India as the culmination of a year spent looking into the worldwide work of the YMCA. Arriving in London, Korda took to England with the unabashed patriotism of the adoptive citizen, re-inventing himself as an English gentleman and calling his company London Films. He went into practice in Cardiff but was later moved to London to head a newly acquired insolvency firm which he merged with Cork Gully, led by Sir Kenneth Cork.After Mr Cork’s retirement, Mr Jordan again merged the firm with Coopers & Lybrand – a move he later bitterly regretted.The idea was that no businessman would welcome a man from the UK’s leading corporate undertakers walking in to investigate their company. That does not change the fact that the disabled have been a target for the far right, with attacks reported on average almost once a week in the past two years. Now his name is being uttered once again, but under a new billing: the Father of a Great American Dynasty.His daughter and fourth child, Kathleen, has announced she is a candidate for his job – a post once held by her brother Jerry, erstwhile contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. He insists that the housing scheme and new public lavatories are high on the trust’s agenda, and work has been held up only because of the need to consult conservationists.But not all members of the trust’s ruling council believe that Britain’s largest charity and private landowner is getting its priorities right. The goodies get seen as baddies.’Despite the lack of a sexual relationship – though he had a loving one with Sue Barker – he has always half-believed that, one day, he might still get married, that someone might yet come along.

The main driving force of Western success in science and technology has been the ‘possibility’ system In science the possibility system provides the hypotheses In technology the possibility system provides the visions. Israeli officials recognise that though they could withdraw the army and leave Gaza to its fate, politically this would be unacceptable. This goes against the very grain of face-saving, and it is not the way of meaningful negotiations.. I really admire the charisma when people defy the silence, ignorance and ugliness of prudery. Twenty acres are under negotiation with another food company: they will probably end up as waffles.Potatoes are also subject to British government, rather than EC, control.The Potato Marketing Board controls the acreage grown.

THE OPENING day of the Grand National meeting here yesterday and the most attractive card of the season to be ignored, as interest surrounded who would partner Martin Pipe’s seven runners in tomorrow’s main event rather than the winners of the seven races. Only two days after Mr Whitehead proffered his resignation to Kingfisher, you could have found him in a box at Wembley watching the FA Cup semi-final, together with a number of other Kingfisher dignitaries – and special guest Paul Morris, Goldman’s senior stores analyst, who happened to spearhead the head-hunt.’I was prepared to end up booted out of the box and on to the pitch,’ Mr Morris said yesterday. Talking to women, the conversations were soon circling around pain, fear of loneliness, panic as the child-bearing years slip by, outrage at being treated as a down-valued commodity on the marriage market, and a sense of betrayal at a sexual revolution which seemed to guarantee orgasms but not the partners with which to have them.Single women will ask you, with bewilderment, why all the men they meet are married or gay Yet men seem to find little difficulty in meeting women. Sotto voce at Sotogrande, Gilford shot 68 and anything under par around Valderrama is a cause for celebration.