The shares have been unsettled by the Dixons results, although Rhino reported encouraging Christmas trading. And the reason the performance of these funds over the past 10 years may not stand comparison with other forms of investment is that the amounts invested were so small.For instance, someone investing pounds 9 a month in a 10- year Family Assurance policy could expect pounds 1,163 if the fund grew at 6 per cent, or pounds 1,530 with growth of 12 per cent. Sustainable economic welfare, which measures social and environmental as well as economic factors, has fallen by about a half. According to Ed Mayo - director of the New Economics Foundation, a leading green economics think-tank, which has produced the study jointly with the Stockholm Environment Institute - people in Britain 'appear to be barely better off today than we were four decades ago and considerably worse off than we were in the mid-Seventies'.The foundation's study is the first application to the UK of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, developed by two US academics, Herman Daly and John Cobb. But let us spend longer on the problem of words and deeds.Incitement to racial hatred is already an offence: over words that are directly racist there is, in the legal sense, no problem. Where is the Pat Smyth of the 1990s? Or the Nigel Kennedy of the show ring? Many of the leading names, including David Broome, Michael and John Whitaker, are fantastic professionals: if only they could also do a Gazza for the sport, and enthuse about the joys of riding.The irony is that most of the contestants, if you can get near them, are friendly, down to earth, and happy to have their mounts patted and petted.This year we attempted to go behind the scenes and visit the stables, only to be turned back by the security guards. Hence, many British and Swiss people continue to have more faith in their historical heritage than in the open-ended venture of European integration.This is an understandable but potentially dangerous attitude in a fast-moving and globalising world.Yours faithfully,BRIGITTE BOYCELiverpool8 December.

Without this, BAe would pull out of the regional aircraft market, ending the future development of the RJ 146, an improved version of the 146, of which BAe has sold only about 220.. As he does not, it might be better not to give him one.'I do not believe you or your sponsors can control him. a straight-talking, irascible man and fine surgeon, he had worked tirelessly for many years in Australia and the Third World at his self-imposed task of bringing modern health care to those who do not receive it. Bad debts, said to be the nightmare of every small company during the current recession, do not affect the Jaconellis. He dances inexhaustibly.The band, meanwhile, barely move a muscle.

She said the country was 'burying its head in the sand when it comes to Aids and unwanted pregnancies. Pulling pounds 33m out of working capital, to contribute almost half of a pounds 71m cash inflow last year, suggests just how much Racal stands to gain from a dose of tough management. Her father, 22 years older than his wife, died when Val was seven, so, with two children to look after, her mother took in lodgers (but not black ones). Micro what? Don't you mean Microsoft? But Mr O'Grady gets the next laugh. The dollar raced more than 2 pfennigs higher to DM1.7125.But after it emerged that the meeting had been called off, the French franc weakened by about 0.8 centimes, to Fr3.3670 to the mark.

While acknowledging that both measures are fraught with legal, political and practical difficulties, the committee will urge Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, to implement them on public health grounds. The recommendations follow the most detailed study undertaken on the treatment of Aids within the prison system.Members of the Aids Advisory Committee, which will report to Home Office ministers and senior officials in the prison service, have rejected suggestions that needle-exchange schemes should be introduced in jails. Inch-high figures of Jesus and Mary are embedded almost unnoticeably in the masonry. The last two or three weeks, however, he has been marching his troops down the hill again. I've never been sure about those images of unkempt girls with buckled knees standing next to a rusty radiator in a rundown council flat.' He says he employs the techniques of a voyeur: 'The best pictures of all are of situations you can't set up, like when someone accidentally falls down the steps.'Photographic heroes: 'I'm not saying, I don't like talking about other photographers' work.'Donated print: Linda Evangelista, backstage at Vivienne Westwood's Anglomania collection autumn/winter 93.(Photographs omitted).

'No matter which way you cut the statistics,' said Angela Phillips, an author and journalist, 'one factor is always closely correlated with criminality and that is the presence of a Y (male) chromosome.' She added: 'Perhaps it is time we considered the possibility that in our society. However blurred the images he emerges from memory as a classic wing- half, a natural hero, never flinching from the romantic ideal that football is nothing but a glory game. But with the Government imposing VAT on domestic fuel from next year, it is unlikely to result in any saving on most domestic electricity bills.'Subject to no uplift in input costs, our prices in 1995 will be less than four years ago. Britain will be pushing the case for greater discipline over expenditure.But these financial and economic arguments do not wash when compared with the main political one: the EC's rich members will have to lavish large amounts of aid on the poorer members to persuade them to achieve not just the single market and the ratification of Maastricht but also the opening of the EC to new members and a host of other things.Hence the proposal from the European Commission, now known as the second Delors package, not just to raise real spending by a third but also to devote much of that increase to a doubling of the various arrangements - structural funds, regional funds and, from 1993 onwards, the Cohesion Fund - to help Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece catch up.The important issue on which Norman Lamont will have to try to win agreement is the ceiling on Community spending.