‘Poor results may occur in very heavy soils.’But slugs adore heavy, clay soils, which should improve their odds in the war against the nematodes We shall see. A near doubling of profits in the second half helped Hewden Stuart, the UK’s largest independent plant hire company, achieve a 60 per cent increase in pre-tax profits in the year to January, writes Tom Stevenson. The overrriding factor was that we all knew we couldn’t afford to have a by-election.’Mr Yeo, accompanied by his wife, Diane, put his side of revelations that he fathered two children outside marriage – one to Julia Stent, a Tory councillor, last year and the other 26 years ago to a fellow Cambridge student.The executive was furious that last Sunday he revealed details of his first illegitimate daughter after telling members he had no more skeletons in the cupboard.One senior Tory said: ‘He was ringing people all week. Leeds University and the University of Otago both conferred the honorary degree of D Sc on him in 1975.

THE GOVERNMENT’S rail privatisation programme suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday after it was forced to abandon the sale of British Rail’s Red Star parcels business because no satisfactory offers were received. While inevitable, comparisons with Best are premature, as are fears that he could suffer Best’s self-inflicted damage. The Anglo-Irish relationship that has been nurtured during the past decade should not be sacrificed because of differences in strategy. This combination is called the premedication, and is usually given about an hour before the operation, making the patient drowsy and relaxed. The 250 index, meanwhile, has soared 58 per cent.The 100 index is made up of blue chips with large overseas earnings – good defensive investments when economic times are hard But the mood has steadily turned against them. We believe even more can be saved.’The Cabinet committee reviewing pit closures met again on Wednesday, but no conclusions were presented to the full Cabinet yesterday.Delegates at a special conference of the NUM in Sheffield yesterday unanimously approved a strike ballot over pit closures and criticised the select committee’s rescue package.

Its narrative structure permits Nietzsche to recount, in a dream, the course and purpose of his philosophy on the night before he becomes insane.Repeatedly, Nietzsche says that ‘Plato used Socrates like this, to forge / A semiotic of the holy life.’ If we overlook the ambiguity of ‘forge’, we see that Nietzsche presents himself as his own ideal type, the hero towards whom his own work points What happens in the mind must be lived out to be made true. ALGIERS (AFP) – Algerian authorities have dealt a serious blow to Muslim extremists by killing one of their most radical leaders, Djaafar al-Afghani, and nine of his followers, security officials said yesterday. The FT-SE index dropped by 29.7 points to 3,098.3.The Employment Department said that the recent jump in earnings – more than 3 per cent between December and February alone – owed more to bonus payments than to higher pay settlements, although a number of surveys have shown settlements gradually picking up. Asked how it would be run, one said: ‘We can send in a sergeant.’Barry Irving, director of the Police Foundation, said that, despite the arguments for ending its isolation, ‘asking the City to merge with the Met is a bit like asking the Swiss Guard at the Vatican to join the Carabinieri of Rome. Pastis and armagnac apart, Fatima offers, according to its literature, ‘the chance to get through this terrible ordeal with the maximum opportunity of getting to the Promised Land. It is very hard to say no when your children claim that ‘everyone’ in their class is going abseiling or scuba diving or paragliding; refusing makes you seem a spoilsport or mean. They pick their full-back in his England – and now Lions – position on the wing.All four having reached the semi-finals, Wasps-Northampton and Leicester-Harlequins are potential cup final rehearsals, even if Quins’ priority is the two points that would take them beyond fear of the drop.

Describing the parliamentary debate as ‘unreal’ and involving ’surreal Monty Pythonesque exchanges on the floor of the Commons’, Mr Clarke said Maastricht had not moved great areas of competence into the community.Speaking at a press briefing, Sir Norman stopped short of calling for rebels to be deselected or lose the party whip. He has never been Marco Solo, once pipping a certain Paul Gascoigne to the North-east’s award for most ‘assists’.Talking of which, Gabbiadini believes victory over Second Division Bolton would help revive their promotion chances by boosting a young side’s confidence. ‘Apart from a maximum of 36 hours, we experienced nothing greater than you would find in the North Sea Except for the icebergs, that is. Still in some discomfort, and given no chance of playing against Lazio at the weekend, he was allowed to travel to Cambridge to consult Professor David Dandy, an expert in knee conditions and their treatment. Classic examples are the Moscow trials of the 1930s, the Volksgerichsthof proceedings against the anti-Hitler plotters in 1944, or the Slansky trials in Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s. SHARES in Allied Colloids, the Yorkshire chemicals company, dropped yesterday as fears grew that it will have to foot a large environmental bill after a fire at its main plant, writes Robert Cole. But the couple discovered that marriage would have clobbered them on tax grounds, and so the fiscal had to put the traditional on hold while they both wrestled with the recession.On the day of Pauline’s funeral, Mrs North and I missed a great excitement in the village.