A loss in the second half after a pounds 514000 interim pre-tax profit surprised the market

A loss in the second half, after a pounds 514,000 interim pre-tax profit, surprised the market and the shares were marked down 8p to 50p, writes Tom Stevenson. While Celtic’s Cup exit at Falkirk might appear a distant irrelevance, it means that Liam Brady can not fulfil his promise of a trophy in two years. Like all great institutions, they target their fire more towards the outside world than towards internal bickering.And, like all elites, they can be dismissive of ideas from outside. And it may be that, in a famously conformist culture, his room to manoeuvre is more cramped than we could ever imagine. The Catholic Bishop of East Timor, Monsignor Ximenes Belo, spoke out again last week for the absolute necessity of the withdrawal of all Indonesian military forces from the territory, and the holding of a properly supervised referendum which will enable the East Timorese to decide their political future.The scheduled talks between Portugal and Indonesia in New York on 17 December should concentrate minds on these issues. And there was barely a Top 10 society that didn’t rush out to buy an estate agency chain, again paying top whack for businesses that were to prove worse than worthless when the domestic property boom fizzled out.It was an unthinking, sheep-like flood, with losses and write-offs running into hundreds of millions of pounds. Jeff Bridges, with characteristic laid-back brilliance, conveys this.

The commissioners’ approach was the equivalent of treating the strong words ‘consists in’ as ‘includes’.The words ‘to be sold’ could not be satisfied by reference to the agents’ intentions, but must refer to the purpose of the supplier at the time of the supply. No one is safe from his savage wit; not even, it seems, the artist himself. I have no doubt that the pattern of Tory supporters chairing trusts is repeated throughout the country.’The NHS is becoming a lucrative job centre for Conservative supporters. Don’t cry on me.’ Off the ice, interestingly, he deferred to her in conversation and she would straighten his hair with casual intimacy, evidence that the closeness of the relationship took other forms than enduredbickering.On the ice though her surrender was complete. The viewer will be able to choose a film, order it via the screen in their home, and the Media Server will then deliver a copy, in digital code, over the telephone lines for the intelligent box linked to their television to convert back into comprehensible moving images.Dave Thunder, a director in the telecommunications services division of the Gartner Group, says the Oracle software opens up a vast range of possibilities: ‘Nobody thought, even a year ago, that people would be able to do this with ordinary copper telephone lines.’Superhighways will put hundreds of video and film services under the control of the individual, bringing fresh meaning to the concept of ‘information overload’.Users would also be able to create their own evening news service by programming their interests into a computer that scours the airways for relevant items. But the company puts the fund’s success down to having nearly half its portfolio invested in Malaysia, which over the past year had one of the region’s best performing economies.Another good performer has been Thornton’s Little Dragons fund, which has exposure to smaller and medium- sized companies and has an aggressive policy on asset allocation. Think of Canada’s sporting legacy and you think of men chasing a puck around on ice and slamming each other into Perspex boards.

So we closed it.We now have publishing operations and magazines in Amsterdam, Paris and New York – run by a Time Out employee who understands our company culture. He is in favour of the conditional fee, and the contingency fee system.’Legal aid,’ he says, ‘must have a limited life with this or any government because of the resources it expends. Named after two sharp spines in front of their dorsal fins, young spurdogs are born alive after a pregnancy of 18 to 22 months. Members often see themselves as operational managers, apologists for what has gone wrong, reluctant to delegate authority to officers.As a result both officers and members have lost motivation, with councillors over-working themselves. But it is equally likely that the fall is a one-off that will leave the inflation rate lower for a year, in exactly the same way as cuts in interest rates will further reduce the ‘headline’ rate If so, wage settlements could continue to decline. ‘The community has been working hard to build up the quality of life.’He said that the reasons behind the violence were complex.

He totters between being an elfin Keystone Kop and a chilled-out Bruce Lee, though comparisons to the latter are, he claims, inaccurate: ‘I’m always a soft person, the underdog’.
That may be true but it’s the stunts that draw the crowds, and Chan does his own; consequently, he can now barely walk before noon. Talks centred on a visit by Mr Mandela to Israel, which would take place only once the Israel-PLO peace deal was implemented.. The fact is that people are also rather worried about Bill.(Photograph omitted). Unless the British and Irish governments make major tactical errors in the next few weeks, the blame for the continuing violence will, outside the republican community, be placed squarely on the shoulders of the IRA.The IRA and Sinn Fein are no strangers to isolation, but their strategists must wonder about the prospects for success of a terrorist campaign which is generating only more and more hostility in the republic. It would be very different with someone else in charge – someone psychological like Phillip Hodson Though Cynthia Payne hosting it would be fun..

Rentokil, the environmental group that took over Securiguard in the summer after an acrimonious confrontation, provided much of the action, as its Danish masters reduced their stakes through SG Warburg.
Sophus Berendsen, a holding company, sold 29 million shares, cutting its holding to 52.4 per cent, and the KG Anker-Petersen Will Trust unloaded 11 million shares, taking its stake to 3 per cent. ‘He has sent word to the Shia fighters that that he will do to them what he did to the Kurds,’ said Dr Shahristani.He is also rounding up Shia men and executing them summarily. The truth is not so much that there is a crisis of the state or even of taxation but that there is a crisis of bigness. There’s no special focus on ‘neglected’ works, no axe to grind.