Labour criticised the Government for reducing hospitals to commercial hotel status and the Liberal Democrats described the plan as grossly unfair

Labour criticised the Government for reducing hospitals to commercial hotel status and the Liberal Democrats described the plan as grossly unfair.
Booklets will be published and lodged in libraries, doctors’ surgeries and Citizens’ Advice Bureaux allowing local people to see how their hospitals are doing.The most sensitive aspect is the star rating system grading hospitals according to their performance in five key areas.These, based on promises in the Patient’s Charter, are: the percentage of patients assessed (but not necessarily treated) within five minutes of arrival in casualty departments; the percentage of outpatients seen within half an hour of appointment time; the percentage of operations not needing an overnight stay; the percentage of NHS patients admitted within three months and within 12 months of being put on a waiting list; and the percentage of patients still waiting within a month of a second cancellation of an operation.The league tables will not include more crucial information which compares how well doctors do in treating their patients. The process is efficient but produces a lot of foul-smelling effluent.Three million tons of rayon are made each year, but this has long been a declining fraction of the world market in artificial fibres. But will there be anything worth reviewing?

Breakfast, then Yesterday at Wimbledon (BBC2) Might have missed the odd shot yesterday. Assuming that you will not be joining your pet tourist on this particular jaunt you had better take not the first, not the second but the third cab you see to Dr Watson’s bar in the nearby Sherlock Holmes Hotel in Baker Street.

Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times, has ambitions in television and may consider the Times job to be a demotion. It is unclear how the clash originated; but there are reports that Mr Mellor was annoyed by an incident when he was Arts Minister two years ago. ‘My team have done the work to keep me in the leader’s yellow jersey, particularly Sean Yates. This expansion of the normal repertoire of Renaissance flower painting makes the Primavera almost (but only almost) a hymn to fertility – an image of floral abundance, peopled by alluring images of female sexuality, thinly draped goddesses in diaphanous veils.But the eroticism of Botticelli’s painting, and the sexual charge of its floral symbolism, is held in check by a peculiar strategy of pictorial conflation – the subtle elision of one symbolic code with another.Botticelli’s Venus, much more decorously dressed than the other figures in the painting, has been made to resemble a Madonna.

Over a number of years, we have supported the retention of the wages councils as a way of combatting discrimination, alongside equal pay legislation. He speaks carefully, with an awareness of the demands of his new status. Any Eroica stands or falls by its Marcia funebre and here, too, Davis has plenty to tell us: throughout the movement basses underpin the texture with their sombre presence, and the central sequence of climaxes retains a discernible structure, without the slightest hint of rigidity.But it is perhaps the theme-and-variations finale that I liked best, its mellow textures and rhythmic incisiveness especially, and the grandeur of an expansive but ultimately exciting coda. The shake-up in the minority Congress (I) government follows intense criticism of Mr Rao for his failure to quell religious strife between Hindus and Muslims.. He has accused her and the churches in Kenya of stirring up violence in the Rift Valley.
It is the first such incident since Kenya’s election in December and may herald a return to the repressive politics of the one-party state era. ‘Check out the mice dressed as children.”Pass the bucket,’ said Greg, thrusting two fingers playfully down his throat.Ten years ago, cake icing was something done in the privacy of the home, perhaps once a year on a birthday or anniversary. Police promised compensation and action against the officers responsible

Photograph: Qaiser Mirza/AP.