For instance, he would often argue in defence of nuclear disarmament - indeed, he took a hand in forming that monstrous organisation 'CND' - yet I believe that, deep down, he was all for the nuclear bomb, provided it is used only selectively and with good taste.Yes, there are many lessons our society may still learn from the great J B Priestley. He would never have supported the striking signal workers, for instance, and he would be thrilled that coalmining in Britain is now pretty much a dead duck. Like Orwell, he had little truck with the shibboleth of democracy, and what has happened in South Africa would have caused him much pain. In this year of his centenary, it is up to all of us to keep alive the flame of his beliefs, and watch them burn bright.. UNIVERSAL Challenge, your starter for 10, no conferring: who said on Thursday in Brussels that the profitability of a company was more important than the family life of its employees? Bzzzz] Yes, that's right, Michael Portillo, the Employment Secretary. First bonus question: Who said in June that business was contributing to the break up of families by forcing employees to spend 'outrageous' hours at work away from their children? Yes, that's right, Alistair Burt, the Social Security minister.

Second bonus question: Isn't the Conservative Party The Party Of The Family? Well, yes, there certainly was a time when that was thought to be the case. There was a time, too, when the goal of a civilised society was thought to be the organisation of work so that people had more time to spend with their families, books, dog or golf ball, a belief that work was a means rather than an end. But then Margaret Thatcher disinvented society and everyone became confused. Mr Portillo's remarks came as he vetoed the European Union scheme to allow three months unpaid paternity leave.

Asked if he would be more concerned with profitability than with his family's health, he replied: 'I don't think even in those circumstances I would want to put my company in a difficult position'. You might prefer Mr Burt: 'Too many companies and businesses demand outrageous time commitments from those who work for them, without thought of the damage to family structure or for the strength their employees should get from a sound family life.' Third bonus question: Does this Government have a coherent policy on anything? Perhaps Mr Blair can help. It is time to rescue the family from the faltering, sanctimonious grasp of those who fail to understand its precious ability to teach obligation with love. (Photographs omitted). WEARY from long voyages through seas 'pestered with ice', from struggling with 'thick fogs, snowstorms, intense cold and every other thing that can render navigation dangerous', Captain Cook never made landfall in Antarctica.

It was, he wrote, 'a country doomed by nature never once to feel the warmth of the sun's rays, but to lie buried in everlasting snow and ice'. More than 200 years later, for the second time in less than a decade, the 'warmth of the sun's rays' may be giving the world a vital early warning. Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which discovered the ozone hole in 1985, now believe that 'a dangerous warming' is first becoming evident in the frozen continent. Flowers and grass, as we reported last week, are spreading explosively in the north of Antarctica. More than two-thirds of the 2,000 square-kilometre (770 square-mile) Wordie Ice Sheet, has melted away in the past 30 years: the BAS warns that other sheets face similar 'catastrophic disintegration'. And since the Seventies, the Antarctic summer has lengthened by 50 per cent.Half a world away, the shrinking band of undisturbed tropical rainforest that encircles the globe, has, says another group of scientists, caught 'the equivalent of a fever'. Researchers at the Missouri Botanical Gardens have found that trees in forests in Australia, South-east Asia, Africa and Central and South America, are growing and dying more rapidly than in the past.