We know we are listening to a gift which, like a flower, is only allowed to bloom for a certain duration; unlike the flower that will bloom again next year, the treble voice will break around the age of 13, and will have gone forever.However, philosophising about life's transience is not part of the daily timetable at King's College School, Cambridge; there is no time for that, particularly with Common Entrance round the corner and Christmas coming up.From 8am, the time of their first practice, to the end of evensong, the choristers have been dovetailing a normal day's work in the classroom and on the games field with the demanding schedule required of one of the world's most famous choirs. Its publication comes as the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee starts examining the issue.Mr Graef concludes that they were all damaged young people. 'It transports you for half an hour into a dream world of romance and skulduggery,' she told this newspaper last month. It's a staging that conveys the horror of damnation not with crackling flames but by making Mephistophilis's words 'Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it' ring coldly true.Hugh Ross, as Mephistophilis, is excellent. TWENTY YEARS ago, computer programmers were saying that the world chess champion would lose to a machine within 10 years.

The company wanted the MPs to give whole-hearted support to the early abolition of the Government-imposed ban that runs until 2001 with a review by the regulator, Oftel, in 1998.The Committee's report is thought to propose a system under which the ban could exist in some parts of the country until the end of the decade.In submissions to the the Select Committee's inquiry, cable industry executives had said that if the ban on BT were to be completely lifted in the near future, it would threaten investment plans to the end of 1999 of about pounds 10bn.BT has argued that it is unfair to allow cable television companies to offer telephone services in their franchise areas while preventing it from providing entertainment over its network.It claims it cannot embark on a pounds 15bn project to install a high-capacity telecommunications network throughout Britain without the returns it would get from new services ranging from interactive television to education, training and shopping.The company is also angry at the perception of cable companies as small and new when they are in general owned by large foreign groups, many of them based in the US.View From City Road, page 27.. If you typed in a URL, please make sure you have typed it correctly. In particular, make sure that the URL you typed is all in lower case. The 20 winners will be able to spend a further pounds 750m over five years.City Challenge has its critics, not least the mainly Labour local authorities which swallowed their pride and seconded senior officers to prepare bids. After myriad problems, Ludwig eventually pulled out of the project in 1982, having watched more than dollars 1bn of his own money disappear into the jungle. There are more than 30 around Britain, and as many as 4,000 people regularly exchange goods and services in return for credits without money changing hands.

But they also represent long-overdue rationalisation of a company that employs more people now than it did at privatisation in 1986.The threat of enormous upheaval prompted by the MMC, which British Gas expects to conclude its work in April, is nevertheless a useful background against which to modernise the group. Yesterday the extent of the gulf between them and Northampton, who are fourth in the First Division, was there for all to see. A solitary figure urinates through the railings of Great Saint Mary's church.I am worried about Francis I haven't seen him for a couple of hours I enquire on the CB I am told that he went off the road an hour earlier. He can however follow up cases of alleged 'maladministration' in any public sector scheme.For Joe Robertson of the Occupational Pensions Advisory Service, Margaret Healy's case reinforces the importance of not taking a pension for granted. MELVYN BRAGG, chairman of Border Television, said yesterday the board was committed to retaining the company's independence after rumours that rules controlling the takeover of small television companies might be relaxed by the Government, writes Topaz Amoore. THIS IS a very typical only-child picture, in my view It's a little too precise, everything is a little too right. If it means regulation by some third party then that third party should be the Government.'The PIA's public interest directors include its chairman, Joe Palmer, a former chief executive of Legal & General and chairman of the Association of British Insurers.

What undermines this House is the cynicism of ministers who will not tell this House what is common knowledge in their department,' Mr Cook said, as Mr Heseltine and his coal deputy, Tim Eggar, remained silent.At Question Time, John Smith, the Labour leader, linked Mr Portillo's speech on the New British Disease of national cynicism with John Major's evidence to the arms-to-Iraq inquiry. The streets were empty and the township's little Monopoly houses, identical rows and rows of them, betrayed no sign of life. BONE fractures that fail to heal can now be treated with ultrasound, avoiding the surgery that is usual in such cases, writes Nuala Moran. It also had a pounds 84m rights issue.That cut its debt to pounds 83m at the end of 1993, equal to 37 per cent of net assets. There might be some problems over that when the time comes.(Photograph omitted).