You just have to keep your feet on the ground."The management would, however, like their forwards to keep their feet less on the ground than they did in the narrow defeat of Wales, the unproductive line-out being one of the areas over which they mulled in formulating their unchanged team. We've been playing better and the game is at Murrayfield, which is a huge bonus. "People seem to forget very quickly that we were in the same situation last year and came away without a win," Rob Wainwright, the captain, said yesterday.Not that he is contemplating defeat. Last season was at Twickenham and England, not Scotland, did the Slam "It's a different story this year. If the English fear this may give their opponents a psychological advantage over and above playing at Murrayfield, perhaps they could get one of their own national icons - Cliff Richard? Vera Lynn? - to sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" before the Irish play at Twickenham on 16 March.As for those in and around the Scotland team, they are as busy as ever playing down the sense of expectation that is growing more febrile by the day. The song having been adopted as the anthem of Scottish rugby, moves are afoot to have Browne lead its rendition before the match. Barring mishap or a conscience which prompts retirement so as to preserve this fraternal symmetry, the Lions centre will exceed the old record in Scotland's first Test against New Zealand in Dunedin on 15 June.When Hastings takes the field he could be accompanied not only by his 14 comrades but also by Ronnie Browne, the surviving member of the duo who wrote "Flower of Scotland".

Rugby Union The last time the Scots kept together the same starting line-up for an entire Five Nations' Championship, it was 1990 and they did the Grand Slam. Yesterday, after a selection meeting rather longer than might have been expected for a team three-quarters of the way to repeating this achievement, the selectors did likewise for the climactic match against England at Murrayfield on Saturday week. Scott Hastings will, therefore, equal the Scottish record of 61 caps held by his retired elder brother, Gavin. For now, however, programming a machine to play chess has been made to look a more difficult task than playing chess itself.. No wonder its play in the last game- and-a-half looked so sulky. Had it accepted the draw in game five, Kasparov would not have realised how badly it was capable of playing, and the illusion of artificial chess intelligence might have been sustained.We can be reasonably sure that improvements in hardware will eventually be enough to overcome all these problems, and with the speed of computer processing doubling every 18 months, we may not have very long to wait. Small businesses continue to be crippled by the high price of basic financial services.

The team came up with the idea of wrapping the bread in plastic bags. There was another panda in John's life at the time: George.)Reports of John Major's success at budding personal friendships in the political world are not all hype, nor are they entirely routine They are the distinguishing mark of his career. The North Herts NHS Trust, based at the Lister Hospital, Stevenage, was approached by UNI Clinical Laboratories (UCL) last year with plans to acquire the laboratories, and provide diagnostic services to the trust and others.Hospital doctors, who are fighting the move, say it confirms that the creation of NHS trusts were part of a 'hidden agenda of privatisation' of services. I must say that I agree with his implication that Clausewitz and Palmerston were neither good nor great.Yours faithfully,C NATZIOThurltonNorfolk29 December. 'Baudelaire has perceived that what distinguishes the relations of man and woman from the copulation of beasts is the knowledge of Good and Evil which are not Puritan Right and Wrong. With the help of a grant from the Burnbake Trust, a prison- based charity, the department is planning to set up a small studio where the women can record.'There's enough talent at Holloway to make an LP that would make a lot of other singers look silly,' Ollie says.(Photograph omitted).

Its report covers more than 6,000 individual packages from 508 companies with turnovers ranging from less than pounds 5m to more than pounds 2bn.It found one in five chief executives or managing directors earning more than pounds 100,000 received no salary increase. Later on that same tour, in March 1877, a combined XI from Victoria and New South Wales met James Lillywhite's English team in what has come to be recognised as the first official 'Test' match, although not billed as such at the time. The ladies eight was fourth (last) and fading when the commentator said: 'Yes, Great Britain have decided to keep their powder dry for another day.' I counted three occasions on which being thrashed was cited as a tactic.Elsewhere, there was one great improvement worth cheering. There is nothing wrong with that per se, although I think a figure of 5 per cent is still too high.But this argument is fundamentally patronising.