On the British side, cars leave England and enter France, checked by French gendarmes and customs before they get on to the trains to ensure they can be driven straight on to the motorway at the other end. In France the process is reversed.The cars drive on to the double-deck trains through loaders which will need to take on 60 cars in eight minutes to allow the trains to meet their projected 35- minute journey times.Christopher Garnett, the ever upbeat commercial director on whose shoulders now rests the financial future of the project, stressed that the experience should be 'incredibly ordinary'. He said: 'We want people to feel 'I've just arrived in France; what's all the fuss about?' 'It is a novel marketing ploy, a recognition that the tunnel cannot compete with the ferry 'fun and shopping palaces' that are advertised as part of the holiday. The tunnel, by contrast, is definitely part of the journey, competing only on speed by offering a saving of an hour, motorway to motorway.Eurotunnel has now realised that it has overdone the no-frills approach. The original idea of a spartan service with no refreshments, duty-frees or food and only a single toilet every three carriages is being changed.Now there are plans to have people, like ice-cream ladies in cinemas, dispensing drinks and sandwiches from trays, posters and maps on the carriage walls to liven them up and even a tunnel radio station.The Mawby family from Reading, were very enthusiastic about the journey and, specifically, the technology. Neda, travelling with her husband Terry, and three- year-old Drew, said: 'I thought it might be like a cattle truck but it's much nicer.

There's a lot of room to walk around in.'But as the trip wore on, she started yawning and said: 'My ears hurt a bit Next time I'll bring some gum. And they must put in some drinks machines.'The ear problem, experienced by several passengers, is caused by pressurisation of the trains.(Photograph omitted). A CLEAR pledge to cut taxes once borrowing is under control came yesterday from Kenneth Clarke, in a pre- emptive strike before Labour's key debate on the economy at its party conference on Monday. The Chancellor moved to reassure his party's grassroots with a promise that taxes would be 'cut once we can sensibly afford to so'. As the Opposition mounted a fresh onslaught on the tax increases in the last two budgets he said it was a 'question of not whether but when' taxes would start falling again. But Mr Clarke again firmly ruled out cuttting taxes in the next budget or 'before we can sensibly afford to do so'.

He added that the 'public will only be impressed by tax cuts if those tax cuts are based on solid economic performance'.Mr Clarke's letter to Tory constituency chairmen came as Labour sought to exploit today's implementation of the 2.5 per cent insurance premium tax, claiming that growing numbers of people in high-crime areas could abandon escalating home cover.The Chancellor's move, aimed at placating an increasingly disgruntled grassroots in the run-up to the Conservative conference the week after next, comes in the face of an unremitting Labour campaign to portray the Tories as the 'tax and spend' party.Mr Clarke's letter said: 'I can promise that tax cuts will come - and it is a question of when not whether - once borrowing is firmly under control.'Keeping a grip on public spending in turn required a 'realistic approach to public sector pay', he emphasised.Motions for the Tory conference have left the Chancellor in no doubt of rank and file anxiety over tax increases and the wish of many to see VAT on household fuel pegged at 8 per cent. He has already ruled out tax cuts in this November's Budget.In implicit recognition that Labour's campaign has borne fruit, Mr Clarke accepted in the letter that the party had to 're-establish' with voters that the Tories would deliver tax cuts when the country could afford it.Harriet Harman, shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, used today's introduction of the new insurance levy to recall Mr Clarke's own admission, in a grilling by a Commons committee last December, that taxation increases in the two 1993 budgets equalled a 7p rise in the basic rate of income tax.Concluding Labour's week- long 'Tory tax and spend', she told a Westminster news conference that the new tax, in force from today, would add pounds 13.90 to the average family's annual household and car insurance bill, which at pounds 556 was already 20 per cent higher in real terms than five years ago.. HOSPITALS are discharging terminally ill elderly patients to spend their last few weeks in private nursing homes - to be paid for by themselves, their families or overstretched local councils, social services directors claimed yesterday. Draft guidelines, published by the Department of Health in August, will further encourage hospitals to 'shunt' responsibility for long-term care of an ageing population from the NHS to means- tested social care, the directors predict. The executive of the Association of Directors of Social Services yesterday called on the Government to withdraw the draft guidance and draw up a policy which clarifies who should care and who should pay for care after elderly patients leave hospital.Tad Kubisa, vice-president of the association, said several directors had reported that an increasing number of patients being discharged from hospital into their care were terminally ill and lived for just a few weeks. One authority said 30 per cent of patients discharged into their care were dying.Mr Kubisa said the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act, which gave social services increasing responsibility for providing care in the community for elderly and other vulnerable groups, was never intended to offload responsibility for people who needed nursing care from the NHS, but the rate of such referrals was escalating and local authorities had not received the extra funding this required.'The association thinks it is unreasonable to be expected to pay for people we weren't paid to deal with. Increasingly, patients who are dying are being shunted on to us They then have to be assessed and means-tested by us. That is not bestowing dignity on them for the last few weeks in their life.'.