Meeting the deadline

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Northern Irelana secretary 1367 out of the 1680 people arrested were in fact held for longer than 48 hours. In the first three months of this year, for example, nearly half of those arrested were kept by the police for four days or more.

The PTA also provides for people to be 'excluded' from Britain, from Northern Ireland, or from the whole UK. 22 exclusion orders have been made in Northern Ireland, 11 of them in 1981.

One of the various complaints we get about the style of Socialist Organiser is slapdash endings to articles: After long paragraphs of detailed and careful argument, the final sentences will suddenly dash into sweeping declarations: "This proves once again the crisis-ridden nature of capitalism/the need for a revolutionary leadership/the impossibility of reformist policies/etc' But we have illustrious precedents - no less than the great 18th century playwright Sheridan.

Sheridan, reports Nancy Banks-Smith in the Guardian of August 24th, was a great talker. And all credit to him. 'But one quite sees' she writes, 'this does cut down the time available for throwing pieces of paper in a dustbin or, as it is known in the trade, writing. .. When Sheridan had not finished The Critic twn days before opening, his fatherin-law, a burn editor, locked him in a room until he did. With, according to Don Taylor, 'two good bottles of claret.' Here one's admiration for Sheridan's father-in-law falls off considerably. Two good bottles of claret amply accounts for a certain incoherent hilarity about the ending of The Critic: •'Flourish of drums, trumpets, cannon etc. Spanish fleet destroyed, etc."

We can do it without the claret.

Tired of Right to Work marches? The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has a more restful answer.

His 'World government' reckons that the answer is for 800 people (the number is the square root of 1% of Britain's population) to gather together in Manchester to meditate for a week.

They' still China would be confined to the higher levels of the bureaucracy.

This may backfire on both governments, for an economic collapse could plunge the whole colony into chaos and upset both governments' plans.

The present lack of success of China's SEZ stems from the fact that few capitalists misunderstand the nature of China as a non-capitalist economy. The SEZ cannot guarantee the type of security and autonomy needed for capitalist investment, without them being a threat to China's collectivised economy, control over which China's ruling bureaucrats i pend for their power and privileges. If such SEZs have not taken off, how can China have its cake in Hong Kong and eat it?

Awareness of China's dependence on Hong Kong for earnings and fear of its economic collapse which would upset China's strategie plans over Taiwan, could prove to be strong