To me consensus seems to be - the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects - the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner "I stand for consensus"?

The real case against socialism is not its economic inefficiency, though on all sides there is evidence of that. Much more fundamental is its basic immorality.

It is your tax which pays for public spending. The government have no money of their own. There is only taxpayers' money.

One only gets to the top rung on the ladder by steadily climbing up one at a time, and suddenly, all sorts of powers, all sorts of abilities which you thought never belonged to you - suddenly become within your own possibility and you think, 'Well, I'll have a go, too.'

The battle for women's rights has largely been won. The days when they were demanded and discussed in strident tones should be gone forever. I hate those strident tones we hear from some Women's Libbers.

Our first duty to liberty is to keep our own. But it is also our duty - as Europeans - to keep alive in the Eastern as well as the Western half of our continent those ideas of human dignity which Europe gave to the world. Let us therefore resolve to keep the lamps of freedom burning bright so that all who look to the West from the shadows of the East need not doubt that we remain true to those human and spiritual values that lie at the heart of European civilization.

There are some remarkable parallels between basketball and politics. Michael Jordan has already mastered the skill most needed for political success: how to stay aloft without visible means of support.