By Sam Wood THE National Farmers Union has welcomed moves by the Government to start a debate about a greater role for GM crops.

The admission by Environment Minister Phil Woolas that water bills here in the South West are too high hardly qualifies as a revelation. Anyone who pays them has known that for decades.

FOR many years to come, politicians will curse the moment Tony Blair coined the phrase "joined-up government".

ENVIRONMENT Minister Phil Woolas has said the bottled water industry "borders on the morally unacceptable". He asked why Britons use millions of litres of bottled water daily when our tap water is drinkable and other countries had supply problems.

By Steve Dube "time after time the more urgent a thing was the greater delay." The words come from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and refer to the days of Ethelred the Unready exactly 1,000 years ago.