Opinion in 1989

abortion The British government's promised bill on embryo research, now imminent, seems bound to provoke an unwanted argument on abortion. But it is not too late to amend the bill and make it better.

Earthquake protection is plainly possible, as the Cali-fornian earthquake showed. But who else can afford it?

The US Department of Agriculture should respond to a plea to fund research competitively, but with guille.

Coincidences are usually meaningless, but can it be significant that last Friday's tumble on Wall Street marks almost exactly the second anniversary of the crash on 19 October 1987, a Monday? Magic is no part of the explanation.

British university teachers are ill-paid, but their new salary claim should be more subtle.

British universities cannot expand a second time without qualitative change.

This year's annual jamboree of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington two weeks ago has deservedly earned a bad press. Their neglect of poor countries' debts is their most serious failing.

There needs to be an imaginative response to a Soviet offer to create an international centre on Lake Baikal.

The postponed timetable for selling Britain's electricity industry will increase uncertainty and reduce the price.

After a long decade of attrition, British universities may have found a way (and the courage) to stand up to the government that has been their principal tormentor.

Europe and the United States are haggling over airline ownership and television programmes.

The failure of a British company's investment in a US business should be followed by more general reform.

With luck, and chiefly because of Mr Mikhail Gorbachev's persistence, there is now a chance that peace will break out. Will the United States, the Soviet Union and their allies be able to manage the transition?

If British Greens in conference last week are anything to go by, the Green movement has a problem of consistency,

The British government's neglect of transport's to Euro-tunnel may be a deliberate ploy.

The British government is again brooding about its mechanism for supporting basic science. The best solution is radical change without the appearence thereof. The danger is the inverse.

Unless a major power (or several) intervenes, the Middle East will be a nuclear-weapons playground in ten years.

The only solution of Europe's money problem is to require European states to accept ECUs as legal tender.

The British Association's stirring manifesto from Sheffield would be more compelling if it were more immediate.

The South African election last week must be demon-strated to have been a hopeful sign or it will be the last.