You can’t just throw resources at this project
You can’t just throw resources at this project.” Problems may also arise because 2000 is a leap year – in programs that calculate interest, for example.An independent analysis by International Monitoring, a consultancy based in London, suggests that the US, Britain and Russia will be among countries that experience the most bug effects. If you’re trying to book a hotel in Torquay and its computer is down, you will go to the one next door.”For Britain as a whole, he said that the picture was encouraging. Of the largest companies, the FTSE 500, 99 per cent reported that they expected no material disruption from the bug, which is caused by some computer programs not being able to distinguish that dates in 2000 come after those in 1999. “They should remember that this is a competitive sector, where companies spring up and go out of business much faster than in other sectors.”If they have millennium bug problems it doesn’t have an effect on the wider economy – they are not part of the supply chain – but it could be the final straw that drives them out of business. Don Cruickshank, head of Action 2000, the official body dealing with “year 2000″ computer problems, said tourism and construction companies with fewer than 250 employees seemed less well-prepared than the average.
“In the hotel and restaurant sector only 71 per cent seem ready, and in construction only 88 per cent,” Mr Cruickshank said. MANY SMALL British hotels, restaurants and construction companies could be driven out of business by the millennium bug computer problem in the new year, the Government’s watchdog warned yesterday.
“They have had 60 years to decided that openness is a good policy. It is a rather late conversion and has only come about because of the overwhelming pressure of my historical work,” he said.. We are all capable of misjudgement.”Mr St Clair was unimpressed by Mr Anderson’s confession. They were also horrified that Dr Jenkins urged those attending the conference to touch the masterpieces.Dr Jenkins added: “The British Museum is not infallible It is not the Pope… its history is a series of good intentions marred by the occasional cock-up.
The Thirties cleaning was such a cock-up.” But the events were history, he said, and all those involved were dead.Opening the two-day conference, the director of the museum, Robert Anderson,admitted publicly for the first time that there had indeed been a cover-up of the damage inflicted on the sculptures.But, he added: “Secrecy may have been true in the past but now we are truly committed to openness We are not angels. The delegates saidthey thought they had come to talk about the British Museum’s record on maintaining the sculptures, not their own. Mr St Clair accused the museum of causing irreparable damage to the sculptures by scraping them to make them white, and of covering up the extent of the damage.The Greek delegation at the conference reacted angrily to the assertion by Dr Jenkins that Greece did not look after its art heritage. “The tragedy of my generation has been to witness the progressive deterioration of the sculptures that have been left until recently on buildings on Athens, while some are still exposed.”
Dr Jenkins was speaking at a conference for archaeological experts convened by the British Museum after the publication of a new edition of Lord Elgin and the Marbles by the Cambridge historian William St Clair. Ian Jenkins, the assistant keeper of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities, said that had the Elgin Marbles not come to the museum in 1816, they would not have survived so well
“This is not an opinion, it is fact,” he said.
THE BRITISH Museum’s cleaning of the Elgin Marbles in the Thirties was a “cock-up”, but nowhere near as serious as the way the Greeks have neglected the Parthenon sculptures that remain in their care, a museum employee told a conference yesterday. The possibility that all three attacks on the train were by one man – or a group of men – was under investigation, the sources said.. He was wearing trainers, a baseball cap and a dark shirt.His description also fits that of a man who attacked a young Breton woman on the Limoges to Paris line in September.Investigation sources re- fused to say yesterday whether it also fitted the description given by the British girl attacked last year but they confirmed that the witness appeal made in October had produced reports of a series of thefts and minor assaults on the Limoges-Paris night train. The man is between 25 and 30 year old, of Mediterranean appearance and of medium height and build.
The girl – who has not been named – was among a number of people interviewed by the two examining magistrates leading the French inquiry when they travelled to Britain two weeks ago.Last week, the investigators issued a composite picture of a man whom they wish to question about the attack on Ms Peake, from Barlaston, Staffordshire. Although officially described as a “possible witness, not a suspect”, his description answers that of a man seen talking to, or standing close to, Ms Peake at Limoges station before she caught the Paris night train. A BRITISH student was attacked and raped a year ago on the same overnight train from Limoges to Paris that a 20-year- old English woman was thrown from in October. French investigators are examining the possibility that the murder of Isabel Peake was part of a series of attacks by one man, including an assault at knifepoint on a Breton woman on the same line in September.
The student attacked last year was – like Ms Peake – on a one-year course at the University of Limoges. She did not report the rape to French authorities but did so when she reached Britain.She came forward again after reading reports of the death of Ms Peake, whose partly clothed and broken body was found beside the Limoges-Paris railway line south of Chateauroux on 13 October.
