We want people to disperse peacefully, with the warm feeling that they’ve had a bloody good evening. We’re not trying to encourage a culture of getting as much beer down your neck as possible.”. After months of argument about its demise, the Millennium Dome was star of the show once more last night as it opened it doors to do what it always did best: holding the party to end all parties. A spectacular fireworks display was followed by the traditional torchlight procession.

In Glasgow, tens of thousands took part in celebrations centring on four music stages across the city centre. Cardiff’s City Hall lawn was transformed into an open-air ice rink.The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey provided a thoughtful counterpoint to the revelry in an annual New Year’s message dwelling on the events of 11 September, and saying how the power of love can conquer all.. John Prescott admitted he “took a gamble” and lost when he relied on Railtrack to restore Britain’s railways. The Rail Passengers Council warned “patience is wearing very thin” and called for urgent action to speed up the process of investment in rail infrastructure.Former Transport Minister Gavin Strang also entered the row, calling for the rail network to be renationalised.Mr Prescott told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “More people travel by train than ever before, millions more journeys, more people travel by bus – that had been declining – a merchant fleet that has been reversed in its decline.”In all of this evidence, the only difficulty we have got is the railways and Railtrack.”Where I can say you would have a proper criticism of me is I took a gamble. I put it to my party conference that we would try to make Railtrack work. I put in a new Strategic Rail Authority, I gave powers to the regulator to fine them.

But Railtrack was so badly flawed it could not implement on the railways.”The admission that the Government put too much trust in Railtrack will ease pressure on Stephen Byers, the embattled Secretary of State for Transport, who has maintained that his controversial decision to put Railtrack into administration was essential to improve rail services. Mr Prescott, himself a former Transport Secretary, admitted the situation “is not a happy one and I am not happy about it.” But he dismissed speculation Mr Byers would lose his job as “press prattle”.He said: “I am not the Prime Minister but I am sure that Stephen is doing the most difficult job you can do and is now facing up to the fact that Railtrack was fatally flawed.”But Mr Strang told BBC Radio: “The correct position now is to take the railways back into public ownership. If the Government owns them then it is able to give it the priority which it justifies.”He added: “If you remember how small the British economy was then and remember the huge programme of public ownership it embarked on what we are talking about in the context of that is not very big at all.”It is all about priorities. If we attach a very high priority to getting the railways right then I think we take complete control, which I think means the Government takes ownership.”A spokesman for the Rail Passengers Council said: “The key to this is sorting out Railtrack and whatever Railtrack is going to become. We are going to need vast amounts of money coming in if targets for increased capacity are to be met. You don’t need extra capacity going to Skegness, you need it coming into London, Edinburgh and Glasgow where it is already very congested.”Mr Prescott spoke after warnings from senior Railtrack executives about the state of the rail network and the emergence of a report by engineers Ove Arup revealing problems on many parts of the network.But George Muir, director general of the Association of Train Operating Companies, insisted that safety on the railways was improving.He said: “We have a clear priority on the railway for safety and we are putting in and have been putting in for a year and longer measures to prevent accidents as far as is possible and we will not relax that.”A sign of that is that the underlying measures of safety have in fact improved in the last year.”. Edward Heath tried to change the immigration rules to make it more difficult for blacks and Asians to settle in Britain even after Parliament rejected the measure, cabinet papers newly released show.

He told the Cabinet: “Such a resurgence would inflame community relations in Britain. At a cabinet meeting on 13 May, ministers accepted would not be possible to try to reinstate it. But Mr Heath, who was knighted in 1992, said they should still investigate if it was possible to achieve the same result by easing rules for white immigrants in practice.He told Mr Maudling and the ministers involved that they should look at “the feasibility of achieving by administrative measures the aims which the rejection of the grandparental concession had frustrated”.The 1971 Act, which has formed the basis of Britain’s immigration rules until now, was introduced on 1 January 1973, amid criticism that its complex entry system clearly favoured whites over blacks and Asians. The records show that despite the criticism Mr Heath’s measure attracted, other ministers had wanted to go even further, calling for the complete abolition of immigration controls for the old Commonwealth.However the minutes show that the Cabinet as a whole believed that was a step too far. “It would be difficult to defend against the charges that we were discriminating against the ‘new’ Commonwealth and giving to nationals of the ‘old’ Commonwealth a special status which it could be argued was contrary to the concept of the Commonwealth as a multi-racial institution,” the minutes recorded.. The Queen made a secret offer to give up the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1968 to save money and show an example to the country as the Labour government pushed through unpopular spending cuts, papers released show. Mr Healey said the offer and refusal should be kept secret because it would be politically damaging to the Government at a time of reduction in spending on the armed forces.The Queen’s private secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, wrote to Mr Wilson on 2 January, 1968, saying the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had discussed the matter and “had in mind the value of an example as much as that of tangible saving.