PERHAPS you remember the TV pictures? Though I've seen no mention of it, next Sunday brings the tenth anniversary of an event that symbolised the end of the Cold War.

No, not the breaching of the Berlin Wall, which happened on November 9, 1989. Fifteen months later, top brass of Nato and the Warsaw Pact got together to jointly witness the start of a programme of the organised dismantling of nuclear missiles belonging to both sides.

The media performed cartwheels, hailing the advent of a brave new world order. Cynics who pointed out that the superpowers still possessed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, were ignored or dismissed as pessimists.

Well, here we are on the brink of the Cold War starting all over again. The new US president, George W Bush, whose father signed a declaration with President Gorbachev that formally ended the Cold War on December 1, 1990, is hell-bent on his Star Wars missile "shield" - in fact a system for attacking missiles, foreshadowing war in space.

Though Bush identifies "rogue" states like Iraq as the potential enemy, claims by his staff that Moscow is helping some of these develop nuclear weapons have racked up the tension.

Distressingly, Tony Blair seems poised to back the hawkishness of the new US president, threatening the return of the perilous - and pointless - arms race of past. That's if it ever went away. Perhaps we just dreamt those scenes of missiles being cut up under the watchful gaze of the enemy.

PRINCE William was out hunting with the Bedale last weekend. What a mistake. Not that he chose the Bedale. But that he was hunting at all.

Foxhunting will survive this Parliament and perhaps even the next. And that would secure its future into the second decade of the century, since the government after the next will be Conservative.

But hunting will not survive the period during which William can be expected to be king - until well into the second half of this century. And if the Prince wants the monarchy itself to survive, he is hardly helping his cause by adopting a pastime which - arguments for or against to one side - is out of tune with emerging ideas on animal welfare, and will be more so when William ascends the throne.

NOW the Queen. We all know she ranks as "the wealthiest woman in Britain'' but what does that wealth mean? It means that a decision to reduce her string of racehorses by almost half (from 32 to 18) will leave her still spending £6,400 per week on training fees.

RICHARD Branson says the £8m compensation he is seeking for not being allowed to run the Lottery should not come out of the Lottery itself. That means it would have to come from the Government, which, of course, would get it from the taxpayer. Few though we are, we non-players of the Lottery should raise a loud voice against that.

DESPITE all his backward policies, William Hague is suddenly up there among my angels. In one of those questionaire-type newspaper features, William revealed that the last piece of music he bought was a Scott Hamilton CD.

Not quite a household name, Hamilton is a relatively young jazz tenor sax player who keeps alive the kind of jazz that adorns the melody rather than murders it.

The day after I discovered that William shared my liking for Hamilton, I missed a pavement encounter with him in Stokesley by half a minute. What a pity. Stokesley citizens would have been spared William's dreary defence of the pound. For it won't be every day on the stump that he gets the offer to listen to a few Scott Hamilton tracks he might not have heard.

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