It makes no sense for Britain to force the pace on change that will be longer lasting and more deeply rooted if it comes with a national democratic mandate.. I've frequently said in my time as Prime Minister that the treatment of indigenous Australians represents the most blemished chapter in the history of this country. It let them imagine that they could simply meet their responsibilities by symbolic expressions and gesture rather than accepting the need for an ongoing persistent rendition of practical, on-the-ground measures to challenge the real areas of indigenous deprivation.We have reached a new level of agreement in the reconciliation process on the "fundamental need for change to be based on indigenous aspiration". And as somebody who believes devoutly and passionately in individual aspiration as a driving force for progress, and a driving force for progress in all sections in the Australian community, I want to see greater progress in relation to land.And when I talk about land in this context, let me make it clear that the Government does not seek to wind back or undermine native title or land rights.

Rather we want to add opportunities for families and communities to build economic independence and wealth through the use of their communal land assets. We want to find ways to help indigenous Australians secure, maximise and sustain economic benefits. We want to make native title and communal land work better.I don't want to be too critical about past structures and past approaches. I accept they were embraced in a spirit of optimism and in a spirit of goodwill, but I think one of the lessons we can learn from the past two decades of indigenous policy is that the solutions that focus on local communities and grass-root responses are infinitely more likely to succeed than those that are imposed from a distant perspective and from above.I say in the name of the Government that we will reach out. We will meet the indigenous people of this country more than halfway if necessary.. Scklopburble alarslop Sorry, caught me talking with my mouth full Yes, I know, it's disgusting. What I didn't know was quite how disgusting quite how many people find it: an advertisement featuring call-centre workers singing the praises of fried chicken with their mouths full of it has attracted a record number of complaints, surpassing even that one in 1995 for safe sex showing the Pope wearing a safety helmet (indeed) Scklopburble alarslop Sorry, caught me talking with my mouth full Yes, I know, it's disgusting.

The ad did contain call centres, quick triggers to suppressed rage. (Steady!) And the Advertising Standards Authority rejected the complaints, expressing confidence in the corrective powers of parents (and probably foreseeing a convulsion of complaints about forks as shovels, elbows on the table, and food not being chewed 32 times).I'm not sure they were right. Manners, for the British, have always been both the key to survival on a crowded island and the means of feeling superior to more obviously civilised peoples such as the French and the Italians.Manners are also the outward sign of an inward morality, the one true indicator of, pace Aretha Franklin and T Blair, Respect. J P Donleavy has always been a striking advocate; if I may, I should like to leave you with, for inspiration and example, his exquisite excuse for the loud and public breaking of wind, which, if I have it right, goes as follows: "My soul speaks when my mouth knows the moment is too divine for words." Thank you.. "But can Ken be fagged?" That is the question the Conservatives are asking of its big-cigar smoking beast in the Tory jungle as he teases them and the media about his leadership intentions. It is the most amusing irony that Kenneth Clarke, that most Europhile of Tories, should be cheering on the results of the French and Dutch referendums even more loudly than Bill Cash, the arch Tory Eurosceptic. At a stroke, so this theory goes, the past 15 years of schism within the Tory party over Europe enables Mr Clarke to re-enter the leadership stakes with his views on Europe no longer a bar to leading his party.It is an attractive proposition.