It was a small and, I suppose one might say, neat and slightly sleekit animal, with one real characteristic - whenever danger threatened and there was a Crisis in the Offing, it scrabbled into a hole and lay there squeaking ineffectively in the hope that the danger would pass away.

Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth health authority, recognised by the Under - Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), as not a profligate one, reported a financial Crisis in the Offing.

in some parts of mid-Wales over the next 13 or 14 years, so we have another social Crisis in the Offing.