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concrete labyrinths of the new social work depart-ments?where the central heating automatically goes on on October 1st and automatically goes off on April 1st, whatever the weather?the filing clerks excitedly cried: 'Isn't it amazing to have the windows open in February!' Nervous daffodils appeared on the typists' desks. It was a mild winter. Of course there were one or two contretemps. During one of the brief cold snaps an old lady froze to death in north London and her brother was found suffering from exposure in filthy and degraded conditions. Having been warmed up in hospital, he was discharged back to the same conditions, presumably to stand on his own feet. Fortunately milder weather spread in from the west soon afterwards. The mild weather continued. The electricity board was quoted as saying that their official policy was to try and avoid old people actually freezing to death, though at the same time they were putting their prices up, and if the price wasn't paid then discon-nection would automatically follow. Pensions did not increase as a result; in fact they continued to decline in value, and by midwinter were worth less (in purchasing power) than they were worth in 1965. A pre-budget forecast was made in March that by October pensions would be worth less than they were worth in 1962. Nevertheless the weather continued to be mild, and no other cases of old people freezing to death were actually reported in the papers (though the papers devoted a lot of space to the story of a protest-commotion at the Miss World competition, and perhaps other stories were squeezed out as a result). Presumably the comparatively balmy breezes blowing from the west in January put new heart and spirit into the long queues of unemployed men waiting for the dole.