A further cloud was cast over the Government's political fightback yesterday when Sir Julian

A further cloud was cast over the Government's political fightback yesterday when Sir Julian Critchley, the Tory MP for Aldershot who is retiring at the election, announced that he would not be voting Conservative for his own MP in Ludlow, the Euro-sceptic Christopher Gill. In a strong defence of his own record on race relations, he promised that "genuine asylum cases will always receive a ready refuge in our country" and said that "those who attack this Bill, as Mr Blair did, do our excellent race relations no service whatever".In an unusually aggressive speech attacking advance ministerial warnings that the speech contained measures intended to "smoke out" Labour, Mr Blair successfully taunted the massed ranks of Tory backbenchers for not challenging him with parliamentary interventions. DONALD MACINTYRE and PAUL WALLACE Fresh signs of weakness in the economy yesterday blunted the impact of the Government's legislative programme announced in the Queen's Speech, and put even greater pressure on Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, to use this month's budget as the launch pad for a Tory political recovery.The first rise in unemployment for two years and sharp falls in retail sales and in the value of the pound threatened to overshadow a Queen's Speech containing contentious measures on asylum, crime, education and housing, and intended to spearhead the Conservatives' "Autumn Offensive".Tony Blair and John Major began to draw the battle-lines for a prolonged general election campaign in pointed and bitter Commons exchanges over a 1995-96 programme containing 15 Bills for what will be the last full session of Parliament before polling day.While the Prime Minister said that the speech was a "common sense practical programme of traditional Conservative values", Mr Blair used one of his most effective parliamentary performances as party leader to claim that the programme was not "to help the people of Britain but to play a game in the run-up to the election".In the fiercest clashes of the day, both Mr Major and the Labour leader accused each other's parties of playing the "race card" over the forthcoming and controversial Asylum and Immigration Bill, which is designed to reduce bogus asylum applications.Mr Blair, whom senior Tories say will suffer electoral damage if Labour opposes the measure, called for the Bill to be referred to a special standing committee that could call expert witnesses and be "a genuinely consensual exercise in getting at the truth".Mr Major said that while he would consider the request, he was not immediately "attracted" to the idea. And what alterations would be necessary, I asked, if we substituted the word "husband" for "dog" throughout the book? Jane Buckle thought a little over that one, then said: "I'd probably have to make some changes in the section on No-Go areas." The book defines such areas as "those in which you would rather not be licked yourself, particularly by your dog".WILLIAM HARTSTON'How to Massage Your Dog', by Jane Buckle (Howell Book House) pounds 6.99, available from Harrod's, some branches of Waterstone's and WH Smith, and the City Lit Bookshop, Stukeley St, London WC2. Like kneading dough only with a sentient creature beneath one's fingertips. That view is confirmed by one of the items in the "Letters from Satisfied Owners" chapter (which may be found after the "Letters from Satisfied Dogs" section).

Signed "a psychiatrist", it ends: "If only people would massage their dogs when they felt stressed, they wouldn't need to come and clutter up my waiting room." We are assured the letter is perfectly genuine.To allay the doubts of anyone who felt that they needed a dog to benefit from her advice, Ms Buckle pointed out that she is bringing out How to Massage Your Cat next February. Such a couch-potato dog may even be lured into progressing to the tango. "But make sure you lead," Ms Buckle warns.Though she was not actually drooling herself while massaging Barney, the demonstration suggested that the experience may be as therapeutic to the massager as the massagee Gentle, rhythmic, relaxing. "It's putting the hospitality back into hospitals." And dogs seem as good a place to start as any.An invigorating massage, we learn from the book, may even cure your dog of watching TV all day while munching dog biscuits.

"All health professionals should be taught how to touch," she says. She used to teach children how to massage a relative who was in a coma. "If the animal has no tail," says Ms Buckle, "it's important to massage where the tail would have been." You have to experiment to find the phantom tail, but you can tell when you're in the right place by the contented expression on the dog's face. After that you may graduate to specialist techniques for dogs' backs, legs, hands, face, chests and paws, for small dogs, large dogs, puppies, old dogs, pregnant dogs, hyperactive dogs, uninterested dogs, jealous dogs, city dogs indeed dogs of every size, shape, personality and social class.A background in critical-care nursing taught Jane Buckle the importance of touch as a means of communication. "He was hard going." When the book came out in the United States earlier this year she promoted it by massaging neurotic dogs on live television.There are three basic massage techniques to master: palm strokes (firmly and with both hands), thumb strokes (slow and circular, by the sides of the spine) and fish strokes (kneading the dog's flesh with hands opening and shutting like fishes' mouths).Having mastered those, you may progress to more advanced techniques, including massaging the tail, and massaging the tail of tailless dogs. Jane is the author of How to Massage Your Dog and the two of them were getting on very well indeed despite having met only a few hours before. Barney was an easy subject "I had a puppy last time," Ms Buckle explained.