So business along with community representatives will be given seats on the company board and encouraged to invest

So business, along with community representatives, will be given seats on the company board, and encouraged to invest.Mr Sutherland, currently Coventry's city development director, will be in charge of the day-to-day running of the new company. He said: "The council will never be able to put more money into the centre of Coventry. If we want more investment we have to give business more of a share in decision-making."Coventry's businessmen share his faith. Martin Ritchley, chief executive of the Coventry Building Society, believes that handing over running of the city to business is its last hope."The local authority imposing its views on the city has not got us very far," he said. Its attitude to car-parking charges, for instance, was less about attracting shoppers than fulfilling the requirements of the city treasurer.

"At the end of the day the prosperity of our businesses depends on the city flourishing."Not everyone is persuaded. Members of Coventry's trades union council say it is the end of local government. Nor are they impressed by the inclusion of one local councillor on the board; it just proves that the whole exercise is undemocratic.Coventry has already set up a shadow board for the limited company, which will take over on 1 June. It will try to give this city of 305,000 people a more distinct identity and combat the fear of crime which has led many people to shop in malls and left a lot of city centres deserted at night.

An application for pounds 2m in European Regional Development funding is also being made.Other towns and cities, faced with similar problems of confidence, have tried to improve their high streets by hiring town-centre managers to co-ordinate services. In 1990 there were just six of this new breed of manager in Britain; today, 154 towns employ them.. The Radio 4 publicity officer spoke of the heartwarming vision of men with their fags and beer, on the way home from the office, playing with the women on their knees. Hardly the sort of thing you expect from an idea conceived by Woman's Hour, but the women on the above-mentioned knees are playing-cards - the first politically correct, feminist playing-cards, each bearing the likeness of a great woman in history. Sally Feldman, the editor of the programme and a keen bridge player, came up with the idea as a way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Woman's Hour: commission South African caricaturist Nicky Taylor to design a pack of cards honouring 54 exceptional women: four all-time greats for the aces, four "formidable stateswomen" for the kings, then queens for the queens, tarnished heroines for the jacks, and so on, all the way down to writers and entrepreneurs for the threes and twos.The pack is rounded off with Victoria Wood and Joyce Grenfell as the jokers.The choices - a communal effort by all the Woman's Hour team - may in some cases seem eccentric to anyone inexperienced in the ways of Woman's Hour.Nobody would argue with Jane Austen and Queen Elizabeth I as aces, but Simone de Beauvoir seems a little iffy as an all-time great, and Billie Holiday is a distinct surprise; a little like putting John Wayne and Louis Armstrong in a shortlist of the greatest men in history.The kings (Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir) and queens (Victoria, Catherine the Great, Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra) nobody could complain about, and the inclusion of the transvestite Dr James Barry - a woman who masqueraded as an army surgeon for most of her adult life - is an inspired choice.Yet finding four female scientists anyone has heard of was clearly an impossible task and the inclusion of Beatrix Potter among the entrepreneurs smacks of desperation.

Some people favour the project as a way to cut crime, while others see a threat to civil liberties in the idea of Big Brother Watching You ... and then snitching to your parents.The project is the first in the country and during April, when it began, police took footage of youngsters drinking under age, scrawling graffiti and hurling stones on to busy roads. Videocop! Police in Gosport, Hampshire, are secretly filming juvenile crime with video cameras so they can play the tapes back to parents, as part of an initiative to check juvenile crime. The scheme has drawn a mixed reaction. A new type of hi-tech police officer is prowling the streets of an English town in a crusade against juvenile law-breakers Here comes ... You're bound to get one or two people fed up with waiting."Dr Brian Young, a lecturer in media psychology at Exeter University and an expert on children in adverts, said he saw no great objection to the use of so many babies. "Basically it's the parents' responsibility putting the children in the advert."Dr Peter Marsh, a social psychologist and expert in car advertising, thinks the ad "bizarre" and is not sure about its message.He believes it might be using the "Bambi effect" which induces "caring and warm" attitudes by transferring the cuddliness of the babies to the car.