Machine technology is now advancing to the point where not only manual but factory supervisors may soon be finding themselves out of work.

For an American company, Western Electric, in conjunction with Bell Laboratories, have invented a computer which can speak instructions to production line workers.

The computer is already so efficient that workers need not divert either hands or eyes from their jobs while orders are given.

J L Flanagan, head of Bell's acoustics research department, says the worker who tested the system had never heard synthetic speech before but, despite its machine accent, she had no difficulty in using it at once.

"In fact," said Flanagan, "She remarked that the caricatured nature of the computer speech made it easier to understand when in competition with typical plant noises."

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As we all know, the Department of Health and Social Security shuffles thousands of pieces of paper from office to office. Accompanying these is form EF 196. In the good old days of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance it read: The accompanying communication appears appropriate to your office and is therefore forwarded for necessary action. The writer has been informed accordingly.

It now reads:

This seems to be yours. We have told the writer we have sent it on.

Makes ya fink!

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Of course we all know how our benevolent government wants to help the erring members of our society who have done wrong and paid for their crimes in prison. It is of course their firm intention and wish that such unfortunate people be rehabilitated and helped to live in society with normal people.

So how come the RAF won't accept you for service if you've done time?

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Teesside Corporation have just bought 12 1952 buses from Ribble for about £800 each. The buses were used on Motorway runs, and the Corporation has had to take the toilets out, strengthen the structure at the rear, and alter the gear ratios.

The buses will be redundant in two years.

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Further news from Teesside Corporation buses. The entire fleet has just been painted turquoise, and now it has been decided to recall them all, as the livery is too monotonous, and add a cream stripe to each one. I suppose they've got to spend their millions on something.

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Recently we at last got our phone installed - our first call was from the GPO, telling us that they would be coming to connect our phone shortly. Hhmmm!!

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Durham's Students' Union plan to fight council elections in three wards in Durham. In each of these wards, if all the students vote for their candidate they will swamp the polls. It is believed that the returning officer deliberately called a recent by-election when the students had gone down and were unable to vote. So they are worried. But when the crunch comes, will the students whose apathy for voting in their own college elections is renowned, turn out and vote in the city elections? And when it comes down to it should they interfere in a City affair? Watch Muther Grumble for details.

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This year's annual conference of the National Union of Journalists at Tenby in Wales later this month, promises to be the stormiest yet.

No fewer than 21 motions have been tabled on the agenda calling for either an end to news censorship and discrimination against women, or worker participation throughout the industry.

The Newcastle branch leads the way on worker participation, calling on the National Executive to give journalists the right to discuss with managements the content, staffing and future policy of the medium "with a view to its becoming more responsive and receptive to the areas it serves and the people it employs".

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Scared of the police? Feel suicidal whenever you're asked to pay them a visit? Well Durham City police have helpfully stuck up the local Samaritans' phone number in the station waiting room in case you feel you need them in the agonising minutes before, and the time after, your interview.

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The North-East's first-ever teacher training school for meditators will be launched in Newcastle this summer.

The school will train up to 200 local people how to teach meditation to others and lectures will concentrate on the philosophy behind the practice itself.

The net is being spread wide in a hope to catch all kinds of people, not just students and drop-outs, so most lectures will be in the evening for the benefit of those who have to work.

The teacher-training set up is an idea of the Maharishi Yogi who aims to establish 3,500 similar centres for the teaching of the science of creative intelligence throughout the world by the end of the year.

Courses will be open to all. People interested in finding out more should contact Stephen Benson, 71 St George's Terrace, Jesmond, Newcastle, tel 815108.

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The NCB has the right to the lungs of a dead miner without asking the permission of the next of kin. They get away with this legally to suit their own ends. There is no law to give the rights over the dead body of a miner to his family who should have that right. It's about time this body-looting was stopped.

Miners' families are not allowed access to the dead person's lungs which belong to the NCB's own pneumoconiosis panel, who decide if compensation should be paid. The law should be changed so that the next of kin can have their own analysis made first and find out from an impartial source if they are entitled to compensation.

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In Lancashire the government is testing a new type of electric bus that causes less chemical pollution: eventually they hope to introduce these buses all over the country. But they are also less noisy. Take your choice between choking to death and being run over by a bus you cannot hear.

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We should like to give unusual congratulations to the Durham Conservatives for making overtures to their last General Election candidate Mr E Greenwood to stand again. The reason is because Mr Greenwood has been found guilty of flashing his private parts at local girls in Ferryhill. A nice change from the usual Mary Whitehouse attitudes in that party.

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Faced with a potential suspect list of millions of Irish liberation struggle sympathisers, the bombing of the Parachute Regiment HQ in Aldershot presents the Special Branch with an incredible task. Intelligence files built up by the SB over the years are clearly useless against a national liberation movement whose activities include those of the urban guerrilla.

So on Wednesday 15 March the SB busted over 60 known sympathisers of the Irish struggle. Armed with explosives warrants the police ripped off files and address lists from the homes of those raided.

Reliable sources indicate that the common bond between most of those busted - some of them belong to the various political groups, including the IMG and IS - can be traced back to meetings of the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Movement held in a London pub over two years ago, which the SB also attended. Predictably enough, address lists were circulated and filled in at these meetings.

Amongst those busted were leading members of the International Socialist group, from whose homes considerable quantities of documents and address lists were taken. In common with other democratic centralist organisations, the IS usually acquire the name and address of those non-members attending their meetings, on the flimsy pretext that further information will be sent to them at a later date. In practice these address lists are drawn upon by the IS group as contact lists functional in the drive toward building what they describe as the mass revolutionary party.

These files are available to any Special Branch personnel with a search warrant. The political groups are compiling data on subversives for the forces of repression.

When attending any meeting where lists are circulated, it is advisable to give fictitious information. Files on non-existent people would have a dual purpose in disrupting both the democratic centralist groups, and the Special Branch.