I have a feeling that this may not be a change for the better.The Modern Age built itself on the idea of clocked time. She never wears a wristwatch because she relies on public clocks. This is because she has an upright, socialist disposition which assumes that public provision will eventually replace bourgeois individualism. But all the public clocks in her bit of London have now broken down: some vandalised, some pulled down for traffic-calming measures, some simply neglected So .. you might assume that my colleague is late for everything. But instead she is discovering that punctuality is somehow no longer the point. And she has not bought a wristwatch.Time on clocks does not matter as it used to.

Once time was both a god and a tyrant – in many ways, an Enemy indeed. The minute-hand would finally reach the hour; the bells would explode in one classroom after another; the uproar of slamming desks and thundering shoes would announce liberation.
Last week, a colleague came in ratty because she had mistaken the time. He was too badly-paid to have a wristwatch, too young for a brass one on a chain. Only the rumbling in his belly told him the lesson was nearly done, that biscuits were being set out and tea brewed in the staff room

We would all shout back at him with the time It was no Enemy to us, but a friend. He would do better to think about how he would mend his divided country.. “HOW goes the Enemy?” our teacher used to ask The clock was on the wall behind his desk. “Mend it, don’t end it,” is what Bill Clinton has to say about affirmative action.

If affirmative action has helped some of their fellows to escape into law offices and the suburbs, that only makes them more conscious of their plight, not less.Affirmative action was a brave attempt to correct the wrongs of the past. But preferential treatment cannot help disadvantaged groups if deeper social and economic forces are working against them. How much harder must it be when your parents, your neighbourhood, your school, everything around you, is slowly sinking, when hope is receding rather than growing? That is what is happening to the majority of blacks and Hispanics in America. America, like Britain, has become more unequal over the past 15 years.

And no number of special programmes can create true equality of opportunity if society is moving to greater inequality. It is hard enough to pull yourself off the bottom in any circumstances. How black do you have to be to qualify? Which minorities deserve how much special treatment? But that should not blind us to an important lesson. Blacks occupy top positions in government, education, the professions and the armed forces.