TONY BLAIR'S favourite union baron, Ken Jackson, heads a smaller than usual list of political honours announced today.

Politics

A PLANNING row between the architect Sir Norman Foster and the Corporation of London will come to a head this week when two of Sir Norman's six projects for the Square Mile come before City planners.

Sir: The only time a substantial country has been bombed from the air into surrender, the weapons used were nuclear.

WHATEVER WOULD Robert Maxwell have made of it? The old Mirror headquarters at Holborn Circus, which the late tycoon wanted to redevelop as a giant temple to his success, is at last being developed - but for Andersen Consulting. Yesterday Lord Hamlyn, the publisher, bought the building at 33 Holborn. He has planning permission for a "spectacular glass and steel building", costing pounds 135m and designed by Sir Norman Foster, which will provide 320,000 square feet of space for Andersen Consulting.

A SPECTACULAR glass-fronted building overlooking Tower Bridge is to be the pounds 20m new home for London's mayor and assembly.

Norman Foster's first museum installation reveres the 1930s and the arrival of international modernism.

London's Mayor will be looking for a new home

Sir: At the Heritage Lottery Fund we were heartened by Sir Roy Strong's article "Learning to love the lottery"(20 November).

The Victoria and Albert Museum's 'Spiral' represents a triumph of image over function. So what else is new?

Pitted against the British Library, the American Air Museum won Norman Foster the Stirling Prize.

What is the most important feature of an airport lounge? Comfortable seating. What will travellers be sitting on in Cathay Pacific's new waiting area at Chek Lap Kok? Concrete. And they love it - minimalism has really taken off.

Will Millennium fever and lottery funding turn our country into a giant theme park?

IF YOU'RE in the right frame of mind, on a long train journey or half awake, you can play the game of reveries. It's using your mind to travel about the place. Surfing your own Internet, I think I'd call it.