WHAT is it about the new millennium that makes its arrival fill so many with dread as they fear that awful epochal events may be triggered by this momentous turn of the calendar?

But now, it seems, the government is joining seers who are filled with foreboding, by warning that the celebrations may be clouded by food shortages, a flu epidemic, crime and even an upsurge in mental illness.

Yet can the arrival of the year 2000 cause so much mayhem - especially when, in truth, the Millennium does not really arrive until a year later and only does so then by virtue of Pope Gregory XIII tinkering with the calendar 417 years ago?

Rather than doom and disaster, it will probably be like any other New Year, with too many people giving themselves a hangover and the rest staying in to watch the TV.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.