We’re most impressed with all the Teutonic ingenuity that has clearly gone into the Spicos speech recognition and voice response system developed by Siemens and Philips in Eindhoven and described in the Observer in glowing terms last weekend: the thing speaks and understands only German at present which is probably just as well, because those who have been brought up on German movies will likely not at all mind the greatest snag quoted in the Observer – that there is a half-hour delay between recognising questions and giving answers.