Negotiating the plan has involved hectic late-night sessions in which outside officials have given locals copious instructions on the details of reform measures and the lobbying needed to gain support for them.

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As the team's most expensive employees, they also have to follow instructions, which will include going all out to win the constructors' championship for McLaren.

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In some rural areas, residents also have radios distributed by the local government over which instructions to evacuate can be broadcast.

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Instead, it has issued a series of unilateral and usually opaque instructions, terms and deadlines, all of which have subsequently been revised or extended although never to the creditors' significant advantage.

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Some supermarkets for example have computers with millions of lines of computer instructions each of which has to be checked for date references.

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The government is trying to anticipate this first by its warnings that money will only be released in return for results, and second by giving new instructions to the official pay-review bodies, which will have to consider the overall affordability of pay rises and their effect on inflation.

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So they must have been discombobulated by instructions to do just the opposite at this year's gathering, which took place in Birmingham from September 28th.

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