Following on from your suggestions, I went looking for any out of date libraries. Turns out that there was a libcrypto.so.0.9.8 which was being found, and which was not updated by aptitude.
Moved it to another directory where it would not be found, the problem went away. So this bug can be closed - which is excellent, particularly so close to the proposed release! Thank you very much for your prompt response, Jakub. bfn, John -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org