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Compares British prices of toilet tissue to prices in other European Union countries. Quality and size of British products, including amount of fiber; Background of standards set by Andrex, owned by the United States company KimberlyClark; Variety of product available in Britain.

The article reports that Germany's Töpfer law appears to be strangling Great Britain's paper-recycling industry. The companies paid by German industry to dispose of waste paper have such a glut of the stuff that many are paying German paper makers to take it off their hands. This, in turn, has allowed German paper makers to reduce their costs by as much as 15%. British firms have lowered their prices in an effort to hold on to market share, but are losing money as a result. British paper mills are closing.

The article focuses on efforts by businesses and interest groups to phase out the one dollar bill and replace it with a dollar coin. It states the U.S. is one of the few large economies that issues low-denomination bank notes (LDBN), with Canada and Great Britain having replaced their LDBN before the turn of the 21st century. It comments that lobbyists are trying to convince Congress to switch to dollar coins to reduce the deficit and mentions a Government Accountability Office study about the savings.

The article focuses on the British newspaper business. Newspapers are trying all sorts of strategies to slow their decline. Having changed its shape from broadsheet to tabloid last year, the "Times" put its price up by five pence. And a more radical response appeared with the launch of "City A.M.," a new free daily paper aimed at business readers. Although fewer people are buying papers, lots more are reading free ones. Some newspaper consultants reckon, if young people are reading freesheets, it might just entice the next generation into buying the real thing later on. Most free papers are generalist, and it is far harder for a business and finance freesheet to get any attention from professionals. Attracting younger readers is the main reason for the format change by "The Guardian," with colour throughout It will take a sizeable jump in circulation for the investment to be judged a success. Nonetheless, this week's burst of activity shows that while Britain's newspaper market is not thriving, it is still vibrant and innovative.

Discusses Britain's budget. The question of how much room there will be for tax cuts before the next election; Four possible goals for the public-sector borrowing requirement (PSBR); Asks if it is wise to consider tax cuts in an economy that is already growing alarmingly fast.

The article focuses on Great Britain's manufacturing sector and efforts to rebalance the economy away from Finance industries and boost manufactures. It states that Britain's finance and business services sector have a bigger share of the gross domestic product than manufacturing. It comments that politicians are not advocating a return to protectionism to boost manufacturing and mention that British politician George Osborne is funneling money into apprenticeships and science to boost industry.

The article focuses on security measures at Glastonbury, Britain's biggest pop festival. There will be spot checks for cars without tickets within a 15-mile radius and patrolling guards in Land Rovers. Anyone with no tickets will have a 12-foot-tall, four-mile-long perimeter fence to scale. How different from 1970, when the first Glastonbury Fayre attracted about 1,500 curious revellers to a single field for a laid-back weekend of folk and blues. Today's tickets cost ten times as much in real terms and must be ordered online or by phone. The emphasis is now on security, safety and making sure that the 115,000 people who have paid are the only ones allowed in. Official advice is to bring a credit card and a mobile phone. There is a family-oriented camping ground for parents with young children, sensible advice on noise levels and reminders not to drink to excess. To be fair to Michael Eavis, who runs the event, the local council, which gives him his entertainment licence, demands the security measures.

The article discusses economist and Harvard University faculty member Kenneth Rogoff's claim that if nations such as the U.S. and Great Britain scrapped their physical forms of currency it would help the governments collect additional taxes, fight crime, and develop more efficient monetary policies. Computer software company Apple Inc.'s "contactless payment" system is mentioned, along with cash and the amount of paper monetary notes and coins in circulation. The World Bank is examined.

Barbara Smith, who has just retired, looks back at her 47-year-career as a reporter and editor at "The Economist." I joined the foreign editorial department of The Economist in 1956, sneaking over from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Naturally, the paper was different then. Our correspondent in Beirut, whom we shared with the Observer, was Kim Philby, who was spying for the Soviet Union. If shame for Britain's part in the Suez affair set off my exasperated affection for the Arab world, a far deeper, European, shame fed my passionate advocacy of Israel's existence, a passion that survived, just, my first visit to the Middle East. One way and another, it has been a steamy half-century. Inevitably, I have often disagreed with the paper's policies: for instance, when, from time to time, we veered sharply to the right, when we supported anti-communist third-world monsters--in cold-war terms, bastards but our bastards--or when, as at present, we seem to me to be much too closely identified with official America. During two crises the paper was painfully split. The first was the Vietnam war, which we supported, and the second was this year's Iraqi war, which we also supported. Neither occasion, I would submit, was our finest hour. Yet, did those of us who disagreed strongly with the paper's line, resign on principle? We did not. Shameful that, I agree. Over the years, I've invented excuses for myself, but the truth of the matter is that The Economist is too enticing a place to leave easily.

Engineers frequently admire the ways in which living creatures solve problems. However, they rarely manage to emulate them. But Andrey Geim, from Manchester University, in England, and his colleagues have done so. In a paper just published in "Nature Materials," they describe how they replicated the way that geckos cling to ceilings in a new, glue-free adhesive tape. A gecko's powers come from tiny hairs on the soles of its feet. Each hair sticks to any surface it touches by a combination of capillary action due to water it has absorbed and so-called van der Waal forces--electrostatic interactions between individual molecules. Dr Geim and his colleagues used electron-beam lithography (a technique employed in the manufacture of computer chips) to fabricate small pieces of plastic tape that had hairlike protuberances on their surfaces.

The article discusses tabloid journalism. Emphasis is given to comparisons of tabloid newspapers in Great Britain to those in Germany, France, Japan, Poland, and the U.S. According to the author, tabloid publications in most countries suffer from declining circulation, but a revival in tabloid journalism is taking place online. Details related to the German paper "Bild Zeitung" are presented. Topics discussed include the relationship between tabloids and politics and competition between papers.

The article focuses on British education and media conglomerate Pearson. Compared with other rumoured candidates for the job, Glen Moreno, who was named Pearson's new chairman, was a surprisingly low-profile choice. Moreno, a 62-year-old American, once ran Fidelity International, a fund manager, and is now on the board of Man Group, a hedge-fund firm. Moreno joins Pearson at a time of lively debate over its strategy. Some analysts are questioning the logic behind its current mix of businesses. One large shareholder in the firm believes that it was inappropriate that Marjorie Scardino, Pearson's chief executive, was on the nomination committee that picked the new chairman. Scardino has been under pressure from her board to deliver higher profits in 2005, after a dismal 2004. Pearson's board is certainly worried about the performance of the "Financial Times"-even though it is now expected to break even this year, thanks to cost cutting and a pick-up in advertising. There are many possible reasons why the paper has lost ground in Britain--job losses in the City, the availability of free news and equity prices on the internet and, some say, too much attention to business readers overseas. To be sure, most British papers are also losing circulation.

The article focuses on the successful website of the BBC, Britain's public-service broadcaster. The internet has brought the BBC and newspapers in direct competition--and the BBC looks like coming off best. The improbable success online of Britain's lumbering giant of a public-service broadcaster is largely down to John Birt, a former director-general who "got" the internet before any of the other big men of British media. He launched the corporation's online operations in 1998, saying that the BBC would be a trusted guide for people bewildered by the variety of online services. The BBC now has 525 sites. It spends £15m ($27m) a year on its news website and another £51m on others ranging from society and culture to science, nature and entertainment. But behind the websites are the vast newsgathering and programme-making resources, including over 5,000 journalists, funded by its annual £2.8 billion public subsidy. It is the success of the BBC's news website that most troubles newspapers. Newspapers need to build up their online businesses because their offline businesses are flagging. Total newspaper readership has fallen by about 30% since 1990 and readers are getting older as young people increasingly get their news from other sources--principally the internet. The difficulty for all newspaper websites is that most of their visitors tend to stay only briefly, viewing just a few pages. That makes it tricky to build a subscription model. Part of the papers' problem online is that they're papers: they don't understand moving pictures and graphics. The BBC's television background gives it a feel for what works well on the internet. And, crucially, it has far more journalists on tap than any newspaper.

The author reports on a controversial auction of private papers of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at Christie's in London this week. The long unseen collection shows that Conan Doyle was not only one of the most popular writers of the 20th century--he has still outsold J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien put together--but a public figure who took an active interest in politics and war, championed many private causes and gave £250,000 (millions in today's money) to further the interests of spiritualism. Befittingly, the auction has not been without controversy, not least thanks to the mysterious death of Richard Lancelyn Green, a former chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, who was found garrotted in his locked bedroom in March. There was not enough evidence for the coroner to rule it was suicide, but enough for believers in the" Conan Doyle curse" to suspect foul play worthy of Holmes's attention. Lancelyn Green believed that some of the papers in the auction had rightfully been left to the British Library, and he told the Times newspaper that he had written to Christie's asking them not to go ahead with the sale, which Christie's denies. Would-be Conan Doyle biographers, as well as the British Library, have expressed disappointment that the material in the auction has now been dispersed.

The author discusses the controversy surrounding the MMR vaccine, which some researchers have suggested could cause autism in children. Few recent memes have been more successful than the one which causes many people, particularly in Britain, to believe that the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause autism in children. That meme has been responsible for a fall in vaccination rates in Britain The MMR-causes-autism meme originated in the early 1990s, in the wake of suggestions that measles itself is a cause of autism. But it really started spreading in 1998, after the publication in the Lancet of a paper by Andrew Wakefield, of the Royal Free Hospital in London, and his colleagues. The authors clearly state in the paper's discussion that "We did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described." Nevertheless, the suggestion was there, and that was enough. Then a larger study in which Dr Wakefield was involved produced evidence that children with the new syndrome had measles viruses in their guts more often than healthy children did. On February 20th, the Lancet issued a carefully worded statement It said that certain allegations about Dr Wakefield's paper had been brought to its attention. It rejected some of these allegations after investigating them. But some it accepted. In particular, it seemed as though Dr Wakefield had had an undeclared conflict of interest. Dr Wakefield's conflict of interest was that he had received £55,000 ($90,000) from England's legal-aid board to carry out a second study on the relationship (if any) between MMR and autism.

When the government publishes a green paper--a consultative set of proposals--that's usually a sign that it hasn't a clue what to do. This week's green paper on pensions is no exception. Although it offers some useful minor reforms, it still leaves the government groping for an answer to a mounting crisis over pensions. Britain's pension system is unusual. In most rich countries, the state dominates pension provision through a generous "pay-as-you-go" scheme, under which this generation's workers pay for their parents' retirement. The government projects that state pension payments will remain at around 5% of GDP, even though the ratio of pensioners to workers will rise sharply over the next 30-40 years. Labour's big idea for improving the lot of poorer pensioners without loading heavy costs on taxpayers is to means-test benefits, offering bigger state pensions to those who haven't built up their own savings.

The debate over "offshoring" has been brewing since a study by Forrester, a research group, in 2002 claimed that 3.3m white-collar American jobs (500,000 of them in IT) would shift offshore to countries such as India by 2015. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, talks about a "new and powerful global labour arbitrage" that has led to an accelerating transfer of high-wage jobs to India and elsewhere. He reckons this is adding to the bias towards jobless recoveries in western economies. Multinationals may in future do original R&D in low-cost places, but for the moment most of the jobs on the move are the paper-based back-office ones that can be digitalised and telecommunicated anywhere around the world, plus more routine telephone inquiries that are increasingly being bundled together into call centres. The offshoring business remains predominantly English-speaking. It is dominated by American and British companies outsourcing their internal operations to third parties in places such as Ireland, Canada and South Africa, but most of all in India. The main advantage of shifting business operations to India and similar low-cost countries comes from a combination of lower wages and the improvement in the quality and price of international telecommunications. But the benefits of offshoring are not confined to lower costs. For one thing, offshoring allows companies to work round-the-clock shifts, ferrying data back and forth from one place to another as the sun sets. For another, it allows them to rethink the way they solve IT problems.

Discusses foreign relations between Great Britain and Germany in light of the June 1999 publication of a joint Anglo-German paper called `Europe, the third way, die neue Mitte,' emphasizing New Labour positions on Anglo-Saxon economics. Political, economic and institutional differences between Britain and Germany; Identification of the group that prepared the paper; Possible gains for British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Reports on the press in Britain. Though the silly papers are now behaving more seriously, some of the serious papers are getting increasingly silly. Number of complaints from readers dropping; Journalists' manners improving; Threat of legislation; Political bias coming to the fore.

Discusses utility regulation in Great Britain. Focus on the content of a government green paper on the issue released on March 35, 1998; How the government is still finding it hard to come to terms with the privatization of public utilities; The role of Margaret Beckett, the trade secretary, in formulating the policy paper; Financial data; Analysis.

Predicts that a new British white paper on housing will contain some sensible measures, but that they will not do the government any good politically. The portion of the white paper that will deal with increasing private rentals; The push towards more owner occupation; An outline of plans to privatize council estates to improve their management.

Considers Britain's present press laws. Princess of Wales, Diana; Photographs of her exercising at a gym; Brief circulation war among Britain's tabloid papers and the temporary withdrawal of the Mirror Group papers from the press's own watch-dog commission; Clear breach of privacy; Gains made by the gym-manager who took the photographs and the `Mirror'; Difficulty public figures have in winning libel cases; Details.

Reports on the possible deregulation of the British Telecom, Great Britain's monopolist telephone operator. Competition with Mercury Communications, owned by Cable and Wireless; Trade and industry secretary Peter Lilley's publication of a green paper setting out provisional ideas for deregulation; Restrictions on companies that make telephone calls; Impact of deregulation.

Speculates that despite the expected launch of the British government's white paper on competitiveness, it may already be neglecting one of the most important components of a healthy market economy: competition policy. Criticism of restraint of competition; The Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

The article focuses on a paper by Jonathan Chapman to be presented at the 2019 conference of Economic History Society which examined the relationship between inequality and the generosity of welfare spending in Victorian England. Topics covered include comparison of the generosity and harshness of the conditions of poor-law relief, influence of the degree of inequality within the upper classes on rules for welfare handouts and outlook of the upper middle class on Britain's inheritance tax.

The article focuses on the economy in Great Britain in 2007. The author reports that one of the main issues in assessing innovation's impact on the economy is that official statistics trail behind the pioneers. National accounts measure capital spending but are behind in incorporating investment in intangible activities. A paper written by economist Jonathan Haskel is discussed. The paper estimates the value of 3 broad categories of intangible investment in the business sector of the economy.

The author compares the reactions of the U.S. and the British media to the baring of singer Janet Jackson's breast on live television during the Super Bowl half-time. Competition, this newspaper believes, has beneficial effects pretty much everywhere. This week's British newspapers may lead higher-minded readers to disagree. On February 1st, a breast belonging to Janet Jackson, a singer, escaped during Super Bowl half-time. High-brow American papers reported the incident, but with no photo. Low-brow papers pictured the recapture, but not the breast. Michael Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission, called it a "classless, crass and deplorable stunt". There is to be an official inquiry. This seems odd to Britons, whose smaller broadcast channels keep themselves afloat on a sea of smut. Not only tabloid newspapers, but also the Times and even the Daily Telegraph (average age of reader 55) showed the star's spangled nipple, waving joyfully in the wind. Why the difference? Maybe because secular Britons are no longer shockable, while Americans have clung to their religion and associated puritanism. The Economist, of course, deplores the degradation of the British press. As a service to American readers, who should know how low it has fallen, we reprint the picture below.

According to a paper published in Science on January 9th, levels of organochlorines in farmed salmon are so high in Scottish output that people should eat less than half a portion of salmon a month. Organochlorines are unpleasant chemicals such as dioxins and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) produced by industry that hang around in the environment. They accumulate in animals, concentrating in the fatty parts. The authors of the Science paper looked at 700 salmon from around the world. Europe's salmon came off worst overall; among European salmon, Scottish fish did particularly badly. Yet America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) think there is nothing to worry about, so long as people eat the amounts they recommend. Contaminant levels reported in the study are easily within guidelines set by the FDA, the World Health Organisation and the European Commission. So why did the authors of the Science paper come to such a different conclusion? Because they based their findings on the method of assessing toxicological risk used by a different regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), to advise sport fishermen how much of the fish they catch they can eat.

Plans to expand airports sit badly with the government's green aspirations. Demand for air travel is soaring and the government has decided to approve two new runways for the south-east, the first to be built at Stansted by 2012, the second at Heathrow by 2020. The plan was announced in a white paper published on December 16th. Three years ago, Roy Vandermeer, the government-appointed inspector in charge of the Terminal 5 inquiry, concluded that a third runway would have "such severe and widespread impacts...as to be totally unacceptable". The white paper does not tackle the environmental consequences of unrestrained air travel. Even on the government's own figures, which are less than a quarter of those provided by the European Environmental Agency, the industry is seriously under-taxed. Air passenger duty (APD) currently raises about£ 850m ($ 1.5 billion) a year, barely half the cost of the damage the government estimates is done by aircraft emissions. The Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think-tank, suggests that, if aviation had to pay tax on fuel and VAT on air fares, it would have to pay another£ 9 billion a year--roughly£ 50 on the price of a ticket. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution says that, at current rates of growth, aviation will become a major catalyst of climate change.

By taking out an injunction in a German court against a British tabloid for publishing rumours about his private life, Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has done nothing to squelch the story, while giving his opponents a chance to froth on one of their favourite subjects--sinister continental threats to ancient British liberties. The 'Mail on Sunday' ran an interview with Schröder's ex-wife about the state of his current marriage. She appeared to confirm rumours that it was on the rocks. It linked the chancellor to a prominent television talk-show presenter. By British standards, it was pretty tame stuff. In Germany, though, standards are different. Reporting of politicians' private lives counts as a scandalous intrusion. Schröder even went to court last year to scotch rumours that his hair colour came out of a bottle. It is the opinion of this author that the injunction against the 'Mail on Sunday' is toothless. The paper did not sell any of the offending copies in Germany, and it does not even have a proper website from which Germans could download the story. Despite the German lawyers' failure even to try to prevent the 'Mail on Sunday' from publishing whatever it likes in Britain, the paper sees the whole business as a terrible warning of the dangers of further European integration.

Offers observations on a government white paper on British universities. The proportion of young people going into higher education has risen from 5% to 35% over 40 years, but universities have not been provided with the money, or the means of raising it, to pay for the increase. But the solution is much disputed. An alliance of the left, which believes pretty much everything should be tax-financed, and the rich, who like their children's education being subsidised by poorer taxpayers, wants more tax money. The white paper goes the other way, and proposes charging students more. Should students pay through a tax--which the government would collect from graduates, and use to fund universities--or through loans--which students would repay if they get a reasonably well-paid job? And should the government or the universities set fees? These related questions have formed the main battleground between Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Tony Blair.

Public opinion of British prime minister David Cameron is discussed in light of the Panama Papers leak of information regarding the investment and holding of assets in offshore tax havens by Cameron, his father's Blairmore trust, and other politicians and officials. Criticism of the publication of tax returns by Cameron, Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn, and mayor of London Boris Johnson is offered and inequality in British society is described.

The article focuses on the leaked "Paradise Papers" that revealed the millions of investments in Cayman Islands fund made by the Duchy of Lancaster private estate of Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth and her payment of tax more than the legally required.

Discusses Britain's white paper on the environment. Subjects the paper might cover including climate change; Effects of the higher energy prices due to the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990; Targets for green policy; Possibility of creating a regular report on the impact of government activity on the environment.

Relates the incidents surrounding a white paper published by John Major on Britain's negotiating position prior to the March 29, 1996 European inter-governmental conference (IGC). The demand for such a paper in order to show that Tories had much in common on the subject of Europe; The simultaneous surprise launch of several interfere-in-Britain initiatives by European institutions.

The article discusses the Great Britain's Budget plan by Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer. It mentions Hammond's announcement to manage gig economy and higher taxes for self-employed people, where the chancellor raises their national insurance contributions (NICs). Policy reviews under the Prime Minister of Great Britain Theresa May are stated, which is still unclear, like a long-delayed white paper on the chronic shortage of housing and failure of endorsing ideas for housebuilding.

The article focuses on the British government's announcement on July 16, 2012 that taxpayer-financed research would be accessible online for free, which prompted the European Union (EU) to do the same. Topics include the annual profits made by academic journal publishers such as Elsevier and the competition between researchers to have papers published, which increases the value of the journals.

This article discusses a policy paper published by the Treasury of Great Britain on July 8, 2009, which sought to calculate the amount of capital that banks would have needed to withstand the global financial crisis. The Basel One Accord of 1988 established the baseline amounts of capital held by banks going into the 2008-2009 crisis. The performances of the banks UBS AG and Citigroup Inc. in the crisis are used to judge the standards set by the Treasury report.

The article discusses proposed reforms to Great Britain's energy policy. A policy paper from British prime minister Tony Blair outlines the need for an energy policy that addresses climate change and Britain's dwindling energy reserves. Blair's plan supports a revival of Great Britain's nuclear energy programs. Opposition to the plan is discussed. The article also discusses plans for carbon capturing and emissions trading programs.

This article focuses on British government funding of the BBC. "The Reithian aims will continue," said Tessa Jowell, minister for culture, as she introduced the government's white paper on the BBC this week. The BBC now has generous public funding until 2016, and Britain will keep spending far more on state broadcasting than any developed country except Germany. The outcome is a triumph for the BBC.

The article reports on violence in the British-controlled area around Basra, Iraq. A few protesters were shot dead and a police barracks stormed by British troops after Iraqi police arrested, and then refused to release, two of their comrades. It revealed the alarming potential for chaos in one of the country's most peaceable areas--which happens to be a heartland of the country's Shia rulers and the repository of most of Iraq's oil. Tensions started boiling on September 18th, when British soldiers arrested the Basra boss of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a fiery Shia nationalist, who twice last year set southern Iraq ablaze. They accused him of organising roadside bombs that have killed nine people, including two British soldiers, in the past two months. Basra may be the most tightly controlled of the four southern "British" provinces. Of the rest, Muthanna, home to a small Australian garrison, is fairly tranquil, but dominated by the local officials of Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Farther east, much of Maysan, including the city of Amara, is out-of-bounds to British troops; the SCIRI's Badr Brigades and the Sadrists vie for control of Maysan as well as neighbouring Dhi Qar province, especially its main town of Nasiriya, where a small garrison of Italian troops is loth to leave its base. Britain hopes to quit Muthanna, and perhaps Maysan, this year, and Dhi Qar and Basra next year. As this week's violence shows, it will not be a glorious exit: nowhere in southern Iraq is the central government in firm control. Yet with so few forces to control so vast and vexed a region, the British have never pretended to be doing much more than paper over the cracks.

The article looks at research regarding social/economic status and public health in Great Britain. Health Minister John Reid says that the government's proposals on public health, published on November 16, 2004, are designed to promote "informed choice." But the centerpiece of the paper is a ban on smoking in most public enclosed places. The government is also seeking to curb television advertising of junk food and drinks to children and wants to use the National Health Service to cajole patients into healthier behavior. Potential savings arise from the strong link between behavior and health. Alot of the improvement in life expectancy in Britain has resulted from a decline in smoking. But it is not just the prize of better health at low cost that inspires the public-health strategy. The policy is also designed to reduce persistent health inequalities. Attempts to prod people into healthier lifestyles are unlikely to produce quick results.

The article focuses on the value of higher education in promoting social mobility. Research in Great Britain shows that education plays a smaller role in social mobility than it used to, according to a study, "Education, Employers and Class Mobility," which looked at the relationship of people's education to their careers in the early 1970s and early 1990s. Why should the impact of education on social mobility be declining? Because, according to the forthcoming paper by Michelle Jackson, John Goldthorpe, and Colin Mills, three academics at Nuffield College, Oxford, employers are becoming less interested in educational qualifications. Part of the job of higher education is to send a signal to employers--that someone has learnt to think, to persevere, to absorb information and to present ideas. The qualities that employers in the service sector want are those the middle classes acquire at home: articulacy, confidence and smartness. "What our members want is office and personal skills rather than more advanced education," says Matthew Knowles, policy adviser at the British Chambers of Commerce, a group for small and medium-sized businesses. That chimes with the Oxford research, which showed formal qualifications featuring in only a quarter of the advertisements in the sample, typically for top-level jobs. Assuming, reasonably, that job adverts reflect what employers really want, this neatly explains why education matters less than the believers in meritocracy expected.

The British newspaper industry thinks rather highly of itself. It sustains 11 national titles, and unusually high readership levels. It has a culture of irreverence, from which it looks down at the tame and stodgy German papers, and now at "Le Monde," France's leading high-brow newspaper, recently the target of accusations of political collusion. Yet British newspapers are in bad trouble--even worse than meets the eye. Pearson, part owner of "The Economist," reported this week that its flagship title, the "Financial Times," lost money in the second half of 2002, and just scraped a £1m ($1.6m) full-year operating profit, 92% down on 2001. One reason is the advertising slump. While some businesses, such as fashion, are still advertising heavily, others, such as technology, telecoms and financial services, are not. A survey last year by Freeserve showed that, in the 50% of homes that are wired to the internet, online news sites beat newspapers as the main source of news, and were topped only by TV and radio. Richard Desmond, the owner of Express Newspapers and publisher of titles ranging from "Women on Top" to the "Daily Star," has reinvented this end of the market.

This article focuses on the expansion of airport facilities in Great Britain, based on the prediction that as many as 500 million passengers will be using British airports in 2030. At least three new runways will be needed in the southeast to meet future demand, according to the government's consultation paper. But the possible sites listed for expansion, Stansted, Heathrow or a new estuarial airport at Cliffe in Kent, are bitterly contested. Thanks to an injunction that forced the government to include Gatwick too, it has extended the consultation process until May 2003; a final decision should come later in the year.

Discusses the rise of crime in Great Britain and efforts of the Labour government to find short-term solutions to the problem. Indication that legislation enacted as of June 2002 has been ineffective; Conclusion of an official report, a White Paper by the Audit Commission, that the criminal justice system is failing; Issues of court delays, suspects charged with wrong offenses, and inefficiencies in forensic science; Idea that legislation is needed that will redress the balance of the law in favor of victims.

Reports on how economic conditions divide society in Great Britain. View that poverty stimulates racial tensions; Topics of intermarriage, unemployment, and the inactivity rate; Reference to a prosperity gap among immigrants, according to a paper by Esra Erdem and Andrew Glyn in 'The State of Working Britain'; Factors that interfere with market operation, including the issue of social housing.

Reports on tabloid newspapers in Great Britain. Ruling by a judge that details on a sexual encounter between a prominent athlete and two women were confidential; Comments from various papers on the ruling and its implications; Views from the 'Daily Mail,' 'News of the World,' and the 'Mirror.'

Reports on the pending publication of the urban policy of the government in Great Britain to improve conditions in the inner cities of the country. Question over the inclusion of ideas outlined by a government-appointed task force headed by Lord Rogers, one of Great Britain's most famous architect, in the government's urban policy white paper; Suggestion for more incentives to be given to encourage private capital into depressed areas; Opposition of the government against the idea of cutting taxes on business in depressed areas.