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The record of the British Conservative Government from 1979 onwards is inconveniently scattered among a host of official papers, many of them either incomprehensible or, where apparently comprehensible, misleading. The single most useful source for the public sector as a whole is the annual Public Spending White Papers, which run up to 1988 when they were replaced by an enlarged Autumn Statement and a series of annual reports covering the spending programmes of individual Departments. There are no sources which deal comprehensively with the off-loading policies. On the other hand, the containment of public spending is better covered.

This article introduces topics related to policy making and political planning in the U.S., which appeared in the 1989 issue of the "Policy Studies Review Annual." The three papers in this section all address the consequences of what policy decisions made during the 1980s will have on the policy options of the 1990s. Each of them stresses that while the decisions made earlier were perhaps justifiable in terms of the political and ideology agenda of those in power, the results can outlast them by a considerable time. Articles here reflect something of what staying power can accomplish. The focus here is on those changes brought about by two political leaders who have had long tenures, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The first article, analyzing the state of science and technology in Great Britain, makes clear that the manner in which the Thatcher government has allocated resources has had a profound impact on the capability of Great Britain to compete at the cutting edge of scientific research. The second article focuses on the Reagan administration initiatives to reduce federal support for urban areas.

The article presents information on the book "Making Social Work News," by Meryl Aldridge. The book falls into three parts, the first providing students and practitioners with a basic understanding of the day-to-day working and commercial logic of Great Britain press. The second part examines the press coverage of social work itself, exploring its considerable variation, comparing different news treatments between broadsheets and tabloids, and between national and local papers. The final part considers whether social work has particular difficulties in defining its goals and lobbying on its own behalf. It concludes with some reflections on the importance of doing so now that marketing has become part of the policy process. Social work has recently received some dreadful news coverage, but the most extravagant headlines and accusations center on local authority social work with children. Moreover, they are almost exclusively from the national press.

The article presents information on the press in Great Britain. The press is still a vital force in Great Britain. Despite expanding radio and television, a deep recession, and the long list of failed ventures, newspapers retain enough social and political importance for new titles to be started. In mid-1992, for instance, there was a sudden expansion of the regional Sunday paper market. Eleven weekday morning papers have national coverage; there are regional morning papers covering Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of England, as well as local evening and morning papers, local weekly paid-for papers and local weekly free papers. "Tabloid" papers fall into two groups: the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and Today are often referred to as "mid-market" papers, serving people with middle incomes. Although livelier typographically than the broadsheets, they contain longer and more complex news and feature items than the Sun, the Daily Mirror/Daily Record and the Daily Star. Broadcasting in Great Britain whether publicly or commercially funded, is required to be "impartial," that is, not to take an overtly political editorial stance.

This chapter focuses on the development of performance indicators (PI) in three British organizations, that are, British Rail, the Water Authorities, and BAA, formerly known as the British Airports Authority. The authors remark that an important catalyst for change in all three organizations was the Labour Government's White Paper on Nationalized Industries in 1978 which called specifically for the production and publication of a number of key performance indicators, including PIs for standards of service and productivity, and to make public suitable aims in terms of performance and service. The pressure to generate financial PIs was increased by the Conservative Government's decision to impose strict external financial limits on every nationalized industry, preventing access to public funds. British Rail (BR) is one of the few remaining nationalized industries, although the Conservative Government has made clear its intention to privatize it. BR is very much in the public eye. Traditionally BR's structure has been a combination of geographical and functional management.

The article describes the emergence of health promotion at the level of both rhetoric and implementation. The term health promotion was virtually unknown until the late 1970s. It reached remarkable prominence, however, in less than a decade and now figures as a key policy issue on the agenda of many nations, particularly those in the Western, industrialized world. Great Britain has recently embraced the need for a new approach to health in a major White Paper, "The Health of the Nation." The notion of health promotion had its origins in 1980. At that time, the WHO Regional Office for Europe was in the process of planning its health education programme for the period 1980 to 1984. There was a dawning recognition that health education in isolation from other measures would not necessarily result in the radical changes required to herald a new era of improved health. Great Britain was not alone in debating how best to improve health prospects in the last quarter of the century. Much of the industrialized world was considering how to address the ever increasing demands upon health care systems.

This article focuses on the issue of mediation in divorce settlement in Great Britain. Mediation is a process intended to enable couples themselves to decide, subject to their right to independent legal advice, to resolve or minimise the issues in dispute between them. In December 1993 the government issued a consultative Green Paper on divorce reform and mediation. This was followed in 1995 by a White Paper. These documents were precursors of the present Family Law Bill. The Family Law Bill envisages divorce on the basis of a divorce order or a separation order after a period of one year for reflection and consideration. The bill provides a power for the court after it has received the statement of marital breakdown to direct the parties to attend a meeting explaining mediation and provide them with an opportunity to make use of mediation. Mediation organisations are anxious to ensure that the government provides funding for mediation so that it is universally available. Such funding seems unlikely unless it is diverted from the money currently used to fund legal aid.

This chapter identifies the need for national governments to produce information strategies which tackle the threat of a cyberdivide. The author, as an example, investigate the British government's approach national policy. The chapter first reviews the plans of the government for the provision of electronic information services, and argues the need for government to have a well coordinated and coherent information strategy which places as much emphasis on service and content as it does on the physical network itself. The article postulates that an information policy must fundamentally aim at making a wide range of public information and services available to the public so that a declared objective by government to institute open, flexible and responsive government as a means of promoting social cohesion and integration is credible and realisable. Most particularly, it notes that insufficient mechanisms for wide access to information in an informatised economic structure will result in failure by government to bridge the cyberspace divide, and thereby fall short of its bridging attempts. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some main elements of a coherent and well formulated strategy for the implementation of government delivery of information services. In particular, it highlights the crucial role of government leadership in the adoption of information technology as a first measure in the implementation and provision of electronic information services. Equally importantly, the paper also notes that a necessary condition for government to span the electronic ghetto lies in the provision of useful public information and the explicit right of citizens to such information.

This chapter examines the opportunities and problems associated with adopting information and communications technologies networks in the British National Health Service. To focus the analysis, the paper considers the practical implications of networking in primary care--where the greatest volume of healthcare is provided--and adopts an economic perspective to analyse current developments. General Practitioners are currently having to make decisions about linking their practices to networks, and the central role of General Practitioners in healthcare means that the success of networks will stand or fall on the decisions they take. So this paper considers a situation where networks are not yet available, and people have to make decisions about designing and joining them. The next section provides some contextual background about the National Health Service. The following section considers the key relationships that General Practitioners have with patients and other actors, and identifies some of the potential costs and benefits to General Practitioners of joining networks. The chapter then moves to a different perspective, and examines the benefits that networks may bring to General Practitioners and other users, drawing on the network economics literature. The final section outlines the main economic issues that will influence the course of developments in the National Health Service over the next few years.

In the article, the Adrian Little acknowledges that the inspiration for his book "Post-Industrial Socialism," was his encounter with the radical theoretical debates on welfare in Europe in the course of writing his earlier book, "The Political Thought of André Gorz." It seemed remarkable that these radical ideas were not finding any real currency in the realms of political and social theory and social policy in Great Britain. Patrick Proctor has supported this project wholeheartedly, as have the rest of the people involved in the production of the book at Routledge. Little is also grateful to his colleagues in the School of Social Studies at Nene College for their comments on earlier drafts and papers on which much of this book is based.

This chapter offers information on social work education in Great Britain. In Britain it will only take two years to become a qualified social worker. Despite considerable lobbying from within the profession and outside, culminating in a proposal for a three-year training period put forward in 1987, the government refused to extend the length of basic training for social workers. The Diploma in Social Work is the professional qualification for all social workers in Great Britain and for probation officers in Northern Ireland. Diploma in Social Work programs are based at universities and colleges of higher education. As with most other courses of study, students have the option of full-time or part-time study, or they can gain the social work qualification at home through a distance learning program. All social services departments have a training plan, which has to be submitted to the Department of Health who then allocate a Training Support Grant for social services staff to each local authority in Great Britain. Training plans have to be developed after a training needs analysis, of individual staff, of staff groups and of the needs of the service as a whole. Training is a good way of stretching boundaries, therefore, social services should take a responsibility for making sure that training takes place locally across sectors and that staff from different agencies, including the independent sector, are able to participate in programs.

This chapter examines the issues of state or party control, notably the secrecy of the ballot in the electoral process in Great Britain. People's votes are secret at the point of voting but the administration of the ballot allows the authorities to make retrospective checks on how individual people voted an official provision which may be open to abuse. The registration number of everyone voting is recorded on the counterfoil of their ballot paper. After the local count, the counterfoils and ballot papers, bearing each person's vote, are sealed in parcels and dispatched to the care of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery and kept at a secure location in Greater London. Thus, it is possible for the authorities to identify who any one individual has voted for and perhaps more pertinently which individuals have voted for any particular candidate. There are several ways in which the government of the day has an advantage over the other political parties contesting an election. There must be an election every five years but the current Prime Minister can choose when it falls within that period. The Prime Minister can also decide the length of the campaign period. By convention, governments contemplating major changes at local level were bound to set up an independent commission and to undertake substantial consultation, seeking to base change at least on the legitimacy of a broad political consensus.

The article presents the author's views on idealism and realism. The Criminal Justice Act 1948 in Great Britain gave an official and definitive seal to the most progressive and coherent criminal policy, not simply conceived on paper, but pursued in practice of any major country in the world at that time. The parliamentary game to secure this objective continued to be played out to the unrestrained satisfaction of all concerned. The author was given the opportunity to be present at some of the general debates and at the committee stage. The reformers were idealists but they were not sentimentalists. They did not wish to avoid confronting reality. They were, for example, without exception dead against the infliction of corporal punishment as a form of penal sanction and they made their point. But they agreed, though with some reluctance, to keep it in prison as a disciplinary measure for the offences of mutiny or incitement to mutiny, and for gross personal violence to a prison officer. Great Britain was the first major country in Europe where the authorities initiated, conducted and published systematic after-conduct studies of many categories of offenders.

This article investigates the therapeutic relationships between health care professionals, complementary therapists and people with cancer. Alongside this are reports of increasing numbers of patients using complementary therapies to address the psychological and emotional impact of cancer, often without the knowledge of health care professionals. There are shared concerns about patient advocacy, particularly in terms of self-care strategies, the emotional needs of patients, ownership of the body and the role of holism in health care. The rationale for the present study came about as a result of the growing burden placed upon cancer services in Great Britain by government reforms impacting upon oncology centers in the British National Health Service as embodied in a series of Department of Health White Papers. Coupled with this is the growing advocacy of patients and self-help groups who are aware of their rights as set out by the Patient's Charter, with its developments in clinical accountability, access to information, the right of informed consent to treatments, and more accessible channels of complaint and litigation.

This chapter argues that there has been little coherent attempt by the World Health Organization to align theoretical developments in health promotion research to shifting policy agendas. The evolving nature of health promotion has implications for health promotion research and related research agendas. By health promotion research, we mean research that services the needs of health promotion. By contrast, research on health promotion, may be concerned with developing critiques of health promotion practice or studying the values base of policy and practice. Both encompass a wide range of disciplines, among them epidemiology, anthropology, psychology, organizational and political science and sociology, that do not always sit comfortably side by side. This chapter draws on papers presented at, and reflections prompted by, the First UK Health Promotion Research Conference, held in Edinburgh, Scotland in April 1998. The conference was organized against the backdrop of this evolving international agenda and recent Great Britain Government policy initiatives. As such, it provided a timely opportunity to explore the main challenges for health promotion research in the twenty-first century. Two key themes recurred throughout the conference: the nature of knowledge and the meaning of evidence in health promotion. Finally and perhaps inevitably, in any field there is a lead and lag relationship between theory and action. In health promotion, theory has lagged behind action. In consequence, it has become increasingly difficult to account for how and in what ways action is linked to policy.

This chapter reprints the article GLF: 25 Years on, which was first published in the June 1996 issue of Pink Paper. This article marks the 25th anniversary of the first British Gay Day rally in Hyde Park, London, England. Whilst earlier homosexual rights movements in Great Britain and Europe had campaigned and lobbied for equality in law, and tolerance, Gay Liberation looked beyond narrow parliamentarianism, recognizing that questions of sexuality affect every aspect of society, from women's wages to the school curriculum, as well as opportunities for personal happiness and fulfillment. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) movement provided the initiative behind a wide range of institutions founded by and for lesbians and gay men in the seventies, such as the national Switchboard movement, and the emergence of the modern gay press, which in turn nourished our original responses to HIV and AIDS in the early eighties. GLF always insisted that the regulation and policing of homosexuality, in public or in private, was equally of political significance. This came from direct experience. The author is convinced that much of the deeper popular impetus behind GLF related far more to the dramatic contrast between British and mainland European experience, than to the direct influence of the U.S.

This article focuses on evolving policies for lifelong learning in the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain. In both Britain and Ireland, as elsewhere in Western Europe, lifelong learning has recently commanded considerable policy attention. Nevertheless, despite broad similarities of discourse and approach, the two contexts differ considerably. Of course, much is shared between Britain and Ireland, including a common language and the one land border in these islands. Historical ties and tensions have also played their part, not least in shaping the education and training systems. As in all members of the European Union, some public education and training programmes are partly financed and governed through the European Commission's Structural Funds. Yet the differences are important ones, and mean that the challenges faced by each society are rather different. In both countries, lifelong learning now occupies a leading place in policy discourse. In the Republic and Great Britain, a series of policy papers were produced around the turn of the century, leading subsequently to what appear to be a series of substantial new policy initiatives.

The article focuses on research methods courses at diploma level. One is not required to carry out a piece of research involving the collection of new data. The critical analysis of a research paper should draw upon all the skills and knowledge of the research process. Thus the authors' credentials should be borne in mind: are their qualifications and experience appropriate to the topic being researched? Was the study carried out in Great Britain or the U.S. or somewhere else, and is this relevant to professional practice? There is a huge variety of research journals that publish health-related material and they vary in quality, especially in the processes or standards of peer review that are applied to articles submitted for publication by researchers. The better known and international journals--such as the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Advanced Nursing or the Journal of the American Medical Association to name but a few--generally apply rigorous standards of review of articles submitted. One should not automatically assume, however, that because a research paper appears in a prestigious journal that it is necessarily true or beyond reproach and should also consider who it was that funded the study; funding organizations range from charities, research councils and local sources to commercial companies such as drug and appliance manufacturers.

The article presents information on the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (CILT). Established in 1966, CILT aims to collect and disseminate information on foreign language teaching and learning. Since 1986 this has been specifically interpreted to mean the promotion of greater national capability in languages throughout Great Britain. CILT is a registered educational charity. It was originally a non-departmental public body; but in 1999 its status changed to that of a near to government body. CILT receives various grants for its activities. Besides, it also generates income from its programme activities. CILT's resources library constitutes a unique collection of multimedia language teaching resources. In addition, it contains a wide selection of books and periodicals on language teaching methodology, policy and related issues. The library is open to the public throughout the year. CILT collects and makes available information on a wide range of language related topics. CILT staff also offer advice and consultancy services. This information is made available in paper form, and online through the CILT web site and virtual resources centre.

This article presents information on the freedom of the press and the safety of journalists the world over. The ultimate constraint on journalists is said to be imposed through murder. The killing of Veronica Guerin, crime reporter of the Sunday Independent, in Dublin on 26 June 1996, highlighted starkly the dangers posed to intrepid investigative journalists. Yet her death raised serious questions about journalists training for dangerous assignments and newspapers cultivation of their star reporters personalities as a deliberate marketing ploy. Many laws exist in Great Britain restraining the media. In 1992, the White Paper, Open Government, identified 251 laws outlawing information disclosure. Two years later the Guild of Editors listed 46 directly relating to journalists. They included the Children and Young Persons Act 1993 and the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993 which imposed reporting restrictions on industrial tribunals involving sexual harassment. The Criminal Procedures and Investigations Act 1998 gave the courts further powers to impose reporting restrictions.

This paper examines the establishment of social work within primary health care settings in Great Britain, following the passage of the National Health Service and Community Care Act in 1990. Although the improvement of relationships between social workers and primary health care teams has been promoted for a number of years, the advent of formal policies for community care has made this a priority for both social services and health. This paper presents interim findings from the evaluation of three pilot projects in Nottinghamshire, Great Britain. These findings are analysed from three linked perspectives. The first is the extent to which structures and organisations have worked effectively together to promote the location of social workers within health care settings. The second is the impact of professional and cultural factors on the work of the social worker in these settings. The third is the effect of interpersonal relationships on the success of the project. The paper will conclude that there is significant learning from each of these perspectives which can be applied to the future location of social workers to primary health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the life of Dusé Mohamed Ali who spent most of his life writing and working against what he called the rising tide of aggression, segregation and oppression which threatens to engulf people. Bereft of family financial and other support, the sixteen-year-old had to leave school. He worked as an actor in Great Britain and the U.S. and wrote some plays, which, though performed, were unsuccessful. He apparently worked his way around the world, visiting India, North, South and Central America and the Caribbean. Ali was duly invited to attend the bland Universal Races Congress in 1911, which focused on creating a better understanding between races. He was put in charge of publicity and the entertainments. The paper and the publication of his book naturally made Ali well-known amongst people in Great Britain interested in the colonies. Ali also became involved with and established many organisations, Islamic, Ottoman and Egyptian. The British government, which had been keeping Ali under surveillance, concluded that Ali was a notorious disseminator of sedition.

This paper describes the events of 2001 in South West England and explores their wider messages for the management of tourism in the region. The year 2001 was an annus horribilis for the region, witnessing as it did, first of all, an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and later, as the region began to emerge from its first crisis, the unfolding events of 09/11. This sequence of events is used as a lens through which to inspect the interaction of three sets of obviously overlapping tourism management approaches. This fusion reveals that important contradictions and tensions exist between the claims, assumptions and practices of contemporary tourism governance. A more strategic approach to the concept of risk is required in the UK tourist "industry" since the prevailing principles and imperatives of tourism governance may have frustrated the response to events in 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of disasters and crises affecting the tourism industry increases, it is becoming necessary to understand the nature of these disasters and how to manage and limit the impacts of such incidents. This paper defines crises and disasters before discussing the area of crisis communication management and crisis communication in the tourism industry. The paper then applies the foot and mouth disease (FMD) which occurred in the United Kingdom to crisis communication theory at a national level (by examining the response of the British Tourist Authority) and at a local level (by examining the response of a District Council). The response was limited in part because of a lack of preparedness, but also due to the nature of the foot and mouth outbreak, and the speed and severity of international media coverage. Action was taken in the emergency phase of the crisis and was reactive involving inconsistency in developing key messages to stakeholders, partly due to confusion and a lack of information at the national level. Recovery marketing was also limited due to the length of time of the disease outbreak. This paper provides lessons for destinations and organisations are discussed which may help develop crisis communication strategies for tourism organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]