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The article discusses the memorandum of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association. It focuses on the green paper that indicates the administrative structure of the medical services in England and Wales. It is explained that any attempt to integrate the present tripartite administration into a single authority for a single community would be accepted by the Association, if satisfactory arrangements may be made that surpass the existing ones. Moreover, it should take responsibility for all the health functions of present local health authorities. Thus, it is stated that the unification of the tripartite structure of the National Health Service, by the development of Area Health Boards, are supported by them.

This short paper presents some results of an attempt to derive a suitable function to explain unit costs in the water supply industry in England and Wales. The data we used were the latest available at the time of writing. The data, in effect, were for the year 1965-66. It was not possible, because of lack of data, to carry out a time-series analysis to supplement our cross-section findings. At the moment the industry is composed of some 331 undertakings; our sample, which is based on data provided by I.M.T.A.,' covers 162 of those under- takings. In effect, it covers: 67 local authorities; 75 water boards; and 20 water companies. In this paper then we are concerned with the derivation of an industry average cost curve, or function. Although the resulting curve could be similar to the envelope curve, or to part of the envelope curve, as we know it, it will differ from the usual conception of that curve because of the nature of production conditions in the water supply industry. Section II notes the type and characteristics of the four cost functions we have fitted to the data. Section III briefly presents and assesses the statistical results obtained from using those functions. Section IV then makes some comments on the major issue of amalgamation in the light of the statistical results.

The article presents abstracts of the papers based on politics in Wales, that were read on May 15, 1971 at the conference held at the Polytechnic of Central London. One of the papers discussed here is titled "Aspects of Politics in Mid-19th-Century Wales." The middle decades of the last century deserve detailed study by the historian of the labor movement for the reason that these were the years when characteristic attitudes to politics among the rural and urban working classes were being formulated. The solidification of these attitudes during subsequent decades helps to explain the relatively slow development of the labor movement in Wales in the 20th century. An examination of some of the formal aspects of the structure of politics in the period 1850-70 in such a way as to expose its underlying social realities enables to understand how and why these attitudes came to be so powerful. The outstanding feature of the formal representative system in 1850 was the extent of the inequalities contained within it. Most of these can be ascribed to the working out of the arrangements of the First Reform Act, but the result of a vast increase in, and a redistribution of, population in the intervening years had been to make them far more pronounced than they had originally been. This was the case in both county and borough constituency, but was most pronounced in the latter.

In recent years several writers have drawn attention to the dangers of relying upon "calendar year" reproduction rates, such as the conventional net reproduction rate, as indicators of future population prospects. The synthesis considered in the present paper is of the births to generations of women, and is thus free from these objections. In brief the defence of an analysis limited to females in England and Wales today is based on the shrinking proportions of females to males at the younger ages in the unmarried population and one may suppose, the decreasing dependence of the proportions of women marrying on the availability of potential husbands. In the simplest case, the definition was in terms of mortality and fertility rates, progressing to mortality, marriage and legitimate and illegitimate fertility rates and, if the pendulum had not swung away from this approach, no doubt further complexity would have been added introducing considerations of widowhood, divorce and re-marriage and distinguishing duration of marriage as an additional factor in fertility rates.

The paper describes the training of accountants in Great Britain, first discussing the situation in England and Wales and later mentioning ways in which the Scottish training differs. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has virtual control over the admission of people into the public accounting field in those two countries. There is no separate licensing of public accountants by a government. Membership in the Institute is comparable to holding a state license to practice as a certified public accountant in this country. Members are allowed to described themselves as "chartered accountants" and to use the abbreviations F.C.A. for fellows and A.C.A. for associates. Businessmen are accustomed to seeking the services of Institute members for their professional accounting needs, and "by far the most important part of professional accounting work is carried out by chartered accountants." To become a chartered accountant one must become an articled clerk under Institute regulation and supervision for a prescribed period of years, pass examinations prepared, administered, and graded by the Institute, be accepted by the Institute council for membership.