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The 2010 British election particularly focused on the party leaders' images - a departure in fifty years of British elections. The principal contribution of the article is to illustrate how a combined approach to assessing leadership positioning using both the traditional survey and semiotic analysis can provide insights into what image attribute dimensions end up in the minds of members of the public (actual positioning) and on what image attribute dimensions party marketers are trying to position themselves (intended positioning). Using data from the 2010 British general elections, our findings indicate that the combined methodological approach would be particularly useful for brands that need repositioning, those whose image attribute positions change dramatically over time, and those who wish to target previously unresponsive target audience segments.

The erosion of coastal cliffs is inevitable. The cliff collapses are a hazard, a problem for coastal land use planners and limit the use of the coastline as an amenity. Techniques to increase our knowledge of coastal cliff failure and provide pre-cursors to impending collapse are presented. The rock mass cracks before a collapse and the cracking generates high frequency seismic signais. An increase in emitted seismic energy has been recorded on accelerometers, in boreholes within a cliff, during the fifteen hours before a cliff fall. Comparison of the seismic signals with those generated in the laboratory has identified a number of collapse mechanisms that occur during different phases of the fall. A second technique assumes that in cliffs composed of a highly fractured rock, any sub-vertical fractures will gradually dilate with time before a collapse. The electrical resistance of the rock varies with azimuth reflecting the dominant fracture orientation. A factor of anisotropy, calculated from the measurements, was found to change dramatically due to a cliff fall. Large values of anisotropy prior to the fall were interpreted as evidence of dilating fractures. In addition, the research has demonstrated the existence of a cliff parallel fracture adjacent to the cliff edge. It is likely that cracking within this fracture set is responsible for the seismicity and the variations in the measured anisotropy. Laboratory analysis has identified a significant weakening of the rock due to sait crystals within the matrix. The integration and implications of these results are discussed.

The recognition of the Coniacian-Santonian boundary is easy with good correlation of macro- and microfossil evidence. The Santonian Working Group (SWG) recommends the lowest occurrence of Cladoceramus undulatoplicatus (Roemer) as the marker for the Coniacian-Santonian boundary. As yet, the SWG cannot make a formal proposal for a Boundary Stratotype Section, because the biostratigraphy must be better known and integrated first. Three candidates for Boundary Stratotype Section, Olazagutia Quarry (Navarra, Spain), Seaford Head (Sussex, England) and Ten Mile Creek (Dallas, Texas, USA) were selected for further decision. To achieve a useful subdivision of the Santonian into substages a better understanding of taxa ranges and correlation through different biogeographic realms is needed. Formal proposals for subdivision would be premature at present, but a three-fold division is favoured.