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There's plenty to think about in the Correlli Barnett article, in all conscience. The message is that Britain is fighting a fierce battle for survival, impeded by severe disabilities resulting from her past.

Correlli Burnett's fascinating article THE HUNDRED YEAR SICKNESS (p 235) has opened another chapter in the long discussion on why are we in such a mess. This country's prosperity is always just round the corner. ‘You never had it so good’ is either yesterday's jam or tomorrow's; never today's. The Briton, like mankind in Pope's Essay finds always that ‘Man never is, but always to be blessed’ Rightly, the author points out that the inadequacy of U K wealth production has persisted for a long time — much longer than the 30 post war years — and he gives a valuable historical outline of our economic and technological shortcomings over the past 150 years. These are linked with British social distinctions, eg the cloth cap image of the working class, in council house estates, and the social bias of upper class education ‘away from the realities of an industrialised world.’ (p 241).

We are here to discuss how education and industry can forge a more effective partnership, so that we can match the professionalism of our rivals in world markets. Our context is Britain as an industrial and commercial nation faced with the basic need to survive and prosper in those markets. Because without such success, without the big enough resources which can come only from that success, it really is pointless to talk about values or the kind of society we would ideally like to see. Except for saints, there is very little nobility or spiritual uplift in poverty. When people talk glibly about the post‐industrial society being a good thing, they fail to recognise the reality under their noses — our urban problem areas. Never let us forget that one possible future for Britain, when the oil‐lake finally runs down, is a swift descent into Third World status.

The British Gross National Product is only three times that of Sweden, although our population is eight times larger. West Germany's GNP is twice ours, although her population is only a tenth larger. France, with a smaller population than our own, has a GNP more than half as much again. And the gap between us and the others has been widening ever more rapidly over the last two decades. This is the measure of our failure as an industrial and commercial nation.

This paper describes the different ways in which people in the highlands of Papua New Guinea are talking about climate change. It demonstrates that people locate themselves in this process of change in terms of food production and exchange, and that some of the changes being witnessed are also related to the impacts of a growing cash economy on social relations.

This ethnography involved 12 months fieldwork including participant observation and interviews.

This is a qualitative study that recognises the perspective of local people for understanding culturally mediated experiences of climate change. However, data regarding rainfall and temperatures over time would be a useful addition for thinking about the extent to which the climate has in fact changed in recent years.

The implications of this paper are that the predictions made in 1990 about increases in production as a result of climate change are apparently coming true, with benefits for some food and coffee producers. But that there are complex social processes occurring at the same time as climate change that mean people’s ability to adapt is dependent on other social conditions. Maintaining ecologically sustainable methods of production and local cultural practices may enable more resilience to the impacts of climate change.

The experiences of people living in the Eastern Highlands and the ways in which people use the discourse of climate change are yet to be acknowledged in policy circles or socio-cultural anthropology literature. This paper presents a partial account of how people in Papua New Guinea are experiencing and talking about change.

Historically, universities have been seen as places of excellence in research, with certain added teaching and educational functions. In Britain, though not in many other countries, there was seen little or no need to transfer that excellence out into the world outside nor for there to be much of a relationship between the universities and industry. So universities have been very relaxed about transferring their capabilities to the world outside — and the world outside has not been, until very recently too concerned about that. It may be helpful to spend a little time looking at that in greater depth.

I first came to this conference just four years ago. It was, I recall, almost the first major speaking engagement after my appointment as Chairman of the Manpower Services Commission. It was certainly the first occasion since Norman Tebbit had announced the introduction of the Youth Training Scheme. Indeed, as I recall, that was the major subject of our debate that day — would we be able to put in place a national training scheme for hundreds of thousands of young people? Would we have enough employers, enough trainers, enough time?

It has become an article of faith to believe that the root of the British industrial malaise lies in low productivity. The apparent permanence of a poor productivity record in Britain was brilliantly chronicled by Corelli Barnett in his recent article in ICT on ‘The hundred year sickness’. The government, industry, and commentators point to the unfavourable comparisons between British industry and our foreign competitors. The car industry seems to be the favourite example for this masochistic mode of analysis.

THE proposition that British library schools should examine their own students is not a new one. As long ago as 1954, Roy Stokes put the question bluntly to the profession. In those days his was a voice crying in the wilderness. The profession at large was not ready for such a development, and continued to adhere to its long held view that the Library Association should examine the products of the schools, while the schools confined themselves to teaching.

Economics and economic history, general history and sociology have all usefully informed debates about the decline of the British economy relative to those of other nations, and useful contributions have also been made by political scientists, psychologists, students of industrial relations and of management and organisational behaviour. However, the most fundamental contributions have generally come from the three major disciplines of economics (with economic history), general history and sociology. Unfortunately habits and traditions peculiar to these disciplines have sometimes been unhelpful to processes of approaching comprehensive understanding. Further, interdisciplinary discussions and controversies have sometimes produced a certain amount of ‘noise’, even on some occasions where agreement on substantive points has been considerable.