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This is about the authors’ son James’ life. The purpose of this paper is to share a story of misfortune and a battle to find answers in which the greatest enemy was ignorance. Such experiences are not uncommon. It is the authors hope that sharing this will make some small contribution to bringing about change.

The authors discuss the experiences of care placements, and the battle to understand “challenging behaviour”.

Reflecting upon James’ experiences of the care system, it is clear that the system is fragmented and operates in silos that do not work together. Decision makers were all too often individuals not qualified to assess James’ needs and therefore implement appropriate solutions. The outcome was repeated failure which resulted in the view that he was a lost cause.

Such cruelty as James has experienced should be recognised and banished forever.

This paper outlines the objectives and quality assurance arrangements of Scottish Quality Cereals (SQC), the first major assurance scheme to be implemented for combinable crops in the UK. Thereafter, the traceability arrangements of Coastal Grains, a farmer co‐operative drawing grain from the English and Scottish Borders, are described. The Coastal Grains′ system provides traceability, quality and treatment information from seed and farm of origin right through to the industrial customer. SQC and Coastal Grains provide clear examples of how quality assurance and traceability may be developed in the combinable crops sector.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

This paper aims to ass whether or not the USA is going through a recession, looking at evidence from business data as well as interviews with local business people.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments.

Earlier this year The Economist published an article that asked whether or not emerging economies are becoming decoupled from the US economy. It highlighted a current debate among economists about the likelihood that emerging economies will follow the USA into recession. Those who believe they will argue that it makes no sense to talk about decoupling of economies in an era of globalization. Economies are now so entwined thanks to current trade and finance conditions that if the US experiences a tough time economically then it will perforce take other countries with it. Against this view, however, others argue that although weakened sales to the USA will have an impact, emerging economies are still surging and are finding other channels for sales and growth. After all, the four biggest emerging economies – China, India, Brazil and Russia – are hardly dependent on the USA: the majority of growth in these areas is coming from domestic demand and trade deals among themselves. Whichever side of the debate we stand on, common to both arguments is the implicit agreement that the USA is currently going through a recession. Whatever is going on in emerging markets, the US economy is on the verge of crumbling. But, ask Jack Gage and David Whitford, is that really the case?

The paper gives a starting point for further lines of enquiry into the supposed US recession.

The paper offers different perspectives on the US economy, and how it is affecting everyone from the local businessman to major emerging economies.

We thank the Simon Center for Regional Forecasting at the John Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University – especially Jack Strauss, Director of the Simon Center and Ellen Harshman, Dean of the Cook School – for its generosity and hospitality in hosting a conference during the summer of 2006 where many of the chapters appearing in this volume were presented. The conference provided a forum for discussing many important issues relating to forecasting in the presence of structural breaks and model uncertainty, and participants viewed the conference as helping to significantly improve the quality of the research appearing in the chapters of this volume.³ This volume is part of Elsevier's new series, Frontiers of Economics and Globalization, and we also thank Hamid Beladi for his support as an Editor of the series.

On‐site interviews were conducted with distribution managers in 20 technology‐based manufacturing firms located in Canada. The managers were asked to indicate the thoroughness with which they identified, selected, and recruited middlemen. Perceptions of the importance and success accorded each activity were also obtained. The results indicate that although many criteria are used or consulted, the thoroughness with which the activities are undertaken is significantly less than maximum. Additional analysis suggests that success in conducting these activities may be related to the perceived importance of each activity, and the thoroughness of the processes employed.

A review essay on Postmodernism, Economics and Knowledge. Edited by Stephen Cullenberg, Jack Amariglio and David F. Ruccio. London: Routledge, 2001. p. 495. Most economists agree that economic knowledge has gradually increased as more facts and data have been accumulated to support (or reject) theories. That is, economic knowledge and progress of the discipline have benefited from the scientific method. While not disputing this modernist conception of historical progress in economics, the articles in the volume consistently urge a broader discourse in economics, suggesting that without an expanded discourse economics will, as Hutchison (1979) argues, be “destined for a somewhat ambiguous and problematic place in the spectrum of knowledge” (p. 4). This edited volume discusses and seeks to discover what the postmodernist movement can add to broad economic discourse.

Sociologists of crime and deviance have devoted considerable time and effort, in recent years, to the study of deviants' accounts of their activities. There are good reasons why students of deviance in particular should be interested in what can be learned from their subjects' explanations of their social practices. Actors are normally called to account for or to explain their activities precisely when these actions are seen by significant others to be in some sense “unreasonable”. Moreover, accounts are central to the processes of law. The purpose of legal judgements is to attribute or withold responsibility. In order to assess an individual's guilt, where criminal activities are concerned, lawyers, judges, and juries pose such questions as: “Did the defendant perform an illegal act?”; “if so, can he or she explain his or her actions in reasonable terms?”; “Was the act in question pre‐meditated?” (that is, “motivated”); and, perhaps most important of all “What is the relationship between the accused's account of his or her involvement in an act, and their real involvement?”