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The framework for the major controls relating to the labelling of foodstuffs and consumer safety by the Commission of the European Communities is detailed; specifically, general food labelling requirements, batch marking, nutrition labelling, foods for particular nutritional uses, food irradiation, fruit juices, spirit drinks, and articles intended for food contact.

A comprehensive description of food law enforcement in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is presented. The history of food law is described together with the probable consequences of future EEC legislation on the UK situation.

A target date of 31 December 1992 has been set for the abolition of many of the present controls on goods passing between member states of the European Community. For foods, as with other products the Commission has established a list of proposals that require adoption if the “internal market” is to function properly. Considerable progress was made on the new directives required during 1988. Information on the position reached by then is presented, as is the text of the Amended Proposal for a Council Directive on the Official Inspection of Foodstuffs.

A summary of the issue of food safety is given, in the light of recent public concern over food hazards in the UK. The future of food safety is discussed and mention is made of the role of the various enforcement officers associated with the health and wholesomeness of food

The formulated proposals for this legal principle in the trade battern of the European Community have again appeared in the EEC draft Directive. It has been many years in coming, indicating the extreme difficulties encountered in bringing some sort of harmony in the different laws of Member‐states including those of the United Kingdom, relating to the subject. Over the years there were periods of what appeared to be complete inactivity, when no progress was being made, when consultations were at a stand‐still, but the situation was closely monitored by manufacturers of goods, including food and drink, in the UK and the BFJ published fairly detailed reviews of proposals being considered — in 1979 and 1981; and even as recently as the last few months — in “Consumerism in the Community”, the subject was briefly discussed.

The whole kingdom from north to south at the time of writing is enveloped in freezing Arctic weather, reminiscent of the North Russian campaign of long ago. The normal winter is relatively mild, mainly a Westerly pattern, occasionally wild and windy, wet with a rare cold “snap”. There are variations in the pattern, damp and warm in the south‐west, few frosts and rarely any snow; in the north of the country, Scotland, much colder, with the south‐east partaking of the weather pattern of the land mass of the Continent. The variations appear more of the mild weather in the South and colder, appreciably, in the North; recalling service personnel stationed at Gosport who did not need an overcoat all winter, whereas in the North, many found it necessary to wear a light overcoat tor most of the year, the south‐east corner of England, obtaining no help from the warming Gulf Stream, often gets the worst of the weather, which it has done to a very considerable extent in this winter.

A history is presented, including comprehensive tables, of EC legislation controlling the use of 65 substances used as food colours in EC countries since 1962. EC countries vary in their permitted conditions of use – the need for a more consistant approach is discussed. The relevance and benefits of the proposed consolidated EC directive are outlined with particular reference to the present problems of regulating those foodstuffs which are also used as sources of natural colours and of quantitatively expressing the pigment content of such natural extracts.

The clustering of objects in a layered object storage system is by common consent an exceedingly difficult problem. Studies the performance of three heuristic placement algorithms. A series of eight reasonably realistic case studies were used as a benchmark battery, and several hundred experiments were carried out to evaluate results of using the algorithms. Presents the results and the insights gained from the study.

Language may be a treasured heritage of small comunities, all that is left to bind them together. It is often a matter of national or regional pride, keeping alive a tongue dead centuries past everywhere else; in an area of the Grisons forty thousand Swiss speak the Latin Romansch, the tongue spoken by the citizens of ancient Rome, and nowhere else in the world is it heard. There are so‐called official languages; in the councils of Europe, it has always been French, which is the official language of the European Economic Community; this means, of course, that all EEC Directives and in due course, judgments of its courts, will be first delivered in French.

First January 1973 will not only mark the beginning of a New Year but a year which history will mark as a truly momentous one, for this is the year that Britain, after centuries of absence, re‐enters the framework of Europe as one of the Member‐States of the enlarged European Community. This in itself must make for change on both sides; Britain is so different in outlook from the others, something they too realize and see as an acquisition of strength. There have been other and more limited forms of Continental union, mainly of sovereignty and royal descent. Large regions of France were for centuries under the English Crown and long after they were finally lost, the fleur de lis stayed on the royal coat of arms, until the Treaty of Amiens 1802, when Britain retired behind her sea curtain. The other Continental union was, of course, with Hanover; from here the Germanized descendants of the Stuarts on the female line returned to the throne of their ancestors. This union lasted until 1832 when rules of descent prevented a woman from reigning in Hanover. It is interesting to speculate how different history might have been if only the British Crown and the profits of Tudor and Stuart rule had been maintained in one part of central Europe. However, Britain disentangled herself and built up overwhelming sea power against a largely hostile Europe, of which it was never conceived she could ever be a part, but the wheel of chance turns half‐circle and now, this New Year, she enters into and is bound to a European Community by the Treaty of Rome with ties far stronger, the product of new politico‐economic structures evolved from necessity; in a union which cannot fail to change the whole course of history, especially for this country.