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After great Wars, the years that follow are always times of disquiet and uncertainty; the country is shabby and exhausted, but beneath it, there is hope, expectancy, nay! certainty, that better times are coming. Perhaps the golden promise of the fifties and sixties failed to mature, but we entered the seventies with most people confident that the country would turn the corner; it did but unfortunately not the right one! Not inappropriate they have been dubbed the “striking seventies”. The process was not one of recovery but of slow, relentless deterioration. One way of knowing how your country is going is to visit others. At first, prices were cheaper that at home; the £ went farther and was readily acceptabble, but year by year, it seemed that prices were rising, but it was in truth the £ falling in value; no longer so easily changed. Most thinking Continentals had only a sneer for “decadent England”. Kinsmen from overseas wanted to think well of us but simply could not understand what was happening.

Speaking at a recent dinner, the new Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Rt. Hon. John Hare, observed that he had arrived at a time when the last traces of shortages and controls had been finally buried. He claimed that the efforts of the Conservative Party had been largely responsible for the great improvement in the general food situation over the last six years. “What a transformation has occurred,” he said. “Thanks to the policies we have adopted, everybody is eating better, including, I am glad to say, the old‐age pensioners. We have finally passed out of the era of shortage into plenty. I mean, of course, plenty in relation to consumers' purchasing power throughout the world. I know full well that there are great areas of the world where the population is still woefully badly fed.” The last‐quoted sentence of the Minister shows more signs of under‐statement than the earlier ones, for it is unhappily only too true that under‐nourishment is still the apparently inescapable lot of millions of our fellow human beings.

Few will complain that 1974 has not been an eventful year; in a number of significant respects, it has made history. Local Government and National Health Services reorganizations are such events. This is indeed the day of the extra‐large authority, massive monoliths for central administration, metropolitan conurbations for regional control, district councils corresponding to the large authorities of other days; and in a sense, it is not local government any more. As in other fields, the “big batallions” acquire greater collective power than the total sum of the smaller units, can wield it more effectively, even ruthlessly, but rarely appearing to take into account the masses of little people, the quiet people, who cannot make themselves heard. As expected, new names of authorities are replacing the old; new titles for departments and officers, ambitious and high‐sounding; a little grandiose for the tongues of ordinary folk. Another history‐making event of 1974, in the nature of a departmental transfer but highly significant for the course of future events as far as work in the field is concerned, was handing over of the personal health services—health of expectant mothers, babies, children, domiciliary midwifery, the school health services and their mainly medical and nursing personnel—from local health authorities to the newly created area health authorities. The public health departments over fifty years and more had created them, built them up into the highly efficient services they are. If anything can be learned from the past, new authorities are always more expensive than those they replace; they spend freely and are lavish with their accommodation and furnishings. In their first few months of existence, the new bodies have proved they are no exception. News of their meetings and activities in many areas is now scanty; even local newspapers which usually thrive on Council news—or quarrels—seem to have been caught on the wrong foot, especially in the small towns now merged into larger units. The public are relatively uninformed, but this doubtless will soon be rectified.

Messrs. W. and G. Clark have invented a milling machine which, it is claimed, for the first time enables a meal containing the whole of the wheat berry in assimilable form to be produced. The cells of the berry, containing the protein, starch grains and wheat germ, are exploded by intense air pressure. The process is wholly dry, whereas wheat which is roller milled is first soaked in water for many hours; and meal produced by the new method contains 8·2 per cent. natural moisture, compared with 17 per cent. in ordinary flour. Already much bread made from the new meal is being sold. It can be obtained from a well‐known London store. Three depôts of the Royal Navy and a London hospital are among regular consumers of bread and biscuits made from the new meal, which is to be subjected to a biological feeding test at the Lister Institute to test its vitamins B1 and B2 complex content.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The pattern of prosecutions forfood offences has changed very little in the past decade. Compositional offences have rarely exceeded 5 per cent and, since the 1967 batch of regulations for meat products, are mostly in respect of deficient meat content. Food hygiene offences have also remained steady, with no improvement to show for all the effort to change the monotony of repulsive detail. The two major causes of all legal proceedings, constituting about 90 per cent of all cases—the presence of foreign matter and sale of mouldy food—continue unchanged; and at about the same levels, viz. an average of 55 per cent of the total for foreign matter and 35 per cent for mouldy food. What is highly significant about this changed concept of food and drugs administration is that almost all prosecutions now arise from consumer complaint. The number for adulteration as revealed by official sampling and analysis and from direct inspectorial action is small in relation to the whole. A few mouldy food offences are included in prosecutions for infringements of the food hygiene regulations, but for most of the years for which statistics have been gathered by the BFJ and published annually, all prosecutions for the presence of foreign matter have come from consumer complaint. The extent to which food law administration is dependent upon this source is shown by the fact that 97 per cent of all prosecutions in 1971 for foreign bodies and mouldy food—579 and 340 respectively—resulted from complaints; and in 1972, 98 per cent of prosecutions resulted from the same source in respect of 597 for foreign matter and 341 for mouldy food. Dirty milk bottle cases in both years all arose from consumer complaint; 41 and 37 respectively.

The Transfer of Functions (Food and Drugs) Order, 1955 (S.I. 1955 No. 959), providing for the transfer of certain food hygiene functions from the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the Minister of Health, was laid before Parliament on July 5th.

The Sanitary Committee of a certain County Council, strong with the strength of recent creation, have lately been animated by a desire to distinguish themselves in some way, and, proceeding along the lines of least resistance, they appear to have selected the Public Analyst as the most suitable object for attack. The charge against this unfortunate official was not that he is incompetent, or that he had been in any way negligent of his duties as prescribed by Act of Parliament, but simply and solely that he has the temerity to reside in London, which city is distant by a certain number of miles from the much favoured district controlled by the County Council aforesaid. The committee were favoured in their deliberations by the assistance of no less an authority than the “Principal” of a local “Technical School”;—and who could be more capable than he to express an opinion upon so simple a matter? This eminent exponent of scientific truths, after due and proper consideration, is reported to have delivered himself of the opinion that “scientifically it would be desirable that the analyst should reside in the district, as the delay occasioned by the sending of samples of water to London is liable to produce a misleading effect upon an analysis.” Apparently appalled by the contemplation of such possibilities, and strengthened by another expression of opinion to the effect that there were as “good men” in the district as in London, the committee resolved to recommend the County Council to determine the existing arrangement with the Public Analyst, and to appoint a “local analyst for all purposes.” Thus, the only objection which could be urged to the employment of a Public Analyst resident in London was the ridiculous one that the composition of a sample of water was likely to seriously alter during the period of its transit to London, and this contention becomes still more absurd when it is remembered that the examination of water samples is no part of the official duty of a Public Analyst. The employment of local scientific talent may be very proper when the object to be attained is simply the more or less imperfect instruction of the rising generation in the rudiments of what passes in this country for “technical education”; but the work of the Public Analyst is serious and responsible, and cannot be lightly undertaken by every person who may be acquainted with some of the uses of a test‐tube. The worthy members of this committee may find to their cost, as other committees have found before them, that persons possessing the requisite knowledge and experience are not necessarily indigenous to their district. Supposing that the County Council adopts the recommendation, the aspirations of the committee may even then be strangled in their infancy, as the Local Government Board will want to know all about the matter, and the committee will have to give serious and valid reasons in support of their case.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Inspections have been made during the year at the majority of the principal food importing ports in England and Wales in connection with the administration of the Public Health (Foreign Meat) and the Public Health (Unsound Food) Regulations, 1908.