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This paper explores the evidence on risk and vulnerability to depression of older people, looking at the complex interplay between physical ill health, disability, loss of intimates and social relationships, loneliness and depression, and the resources and protective factors at individual, social and community level that either buffer risk or promote psychological well‐being. It concludes, with Blazer (2000), that effective strategies for the prevention, treatment and management of depression must ‘proceed across multiple domains simultaneously’, and address social, environmental and economic as well as medico‐biological factors if interventions are to prove effective in this greatly neglected field. Action at government level to address social inequalities throughout the life course would also have a significant protective impact on mental well‐being in old age.

There has been a growing policy emphasis on prevention and the promotion of independence for older people. Are we clear, however, what we mean by prevention and how far authorities have been able to balance the needs of service users with promoting the well‐being of older people in general?

The government's reimbursement policy, whereby local councils face fines if a patient cannot be discharged from hospital because they are waiting for an assessment etc, introduced new pressures into a system that was already fraught. One of the policy's aims is to allow people to exercise ‘genuine choice’ as regards their ongoing and longer‐term care. Based on their research into the policy however, Michelle Cornes et al investigate whether choice really can be exercised when lying in a hospital bed.

A sample of sixty panellists was selected from the Sainsbury's Consumer Panel. Each week they were given a different variety of new potatoes which they were asked to take home and use as they normally would, recording their results on a questionnaire. Eleven different varieties were tested, some two to three times. Some well known varieties were interspersed amongst the less well known. The results have shown that there are some new varieties which match up to the standards of the present ones marketed by J. Sainsbury and also that different varieties are well suited to specific and different types of preparation.

There is a divergence between the contributions of Mary Parker Follett on an intellectual plane and the practical application of her ideas and rationale. Apart from her unparagoned writing style, the obvious complexity of her abstract and interdisciplinary approach makes it extremely challenging to understand and apply her insights to achieve a harmonious organizational life. Yet, in her integrative mind, she viewed philosophy as directly related to action and reality. This paper reduces this divergence by translating her thoughts into practical guidelines for the manager, educator and researcher. The application of Follett's philosophy to a paradigm of lifelong learning and education, the key to lasting change (hitherto unexplored), is addressed, along with implications for the researcher. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to view the work of Follett through a new lens – that of advocate of lifelong learning. Two appendices list Follett's contribution to management thought and education.

The last two years have witnessed what may justly be described as a revolutionary change in the packaging and marketing of goods, of which pre‐packed food constitutes a substantial part, but as far as public reaction goes, it has largely been a silent witness. There has been none of the outcry such as accompanied metrication, sufficient to call a halt to the process, and especially to the introduction of the decimal currency, of which most shoppers are convinced they were misled, “conned”. Every effort to make the changeover as smooth as possible was made; included was the setting up within the Department of Trade of a National Metrological Co‐ordinating Unit charged with co‐ordinating the work of 91 local weights and measures authorities in Great Britain in enforcing the new law, the Weights and Measures Act, 1979. This Act replaced the net or minimum system of the old law, the traditional system, re‐enacted in the Weights and Measures Act, 1963 with the average system, implementing EEC Directives and bringing weights and measures into line with Member‐states of the European Community.