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The UK Government started Employment Training (ET), a programme for unemployed people, in September 1988. It quickly became established as a major programme; in February 1992 there were 146,000 ET trainees in Britain. Thousands of employers are involved in ET by offering placement opportunities to trainees. Looks at the way British employers participate in ET and considers some ideas for improving the effectiveness of and pay‐off for carrying out training under the programme. Refers to a special survey of 301 London employers in the spring of 1992. This was carried out for the Central London Training and Enterprise Council (CENTEC). Provides evidence that employers participate in ET because of the possibility of recruiting ET trainees to the permanent workforce.

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) was the originator of the Scottish philosophy of common sense, an approach that claims reality is objective and knowable, made up of material objects, and understandable by ordinary men. Common sense philosophy developed in opposition to the pervasive skepticism of the period, best exemplified by David Hume. A professor of philosophy at King’s College, Aberdeen, Reid was chosen to be the successor to Adam Smith as the chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. From that position, Reid played an important role in the Scottish Enlightenment as professor, scholar, and correspondent. While Reid was not an economist, he did write on important theoretical and philosophical issues in moral philosophy, the natural sciences and mathematics. Reid may prove additionally interesting to economists for his insightful critique of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.

In the 1970s there was a growing realisation of a need to prepare young people for work. It was hoped by many that public policy initiatives in vocational preparation would enable Britain to catch up with the more systematic youth training practices of its European neighbours. Ironically, the development of vocational preparation has really been fostered by the employment crisis of the 1980s. As unemployment began to climb in the late 1970s and surged in the early 1980s, the scale of training measures, paid out of public funds, likewise expanded. The YTS programme is a product of these trends.

It has long been assumed that brands sponsoring athletes who excel in competition realise more exposure than brands that do not. But which factors have a significant impact on the amount of exposure a competitor earns? The broadcasts of six major men's golf tournaments were analysed to determine the exact duration and value of sponsor exposure during those broadcasts. Multiple regression analysis was then utilised to determine the impact of several variables on the exposure the competitors realised for their sponsors, resulting in a model that estimates the amount of exposure a competitor should earn, based on these factors.

Youth unemployment is one of the most serious problems of the early 1980s. In 1981 one in six youngsters under 18 years old were looking for jobs. As the problem has worsened the emphasis of public programmes has shifted from attempts to reduce the level of unemployment to the provision of training alternatives to employment, such as the Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) and the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). At present, the Government is committed to employer‐based, on‐the‐job training for school leavers.

In July 1985 the government decided in favour of major reform of wages councils. It restricted their scope to setting minimum hourly and overtime rates of pay and removed people under 21 completely from their coverage. This raises questions about the functions of wages councils within the British industrial relations system. There is a need to adopt an industrial relations perspective on wages councils. Contemporary debate on the continued usefulness of wages councils is biased against them by virtue of failing to recognise that they exist not only to protect workers from low pay, but also represent state attempts to create collective bargaining and industrial democracy in situations where the capacity of workers for collective organisation has been too low to support voluntary developments. All these different identities of wages councils need to be understood and combined to achieve a comprehensive conception of their actual significance. There is a need for more research based on appropriate methodologies, studying the wages council sector itself and for studies to measure the effects of wages councils on efficiency and productivity.

Looks at the way traditional family units are ceasing to operate and proffers a wider definition for the family, outlining the criteria used by a number of companies to offer family healthcare. Considers the tax implications and the costs and impacts of this extension of care. Gives arguments against this extension but concludes that it may be fair, equitable and economically feasible to extend coverage.

Over the last decades, the social sciences have become increasingly concerned with the role of the state and the politics of institutional restructuring. Within mainstream political science this has led to the development of a “state-centered” research program that emphasizes the autonomy of institutions. Marxist theory, however, has continued to adhere to a “society-centered” perspective, seeking to combine an ability to account for institutional change with the analysis of more structural social and economic forces. After some introductory comments that frame the problematic within which the paper is situated (Section 1), I discuss in Section 2 three of the most important recent Marxist attempts to construe the relation between socio-economic imperatives and political institutions. My argument is that Marxists’ attempts to relativize the autonomy of state institutions are too often still based on the postulation of an unexplained structural moment. This leaves them vulnerable to institutionalist claims concerning the autonomous nature of institutions. Section 3 proposes a different way of thinking the role of institutions in capitalist society. This approach breaks with a causalist, structuralist mode of explanation and relies on a more hermeneutic understanding of the role of institutions. I will shift the problematic to the relation between institutions and agency, arguing for a more pragmatist understanding of the role of institutions and an agency-based understanding of the formation of socio-economic imperatives. Section 4 concludes with some thoughts on the prospects held out, as well as the challenges faced, by the approach proposed in this paper.

Remarks on the parallel in the basis of the riches of the aristocracy and plutocracy. Illustrates the argument from the history of the development of the cotton textile industry, the underpinnings for its growth being the inventions prior to and during the eighteenth century. Exemplifies the part of inventions as the begetter of plutocratic wealth. Sir Richard Arkwright, notably, was its salacious issue.