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The purpose of this paper is to contrast consumer laws in England and Australia in relation to residential building projects, and considers how the laws of England may be improved in light of the Australian laws.

The paper reviews consumer laws in both England and Australia, and examines the measures that are in place (or not) to protect consumers who engage builders or purchase a home that contains latent defects.

After comparing the laws of the two countries, the conclusion is made that English law could be improved by imposing regulations on builders, including by mandating the use of written contracts for building work which are required to contain particular terms, requiring builders to be licensed and insured, and by introducing a consumer‐friendly form of dispute resolution for home building disputes.

The paper recommends that there be law reform in England.

The paper provides (so far as the authors are aware) the first comparison of English and Australian consumer laws in relation to residential building work.

There are an increasing number of predictions on the future of the European PWB manufacturing industry stating that Europe is becoming increasingly uncompetitive in the field of PWB manufacture and that, as a result, the European PWB manufacturing industry will collapse as OEMs and assemblers seek to source their PWBs from other regions of the world. This paper will review the competitive position of Europe in the global marketplace. Global technology, differing regional manufacturing cost structures, individual company financial expectations and other influencing factors such as governmental policy and environmental legislation will be discussed in detail. Reasons both “for” and “against” an indigenous European PWB source will be developed and compared and contrasted. This paper will then seek to develop potential “winning” business strategies to ensure the survival of PWB manufacture in the region.

Every April thousands of “pilgrims” from all over the world flock to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage. This region of the country, lavish with colorful flora, richly rewards the nature lover's devotion. Wildflowers can be found almost anywhere, if one knows what to look for and how to look. Field guides provide the keys the nature lover needs to become acquainted with the flora of a particular region. There are currently well over 100 books in print that offer guidance, through illustrations, descriptions, and various methods of identification, in recognizing the most representative wildflowers of every part of the United States. This review will examine 15 of these guides, chosen to exemplify the books available on the wildflowers of major regions.

Zinc potassium chromate (4Zn·O₄CrO₃·K₂O·3H₂O) was prepared using zinc salt solution, sodium hydroxide and potassium dichromate solutions. The pigment synthesised was investigated by various methods. Upon heating, this pigment underwent decomposition to form ZnCr₂O₄, K₂CrO₄ and ZnO. The pigment obtained was successfully used in the preparation of glaze and then on a tile. The L*, a* and b* values of the fired glaze were 71.607, 2.695 and 67.327, respectively.

Quality in the service sector is of increasing concern to both academics and practitioners. Previously published material is reviewed and attention is focused on the importance of people and internal marketing in the changing environment of service industries, definitions and measurement of service quality, and the service quality/customer care programmes presently being developed and implemented.

This chapter focuses on the experiences of disabled Tamil and Sinhalese women in Sri Lanka.

Using fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews obtained through Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) programs over 13 months across four distinct districts in Sri Lanka, we examine complex sociocultural issues at the intersection of gender and disability.

These women’s narratives about their lives show the physical and social barriers related to the accessibility of everyday activities, and also the complex gender norms relating to social expectations to stay hidden from public view, contradictory messages around love and marriage, and reactions to and consequences of being disabled women in public.

The results support calls to prioritize disabled voices in disability research in the Global South, which is currently dominated by a CBR approach in the name of “development.” These data also show the need to systematically address power relations currently at work in policies, practices, and communities that perpetuate disablement; document the need for communities and research to be more inclusive; and obligate scholars and practitioners to be more aware of how the CBR context may aim for development and change, yet often maintain highly gendered economic, political, and social processes of isolation. This project illustrates the ways in which careful attention to personal stories can illuminate complex socio-cultural processes. The chapter also brings voices of women in the Global South into the discourses on narratives and disability, both of which are dominated by perspectives from the industrialized west.

Tourism is one of South Africa’s fastest growing sectors. Pro-Poor Tourism (PPT) is an approach to tourism development that results in increased net benefits for poor people. It enhances the linkages between tourism businesses and poor people, so that tourism’s contribution to poverty reduction is increased. The South African Township Tourism Organisation tries to implement PPT by providing tourists with the chance to learn about the country and its history in an authentic way. The authors took a sample of Tour Operators registered with Tourism South Africa in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria that include the two biggest townships Khayelitsha and Soweto. They used in-depth interviews to identify the kind of tours offered and the extent to which local communities are involved in and benefit from these tours. Results show that in terms of direct poverty alleviation township tourism is considered to be only moderately successful. The tour operators emphasised the need for more social investment and for local government to play an active role in encouraging the employment of more local people.

IT IS EASY to make glib generalisations about the student situation in this country, and its associated problems, but a recondite analysis of student mores is much more difficult. Commentators tend to be extreme, varying from those who declaim ‘All for youth and the world well lost’ to those crying ‘Stop their grants, make them do a day's work’, and more in similar vein. An understanding of student attitudes to work and society is one thing, the cause and effect of their attitudes is quite another. What is certain is that there has been a radical change, and the full effects of this change are yet to be felt. Behind each new generation rise those ever ready to decry the follies of youth, but today there is a widespread and differing view held that youth is king, and can do no wrong. Both of these points of view are extreme, and both, in totality, are unjustified.