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Mentally disordered offenders (MDO), contary to general belief, are not the sole concern of specialist and secure services. Their numbers are far greater in the community. Instead of denying involvement with and responsibility for this group, mainstream mental health services need to recognise the reality of their presence on their caseloads and take steps to provide services to them. However this client group often has complex needs that may transcend the capacity of individual key workers or single agencies to meet. This has important implications for the training, supervision and support of individual staff, and for improved liaison and inter‐agency working, particularly with forensic practitioners in prisons and secure mental health services.

There is not only an absence of guidelines for the development of medium and low secure units but also confusion over the definitions of these types of provision.

A survey was undertaken to determine the number of young people needing secure psychiatric inpatient care as at 1st January 2001. Twenty‐three individuals were identified who were placed in a variety of settings. However, few of the placements could be considered ideal. There was a wide range of diagnoses, and most young people had additional problems of social and education deficits and offending behaviour.Specialist resources need to be made available to local secure and residential facilities to reduce the need for secure placements. However, there may be a case for developing a regional secure service although, given the wide range of needs presented, it is unlikely that a single secure resource could meet them all.

An opinion survey of mentally disordered prisoners was undertaken to ascertain their views on the responsiveness of mental health and criminal justice services to their perceived needs while in the community.The findings reveal that their illness and offending behaviour were not deemed serious enough to warrant intervention by forensic psychiatric services but their needs were too complex for mainstream community care services. They felt vilified and marginalised by many professional workers and were unlikely to seek help themselves. Psychiatric intervention was therefore usually precipitated by a crisis. Hospital and prison aftercare was not always pursued, leading to deterioration in mental health and/or offending behaviour, followed by further detention.The authors argue the need to broaden the referral criteria of community agencies to avoid excluding MDOs. They make a number of recommendations to ensure this vulnerable group receives adequate ongoing care and support following release.

IT would be difficult to state with any certainty exactly when the first anti‐friction bearing was made or used, since it would be necessary first to define an anti‐friction bearing in its broadest sense. For generations the term anti‐friction bearing has been taken to include ball, roller and needle bearings, i.e. those bearings that have, in theory at least, only point or line contact with the shaft or journal. An interesting historical account has been given in the opening chapter of the book “Rolling Bearings”, where the author shows that the advantages of rollers were realised many years B.C. Many examples of balls and rollers being used to reduce friction were employed during the middle ages, and in the early sixteenth century cast‐iron balls replaced those of stone for offensive purposes for placing under gun carriages to render their movement easy.

There is no nation more ready for self‐sacrifice for the common good than the British. The “ Authorities ” have been put to the proof by the war and the future of the Empire largely depends upon how far they are prepared to abandon nepotism and to accept the service of a man at its value alone. For effective national service means the employment of every available man in that capacity in which he is able to give of his best; it means the very antithesis of the square‐peg‐in‐the‐round‐hole policy so popular with the Government Official ; it means that ability shall no longer subserve insolent ineptitude, nor influence continue to shield the incompetent ; it means the employment of those who for the past four years have offered their services to their country in vain ; it means, in short, the destruction of all those idols which official‐dom loves and the worship of which stands between us and victory. Voices, crying in the wilderness, have raised a plca for cleaner politics, for an imperial and not a party policy, but the plea, so far, has met with little sympathy. But it is not politics alone which are in need of cleansing. The cancer of nepotism, of the necessity for lick‐spittling to secure advancement, has sunk deep into the national life, and even four years of dire peril and unprecedented bloodshed have not mitigated the disease. Knowledge still waits in the ante‐chamber of the clerk ; skill sits on the benches of the Labour Exchange. The introduction of a true and not of a “ camouflaged ” system of national service would afford an opportunity of destroying a system which is sapping the energy of the whole nation. It would be the severest test of the State Department yet devised. No compulsion would be necessary if an honest attempt were made to give every man a fair chance and, if only for this once, to put the right man in the right place.

This article provides an introduction and assessment of the English and Spanish literatures on gender relations in disaster contexts. We analyze regional patterns of differences and similarities in women’s disaster experiences and the differing research questions raised by these patterns in the scholarly and practice‐based literature. The analysis supports the claim that how gender is theorized makes a difference in public policy and practical approaches to disaster risk management. We propose new directions in the field of disaster social science and contribute a current bibliography in the emerging gender and disaster field.

In a previous monograph a discussion took place on stages one and part of stage two of the three stage process in an unfair dismissal action, namely the employee having to show that he has been dismissed (stage one), and some of the reasons for dismissal which fall within the statutory categories, namely the employee's capability and qualifications; misconduct and redundancy (part of stage two). In this monograph an analysis is proposed on the two remaining reasons, these being the contravention of a duty imposed by an enactment and some other substantial reason. There will then follow a discussion on the test of fairness as constituting the third of the three stage process and on the remedies available when the tribunal finds that the employee has been unfairly dismissed.