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Traces the development of the principles of professional negligence especially in the 1980′s and to reappraise them in the 1990s. Illustrates with cases designed to show perceived trends and which are deemed significant to practitioners. Concludes by observing an uncomfortable hardening of the courts′ attitude towards professional negligence.

I did not attend a course of training to prepare me for what has proved to be my life work, industrial training. This I regret. I and all my contemporaries in industrial training and the technical colleges learned the hard way — though if it was hard, it was also very satisfying. There was a very simple reason for our lack of formal preparation: there were no special courses when we started out. But had there been, I, for one, would most certainly have attended.

Because of the immensity of the tasks facing the industrial training boards, it will probably be years before their policies can be made fully effective. When one considers what has not been done to organise and standardise education and training in many occupations, and the little that has been done, one can only admire the courage of those seeking to put the national house in order.

The significance and functions of the men and women who earn their living in the industrial training field vary considerably. On the one hand, there are those who enjoy manager or even director status; on the other hand, there are those who occupy relatively humble positions in the social scale of industry and commerce. All can justifiably lay claim to the title of Training Officer, even if they are not accorded it in their organisations. One day, perhaps, we shall see greater standardisation of nomenclature. In the meantime, we encounter titles as varied as Training Director, Training Adviser, Apprentice Superintendent, Apprentice Personnel Supervisor, and Controller of Training.

Recently, I had need to recruit a new training officer for an engineering firm with which I am associated. Because I believe very strongly in the policy of promotion from within, I publicised the vacancy amongst the personnel of the company concerned and also examined carefully its personnel records to see whether any ex‐apprentices or other skilled staff could be approached to take the post.

Among the many problems posed by the Industrial Training Act is that of the status of those directly concerned with its day‐to‐day implementation in the nation's workshops, offices, and laboratories — the training officers. Is their occupation merely a job of work, like clerking or cleaning? Or is it something worthy of the honourable title of ‘Profession’?

A smoke tunnel for lecture demonstrations was described in the May issue of TECHNICAL EDUCATION. May I put in a plea for demonstration water tunnels? Flow phenomena have been observed with water for a long time — indeed a simple instructional water tunnel was marketed between the two world wars.

‘Tertiary Education’, Industrial Training and the ATTI ‘A comprehensive school system implies a comprehensive system of post‐school education — tertiary education, not just higher education in its present sense’. This was how Mr E. Robinson of Enfield College of Technology introduced the priority motion on ‘The Future of Higher Education’ at the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions recent 56th Annual Conference at Whitley Bay.

IT can be shown that a close analogy exists between the system of forces acting on the blades of an airscrew and on a direct‐acting engine.