You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Almanac of British Politics is a guide to the political status of the United Kingdom. It covers in detail each of the constituencies sending representatives to the House of Commons. It includes sketches of all serving MPs.
Ministers of the Crown provides a detailed and concise description of the legal and political position of Ministers, and of their work within the contemporary British governmental system. It covers the daily work of Ministers in their departments and collectively in government; their benefits and pay; as well as how politicians prepare themselves for office and the legal and other qualifications which are required for appointment. Detailed coverage is given to Ministers as legislators, how Ministers are required to exercise their legal powers, and the position of Ministers as plaintiffs and defendants. Finally, the loss of office, and its consequences, is considered.
This new edition of The Almanac of British Politics has been thoroughly revised and updated since the second successive Labour election victory in 2001. It is firmly established as the definitive guide to the political map of the United Kingdom, covering in detail each of the constituencies sending representatives to the House of Commons. It also contains insightful biographical sketches of every single Member of Parliament. The Almanac gives a comprehensive seat-by-seat analysis of all parliamentary constituencies, describing their social, economic and political characteristics. This edition also includes new statistics for each seat including: electorate and turnout average property values per constituency unemployment premature mortality index and rank order financial deprivation. This is the essential reference work on British politics for students, academics, journalists and psephologists.
In this report the Defence Committee argues that the capabilities of HM Forces should be determined not by budgetary constraints but by a fully-developed strategy which defines the position in the world that the UK wants to adopt. The report urges the government to produce a comprehensive national security strategy in the first place and let that document, along with the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), direct the next Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). The allocation of resources will be based on national spending priorities set to meet the nation's security needs. There is a danger of defence becoming a matter of discretionary spending. Decisions about the expeditionary capa...
This report examines how the Post Office closure programme is being implemented and areas where it could be improved. The Network Change Programme began in July 2007 and the final consultation is scheduled to end in October 2008. This challenging timetable has meant that consultation has been curtailed, and the whole process has been rushed. The Committee does not accept that a reduction to 7,500 offices is acceptable, and a minimum of 11,500 fixed outlets is recommended. Post Office Ltd should be clearer in its approach to public consultation about closures. The Committee is also concerned that access criteria - proximity of population to offices, local transport and geographical constraints - have not been fully taken into account, nor the principle of services being fully accessible to all. The process has been improving with more experience, but there is still room for further improvement and clarity.
This report looks at operations in Afghanistan since 2006 and makes further recommendations for the anticipated draw-down of forces. UK Forces were deployed in Helmand Province in Afghanistan for three years from 2006 without the necessary personnel, equipment or intelligence to succeed in their mission. Mistakes were made as a result of a failure in military and political coordination. The decision to move UK Armed Forces into the South of Afghanistan in early 2006 was not fully thought through. The Committee is concerned that the MoD did not anticipate that the presence of the Armed Forces in Helmand might stir up a hornets' nest, especially as much of the intelligence was contradictory. S...
The Defence Committee accepts that there are deep-rooted problems with the present acquisition system, and draws attention to the example of the decision in 2010 to change to the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, a decision which later had to be reversed. The Committee agrees with the Government that the current arrangements for acquisition, constrained by public sector employment rules, are unsatisfactory. But the proposal to entrust acquisition to a Government owned, Contractor operated company is not universally accepted as the best way forward, and there are particular concerns about how the MoD's overall responsibility for acquisition could be maintained within a GoCo. The Committee considers that problems might arise if a non-UK company were given responsibility for UK defence acquisition. It further considers it vital that consultations are satisfactorily concluded with allies, to ensure that there is no adverse impact on co-operation, before any proposals are implemented.
Corporate Communication: Concepts and Practice—a comprehensive and engaging textbook—helps in understanding the underlying concepts and real-life strategies of communication in modern-day corporate set-ups. One of the youngest management disciplines, corporate communication is used by companies to position themselves to the outside world in a highly competitive business environment and to build a “sense of being,” on the one hand, and creating a feeling of pride in being associated with the company for various stakeholders, especially the employees and investors. Some of the functions of corporate communication include identifying and segmenting stakeholders, articulating brand posit...
Technologies such as GPS, vital to the financial markets as well as the military, are known to be vulnerable to the effects of space weather or the EMP resultant from a nuclear weapon exploded at altitude. It is also possible to build non-nuclear devices which can disrupt electronic systems, though so far only over a limited area. A severe space weather event is not necessarily seen as a military problem in the first instance, but it would be likely to meet the definition of an "emergency" under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and call for the help of the Armed Forces. The reactive posture described by the Government appears somewhat complacent. The Committee is very concerned that there ap...
The Government must show how the excellent medical care being delivered to injured service personnel will continue long after the memory of the Afghan Operation fades. This report, which gives praise to the first class medical treatment provided for the Armed Forces, questions whether the support for injured personnel will be sustainable over the long term. In particular, the committee is concerned about the number of people who may go on to develop severe and life-limiting, physical, mental health, alcohol or neurological problems. There is still a question mark over whether the Government as a whole fully understands the likely future demands and related costs