Educating Britain? Political Literacy and the Construction of National History

Despite the reflexive nature of historical enquiry and the degree of national interconnectness now theorized by historians in the United Kingdom, education debates over history teaching in Britain often yield a comforting defence of Britain's 'island story'. The singular 'island story' is an economical narrative device favoured by politicians and further mediated through newspapers which profit from such national cryogenics. Maintenance of a currency, or crisis, of Britishness can also be contrasted with the relative absence of longitudinal or comparative enquiry into identity and school curricula. In addition, the teaching of states, connections and post-sovereign communities is largely under-theorized, potentially contributing to the sterility of future debates about citizenship, agency and Britain’s wider political reach. It is argued here that the public framing of history as nationhood and the underdevelopment of children’s political literacy are mutually reinforcing conditions by which the state has constructed a stabilizing, yet shifting presence of the ‘national’

Surfactants Based on Renewable Raw Materials.

Under the European Commission's European Climate Change Programme, a group of experts studied the possibilities of using more renewable raw materials as chemical feedstock and assessed the related potential for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. Surfactants were among the products studied. Surfactants are currently produced from both petrochemical feedstocks and renewable resources (oleochemical surfactants). Assuming, in a first step, that total surfactant production in the European Union remains constant until 2010, it was estimated that the amount of oleochemical surfactants could be increased from about 880 kilotons (kt) in 1998 to approximately 1,100 kt in 2010 (an increase of 24%). This substitution reduces the life-cycle CO2 emissions from surfactants by 8%; the theoretical maximum potential for total substitution is 37%. Because the surfactant market is expected to grow, the avoided emissions will probably exceed 8% of the current life-cycle CO2 emissions from surfactants. If compared to the CO2 emissions from the total industrial sector and, even more so, if compared to the total economy, the relative savings are much lower (0.02% to 0.09%). This leads to the conclusion that the increased production and use of biobased surfactants should be part of an overall GHG emission reduction strategy consisting of a whole range of measures addressing both energy demand and supply. This article also discusses policies and measures designed to increase the use of biobased surfactants