Assessing the sustainability of EU organic and low input dairy farms

The EU funded Sustainable Organic and Low Input Dairy Systems project (SOLID), aims to support the improvement of sustainable production on organic and low input dairy farms. 10 farms in each of 9 countries participated in an initial interview based assessment. The article presents some results from the UK (Ten OMSCo and seven Calon Wen farms), Austria, Finland and Den-mark. Other countries - Romania, Italy, Spain, Greece and the Netherlands - are also involved in the project, but since these countries have very different production systems from the UK they are not covered in this articl

The effective assessment of clinical legal education

In January 2003, a new unit was established under the auspices of the Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute of London Metropolitan University to deal with human rights cases from Russia (see Leach, 2003). The new unit, the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC), is assisting lawyers and non-governmental organisations based in Russia to utilise the European Convention on Human Rights (which Russia ratified in 1998) by providing advice and assistance in taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights. By March 2003 EHRAC was already advising on cases alleging very serious human rights abuses arising out of armed conflict in Chechnya and the first (law) students at London Metropolitan University had begun to assist EHRAC’s staff. One of the goals of EHRAC is, in due course, to introduce aspects of 'clinical legal education' into the curriculum of students studying human rights law, practice and theory

\u27A Civil and Useful Life\u27: Quaker Women, Education and the Development of Professional Identities 1800-1835

Exhorted by George Fox to live a \u27Civil and useful life\u27, educated middle-class Quaker women who did not feel called to undertake a recognised ministerial role within the Religious Society of Friends still used their education and skills to the benefit of the wider community. This article examines the engagement of Quaker women with education by focussing on the work of Mariabella and Rachel Howard (mother and daughter), who were involved in several educational charities between 1800 and 1835. The article seeks to address the irony of two educational campaigners who as non-professional women sought to professionalise the work of women in teaching. Through the use of their journals, letters and published texts, the article explores how they sought to transmit their knowledge and provide a system of training for other women to emulate, particularly those women who wanted to gain employment as professional teachers. In examining the professionalisation of teaching, my work seeks to add to that of Christina de Bellaigue (2001) and Joyce Goodman and Jane Martin (2004) by looking at professionalisation processes in teaching through the lens of Quakerism

Going beyond Google: the invisible web in teaching and learning

Review of: Devine, J. and Egger-Sider, F. (2009) Going beyond Google: the invisible web in teaching and learning. London: Facet Publishing (ISBN 978-1-85604-658-9

Ex Post Welfare under Alternative Health Care Systems

This paper studies the implications of a societal aversion to inequality for the optimal design of a public health care system. Inequality aversion is introduced by postulating a strictly concave ex post social welfare function. Illnesses are characterized by three factors: the agent's health with treatment, the agent's health without treatment, and the cost of treatment. It is shown that the optimal public health care system allocates health care differently than would private health insurance; speci?cally, people who are relatively unhealthy with and without treatment receive more health care, and people who are relatively healthy with and without treatment receive less health care. The aggregate quantity of health care under the optimal public health care system might be either greater or less than under private health care insurance. If the public health care system is optimally designed, allowing agents to purchase supplementary private health care insurance cannot raise social welfare and is likely to decrease it.