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The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of new model farmer cooperatives set up with Aid agency assistance in Shandan County, Gansu Province, China, focusing on enterprise management and training, and the monitoring and evaluation issues and outcomes.

The paper is a case study of two projects that integrated participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) methodology into both field practice and institutional development. The project evaluation data were collected from semi‐structured interviews, observation and secondary sources.

The cooperatives increased community income through collectively improving members' production and marketing capabilities. As well as economic benefits, the Shandan cooperatives show improvements in social collaboration that include enhanced inter‐ and intra‐family relationships, community harmony and raised status for women.

The cooperatives have only operated since the new co‐op law was enacted 1 July 2007. While the findings are preliminary, planned ongoing evaluation for the Shandan co‐ops will review the sustainability of the economic and social gains made.

The lessons learned from the participatory approach to improve rural cooperative development in Shandan County are relevant to researchers and practitioners, and can be applied by rural communities throughout China.

Although the new style cooperatives have the potential to improve the rural economy, leading to poverty reduction and social development, there have been few case studies of the establishment and progress of these enterprises in China's poorer regions.

For a variety of reasons, both ordinary citizens and political leaders have failed since 1914 to be passionate and imaginative enough in the pursuit of peace. As technological advances have made it possible to kill increasing numbers of people and put civilians increasingly at risk, our moral development has lagged far beyond. We need to emulate Gandhi more, whose moral passion and non-violent resistance tactics have inspired other seekers of peace like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Although political leaders have different responsibilities than ordinary citizens, they too can be ardent and imaginative peace seekers, as the examples of West Germany’s Willy Brandt, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, and U.S. President John F. Kennedy (during the last year of his life) demonstrate. At present, the Ukrainian Crisis cries out for just such leadership, but heretofore has not been forthcoming.

X = multiple interpretations

Major UK building society West Bromwich is developing cultural harmony and gaining the benefits of a diverse workforce through its revised equal‐opportunities policy and action plan. West Bromwich, which employs around 800 people, is building cultural harmony rather than cultural conformity with its policy – whose central approach is to promote understanding, tolerance and flexibility, along with shared values, beliefs and goals.

Language may be a treasured heritage of small comunities, all that is left to bind them together. It is often a matter of national or regional pride, keeping alive a tongue dead centuries past everywhere else; in an area of the Grisons forty thousand Swiss speak the Latin Romansch, the tongue spoken by the citizens of ancient Rome, and nowhere else in the world is it heard. There are so‐called official languages; in the councils of Europe, it has always been French, which is the official language of the European Economic Community; this means, of course, that all EEC Directives and in due course, judgments of its courts, will be first delivered in French.

At the Royal Society of Health annual conference, no less a person than the editor of the B.M.A.'s “Family Doctor” publications, speaking of the failure of the anti‐smoking campaign, said we “had to accept that health education did not work”; viewing the difficulties in food hygiene, there are many enthusiasts in public health who must be thinking the same thing. Dr Trevor Weston said people read and believed what the health educationists propounded, but this did not make them change their behaviour. In the early days of its conception, too much was undoubtedly expected from health education. It was one of those plans and schemes, part of the bright, new world which emerged in the heady period which followed the carnage of the Great War; perhaps one form of expressing relief that at long last it was all over. It was a time for rebuilding—housing, nutritional and living standards; as the politicians of the day were saying, you cannot build democracy—hadn't the world just been made “safe for democracy?”—on an empty belly and life in a hovel. People knew little or nothing about health or how to safeguard it; health education seemed right and proper at this time. There were few such conceptions in France which had suffered appalling losses; the poilu who had survived wanted only to return to his fields and womenfolk, satisfied that Marianne would take revenge and exact massive retribution from the Boche!

This chapter is the introduction to the 26 trade-tale case studies in the present volume. Face-to-face, telephone, and written interactions between salespersons and customers and service-providers and customers occur frequently in everyday life. Successful communications and outcomes are likely to occur for the majority of these encounters. However, most ­customers, salespersons, and service-providers are likely to be able to identify personal examples of miscommunications and bad outcomes. Most of the trade-tale cases in this volume include in-depth cases of miscommunications and bad outcomes. Chapter 1 is a call for achieving “requisite variety” and in-depth examination of such cases. All the cases in this volume present deep dives into describing and understanding details in the inter­action processes and alternative versus actual outcomes of each case study. The numerous and varied case studies along with the deep interpretations of the processes and outcomes provide useful steps for achieving the objective of requisite variety. Chapter 1 provides details of the topics and ­coverage of requisite variety.

First January 1973 will not only mark the beginning of a New Year but a year which history will mark as a truly momentous one, for this is the year that Britain, after centuries of absence, re‐enters the framework of Europe as one of the Member‐States of the enlarged European Community. This in itself must make for change on both sides; Britain is so different in outlook from the others, something they too realize and see as an acquisition of strength. There have been other and more limited forms of Continental union, mainly of sovereignty and royal descent. Large regions of France were for centuries under the English Crown and long after they were finally lost, the fleur de lis stayed on the royal coat of arms, until the Treaty of Amiens 1802, when Britain retired behind her sea curtain. The other Continental union was, of course, with Hanover; from here the Germanized descendants of the Stuarts on the female line returned to the throne of their ancestors. This union lasted until 1832 when rules of descent prevented a woman from reigning in Hanover. It is interesting to speculate how different history might have been if only the British Crown and the profits of Tudor and Stuart rule had been maintained in one part of central Europe. However, Britain disentangled herself and built up overwhelming sea power against a largely hostile Europe, of which it was never conceived she could ever be a part, but the wheel of chance turns half‐circle and now, this New Year, she enters into and is bound to a European Community by the Treaty of Rome with ties far stronger, the product of new politico‐economic structures evolved from necessity; in a union which cannot fail to change the whole course of history, especially for this country.

Describes the context, motivation and findings of health sector‐led research into food retailing in an urban conurbation with significant levels of deprivation and a poor health record. The research involved the systematic collection of price and availability data for a wide range of foods. Maps were constructed showing access to different types of food within walking distance. Semi‐structured interviews were carried out with 175 shopkeepers to explore some of the factors affecting the viability of their business and their capacity to stock “healthier foods”. The social, economic, environmental and health‐related implications of these findings, and the limitations of current “food access solutions”, are discussed. It is argued that the quality of local neighbourhood food retailing should be a key indicator of, and a priority for, regeneration. The paper finishes with some recommendations for action and a vision for the future.