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Mr Finch reviews the present position of catering in the UK, in respect of its training facilities and the new developments occurring. He points the idiocy of comparisons between catering and engineering, and ends with a plea that as a nation we should begin to pay for that which is good, rather than eat bad food on the cheap.

Even if one is to ignore the smug and childishly rounded invective with which Mr Johnson sets the stage for his amply padded apologetic — and ignore even further his nonsensical non‐sequitur about the demand for Technicians' courses (the Cotton Board, among others, was asking for these in 1951), there still remains the matter of his slick dismissal of a 60–70 per cent failure rate by quoting a 75 per cent failure rate. I stand humbled. If he chooses to gloss over the transference of courses concept as do most others, then we obviously part company quite badly. Not even the considerable mass of sophistry employed by Mr Johnson obscures the basic issue, and his persistent chuntering away about the importance of National selection leads one to wonder whether he would not rather be back under the happy simple days of yesteryear. If, on the other hand, he wants to tighten technical education into a closed educational system he might come out openly and say so. He might also reflect that in doing so he would be contributing to the destruction of its most vital and — in English education — unique feature.

Peter Haxby of Royce's is a man of no mean standing among training managers. Like most other people at BACIE's September conference at Loughborough he confessed to being sceptical and curious about the manner of man Frank Metcalfe would turn out to be. And, again like most others, he stayed through to the end to hear him.

The Minister of Technology announced recently that, since April 1964, when the Industrial Liaison Scheme was first started, 18 technical colleges had appointed industrial liaison officers and 18 others were in the process of making appointments. Four further colleges had the matter under review, and it was proposed very shortly to invite another 20 to 30 colleges to take part in the scheme. The prime aim of this liaison, however, is to serve as an aid to the greater dissemination of technical information and scientific and technological resources. Way down in the list of these officers' duties comes the matter of furthering relations and information about the nature and scope of the courses and facilities available at their colleges.

State encouraged monopolies are not among the easiest of institutions to evaluate. They provide on the one hand an enormous scope for the informed innovator, and on the other an equal scope (until detected) for the deft charlatan. When Bristol College of Science and Technology's School of Management ended its first intensive eight week course at Rockwell for training officers in October 1964, H. M. I. Stubbings remarked guardedly that he was grateful for any development. Within six months Rockwell's innovation had been rewarded with the Department of Education and Science imprimatur to develop the top end courses in the training hierarchy, and courses for training officers in skills analysis and the like had been pushed down to the level of the colleges of technology.

BROADLY SPEAKING, the 1961 White Paper can be said to have had two main considerations, both of them expedient, and neither of them particularly palatable.

At this year's National Union of Students' Technical College Conference an NUS vice‐president, Mr Albert Swindlehurst, suggested that the age of technical college entrants be raised to 18. Such a move, so ran his argument, would put an end to teaching staff over‐ruling the students' unions in colleges where the students were very young, and would remove the present inhibitions on social life caused by the lack of bars where students could gather in convivial fraternities.

The City and Guilds of London Institute was founded after a hearty gathering at the Mansion House on 3 July, 1876. Three years later it held its first examinations, and the institution which its present officers are pleased to regard as the ‘chosen instrument’ for the advancement of technical education was under way. Initially they ran with 202 candidates taking seven subjects in 28 centres; currently they claim a total of some 250 000 taking 250 subjects at over 1200 local centres.

For a group of apprentices, sex can be a non‐vocational day‐release background study of crude and compelling interest, and with the sanctions of school discipline left behind, it comes right out into the open. For the lecturer in charge this presents a problem scarcely dreamed of by most teachers: and it recurs unfailingly as each group goes through that certain phase

I read with interest the article by J. B. Brown of Skefko on the appointment of the Central Training Council. I would disagree with his statement that the Government intends to do nothing about training standards by not appointing practical training officers to the board. The training officer will play the largest part in the implementation of the Industrial Training Act by ensuring that his company takes full benefit from what the Act can do to help raise standards of training in every sphere of industry. I have no doubts whatsoever that experienced training officers will be co‐opted to the Regional and District Board, where their first hand knowledge of local conditions will be most useful.