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This paper offers a comparison of local government accounting and auditing in the U.S. and the U.K., including descriptions of the wider environment of the two governmental systems. The paper identifies two major differences in accounting. The first is that, in the U.S., the standard-setter makes requirements, whereas the U.K. policy-maker issues recommendations, which are sometimes not followed. The second is that, in the context of public reports outside the audited financial statements, the U.K. government has mandated the preparation and publication of performance measures by local governments.

In an earlier paper in this journal (Peel, Groves and Pendlebury, 1990), we outlined a major research project, being conducted at the Cardiff Business School, into the impact of privatisation/share‐ownership on the ‘financial awareness’ of employees.

This paper discussed the evolution of Islamic banks and their financial reporting practices. The paper reflected on religious justifications for establishing banks. In addition, a comparison between Islamic and commercial banks was provided.

After the ratification of the peace treaty and the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel, Jordan was expected to play a major role in the Middle East financial market. As a result of the peace treaty Jordan may attract overseas investors to invest in the Amman Financial Market (AFM). Consequently, the level of information disclosed by companies listed on the AFM will become an important issue for prospective investors. This study empirically examined the effect of specific financial characteristics on the comprehensiveness of disclosure in the annual reports of a sample of 54 companies listed on the AFM. The variables tested in this study were market related: industry, audit firm size and market capitalisation; performance related: profit margin, return on equity and liquidity, and structure related: assets, sales, leverage and ownership. The empirical evidence revealed that company size (measured by assets and market capitalisation), leverage and return on equity were statistically related to the comprehensiveness of disclosure of the sample companies listed on the AFM. Reporting improved after international standards were adopted. Large companies were more involved in long term borrowing which requires detailed reporting. Size was the main predictor in comprehensive reporting.

Most countries seek to impose control on the chemical treatment of both human and animal food. Some, such as the U.S.A., attempt it by highly detailed regulations, in terms most orthodox and almost psychically specific, which seem most complicated compared with our own simplified food ordinances; other countries, such as many of the newer states, treading cautiously in their virgin fields of law‐making, pass broad, enabling laws, leaving details to be filled in later. Although the object is the same in all countries, it is nothing short of amazing how the pattern of legislation manages to be so divergent, and applied for reasons that are not always apparent. In published regulations and laws, there would seem to be less intent on making a country's food exports conform to the legislative requirements of importing countries than in prescribing standards for its home products; the end results have produced food law chaos, rarely seen in other branches of law. A notable exception, the only one, to these irregular developments, and with particular reference to food additive control, are the common decrees and directives of the European Economic Community, representing the six Common Market countries. Its Council prescribes quality standards for individual foods, specific purity standards for preservatives and other additives which may be used for human consumption, and although this standardisation is only beginning, it deserves study, especially the manner in which the community regulations are enforced.

OUR various accounts of the Portsmouth Conference, and the official record of it which is now in the hands of readers shows that it may be regarded as a successful one. It was specially notable for the absence of those bickerings and differences which must inevitably come to the surface at times. There may be something in the suggestion of one of our writers that the weather was a main factor. However that may be, there was uniform good temper, and we came away with the belief that a good week's work for librarianship had been done.

SEPTEMBER is the month when, Summer being irrevocably over, our minds turn to library activities for the winter. At the time of writing the international situation is however so uncertain that few have the power to concentrate on schemes or on any work other than that of the moment. There is an immediate placidity which may be deceptive, and this is superficial even so far as libraries are concerned. In almost every town members of library staffs are pledged to the hilt to various forms of national service—A.R.P. being the main occupation of senior men and Territorial and other military services occupying the younger. We know of librarians who have been ear‐marked as food‐controllers, fuel controllers, zone controllers of communication centres and one, grimly enough, is to be registrar of civilian deaths. Then every town is doing something to preserve its library treasures, we hope. In this connexion the valuable little ninepenny pamphlet issued by the British Museum on libraries and museums in war should be studied. In most libraries the destruction of the stock would not be disastrous in any extreme way. We do not deny that it would be rather costly in labour and time to build it up again. There would, however, be great loss if all the Local Collections were to disappear and if the accession books and catalogues were destroyed.

There are over fifty Faculty, Departmental, and Special Libraries in the University of Cambridge and, as may be imagined, the functions of these libraries vary greatly. There are roughly speaking three main types. The main purpose of the first group is to make books available to undergraduates who are reading for Tripos and other examinations, while that of the second group is to supply the needs of the teaching staff and of research. The third group of libraries caters for the needs of the teaching staff, of research students, and of examination students. It must be borne in mind that this grouping is purely arbitrary, and the reader will find that scientific libraries are in many cases seeking to cater for undergraduates as well as for those engaged in research.

TO some, Annual Estimates this year may have a nightmarish quality. Not perhaps so much in the safe areas to which many who had the means to do so have gone with those means and no doubt are contributing part of them to the local exchequers; but in the so‐called “dangerous” areas which have lost them and their means and have, because of their liability to air raids, huge expenditure on A.R.P., the librarian may have a severe battle to get what he needs to maintain his work. Our own policy would be to concentrate, so far as is possible, upon the book fund and on salaries. If these can be retained at a fair amount much good will ensue.

These are the days of falling standards and sagging morale, nowhere more apparent than in the one‐time efficient public service. The division between management and workers in the field in the large public enterprises has grown wider and wider and we tend to blame the lower strata of the structure for most of the ills which beset us, mainly because its failures are more obvious; here, the falling standards of work and care speak for themselves. The massive reorganization of the National Health Service and local authorities has made evident, especially in the first, that the upper strata of the colossi which dominate our everyday lives have their ills too. Local authorities have been told “The party is over!” and the National Health Service has been told of the urgent need for the strictest economy in administration; that the taking over of personal health services from local authorities was wrongly attributed to “managerial growth” instead of a mere “transfer of functions”, but, nonetheless, new authorities were created, each with fast‐growing administrative organs operating services—doctors, nurses and patients—which had remained unchanged. Very large local authorities, with many functions lost to others, one would have expected to have resulted in economy of administration, has all‐too‐often been the opposite. Hardly surprising that those who pay for it all, distinct from those who receive of its largesse, are being stirred to rebellion, when they have been overtaxed, ill‐used and what is more important, ignored for so long.