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I now know what the NASA Flight Director feels when he has to press the ‘abort switch’ when a multimillion pound satellite launch vehicle involving thousands of skilled man hours goes into an erratic flight path. This experience came to me on the 6th April, 1979 when, at a poorly attended Annual General Meeting of the Institution of Training Officers at Scarborough, I said farewell to the organisation disgusted with the series of events which led up to the final decision to change its name to the Institute of Training and Development. My disillusionment had gathered momentum over a period of six years with ITO's loss of direction and clear objectives occurring mainly through the long drawn‐out merger talks with the Institute of Personnel Management — these came to nothing last September with the IPM Council deciding by a narrow majority to overturn their members' ballot decision for reasons of incompatability on legal and financial grounds. In other words, the organisational ‘hang ups’ of the two organisations involved overcoming too great an inertia to allow common sense to develop an organisation with a total commitment to providing a professional service to the training and/or personnel manager. Both IPM and ITD are now going into their own orbits, which in the case of ITD is going to be an expensive struggle to reach orbital speed from a zero base. Even the appointment of a new director (ex MSC advisor George Webster) and a £10,000 PR exercise commissioned with Welbeck PR is unlikely to save them from an erratic path to oblivion. The reason is simply that you have to get your objectives right, and no amount of PR work will make any impact without the right formula. The evidence for a need to change should have been clear to see in view of the great debate surrounding the IPM/ITO merger, and also the considerable grass root support for the final proposals by both ITO and IPM members. No way should the respective Councils have thrown out proposals which had the support of at least seven thousand professional personnel and training managers. This level of support should have clearly indicated that neither organisation was providing satisfactory service to their members. The comments column of this journal (Industrial and Commercial Training) have highlighted on frequent occasions the disenchantment of the profession with not having their views projected at national level, and the MSC Training of Trainers debates have revealed the shortcomings of the present institutions to monitor and develop the professional trainer of the future.

The need to develop new techniques of authoring and delivery of open learning material has led to a new generation of open learning workstations, the most recent being the Open Tech Workstation developed by the MSC's Open Tech programme. When fully exploited in an industrial training centre trainees at each Workstation can learn a whole range of technical information. The powerful computer and high quality graphics system allow the teaching of computer aided design drafting to be taught, with a live computer aided manufacture link with machine tools in the workshop.

Supported by the message of good will and promises of local and regional pressure to influence those unfortunate enough to be numbered amongst those who are not regular readers of this journal, we believe that it is possible to commence a viable professional national organisation for human resources management by 1 January 1980. This action will have to be subject to the financial restraints which are the inevitable result of independent action.

Since 1975 an organisation has grown up in East Anglia (Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Northeast London) to develop a co‐ordinated approach by the engineering industry in its area to meet its manpower needs for the future. It has grown from 12 sponsoring organisations in 1975 to 78 within the past seven years and now covers 95 per cent of the engineering companies and associated organisations concerned with education and training for the key industry in the area. The organisation has a title which varies year by year in the sense that in 1975 it was called ENGINEERING '75; today, according to this system, it is called ENGINEERING '81. Today ENGINEERING '81 is the biggest and the most vigorous of the grass roots organisations in Britain in this field. It recently formed a Working Party to put forward proposals for an Open Learning System Pilot Scheme in East Anglia. This Working Party published its recommendations in August 1981. Here are critical extracts from it. The full report is freely available from the organisers.

There is no more fascinating type of bedside book than the catalogue of a great private library. “Bedside book” I say: but that is hardly just, for I would willingly retire to a desert island (as all the best people appear to be prepared to do these days) with a comfortable handful of such records of greatness. These can conjure up visions for me as no other books can. I find the Abbotsford catalogue as spell‐binding as The Three Musketeers, and old Kirk‐patrick Sharpe's curious collections as intriguing as the adventures of young Waverley. Are there others who share my taste? I hope so, though I admit that it is not everyone's meat. Might I be pardoned for trying to suggest why I like this bye‐way? Bear with me while in the manner of Hill Burton I summon up a few of the famous bookmen of a former day. And pardon me again if it be found that they are all Scots.

The Milk (Amendment) Order, 1917, which came into force on December 31st, provides that milk shall be sold retail only by Imperial measure; that no colouring matter shall be added to milk or cream intended for sale; that no milk to which any water has been added shall knowingly be sold or offered for sale; that no person may use for the purpose of his trade any milk can or milk bottle which bears the name, trade name, trade mark, or trade device of some person other than himself or his employer, except with the consent of such person. The Order contains a new clause, in substitution for Clauses 4 and 6 of the Milk Order, 1917 (which are revoked), providing that where milk is sold wholesale by or on behalf of any person other than the producer the maximum prices chargeable shall, unless otherwise determined, pursuant to the Order, be as follows:—

INTRODUCTION With the increasing importance of capital investment selection in modern business the field has attracted a large body of interest in the literature of the last two decades. It is the purpose of the survey to trace this development from the use of simple financial criteria for assessing investments to the use of more sophisticated financial measures, techniques for assessing risk in investments and finally complex models for selecting portfolios of investments.