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This paper aims to assess the current state, and various methods, of public and patient involvement, particularly but not exclusively in research on ageing and dementia.

Interviews were carried out with a researcher, who has had a leading role in research on dementia; a public contributor with extensive relevant experience; and a member of the research design service with responsibility for patient and public involvement.

All those involved in the research can benefit considerably from public and patient involvement and it can make a significant difference to the course of a project. The importance of choosing an appropriate method of involvement is discussed and planning for it in both financial terms and time allowed. Examples are given of successful studies.

Those who took part in the interviews were chosen for their record in furthering public and patient involvement in research. There is no attempt to compare their views with those of the wider research community.

The various ways in which patients and the public are involved in relevant research is a guide to those designing projects and those who may want to explore opportunities for involvement.

Social implications include being able to influence research projects, contributors of all ages find they are valued.

The format of the paper is original, eliciting material from three viewpoints on research and involvement.

Including the views of service users, carers and clinical staff when prioritising health research can ensure future projects are meaningful and relevant to key stakeholders. One National Health Service Foundation Trust in England, UK undertook a project to identify the top 10 research priorities according to people with experience using or working in services for dementia and older adult mental health. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Service users with dementia and mental health difficulties; informal carers, family and friends of service users; clinical staff working in the Trust. Participants were surveyed for research ideas. Ideas were processed into research questions and checked for evidence. Participants were then asked to prioritise their personal top 10 from a long list of research questions. A shortlist of 26 topics was discussed in a consensus workshop with a sample of participants to decide on the final top 10 research priorities.

A total of 126 participants provided 418 research ideas, leading to 86 unique and unanswered research questions. In total, 58 participants completed interim prioritisation, 11 of whom were invited to the consensus workshop involving service users, carers and clinical staff. The final top 10 priorities were dominated by topics surrounding care, psychosocial support and mental health in dementia.

Future research from the Trust and collaborating organisations can use these results to develop relevant projects and applications for funding.

This project has demonstrated the possibility of including key stakeholders in older adult mental health research priority setting at the local level.

Employs the semiotic method to explore community policing reform and its use of language as a form of social control. Uses postmodern theoretical and methodological filters to clarify the discussion. Sees community policing more as a realignment of police institution’s language and symbols to better fit changes in society.

The volume and range of food law enforcement in the field of purity and quality control has grown dramatically in recent times. Only those able to recall the subject from upwards of half a century ago can really appreciate the changes. Compositional control now appears as more of a closely knit field of its own, keeping pace with the advances of food processing, new methods and raw materials. It has its problems but enforcement agencies appear well able to cope with them, e.g. the restructuring of meat, excess water content, fat content, the application of compositional standards to new products, especially meat products, but the most difficult of all areas is that of securing and maintaining acceptable standards of food hygiene. This is one of the most important duties of environmental health officers, with a considerable impact on health and public concern; and one of the most intractible problems, comparable in its results with the insidious onslaught of the ever‐growing problem of noise, another area dependent on the reactions of people; to use an oft repeated cliche — “the human element”.

During the last ten years or so people have become more aware of the importance of fibre in the diet. Dietary fibre is the term used to describe those parts of plants, both vegetables and cereals, which are not absorbed from the gut. Fibre used to be thought of as unimportant and unnecessary. People have developed a liking for refined, easy to cook, quick, convenience foods which have had most of the fibre removed and so contain very little. Dietary fibre is basically the structural part of the plant cell, the cell wall that holds the cell together and enables cells to sit on top of one another to form the plant tissues. Inside the cell is the sap and food stores of the plant. When the pectins and celluloses forming the wall are removed the sap and food stores are left.

There are encouraging signs that mental health, as opposed to mental illness, is beginning to move up the political agenda, but much still needs to be done to challenge misconceptions. Drawing on the growing literature on social capital, this paper looks at the case for building a new agenda for mental health promotion, one which recognises that we all have mental health needs, whether or not we have a diagnosis. Such needs underpin all health and well‐being and provide a rationale for placing mental health at the centre of the new public health debate.

The ‘interview’ undergone by the young prince in W F Yeames' well known painting shown on our front cover this month, was more painful than most. But job interviews are more often than not rather harrowing—at least in prospect—and we have asked four authors, each representing a different part of the interviewing spectrum, to give us their views about the process, its importance, and how best to approach something which happens to most of us at least once in our professional careers.

Posits that in any business there seems to be three general activities: first, businesses must attract and keep their customers; second, businesses must produce services or goods for their customers; third, businesses must renew production and ways of relating to customers. Concludes that organizations must attract, satisfy and keep customers.