This chapter offers a descriptive analysis of Palermo students' level of interpersonal or generalised trust, with emphasis on their trust in others. In the literature on Italy, southern Italians are often described as less trustful than people in other parts of Italy. In this chapter, the statistics are based on the two questionnaires, distributed in 2002 and 2005. Statistics are presented for total samples and by socio-economic area. Different types of questions are used in order to analyse students' perceptions of other people. Two standard questions on trust that are frequently employed in international and national surveys and that are closely related are fielded: ‘Generally speaking, do you believe that most people can be trusted or that nobody can be trusted?’, and ‘Do you believe that most people try to help each other or that people generally only think about themselves?’. The chapter examines how much trust students have in family, relatives, and neighbours; how much trust they have in their classmates, teachers, school principals, and school staff; and their degree of trust in Palermitans, Sicilians, Italians or foreigners.

This chapter discusses the role of the councillor serving alongside an elected mayor, and the reactions and experiences of councillors to working with an elected mayor. It specifically explores how the London Borough of Newham redefines the role of the councillor. The arrival of the English version of the directly elected mayor eases the tension between governing and representation as it is experienced by the councillor. Mayoral government has the potential to strengthen the links the councillor has with the ward he or she represents. Labour councillors saw a greater importance for the mayor in representing his or her party than Conservative, Liberal Democrat and (not surprisingly) independent councillors. Councillors on mayoral authorities have recognised their role in relation to mayoral accountability, but perceive that their role has been diminished as a result of the direct election, by the public, of the political head of the council.

This chapter looks at how the relationship between gay men and the Left was further crystallised through events in the 1980s. Although there were clear moments of out and out animosity between gay activists and the Left, there were also significant moments of unity between the two. These two poles can be traced through two gay activists at the time, Peter Tatchell and Mark Ashton. Tatchell felt the full impact of both the parliamentary and radical Left's attitudes to gay politics when he stood as Labour candidate in the Bermondsey by-election (1983). Ashton was the first out gay Secretary of the Young Communist League, a bit player in Red Wedge, and a key player in Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Despite these shared campaigns where gay activists were able to engage with the Left without compromising the politics of their sexuality, Tatchell's experiences were ultimately more representative. By the time AIDS and Clause 28 made lesbian and gay self-defence an absolute necessity, the Left had already burnt its bridges.

Neither New York City English (NYCE) nor Baltimore English (BE) have garnered much historical research, so there is little understanding of the origin and development of English in either region. In this chapter, we show that the settlement histories of NYC and Baltimore show that neither city fits Trudgill’s (2004) model of tabula rasa new dialect formation but suggest more complicated patterns of settlement and therefore English feature origins. For subsequent evolution, we discuss the impact of incoming migrants on the evolution of the dialects until the present day. As elsewhere in the United States, race and racialisation play prominent roles in separating out different co-territorial varieties and in stigmatisation and prestige. Besides historical analysis, we investigate these questions through archival materials, literary representations and lay observations. These sources, alongside later dialectological and variationist accounts, allow us to trace the origins of many features of the varieties. For instance, we find evidence that (i) r-lessness had emerged in NYCE by the end of the eighteenth century, (ii) a-prefixing occurred in NYCE until at least 1860, (iii) the wine–whine merger had begun in NYCE and BE by about 1840 and (iv) most features stereotypical of White working-class BE were in place by 1950.

This chapter centres on German Ostpolitik in its three phases and the reaction to it by the British government. Britain was a firm advocate of moves designed to improve East-West relations, and encouraged Germany away from the Hallstein doctrine, towards a position that was based on an improved détente with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries as the best means of achieving a settlement in Europe. The discussion includes detail of a seemingly little-known British Ostpolitik initiative launched in 1966, which proposed a ‘Declaration on Europe’. Like the British reaction to the Peace Note, the Germans were lukewarm about the Declaration, but it was an indication of the state of relations at the time that neither country was prepared to express outright opposition.

This chapter examines whether contributor participation affected decision-making and signalled a genuine shift in control of institutions and made them more responsive to the needs of local users. It describes the routine work of the administrators of hospital contributory schemes and evaluates whether they expressed patients’ concerns about services. The analysis reveals two areas in which contributors successfully asserted their wishes. These are the rejection by schemes in Scotland and the North East of the hospital means test and the retention of convalescence benefits.

This chapter attempts to answer the threefold question why Germany changed, what it has become and what that means to Germany's partners. It discusses the respective roles of systemic pressure, domestic culture and individual political entrepreneurs in the German transformation process. It discerns an emerging pattern as to where, with whom and for what German policy makers became willing to dispatch the Bundeswehr and discusses whether Germany's partners have any reason to be concerned over the new German assertiveness. It examines the consequences of Germany's transformation for the organisation of Western security and for the way the Western world goes about managing the security threats of the post-Cold War world.

This chapter evaluates the EU's internal cohesion by extrapolating the findings from the case studies into three major ‘gaps’ in reasoning on security. The gaps revolve, to a significant extent, around the role of norms in international affairs, around the governments' favoured methods of preserving stability, and around the issue of the role of the USA in global security. The chapter extends the analysis by analysing a number of more recent EU documents. It ends by elaborating on the consequences for practical cooperation.

This chapter introduces learning methods – the essential phase that transforms action into growth. After trying out a prototype, it’s tempting to move on quickly. But real progress happens when we pause to reflect, extract insights, and adapt. The Growth Journey Map is the Core Method, guiding you to make sense of your experience – what you did, what you learned, and what that means for your next step. Two additional methods enrich this reflection: PPCO Hollywood Star, a constructive feedback tool adapted from screenwriting, and Start–Stop–Continue, a simple framework to clarify what to keep, let go, or try anew. Whether your prototype felt like a success, a flop, or something in between, these tools help you close the loop with clarity, deepen your self-awareness, and fuel your momentum with a growth mindset.

Drawing on panel data and multivariate regression analysis, this chapter explores possible change between two surveys: one conducted in 2002 and the other in 2005. The analysis is based on an index of trust that measures Palermo students' trust in persons who are not personally known to them. The chapter focuses on variables at the school level and the classroom level, for example openness of school structures, fairness of institutions, caring school environment, peer interaction, openness of classroom climate, and aspects of the school programme. Is it possible to see whether any of these institutional school variables have an impact on students' generalised trust? Is it possible to change students' values through civic education at a grass-roots level? The importance of institutions for the development of generalised trust has been analysed in several studies on social capital.

To the extent that the problem of global warming arises from existing socio-economic activities, tackling it will entail an institutional metamorphosis towards a more sustainable form of socio-economic system. This will require a realignment of broad policy goals, which itself may require changes in policy-making institutions. Such changes have been referred to as policy integration, which is the theme of this chapter. The integration of environmental concerns into general economic policy in Japan started around the time of the Earth Summit in 1992. This chapter looks at policy integration specifically in the areas of global warming and energy and transportation, focusing on whether and how global warming policy caused policy and institutional developments. It first provides a background on Japanese energy policy, energy efficiency policy, electricity prices and demand, and the promotion of ‘new energy’. It then explores Japan's nuclear energy policy, energy taxation and finance, coal and global warming, transport and global warming, fuel efficiency, concerted action for the promotion of low-emission vehicles, and policy co-optation and exclusion of environmental interests.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about the history of the British hospital contributory schemes in the twentieth century. This volume provides a revised historiography of welfare, one that is no longer premised on a view of the ascent of state intervention as an unproblematic process of enlightenment and progress and that is increasingly concerned with welfare outside the state. It explores the development of acute in-patient care in relation to broader socioeconomic changes in Great Britain and in relation to changes in National Health Service (NHS) policy. This volume also attempts to relate the history of contributory schemes to a range of debates about the advantages and disadvantages of ways of organising and delivering welfare services.

Western Canada is emerging as a site of rich linguistic variation. Lexical differences are long acknowledged (e.g. bunny hug, jam buster), but distinctions in other grammatical sectors are less frequently reported. More recent work uncovering phonetic differences in key vowel sets, however, suggests that the West Coast (British Columbia) and the Prairies (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) are not monolithic. We review the predictions of settler colonialism in the context of westward expansion and the rhetoric of widespread dialectological homogeneity in the literature on Canadian English. Recent research reveals that synchronic variation is primarily ethnic (local) rather than strictly regional. We conclude by highlighting the pervasive effects of settler colonialism in dialectological outcomes, while also highlighting the gains to be made by exploring diversity within local varieties.