Richard Dawkins has contributed enormously to the general readership’s understanding of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Starting from his seminal first book The Selfish Gene Theory, his writings have come to represent robust scientific logic and high literary quality. His latest contribution toward this end comes in the form of a chapter written…
Tag: UK
Does the British education policy uphold class privilege over competitive pressures of globalization?
British society is one of the most stratified in terms of social class. In contrast to the United States, where politicians at least pay lip-serve to the notion of a class-less society, class divisions are woven into the fabric of the nation’s social, political and economic institutions. Barring occasional rhetoric from Labour benches, Realpolitik considerations…
Investment Through On-line Banking Services: Risks and Rewards
The growth of the Internet in the last twenty years has spurred the growth of on-line financial services as well. These days on-line banking and e-commerce have become ubiquitous, as financial transactions are carried out at users’ convenient place and time. An offshoot of this broader phenomenon is on-line investment services offered by various banks. …
Should the UK Tax system be simplified?
A good indication of how complicated the present tax system in the UK is, is learnt from the size of the most authoritative guide to the subject. Tolley’s Yellow Tax Handbook, which is being published every year since 1983 is getting bigger each subsequent year. To give an example, it totalled close to 6,000 pages…
How do customers assess service quality of retailing websites?
Since the beginning of the 1990s, and with the advancement in global telecommunications technology, electronic commerce (commonly referred to as e-commerce) has really taken off. And online retailing comprises an integral part of this broader phenomenon. Here in the UK, as elsewhere in the world, traditional brick and mortar retail stores have extended their services…
Why is a state’s authority to govern is always contested?
In all forms of government there is always an element of dissent and disobedience to the authority of the state. While in totalitarian states, dissent is not tolerated and crushed as and when it happens, in the more democratic forms of government it is actually seen as a healthy sign. If we go back in…
The views of Robert Maxwell and Harold Edey on accounting policy, creative accounting and regulation
Robert Maxwell was credited with saying that Accountancy is not the exact science which some of us once thought it was, and in an academic paper, Edey (1989) stated that Accounting reports can provide no more than approximate (rough is a better term) indications of the financial health and state of a business. Profit is…
National Health Service (NHS): A study of its Structure, Funding and Regulation, Strengths and Weaknesses
The National Health Service, which is a government run public health care enterprise, is an important institution in Britain. Both the Tory party and the New Labour Party have competed to claim the NHS as their own and no election campaign in Britain is without numerous references to the benefits offered by the NHS. While…
Different theoretical perspectives on family as a basic social unit
Sociology as a field of inquiry has wide ranging applications in the understanding of human societies. While sociology does not lend itself to rigorous scientific analysis in terms of conception and verification of theories, there are indeed some proven methods of testing the veracity of theories pertaining to sociology. Sociology is usually approached from certain…
Why minority ethnics seem not to have accepted mainstream opportunities like The Princes Trust 12 week development programme
Blacks and other ethnic minorities in the UK have historically faced discrimination and prejudice. While in recent decades their situation has improved to an extent, they continue to lag behind native Anglo-Saxon Brits in terms of access to quality education, healthcare and job opportunities. The New Labour government in power today has made efforts to…