THERE ARE COMPLAINTS ABOUT CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION: it is inefficient and expensive, its outdated curricula and methods of teaching do not adequately prepare the brighter students for life in a post-industrial economy, while the less gifted or privileged ones often leave school without having acquired basic skills of reading, writing and calculating. Educational reform, of both institutions and curricula, is on the agenda.

Where it is Practised, Democracy is a) Not The Only principle practised, and b) practised differently from the way it is practised in other places. If democracy has a clear meaning and clear requirements – I shall argue that it does – then we should be able to map out the bases on which degrees of democracy are traded off in the name of other values, and with what justification. In attempting to make some inroads into the serious conceptual and empirical problems this topic presents, my point of reference will be the modern nationstate, though the use of the phrase ‘political units’ throughout signals the fact that the argument largely holds for other geographically-defined entities as well.

Joseph Raz Has Long Been Well Known as a Legal philosopher and theorist of practical reason. But it is only in the last decade that he has come to be widely identified as the most prominent defender of a distinctive interpretation of the liberal tradition. Raz wholeheartedly endorses the communitarian view that the individual is a social being, who needs society to establish his/her self-identity and to gain objective knowledge of the good, rather than a self-contained subject abstracted from any specific social experience. Unlike neutralist liberals, such as Rawls and Dworkin, he rejects ‘the priority of right over the good’, stressing the interdependent relationship between right and the good. Yet he remains very much a liberal in his commitment to the value of autonomy (or freedom) and argues powerfully for the desirability (or necessity) of incommensurable plural conceptions of the good life for the well-being of people, as well as for the liberal virtue of toleration, and for their attendant liberal democratic political institutions.

The good news is that the Queen Mother, at the age of 95, has undergone a successful hip replacement operation. The great lady is indeed a phenomenon of vitality. We can only wish that it will continue for many years to come, for she is, and recent events have proved it, an example of a monarchy which is popular without being populist. She is adored by the crowds, but she has never gone and never goes beyond the limits of her position. Incidentally, it was learnt recently that she has not given an interview to the Press since 1923. This is, to my mind, a sign of monarchical discretion. The populist style of monarchy, on the contrary, affects great familiarity with the media and finds itself, afterwards, the worse for it. But the Queen Mother is not only needed as a symbol of pure monarchy. Her presence is still very badly needed by the Queen who does need now as much help as she can get.