Increased Careers & Employment Service at the Bedford, Polhill Campus

The Careers & Employment Service at Bedford, Polhill Campus has now increased its service. Students are now able to gain information/advice on:

• Jobs and Employment
• Options after your degree/occupational areas
• Postgraduate study
• CV checks
  

You can book a guidance appointment or CV check via the SID desk.

Information about volunteering is now located within the Student's Union. For more information go to: http://www.beds.ac.uk/studentlife/careers

Additional RefWorks Workshops

I shall be holding two additional RefWorks Workshops on 12th & 19th December. The programme of RefWorks Workshops is now as follows:

• Monday 28th November, 11.00-12.00 (Polhill Library ICT Suite 1)
• Monday 5th December, 11.00-12.00 (Polhill Library ICT Suite 1)
• Monday 12th December, 11.00-12.00 (Polhill Library ICT Suite 1)
• Monday 19th December, 11.00-12.00 (Polhill Library ICT Suite 1)

All workshops are optional, there's no need to book - just turn up!

Upcoming Workshops At Polhill

Just to remind you all PAD hold a series of workshops throughout the term. The workshops are open to everyone & there's no need to book (just turn up if you're interested). Upcoming workshops over the next few weeks are:

• Tuesday, 22nd November 13.00-14.00 Critical thinking & reading (Room P.2.05)
• Wednesday 23rd November 12.00-13.00 Critical thinking & reading (Room P.2.05)
• Tuesday 29th November 13.00-14.00 Critical writing (Room P.2.05)
• Wednesday 30th November 12.00-13.00 Critical writing (Room P.2.05)
• Tuesday 6th December 13.00-14.00 Doing presentations (Room P.2.05)
• Wednesday 7th December 12.00-13.00 Doing presentations (Room P.2.05)
• Tuesday 13th December 13.00-14.00 Preparing for your dissertation (P2.05)

How do we know there are children in need?

Last Friday the BBC held its annual Children in Need Appeal - but how much do people actually know about the number of children in need in the UK? Well here are some statistics from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation:

• 2.6 million children live below the poverty line in the UK. This number has been reducing for the past two years, but their forecasts predict it will rise to 3.3 million by 2020/21.
• More than half (57 per cent) of all children in poverty now live in families where at least one of the adults is in paid work.
• Inner London has a much higher proportion of children in low-income households than any other region: at 44 per cent, thirteen percentage points higher than the average for the United Kingdom as a whole.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation provides facts and figures for many TV programmes on poverty (including Children in Need) and has a useful list of further reading (all freely available material on the web) which you can view here: Further Reading on Poverty

RefWorks Workshops

I shall be holding two RefWorks workshops at the Bedford, Polhill Library in ICT Training Suite 1 (top floor). Dates & times are:

• Monday, 28th November 11.00-12.00
• Monday, 5th December 11.00-12.00

RefWorks is an online reference management tool. It allows you to gather and store useful references & to create bibliographies and reference lists - taking much of the hard work out of referencing.

Please note: If you are a level 1 student you must have attended at least one session on the British Harvard Standard of Referencing. If you know nothing about referencing RefWorks will make no sense at all to you!

Social Science Readings

There is a problem with the Module Support webpage at the moment so I'm listing some useful materials for the social sciences below. As usual you will need to log in with your username and password to view them.

• Alcock, C. (2008) Introducing social policy. 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson Longman.

• Albrow, M. (1999) Sociology: the basics. London: Routledge.

• Blakemore, K. (2007) Social policy: an introduction. 3rd ed. Maidenhead: OUP.

• Bochel, H. (2009) Social policy: themes, issues and debates. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman.

• Clarke, A. (2010) The sociology of healthcare. 2nd edn. Harlow: Longman.

• Cunningham, J. and Cunningham, S. (2008) Sociology and social work. Exeter: Learning Matters.

• Gabler, J. (2010) Sociology for dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

• Marsh, I. (ed.) (2006) Sociology: making sense of society. 3rd ed. London: Prentice Hall.

• Page, R. M. (2007) Revisiting the welfare state. Maidenhead: OUP.

• Powell, M. (ed.) (1999) New Labour, new welfare state? the 'third way' in British social policy. Bristol: Policy.

• Rhodes, M. (2000) 'Desperately seeking a solution: social democracy, Thatcherism and the 'Third Way' in British...' West European Politics, 23(2), pp. 161-187.

Report

• Rowlingson, K. (2011) Does income inequality cause health and social problems? [Online] Available at: http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/income-inequality-health-social-problems (Accessed: 26th October 2011).

Journal articles

• Burkitt, B. (2006) 'Constrained discretion: New Labour's third way for economic and social policy', International Journal of Social Economics, 33(1), pp. 4-10.
• McRobbie, A. (2000) 'Feminism and the third way', Feminist Review, 64, pp. 97-112.
• Taylor-Gooby, P. (2008) 'The new welfare state settlement in Europe', European Societies, 10(1), pp. 3-24.

Some Ebooks on Marxism

Some of you have been asking me recently about Marxist perspectives on social issues. The following books are available online. Login with your username and password to view the full text.

• Cole, M. (2008) Marxism and educational theory. London: Routledge.
• Collier, A. (2008) Marx: a beginner's guide. Oxford: Oneworld.
• Lechte, J. (2008) Fifty key contemporary thinkers. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
• Worsley, P. (2002) Marx and Marxism. Rev. edn. London: Routledge.

New Report On The Experiences Of Forced Labour Among Chinese Migrant Workers

Here's an interesting new report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It outlines the patterns of migration for work from China to the UK and reveals the range of exploitation (from decent work to forced labour) to describe the working conditions and patterns of employment of Chinese migrant workers in the UK. The report also identifies what actions could be taken by government, civil society organisations, trade unions and employers to combat these issues. You can read it in full here:Experiences of forced labour among Chinese migrant workers