The controversy and the future of Common Agricultural Policy of European Union Free Essays

Agriculture is a problematic area in every developed country. Free market economy that allows direct competition of agricultural products can often cause a surplus or shortage of certain products, and quality changes. In order to ensure reliable supply of food member states of the European Union decided to cooperate and transferred the authority over agriculture policy to European level. We will write a custom essay sample on The controversy and the future of Common Agricultural Policy of European Union or any similar topic only for you Order Now Common Agricultural Policy was set in 1961 and its aims were to improve production and solve existing problems in agriculture all over EU member states. The previous successes of cooperation with coal and steel, and the fact that most states had difficulties to produce certain goods logically led to deeper cooperation in agriculture, and to CAP. Today, â€Å"CAP is regarded as the most developed of the European Union’s policies and covers almost 90% of all agricultural products† (reader). But, also it is regarded as the most controversial and has been responsible for some negative consequences on the industry, and it had to go under many reforms. This essay will explain why CAP has been both celebrated and criticized. Also, it will include the challenges that will be put in front of it by the future enlargement of European Union. At the time CAP was made, national agricultures had all common problems. Although the different level of development, and different level on dependence on this industry between member states of EC, there were some immense troubles to be solved by Cap: deficits of certain goods, inefficient production practices, poorness of people employed in agriculture, rapidly dynamic prices, substantial variations in quality of products etc. The goals of policy defined in Maastricht Treaty, article 39: â€Å"(a) to increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and by ensuring the rational development of agricultural production and the optimum utilization of the factors of production, in particular labor; (b) thus to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture; (c) to stabilize markets; (d) to assure the availability of supplies; (e) to ensure that supplies reach the consumers at reasonable prices.† (TEU) Since its foundation CAP has improved the agriculture of Europe in a great sense, but critics would say that costs of the successes are considerably high for all. Some of the goals were fulfilled with little negative consequences, while others were solved with controversial methods that became a huge burden for the budget and had many counter-effects. The changes in Europe’s agricultural structure and productivity since 1961 caused by CAP were enormous. Thanks to the investment in technology, there was a growth in productivity of farms, decrease in people employed in agriculture, rapid urbanization and therefore prosperity in other sectors of economy. Statistics show that â€Å"the workforce employed in agriculture declined from 11.3% in 1973 to 9.4% in 1980 and only 5.7% in the whole of the EU in 1992.† (Hitiris, 190) Productivity growth was rapid, and we can say that the aim of CAP to restructure the farming to make it more efficient is being fulfilled. The growth of the efficiency of the labor can be noticed on the fact that: † In 1960 over 15 million people in the original six had worked on the land. In the mid-1970s the agricultural population of the enlarged EC was only 14 million, falling to 10 million by the mid-1980s† (Urwin, 187) Second goal of CAP is a social mission: to help the quality of life of the people in agriculture. This went little against the economic productivity and caused many negative consequences on it, especially by huge costs. The interventions that were made were not only subsidizing the farmers, that is a huge burden for EU budget but artificial manipulations with prices and setting of standards. These two were criticized by many liberal economists as standardization brought prices up, and artificial price setting caused surpluses and deficits. How to cite The controversy and the future of Common Agricultural Policy of European Union, Papers

Mark Slouka free essay sample

A strong and trustful father-son relationship, I suppose, is any fathers greatest wish. But how do you get such a close relationship that binds the father and son faithfully together? With such a close relationship to each other, you will, when you turn into a grown-up man, really appreciate the family bond, and might have the desire to pass it on, to your own son. That is one of the main themes in Mark Sloukas short story Crossing, where you gain an insight into a father in constant search of the role as a brave and courageous father. The father in Crossing takes his son on an extremely challenging trip that includes fording an enormously strong river. The father and son face such dangerous experiences that we are not sure whether the fathers wish for his son to become more grown-up comes true or not. The short story is written in a 3. We will write a custom essay sample on Mark Slouka or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Person narrator. We are giving an insight of the thoughts of an unhappy father due to the line: ( ) and he hadnt been happy for a while. l During the short story we are only introduced to the thoughts and ideas of the father, which narrows our knowledge down to only hearing the story from one spect, the fathers. On the one hand it makes the story much more simpler, with only one point of view, but on the other hand it differentiates the fathers feelings and thoughts, thus we get really close to the father by seeing everything through his eyes. According to the father these dangerous adventures will make the son and him friends: He and his son would be friends. Nothing mattered more. 2 In this sentence the narrator makes it clear to us that the father desperately wants for the son and him to be friends more than anything else. But because of the absence of he boys thoughts, we do not know if the boy feels the same way. The only thing we know about the boy is that he is a small boy: He looked over the miniature Jeans ( ) the hiking boots dangling off the floor. 3 Due to this sentence and others as well, we get the impression that the he is a really small kid. The sentence: Dad, you okay? 4, could indicate that the kid is not very fond of the challenges they meet on their way. There is a sense of doubt and insecurity in his voice. The wilderness, the little boy is being dragged into, is something the father himself has experienced with his own dad. During the trip the father remembers things he, as a boy questioned his father: So what do you do if you fall? It shows us that the experience the father had as a child with his own father had made a big impression on him, and he wants to carry it on to his own son. But the father has underestimated the power of the river, which detracts from the value of the trip. The father is in the river with his son on his back, without hesitating whether to continue or not. The responsibility is on him for the first time in a very long time. You could be tempted to believe that the father is divorced from the boys other (p. line 15), and therefore has been in a lot of sorrow and pain lately. That could also explain why ne thinks that the trip is such a g idea. He wants to gain respect from his son, and he sees a real manhood trip as the way forward. A real manhood trip is a common thing amongst boys and men. It is a way of turning from a little boy into a real mature man, and every father want s his son to become a real man Just like himself. That is probably another purpose of the trip, but does this exactly trip succeed in turning the boy into a much more mature kid? You can interpret the river as a symbol of the state of confusion and perplexity the father is in. The extremely strong and mid-thigh current, the savage and the brute strength his is surrounded by are comparable to his own life situation by that time. He is no longer together with his wife/girlfriend: For a long time he hadnt wanted her back. 5 Such a situation brings along loneliness and a feeling of guilt towards his son. The father is in serious danger, and he is collapsing, Just like everything around is falling apart too. He is balancing on the line between life and death in the river nd in his current life situation. To sum up the father is in a critical situation and therefore very fragile. In deep frustration he takes his son on a trip into the wild. A trip that is way too dangerous for both him and the son. His intention of letting the boy experience something extreme and wild went too far. However the ending is really open, and lets us as readers decide whether they went down or not. Im not sure if I think they made it or not, but I definitely think that the father was not able to Judge if the boy was old enough for all those challenges. The kid was without any doubt way too young to experience this, and I do not think it made him any more mature. I on the other hand think it probably would be quite the opposite. In conclusion you can tell that the divorced-father is desperate to get closer to his son and turn him into a mature young man. In his perplexity he forgets that his son is Just a little boy. There are tons of other ways of strengthening the father-son relationship, but this man Just chose the wrong decision. We are all human and mistakes do occur, but this decision was probably an unfortunate and unwise choice to make.

Is China Unstable Essays - Social Justice, Unemployment, China

Is China Unstable Is China Unstable? Foreign Policy Research Institute Wire, July 1999 By Minxin Pei Western attitudes toward China tend to oscillate between two extremes, often with confusing rapidity. Not too long ago China was widely portrayed as an emerging military and economic threat to the West. Its total economic output was projected to surpass that of the United States in two decades. Its military modernization was expected to provide China the capability to project its power far beyond its borders (and the recent Cox report on nuclear espionage has revived those concerns). And its authoritarian regime was supposed to be able to retain its grip on power for a long time. Nowadays, however, the speculation about China's future has generally inclined toward pessimism. The influential British magazine The Economist openly speculated about the break-up of China in its last issue of 1998. Not long before that, the same publication ran a cover editorial opining about the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy. And in a speech delivered in April of this year, President Bill Clinton warned of the dangers of an unstable China which failed to reform. Even within China, signs of danger and nervousness abound. Arguably, the Chinese government now faces the most severe challenge since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations a decade ago. Unemployment is rising at a frightening rate. Several key anniversary dates fraught with symbolic and real political dangers (such as the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic, the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and the 40th anniversary of the uprising in Tibet) have prompted the government to maintain a tight watch over the country's tiny dissident community lest something akin to the 1989 movement break out again. In my judgment, the current pessimism about China's short- term prospects is as exaggerated as the previous optimism about its long-term economic outlook. In fact, China is likely to retain its short-term political stability despite many signs of potential turmoil, but will face rising instability if the regime fails to undertake significant political reform in the next decade. CHINA'S CURRENT DIFFICULTIES While parallels between the problems China faces today and those it confronted during the Tiananmen crisis a decade ago may be alluring, they are misleading. In 1989, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) faced a genuine crisis of political legitimacy, which had its origins in 1978-79, when the leaders promised, but repeatedly failed to deliver, political reform. By contrast, the challenges confronting the Chinese government today are primarily economic, although weaknesses in the political system make potential solutions more elusive. Specifically, China's economic difficulties today originate, externally, from the aftermath of the East Asian financial crisis (falling exports and foreign direct investment) and, internally, from weak consumer demand and severe structural problems. The internal problems are far more daunting than the external. It is well known that China's two most perilous economic challenges are an insolvent banking system (which has total bad loans of between 25 and 30 percent of gross domestic product) and rising unemployment due to the restructuring and privatization of the loss-making state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Many analysts believe that the latter poses the clearest threat to the Chinese government, because any unrest by the unemployed, who are concentrated in urban areas, would lead to a political crisis akin to the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1981-82. Given the sheer numbers of unemployed and underemployed people in China, this analysis is not without merit. The official China Daily reports that, among urban dwellers, unemployment is about 11 percent (or 16 million people). In addition, as many as 120 million rural laborers are considered underemployed. However, unemployment alone is unlikely to generate a high level of political instability and is even less likely to bring down the regime. (Can you recall the last time a regime was toppled by unemployment?) In analyzing the political consequences and implications of economic crises, we must understand that not all economic crises are created equal. Although all of them are nasty and harmful to the societies they hit, they produce different political outcomes because their effects are filtered through the political system differently. In the case of high unemployment, its impact on political instability tends to be limited for two reasons. First, unemployment principally affects only one segment of society, namely, manufacturing workers. It would be difficult for these workers to find political allies in other sectors. In China, workers being laid off from SOEs are viewed as industrial aristocrats who have had it pretty good for the last fifty years at the expense of the other

IRONY the Challenge of Acting Oscar Wilde And George Bernard Shaw essays

IRONY the Challenge of Acting Oscar Wilde And George Bernard Shaw essays the Challenge of Acting Oscar Wilde And George Bernard Shaw Irony is another staple tool of wit in Style acting, and it often seems to come effortlessly to British actors because the British rarely say what they mean. "The speech we hear is an indication of what we don't hear... One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness," says British playwright Harold Pinter. But I notice that some American actors (other than native New Yorkers) are made uneasy by the notion that what they are saying is a decoy from the true intention, that the language distracts from what the character is actually thinking They worry that the underlying meaning is not obvious enough and in their attempts to communicate it they destroy all irony because if it isn't delicate, it's not irony. It's nudge,nudge or worse. Meaning one thing while saying something else is like singing a harmony with yourself, and the dominant tune is the spoken words. If they are convincing in their own right, and the audience realizes the unspoken irony a second later, it's funny. The character need not necessarily grasp the irony: awareness is not always part of the equation. Another form of irony springs from the contradiction between words and actions. When this is deliberate it can be crude, such as "how very amusing" said with a straight face. Action should not reinforce an irony or it will overload it. For example, "I like you already more than I can say" should not be accompanied by a hostile stare. In fact, the action that accompanies irony should be ambiguously appropriate. In other words, it should be capable of being interpreted as the truth by the recipient, and recognizable cover up by the audience. It's a fine line to tread. Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a minefield of irony, and you will fall all too easily into leaden unfunniness if the you don't have a light touch.The structure of Oscar Wilde's di ...

When Family Isnt Supportive

When Family Isnt Supportive I received a heart-breaking Facebook message from a 15-year-old young man who asked me how to get his writing accepted. When I explained about polishing his words, agents, publishers, indie and the like, he replied: For me, I come from an unsupportive family that doesnt take writing as a talent or a valuable art. How can I practice in such conditions? My husband supports me unconditionally, often following me to my appearances. One son out of town reads my work and  gives honest feedback. My sister-in-law in Iowa reads every book within days of release. Other than that, nobody else in my family has read my novels much, and definitely havent read any articles, blogs or other items Ive published. While I thank my lucky stars for the three people I have, I know how that stings when family doesnt care. I told the young man this: At your age, its a matter of being well-read first and foremost, then attempting to write stories from what youve absorbed via those good authors. They are your family right now. You are young. You will be an adult in good time and be able to do what you wish, when you like, but in the meantime, read with a writers eye, seeing what makes for a grand story, great character, and snappy dialogue. Write as you can. And know that successful authors everywhere are in your corner. When family doesnt believe in your writing, you do the following: 1) Join a writers group. Use it like a support group. 2) Read with a writers eye. Nobody puts down reading. 3) Write when you can: lunches, night, early mornings, outside, riding in the car, or while everyone else is watching TV. 4) Relate your interest in writing to your family members interest in something else. I once used my teenagers interest in playing hockey. Ask them how much time and money they invest in their sports, hunting, cars, video games, etc. 5) Carve out time and call it yours. It doesnt have to be called writing time, but you use it as such. Just make sure you capitalize on it and write instead of doing other non-productive things. 6) Refuse to feel guilty about a beloved hob 7) Display how much writing makes you whole . . . and happier. If you act grumpy, you accentuate their opinion. 8) Ask them when theyll give up reading, watching television, going to movies, listening to music, playing online games, because a writer allowed all of those entertainment opportunities to happen. 9) When someone asks when youll do something other than that writing stuff, tell them you adore what you do. Eighty percent of the world hates their job, and you arent one of them.

Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 132

Summary - Essay Example The study is conducted in a single Congress; it is the reason why Clinton does not apply it to all states. The results may differ depending on the party of the representative and geographic factor. In the opposition of party constituency and geographic constituency, conservative wings tend to care more about party constituency while progressive forces pay more attention to local preferences. Rivalry between Republicans and Democrats results in the fact that policies of the House become more radical than people want them to be. Voters who belong to different parties are expected to have opposite points of view on the same issue. It results in radical solutions offered by both of them. Even though it seems that such radicalism negatively influences representative function of the House, all policies need to be approved by the Senate and the President. This approach mediates differences in party-correlated behavior. The limitations of this study give a clue for further research where the true causes of differences of party correlated behavior are identified and studies. The study by Butler and Nickerson examines how legislators tend to react when they are informed about public opinion. Since their main function is to represent people, they need to act in line with what people expect from them. At the same time, many legislators remain uninformed and their decisions do not represent the interests of their voters. Butler and Nickerson conducted a survey of New Mexicans regarding 2008 summer session and shared their findings with a randomly-selected half of legislators. Those legislators who were informed about the results of the survey, were more likely to vote in support of public opinion. At the same time, legislators who were in the control group were less likely to guess what people expected from them. This study supports the idea that legislators want to act in line with public opinion; however, the authors warn that the information about public

The motivation theories and staff retention at web design companies Essay

The motivation theories and staff retention at web design companies (digital communication agencies) in UK, Spain and Italy - Essay Example Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests that the basic physiological needs have to be met first before a person can look ahead. Only when the basic needs are satisfied he clamors for safety needs, need for love, self-esteem or self-actualization. As one need is somewhat fulfilled, the other needs become important and this motivates or influences his behavior (Accel-Team, 2006). This corroborates with Herzberg who proposed that an employee’s motivation is understood when his attitude is understood (Tietjen & Myers, 1998). Herzberg determined that happy feelings or a positive attitude was always task-related while the bad attitude or unpleasant feelings depend upon the surroundings. These are the motivators and include recognition, achievement, career advancement and the work itself. These motivators cause positive job attitudes because they satisfy the need for self-actualization, which is the last in the hierarchy of needs of Maslow. Motivation differs significantly from satisfaction. Motivation to work can come from external factors or from within. Organizational commitment itself is a motivating factor and no satisfaction with job is a demotivating factor. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs basically speculates that people’s needs are satisfied progressively, only when basic needs are met do their aspirations rise and other goals are set. Thus when the employees are motivated, their dedication and initiative increases as Brown et al., (2005) suggest that the need for self-training arises only later. Employees should be able to identify with the firm’s style which gives rise to the necessity of self-training. Knowledge about the work is essential and continued training in the digital communications firms is considered essential. According to Herzberg two factors act upon the motivation of employees – the hygiene factors and the motivators. Hygienes are the intrinsic entities while motivators are intrinsic (Tietjen & Myers, 1998). According to Herzberg