No abstract

Work-life balance policies aimed at reducing working hours are often assumed to be of particular interest to workers with family responsibilities such as young children. Although workers in Britain report the kind of time-stress envisaged by the debate over a 'long-hours culture', there is little relationship between workers' family situation and preferences for working fewer hours. Women workers' hours already reflect family commitments to some extent, while families with young children may need the income levels that only substantial working hours bring. Conversely workers without family commitments may have more capacity to swap income or career progression for increased leisure time. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005.

‘There has never been such complete democracy in the management of industrial establishments as exists in our shops.’ F.W. Taylor [1]

There are two problems with the existing account of the relationship between newspapers and national identity in the UK. The first is that although it is widely assumed that the mass media are central to the reproduction and evolution of national identity this has never been empirically demonstrated. The second is that exactly what comprises the relevant 'national' context in the UK is unclear. Content analysis of 2,500 sampled articles, together with qualitative comparison of different editions of the same newspaper titles and interviews with editors and journalists are used to show the extent and nature of 'national' frames of reference in newspapers in England and Scotland. Paradoxically, devolution may have reduced the spatial diversity of news stories in the press in England and Scotland.