There are people who don't exist, people who live outside the realms of normal society. They keep us safe. We should never hear about their activities. If we do, something has gone terribly wrong. The Assets are one such covert organisation, a highly trained counter terrorist unit. An international force, tasked with hunting down and exterminating the enemies of the free world. However, they are still only human. No man is exempt from the pressures of combat. Anyone can break. Anyone can go Rogue.Now they must hunt one of their own.

Two years after the Torness job Cam is sent on his next deadly assignment. A rogue Iranian General has disappeared with an arsenal of deadly chemical weapons and is threatening to unleash them on his country's enemies. Joined by old friends and new, Cam must hunt down and find this dangerous man before he holds to ransom the counties of the Gulf of Oman and the surrounding states.

Meet Robert Cameron. 'Cam' trained as a covert military operator for the British Army. A hardened ex-Special Forces veteran of Sierra Leone and other major actions including UK counter-terrorism operations. Now, with the military behind him, it seems Cam is living a quiet life in the English Lake District but between suffering flash-backs to his secret past that he would rather forget, he is planning. But planning for what? He may no longer be part of the covert world, but Cam still has his specialist skills and training - he is also armed with an archive of undealt with terrorist activists in the UK and their personal details and whereabouts - He is ready to start his crusade. However, as he discovers - a plan never survives first contact. Sterling is a real page-turner of Cam's personal vendetta against terror and terrorist recruitment - loosely based on real events, Sterling is a detailed and fascinating insight into covert operations, and how the elite forces train and work.

Slugs and snails are part of the great Phylum Mollusca, a group that contains creatures as varied as the fast-moving squid or the sedentary clams, cockles and mussels. The largest group, however, are the gastropods, animals originally with a single foot and a single coiled shell. They are the only group of molluscs to have representatives living on land as well as in the sea and freshwaters. This book is about the slugs and snails that live on land. For creatures living on land they are bizarre: snails carry a huge weight of shell; both snails and slugs move slowly relative to their potential enemies; and most are not well camouflaged. Their wet bodies are at the mercy of dry weather and their movement is very wasteful of energy and water. Despite all this, they are found from the tundra through to deserts, and on all continents apart from Antarctica. They have reached the most remote oceanic islands and undergone amazing evolutionary developments. In terms of species, they outnumber all land vertebrates. As pests, slugs and snails are all too familiar. The damage that they can cause in our gardens and to agricultural crops can be considerable and they are remarkably tenacious and thus difficult to control. In this long-anticipated New Naturalist volume, Robert Cameron introduces us to this remarkable group of gastropods. While dealing with the natural history of slugs and snails of the British Isles it also ventures across the world to explore the wide range of structures and ways of life of slugs and snails, particularly their sometimes bizarre mating habits, which in turn help to illuminate the ways in which evolution has shaped the living world. Snails can be and have been used to explore important ideas in evolutionary biology, in biogeography and in ecology, and Cameron draws out these explorations, looking specifically at the role of evolution in determining how our understanding of snails has developed over the years.

Local Government Reforms in Countries in Transition explores the impacts that the end of the Cold War and increased globalization have had on government around the world. The decentralization of national governments has led to a greater role for local governments; public administration and democrative representation are the new arena of local governments the world over. Focusing not only on countries from the former Soviet Union, but also on Israel, China, South Africa, and Egypt, the contributors to this volume present a truly global investigation of countries experiencing governmental transformation.

Local Government Reforms in Countries in Transition explores the impacts that the end of the Cold War and increased globalization have had on government around the world. The decentralization of national governments has led to a greater role for local governments; public administration and democrative representation are the new arena of local governments the world over. Focusing not only on countries from the former Soviet Union, but also on Israel, China, South Africa, and Egypt, the contributors to this volume present a truly global investigation of countries experiencing governmental transformation.

Public Sector Reform in South Africa 1994-2021 is an examination of specific public sector reforms in three core Public Administration areas in the democratic South Africa: political-administrative relationships, the delegation of authority to senior managers and performance management. Comprehensively spanning a critical period from 1994 to the current day, this collection constitutes the first systematic study of public sector reform in the gamut of the democratic era in the country. The author traces developments of policy following a rapid political shift, shedding light on previously unexplored evolving structures and systems. The Public Policy and Governance series brings together the best in international research on policy and governance issues. Books within the series are authored and edited by experts in the field and present new and insightful research on a range of policy and governance issues across the globe.

Economists and others have long believed that by balancing the costs of such public goods as air quality and wilderness areas against their benefits, informed policy choices can be made. But the problem of putting a dollar value on cleaner air or water and other goods not sold in the marketplace has been a major stumbling block. Mitchell and Carson, for reasons presented in this book, argue that at this time the contingent valuation (CV) method offers the most promising approach for determining public willingness to pay for many public goods---an approach likely to succeed, if used carefully, where other methods may fail. The result of ten years of research by the authors aimed at assessing how surveys might best be used to value public goods validly and reliably, this book makes a major contribution to what constitutes best practice in CV surveys. Mitchell and Carson begin by introducing the contingent valuation method, describing how it works and the nature of the benefits it can be used to measure, comparing it to other methods for measuring benefits, and examining the data-gathering technique on which it is based---survey research. Placing contingent valuation in the larger context of welfare theory, the authors examine how the CV method impels a deeper understanding of willingness-to-pay versus willingness-to-accept compensation measures, the possibility of existence values for public goods, the role of uncertainty in benefit valuation, and the question of whether a consumer goods market or a political goods market (referenda) should be emulated. In developing a CV methodology, the authors deal with issues of broader significance to survey research. Their model of respondent error is relevant to current efforts to frame a theory of response behavior and bias typology will interest those considering the cognitive aspects of answering survey questions. Mitchell and Carson conclude that the contingent valuation method can obtain valid valuation information on public goods, but only if the method is applied in a way that addresses the potential sources of error and bias. They end their book by providing guidelines for CV practitioners, a list of questions that should be asked by any decision maker who wishes to use the findings of a CV study, and suggestions for new applications of contingent valuation. Additional features include a comprehensive bibliography of the CV literature and an appendix summarizing more than 100 CV studies.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. All over the world, economic inclusion has risen to the top of the development discourse. A well-performing education system is central to achieving inclusive development - but the challenge of improving educational outcomes has proven to be unexpectedly difficult. Access to education has increased, but quality remains low, with weaknesses in governance comprising an important part of the explanation. The Politics and Governance of Basic Education explores the balance between hierarchical and horizontal institutional arrangements for the public provision of basic education. Using the vivid example of South Africa, a country that had ambitious goals at the outset of its transition from apartheid to democracy, it explores how the interaction of politics and institutions affects educational outcomes. By examining lessons learned from how South Africa failed to achieve many of its goals, it constructs an innovative alternative strategy for making process, combining practical steps to achieve incremental gains to re-orient the system towards learning.

Helmand Province in Afghanistan in 2008 was the most dangerous place on earth. George McCafferty of Delta Company led 12 Platoon Delta Company, 5 SCOTS through the fighting season. He kept a diary. For some of that period Ross Kemp went out with the platoon to film and report for Sky News. ‘“Ross, What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked him. He knotted his eyebrows and looked around. “No civvies!” he exclaimed. He was absolutely right, not only were there no visible signs of life but there was also no noise, no call to prayer.’ The Little Men tells the real story of Operation Herrick 8, unvarnished, from the point of view not of generals or politicians, but the poor bloody infantry. It is full of details that only such a source can provide: ‘I looked at Scotty McGregor, my little Gimpy gunner. He was five foot nothing and if he rested the butt of the 7.62mm machine gun on the floor, the gun was nearly as tall as he was. In his patrol pack he carried eight hundred rounds of 7.62mm ammo and a spare barrel. I had chosen him as a Gimpy gunner as he was the best man for the job. He didn’t go crazy with his bursts and was always aware of his fall of shot, so he never came close to running out of ammo.’ Courage, loyalty to one another, sacrifice. Was it all worth it? That’s still to be determined ‒ but whatever the answer, the effort should never be forgotten.