Reflection Of Media Literacy - 962 Words

Mass media, a cultural industry for a large of people, is seen everywhere all across the globe. It is right that people want to know what is going on in the world around them, hence there is no doubt that media literacy have already became an essential skill for everyone’ s life in the ever-changing world. A person who is media literate can clearly describe the role of media in their lives. According to the Center for Media Literacy (CML) definition, media literacy is the ability to understand, analyze, evaluate and participate with our contemporary mass media culture. What I’ve learned from this course make my media literacy change dramatically. First, I am becoming more aware of the pervasiveness of the media in my life. For the first†¦show more content†¦As I get a sense of this chapter, I start to think of some research questions of my own. Considering my own Internet habits, I usually spend more than 10 hours online every day and view various types of onl ine content for studying, working and entertaining. Most of the time, I really enjoy watching the movies and television programs. Also I strongly consider that as the form of cultural industry these media products can affect the emotion and value of audience to a certain degree due to the representation of different races, genders, religions, and sexual orientations. For example, 2 Broke Girls is the popular American television sitcom with heavy use of sexual and racial humor but sometimes the improper speech and deportment would hurt some audience unethically. Actually in all various forms of mass media there are bunch of products which include different style and content of each. In general, media products are created by individuals who make conscious and unconscious choices about what is include and how to present. These decisions are based on the media gatekeepers’ point of view, which will have been shaped by their own opinions, assumptions and biases-as well as the med ia they have been exposed to. It is also worth to consider whether the effects of mass media are because of the existing government policy and system. Considering more inquiry about media effect, I have interviewed one of my friendsShow MoreRelatedReflection About Media Literacy Reflection1416 Words   |  6 PagesMedia Literacy Reflection What was the most useful part of the week for you? Media education is an important aptitude for anybody today, particularly for more youthful ages, who are investing increasingly energy devouring the media. The Kaiser Family Foundation as of late found that people going from 8 to 18 years of age spend a normal of 7 hours and 38 minutes expending media. 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A factor contributing to the problems in the literacy rate includes children’s exposure to television which has resulted in a shortened attention span during other activities. Today, c hildren are less active because of technology such as television and video gaming and, as a result more children are suffering from obesity. Television has been in American Society since 1920’s and has gradually been spreadingRead MoreHow Does Social Media Affect The Fashion Industry?1403 Words   |  6 PagesTO WHAT EXTENT DOES SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT THE FASHION INDUSTRY? Summary: The essence of my Research Project was to determine the effectiveness of using social media in the fashion industry. It was informed by my interest in social media and fashion. It attempts to analyze the success of social media for emerging brands. The focus of this investigation was further refined by an analysis of the current success of fashion across a range of social media sites. 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Native American Astronomy Essay Example For Students

Native American Astronomy Essay For many years astronomers and people alike have constantly heard about the observations and records of the Chinese and Europeans. No other culture can provide as much information as that gathered by the Chinese and Europeans, but there are many other cultures that observed and recorded the night sky, one of those being the Native Americans. During the last fifteen to twenty years archaeoastronomers have uncovered much concerning the beliefs and records of Native Americans. Unfortunately, the methods of keeping records of astronomical events were not as straight forward as the Chinese and Europeans. The Native Americans had to use what they could to record what they observed. Their records were found on rock and cave drawings, stick notching, beadwork, pictures on animal skins and story telling. One of the few dateable events among the various records of Native Americans was the 1833 appearance of the Leonid meteor shower. The most obvious accounts of the Leonid storm appear among the various bands of the Sioux of the North American plains. The Sioux kept records called â€Å"winter counts,† which were a chronological pictographic account of each year painted on animal skin. In 1984 Von Del Chamberlain listed the astronomical references for 50 Sioux, forty five out of fifty referred to an intense meteor shower during 1833/1834. He also listed nineteen winter counts kept by other plains Indian tribes, fourteen of which referred to the Leonid storm. The Leonids also appear among the Maricopa, who used calendar sticks with notches to represent the passage of a year, with the owner of the stick remembering the events. The owner of one stick claimed records had been kept that way â€Å"since the stars fell. † The first notch on the stick represented 1833. A member of the Papago, named Kutox, was born around 1847 or 1848. He claimed that 14 years prior to his birth â€Å"the stars rained all over the sky.† A less obvious Leonid reference was found in a journal kept by Alexander M. Stephen, which detailed his visit with the Hopi Indians and mentions a talk he had With Old Djasjini on December 11, 1892. That Hopi Indian said, â€Å"How old am I? Fifty, maybe a hundred years, I cannot tell. When I was a young boy eight or ten years there was a great comet in the sky and at night all the above was full of shooting stars. (Stephen 37). During the lifetime of Old Djasini there was never a great comet and a sky full of meteors in the same year, but he might be referring to the comet in 1843 and the Leonid storm in 1833. The Pawnee have a story about a person named Pahokatawa, who was killed by an enemy and eaten by animals, and then brought back to life by the Gods. The legend goes that he fell to earth as a meteor and told the people that when meteors were seen falling in great numbers it was not a sign that the world would end. When the pawnee tribe witnessed the time the stars fell upon the earth, which was in 1833, there was a panic, but the leader said, â€Å"remember the words of Pahokatawa† and the people were no longer afraid. This shows how powerful a role astronomy played in the Native American culture. Although the Pawnee learned not to be afraid there were Native Americans who feared meteors. The Blackfeet of Montana believed a meteor was a sign that sickness would come to the tribe in the winter the Kawaiisu thought a meteor started high and fell to the horizon was an omen of death. The Cahuilla thought a meteor was the spirit of their first shaman, takwich, who was disliked his people. .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 , .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .postImageUrl , .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 , .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255:hover , .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255:visited , .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255:active { border:0!important; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255:active , .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255 .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u3ec98c8f09edcd3363febd948916b255:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Weed Essay Takwich wandered the sky at night looking for people far from their tribe. If he found a lost person he steal their spirit and the person home and eat them. The Shawnee believed meteors were beings fleeing from the wrath of some adversary, or from some anticipated danger.(Howard 178) Many Native Americans saw the stars as heavenly and mystical. The Wintu explained meteors as the spirits of shamans traveling to the after life. The Chumash referred to meteors as a shooting star. They believed a meteor was a person’s soul on their way to the afterlife. The Eastern Pomo believed meteors were fire dropping from the sky. The most widely accepted belief was that meteors were the feces of stars. (Hudson 40) The Ojibwa of the upper Great Lakes had a story about Genondahwayanung, which meant, â€Å"Long tailed heavenly climbing star.† An Ojibwa says that Genondahwayanung was a star with a long wide tail which would return and destroy the world someday. The shaman said it came down one thousand years ago. He said it was just like sun, radiation, burning heat in its tail. The comet was said to have scorched earth except for Native Americans, who were warned by a Holy Spirit, Chimantou. The animals were killed off it was so hot stones were said to have melted. It is said the comet came down and spread for miles. Another form of record keeping were rock petroglyphs, or pictures carved into rock. The western part of the United States is filled with these pictures, but any dating is virtually impossible. It is very difficult to determine whether or not the object drawn is a meteor or a comet. The most common petroglyphs are a circle with a wiggly line coming from it. Various archaeologists have interpreted these as meteors, comets and snakes Records were also kept in the form of pottery. A Hopi jar that was found had a scene that had mountains, stars and three objects falling towards the ground. This scene implies a meteor shower or a meteor that broke up as it fell. It may be possible that this jar depicts the Leonid storm of 1833. (Hudson 41) Native Americans also attained their records by building structures that would observe the sun. the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming dates to AD 1400 to 1700. Lines drawn between major markings on the wheel point to the location of solstice sunrises and sunsets and also toward the rising point of the three brightest stars that rise before the sun in the summer. About fifty medicine wheels have been discovered, several are thousands of years. Many of them have the same alignment as the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico two spirals carved into the rock by the prehistoric Anasazi can be used as a calendar. A dagger of light penetrates the shadow of adjacent rocks. The dagger moves with the sun to different locations on the spiral. the full pattern also reflects the 18.6 year cycle of the moon as well as the yearly cycle of the sun. The ancient Native Americans were not sophisticated astronomers in the sense of coherent theory behind the movements of heavenly objects, their level of understanding of the time cycles of the sun, moon and planets was great. The methods for recording and keeping track of the seasonal movements was clever and displays a cultural richness that varies from tribe to tribe.Astronomy Essays

Kinds of Poetry Flashcard

Kinds of Poetry

Essay on Masao Miyoshi and Tamura Toshiko Essay Example

Essay on Masao Miyoshi and Tamura Toshiko Essay Example Essay on Masao Miyoshi and Tamura Toshiko Paper Essay on Masao Miyoshi and Tamura Toshiko Paper Tamura Toshiko, Masao Miyoshi Against the Grain by Masao Miyoshi advocates that the western reader approaches strange foreign texts as acts of self-affirmation to adjust to the cultural distances exhibited by the narrative. Differences are exaggerated to accommodate what is seen as normal and the reader assimilates differences into the hegemony of life cycles present in birth, death, happiness and suffering. In this way the reader is able to neutralize the strangeness of novel text. She describes western reactions to a foreign text, such as Japanese literature, as a way to distance the foreingess from the readers proximity. Further, academics who present themselves as experts of Japanes literature cover up their lack of engagement with a text they do not understand with a flurry of adjectives, such as delicate or incomprehensible. In a similar vein, the admired archetype of the Woman Writer in Japan, Tamura Toshiko used her writing, The Great Divide to look for recognition of female writers in Japan. Sje explores the cultural distances between women and men in general, and of emancipated Japanese women bounded by cultural expectations. Her conceptions of the New Woman highlighted woman as being the other, strange and foreign. Her critique of Japanese patriarchy was later replaced by writing of racism that she witnessed in her travels around the Pacific Rim. Her writings about ideologies of nationalism, race and gender were powerful, though remained largely unread in the west until their dissemination in 1922 by postwar writer Setouchi Harumi. Toshiko is notable for being one of the first Japanese female writers to use psychological narrative to explore womens aspirations, sexuality and conceptions of freedom. Her depictions of women challenged popular social conceptions of the time that women were inferior, and had life experiences that were diametrically different to those of Japanese males. Toshikos later writing about nationalism and racism reflected her inward emancipation of Japanese women as she sought to illustrate experiences of social dictates and conventional mortality.

Portfolio base on Case study on sexual child exploitation in Uk and 2 Assignment

Portfolio base on Case study on sexual child exploitation in Uk and 2 different countries - Assignment Example This brings about confusion between the agencies as well as obstacles to information sharing. For instance, a report by the Victorian ombudsmen in Australia, revealed that child protection personnel do have false beliefs concerning their limits under the Information Privacy Act and in most instances they end up not revealing identity of offenders or the child victims to the Police when allegations of sexual abuse arises (Australian Government, 2012). This is also true in UK whereby the child protection departments do not offer their personnel sufficient training, guidance or even resources to make certain a suitable phase of privacy compliance is taken into consideration, in relation to collection, application and revelation of personal information regarding alleged offenders or the child (National Council to educe Violence against Women and their Children, 2009, p. 2011). Likewise, the UK faces the same challenges whereby the agencies concerned with child protection are reactive rat her than preventive in most cases. It takes a long time for the information concerning a particular child sex abuse investigation with approach to be taken, from being defined based on the problem presented. The police and the social work service do not effectively share or jointly assess all of their relevant information during the initial planning. Planning ought to take into consideration the needs of and danger to the child, in particular the medical information (Dewar, 1998, p 5). The same case is in South Africa whreby child welfare agencies are not colloborating effectively under a common framework using the three-pronged strategy of prevention, safeguard and prosecution. The agencies in most instances do not possess a shared consideration of the predicament of child sexual exploitation (South African Human Rights Commission, 2002, p. 16) For instance, in the case of Martin Jenkins, care workers were aware that Martin Jenkins had sex with the mispers whilst at the flat and th at Martin Jenkins would only allow this to happen if the girls performed oral sex on him, but such information was not disclosed acted upon by the police until when PV1 made an official complaint with the police even though the care workers knew about it. Unlike in Australia UK professionals interacting with the child even though they are aware of the developing awkward behaviours, do not make collaborate effectively to make referral to suitable agencies, due to restrictive privacy laws. The screening process does not lead to risk assessments having high rate of correctness, and as such the risk instruments result in inappropriately high phases of false positives (Munro, 2007). In terms of multi-agency workings, differences do exist in the manner in which child exploitation professionals, evaluate what is considered to be conventional and what is not, in particular where individual organisations feels that there are issues that need to be addressed. For these agencies to be effectiv e, the collective responsibility should involve an overlap or integration of roles, whereby Communication is at every level of working. Emphasis should be placed on effective information allotment, cooperation and understanding involving agencies and notable professional when it comes to promoting the children well-being plus safeguarding them from sexual exploitation (Atkinson & et tal, 2002, p. 3). Infra-Structure to Support Victims According to a research conducted by the

War on terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

War on terrorism - Essay Example Morgan speaks about Canadian politicians in the following terms: "they've been using that familiar demon -the United States and all its evils- as the fuel to heat Canadian voters to a frenzy. () And all the while, they're studiously ignoring Canada's own homegrown issues." Morgan stated the following about Canadians in general: "There's no denying that Canadians are in an even more anti-American mood than usual, thanks to the Iraq war and the Bush administration's perceived arrogance. () Politicians here know that Canadians love to read, talk and debate about U. S. transgressions. Newspaper articles point to ethnic profiling at airports and long border waits as evidence that the war on terrorism is a sham, and that Americans are simply looking for excuses to harass Canadians for the country's multicultural society." (Morgan, 2006). Morgan pointed out the following about Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin, the NAFTA's accord, and the Canadian government: "he (Martin) conveniently neglected to mention that Canada, which is one of the accord's major promoters, so far hasn't complied with its emission reduction requirements.

Analysis of UK Commercial Law

Analysis of UK Commercial Law Commercial Law Definition Commercial law in England and Wales is not susceptible to succinct categorisation as a unified body of law such as, for example, criminal law or the law of torts. Goode[1] has commented: â€Å"The absence of anything resembling a commercial code makes [the question, â€Å"Does Commercial Law exist?] harder to answer than might be imagined. If, by commercial law, we mean a relatively self contained, integrated body of principles and rules peculiar to commercial transactions, then we are constrained to say that this is not to be found in England†. Commercial legal practice will deal with a wide variety of subjects including the law relating to contracts, consumer credit, insurance, tax and partnerships. Commercial Law is thus an amalgam of common law, statute and even equity. Historical Development Despite these difficulties of categorisation the existence of a body of law controlling mercantile life has been recognised since medieval times when special courts existed for the purpose of dealing expeditiously with trade disputes. In the eighteenth century Lord Mansfield held sittings in the Guildhall in the City of London to hear commercial cases assisted by special panels of merchant jurymen to provide commercial expertise. When these sittings were discontinued the parties were forced back into the common law courts which proved unpopular due to procedural delays and the fact that the judges were often not conversant with the needs of the commercial community. Accordingly, in 1892, the Council of Judges recommended that there should be a special court to hear commercial cases and this led to the introduction in 1895 of a special commercial list in the Queen’s Bench Division. In 1970, a special Commercial Court was established but this remains part of that division. Court Structure and Jurisdiction The Commercial Court is subject to the Civil Procedure Rules. Part 49 and the associated Practice Direction provides that the court has jurisdiction in: â€Å"any case arising out of trade and commerce in general including any case relating to†: A business document or contract; The export or import of goods; The carriage of goods by land, sea, air or pipeline; The exploitation of oil and gas resources; Insurance and reinsurance; Banking and financial services; The operation of markets and exchanges; Business agency; and Arbitration. The remit of the court therefore also represents a succinct statement of the type of disputes which might be regarded as â€Å"commercial† notwithstanding the vagueness of this term. However, it should be noted that the county court has unlimited jurisdiction in claims in contract and tort and it is mandatory for claims worth less than  £15,000 to be commenced there. Thus a high volume of â€Å"commercial† law is administered by this court with the more valuable or complex being dealt with by the Queen‘s Bench Division of the High Court. The Chancery Division (the role of which in this regard can be summarised by its dealing with cases concerning companies and insolvency) will therefore also hear commercial matters. Finally, it should be noted that in addition to the Commercial Court, there is also a specially constituted Companies Court. The rationale behind the establishment of these fora is to allow the speedy resolution of commercial disputes by a body with expertise in and sympathy for the unique needs of those involved in commercial enterprise. Thus the scope and extent of commercial law is vast and full description is impossible within the scope of this submission. Nonetheless, it is proposed to examine certain key elements of the corpus of commercial law which characterise its principles and demonstrate its operation in practice. Sale of Goods This is a species of the law of contract which has long existed and been regulated by common law principles. Contracts have been defined[2] as â€Å"legally enforceable agreements which represent a vehicle for planned exchanges†. Contracts for the sale of goods are therefore subject to contract law principles but it should not be forgotten that they are increasingly controlled by specific statutory provisions. Thus all contracts for the supply of goods now contain terms which are implied by statute and prescribe that they must be of a stipulated quality. The Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended by the Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994) imposes a number of requirements: s.12: that the seller should have the right to sell the goods, that the goods should be free from encumbrances and that the buyer should enjoy quiet possession of them; s.13: that where the goods are sold by description, they should corespond with that description; s.14(2): that the goods should be of satisfactory quality; s.14(3): that the goods should be fit for the buyer’s purpose; s.15: that where the goods are sold by sample, they should correspond with that sample. Of the above, the implied term as to satisfactory quality is one of the most frequently litigated. The word â€Å"satisfactory† replaced (by the 1994) the use of the historic term â€Å"merchantable† in relation to quality and continues a long pedigree of such a requirement in English law. Decisions in the 19th Century demonstrate a recognition by the law of the commercial expectations of a purchaser. In Gardiner v Gray[3], Lord Ellenborough observed somewhat bluntly: â€Å"The purchaser cannot be expected to buy goods to lay them on a dunghill†(!) While the concept of â€Å"merchantability† endured, it was not until 1973 that it was the subject of statutory definition. By then, the term had become somewhat outmoded with Lord Ormrod commenting in 1976[4]: â€Å"the word has fallen out of general use and largely lost its meaning, except to merchants and traders in some branches of commerce†. Nonetheless, it was not until 1994 that it was replaced by somewhat less arcane terminology. Another significant statutory intervention in the ability of parties to determine the contractual relationships between themselves relates to exemption clauses or unfair contract terms. The leading piece of legislation in this field is the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977. Prior to its enactment, the courts interpreted attempts by parties to a contract to restrict or exclude their liability in the event of a breach of contract very strictly. The legislative code has now largely superseded this function. The common law lacked the ability simply to declare such a term unenforceable merely on the ground that it was unfair or unreasonable (see Photo Production Ltd v Securicor Transport Ltd[5]) hence the need for the sometimes strained interpretation of such clauses. In broad terms the 1977 Act applies a test of â€Å"reasonableness† to such clauses in commercial contracts. Not surprisingly, this concept and the interpretation of the term has been the subject of much litigation. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 extend certain aspects of the 1977 legislation. They were implemented as a result of a European Directive and apply to terms (other than â€Å"core† terms in consumer contracts. They are therefore different in certain critical aspects from the 1979 Act and a comparison of the respective effects of the two reveals anomalies. It is submitted that the original legislation should now be reviewed and redrawn in order to provide a unified and consistent framework. Manufacturers and Product Liability While the above legislation applies only in contract law, it should not be overlooked that there are certain commercial situations in which the law of tort can play a part supplying an additional or alternative remedy. The statutory implied terms described above may entitle the buyer to reject defective goods and, in any event, claim damages for the breach of contract. Because this law is based upon the contract, a problem arises as a result of the doctrine of privity of contract which enables only the parties to a contract to sue upon it. Accordingly, the law of tort began to develop remedies for situations in which loss or damage was caused by a breach but the breach was not actionable in contract at the behest of the party thus injured. In the classic case of Donoghue v Stevenson[6], the principle was established that in certain circumstances a manufacturer owes a duty of care to the end-user of his product. Thus where the product is defective and causes injury, the consumer may r ecover against the manufactuer in negligence notwithstanding that there is no direct contractual or other relationship between them concerning the supply of the product. Again driven by Europe, the UK passed the 1987 Consumer Protection Act in order further to regulate product liability. A claim may be brought under the Act by any person injured by a â€Å"defective product†. â€Å"Product† includes goods and even electricity. A product is defective for the purposes of the Act if its safety, including not only the risk of personal injury but also the risk of damage to other property is â€Å"not such as persons generally are entitled to expect†. It is submitted that this legislation is not only appropriate but necessary in the complex modern consumer society in which products are increasingly sophisticated and the relationship between manufacturer and end-user far more difficult to discern than would have been the case in the nineteenth century. Consumer Credit A very significant development in commercial law in the recent age has been in respect of the protection of customers in credit transactions. In Consumer Credit Deregulation, A Review by the Director General of Fair Trading[7] it was recognised that there was required â€Å"a strong level of protection in a market which for many centuries perhaps even since ancient times has been regarded by law makers as particularly sensitive. Buyer-seller interactions in credit markets are characterised by imbalances of information and bargaining strength between lenders and borrowers.† Accordingly, in the 1970’s, following the report of the Crowther Committee[8] the Consumer Credit Act 1974 was enacted. The Act applies to â€Å"regulated agreements† which are defined as â€Å"consumer credit agreements or consumer hire agreements†. Despite the emphasis on the word consumer, certain types of business credit transactions are controlled. Section 8 of the Act defines a c onsumer credit agreement as â€Å"a personal credit agreement by which the creditor provides the debtor with credit not exceeding [an amount varied by Statutory Instrument from time to time]. Section 189(1) defines an individual as â€Å"including a partnership or other unincorporated body of persons not consisting entirely of bodies corporate†. Thus many commercial business transactions (provided that they do not involve companies) are caught by the Act. The OFT Report referred to above proposed that all business credit transactions be removed from the scope of the Act but this suggestion was rejected. Conversely (and perhaps a little perversely) the present upper limit on such transactions of  £25,000 means that many genuine non-business consumers increasingly fall outside the safety net of the Act. The operation of this type of provision in the commercial sector again serves to illustrate the difficulty of classifying commercial law as a single discrete body of regulati on. The inclusion of chapters on consumer credit in most so-called commercial law textbooks plus the existence of an entirely separate body of work purporting to deal with â€Å"consumer law† is illustrative of this dilemma. Insurance The scope of commercial law extends into many other fields of human activity. On such example is insurance. This remains essentially commercial in nature and, in many instances, can be said to stem from the basic commercial dealings of the parties. If commercial law is regarded as being based upon transactions, insurance has developed as a means of protecting those transactions and the subject-matter thereof. The modern law of insurance has developed directly from the activities of merchants principally those involved in seafaring from Italy in the fourteenth century. Merchants reached agreements between themselves to insure their ships and cargo against the risk of travel by sea. This practice was adopted in the coffee houses of London and gave birth to Lloyds the principal insurance underwriter in the world. The insurance industry has been subject to statutory regulation since the Life Insurance Companies Act 1870. The current regime is regulated by the Financial Services and Marke ts Act 2000. Interestingly, in addition to such controls, contracts of insurance where appropriate also fall under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 discussed above. Banking Bradgate[9] places banking at the very heart of commercial law: â€Å"The banking system plays an essential part in commercial activity in a developed economy. The modern bank provides a wide range of services to both business and private customers. The provision of such services is itself an aspect of commerce†¦in addition, banks provide essential services which underpin all other commercial activity†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Banking activities in the UK have long been regulated by regulated by statute with important developments occurring in the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 and the Cheques Act 1957. International Trade Although this submission has focussed perforce upon UK domestic law, it would be erroneous to conclude without acknowledging the international element which represents so great a proportion of commercial activity and gives rise to a consequent need for regulation. In this regard a distinction should be drawn between two possible uses of the term â€Å"international trade law†. First, it is used to describe the law controlling the relationships between the parties involved in international trade transactions. Second, it may describe the body of rules which govern relationships between states and regulate the use between states of devices such as tariffs to control imports which are subject to such international treaties as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Works on commercial law habitually focus upon the English law applicable to international transactions. A great many contracts used in such international transactions contain a standard clause requiring the contract to be governed by English Law with the result that the Commercial Court in London is frequently called upon to adjudicate upon agreements that have been made between one or more parties located outside the jurisdiction. The UK is a party to the Hague Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods which is given effect in English law by the Uniform Law on International Sales Act 1967. That Act is applicable to contracts where the contract itself stipulates that it should apply. In practice, few contracts take the opportunity to do so with the result that international sales contracts which are governed by English law fall to be determined according to the principles of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 thus returning us to the outset of this discussion. Conclusion Thus the scope and extent of the law which might be grouped under the heading of â€Å"commercial† is seen to be vast in reach and divers in type. Detailed description is therefore beyond the limit of a submission of this length. However, an examination of the broad cross section of topics discussed above reveals an enduring theme. In all aspects of commercial law the focus is upon transactions. Some commercial law such as the sale of goods legislation regulates such transactions directly. Other areas such as the law relating to banking and insurance concern the mechanisms that are necessarily ancillary to such transactions. Others again, such as product liability, stem from the consequences of transactions even where the party seeking to avail himself of the law was not a direct participant in such a transaction. Bibliography Bradgate, Commercial Law, (3rd Ed., 2000) Goode, Commercial Law (2nd Ed., 1995) Poole, Textbook on Contract Law (7th Ed., 2004) Treitel, The Law of Contract (11th Ed., 2003) www.hmso.gov.uk Lexis/Nexis Westlaw 1 Footnotes [1] Commercial Law (2nd Ed., 1995), p.1205 [2] Poole, J., Textbook on Contract Law, (7th Ed., 2004), p.1 [3] (1815) 4 Camp 144 [4] Cehave NV v Bremer Handelgesellschaft mbH [1976] QB 44 @ p.80 [5] [1980] AC 827 [6] [1937] AC 562 [7] OFT (1994), para.1.8 [8] Report of the Committee on Consumer Credit (1971) Cmd 4596 [9] Commercial Law, (3rd Ed., 2000)