Such a road pricing scheme when drivers have to pay per mile have many benefits in terms of reducing negative externalities, however there are some arguements against this policy.

There are many external costs arising from the use of private cars such air pollutions, traffic jams and time wasted in traffic jams, decrease in efficiency and loss of time; in order to cope with all these problems government as one of the solutions might introduce charging scheme and this will be an effective way since there 'pay as you go' principle will work and every driver will pay as much as he has driven and so this would be more equitable. However, on the other hand, the question of equity will still arise, because people from different backgrounds will have to pay the same amount and thereby there regressive taxation system will work since the poor will spend a bigger proportion of their income on it.
Another advantage of this charging scheme is that it might be really helpful in reducing congestions on major roads and thereby reduce negative externalities. But the problem for the government is the amount of tax that has to be charged per mile.
As you can see from the graph below there wasn’t any market failure before the line started to diverge.



This occurs because volume of cars reached the point when negative externalities appear. Market equilibrium will be at point B, while social equilibrium where external effect is internalized is at point C. If government introduces prices which covers all the costs from congestions, volume of traffic will fall from Q to Q1 and price will increase from P to P1; the net social gain from saved congestion costs is shown by triangle ABC. However, since it is almost impossible to calculate exact price for all the costs, it would be very difficult to achieve such situation.
Another problem with this charging scheme is that instead congestions on smaller roads might appear where drivers have to pay fewer taxes and as these small roads usually increase journey, more time will be lost and more delays might occur.
Moreover, there is an ethical issue about the scheme of having electronic tags in each car since every car will be under control by government which can spy all your journeys. (Big Brother problem)

something about tfl =)))

Transport for London is a huge programme carried out in London in order to improve it’s transport infrastructure. This investment project is aimed in five years make some improvements in different types of transport, make green types of transport more attractive and move to sustainable transport system that is a system that makes contribution to the environmental, economic and social sustainability.
Fall in 6,4 % in August due to recession brought many problems into the whole transport system which was planned ahead. This decline in demand for underground might be caused by switching to it’s cheaper substitutes or by fall in income.
Decline in revenue due to decrease in demand for underground complicated questions of TFL funding as they wouldn’t receive the same amount of money and so will have to find other ways of finding money for their project. Managers of TFL project will have to work hard in order to raise demand for underground even if there is a recession. Peter Hendy, London's transport commissioner, said "Revenue is not where we expect it to be in this year's budget. A decline in revenues now will also have a budgetary effect in the years to come".
As there is a fall in Tfl finances, managers of it cannot be sure whether it will be possible to end the programme in five years and make all the changes that were planned to do. In order to have an adequate Tfl has to either increase number of passengers or raise prices for tickets. However, Tfl have very pessimistic expectations about the former, while the pressure on fares will be and prices for tickets might increase by almost 6% next year already if number of passengers remain the same.
Also Tfl will have to continue to seek reductions in costs of improving infrastructure and remain efficient and useful.
Another consequence of this decline in revenue might be that some constructions which are already started will have to be delayed in continuing and so possibly create traffic jams or increase time spend on the way to work for people and thereby they would be more tired and annoyed, and thereby lose concentration.
Because of decline in demand for underground Tfl is not sure whether demand will rise again and if it rises, how much and so it is difficult to plan how many trains will be needed and how other types of transport have to be improved; whether buses will be more demanded rather than underground or not.

High Speed Rails.

High speed rail is a kind of transport which is much faster than usual trains and their average speed is about 200 km/h and faster. High Speed Rail has many advantages over other types of transport. First of all, it is called to be environmentally friendly and green transport due to a lower consumption of energy per person, big capacity, reduced land usage and also smaller amount of carbon dioxide emissions.
Also when we compare High Speed Rail service with other types of transport such as car, trains, the former has advantage in being much faster and connecting city centers, while trains or aircrafts usually stop outside the city and passengers will have to find ways of getting the town after their plane/train. This advantage increases demand for rails and make them more convenient rather than others.
Besides, there is no need to book and buy ticket beforehand usually, so if one decides to go somewhere he easily can use rails without any reservations. Also some rails allow standing passengers in comparison to planes or buses where only sitting passengers are allowed and this increases capacity of high speed rails. However, on the other hand there is a big disadvantages of using rails when we compare them to private cars, because in your own car you can do whatever you want and change your destination or plans anytime, while in rails if you forget something, it would be difficult to come back then find another rail. The same is with other types of public transport.
In terms of safety, High speed rails are less likely to have different accidents as they are much simpler in controlling due to their predictable course, however it is not 100% safe transport.
Another advantage which we can find in use of High Speed Rails is that they are not so dependable on weather as planes of cars. In businesses’ point of view, High Speed Rails are convenient types of transport since they don’t require going through customs, or repeated checking baggage and highly time-reliable as they usually depart and arrive on time. Also they allow use of mobile phones or internet, while planes not.
When we talk about costs of High Speed Rails it is obvious that this types of transport is more expensive in comparison to buses for example as they require to create the whole modern transport system, also even if they are green transport, they create negative externalities the same with other types of transport: air and noise pollution.

Thank you very much Chris for the knowledge you gave me this year and for everything else =)

=)))

mock exam(will continue later)

1.(a)Explain what is meant by material deprivation.
Material deprivation is lack of money and things that money can buy.
(b)Suggest three reasons why girls and boys often choose different subjects to study.
-Parental expectations – because parents might encourage boys to choose subjects that are more suitable for them in their opinion such as science
-Role models – girls and boys choose subjects according to their parents’ choice
-Stereotyping- because of traditional division of subjects into categories for boys and girls
-Career opportunities- it can be easier for boys to find a job in science, business
(c)Outline some of the current education policies that affect the achievement of social classes
There are many policies exist nowadays that affect achievement of different social classes, however some of them reduce inequalities, and while others widening the gap between classes.
In 1997 when Labor party became the major party, it’s priority was to improve standards of current education and raise attainment of students. Introduction of policy Excellence in Schools, which aimed to encourage young people in deprived inner city areas study and find motivation of going to the higher education, was an example of policies which give equality of opportunities for everyone. Education Action Zones have similar aim as they were located in deprived areas to increase attainment of students by running extra classes and activities. These zones were replaced by more successful program Excellence in Cities which was funded by individuals, businesses, government and aimed to raise achievement in deprived areas by replacing poorly performing schools and providing more school places where necessary. Another policy Education Maintenance Allowance gave opportunity for students from poor backgrounds to continue education as they were given bonuses for good attainment and progress in education.
However other policies weren’t so successful as they made the situation with class inequalities even worse. Current policies reflect New Right ideas of marketisation of education and introduction of grant maintained schools, which were partly independent from government and they could choose their specialization, publication of exam results and creating league tables increased opportunity for parents to choose the schools for children. However, as Stephen Ball argued, marketisation of education put middle class children into advantage. League tables were aimed to increase competition between schools and encourage them to raise standards, however parents by looking at league table would choose the school with higher results while those schools in inner city areas where population mostly consists of people from working class will lose its popularity since pupils from poor background are not so concerned about education. Introduction of National Vocational Qualificationst aimed to provide training courses and vocational education for young people and raise skill levels in a wide range of jobs. This gave opportunities for working class students instead of going into higher education, get qualification and find a job. However, as Marxists- sociologists argued, this vocational training provide cheap labour with low skills and helps only in lowering unemployment statistics. And also as Lee claimed vocational education is for the less able people which channels them into low status and low paid jobs.
As we can see, some policies are useful while others can make achievement of some group of people even worse, however marketisation of education have many advantages and reflects increased diversity of young people in the modern life.
(d)Asses the view that ethnic differences in achievement are primarily the result of home backgrounds.
Hmm, we wrote about that last lesson.

2. Asses the strengths and limitations of unstructured interviews for the study of teachers’ attitudes.
Unstructured interviews are those interviews where questions are less likely to be pre set, though the researcher usually have a certain topic to cover and just discuss it with the interviewee by asking about appeared details.
Interpretevists are in favour of unstructured interviews since they achieve validity. This type of interviews allow the interviewee express himself in his own words without any limitations in answers and the interviewer have opportunity to ask any questions he wants which helps him to get data in depth. When investigating teachers’ attitudes about towards pupils, unstructured interview may help to establish rapport since teachers are used to “putting on an act in front of pupils” and not telling their real thoughts. That’s why in this case structured interviews may reduce validity of answers as teachers due to their occupations are good in hiding emotions and being formal.
Positivists reject unstructured interviews since it is almost impossible to replicate them. Every interview is unique, the interviewer might ask any questions when exploring the topic and so this data will be unreliable. Also unstructured interviews can not be pre-coded which makes them to be uncomparable, and it is more difficult to generalize the data. Positivists argue that structured interviews could give more reliable data and study larger sample.
When researching teacher using unstructured interviews, researchers will be able to study only small amount of people as each interview takes time, this reduces possibility of having a representative sample if researcher studies particular school where for example there are more modernistic teachers who try to be equal for everyone and don’t show their attitudes towards a particular student. Also there are might be ethical issues and teacher has to be guaranteed of anonymity and be fully informed about the aim of the interview as it might affect his reputation and pupils’ expectations.
Unstructured interviews in some cases might not produce expected result with teachers, because people of this occupation are usually over-worked and will not be happy to spend a lot of time for interview which lowers the response rate. In this case, structured interviews might be more helpful as they take less time and teacher will not be asked extra questions.
One of the advantages of unstructured interviews is that they give opportunity for the interviewer to use non-directive or directive approach. For some teachers direct and aggressive interviewing techniques will be more useful as they give more valid information. Teachers are skilled in controlling their emotions and behavior and as Howard Becker showed in his interview with teachers, aggressive approach helped in finding attitudes and reasons for prejudice of some pupils. This information teacher would not give as volunteer.r
Oh, I will continue later. I don’t know why but it is really hard to think now(

Why do intepretevists prefer documents?

The documents cover a wide range of secondary data, written and recorder material such as biographies, letters, novells, photos, radio and TV broadcasts. From interpretevists’ point of view, this type of data is very important and plays a significant role in their research methods since some kinds of documents are based on people’s understanding of the world and explains reasons for human’s behavior. Diaries, letters may help in understanding the past and compare how people’s views and attitudes are changed over the period of time. It helps to discover and interpret the meanings which guide people’s actions. There are different types of analysis of documents that are used by interpretevists: they might classify the content of the documents into different categories to make the data quantitative( Content analysis) This type of analysis might be valued by positivists since they see translating all the things into numbers as the most suitable way of research because it helps to make comparisons. Also intepretevists might pay more attention on the motives and ideologies of a particular document.( Thematic analysis) And some sociologists may be more interested in text analysis when looking at the text to understand how can it affect people’s ideas and create an impression.
However when using the documents, no one it is difficult to be sure whether what is written is genuine and sociologists can rely on that. While positivists by using Official statistics, will be surer that this data is valid and reliable.

Official Statistics

Secondary data refers to the data that are already exists. This might include historical documents, autobiographies, photos, novells, statistics.
Official statistics are one of the major types of secondary data and they are produced by local and national government, its agencies and organizations. Official data is widely used by positivists since they see all types of quantitative data as the main source of information. While intepretevists see statistics as not useful source of data because they do not help in answering why certain group of people committed to suicide, for example, and what made them to do so, but they just give a factual information about the situation.
When using Official Statistics, for sociologist it is important to know how was these statistics constructed. For example, statistics about the educational attainment might be different for different ethnic groups and social classes, however statistics may not provide with such information.
Also use of this source of secondary data may reflect somebody’s interests and as it is governments who is responsible for the statistics, it might try to show itself in favourable light and hide the real information about the current situation. Also another limitation of Official Statistics that sociologists can not affect the topic and sources of information that will be used for creating the statistics and governmental representatives and officials decide what is useful and what is not.
However, there are many advantages for using official statistics. They are available and cost usually nothing for researchers. Also they are often updated and so sociologists can compare change in the survey over time.

Pupils

a) When making a research among pupils it is important to consider some problems which sociologists have to avoid such as sensitivity of children: they might be shy and not answer questions for example in group interviews, that are interviews based on a group of people and where the interviewer asks questions and respondents answer in turn. So sociologists are more likely to choose unstructured interview where the interviewer can develop rapport that is friendly and trusting relationship and thereby collect more valid and in depth data. However,
Willis, for example, used in his study of ‘lads’ group interviews which allowed pupils to talk freely about their views and values and this gave him opportunity to understand reasons of creating counter school culture. However the researcher could find it difficult to interpret interviewees answers and this might lead to the interviewer bias.
Questionnaire is another convenient type of research which might help to collect data among pupils about some sensitive topics which they might not discuss orally, however this type of research does not guarantee validity of data since pupils might not respond correctly and they just may not understand a question. Also questions might mean for every person something special, so they can answer for the same question in different ways. This makes quantifying and making statistics more difficult. Marxists Bowles and Gintis in their research used self-completion questionnaires for employers and students to compare which personal traits are valued by students themselves and which personal traits are valued by employers in their workers. They could compare and find a correlation between these personal traits to explain and support their Marxist approach. Questionnaires gave opportunity for the researchers to use a large sample and use comparative method. However, questionnaires may be biased since some students could try to show themselves in favourable light and also they could misunderstand some questions.
When researcher wants for example find out how many pupils like mathematics, it is difficult to decide which sample he has to choose. Because if it is a random or systematic sample, it doesn’t mean that it will be representative, because a lot of pupils might be from science ability group and the result of the research will not be valid. Stratified samples are more useful since they give opportunities for researchers to divide the sample into strata such as age, type of school, type of ability group, etc. and make the sample more representative.