The Canary Wharf Debacle: From ‘TINA’—There is No Alternative—To ‘THEMBA’—There Must Be an Alternative

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (9) ◽  
pp. 1247-1265 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Merrifield
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Commercial Real Estate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Financial Asset ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Canary Wharf ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
London Docklands

In this paper, the recent failure of the Canary Wharf project at London Docklands in the wake of the financial collapse of Canadian property giant, Olympia and York, is critically examined. Some theoretical pointers are offered as to how the Canary Wharf affair arose, the logic through which it was implemented, and the political and financial mechanisms deployed to ride the storm are highlighted. The shifts occurring in the global political economy since the mid-1970s are charted, particularly the massive explosion of the financial sector. These developments have, in turn, rendered commercial real estate a pure financial asset. It is argued that it is this mechanism that spurred the frenetic speculation and overinvestment in the property sector throughout much of the 1980s. This was especially so at London Docklands as investment activities there were further catalysed by an urban and economic policy that endorsed market-driven, speculative short-term practices. The contradictions and instabilities this process engendered at Canary Wharf itself, and how the ensuing ‘fallout’ has been minimised and legitimated in the United Kingdom through effective nationalisation are examined. The paper is concluded with a discussion on the implications the débâcle has for critical theory and progressive politics.

scholarly journals Are public service media distinctive from the market? Interpreting the political information environments of BBC and commercial news in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110121
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Television News ◽  
Information Environment ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Market Driven

Public service media face an existential crisis. Many governments are cutting their budgets, while questioning the role and value of public service broadcasting because many citizens now have access to a wide range of media. This raises the question – do public service media supply a distinctive and informative news service compared to market-led media? Drawing on the concept of political information environment, this study makes an intervention into debates by carrying out a comparative content analysis of news produced by UK public service broadcasters and market-driven media across television, radio and online outlets (N = 1065) and interviewing senior editors about the routine selection of news. It found that almost all BBC news and commercial public service media platforms reported more news about politics, public affairs and international issues than entirely market-driven outlets. Online BBC news reported more informative topics than market-based media, which featured more entertainment and celebrity stories. The value of public service media was demonstrated on the United Kingdom’s nightly television news bulletins, which shone a light on the world not often reported, especially BBC News at Ten. Most market-driven media reported through a UK prism, excluding many countries and international issues. Overall, it is argued that the influence of public service media in the United Kingdom helps shape an information environment with informative news. The focus of the study is on UK media, but the conceptual application of intepreting a political information environment is designed to be relevant for scholars internationally. While communication studies have sought to advance more cross-national studies in recent years, this can limit how relevant studies are for debates in national political information environments. This study concludes by recommending more scholarly attention should be paid to theorising national policy dynamics that shape the political information environments of media systems within nations.

Reflection in the Shadow of Blame: When Do Politicians Appoint Commissions of Inquiry?

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan
Keyword(s):  
Choice Model ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Survival ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Short Term ◽  
High Stake ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Commissions Of Inquiry ◽  
Using Data

Commissions of inquiry play an important role in the aftermath of crisis, by serving as instruments of accountability and policy learning. Yet crises also involve a high-stake game of political survival, in which accountability and learning pose a serious threat to incumbent politicians. The political decision of whether to appoint a commission of inquiry after a crisis thus provides a unique prism for studying the intense conflict between politics, accountability and policy learning. Using data from the United Kingdom, this study develops and tests a choice model for this political decision. The results show that the political decision to appoint inquiries into public crises is strongly influenced by short-term blame avoidance considerations, media salience and government popularity.

Free Trade and State Formation: The Political Economy of Fisheries Policy in Britain and the United Kingdom circa 1780–1850

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Gambles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Policy ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
State Formation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
British State ◽  
The Relationship

It is striking that historians of the early nineteenth century have been relatively reluctant to consider relationships between economic policy and the consolidation of the British state. In today's context, the economic and political challenges posed by both European integration and resurgent nationalism have generated hotly contested controversies on the political economy of state formation. From the perspective of the United Kingdom, the prospect of political and administrative devolution has forced us to address the implications of political decentralization for regional economic development (and vice versa) and to consider in turn the impact of these dynamics on the political integrity of a multinational state. For Britain, the period between circa 1780 and 1850 was characterized by unprecedented economic growth, imperial crisis and acquisition, and political consolidation. In a metropolitan sense the most dramatic feature of this process was, of course, the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800. Insofar as historians of early nineteenth-century Britain have examined the relationship between “state formation” and economic policy, however, they have tended to focus on the ideas, politics, and pressures surrounding the retreat of the state from economic intervention. Thus in more general accounts it became axiomatic that the nineteenth-century state shrank progressively from social and economic intervention, liberating commerce, and resting the fiscal system on secure but modest direct taxation.More recently, the relationship between the concept of “laissez-faire” and British state formation has been dramatically revised and refined by Philip Harling and Peter Mandler.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

More about Diamonds

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-119
Author(s):  
Vladimir Shubin
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
South African ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
De Beers

The article is a rejoinder to the work of Yury S. Skubko, previously published in the Journal of the Institute for African Studies, on Moscow’s relations with De Beers. It is based not only on the available literature but also on the author’s personal experience. The author shows that under the monopoly of this South African company in the field of diamond sales, Soviet organizations, even in the conditions of a South African boycott, were forced to deal with its subordinate structures and the attempts to sideline them were in vain. In particular the article analyses the attitude to a controversial agreement signed by the Soviet state-owned “Glavalmalmazzoloto” and De Beers Centenary in 1990, when, like in many other cases in the “Gorbachev’s era” Moscow’s principle stand was eroded for short-term results even personal gains. The author comes to the conclusion that the responsibility for Moscow’s dealings with De Beers must be borne not by our country, but above all by the United Kingdom, which allowed De Beers have the headquarters of its Central Selling Organisation (CСO) in London.

Bossa Mundo

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.E. Goldschmitt
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Film Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Brand ◽  
Brazilian Music ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rich Countries

Bossa Mundo chronicles how Brazilian music has been central to Brazil’s national brand in the United States and the United Kingdom since the late 1950s. Scholarly texts on Brazilian popular music generally focus on questions of music and national identity, and when they discuss the music’s international popularity, they keep the artists, recordings, and live performances as the focus, ignoring the process of transnational mediation. This book fills a major gap in Brazilian music studies by analyzing the consequences of moments when Brazilian music was popular in Anglophone markets, with a focus on the media industries. With subject matter as varied as jazz, film music, dance fads, DJ/remix culture, and new models of musical distribution, the book demonstrates how the mediation of Brazilian music in an increasingly crowded transnational marketplace has had lasting consequences for the creative output celebrated by Brazil as part of its national brand. Through a discussion of the political meaning of mass-mediated music in chronologically organized chapters, the book shifts the scholarly focus on the music’s transnational popularity from the scholarly framework of representing Otherness to broader considerations of a media environment where listeners and intermediaries often have differing priorities. The book provides a new model for studying music from culturally rich countries in the Global South where local governments often leverage stereotypes in their national branding project.

scholarly journals Renewable Energy Deployment and COVID-19 Measures for Sustainable Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4418
Author(s):  
Miraj Ahmed Bhuiyan ◽  
Jaehyung An ◽  
Alexey Mikhaylov ◽  
Nikita Moiseev ◽  
Mir Sayed Shah Danish
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Energy Markets ◽  
Energy Market ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Long Short Term Memory ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
The Impact

The main goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of restrictive measures introduced in connection with COVID-19 on consumption in renewable energy markets. The study will be based on the hypothesis that similar changes in human behavior can be expected in the future with the further spread of COVID-19 and/or the introduction of additional quarantine measures around the world. The analysis also yielded additional results. The strongest reductions in energy generation occurred in countries with a high percentage (more than 80%) of urban population (Brazil, USA, the United Kingdom and Germany). This study uses two models created with the Keras Long Short-Term Memory (Keras LSTM) Model, and 76 and 10 parameters are involved. This article suggests that various restrictive strategies reduced the sustainable demand for renewable energy and led to a drop in economic growth, slowing the growth of COVID-19 infections in 2020. It is unknown to what extent the observed slowdown in the spread from March 2020 to September 2020 due to the policy’s impact and not the interaction between the virus and the external environment. All renewable energy producers decreased the volume of renewable energy market supply in 2020 (except China).

scholarly journals What does it Mean to be a Man? Trans Masculinities, Bodily Practices, and Reflexive Embodiment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2110085
Author(s):  
Sofia Aboim ◽  
Pedro Vasconcelos
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
To Come

Confronted with the centrality of the body for trans-masculine individuals interviewed in the United Kingdom and Portugal, we explore how bodily-reflexive practices are central for doing masculinity. Following Connell’s early insight that bodies needed to come back to the political and sociological agendas, we propose that bodily-reflexive practice is a concept suited to account for the production of trans-masculinities. Although multiple, the journeys of trans-masculine individuals demonstrate how bodily experiences shape and redefine masculinities in ways that illuminate the nexus between bodies, embodiments, and discursive enactments of masculinity. Rather than oppositions between bodily conformity to and transgression of the norms of hegemonic masculinity, often encountered in idealizations of the medicalized transsexual against the genderqueer rebel, lived bodily experiences shape masculinities beyond linear oppositions. Tensions between natural and technological, material and discursive, or feminine and masculine were keys for understanding trans-masculine narratives about the body, embodiment, and identity.

Board-level employee representation in the Visegrád countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Zybała
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Employee Representation ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Labour Participation ◽  
Board Level ◽  
Practical Agenda ◽  
Visegrád Countries

This article addresses the complexity of trade-union approaches to board-level employee representation in the Visegrád countries, and the barriers it faces in particular national settings. Trade unionists in these countries accept the relevance of such employee representation in theory, but their practical agenda covers other issues which they perceive as more important as they struggle to survive at many levels of activity, and face growing existential uncertainty and risk. Unions also lack capacity to overcome obstacles such as reluctance on the part of the political class and managerial hostility to board-level representation; they cannot exert influence on major policy decisions at national level. They are operating in a more and more difficult environment, reflecting not merely a declining membership base, but also the recent economic crisis that failed to change the economic policy paradigm in the Visegrád countries: policies there still rely on a neoliberal approach and hence are not conducive to labour participation. What can still be seen as the predominant model is the traditional one of the market economy in which rights of ownership reign supreme.

‘A Party for Owners or a Party for Earners?’ How far did the British Conservative Party Really Change After 1945?

1987 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 49-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Ramsden
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Characteristic Mode ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Post War ◽  
Looking Back

THE period spent in opposition between 1945 and 1951 has generally been thought of as a key to the understanding of the activities of the post-war British Conservative Party. Autobiographies of the Party leaders of the time began to appear at the end of the Fifties, already looking back to a period in which the Conservatives had decisively changed their approach. So for example, Lord Woolton's Memoirs reviewed not only a term as Party Chairman which had been a highlight of his own crowded career, but also his sharing in a major act of transformation, a transformation that had led on to Conservative success since 1951: ‘the change was revolutionary’. Other key figures in the organisation reached similar conclusions as their own accounts appeared: David Maxwell-Fyfe argued that the new Party rules which he had drawn up had not only decisively widened the political base of British Conservatism, but that events since had confirmed the importance of the change. R. A. Butler's account of The Art of the Possible argued in 1971 that ‘the overwhelming electoral defeat of 1945 shook the Conservative Party out of its lethargy and impelled it to re-think its philosophy and re-form its ranks with a thoroughness unmatched for a century’. The effect was to bring both the policies of the Party and ‘their characteristic mode of expression’, as he puts it, ‘up to date’. As recently as 1978, Reginald Maudling—a key figure behind the scenes in 1945–51 as a speechwriter from Eden and Churchill and as the organising secretary of the committee which produced the Industrial Charter of 1947—reached much the same view: ‘We were at that time developing a new economic policy for the Conservative Party … It marked a substantially different approach for post-war Conservative philosophy.

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