Suchergebnisse

The privatization of the utilities by the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s was a major shift in public policy. It was also a huge experiment in reinventing government, since the newly privatized companies were regulated by high-profile individuals. Frequently criticized and often controversial, the regulators wield enormous power over a large sector of the British economy. This book tells the story of their first fifteen years or so controlling prices, introducing competition, refereeing mergers and sometimes clashing with the government.

The dissolution of the monasteries in England (1536&ndash ; 1540) forced hundreds of former inmates of religious houses to seek livelihoods outside the cloister to supplement meagre pensions from the crown. Among the marketable skills these individuals possessed were Latin literacy, knowledge of liturgy, sacramental authority and a reputation for arcane learning: all qualities desirable in magical practitioners in early modern Europe. Furthermore, the dissolution dispersed occult texts housed in monastic libraries, while the polemical efforts of the opponents of monasticism resulted in the growth of legends about the magical prowess of monks and friars. The dissolution was a key moment in the democratisation of learned magic in sixteenth-century England, which moved from being an illicit pastime of clerics, monks and friars to a service provided by lay practitioners. This article considers the extent of interest in magic among English monks and friars before the dissolution, the presence of occult texts in monastic libraries, and the evidence for the magical activities of former religious in post-dissolution England. The article considers the processes by which monks, friars and monastic sites became associated with magic in popular tradition, resulting in a lasting stereotype of medieval monks and friars as the masters of occult knowledge.

The chapter examines the connection between theories of deliberation and democratic dialogue. It argues that adding a component of deliberation will not, in and of itself, resolve definitional and stability issues which arise in accounts of democratic dialogue. However, it argues that deliberation is a goal that may be fostered by democratic dialogue and that an assessment of deliberation may help to choose between different legal mechanisms designed to facilitate democratic dialogue.

This article comments on the recent UK Supreme Court decision on the legality of triggering Article 50. It sets out the background to the decision and explains and evaluates the differences between the majority and the minority. It argues that the decision, in one sense, did not live up to the expectations generated by its publicity. It drew on long-standing principles of UK constitutional law and its outcome appears unlikely to delay or condition the exercise of Article 50. Nevertheless, the majority focused on the constitutional impact of joining the European Union and reinforced both that it is for UK law to determine the relationship between UK law and EU law, and that constitutional principles of the UK may limit the transfer of sovereignty from the UK to the EU. These elements may have more long-term consequences for EU law.

The Court of Justice of the European Union faces a wide variety of human rights decisions. In common with national courts, it has to ensure that the actions of the European Union administration and legislature comply with human rights. These human rights are found in the general principles of Community law, including, inter alia, those of the European Convention of Human Rights, in addition to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. When doing so, the CJEU may find that it is judging not only the actions of the institutions of the European Union, but also actions of the administration and legislature of the Member States as they implement provisions of EU law, or act as agents of the EU administering EU law. In addition, the CJEU will adjudicate on actions of the Member States when they are acting within the sphere of European Union law. This can occur when Member States derogate from other provisions of EU law on the grounds of protecting human rights, or where Member States fail to implement European Union law provisions that either directly or indirectly protect human rights. This diverse nature of the human rights jurisdiction of the CJEU poses unique problems for human rights adjudication in the EU. The Court is at one and the same time protecting human rights from abuse by its own measures and policing the activities of its Member States. Moreover, the lines between these roles are blurred. For the CJEU to provide a human-rights compatible interpretation of the provisions of a Directive, for example, not only restricts the actions of the EU legislature, but also limits the actions of Member States. In addition, when the CJEU takes on the role of policing the actions of Member States, it does so within the context of the ECHR, given that all Member States, and potentially soon the EU itself, are signatories to the ECHR and the provisions of the ECHR are sources of general principles of Community law as well as being mirrored in the first Chapter of the Charter. Yet for the CJEU to perform the ...

This paper will discuss two social action initiatives that were undertaken as part of communication design courses offered in Australia and New Zealand. Each initiative involved student designers collaborating with a discreet community on a project that each community had identified as of importance to them. It provided the students with valuable industry experience and with the opportunity to think not only critically about the world in which they live, but also to think about how designers can make ethically responsible work, rather than churning out logos, brands and adverts aimed at encouraging rampant materialism and fostering the shallowness of western culture. This may seem antithetical to the purposes of design education, yet almost all university design courses identify both a worldview and a practice grounded in ethics as desired graduate attributes. We see art and design education in terms of Atkinson's notion of pedagogies against the state, in particular 'pedagogy as a form of resistance to liberal democratic economics as the driving raison d'être for state education' (Atkinson, 2012 p. 15). Working within community settings is not a novel concept. Artists, either individually or whilst working alongside communities have attempted to depict historical stereotypes or assumptions that have shaped collective memory and identity (Desai & Hamlin, 2010). However, in an attempt to define its boundaries, communication design education appears to have aligned itself with the 1% of the population who control the state (Landers, 2012). Located in Freire's theories of empowerment through participation, (Benmayor, 2008; Freire, 1972) the art we make demands that designers use their skills to become part of the solution rather than as one of those who sit on the fence silently yet vicariously supporting the problem. We believe that designers do have a valuable role to play in increasing the store of humanities knowledge by designing 'like the world matters' (Gablik, 1991).