Local government needs fiscal devolution, more power in the hands of councils and communities and respect from the centre

What does the result of the 2015 General Election result mean for local government? Jonathan Carr-West of the LGiU think tank argues that local government should not be forgotten amidst all of the new announcements, and that the sector needs more power of spending and services, and more respect and space from the still-dominant political centre

A road map for pluralistic and ‘asymmetric’ devolution in the UK

Jonathan-Carr-West1 Devolution to a model set out by the centre is not devolution at all, writes Jonathan Carr-West. We need local authorities and groups of local authorities in cities and counties to come forward with detailed and realistic proposals on how they plan to grow their local economies and improve local services and what powers they need to achieve this

Is local government heading for broke? The scale and speed of budget cuts mean that councils do not have the time and space to ensure permanent and sustainable reductions in cost

Jonathan Carr-WestThe scale of budget reductions means that some councils, including some large ones, are bound to fail. The irony is that dealing with immediate budget cuts mean that councils do not have the time and space to invest in or think deeply about the measures that will ensure permanent and sustainable reductions in cost. Jonathan Carr-West writes that local authorities have both the motivation and the capacity to change, but the central government must make it easier for them to do so

Pensions policy: A little more consultation, a little less action please

The Pensions Bill that is working its way through Parliament allows the government the ability to suspend auto-enrolment duties at any time, for any reason. Craig Berry argues that the government must take consultations seriously and that exceptions to auto-enrolment should be based on more specifically defined circumstance

We need fundamental innovation and change in local government

Jonathan Carr-WestThe spending review saw further cuts to local government budgets, which will have left the sector feeling somewhat hard done by. There were nonetheless some positives, such as the integrated health and social care commissioning, but they could have gone much further. Jonathan Carr-West argues that long term changes to our society, economy and environment require us to think radically about what local services look like

Student Recital: Jonathan Carr, Clarinet

Jonathan Carr is a student of Patti Carlson. This recital is given in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Music, Music Education degree. Jonathan Carr, clarinet Rebecca Raydo, pian

The Normalisation of Surveillance Through the Prism of Film: A Practice-based Study

This practice-based research project uses a study of the key technological, political and social triggers that have brought about the normalisation of surveillance to identify the ways in which cinema has, over the last two decades, reflected the transformation of top/down institutional monitoring into a complex, criss-crossing dynamic that allows citizens to look up and challenge authority figures as well as peer across at each other both off- and online. The research illustrates that the domestication and demystification of monitoring has resulted in citizens playing an active part in the surveillance game while also making them more accepting of an institutional gaze that whistleblowers like NSA contractor Edward Snowden have demonstrated is being used to a greater extent than ever before. At the same time, the vast majority of contemporary films utilise the aesthetics and practices of surveillance primarily for the purpose of spectacle rather than presenting narratives and characters that help to investigate how the new monitoring dynamic is changing the way in which we watch and interact with each other, the media and our popular culture. While recognising the many positive aspects of ‘new’ surveillance this thesis argues that cinema must return to its historical position as a scrutiniser of institutional and domestic-based monitoring and my creative practice is a direct response to the shortcomings of current big screen depictions. The feature screenplay, Function Creep, contemporises the characters and tropes of classic surveillance narratives like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor (1975) while the short film, Groucho, uses satire and stylistic experimentation to investigate counter surveillance by citizens in a domestic setting and the way in which Internet content can reach and engage a global audience

Juvenile Salmon Usage of the Skeena River Estuary

Migratory salmon transit estuary habitats on their way out to the ocean but this phase of their life cycle is more poorly understood than other phases. The estuaries of large river systems in particular may support many populations and several species of salmon that originate from throughout the upstream river. The Skeena River of British Columbia, Canada, is a large river system with high salmon population- and species-level diversity. The estuary of the Skeena River is under pressure from industrial development, with two gas liquefaction terminals and a potash loading facility in various stages of environmental review processes, providing motivation for understanding the usage of the estuary by juvenile salmon. We conducted a juvenile salmonid sampling program throughout the Skeena River estuary in 2007 and 2013 to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of different species and populations of salmon. We captured six species of juvenile anadromous salmonids throughout the estuary in both years, and found that areas proposed for development support some of the highest abundances of some species of salmon. Specifically, the highest abundances of sockeye (both years), Chinook in 2007, and coho salmon in 2013 were captured in areas proposed for development. For example, juvenile sockeye salmon were 2–8 times more abundant in the proposed development areas. Genetic stock assignment demonstrated that the Chinook salmon and most of the sockeye salmon that were captured originated from throughout the Skeena watershed, while some sockeye salmon came from the Nass, Stikine, Southeast Alaska, and coastal systems on the northern and central coasts of British Columbia. These fish support extensive commercial, recreational, and First Nations fisheries throughout the Skeena River and beyond. Our results demonstrate that estuary habitats integrate species and population diversity of salmon, and that if proposed development negatively affects the salmon populations that use the estuary, then numerous fisheries would also be negatively affected