In Depth: The Conservatives will suffer electorally from the Liberal Democrats’ revenge over failure to support House of Lords reform

Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and David Rossiter consider the background to and likely electoral consequences of the delay in implementing agreed changes to Parliamentary constituency boundaries. The Conservatives had anticipated their chances of victory in 2015 would be enhanced by the reduction of the number of MPs and the introduction of new rules for defining equal-sized constituencies. Because of a ‘revolt’ by their coalition partners which prevented those changes being implemented they now face a much harder task of winning a majority in the current 650 constituencie

There are fewer people registered to vote in 2015 than there were in 2010: is that to Labour’s advantage?

The 2010 general election result was considerably biased in Labour’s favour: if they and Conservatives had won equal shares of the vote total, Labour could have obtained as many as 54 more seats than their Tory opponents. This bias partly reflected unequal electorates across the country’s constituencies. Recently published data show that the number of registered electors nationally has since declined. But is Labour’s advantage still there? Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and David Rossiter analyse those data and show that, unless the Conservatives win a lot of seats from Labour on 7 May, if the two parties are roughly equal in their number of votes Labour could again benefit from the inherent biases in the electoral system, perhaps by as many as 30 seats

The case of the missing marginals: how big will May’s majority be?

A little-reported result of the 2015 general election was a substantial reduction in the number of marginal seats, and a consequent increase in the number of very safe ones for both the Conservatives and Labour. Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and David Rossiter explore the implications of those changes for the forthcoming election. Will May get the landslide the polls suggest

Ensuring equal representation in Parliament: who counts?

The UK government announced on July 16 that it had decided to end the transition period to Individual Electoral Registration early. The Electoral Commission had recommended that it did not, and thereby allow some 1.9 million people who would otherwise be removed to remain on the electoral roll for a further year. The Commission’s reasons for this concern the potential disenfranchisement of a large number of potential voters at next year’s important elections to devolved bodies and local governments. A further important reason not given is that ending the transition period early could bias the allocation of Parliamentary constituencies for the 2020 general election against the country’s urban areas. Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and David Rossiter explain why

Translating Votes into Seats

It is currently likely that no party will be a clear winner in next May’s General Election. What is much less clear is how many MPs each party will have and who will lead the next government. In this post, Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and David Rossiter explore why the composition of the House of Commons after next May’s election is difficult to predict

How UKIP’s election strategy is boosting Theresa May’s chances of a big majority

In the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit vote, UKIP seems to have lost much of its original purpose and is unlikely to repeat its 2015 vote share at the 2017 General Election. But, Ron Johnston, Charles Pattie and David Rossiter argue, it may yet have an important – if indirect – impact on the election result. UKIP is trying to demonstrate the strength of support for Brexit by standing candidates in Labour-held but UKIP-leaning seats, and constituencies where the Conservative incumbent opposed Brexit. In some Labour-Conservative marginals, meanwhile, it has not fielded a candidate at all. In this way, the party is boosting Theresa May’s chances of a big majority

The Geography of the Crown: Reflections on Mikisew Cree and Williams Lake

In this article, we argue for the importance of the geographic underpinnings of the concepts of “the Crown”, the “honour of the Crown”, “fiduciary duty”, and the “duty to consult” in cases concerning Aboriginal title and rights in Canada. Recent decisions, including Williams Lake (2018) and Mikisew Cree (2018), while further developing and refining these concepts, continue to skirt around the fundamentally geographic issue of territorial sovereignty. We argue that both political and legal discussions fail to recognize fully how the honour of the Crown, fiduciary duty, and the duty to consult arise from this geographical basis, rather than from a legal or abstracted definition of the Crown. More than a bounded space or a specific site, territory is a strategic process of settler-colonial statecraft, in which the law is a constitutive instrument in the unmaking and remaking of territory. The concepts of the Crown, its honour and its duties are not exempt from this process

Repealing the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act is a tidying-up exercise, not a major constitutional change

The 2011 Fixed-Term Parliaments Act was the most successful of the constitutional reform measures championed by the Liberal Democrats during their period in coalition with the Conservatives. Nine years after the Act was passed, a new bill seeks to repeal it. But, argue Charles Pattie, Ron Johnston, and David Rossiter, the Act was in many respects a dead letter long before the official repeal process began

Logical foundations for the infrastructure of the information market

In the context of enterprise applications, interoperability is the ability of a system or an organisation to work seamlessly with other systems or organisations without any special effort. This ability to interact and exchange information both internally and with external organisations (partners, suppliers and/or customers) is a key issue in the global economy. It is fundamental to the acceleration of the production of goods and services at lower cost at the same time as ensuring higher levels of quality and customisation. Despite the last decade’s many efforts to overcome interoperability barriers in industry, non-interoperability still causes an enormous cost for all business partners. Studies show that more than 40% of IT costs are devoted to the solution of interoperability problems. This book provides knowledge for cost savings and business improvement as well as new technical solutions. Composed of over 50 papers, Enterprise Interoperability III ranges from academic research through case studies to industrial and administrative experience of interoperability. The international nature of the authorship continues to broaden. Many of the papers have examples and illustrations calculated to deepen understanding and generate new ideas. The I-ESA’08 conference from which this book is drawn was sponsored by the Interop-VLab and the Enterprise Interoperability Center (EIC). It is also supported by the International Federation for Information Processing and various national associations. A concise reference to the state of the art in software interoperability, Enterprise Interoperability III will be of great value to engineers and computer scientists working in manufacturing and other process industries and to software engineers and electronic and manufacturing engineers working in the academic environment

The selective cytotoxicity of the alkenyl glucosinolate hydrolysis products and their presence in Brassica vegetables.

© 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.Cruciferous vegetable consumption correlates with reduced risk of cancer. This chemopreventative activity may involve glucosinolates and their hydrolysis products. Glucosinolate-derived isothiocyanates have been studied for their toxicity and chemopreventative properties, but other hydrolysis products (epithionitriles and nitriles) have not been thoroughly examined. We report that these hydrolysis products differ in their cytotoxicity to human cells, with toxicity most strongly associated with isothiocyanates rather than epithionitriles and nitriles. We explored mechanisms of this differential cytotoxicity by examining the role of oxidative metabolism, oxidative stress, mitochondrial permeability, reduced glutathione levels, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. 2-Propenylisothiocyanate and 3-butenylisothiocyanate both inhibited cytochome P450 1A (CYP1A) enzyme activity in CYP expressing MCL-5 cells at high cytotoxic doses. Incubation of MCL-5 cells with non-cytotoxic doses of 2-propenylisothiocyanate for 24. h resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of ethoxyresorufin O-deethylase, yet failed to affect CYP1A1 mRNA expression indicating interference with enzyme activity rather than inhibition of transcription. Increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was observed only for 2-propenylisothiocyanate treatment. 2-Propenylisothiocyanate treatment lowered reduced glutathione levels whereas no changes were noted with 3,4-epithiobutylnitrile. Cell cycle analysis showed that 2-propenylisothiocyanate induced a G2/M block whereas other hydrolysis products showed only marginal effects. We found that 2-propenylisothiocyanate and 3-butenylisothiocyanate induced cell death predominantly via necrosis whereas, 3,4-epithiobutylnitrile promoted both necrosis and apoptosis. Thus the activity of glucosinolate hydrolysis products includes cytotoxicity that is compound-class specific and may contribute to their putative chemoprotection properties