Postcolonial Poetry of Great Britain

This chapter develops a way to examine twentieth-century and contemporary poetry in terms of Great Britain’s postcoloniality. Beginning with Stuart Hall’s call to understand the ramifications of the British Empire within its center’s “home”, I trace a chronology of counter-discourses of identification and disidentification that move from the imperial concept of “Britisher” to an ambivalently devolved poetry of Britishness. The work of Claude McKay, Una Marson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jackie Kay, Imtiaz Dharker, Patience Agbabi and their contemporaries offers a remapping of poetry, migration and ethnicity in Britain, articulating how poetic vocabularies can unravel notions of standardising English, and how in-placeness can be performed within landscapes unevenly naturalized through centuries of settlement. What emerges in this chapter is a poetics of contradictory affinity, a poetry that disavows shared identity and refuses recognition just as often as it demands them

Needle exchange provision in Ireland: The context, current levels of service provision and recommendations. A joint report by the National Drugs Strategy Team and the National Advisory Committee on Drugs.

This document emerged out of concerns from the Voluntary Drug Sector about the need for additional needle exchange services to match the increases in injecting drug use nationally. A working group was established to review the current position in relation to needle exchange provision in Ireland and assess how the relevant National Drug Strategy recommendations should be progressed as we enter the last year of the National Drug Strategy

Score-line effect on work-rate in English FA Premier League soccer

This paper investigates the effect of score-line on work-rate in English FA Premier League soccer. Player movement data from 110 matches where a goal was scored between 15 minutes and the end of the first half were captured by the ProzoneTM player tracking system. The number of V-cut path changes performed per minute declined more after the first goal in matches that were won by one of the sides than in drawn matches (p < 0.017). V-cut path changes involve players changing direction more than 135o to the left or the right. There was also a significant interaction of match type (won, drawn or lost by the team scoring first), period of the match (before and after the first goal), venue and the relative quality of the teams on the total number of path changes performed (p < 0.05). Players from the scoring and conceding teams spent significantly less time in the middle third of the pitch after the first goal then before (p < 0.017). This suggests that variability in work-rate is influenced by a combination of factors. The results suggest that the first goal has an influence on teams’ tactics and work-rate. However, the study did not find any differences in work-rate between teams achieving different outcomes having scored first

The effect of dismissals on work-rate in English FA Premier League soccer

The current paper studies the effect of dismissals on work-rate in English FA Premier League soccer. The study included 28 matches where a team had a player dismissed while they were winning by a single goal or the score was level. Two types of match were compared; matches where the team reduced to 10 players maintained the drawing or winning score-line until the end of the match and matches where they failed to do so. Similar reductions in work-rate variables were observed for teams reduced to 10 players and for their opponents after the dismissal irrespective of the outcome of the match. A significant interaction effect of team (the team reduced to 10 players v the team that played with 11 players throughout the match), match period (before v after the dismissal) and type of match was found on the percentage of time spent in the defending and attacking thirds (p < 0.05). The teams reduced to 10 players tended to spend more time in the defending third and less time in the attacking third after the dismissal. This pattern was observed to a greater extent in matches where the 10 players successfully maintained or improved the score between the dismissal and the end of the match. This suggests that outnumbered teams played strategically to defend the match status, rationing their efforts after the dismissal

That's maybe where I come from but that’s not how I read: Diaspora, Location and Reading Identities

First paragraph: The historical neglect of readers within the field of postcolonial studies has produced what C. L. Innes suggests is a reductive and presumptuous idea of  "the reader": "most critical analyses of postcolonial writing implicitly or explicitly presume that the reader is either a member of the writer's nation, as in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (1983) . . . or, more frequently, a generalized cosmopolitan Westerner"; even in those accounts that do exist "there is little differentiation between different kinds of Western reader" (2007, 200). Much of the haziness around readers here hinges upon commonsense assumptions about the location of reading, whether it is conceived in terms of national affiliation or in more generalised, global and diasporic terms of cosmopolitan consumption in "the" West. In what follows we explore some of the findings of a recent project that attempted to firm up current conceptions of readership by investigating how readers in a series of geographically dispersed locations made sense of the same, or similar works of fiction associated with postcolonial or diaspora writing. These works included canonical classics such as Things Fall Apart (1958), as well as proto-canonical contemporary works such as White Teeth (2001), experimental writers like Junot Diaz and more mainstream realist novelists like Andrea Levy and Monica Ali, poetry and short fiction, as well as novels, and prescribed works as well as books selected by the individual groups themselves. By recording and transcribing a series of isolated book group readings of these texts in Africa (Lagos, Kano, Nigeria; Tetuan, Morocco), India (New Delhi), Canada (Kingston), the Caribbean (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Kingston, Jamaica) and across the UK (from Cornwall to Glasgow), this project asked how (if at all) the reception of the same book differs according to the place in which it is read

That's maybe where I come from but that’s not how I read: Diaspora, Location and Reading Identities

First paragraph: The historical neglect of readers within the field of postcolonial studies has produced what C. L. Innes suggests is a reductive and presumptuous idea of  "the reader": "most critical analyses of postcolonial writing implicitly or explicitly presume that the reader is either a member of the writer's nation, as in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (1983) . . . or, more frequently, a generalized cosmopolitan Westerner"; even in those accounts that do exist "there is little differentiation between different kinds of Western reader" (2007, 200). Much of the haziness around readers here hinges upon commonsense assumptions about the location of reading, whether it is conceived in terms of national affiliation or in more generalised, global and diasporic terms of cosmopolitan consumption in "the" West. In what follows we explore some of the findings of a recent project that attempted to firm up current conceptions of readership by investigating how readers in a series of geographically dispersed locations made sense of the same, or similar works of fiction associated with postcolonial or diaspora writing. These works included canonical classics such as Things Fall Apart (1958), as well as proto-canonical contemporary works such as White Teeth (2001), experimental writers like Junot Diaz and more mainstream realist novelists like Andrea Levy and Monica Ali, poetry and short fiction, as well as novels, and prescribed works as well as books selected by the individual groups themselves. By recording and transcribing a series of isolated book group readings of these texts in Africa (Lagos, Kano, Nigeria; Tetuan, Morocco), India (New Delhi), Canada (Kingston), the Caribbean (Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; Kingston, Jamaica) and across the UK (from Cornwall to Glasgow), this project asked how (if at all) the reception of the same book differs according to the place in which it is read

Not reading Brick Lane

When someone becomes or does not become a reader - and how we make a claim to or refuse these kinds of identity - clearly matters within globalised cultures, where the challenges of literary representation quickly become problems of cultural misrepresentation. Yet precisely because not reading would appear to amount to nothing, its significance remains unexplored. In order to trace the conjunctural and multiple meanings of not reading, this essay explores the embattled reception surrounding Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane (2003) and its adaptation into film (2007), and locates not reading within a longer history of book controversies that is overshadowed by the Rushdie Affair. Our paper argues that, far from mere negation, not reading is an intensely productive site of cross-cultural negotiation and conflict without which the contemporary significance of global readerships and reading acts makes only partial sense

Development of some capillary electrophoretic separations and enzyme-based sensors for substances of pharmaceutical and biomedical interest

The development of Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) over the past decade has witnessed continued expansion, and it is now recognised as a powerful analytical technique. In Chapter 1 the concepts of CE are introduced and the various separation modes available to CE are discussed. Combinatorial Chemistry is a technique that is rapidly re-shaping the drug discovery process. This novel and cost-effective approach is capable of synthesising vast numbers of chemical variants all at one time, followed by the screening of these molecules for their bio-activity. This growing interest in combinatorial chemistry by the pharmaceutical industry has influenced the development of new analytical techniques for the analysis of such complex molecules. In Chapter 2 a CE method was developed for the separation of NSG-peptoid combinatorial libraries. In total, six libraries were examined. The separation power and versatility of CE makes it an ideal tool for the analysis of such libraries. A particular attraction is the ease with which the selectivity can be manipulated to bring about the efficient separation of these libraries. Chapter 3 discusses a CE method for the separation and analysis of products and intermediates of L-Dopa oxidation with Diode Array Detection (DAD). L-Dopa is one of the most important pre-cursors in the melanogenesis pathway. In this study both the tyrosinase enzyme and sodium periodate were used to catalyse several key steps in this pathway. Because of the instability of several of the intermediates formed, the detection and isolation of these compounds has remained problematic. Herein the advantages offered by CE are discussed and comparisons made with spectroelectrochemical techniques. Cyclic voltammetry and chrononcoulometric methods were used for the characterisation of the final polymeric product, melanin, and its utility as a sensor/biosensor assessed. Recent advances in biosensor development are discussed in Chapter 4, in particular, for the detection and monitoring of toxins. The suitability o f electroactive redox polymers as artificial mediators is examined and the concepts of charge propagation through such polymers. Recent trends have been to ‘wire’ a redox enzyme to an electrode via the use of these redox polymer chains. The development of a ‘reagentless’ immobilised enzyme inhibition sensor for respiratory poisons is described in Chapter 5. This system was based on the co-immobilisation of tyrosinase and a redox polymer, [Os(bpy)2 (PVT)ioCl]Cl (OsPVI), where bpy is the 2,2’-bipyridine ligand and the (PVI)io is poly-N-vinylimidazole indicating a ratio of co-ordinated redox sites to free pendant groups of 1:10. The hydrogel enzyme electrode allows ‘reagentless’ sampling of the enzyme activity by electrochemicaliy ‘switching on’ the enzymatic reduction of oxygen through electrochemical reduction of the immobilised osmium redox couple. This tyrosinase based sensor is capable of detecting any modulator of enzyme activity. Both homogenous and heterogeneous enzyme inhibition were investigated. The respiratory poison azide, which inhibits the tyrosinase enzyme, was selected as a model inhibitor to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. It is envisaged that this system can be extended for the detection of other inhibitors of tyrosinase such as cyanide. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses the conclusions reached during the course of this research and looks at possible areas for future research

Gambling Sponsorship and Advertising in British Football: A Critical Account

Problem gambling is a growing public health issue in the UK. In this paper, we argue that football plays a problematic role in the promotion and normalisation of gambling. Given that sport broadcasts offer gambling (and alcohol) companies a loophole to avoid the post-watershed guidelines, children and young people are also exposed. By marketing gambling in general and to children in particular, football contributes to an increase in the overall ‘amount’ of gambling in society. In turn, this contributes to an increase in the prevalence of problem gambling (including gambling disorder) and all the associated harms. Furthermore, we argue that a significant amount of gambling profits come from problem gamblers. Therefore, football benefits from, and contributes to, the addictive consumption of gamblers