Food safety regimes in Scotland, 1899-1914

No abstract available

The impact of open data in the UK: complex, unpredictable, and political

This article examines the democratic impact of the UK coalition government's Transparency Agenda, focusing on the publication of all local government spending over £500 by councils in England. It looks at whether the new data have driven increased democratic accountability, public participation, and information transmission. The evidence suggests that the local government spending data have driven some accountability. However, rather than forging new ‘performance regimes’, creating ‘armchair auditors’, or bringing mass use and involvement, the publication creates a further element of political disruption. Assessment of the use and impact of the new spending data finds it is more complex, more unpredictable, and more political than the rhetoric around Open Data indicates. The danger is that the gap between aims and impact invites disappointment from supporters

The Internet and local authorities

SIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

The public library and the local authority

6.00SIGLELD:2113.56F(BLRDR-5738) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The Asylum, the Poor Law, and a Reassessment of the Four-Shilling Grant: Admissions to the County Asylums of Yorkshire in the Nineteenth Century

In the mid-1870s, the British government introduced a grant that transferred a proportion of the cost of asylum care from local to central funds. Typically, this has been seen by contemporary and more recent commentators as part of the explanation for the therapeutic failure of the County and Borough Asylums, and for their degeneration into custodial institutions. Building on recent work on the Poor Law, the aim of this article is to reassess the impact of the grant using both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Contrasting the records of two County Asylums with the annual reports of the Lunacy Commissioners, it shows that there is little evidence to suggest that the grant was responsible for a change in either the size or composition of the asylum population. Ultimately, it argues that the admission of patients in general, and the admission and discharge of chronic cases in particular, rested with longer-term factors than simply the introduction of one fiscal incentive