Historical geographies of the future: airships and the making of imperial atmospheres

This article explores the elemental encounters and imaginative geographies of empire to develop a new means of engaging with the historical geographies of the future. Futures have recently become an important topic of historical and cultural inquiry, and historical geographers have an important role to play in understanding the place of the future in the past and in interrogating the role of posited futures in shaping action in historical presents. Drawing on literature from science and technology studies, a framework is developed for engaging with the material and imaginative geographies that coalesce around practices of imagination, expectation, and prediction. This framework is then used to reconstruct efforts to develop airship travel in the British Empire in the 1920s and 1930s. At a moment of imperial anxiety, airships were hoped to tie the empire together by conveying bodies, capital, and military capacity between its furthest points. Confident projections of the colonization of global airspace were nonetheless undermined by material encounters with a vibrant, often unpredictable atmospheric environment. The article aims to spur renewed work on the historical geographies of the future, while also contributing to debates on the cultural and political geographies of the atmosphere and of atmospheric knowledge making. Key Words: atmosphere, empire, future, mobility, technology

Tax reform and simplification

Major tax reform to simplify the UK tax system is possible. Merging income taxes, social security taxes and corporation tax into only a single flat--rate of tax on all incomes would be a radical start. Avoiding taxes on income and expenditure which are "too high" requires major reductions in government spending, mainly on the welfare state. Given the political will, over a period of years we really can hugely improve the UK tax system. Copyright Institute of Economic Affairs 2003

Accounting for lives: Autobiography and biography in the accounts of Sir Thomas Myddelton, 1642–1666

This article significantly adds to the literature on the value of financial accounts, demonstrating their worth as both an autobiographical and biographical source. It argues that elite accounts can be seen both as a biography of the master, and an autobiography of the servant. It demonstrates this through analysis of the remarkably detailed Chirk accounts for the period 1642–1666, and the relationship of Thomas Prichard and Sir Thomas Myddelton II. This article uncovers insights into Myddelton’s life and character while revealing Prichard’s life in detail for the first time. This article provides a new model for considering financial accounts as both family chronicle/biography, and history from below/autobiography. Examining the accounts as a self-designed mirror for Myddelton and as a way of discovering the lives of his senior servants and household, the article casts new light on early modern social relationships