The 1930s as black mirror: Visions of historical repetition in the global financial press, 2007-2009

Media coverage of the recent financial crisis has referred extensively to various past crises, and in particular to the events of the 1930s. This article suggests that the idea of the Great Depression has effectively come to function as a kind of historical ‘black mirror’ – a quasi-object within which conjuncture and historical representation interact to produce an image of capitalist history itself. Focusing on the journalistic output of four key financial publications, I trace how portrayals of the 1930s have evolved over the course of the crisis. I find that while the 1930s are frequently and consistently invoked in ways that purport to reveal the historicity of the crisis, these representations produce an oscillation between different visions of historical repetition, which in turn underpin competing interpretations of the crisis as it unfolds. In so doing, I argue, appeals to the 1930s have simultaneously served to conceal and disclose the constitutive relation of historical imagination to historical process – a double move that has had the paradoxical effect of both securing and undermining the reproduction of finance capitalism as we have come to know it

Assembling the Healthopolis: Competitive city‐regionalism and policy boosterism pushing Greater Manchester further, faster

Health and care policy is increasingly promoted within visions of the competitive city‐region. This paper examines the importance of policy boosterism within the political construction of city‐regions in the context of English devolution. Based on a two‐year case study of health and social care devolution in Greater Manchester, England, we trace the relational and territorial geographies of policy across and through new “devolved” city‐regional arrangements. Contributing to geographical debates on policy assemblages and city‐regionalism, we advance a conceptual framework linking crisis and opportunity, emulation and exceptionalism, and evidence and experimentation. The paper makes two key contributions. First, we argue health and care policy is increasingly drawn towards the logic of global competitiveness without being wholly defined by neoliberal political agendas. Fostering transnational policy networks helped embed global “best practice” policies while simultaneously hailing Greater Manchester as a place beyond compare. Second, we caution against positioning the city‐region solely at the receiving end of devolutionary austerity. Rather, we illustrate how the urgency of devolution was conditioned by crisis, yet concomitantly framed as a unique opportunity by the local state harnessing policy to negotiate a more fluid politics of scale. In doing so, the paper demonstrates how attempts to resolve the “local problem” of governing health and care under austerity were rearticulated as a “global opportunity” to forge new connections between place, health, and economy. Consequently, we foreground the multiple tensions and contradictions accumulating through turning to health and care to push Greater Manchester further, faster. The paper concludes by asking what the present crisis might mean for city‐regions in good health and turbulent times

Proton scattering studies: 70 to 140 Mev

The work reported in this thesis covers the latter part of a programme undertaken at A.E.R.E. Harwell to collect data on the nucleon-nucleon scattering problem at energies accessible to the Harwell 280 cm synchrocyclotron. The experiments described belong to the second phase of data collection at these energies in that they do not of themselves determine a unique set of phase shifts in a modified phase-shift analysis, but resolve ambiguities in the earlier data available, or improve the precision to a significant degree. The first chapter contains a review of the nucleon-nucleon scattering problem, and provides a common context for the different types of experiment described. The second chapter is devoted to a description of the development and final form of a polarised proton target for use in the 70-150 Mev region for proton-proton scattering. Radiation damage resulted in a decay of the polarisation produced in this target, and a brief study of this phenomenon (described in Chapter II) was required to supplement the polarisation decay data collected in the spin correlation experiment reported in the third chapter. The third and fourth chapters contain the experimental method and analysis of experiments using the polarised target to determine the spin correlation parameter Cnn in proton-proton scattering at 90° centre of mass for three energies: 74, 98, and 143 Mev; and at 61.8° centre of mass at 143 Mev only. A typical precision of ± 0.05 was obtained for this parameter. The fifth chapter contains a description of the apparatus and methods used for measurements of polarisation in the 98 Mev region: the experiment at 98 Mev to determine P(θ) in p-p scattering is described and analysed in chapter six. Due to a recent remeasurement of the polarisation of the Harwell 142 Mev polarised proton beam, absolute polarisation values were obtained, to a typical precision of ± 2% of the peak value of the asymmetry. The 98 Mev data provide a notably more stringent restriction on phase-shift fits at this energy than previous polarisation information. The preliminary results of a measurement of the absolute differential cross section for p-p scattering at 98.8 Mev are briefly discussed, and the chapter concluded with a compilation of the N-N scattering data now available in the energy range 60-160 Mev

Traffic restraint as a transport planning policy 1: A framework for analysis

This paper summarises the program of work carried out at TRRL up to 1971 on traffic restraint treated as a policy for transport planning. The special techniques required were developed and are described here. The theoretical framework within which local traffic effects can be treated at a strategic level is developed using marginal cost road pricing as an example, and the necessarily stringent pricing establishing the convergence, stability, and repeatability of the results is described for a practical algorithm which can readily be used in other transport planning program systems. The application of these techniques to analyse the comparative effects of different traffic restraint policies, and the variations on the techniques required to handle several groups of travellers who react differently to restraint measures, are the subject of companion papers to appear later in this journal.

Traffic restraint as a transport planning policy 2: A comparative network analysis

The traffic modelling techniques described in the last issue are here applied to a number of variations on traffic restraint policies. The links between a transport-model view of road pricing and a view based on models of a single road are demonstrated, and the differing impacts and benefits of a range of other -- more limited -- policies are compared. The special sensitivity of parking policies to the degree of enforcement of parking charges is demonstrated using the same type of equilibrium model, extended to handle two different types of traveller.

Disseminating learning

Abstract not availabl

Traffic restraint as a transport planning policy 3: The effects on different users

Models used to simulate traffic flow and travel demand normally represent traveller behaviour by a single, averaged, group responding to cost, time, and distance changes. For systematic traffic-management measures, such as those of traffic restraint, it is desirable to examine shifts of benefits and costs between different groups of travellers. This requires equilibrium models of two or more types of traveller, each of which responds differently to charges or to travel-time changes. An appropriate technique has been developed to deal with this question, and results are presented in terms of two situations where benefit and cost transfers could arise: the effect of private parking places, and the differential impacts of road pricing.

Legal and ethical issues in expert systems used in planning

Increasing specialisation and the growth of automated advice-delivery systems are creating new problems in legal responsibility and ethical behaviour. Engineering, planning, legal, and medical workers can expect early encounters with these difficulties, which are essentially concerned with a new interpretation of 'due care' and of 'professional liability'. The precipitating factor in this debate is the emergence of usable 'expert' systems, which emhody judgmental and operational knowledge, and are often designed to mimic the behaviour (if not the public pronouncements) of acknowledged experts in the field. The task of the knowledge engineer and of the professional worker using -- or expecting others to use -- such automated advisory systems raises ethical problems both for individuals and for professional and learned societies. Some of these are considered in this paper with special reference to the arms-length delivery of engineering, planning, and regulatory advice.

The estimation of environmental impacts for transport policy assessment

The analysis of traffic and transport alternatives by means of mathematical models is well-established as an aid to design and economic assessment. The emphasis in the past has been on the traffic effects of the policies involved, and it is only recently that methods have been devised to give approximate estimates of the levels of and degree of exposure to noise, air pollution, and pedestrian interference as an essential part of the study of traffic and transport proposals. This paper covers the design and use of special models, and the collection and analysis of noise and pollution data in a form suitable for forecasting. The application of the techniques is illustrated by means of models of Coventry drawn from the Transportation Study report. One model was designed to simulate conditions in 1967, and another to simulate extreme (and unlikely) conditions in a future where congestion and pollution are both severe. The environmental impact estimation process has been integrated into the RRLTAP transportation modelling research system. The strengths and weaknesses of this approach are brought out by an illustrative application. Special attention has been paid to the different pollution estimation equations as a basis for forecasting, and the degree to which a particular choice could affect the results.