The Patriotic Consensus: Unity. Morale, and the Second World War in Winnipeg (Book Review) by Jody Perrun

Reivew of The Patriotic Consensus: Unity. Morale, and the Second World War in Winnipeg by Jody Perru

Developing critical thinking: student perspectives

Discussion paper outlining preliminary results of a research project which examines the difficulties that undergraduate law students experience in developing their analytical legal problem solving skills. The research tests the theory that students do not naturally develop these skills through ordinary law teaching but may require dedicated teaching or an alternative approach

Dynamics of Equity Market Integration in Europe:Evidence of Changes over time and with Events.

The signs of a transition in the global gender order appear, in part, to be linked to the conjunctural shift in the global capitalist accumulation process. The main observation is that men’s traditional roles in the workplace, at home and in school have been eroding with the shift towards a knowledge-based and services world-economy. However, the transition in the gender order is more than merely a matter of economic adjustment and industrial respecialization. The transition has much to do with the impact of the antisystemic movements and changes in the politics of identity such as the rise of feminism and the women’s movement, the feminization of both male consumption culture and the workplace, the gay rights movement and the resistance to empire and racialized masculinities (Nurse 2004). These trends have evoked a counter-movement and a counter-discourse on male marginalization, demasculinization and the feminization of masculinity in core countries (Bly 1990) as well as in peripheral areas (Miller 1991). The erosion of the male superiority myth has specifically affected the hegemonic status of the white male subject.

Cats and the law: a report for International Cat Care (iCatCare) (formerly the Feline Advisory Bureau (FAB))

This research examines the legal status of cats, within the UK’s legal system (primarily in England and Wales) but also in an international context. It considers a range of different areas of law and conflicting perspectives within the UK’s animal welfare, contract, criminal and environmental law and also addresses issues of ownership and liability. In particular, the research examines how both domestic and wild cats are subject to different protection under the law and the manner in which ambiguities concerning the status of wild and domestic cats impose liability on humans for their actions in dealing with cats. The research was commissioned by the Feline Advisory Bureau (FAB) (now International Cat Care (iCatCare)) on behalf of the Cat Group1who identified that a number of legal questions could arise for cat owners for which there does not currently seem to be a definitive answer. While the legal status of cats is, in principle, well established under common law as they are personal property, problems can occur because cats exist in a range of states e.g. feral, semi-feral, domesticated and stray. Some grey areas exist in relation to animal welfare legislation and in respect of the liabilities of cat owners. There has been little or no attention paid by legal researchers to addressing the legal status of cats except within the context of animal welfare offences, some prior research into offences involving wild cats2 and research into whether animals (including cats) can be said to have legal rights.3The research considers this issue in the context of not just the enforcement of animal welfare law but also within the context of other aspects of the law, which includes policy and ethical considerations relating to animal ownership and welfare. The research deals primarily with domestic cats in England and Wales. The primary legislation imposing responsibilities on cat owners is the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which consolidates much earlier legislation and both promotes animal welfare and provides an enforcement mechanism through which punishment may be pursued where there is a breach of animal welfare standards. The UK Animal Welfare Acts4 are part of the criminal law and impose a duty to ensure welfare (although this research is not confined to evaluating welfare considerations) and an important part of the Acts is the requirement for a ‘responsible person’ to ensure that a cat’s needs are met. However, the question of what constitutes ownership or being a responsible person and whether a cat is domestic is not always straightforward. Our research also deals with offences under wildlife legislation where these may impact on cats living in a wild state or on recognised species of wild cat. Separate from the provisions of keeping and care of a cat, the research also considers issues relating to the sale or theft of cats noting that under the common law cats are regarded as property or objects, albeit animate, in terms of being owned and possessed. Damage to a cat by a third party can be akin to (certain) property damage giving cat owners the right to take action for redress to damage to ‘their’ animal. The issue of liability is also dealt with by this research and the courts have clarified a number of issues relating to the harm caused by cats and liability in respect of that harm, which we discuss in this research, treating aspects of the common law and the imposition of strict liability under the Animals Act 1971. The question of liability is not always a straightforward issue; while there are specific provisions for example in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 concerning nuisance caused by animals, they have been strictly interpreted so that the natural behaviour of a cat is generally not considered to be a nuisance even where damage is caused. However, cases where an excessive number of cats is kept such that their noise or odour cause harm to the health of neighbours or constitute a nuisance have also been decided such that the cat’s owner is responsible and can be required to take action to abate the 4 There is country-specific legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland; the Animal Health & Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 and the Welfare of Animals Act (Northern Ireland) 2011. The three animal welfare acts have similar aims of preventing harm and promoting animal welfare although there are some differences in the respective Acts. Lincoln Law School, Middlesex School of Law - A Report for International Cat Care 7 nuisance.5 In addition, the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Code of Practice on the Welfare of Cats contains provisions on keeping cats in a suitable environment. While the Code holds ‘advisory’ status rather than itself being enforceable, we argue that the Code’s guidance combined with the Animal Welfare Act’s provisions changes the dynamics of liability such that action might be taken under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, allowing the court to consider a failure to provide the necessary catfriendly environment required by the Act (in accordance with the Code),as opposed to considering the specific nuisance requirements of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. This widens the scope of the action that might be taken against cat owners, and is significant in the fact that the focus for the imposition of liability has shifted from the harm caused to other humans to the degradation of the health and welfare of the cat. We explicitly consider this issue in the research. This research investigates different aspects of the law as it applies to cats and conducts an analysis of the requirements placed on cat owners under the law. It also considers how the law can be interpreted on issues of liability, responsibility, and the care of cats, as well as the ambiguities in the status of cats that give rise to confusion under the law. This report thus attempts to provide not only an overview of the law but our analysis of some of the main areas of confusion raised by iCatCare as causing problems for cat owners and, where applicable, for re-homing institutions.6 Some of these questions inevitably touch on compensation and recompense issues where complaints or claims for loss or damage arise. While dealing with the substantive issues of liability, responsibility and legal protection in answering questions, we only briefly deal with compensation issues as the specifics of cat, business, and even home, insurance relevant to such claims are outside the scope of this research

Promoting Change from ‘Child Protection’ to ‘Child and Family Welfare’: The Problems of the English System

In England, the system for children and families in need of state intervention has developed in response to a series of political changes and to high profile and highly publicised child welfare ‘cases’. This has led over the past 20 years to a focus on child protection as the most important aspect of the work. For the last 5-8 years, attempts have been made at many levels to redress this imbalance and put more emphasis on family support. However, there are barriers to change, in the existing structures, in the distribution of resources and in anxieties about public responses to state intervention. Moving from child protection to a more supportive and interventionist approach is proving difficult. This paper will describe the English system and consider ways in which a more preventive and proactive approach to child and family welfare might be achieved

STELLAR (Semantic Technologies Enhancing the Lifecycle of Learning Resources): Jisc Final Report

[Project Summary] As one of the earliest distance learning providers The Open University (OU) has a rich heritage of archived learning materials. An ever increasing amount of that is in digital form and is being deposited with the University Archive. This growth has been driven by digitisation activity from projects such as AVA (Access to Video Assets) and the Fedora-based Open University Digital Library ‘a place to discover digital and digitised archival content from the OU Library, from videos and images to digitised documents’. Other digital content is being captured from web archiving activities, such as work to preserve Moodle Virtual Learning Environment course websites. An evidence based understanding is required to inform digital preservation policies, curation strategy and investment in digital library development. Following the Pre-enhancement, Enhancement and Post-enhancement methodology set out by Jisc, STELLAR adopted the model of a balanced scorecard to ascertain the value ascribed to the non-current learning materials. Four aspects were considered: Personal and professional perspectives of value; Value to the Higher Educational and academic communities; Value to internal processes and cultures; Financial perspectives of value. The outcomes of the survey indicated that stakeholders place a high value on the materials, and that they perceived them to have value in all areas evaluated. Three OU courses were chosen from the digital library for the transformation stage. These materials were enhanced and transformed into RDF, a process that required more extensive metadata expertise and effort than was expected. Following enhancement the RDF was accessed through a tool called DiscOU, created by a member of the project team from the OU’s Knowledge Media Institute. DiscOU uses both linked data and a semantic meaning engine to analyse the meaning of the text in a search query. This is matched against the meaning of the content derived from an index of the full-text of the digital library content. In the final stage stakeholders were asked through a survey and series of workshops to use the DiscOU proof-of-concept tool to assess their perception of the value of this transformation. This has revealed that overall, academics and other stakeholders in the university do believe that the value of the selected materials was positively impacted by the application of semantic technologies