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Hardly a day goes by without a report about one of the great traditions of British dissent: a small group protesting at the demolition of a cottage; a lone crusader chaining him or herself to a tree to prevent its felling; or a band of enthusiasts standing in the way of a bulldozer as it attempts to fill in a duckpond. Yet that same culture, which has bred a stubborn tradition of activism in the cause of a manageable and human‐centred environment, is curiously silent in the face of a threat that will involve the demolition, potentially, of hundreds of cottages, thousands of trees and scores of duckponds. Additionally, it will involve the desecration and impoverishment of the urban landscape that city‐dwellers are only now beginning to learn is every bit as fragile and in need of care and attention as our natural heritage. This is the looming threat of the giant multi‐purpose out‐of‐town retail centre. Whether it be for a large clear span warehouse, for a retail ‘farm’ of several similar centres selling stratified lines in bulk, or the establishment of an entire alternative High Street in the middle of nowhere, most urban centres and particularly free‐standing centres, face a plethora of applications and a wash of finance and public relations expertise in the drive to persuade, cajole or bully local authorities into accepting planning applications of monumental consequences for the established retail centres of those authorities. In South Hampshire alone there are currently 18 applications under consideration for out‐of‐town shopping centres which together total in excess of 4,000,000 sq. ft. (To put this figure into real context, Southampton City Centre currently has 1,500,000 sq. ft of retail.)

NOT for a long time have books and libraries featured in the correspondence columns of The Times and other newspapers as regularly as they have in 1960. Earlier in the year Sir Alan Herbert's lending rights' scheme had a good run, and we have clearly not yet heard the last of it. Indeed, a Private Member's bill on the subject is to have its second reading in Parliament on December 9th. More recently, the Herbert proposals have had a by‐product in the shape of bound paperbacks, and a correspondence ensued which culminated in Sir Allen Lane's fifth‐of‐November firework banning hard‐covered Penguins for library use.

While feminist scholars have highlighted the fact that citizenship should not simply be equated with political representation, they have also emphasized the importance of equity of participation for women in the formal sphere of politics (e.g., Lister, 2003; Staeheli & Kofman, 2004). Thus, the focus of this chapter is on women's representation in mainstream politics and more particularly, within the political arena of local governments in rural and regional areas. The aim of the chapter is to use a feminist theoretical lens to examine gender and representation in rural local governments in Australia. To do so, I draw on data from nineteen interviews with women elected mayors in the Australian state of Queensland. While women continue to be seriously under-represented in the local government sector in rural areas in Australia (see Table 1), women's presence has increased dramatically in the arena of local government in recent years (Sawer, 2001; Pini, Brown, & Ryan, 2004). Nineteen represented a record number of women mayors in the state of Queensland in 2002. Furthermore, all of these women represented constituencies outside the state's capital city of Brisbane. In fact, ten were located in very sparsely populated shires in the western areas of the state (populations ranging from 400 to 7,000 people), two in areas with populations of approximately 15,000, and the remainder in regional towns with populations ranging from 40,000 to 120,000.

The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge and obtain an understanding of the phenomenon of public sector external auditing (PSEA) in Tanzania.

The paper used a grounded theory method informed by a critical approach. It used data from multiple sources including interviews, observations and documents, to provide a theoretical and practical understanding of PSEA in Tanzania. The theoretical aspects were developed ‘in vivo’ and were also informed by the Habermasian concept of colonisation.

The principal research findings from the data concern the central phenomenon of managing colonising tendencies in PSEA which appeared to be the core strategy for both the government and external auditors. While the government appeared to manage the National Audit Office of Tanzania (NAOT) appearance and exploited the legitimising features of PSEA, external auditors manoeuvred within colonising tendencies and attempted to maintain the ‘audit supremacy’ image. PSEA in Tanzania encountered colonising tendencies because of weak working relationship between the NAOT and other accountability agencies, inconsistencies in governance and politics, the culture of corruption and secrecy, dependence on foreign financing and mimicking of foreign models. To coexist within this colonising environment, external auditors managed their relationship with auditees and the complexities of PSEA roles. Managing colonising tendencies resulted into obscured subordination of PSEA, contributing to cosmetic accountability and growing public interest in PSEA.

It is hoped that future research in other countries, in and beyond Africa, will be undertaken to broaden and deepen our understanding of the external auditing of public sector entities.

The paper combines grounded theory with a critical approach to understand PSEA in a developing country.

This paper presents the findings of recent research exploring how local authorities are delivering affordable housing through the planning system, focusing on their use of Section 106 (S106) of the Town and Country Planning Act (1990). Policy and practice vary between local authorities. While the amount of affordable housing delivered through S106 has increased, there is pressure on local authorities to improve performance further as affordability has worsened across the country. This paper highlights the issues that local authorities face, and makes some recommendations for good practice.

The theoretical case for land value capture is well-known, but the effectiveness of affordable housing delivery as a capture mechanism is not so well-documented. Building on the earlier theoretical and empirical work of Whitehead (1991, 2007) and Crook and Whitehead (2002), the purpose of this paper is to consider the provision of affordable housing from a land value capture viewpoint, focusing on the process by which the amount of affordable housing is determined between landowners/developers on the one hand and local planning authorities on the other.

The paper adopts a mixed-mode approach for the data collection. Two surveys of local planning authorities were undertaken, together with a series of case study interviews.

The paper evaluates whether land value capture has been an effective mechanism for delivering affordable housing by focusing on three principal areas: first, the political agenda in relation to land value capture and the supply of affordable housing; second, the nature and motivation of the stakeholders involved in affordable housing decision-making; and third, the use of economic models as decision tools for determining the amount and type of affordable housing are negotiated.

The research provides some insight into the effectiveness of local authority affordable housing targets as a means of capturing the uplift in land value that results from the grant of planning permission.

IT is evident from the numerous press cuttings which are reaching us, that we are once more afflicted with one of those periodical visitations of antagonism to Public Libraries, which occasionally assume epidemic form as the result of a succession of library opening ceremonies, or a rush of Carnegie gifts. Let a new library building be opened, or an old one celebrate its jubilee, or let Lord Avebury regale us with his statistics of crime‐diminution and Public Libraries, and immediately we have the same old, never‐ending flood of articles, papers and speeches to prove that Public Libraries are not what their original promoters intended, and that they simply exist for the purpose of circulating American “Penny Bloods.” We have had this same chorus, with variations, at regular intervals during the past twenty years, and it is amazing to find old‐established newspapers, and gentlemen of wide reading and knowledge, treating the theme as a novelty. One of the latest gladiators to enter the arena against Public Libraries, is Mr. J. Churton Collins, who contributes a forcible and able article, on “Free Libraries, their Functions and Opportunities,” to the Nineteenth Century for June, 1903. Were we not assured by its benevolent tone that Mr. Collins seeks only the betterment of Public Libraries, we should be very much disposed to resent some of the conclusions at which he has arrived, by accepting erroneous and misleading information. As a matter of fact, we heartily endorse most of Mr. Collins' ideas, though on very different grounds, and feel delighted to find in him an able exponent of what we have striven for five years to establish, namely, that Public Libraries will never be improved till they are better financed and better staffed.

We issue a double Souvenir number of The Library World in connection with the Library Association Conference at Birmingham, in which we have pleasure in including a special article, “Libraries in Birmingham,” by Mr. Walter Powell, Chief Librarian of Birmingham Public Libraries. He has endeavoured to combine in it the subject of Special Library collections, and libraries other than the Municipal Libraries in the City. Another article entitled “Some Memories of Birmingham” is by Mr. Richard W. Mould, Chief Librarian and Curator of Southwark Public Libraries and Cuming Museum. We understand that a very full programme has been arranged for the Conference, and we have already published such details as are now available in our July number.

Central Government in the UK has opened the door to futures work at a local level through the modernisation programme for local government. It has created conditions for local governance which are strategic and futures‐orientated. This raises challenges and opportunities for developing expert and participative futures research to inform local thinking, decision making and action. It also opens the institutions, structures and processes at a local level to the inherently uncomfortable and destabilising thoughts of what the future may hold within an interconnected and turbulent world. This work appears to be a quiet revolution in the making, creating major opportunities for foresight, futures research and anticipatory management at a local level and for developing processes that focus civic attention on a regular basis on long‐term challenges and implications for personal, corporate and political action.

THE pages of the Library World have at all times been open to receive the opinions of every side, on all questions of library policy, and we believe that it can be fairly claimed that no other English professional journal can show a greater record of catholicity and freedom from prejudice. Just recently we have published three articles in succession, which plead for, or advocate, some method of mitigating what the writers term the “Fiction Nuisance,” and one result of our complaisance may be witnessed in the stir which has been caused in journalistic quarters, over the alleged shortcomings of Public Libraries, and their scandalous distribution of nothing but fiction! It is argued, with some justice, that, if librarians are so quick to admit the existence of a fiction nuisance, then the case must be very serious indeed; and that it is regarded in this light may be gathered from the article on “Free Libraries,” by Mr. J. Churton Collins, in the June Nineteenth Century. For some reason or another, best known, no doubt, to themselves, certain librarians are always ready to join in the hue and cry against Public Libraries, and to lend the sanction of their authority to the general execration of fiction reading, thus giving a weapon to the enemy which is promptly used to thrash municipal libraries into a pulp. For months past this outcry against libraries has been going on, and there cannot be a single doubt that it has been stimulated by, if it did not originate in, the injudicious apologies for high fiction percentages in some library reports, and the publication of articles by librarians who admit too much, without giving substantial grounds for their conclusions. We are unable to say whether such apologies and articles are dictated by the weak, but human, desire to side with the majority, but there can be no doubt as to their harmful tendency and the evil they are causing all over the country. It is time, therefore, that the other, and, we believe, true side of the question should be put forward, and we propose to devote a series of articles to show that the charges made against Public Libraries of being nothing but huge engines for the distribution of fiction, mostly bad in tone and quality, are either gross misrepresentations, or exaggerations capable of explanation, and justification. As an introduction to this series, we have obtained permission from Mr. Thomas Greenwood, to use the greater part of the paper entitled, “The Great Fiction Question,” which is printed in Greenwoods Library Year Book, 1897, and is now becoming scarce and difficult to procure, owing to the book being out‐of‐print; like the later Year Book of 1900–1901. This paper is a vigorous, fair, and able statement of the case for fiction, which has not received the amount of attention it deserves, and we think it will be performing a service to librarians if we reprint it as a preliminary to our own proposed examination of the question of Fiction Reading in Public Libraries: