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Welwyn Hatfield Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2009] EWHC 966 (Admin), Welwyn Hatfield Council v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2010] EWCA Civ 26 and Welwyn Hatfield Council v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2011] UKSC 15 (Beesley hereafter) and Fidler v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2010] EWHC 143 (Admin), Fidler v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2011] EWCA civ 1159 (Fidler hereafter) are two recent cases concerning deliberately concealed breaches of planning control. The defendants engaged in dishonest and misleading conduct, in an attempt to rely on a loophole within Section 171B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (T&CPA). This study aims to critically analyse two solutions which were created to close the loophole; in addition, this study analyses various alternative remedies that have been suggested, and finally, whether the present law has been sufficient to remedy the situation.

The T&CPA is a key piece of legislation regulating planning controls; Section 171A-C provides the time limits for taking enforcement action against a breach of planning control. To achieve the above purpose, an evaluation of those provisions will be undertaken in detail. Subsequently, this study will analyse two solutions which were created to close the loophole; firstly, the Supreme Court (SC) decision (Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2011] UKSC 15) and, secondly, the governments’ decision to amend the T&CPA without awaiting the SC’s decision[1].

This research concludes that the government should have awaited the SC’s decision before amending statute to prohibit reliance upon the expiration of time where there is an element of deliberate concealment. Additionally, this study suggests that the statutory amendments were not required in light of the SC’s solution in Beesley. As a result of the governments’ ill-considered decision, uncertainty has permeated through the conveyancing process, causing ambiguity, delays and additional expense in transactions at a time when a precarious property market needs anything but uncertainty.

The scope of this research is limited to deliberate concealment of breaches of planning control and the four-year enforcement period; whilst considering the consequences of the solutions proposed, this study does not provide a detailed overview of the planning system, but rather assumes prior knowledge.

This study offers a unique assessment of the law relating to the deliberate concealment of planning breaches and offers a thorough criticism of the law with recommendations for reform. Additionally, a variety of alternative solutions are considered. Both legal academics, planning professionals and those interested in planning law will find the paper a thought-provoking digest.

This chapter considers the current state of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ+) librarianship in the United Kingdom. It begins with a question: at the time of writing, there seems to be more of a focus on LGBTQ+ issues in museums and archives than there is in libraries. Why is this so? To answer this, the chapter focuses briefly on the wider social setting; looks at current library provision; discusses what “queer librarianship” might involve; considers whether LGBTQ+ library staff’s and LGBTQ+ library users’ voices are heard; and then looks at the question of mainstreaming provision, and considers whether this would be a positive step forward.

In my preliminary thesis studies of social media, in the wake of the killings of women such as Natalie Connolly, there was a seeming widespread agreement, that if a man could get a relatively minor sentence for ending the life of a woman, using the purportedly ‘erotic’ context of the death as a legal means, then something in the judiciary was going wrong. Traditional feminists and many sex freedomists appeared to concur, in a rare moment of overlap on contemporary sexual ethics from these often scrummaging political groups. However, this ostensible concurring mystifies a more fundamental set of antagonisms that has plagued what we occasionally understand as the rhizomes of the ‘progressive left’, not least in the difficult relationship between political feminism and the sexual freedom movement, or indeed ‘sex positive feminism’. This latter ‘choice’ feminism seemingly elided with sexual freedom and jettisoned the hang ups of radical, Marxist and some branches of equality feminism, still persisting but indicative of what we broadly call ‘the second wave’. This elision between feminism and sexual freedom situates women as individuals with identities that signify an inexhaustible will, not as a casted and economized subjectivity embedded in a historical moment. This move sought to overcome the stalemate between sexual liberation, and women’s liberation. But did it? If we ask questions such as: what should legal practice and policy privilege in its functioning, the protection of individual sexual choices, or defence of the physical safety of women made vulnerable to violence by sexually oppressive cultures? – we may uncover the more profound ethical and epistemological contentions at stake. I want to frame the disputes between sexual freedomists and feminists that still persist, despite our contemporary liberal feminist vernacular, in relation to this theoretical shift in what is understood as ‘choice’, using the issues that satellite ‘the rough sex defence’ (BDSM, porn, violence, consent) in order to illuminate this tension. I want to use a materialist feminist analysis that retraces the concept of ‘choice’ in the feminist canon in order to analyse this elision in the context of the antagonisms between women’s liberation and sexual liberation. In tracing this ethical history I hope to contribute to an untangling of these unwieldy political notions in order to better confront the crystallized divisions in progressive sexual politics that contextualize the underlying disputes that frame the ‘the rough sex defence’. Doing so is necessary if we are to manage a more open, lucid conversation about what the role of the law is, or should be, in dealing with sex and violence in twenty-first century Britain.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the national and international political-economic environment in which Australian university research grew. It considers the implications of the growing significance of knowledge to the government and capital, looking past institutional developments to also historicise the systems that fed and were fed by the universities.

The paper is based on the extensive archival research in the National Archives of Australia and the Australian War Memorial on the formation and funding of a wide range of research programmes in the immediate post-war period after the Second World War. These include the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, the NHMRC, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, the Australian Pacific Territories Research Council, the Commonwealth Office of Education, the Universities Commission and the Murray review. This research was conducted under the Margaret George Award for emerging scholars for a project entitled “Knowledge, Nation and Democracy in Post-War Australia”.

After the Second World War, the Australian Government invested heavily in research: funding that continued to expand in subsequent decades. In the USA, similar government expenditure affected the trajectory of capitalist democracy for the remainder of the twentieth century, leading to a “military-industrial complex”. The outcome in Australia looked quite different, though still connected to the structure and character of Australian political economics.

The discussion of the spectacular growth of universities after the Second World War ordinarily rests on the growth in enrolments. This paper draws on a very large literature review as well as primary research to offer new insights into the connections between research and post-war political and economic development, which also explain university growth.

Approaches to the sociology of culture have largely been constituted around the long tradition of functionalism in sociology. This has hampered the field greatly. Among other shortcomings, this intellectual foundation has led to a limited understanding of ideology and civil society, a conservative political orientation and an overdeterministic view of social action and the actor. In this paper, I explore and then apply a new approach to the sociology of culture, one that attempts to conceptualize more robustly the dynamics of ideology, ideological conflict and civil society. As part of this project, I endeavor to map out a critical cultural perspective that establishes a multidimensional understanding of the contingency of social action.

Since the early years of the Cold War, two countervailing trends have been present in the treatment of officially held information in the United States. On the one hand, as the foundations of U.S. information policy were being set after World War II, wartime practices were remade and made permanent in a crisis atmosphere, with the establishment of a classification system (essentially the same one used to this day) by executive order, as well, as the passage of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946 and the National Security Act in 1947. However, even as the practice of official secrecy took root, the United States took the lead in formalizing standards of openness by statute, beginning with the 1946 passage of the Administrative Procedures Act and culminating in the passage (and 1974 strengthening) of the Freedom of Information Act. This article traces the development of U.S. information policy since World War II and describes the impact of official secrecy on decision making and democratic practice more generally.

Men make war; women make peace. Men make war; women make children. Men make war because women make children. Because men make war, women make children. Women make peace because they make children.

This paper aims to draw attention to the quiet, if inadvertent, disappearance of the front-line public librarian, as libraries make difficult organizational choices in the struggle to survive the relentless pressures to cut costs on one side while supporting a market ethos of customer service on the other.

Informed by the preliminary findings of a pan-Canadian study of labour in large urban public libraries and a review of professional and academic literatures dealing with contemporary service trends, four models/proposals [(1) participative, (2) community-led, (3) managerial/leadership and (4) digital inclusion] are critically reviewed with respect to their positioning of the front-line professional librarian.

The paper concludes with an argument in favor of one of these proposals because it supports the relevance of public librarians in service to their communities while remaining true to the democratic aspirations of this vital public service within our increasingly complex information societies.

The implication of this work is that by drawing our attention to the contradictions inherent within contemporary and popular library initiatives, the disconnect between formal education and professional practice is highlighted, thus providing a foundation for new empirical research into the changing nature of waged work (professional and non-professional) in public libraries.

Failure to situate the professional public librarian strategically and unambiguously within the rapidly evolving roles of the public library has implications for LIS educators, employers and, as significantly, current and future students.

Despite the high rates of connectivity among Western nations and the increasing sophistication of their populations, the digital divide persists among a growing urban and rural underclass. Building, maintaining and promoting a strong and accessible municipal information infrastructure, one could argue, is what public librarianship is all about.

This paper’s identification and critical review of the four dominant service models proposed for the present public library represents the first time that these literatures have been assembled together and critically interrogated for their implications for the work of public librarians. Given the importance of the question “what is the future role of the public library”, a critical analysis of the key contenders is a necessary exercise, as is shifting the subject of the conversation away from the customer and onto the professional public librarian.