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This chapter serves as the introduction to the edited collection, calling into focus the diverse ways in which ‘Australia’ is asserted in the spaces, scenes and practices of Australian heavy metal. This chapter responds to earlier quandaries in the sparse research on Australian metal which question if there is anything definitively ‘Australian’ about the characteristics, themes and narratives demonstrated within Australian heavy metal scenes. In response to this challenge, the author uses this chapter to establish critical foundations for addressing how Australianness has been represented ‘Downunderground’ (Phillipov, 2008, p. 215) – historically, musically and geographically, as work in this collection affirms. This introduction foregrounds the concerns of the edited collection at large, which addresses how national identity has been imagined and constructed in ways which can at once celebrate problematic patriarchal nationalist symbolism, yet also call into focus the resistant and subversive ways in which metal scenes have deconstructed, critiqued and renegotiated the parameters of what it means to be ‘Australian’. This chapter asserts that any interrogation of the ‘Australianness’ of Australian metal must problematise the notion of a singularly ‘Australian’ identity in the first instance. Here the author argues that ‘Australian metal’ as a consolidated signifier must be problematised to instead come to an understanding of the multisited ways in which ‘Australianness’ is experienced within scenes. In doing so the author establishes the critical trajectories for the edited collection at large – to track the genealogies of Australian metal as a component in a wider global scene, and consider the plurality of its contemporary manifestations.

Heavy metal music has had a long relationship with environmental and ecological concerns, one that can be traced as far back as Black Sabbath’s ‘Into the Void’ (1971). Academic work has, however, been slow to recognise the entanglements of metal, environment and ecology in either the global or an Australian context. More recently, however, popular music scholars have begun to acknowledge how the sonic anger of black, death and other genres of extreme metal might be an appropriate medium for social and environmental commentary and protest (Lucas, 2015, p. 555). Therefore, according to Wiebe-Taylor (2009), metal’s ‘darker side is not simply about shock tactics and sensory overload…’, because, ‘metal also makes use of its harsh lyrics, sounds and visual imagery to express critical concerns about human behaviour and decision making and anxieties about the future’ (p. 89). Taking an ecocritical approach, this chapter will map and analyse the environmental concerns and ecological anxieties of Australian metal across a range of different bands and metal genres, as they emerge through three ‘dead-end’ discourses-misanthrophism, apocalypticism, Romanticism – which offer little or no hope of survival.

This year it is estimated that we in tills country will spend £330 million on toys, according to David Brown, general manager of British Lego. Traditionally the sale of toys has been conducted through the specialist toy retailer. Over the past thirty years or so, others have encroached on this lucrative market. What guarantee has the toy specialist, or any specialist trader for that matter, that manufacturers and distributors will treat them fairly, in the light of their low budgets, off‐centre sites and small stock rooms? Will the specialist suffer at peak seasons because delivery to large general retail outlets will take priority over his slower sales outlet?

“WHAT Manchester thinks to‐day, London will think tomorrow,” was a current saying a century or less ago. It may be current today in political matters; it may be so even in library matters. Before his lamented death, Charles Nowell drew up a long, careful memorandum for his committee on the desirability of Government grants in aid for libraries such as his own which acted in a very definite way as national libraries, in that their services were drawn upon by thousands outside Manchester who contributed nothing to the rates. In smaller measure the case could be made for every library authority which maintains a reference library, because there are no qualifications or introductions or fees required of any reader whencesoever he may come. To that quite substantial degree every good public library does national service. It could of course be contended that libraries receive services of a like kind for their own readers from all other towns and counties. In any case, the burden on Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol—to name only a few important examples—is perhaps unfairly heavy. The case seems a good one. Opposition to the suggestion of tax‐aid which is by no means new, came formerly from the Authority associations, not because of their concern for the taxpayer's pocket, although we do not accuse them of lack of such concern, but because such grants imply a possible, indeed a likely, further interference with local autonomy. It is quite understandable; little by little local authorities have been shorn of their most productive enterprises. School and police in some towns, transport in others, and in all the gas and electricity industries have been appropriated by Government. On terms, it is true, but on capital payments which meant the loss of the recurrent income and, what was worse, loosened the local influence over the services concerned. Perhaps the local authorities can be persuaded that grants, without unreasonable interference and without loss of local control, are desirable. Librarians will watch with practical interest the progress of this proposal which, it should have been mentioned, has been approved by the Manchester City Council.

New facilities at Hoechst UK's northern headquarters of Holywell Green were officially opened by Donald Thompson MP on May 19, marking the completion of a major phase in a long‐term programme of reconstruction and redevelopment.

This paper utilizes a new data base on the international activities of small, new ventures in Korea to examine the impact of internationalization on firm performance. Main findings are two‐fold: first, the degree of internationalization by new ventures is related to firm performance in a non‐linear fashion with four phases resulting in the new M‐shaped curve; and, second, the internationalization of the new ventures in the home region of the triad moderates positively the non‐linear M‐shaped relationship between the two as their degree of internationalization increases.

David Peace’s Red Riding quartet ( 1974; 1977; 1980; 1983 ) was published in the UK between 1999 and 2002. The novels are an excoriating portrayal of the violences of men, focusing on paedophilia and child murder, the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper and, predominantly, the blurring of boundaries between the activities of police officers, criminals and entrepreneurs. This chapter aims to examine the way in which the criminal entrepreneur draws on socially constructed ideas of masculinity and the capitalist ideal in order to establish identity. This will be achieved through an examination of John Dawson, a character central to the UK Channel Four/Screen Yorkshire’s Red Riding Trilogy, the filmed version of the novels, first screened in 2009. The central role of networks of powerful men in creating space for the criminal entrepreneur and the cultural similarities between police officers and criminal entrepreneur will be explored.

Using the research approach of bricolage, the chapter provides a reflexive commentary on the films, drawing on a number of other texts and sources, including news accounts of featured events and interviews with the author David Peace and the series co-producer Jamie Nuttgens – an analysis of the texts, using a framework suggested by van Dijk (1993) and McKee (2003) features.

The centrality of the idea of hegemonic masculinity to the activities of both police officers, and criminals and businessmen and Hearn’s (2004) assertion that the cultural ideal and institutional power are inextricably linked are examined through an analysis of the role of Dawson (and his three linked characters in the novels) in the Red Riding Trilogy.

The chapter provides an analysis of one film series but could provide a template to apply to other texts in relation to topic.

The social implications of the findings of the research are discussed in relation to work on the impact of media representations (Dyer, 1993; Hall, 1997).

It is intended that the chapter will add to the growing body of academic work on the criminal entrepreneur and the ways in which media representation of particular groups may impact on public perception and construction of social policy.