Search results

This paper examines the contested value of healthy life and wellbeing in a context of severe austerity, exploring how the value of “Public Health” is constructed through and with material-discursive practices and accounting representations. It seeks to explore the political and ethical implications of constructing the valuable through a shared consensus over the “facts” when addressing complex, multi-agency problems with long time horizons and outcomes that are not always easily quantifiable.

The theorisation, drawing on science and technology studies (STS) scholars and Karen Barad's (2007) agential realism, opens up the analysis to the performativity of both material and discursive practices in the period following a major re-organisation of activity. The study investigates two case authorities in England and the national regulator through interviews, observations and documentary analysis.

The paper demonstrates the deeply ethical and political entanglements of accounting representations as objectivity, consensus and collective action are constructed and resisted in practice. It goes on to demonstrate the practical challenges of constructing “alternative accounts” and “intelligent accountabilities” through times of austerity towards a shared sense of public value and suggests austerity measures make such aims both more challenging and all the more essential.

Few studies in the accounting literature have explored the full complexity of valuation practices in non-market settings, particularly in a public sector context; this paper, therefore, extends familiar conceptual vocabulary of STS inspired research to further explore how value(s), ethics and identity all play a crucial role in making things valuable.

During the year approval was given to the appointments of 36 Public Analysts, and also in one case to the termination of such an appointment.

Ministry of Health, Whitehall, S.W. 1. 16th December, 1926. Sir, 1. I am directed by the Minister of Health to refer to Circular 606, dated the 11th August, 1925, and to forward for the information of the Authority a copy of the Public Health (Preservatives, &c., in Food) Amendment Regulations, 1926, which postpone the operation of the Public Health (Preservatives, &c., in Food) Regulations, 1925, so far as certain foods are concerned, and make certain minor alterations in those Regulations.

There have always been traditional differences between the various regions of the British Isles. For example, meat consumption is greater in the North than the South; most families take some meat at every meal and this extends to the children. The North is the home of the savoury meat products, eg., faggots, rissoles and similar preparations and a high meat content for such foods as sausages is expected; between 80 and 90% with the cereal only present for binding purposes. Present minimum meat contents would be considered a swindle, also the nature of the lean meat and the lean meat/fat ratio. The high water content similarly would have been unacceptable.

The world has just witnessed two of the greatest experiments in social reform ever attempted in history, viz., trying to make Russia free by Revolution, and trying to make America sober by Prohibition; and it is doubtful which of the two is the greater failure! But the strangest part of it all is that while native evidence is coming over by every mail (some of it the tardy admission of the prophets themselves who had hoped to save the world by their reforms), we see in England, from time to time, cranks and fanatics without experience at all who would wish us to “ follow in failure's footsteps.” It would be a pity to miss the lessons of the paradox, chief among which, surely, is the fact that here in England we are always accomplishing more under the principles of toleration than other countries by persecution. Freedom is part of the genius of our constitution, part of the instinct born of long legislative experience, which the younger and more impulsive countries can hardly hope to acquire at once. The New World may dearly love to teach its grandmother to suck the eggs of sobriety, but the New World will have to clean up the awful mess of this first experiment before old Granny Europe can be won over to the new idea. Human nature is much the same in the mass as it is in the individual; the Puritans produced the debaucheries of the Restoration, but it has been reserved for America to show that “ Prohibition is the mother of drunkenness,” though the older nations who have faced the problem for thousands of years could have told her that you can no more make men sober than you can make them happy by Act of Parliament, simply because liberty forms part of the essential psychology of human nature; and it is here that America has done the cause of Temperance more harm than any publican could ever have done had he set out to do harm of set purpose. But the United States has done more than endanger the cause of Temperance, for by bringing the machinery of government into disrepute, and officers of the law into temptation, she has undermined the prestige of civil morality all along the line, just like some stupid parent will wreck his whole authority by some petty act of bigotry. As a matter of fact—strange as it may seem—it is the modern publican himself who is the greatest Temperance reformer to‐day in England, and this for the simple reason that intemperance does not pay, but bootlegging, apparently, does; and, to judge from the latest details, more seems to be made out of alcohol by Prohibition than ever was made by the saloons. The figure was truly appalling when one comes to compare Temperance England with Prohibition America, which spends twice as much upon liquor as we do—some 720 million pounds, for example, are spent on bootlegging in U.S.A., as compared with 315 million pounds on honest drinking here, two‐thirds of which sum, in our case, of course, goes back to revenue, whereas double that sum in U.S.A. goes towards demoralising their Government. Town for town, the statistics all bear the same witness. London, with a population of seven millions in 1925, saw some 30,000 arrests for drunkenness; Chicago, with two millions, over 90,000; Philadelphia, with nearly the same population, had over 58,000 arrests, whereas Liverpool, with about half Philadelphia's population, had exactly one‐tenth of its number, viz., about 5,000, and so the story of the figure goes on, proving, as I say, that there is far more drunkenness under Prohibition than under sane regulation, and similar statistics as to crime are available. No one, of course, would have dared to maintain that this would be the result before the experiment had been made, but the experiment once made, we can only judge by the facts, with the result that all sound temperance reformers may well look with dismay upon the efforts of those who would wreck Temperance by making it into a Prohibition movement, with the effects in England it has had in America. It would be too high a price to pay for the little amount of drunkenness that remains to‐day of that wave of vice which once made it possible to get drunk for a penny and dead drunk for two‐pence. Indeed, in the last ten years the amount of drunkenness punished by imprisonment has diminished by more than 75 per cent., i.e., in 1913–14 the number was 51,851, and in 1923–24 this number had sunk to 11,425. Yet, small as this number is, foreigners coming over from the wine‐drinking countries are often shocked at the amount of intoxication they see over here as compared with their own countries, just as English visitors to New York come back scandalised.

Millions of the British people have for some years now been struggling valiantly to live with hard times, watching them day by day grow worse but always hopefully that the cloud had a silver lining; that one day, reason and a sense of direction would prevail. Tyranny in many forms is a feature of history; the greatest epics have been risings of ordinary people to overthrow it. The modern form of tyranny is that of Money; the cruel and sinister ways in which it can be obtained and employed and the ineffectiveness of any measures taken to control the evils which result. Money savings over the years and the proverbial bank book, once the sure safeguard of ordinary people, are whittled away in value, never to recover. Causes always seemed to be contained within the country's own economy and industrial practices, and to this extent should have been possible of control. The complex and elaborate systems constructed by the last Government were at least intended for the purpose, but each attempt to curb excessive demands for more money, more and more for doing less and less— the nucleus of inflation—produced extreme reactions, termed collectively “industrial strife”. Every demand met without compensatory returns in increased work, inevitably led to rises in prices, felt most keenly in the field of food and consumer goods. What else would be expected from such a situation?

SEPTEMBER is the month when, Summer being irrevocably over, our minds turn to library activities for the winter. At the time of writing the international situation is however so uncertain that few have the power to concentrate on schemes or on any work other than that of the moment. There is an immediate placidity which may be deceptive, and this is superficial even so far as libraries are concerned. In almost every town members of library staffs are pledged to the hilt to various forms of national service—A.R.P. being the main occupation of senior men and Territorial and other military services occupying the younger. We know of librarians who have been ear‐marked as food‐controllers, fuel controllers, zone controllers of communication centres and one, grimly enough, is to be registrar of civilian deaths. Then every town is doing something to preserve its library treasures, we hope. In this connexion the valuable little ninepenny pamphlet issued by the British Museum on libraries and museums in war should be studied. In most libraries the destruction of the stock would not be disastrous in any extreme way. We do not deny that it would be rather costly in labour and time to build it up again. There would, however, be great loss if all the Local Collections were to disappear and if the accession books and catalogues were destroyed.

Statements appear from time to time in the Press and elsewhere that aluminium cooking utensils are dangerous to health and that the small amount of the metal which may be dissolved or corroded by food may give rise to various ailments and may even be a contributory cause of cancer. These statements have been opposed as being contrary to experience and moreover have been declared by many scientific men to be devoid of any scientific foundation whatever. Nevertheless these allegations have been repeatedly made and have induced many of the public to banish aluminium vessels from their kitchens. The Ministry's Report entitled “ Aluminium in Food ” is an attempt to correlate all the known information on the subject, with the object of arriving at some definite conclusions as to whether or not aluminium is in any way injurious. Not only aluminium vessels but alum baking powders have been brought under review, although the latter have been superseded in this country for many years by phosphate baking powders. The report, after giving details of the occurrence of aluminium naturally in plants, vegetables, foods, etc., and the methods of determining it, proceeds to a critical examination of the published scientific work on the subject. The amount of aluminium which may gain access to food from aluminium vessels under different conditions is discussed, and shown to be very small. Many of the statements made as to large amounts being taken up by food must be ascribed to the use of faulty methods of analysis.