The story of Joan Ruddock, born in the Welsh valleys, who came to lead one of Britain's biggest protest movements and went on to address the United Nations, before becoming an MP and minister, is a remarkable one. After her election to the Commons in 1987, Joan held three consecutive shadow posts and, by 1997, was thought to be on the fast-track to high office. Despite having what was perceived by all to be a promising political future ahead, she was overlooked in Tony Blair's early appointments and, as such, branded 'going nowhere' by the press. The slight, though shocking, proved to be baseless, and Joan was soon appointed the first ever full-time Minister for Women. It was a portfolio that saw her, alongside Harriet Harman, push through a radical agenda, getting sacked for her pains a year later. Undaunted, she ran a number of high-profile campaigns from the back benches, including opposing GMOs, championing Afghan women's rights and modernising the Commons. A frank and good-humoured account of a life punctuated by political activism as well as personal tragedy, Going Nowhere is the story of how Joan defied expectations and maintained her resolve throughout twenty-eight uninterrupted years in Parliament.
The story of Joan Ruddock, born in the Welsh valleys, who came to lead one of Britain's biggest protest movements and went on to address the United Nations, before becoming an MP and minister, is a remarkable one. After her election to the Commons in 1987, Joan held three consecutive shadow posts and, by 1997, was thought to be on the fast-track to high office. Despite having what was perceived by all to be a promising political future ahead, she was overlooked in Tony Blair's early appointments and, as such, branded 'going nowhere' by the press. The slight, though shocking, proved to be baseless, and Joan was soon appointed the first ever full-time Minister for Women. It was a portfolio that saw her, alongside Harriet Harman, push through a radical agenda, getting sacked for her pains a year later. Undaunted, she ran a number of high-profile campaigns from the back benches, including opposing GMOs, championing Afghan women's rights and modernising the Commons. A frank and good-humoured account of a life punctuated by political activism as well as personal tragedy, Going Nowhere is the story of how Joan defied expectations and maintained her resolve throughout twenty-eight uninterrupted years in Parliament.
People like to believe in a past golden age of traditional English countryside, before large farms, machinery, and the destruction of hedgerows changed the landscape forever. However, that countryside may have looked both more and less familiar than we imagine. Take todays startling yellow fields of rapeseed, seemingly more suited to the landscape of Van Gogh than Constable. They were, in fact, thoroughly familiar to fieldworkers in seventeenth-century England. At the same time, some features that would have gone unremarked in the past now seem like oddities. In the fifteenth century, rabbit warrens were specially guarded to rear rabbits as a luxury food for rich mens tables; whilst houses had moats not only to defend them but to provide a source of fresh fish. In the 1500s we find Catherine of Aragon introducing the concept of a fresh salad to the court of Henry VIII; and in the 1600s, artichoke gardens became a fashion of the gentry in their hope of producing more male heirs. The common tomato, suspected of being poisonous in 1837, was transformed into a household vegetable by the end of the nineteenth century, thanks to cheaper glass-making methods and the resulting increase in glasshouses. In addition to these images of past lives, Joan Thirsk reveals how the forces which drive our current interest in alternative forms of agriculture a glut of meat and cereal crops, changing dietary habits, the needs of medicine have striking parallels with earlier periods in our history. She warns us that todays decisions should not be made in a historical vacuum: we can find solutions to our current problems in the experience of people in the past.
A groundbreaking investigation into the digital underworld, where far-right operatives wage wars against mainstream America, from a masterful trio of experts in media and tech. Memes have long been dismissed as inside jokes with no political importance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Memes are bedrock to the strategy of conspiracists such as Alex Jones, provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos, white nationalists like Nick Fuentes, and tacticians like Roger Stone. While the media and most politicians struggle to harness the organizing power of the internet, the “redpill right” weaponizes memes, pushing conspiracy theories and disinformation into the mainstream to drag people down the rabbit hole. These meme wars stir strong emotions, deepen partisanship, and get people off their keyboards and into the streets--and the steps of the US Capitol. Meme Wars is the first major account of how “Stop the Steal” went from online to real life, from the wires to the weeds. Leading media expert Joan Donovan, PhD, veteran tech journalist Emily Dreyfuss, and cultural ethnographer Brian Friedberg pull back the curtain on the digital war rooms in which a vast collection of antiesablishmentarians bond over hatred of liberal government and media. Together as a motley reactionary army, they use memes and social media to seek out new recruits, spread ideologies, and remake America according to their desires. A political thriller with the substance of a rigorous history, Meme Wars is the astonishing story of how extremists are yanking our culture and politics to the right. And it's a warning that if we fail to recognize these powerful undercurrents, the great meme war for the soul of America will soon be won.
This book draws on an extensive international literature and policy context, from a wide range of fields of enquiry, to challenge the orthodoxies and systemic issues that serve to marginalise children and young people and lead the way for schools to become more equitable, inclusive and compassionate in their practice. With a particular focus on children with social, emotional and behavioural/mental health needs, it critiques policy and practice as they pertain to behaviour management and school discipline in the UK and the USA, and offers alternative perspectives based on collaborative and relational approaches to promoting positive behaviour and building community. Each chapter features reflection points to provoke discussion as well as offering additional suggested reading, culminating in a discussion of the role of school leaders in leading for social justice. Ultimately, this book will be of benefit to scholars, researchers and students working in the fields of behaviour management, inclusion and special needs education, and education, policy and politics more broadly. It will also offer substantial appeal to education professionals, school leaders and those with a locus on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people.
In this volume, originally published in 1978, the authors survey the historical and contemporary research literature pertaining to two-dimensional visual-geometric illusions. They bring together much of the known data, summarising and evaluating theories that have been offered to explain these phenomena. Coren and Girgus provide a new conceptual framework that suggest that visual illusions are not unitary phenomena. Within this framework, illusions do not represent a breakdown in normal perceptual processing. Rather, it is proposed that each illusion is produced by a number of mechanisms operating at different levels in the visual information processing system. The book contains an extensive collection of illusion figures. It will be essential reading for all of those concerned with vision and visual perception, since it integrates the study of illusions into the main body of psychological and perceptual theories at the time.
This book explores the powers, activities, and accountability of MI5 from the end of the Second World War to 1964. It argues that MI5 acted with neither statutory authority nor statutory powers, and with no obvious forms of statutory accountability. It was established as a counter-espionage agency, yet was beset by espionage scandals on a frequency that suggested if not high levels of incompetence, then high levels of distraction and the squandering of resources. The book addresses the evolution of MI5's mandate after the Second World War which set out its role and functions, and to a limited extent the lines of accountability, the surveillance targets of MI5 and the surveillance methods that it used for this purpose, with a focus in two chapters on MPs and lawyers respectively; the purposes for which this information was used, principally to exclude people from certain forms of employment; and the accountability of MI5 or the lack thereof for the way in which it discharged its responsibilities under the mandate. As lawyers the authors' concern is to consider these questions within the context of the rule of law, one of the core principles of the British constitution, the values of which it was the duty of the Security Service to uphold. Based on extensive archival research, it suggests that MI5 operated without legal authority or exceeded the legal authority it did have.
Issues of gender, religion, and landscape in the works of Shakespeare and Spenser are examined through the lens of colonialism and national identity in this literary critical analysis. This period in early modern English literature is marked by a redefinition of what it means to be British, and close readings of the texts reveal Spenser's developing (and ambivalent) sense of Irishness and Shakespeare's alleged Catholic recusancy. The relationship between biographical details and imaginative writing reveal the conflicting issues of literary reputation and identity that make discussions of nationalism so complex. Pastoralism versus ruralism and internal insurrection versus foreign invasion are among the themes discussed.
A holistic understanding of the physical, psychological and spiritual benefits of marijuana which bridges the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science. By documenting that cannibus impacts the Autonomic Nervous System to restore balance to the body, mind, and spirit, the author shows marijuana's unique value for health and consciousness. According to High Times: "If you would like to be one of those people who seem to know everything important there is to know about marijuana, this is the book you out to read..Bello presents it all with balance, lucidity and a sort of calm spirtuality that you rarely encounter..It's the sort of book you can dip into at random, absorbing nonconsecutive sections at your leisure." (Dean Latimer, Sr. Editor)
The historical biographies of Joan's Great Great, and Great Grandfathers, Eli and Edward, both Sea Captains, plus master ship builders and voyagers brings to life romance, dramatic family life, Atlantic Ocean, Great Lakes sailing adventures, whaling, voyage ship wreck, conflicting religious situations, local government corruption and murder. In addition Captain Elis government commission to charter the Great Lakes and Captain Edwards Civil War service record under Admiral Farragut.
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