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This article argues that shifts in the UK's territorial management practice in the late 2010s and early 2020s, described by various terms, including 'muscular unionism', may be more rhetorical and ideational than substantive. The practices associated with these terms are recognisably part of the 'British political tradition', and the changes of the early 2020s can be viewed as reasserting traditional governance practices rather than introducing new ones. The article examines the various phenomena described as 'muscular unionism' and suggests that many are relatively ad hoc, low-level initiatives, often rhetorical. There is also much evidence that the UK governments of the 2020s see the 'Millennium Settlement', introduced in 1999, as continuing to be a core part of UK territorial management. The clearest break from historical practice comes in the overt, explicit quality of 'muscular unionist' rhetoric. The article then suggests that, contrary to some scholarly expectations, this muscular unionist turn may come to be an effective territorial management strategy for the UK government, as it aligns with an Anglo-British imaginary within England that continues to conflate England, Britain and the UK in terms of governance and national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, Colgate University Libraries began converting their static HTML website to the Drupal platform. This article outlines the process librarians used to complete this project using only in-house resources and minimal funding. For libraries and similar institutions considering the move to a content management system, this case study can provide a starting point and highlight important issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on sub-national governance and leadership has frequently suggested that elected leaders can use influence and facilitation skills alongside coercive power, legal responsibilities and resources to achieve policy outcomes. This article investigates the degree to which influence, networking and leadership – or 'generative power' – can themselves extend a sub-national body's 'capacity to govern'. It uses empirical data from the activities of the six 'metro-mayors' elected in England in 2017 to explore whether new institutions, faced with tight limits on policy divergence and institutional and financial resources, seek to transcend these via generative power, and whether the types of generative power used are in line with the previous literature. Findings indicate that many of the previous patterns of generative power are followed in the English case, but also that generative power has not dominated the metro-mayors' early priorities. Their focus on the distribution of funds suggests that they may develop into 'grant coalitions', maximising funds from central government in place of developing a distinct local strategy. The article contributes to the literatures on urban leadership and sub-national governance, and also has implications for jurisdictional design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK's decision to leave the European Union in 2016 threatens to open up a range of territorial management issues that have long remained unexplored. Since 1999, the UK's devolution settlements have allowed divergent constitutional narratives to develop and to co-exist. This 'constructive ambiguity' has led UK territorial governance to take the form of 'Schrodinger's devolution', where Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have and have not experienced fundamental constitutional change. However, the technical requirements of Brexit will mandate the need for exact decisions where 'constructive ambiguity' has existed up to now. The UK's unwritten constitution, limited intergovernmental relations and a lack of shared rule mechanisms mean that these technical decisions have the potential to lead to ongoing political instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to examine the complex interrelationship between 'front' and 'back' stage policy-making. 'Front stage' describes the activities of visible and accountable office holders in elected bodies, constrained by established bureaucratic rules. 'Back stage' describes the world of unseen decision-making where public officials are less constrained by formal rules and public scrutiny. Drawing on a recent case study of English devolution in the United Kingdom, this article examines how front and back stage policy-making shape one another and the impact this can have on policy effectiveness and democratic accountability. Findings reveal that policy-makers need to think more explicitly about the interplay between front and back stage activities. In the context of English devolution, the transition from back to front stage has been flawed. Central government's purposeful strategy of informal negotiations with very few formal objectives has resulted in low stakeholder buy-in, which has mitigated against the potential effectiveness of back stage decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While devolution has provided a stronger political voice for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since the late 1990s, it is only in the past few years that English public opinion appears to have become exercised by the lack of similar arrangements for England. The renewed debates over the character of the Union after the Scottish independence referendum reveal a desire for 'fair treatment' of England within a Union conceived as a partnership of equals. At the same time, numerous proposals have been made for devolution of power within England, reflecting long-held concerns about the territorial hegemony of London. Solutions to the former issue include English votes for English laws and an English Parliament. Solutions to the latter include city-regions, strengthened local government, the first of these appears to be the government's preferred route, in the light of the recent 'Greater Manchester Agreement'. However, none of these 'solutions' can count on being implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Local Government Act 2000 established the system of ‘overview and scrutiny’ in a majority of English local authorities. Ostensibly an attempt to transfer some of the features of the parliamentary/government decisionmaking process, the new system has not been able entirely to replace its predecessor. An analysis of three case-study county councils shows that they have adapted the overview and scrutiny system to existing political preferences, which owe much both to existing local government practice and to the prevailing cultures within the councils. Culture has influenced the structure of committees, their relationship to the executive, officer relationships, questioning, and use of the call-in function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Government's now-defunct plans for elected regional assemblies in England were principally economic and administrative in focus, and therefore paid little attention to perceptions of regional culture or identity and therefore to questions over regional boundaries. A comparison of two regions of England-Cornwall and the North-East-indicates that regional identity played some role in each. In Cornwall, which is not a standard region, regional campaigners began with an almost ethnonationalist perspective and refocused their campaign on economic and administrative issues. In the North-East, shared economic history and experience characterised the early campaigns, and less successful attempts were made to extrapolate regional identity from this. This relates to historical Labour Party uneasiness about territorial identity, a factor that is far less present in Cornwall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports the referendum of an elected mayor for a local authority in Great Britain. Factors influencing the results of the referendum; Details on the restructuring of executive arrangements; Implementation of postal balloting procedure.

Packet-based data networks such as British Telecommunications (BT) plc's switched multimegabit data service (SMOS) have performance that varies with customer behavior, network design, and network provision. This paper describes a system researched to monitor such networks from the customer's perspective, but on behalf of the operator. The information generated allows the operator to determine whether the network is performing correctly or whether changes or customer load will require the network to be changed in some way. Such networks are increasingly important as many parts of the Internet are built on similar technologies. The paper specifically considers an architecture that encompasses all the main functionality involved in performance management of networks. Consideration is given to the management and dissemination of the data collected. A database to enhance network data mining performance is described. A method to identify the periods of significance in the measurement data based on a statistical test and a neural network is incorporated into a realization of the architecture. In addition, a novel mechanism for the real-time presentation of the network performance data in an operator-friendly manner is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Treatment of bis(fluoroalkyl) phosphites (RFCH2O)2P(O)H, where RF was CF3 or C2F5 with sulfur in pyridine at 80°C gave salts of structure [(RFCH2O)2P(O)SH]NC5H5 in 90 and 88% yield, respectively. The salts reacted with alkyl iodides in acetonitrile at 50°C to furnish bis(fluoroalkyl) S-alkyl phosphorothiolates (RFCH2O)2P(O)SR, where R was Me, Et, n- and i-Pr (when RF =CF3) and Me (when RF =C2F5). Yields ranged from 21 to 57%. Bis(trifluoroethyl) S-methyl phosphorothiolate (CF3CH2O)2P(O)SMe underwent fluorination by silver(I) fluoride in acetonitrile at room temperature to yield the phosphorofluoridate (CF3CH2O)2P(O)F in 75% yield. Tris(fluoroalkyl) phosphorothionates (RFCH2O)3P=S, where RF was CF3, C2F5 and C3F7, were prepared in 30–34% yield by heating the tris(fluoroalkyl) phosphites (RFCH2O)3P and sulfur to 200°C in a sealed tube for 8h. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Network performance monitoring is essential for managing a network efficiently and for ensuring reliable operation of the network. Monitored network performance changes reflect events in the network, such as faults, significant changes in usage patterns or planned alterations. Network managers are interested in how and when the performance of a network changes; however it is inefficient to analyse all the data resulting from the monitoring operation manually. In this paper a rule based algorithm to automate detection of the changes in one of the network performance parameters, namely delay, is presented and described in detail. The nature of the delay pattern in a commercial communication network was the key issue in developing this algorithm. The approach was tested with monitored delay data generated from three different networks and showed good results. Also, the algorithm was tested with sets of delay data which have been already input to a previously developed detector based on a different approach, and the results between the two detectors are compared. In addition to a noticeable improvement in detection performance, the new approach provides more generality and independency of the source of the delay data, making the approach generally applicable to other networks. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Books reviewed in this article: Robert Brenner, The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy Anthony Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics: Opposition to Europe in the British Conservative and Labour Parties since 1945 Martin Holmes (ed.), The Eurosceptic Reader Dick Leonard and Mark Leonard (eds.), The Pro–European Reader Ben Pimlott and Nirmala Rao, Governing London Jean L. Cohen, Regulating Intimacy: A New Legal Paradigm Michael Newman, Ralph Miliband and the Politics of the New Left Kate Berridge, Vigor Mortis: The End of the Death Taboo Peter Clarke, The Cripps Version: The Life of Sir Stafford Cripps Tom Bentley and Daniel Stedman Jones (eds.), The Moral Universe Richard Lindley, Panorama: Fifty Years of Pride and Paranoia Gøsta Esping–Andersen with Duncan Gallie, Anton Hemerijck and John Myles, Why We Need a New Welfare State Reinhard Heinisch, Populism, Proporz, Pariah: Austria Turns to the Right. Austrian Political Change, its Causes and Repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the constitutional affairs and administrative policies of the Labour Party government in Great Britain. Establishment of the Electoral Commission, Joint Committee on Human Rights, House of Lords Constitution Committee; Legality of the Act of the Scottish Parliament; Devolution process of the government on distinctive policies.

The constitution received official recognition in 2003 with the creation of the Department of Constitutional Affairs, but the year was spent mopping up unfinished business from the reform programme started in 1997. This article covers developments in freedom of information, the regulation of the civil service, House of Lords reform, devolution in Scotland and Wales, preparations for devolution to the English regions, and electoral systems and fixed-term elections. A number of themes have become apparent. There is an increasing role for the various constitutional watchdogs outside Parliament, adding to the general shift away from parliamentary sovereignty. The constitution is becoming more visible, with more being written down. Most importantly, the government tends to see constitutional reform as part of pragmatic politics with no clear vision of the final product. Without an all-embracing theory, constitutional change continues to be piecemeal, and both the need and calls for further reform will continue to rumble on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2002 has seen plenty of constitutional developments and proposals for reform, notably a white paper on elected regional assemblies and a white paper on House of Lords reform, followed by the establishment of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to consider options on the composition of the upper house. There has also been considerable innovation in the pilots of electronic and all-postal voting in the local elections. However, as so often since 1997, many have been disappointed with the content of reform proposals and the piecemeal approach the government has continued to take. Although this article is retrospective, much of the last year has been spent looking forwards. Freedom of Information is moving up the agenda of public bodies as the full commencement date of 2005 approaches, while the devolved institutions are looking towards their second elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]