The Ballast Trade: An Economic Driver In Seventeenth- And Eighteenth-century Newcastle Upon Tyne

The domination of the economy of Newcastle upon Tyne by the coal industry during the seventeenth- and eighteenth - centuries is well known. Many ships arriving to collect a cargo of coal did not carry cargo but carried ballast, often in the form of sand or gravel. Over many years a vast quantity of ballast was deposited along the banks of the river, often spilling into the water, causing obstruction to river traffic. The management of ballast became a major pre-occupation for the Burgesses of Newcastle and a complex organisation evolved to manage the problem. Ships masters paid fees to the town to deposit ballast at ballast staiths which was then conveyed to the ballast hills at some distance from the river. The cumulative amount of these fees provided a substantial income both to the town and the Ballast Conveyors who leased and ran the ballast staiths, resulting in significant competition between the leading citizens in the town to obtain a lease to work a ballast shore. The ballast trade and its associated social, political and business networks played a very important and previously little understood role in the economy of Newcastle during this period.     

当代美国的福利困境与福利改革

美国福利制度的建立在一定程度上有助于缓解贫困,稳定社会秩序,但是它对美国人的工作伦理、家庭结构等产生了很大的负面影响。福利改革就是将领取福利与工作联系起来,旨在打破福利循环,减少福利依赖,可是,由于存在种种缺陷,福利改革并未取得预期的效果。     

Taxing the Poor: The Politics of Income Taxation in Ireland

Income tax is the largest single means of generating revenue in modern states, and its impact is felt by virtually all members of society. How it is levied is therefore a matter of the highest political significance. Yet countries vary greatly in the manner in which they allocate the burden of paying income tax. In Ireland, the profile of income tax has changed dramatically throughout the course of economic modernization, since about 1960. By 1980 it was generally agreed that employees were carrying too much of the burden, especially those on fairly low incomes. Steady growth in recent years has enabled governments to cut tax rates while still bringing in rising revenue. But shifting the distribution of tax has proved very difficult, and tax reform has tended to favor the wealthy most. This article draws on comparative political science literature to highlight the political and institutional variables relevant to explaining these trends.
"The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is entrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as fairly as he can" (Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, (Liberal), Hansard, 1870, April 11, col. 1639).     

In Search of Causality: A Regional Approach to Urban Growth in Eighteenth-century England

The simple equation of industrialisation and urbanisation contains much truth: recent national surveys confirm that rapid coal-based industrial growth spawned massive urban development in Britain. And yet at the local level a wide diversity of growth experiences reflect a complex and overlapping nexus of growth stimuli which defy attempts at generalisation. In taking a regional perspective, this paper seeks to occupy a productive middle ground in this ongoing debate. Placing urban growth in north-west England into its real economic and geographical context, it recognises the complexities of urban growth but transcends the narrowness of the particular. In so doing, it challenges some of the certainties of industrial urbanisation, emphasising instead the importance of rural industry, urban commercial functions and inter-place linkages. Most fundamentally, it argues for a more nuanced understanding of the geography of causality.     

Planting Peace: The Greater London Council and the Community Gardens of Central London

‘Peace’ has not lent itself easily to emblematic or mnemonic forms of representation. In Europe’s furnished urban landscapes of the 19th century peace was often personified in female allegorical form. She can be seen in many of the sculpted memorials that commemorate distant battles fought on the edges of Empire. Invariably, however, the figure of ‘Peace’ had a more modest role in the allegory of commemoration than that of ‘Victory’ or ‘Triumph’. As an ideal, peace and pacifism is more often regarded as a process, a long‐term goal that cannot be captured in single static form. To this end, the promotion of peace has most often been realised through intervention, occupation, and fluid, temporal forms such as campaigns, marches, songs, dances and other extended programmes. Peace has also been promoted through slow, evolutionary forms such as designed landscapes, parks and gardens. Drawing on international parallels, this paper examines in detail two community gardens in central London. Each owes its origins to radical local agendas set within the political climate of the Cold War of the 1980s, but both were born out of grand visions for world peace, multilateral disarmament, and global accord. Twenty years after their creation, the author explores their current condition and examines their value as sites of political value and heritage.