Eric Bogle’s No Man’s Land and the grave of Willie McBride at the Somme

ABSTRACT

Eric Bogle wrote No Man’s Land in 1975. When it was released as The Green Fields of France by Davey Arthur and the Fureys in 1979 the song topped the Irish charts, while as far away as Australia it was declared one ‘of the most striking musical essays yet written on the futility of war.’ Yet No Man’s Land has been associated with controversy too: branded a rebel song in Ulster during The Troubles, singled out by Tony Blair as a ‘peace anthem’ and prelude to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, and controversially chosen by the Royal British Legion for the Poppy Day appeal in 2014. In addition to exploring the ‘complex relations between cultural and political history’ in Ireland, this article also looks at the making of the documentary film ‘Eric Bogle: Return to No Man’s Land’ (by Dan Frodsham) in which Bogle returned to the grave of Willie McBride on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme to recite his poem to the now famous Inniskilling. To Bogle’s surprise the grave had become a pilgrimage site for this, an entirely fictional, Irish martyr created then immortalized in his own composition written four decades earlier.     

Planning's “Failure” to Ensure Efficient Market Delivery: A Lacanian Deconstruction of this Neoliberal Scapegoating Fantasy

Our neoliberal governance model places a burden on planning to often take “responsibility” for the failure of market-lead governance to deliver its policy promises of betterment, security and future enjoyment. These include promised, but often-unachievable policies, such as those of increased global competitiveness for areas of structural economic decline; or housing affordability in areas of population growth and constrained land availability. Resultant policy failures then result in a scapegoating response where planning is held responsible. Examples include that economic development, or housing affordability, is obstructed by planning impediments, such as regulatory controls or process delays, which are claimed to hamper efficient market delivery. To deconstruct this neoliberal fantasy that planning often impedes policies for market-lead success, the article will first document exemplars of this scapegoating process. It will then explore the role of fantasy and ideology in governance policy formulation and, from a Lacanian perspective, the theorization that underlies this process. Then, it will investigate the role of the “scapegoat” for public policy facilitation so as to explain why planning is often placed in this role, and why this role is often ideologically necessary, at least for neoliberal governance, when planning undertaking its statutory responsibility of facilitating the public interest.     

IS CRIME BAD FOR BUSINESS? CRIME AND COMMERCIAL PROPERTY VALUES IN NEW YORK CITY

To test how crime affects economic activity, we use point‐specific data on crime, commercial property sales and assessed values from New York City, relying on an instrumental variables strategy. We find that crime reduces commercial property values, and the magnitude of the effect depends on the type and geography of crime. Elasticities range from ?0.1 to ?0.5. We find stronger evidence for negative violent crime effects in neighborhoods with lower incomes and higher shares of minority residents. Thus, disadvantaged neighborhoods are doubly harmed by crime—they have higher crime rates and those crimes have stronger effects on economic activity.