This chapter explores the political power of the English elected mayor, how mayors have carved out a role for themselves locally and how they have operated within a framework set out in both legalisation and a written local constitution. It also theorises on direct election to executive political office. Liberal democracy has traditionally portrayed liberalism as a counterpoint to democracy. Certain political concerns are alleviated by indirect democracy. Indirect election of the executive acts as a safeguard against the voters doing the wrong thing. The constitution of Hartlepool council has granted the mayor an interesting ceremonial role to play. The direct election of an individual to local political executive office is the distinctive and defining feature of elected mayors. The direct election by the local voters of the political head of the council and the political leader of the community provides that politician with a clear mandate.

This chapter introduces three powerful enablers for long-term transformation: energy competence, tangible output, and a supportive social environment. Together, they help Life Designers sustain momentum and integrate insights from workshops and coaching into daily life. Grounded in practical tools like the Energy Curve, Energy Map, and Energy–Tension Matrix, you’ll learn to design around your natural rhythms for more impact and well-being. Visual methods such as mini-zines and Life Design Spaces make ideas tangible and engaging, while social scaffolding – from psychological safety to Life Design Teams – fosters the courage to keep going. These practices bridge the gap between insight and implementation, empowering you to redesign not just your intentions, but the conditions that support lasting change. Sustainable Life Design is not about doing more – it’s about designing smarter, with energy, visibility, and community.

This chapter considers geographical variations in the membership of hospital contributory schemes in Great Britain and the associated issue of variations in the resources generated by the schemes. It offers a geographical disaggregation of membership and finance, as well as a discussion of one of the key problems facing the schemes, namely the extent of cooperation and the demarcation of territory. The analysis reveals that the growth of the contributory schemes was uneven and the resources they generated varied substantially. This chapter suggests that the schemes therefore never attained comprehensive coverage, and a key factor in this was the question of attachments to individual hospitals. It also explains that the schemes played their part in regionalisation initiatives, and reciprocal arrangements were developed to facilitate the availability of services, but the process was not without dissension.

We have seen how one function of the stories within Traveller storytelling traditions is to express and transmit complex Travellercentric themes between the people who share them. In this chapter, we consider narratives where supernatural elements appear within empirical reality and see how supernatural narratives serve a crucial social function within the Travellers’ storytelling traditions. This chapter also reconceptualises the nomenclature in describing such stories, accounting for their status within the Travellers’ traditions and advocates the term super-empirical to describe ‘fantastical’ story spaces. The ubiquity of the fantastic in international traditions speaks to its universal relevance to social life, while its local manifestations are ideal subjects for interrogations into the social experience of discrete communities.

The super-empirical world is an exemplary conduit for the sense of cultural continuity that we have encountered time and again throughout this book. This chapter gives a brief summary of historical attitudes toward the supernatural in Scotland and how these attitudes affected later folkloric scholarship. This summary illuminates previous conceptualisations of the supernatural in Scotland's folklore to place the Travellers’ traditions within the context of the wider Scottish traditions. This summary is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to invoke specific collectors of Scottish folklore, arguing that their contributions continue to shape the way we understand storytelling to this day. The chapter goes go on provide an overview of the fantastical in the Travellers’ traditions using extant examples from the SSS Archives and related literature. Insights from critical analyses of the fantastic are then brought to bear on the super-empirical narratives of the Travellers. Our purpose here is to reinforce the conclusions of the preceding chapters with further detailed evidence.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about Irish foreign policy. This volume considers Ireland's relationship with Great Britain and argues that the roots of Irish foreign policy are to be found in the inevitable fixation of Irish foreign policy makers with their closest neighbour. It suggests that national identity is a process rather than a fixed state and that the significance of the relationship between identity and foreign policy is not restricted to areas of political interest. This volume also presents four narratives related to Irish foreign policy.

This chapter explores the crisis of democracy today — the way that, in the conditions of the ‘war on terror’ and with the ideological consensus that has emerged around the ‘free market’ and ‘security’, the term ‘democracy’ has become largely meaningless. However, rather than simply abandoning democracy, it suggests that democracy contains a radical and emancipative potential that can be reactivated today. It considers a number of different attempts to revive democracy: William Connolly's democratic ethos of pluralism; Jürgen Habermas' and Seyla Benhabib's notions of ‘deliberative democracy’; Claude Lefort's concept of the democratic revolution; and Chantal Mouffe's pluralistic approach to radical democracy. In pointing out the benefits and limitations of these different approaches, the chapter concludes that for democracy to be taken seriously today — for its principle of liberty and equality to be realised — then it must be detached from the concept of state sovereignty. It also discusses postmodernity, the desirability of the democratic consensus, democracy without foundations, and the link between democracy and globalisation.

While the origins of African American English (AAE) have been the focus of debate among linguists for nearly a century, such interest has been aimed primarily at the vernacular end of the continuum, with dialectologists pointing to the retention of features from early British English, while creolists trace the origins to a Gullah-like creole spoken on the US plantations. Though no consensus has been reached regarding the origins of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a focus on the socio-historical evidence suggests that diverse ecological conditions likely yielded a range of linguistic outcomes within the context of the plantation economy. The modern-day development of African American Standard English (AASE), on the other hand, may be traced to the first half of the twentieth century, as the African American middle class emerged in racially segregated neighbourhoods, where increased economic opportunity was met by systemic efforts to disenfranchise upwardly mobile African Americans.