This chapter explores Coupland's ambiguous representation of consumption with particular reference to his evolving, and idiosyncratic, fascination with rubbish; waste is a vital and ethically complex category in his fictional aesthetic. Indeed, the novelist's work resonates with the founding concept of Don DeLillo's Underworld (1998), that ‘waste is the secret history, the underhistory’ of civilization. It focuses on Coupland's interpretation of the practices and unconscious habits of mind that surround contemporary commercial activity. The first section focuses on Coupland's evocation of consumer culture. The second and third sections explore the afterlife of objects.

This chapter provides empirical evidence to inform how special educational needs (SEN) can be best resourced in Ireland. By focusing on the nature and scale of the SEN population across primary and post-primary schools, it examines the extent to which the criteria for SEN funding match the distribution of the SEN population across schools. The chapter also examines the ways in which different countries approach SEN financing within the climate of inclusive education policy. It outlines findings from a National Census of Mainstream Schools to examine the profile and characteristics of students with SEN across Irish primary and post-primary schools. The language of special education and use of categorical systems for resource allocation appears to run counter to the notion of inclusion, which undoubtedly has implications for the systems in place for securing extra provision.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the aftermath of the operation and the British government's attempts to expiate its embarrassment and failures by prosecuting the putative rebels and the English, Irish and Scots officers in French service captured aboard the French warship the Salisbury. It offers a detailed narrative of the execution of the Enterprise of Scotland. The book also looks at the Jacobite response to the failure of the expedition, and the Scots Jacobite and Jacobite court's attempts to get a second Enterprise of Scotland off the ground 1708-1710. It deals with two seminal questions: Why Scotland, as opposed to England or Ireland, and who was involved? The book focuses on the interaction between the French state and the Jacobite movement during the War of Spanish Succession.

This chapter argues that the perhaps counter-intuitive absence of social democracy as a contending political agent after the financial crisis is not a coincidence. The key argument that Anthony Giddens advanced in The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy is summarised by two slogans: 'no rights without responsibilities' and 'no authority without democracy'. The Third Way emerged as an ideological concept of European social democracy in the mid 1990s. This was largely as a result of Tony Blair's ascent to leadership of the British Labour Party and his subsequent electoral victory in 1997. The chapter outlines the attendant detrimental effects that have been corrosive for European social democracy. This includes the cataclysmic effects of the financial crisis itself. It also includes the long-standing effects of economic stagnation in the European Union and the political effects arising from the disillusion of the democratic ethos that underpinned the Third Way.

This chapter explores the army’s physical selection process, the first point in the transformation from civilian to soldier. It describes the various medical grades that men were assigned and discusses the qualities that were considered desirable for recruitment. It then looks at individual instances of examination to suggest that the medical inspection was not an objective assessment of the body but was shaped by wider social and cultural assumptions. The experiences of men who entered into this sorting system also reveal that examination could be a moment of contest and negotiation between the individual and the State. While some men tried to avoid enlistment by feigning illness or disease, others attempted to hide their disabilities in order to be recruited into the ranks. Moreover, these were negotiations in which individual members of the authorities were often complicit, as some examining doctors knowingly let unfit men pass through the selection process.

Viewed in the light of the historic conflict, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was a breakthrough in one very important respect. That is, the role of the British state, which moved away from its traditional alliance with the Protestant/unionist community and committed itself to establishing communal equality. This has opened up new possibilities. However, this had not undone other embedded sources of conflict, in particular the depth of the cultural oppositions and the conflicts of identity. The principle of equality on which the British state had hoped to build a permanent peace was now another source of conflict. For the moment the hope for reconciliation has dimmed and there is increasing concern about the future. In 1998, the GFA was presented as a historic breakthrough, one that would bring to an end centuries of conflict between Britain and Ireland and between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland.

During summer 1909, the confrontation sharpened between the government's welfare reform agenda and the demand for women's full citizenship. Key political figure was Lloyd George, promoting his ambitious National Insurance scheme. His ‘People's Budget’ of April 1909 would help pay for this, and thrust taxation centre-stage. Yet women tax-payers remained voteless. So by summer 1909, two concepts of citizenship increasingly clashed. On one hand, Lloyd George urged welfare reforms: democracy for people. On the other, suffragettes demanded a say in policy that affected them, like taxation: democracy by people. This confrontation was played out against an increasingly forbidding backdrop: prison, hunger-striking and shortly afterwards, forcible feeding. This chapter tells the story through the experience of Helen Watts, Nottingham suffragette. In February 1909, Helen attended the WSPU's Women's Parliament in Caxton Hall, joining the deputation carrying the resolution to ‘Runaway Asquith’. Arrest and imprisonment followed, to the concern of her family. For the other Nottingham suffragettes, Helen returned home from prison a heroine. In September, Helen joined a hunger-strike in Leicester prison. But when in the autumn forcible feeding was initiated in Birmingham's forbidding Winson Green gaol, Helen Watts pondered ~ about what was now being demanded of suffragettes.

Based on a research study involving observation of over 370 LEP cases and detailed interviews with interpreters and legal professionals, chapter 4 looks at the operation of the District Court in cases involving LEP defendants. It considers how and when interpreters are provided, evaluates the interpreter’s role in court, and creates an original typology of District Court interpreters, which classifies how and the extent to which interpreters variously interact in and with the interpreted case.

This chapter tracks the evolution of London's punk world and the network which underpinned it. It investigates the formation of ties between pioneer punks, the emergence of punk's stylistic conventions and the broader relational dynamics and division of labour between protagonists. Network graphs and measures are referred to, but only in so far as they inform discursive attempt to fit the process of punk's emergence together. The chapter suggests that the Sex Pistols' gigs played a big part in the growth of London's punk network. It explains the basic mechanisms of network formation. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's shop served as a magnet, drawing likeminded individuals into a common space, servicing their (fashion) needs and facilitating the formation of a network which, in turn, cultivated the collective effervescence that gave birth to punk.

This chapter presents revised and up-to-date estimates of the direct private economic costs of adult disability in Ireland using the standard of living (SoL) approach. It considers the different methodological approaches available for estimating the economic costs of disability. The methodological approaches include three 'bottom-up' approaches and the SoL approach. The three 'bottom-up' approaches are direct survey approach (DSA), expenditure diary approach (EDA) and budget standard approach (BSA). A study by Indecon for the National Disability Authority used DSA, EDA and SoL approaches is conducted to estimate the economic cost of disability. Survey of Income and Living Conditions Research Microdata File (SILC) is an annual survey conducted by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) to obtain information on the income and living conditions of households. It also collects information on poverty and social exclusion.

When Asquith became Prime Minister in April 1908, the chances of enfranchisement took a nose-dive. Instinctively hostile to giving women the vote, he told a suffrage deputation that first they had to convince ‘the great mass of women’ and then ‘the great mass of men’. How were suffrage organization to persuade the public? As well as the great suffrage processions, campaigners initiated daring caravan propaganda tours. The first was the Women's Freedom League van which set out in May 1908 from Charlotte Despard's country cottage to tour Surrey, Sussex and Kent. Among these intrepid vanners was flamboyant actress Muriel Matters, newly arrived from South Australia. She enjoyed going ‘a-gypsying’ ~ but others joining the caravan tour remembered the hostility of anti-suffrage crowds. Margaret Nevinson from Hampstead joined the tour in Kent and recalled the van being surrounded as ‘the mob howled like wild beasts’. A second 1908 caravan tour was that of suffragists (NUWSS) which travelled down from Scotland to Oxford. Meanwhile, in October Muriel Matters and other suffragettes padlocked themselves to the iron grille of the Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Commons. Would all these imaginative propaganda tactics help persuade Asquith?

Chapter 3 describes the changing context of the District Court resulting from immigration. Here, a discussion of how the need for language services in the Irish courts system grew, and was responded to, moves into a more theoretical dialogue on the role of interpreters in the criminal process and the basis on which LEP defendants have recourse to interpreters in that process, including the right to an interpreter. Consideration is given to how the need for interpreters is balanced against other demands of justice and procedure; and consideration is also given to how the developing interpreting system in Ireland has been evaluated in terms of quality and satisfaction.

During March 1911, Laurence wrote furiously and travelled fast: he spoke in London, Manchester, York, Sheffield, Scotland, Birmingham, Bristol, Harrow, Chelsea, Ipswich, and finally Trafalgar Square. Meanwhile Clemence had set off for Swanage and her inconspicuous house, prepared to defy the enumerator. Luckily, her letters home to her beloved brother Laurence capture the poignantly experiences of an isolated evader: visited by the enumerator, then by the registrar. ‘He said he had to carry out his duty, and I said ditto ditto’. Back in Kensington, Laurence hospitably offered his home to local evaders ~ and completed his schedule giving information about himself but not for any of the women sheltering overnight. Elsewhere in his part of Kensington the picture was mixed, some suffragettes deciding to comply. And one married suffragette, Eleanor Maund, determined to evade ~ but was seemingly prevented from doing so by her blustering businessman husband.