New Labour and Community Protests: the Case of the Govanhill Swimming Pool Campaign, Glasgow

Taking the case study of a community based protest against the closure of a swimming pool in Glasgow, this paper seeks to raise important critical questions about some of the key ideas informing New Labour's urban policy agenda: social capital and active community. It argues that normative notions of active citizenship seriously conflict with bottom-up community protests, highlighting in the process issues of power and inequality. Against claims that New Labour is promoting government through community, here we claim that in the context of this community protest, there was government against community.     

Marginalised voices: resisting the privatisation of council housing in Glasgow

This paper explores the opposition to housing stock transfer in Glasgow in the early 1990s. Taking the position of anti-transfer campaigners, it argues that transfer can be interpreted as a form of 'privatisation' involving a profound restructuring in the role of the state in a key heartland area of welfare provision. Using interviews from housing campaigners in Glasgow, the paper argues that the much-heralded rhetoric about housing stock transfer as promoting tenant choice is highly contentious and misleading. The paper includes by highlighting that dispite the move to transfer in Glasgow, there remains a significant campaign against transfer in other parts of the UK.     

Criteria for Justice

A bstract . Six different but common criteria for describing the meaning of distributive justice are examined. The six are (1) to each the same thing; (2) to each according to his or her merit or achievement; (3) to each according to his or her work or contribution; (4) to each according to his or her need or requirements; (5) to each according to his or her status or position; and (6) to each according to his or her contract or agreements. An attempt is made to show how these six can be viewed compatibly and how all support the right of equal access to land and the duty to pay to the community which created it the full economic rent on the site .     

Reviews

DEPRIVATION IN THE OUTER CITY.

Barke, M. and Turnbull, G. 1992: Meadowell: The Biography of an “Estate with Problems”. Aldershot: Avebury, £32.00 cloth.

CHANGING BOUNDARIES OF RACE.

Jones, Trevor. 1993: Britain's Ethnic Minorities. PSI,

£15.

ENTERPRISE IN ARCADIA?

Curran, J. and Storey, D. (eds), 1993: Small Firms in Urban and Rural Locations, London and New York: Routledge, £40, hardback.

MAKING CONNECTIONS.

Turok, I. 1993: Loose connections? Foreign investment and local linkages in “Silicon Glen” Strathclyde Papers on Planning, 23. Centre for Planning, University of Strathclyde, 50 Richmond Street, Glasgow, G1 1XN. £4.00, paper.

COWLEY: THE END OF THE LINE?

Hayter, T. and Harvey, D. (eds) 1993: The Factory and the City: the Story of the Cowley Automobile Works in Oxford. London: Mansell, £40, hardback.

UPDATING SECTOR APPROACHES.

Geddes, M. and Benington, J. (eds) 1992: Restructuring the Local Economy. Harlow: Longman, £22.00, paper.

BORN AGAIN LOCAL GOVERNMENT?

Hodge, M. and Thompson, W. 1994: Beyond the Town Hall: Reinventing Local Government. Fabian Pamphlet, £3.90.     

The Influence of Riparian Protection Measures on Residential Property Values: The Case of the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds

The Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds encourages residential property owners to plant riparian buffers in an effort to reduce stream temperature and thus improve fish habitat. This study estimates the change in the value of streamside residential properties in response to planting a treed riparian buffer. A hedonic pricing analysis suggests that treed riparian buffers reduce the market value of stream-front residential property in the study area.     

Stock repurchase as a takeover defense

We develop a model in which stock repurchases serve as a defenseagainst takeovers by signaling the manager's private informationabout the value of the firm. The manager repurchases sharesto block a takeover only if the cost of doing so is not toohigh. Since the cost is inversely related to the value of thefirm under his management, a repurchase signals that the valueof the stock is high, blocking a takeover. While a repurchaseincreases the expected value of the stock, it also makes tostock riskier. The model also implies that there are too fewtakeovers for efficiency.     

Hospital cost and length of stay in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Objective: To provide a detailed picture of the economic impact of hospitalization in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and to identify factors associated with cost and length of stay (LOS).

Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional study using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS), this study included hospitalizations for IPF (ICD-9-CM 516.3) with a principal diagnosis of respiratory disease (ICD-9-CM 460-519) from 2009–2011; lung transplant admissions were excluded. Total inpatient cost, LOS, in-hospital death, and discharge disposition were reported. Linear regression models were used to determine variables predictive of LOS and cost.

Results: From 2009–2011, 22,350 non-transplant IPF patients with a principal diagnosis of respiratory disease were admitted: mean (±SE) age was 70.0 (0.32), and 49.1% were female. While in hospital, 11.4% of patients received mechanical ventilation and 8.9% received non-invasive ventilation. Mean (±SE) LOS was 7.4 (0.15) days overall (p?Limitations: The positive predictive value of the algorithm used to identify IPF is not optimal. The NIS database does not follow patients longitudinally, and claims after admission are not available. Claims do not indicate whether listed diagnoses were present on admission or developed during hospitalization. The exclusion of transplant-related expenditures lead to under-estimation of cost.

Conclusion: Using a nationally-representative database, we found IPF respiratory-related hospitalizations represent a significant economic burden with ～7,000 non-transplant IPF admissions per year, at a mean cost of $16,000 per admission. Mechanical ventilation is associated with statistically significant increases in LOS and cost. Therapeutic advances that reduce rates and costs of IPF hospitalizations are needed.