Ravenscraig


Book Description

Ravenscraig is a post WWII fictionalized memoir told from the perspective of Alasdair Marshall who is raising his son Ewan, by himself, after his wife's death. When Alasdair's father Alex is struck with Alzheimer's, Jean, Alex's wife admits him to a full-time care facility called Ravenscraig which has a dark history as a lunatic asylum. The hospital becomes an ever present reminder to Alasdair of his father's deterioration. Jean is overwhelmed by the stress of Alzheimer's and the guilt of removing her husband from his home. Psychologically embattled, she begins to see the spirits of departed relatives. Finally, unable to cope and suffering from emphysema and osteoporosis, she moves to England to live with her daughter Margaret. Alasdair is compelled to examine his relationships with his father, mother and sisters by reliving childhood memories, good and bad. He remembers his family having to live in a cramped, three bedroom apartment with his grandparents, three uncles and an aunt. Clashing personalities and violent tempers are a constant threat to the calm of everyday life. However, Alasdair recalls happy times when the home was filled with laughter, humor and music. Although Ewan is upset that his grandpa doesn't remember him, he finds solace through the healing power of music. When he plays his bagpipes and his grandpa plays his accordion, they are reunited. Although Alzheimer's takes a terrible toll, ultimately it fails to destroy a family determined to reconcile the past with the present and overcome a troubled past....




Ravenscraig


Book Description

Romance, scandal, and tragedy grip the lives of two families and threaten to destroy them both in Ravenscraig, by Sandi Krawchenko Altner. Winner of the 2012 Carol Shields Book Award, Ravenscraig, pitches rich against poor in the height of the immigration boom a century ago. Rupert Willows buries his cruel past and schemes his way to wealth and power when he buys his opulent home, Ravenscraig Hall. Zev Zigman, a devout Jew, mounts a desperate struggle to bring his family out of czarist Russia. At the center is the feisty Maisie, who hides her Jewish roots to enter the world of "The English" as a well-paid maid at Ravenscraig. Love, anger and determination fuel the treacherous journey ahead.




Privileging Industry


Book Description

Why do some industries win substantial protection from the whims of international trade while others do not? Privileging Industry challenges standard approaches to this question in its examination of when governments use trade and industrial policy for political goals. Fiona McGillivray shows why aiding an industry can be a politically efficient way for a government to redistribute resources from one industrial sector to another. Taking a comparative perspective that stands in contrast with the usual focus on U.S. trade politics, she explores, for example, how electoral rules, party strength, and industrial geography affect redistribution politics across countries. How do political institutions and the geographical dispersion of industries interact to determine which industries governments privilege? What tests can assess how governments distribute assistance across industries? Research has focused on the industries that legislators want to protect, but just as important is identifying those legislators able to deliver trade assistance. Assisting an industry requires both a will and a means. Whether an industry is a good vehicle through which to redistribute income depends on its geographic make-up and the country's electoral system. In turn, the electoral system and party strength affect how legislators' preferences contribute to policy. McGillivray tests these arguments using a tariff-based empirical test and nonstandard dependent variables such as the dispersion of stock prices within fourteen different capital markets, and government influence in the targeting of plant closures within declining industries.




The Official History of Privatisation, Vol. II


Book Description

This is Volume II of Professor Parker's authoritative Official History of Privatisation, covering the period from the re-election of Margaret Thatcher in 1987 to the election of Tony Blair in 1997. Volume II considers in detail several of the major privatisations, including those of airports, steel, water, electricity, coal and the railways, as well as a number of smaller ones. Each privatisation involved major challenges in terms of industrial restructuring, organising successful sales and, in a number of cases, establishing effective regulatory regimes. The policy evolved and new methods of selling and regulating were put in place that enabled further disposals to occur. Monolithic nationalised industries with their emphasis on the benefits of economies of scale, vertical integration and rationalisation, were replaced by industrial structures rooted in the importance of commercial management, risk taking and competition. In government departments and parts of the National Health Service, direct employees were replaced by private contractors, and private investment became a characteristic of public infrastructure in the form of PFI/PPP schemes. This study draws heavily on the official records of the British government, to which the author was given full access and on interviews with the leading figures involved in each of the privatisations, including ex-ministers, civil servants, business and City figures, as well as academics that have studied the subject. This book will of great interest to students of privatisation, British political history and of business and economics in general.




Ravenscraig Castle


Book Description




Cash, Crisis, and Corporate Governance


Book Description

A "bottom-up" perspective on government-industry relations focusing on the government's role in restructuring industry in Europe and the U.S.




The Path to Devolution and Change


Book Description

Margaret Thatcher's premiership from 1979 to 1990 had a profound impact on Scotland. David Stewart analyzes the impact of this period of Conservative government on Scotland, while examining the extent to which Conservative policy under Thatcher represented a break from the 'post-war consensus' in British politics. Focusing on the origins and impact of the poll tax, the campaign to save Ravenscraig steelworks, the sharpening of the North/South divide, the 1984/85 miners' strike, and the balance of power within Scottish civil society, he makes substantial contributions to the debates surrounding the decline of Scottish Unionism, the roots of Scottish devolution, the legacy of Thatcherism, and the changing British constitution.




50 Gems of Fife


Book Description

This beautifully photographed selection of fifty of Fife’s most precious assets shows what makes it such a popular destination.







Back from Westminster


Book Description

The British House of Commons has entered a period of substantial change, moving from a state of party cohesion and party leadership toward a more individualistic and active policy-making role. In the dynamic look at the British Parliament and its members, Philip Norton and David M. Wood highlight that change to more intensive constituency response and service on the part of individual members. Like members of the U.S. Congress, British Members of Parliament (MPs) are elected to represent geographical districts. The relationship between the MP and the constituency in Britain has become more important in recent years, but the major changes that have occurred in the relationship since the late 1960s have not been matched by extensive scholarly study. Some pathbreaking work has been done on the subject, but it remains overshadowed by the wealth of material focusing on MPs' activities within the legislative chambers at Westminster. This volume seeks to fill the gap by sketching and assessing the electoral significance of the MPs' constituency work and the broader political ramifications for the workings of the British Parliament. Its findings allow the MP to be seen in full. Norton and Wood argue that the constituency role has gained in importance in recent decades as MPs have become more career-oriented than their forerunners in mid-century. But a by-product of greater professionalism and careerism has been an expanded job description that may take MPs' time and energies away from playing a more effective role in helping to shape the broader policy alternatives for the United Kingdom.




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