The consequence of state controlled forestry in Cameroon has been the overexploitation of forest resources often in conflict with local forest dependent communities and state conservation objectives. The failure of state controlled forestry to achieve sustainable forest management has led to the emergence of new network like arrangements amongst which is independent forest monitoring (IFM) by civil society. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the factors which affect the effectiveness of IFM governance network in Cameroon. Our research focused on a case study of Cameroon, employing a governance network perspective. The main findings are that national civil society in Cameroon is playing a significant role in improving transparency in the forest sector and holding decision makers to account. The paper finds a shift from technical areas of forest monitoring to the monitoring of social obligations and the respect of community rights by private companies. An analysis of actors highlights a strong network of national NGOs with self-defined goals and strategies engaged in very fluid relationships with law enforcement agencies beyond traditional ministries of forests and wildlife characterised by a spectrum ranging from complementarity, substitution and rivalry. The lack of sustainable funding and weak capabilities of national NGOs to navigate these fluid relationships emerges as core constraints for network effectiveness. Accordingly, recommendations for effectiveness entail strategies for sustainable funding, capacity strengthening and network coordination to address current weaknesses but also to build trust and credibility of the governance network.

On the appointed day of 5 July 1948, the National Health Service (NHS) came into existence in Britain. What existed before had been a complex and constantly evolving mixed economy of healthcare, within which hospital services were provided by a combination of public and voluntary sectors. The public sector accounted for the majority of hospital beds and dominated treatment of the chronic and aged sick. However, it is the voluntary hospitals that have often been seen as at the heart of this system because of their historic foundations—many having been established as charitable institutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—as well as their perceived clinical superiority. In fact, the move towards a national health service, which ultimately nationalized the hospitals, gave great credence to an approach Daniel Fox has described as “hierarchical regionalism”. This placed such institutions as leading specialist and teaching centres at the top of a hierarchy of regional service providers, and in doing so reinforced this view of the primacy of the voluntary hospitals

In September 1992, I worked my last shift as an underground coal miner at Point of Ayr Colliery in the small North Wales coalfield. Yet I never really left the industry. As a researcher and academic my work has been underpinned by my own background as a coal miner and continued engagement with the collective memory of coal. The article reflects on this process using memory, autobiography, archival research and ethnography. Drawing on personal experiences of working in the coal industry between the years 1985-1992, it examines the shifting attitudes to health, safety and disability in one colliery, and how such responses were mediated by masculinity, humour, and the shifting industrial relations culture of the British coal industry. In 1989, the Labour Research Department published a pamphlet, The Hazards of Coal Mining, which became a crucial source for trade union officials in stressing the continued problems of miners’ health and safety. Yet the reception of the publication proved problematic in the context of colliery closures, new forms of coal extraction and payment, and an emphasis on increased production. This examination of miners’ attitudes to health and injury was complemented by ethnographic work in one Welsh mining community. The legacy of coal in this locality is still apparent with miners conveying both the physical and mental scars of exposure to dust, diesel and noise, yet working to create their own histories and representations of a mining past.

Paul Rambali, a music journalist during the 1970s and 1980s, explained that popular music had ‘suggested a range of possibilities in life that nobody ever told me at school nor my parents.’1 For young people like Rambali, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s popular music was the most significant cultural form that entertained, informed and influenced them. The music press was where, every week, they found out what was going on and why it mattered. Any young person with a small amount of disposable income could walk to almost any newsagents in Britain and find a copy of a weekly music paper – one of the so-called inkies due to their cheap printing methods which left ink on the readers’ fingers. Even if someone did not have the money to buy a copy, it seemed that music press readers were a generous sort and would share: the National Readership Survey recorded that over nine people read each copy which translated into a potential readership, combining those who read the Melody Maker, New Musical Express (NME) and Sounds, of around 3,000,000 people per week.2 These papers, made in metropolitan London – the hub of the music industry and the press, offered a window into popular music, the people who made it and other fans. Copies piled up in bedrooms, living rooms, university and sixth form common rooms telling not only a story of the happenings in music, but that of social change and the way we as a society understood youth.

During the 1960s, young people were subject to intense scrutiny. Their lives differed from previous generations and as a consequence, they were portrayed as being at the forefront of social change and representative of Britain’s national health. By comparing oral history interviews of those who were young and visited the cinema with media reports, this article evaluates the conversation around ‘teenagers.’ Newspapers’ reports of youth arguably reflected their selection principles and journalistic practices. Oral history narratives, however, complicate press discourse by bringing to the fore a diversity of experiences and understandings: some felt the ‘cultural revolution,’ while others felt bored. This demonstrates how studies of reception materials are incomplete and could benefit from being combined with ethnohistorical approaches.

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Using oral history interviews and questionnaires gathered as part of the ‘Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s’ project, this article recovers and analyses the reminiscences of people who were interested or involved in the British counterculture. By drawing on a broader range of experiences than typically represented in canonical accounts of the counterculture and those that have informed prior historical scholarship, it adds a wider range of experiences, understandings and behaviours when considering how people remember their discovery of the counterculture and its bearing on their social lives, understanding of film, popular culture, politics and society. The article demonstrates how film and, more generally, popular culture held significance in presenting ideas about counterculture as well as how cinemas and film clubs provided spaces for people to socialise and develop subcultural networks. It also suggests how significant class, locality, educational experiences and gender were in shaping how people did or did not enter countercultural scenes, how they understood themselves, their cinema-going experiences and the films that they watched.

In November 2018 two workshops were conducted by Sarah Bown from the University of Wolverhampton in partnership with BID Services, focussing on the menopause as experienced by Deaf and hard of hearing women. The feedback from participants indicated a greater need for accessible information and support.

Despite a long belief in positive impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on host countries and in a positive role of international investment agreements (IIAs) in attracting FDI, empirical studies in neither of the areas have confirmed results. As Sustainable Development has become an important agenda for many developing and less developed countries, where FDI is considered as an important resource for their development. A clearer picture of the relationship between FDI, IIAs and sustainable development will have significant implications in both academic and policy terms. Thus, this study explores conceptual frameworks to re-shape these relationships.

As fans of Harry Potter will be aware, a Dementor is a dark creature which glories in decay, draining happiness and hope from people and creating an atmosphere of misery and disturbance. A Patronus, on the other hand, is a positive force of hope and happiness providing the desire to survive. The purpose of this note is to consider whether the magic of a pre-packaged administration is more Patronus than Dementor. It is widely, but not universally, accepted that pre-packs often produce the best result for a company in financial distress. They often permit an ailing business to be sold, at a higher price than in liquidation, which safeguards the future of that business as a trading entity with minimal disruption and jobs saved.