“Why Wouldn’t I Use It?”: Purdue Pharmaceutical’s Push of Pills

Throughout the early 1940’s to mid 1960’s, the popular habit of smoking cigarettes was not only condoned, but advertised by doctors and lawmakers. With the support of medical professionals and non-restrictive advertisement laws, the widespread use of this deadly product exploded. The ‘Big Tobacco’ industry and the federal government made enormous amounts in profit and tax revenue. Numerous similarities can be found between the advertising of cigarettes and the prescription opioid, OxyContin. ‘Big Tobacco’ and the producer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma (Hoffman and Williams Walsh), employed incredibly similar tactics to encourage the public to use their lethal products. By controlling the narrative about the potential dangers, and the addictive properties through their use of advertisements, both “Big Tobacco” and Purdue Pharmaceuticals accomplished their goals of inspiring the “why wouldn’t I use it” question in the consumers’ minds

Community business in Scotland: an alternative vision of 'enterprise culture', 1979-97

Abstract The force and coherency with which Margaret Thatcher and her inner circle outlined their vision for ‘enterprise culture’, like so many aspects of Thatcherism, have masked the complexity of its origins and the histories of alternative responses. This article provides a history of an alternative vision for enterprise culture by examining the community business movement in Scotland, the largest experiment of its kind in the UK in the 1980s and a forerunner of social enterprise. Working across Scotland, but with a hub of activity in the Strathclyde region, practitioners worked with local people to find ways to develop their neighbourhood economy while improving their environment, creating jobs, and developing services needed in their area. This article outlines the origins of the movement, the shared values of its founding members, and how their training in community development informed the community business model. It analyses how practitioners put their ideas into practice and the reasons behind the fragmentation of the movement in the 1990s. It argues that although at face value the concept of community business may appear to chime with the dominant political rhetoric of Thatcher’s ‘enterprise culture’, the history of the movement provides a signpost to an alternative, if unrealised, vision for Scotland’s recovery from social and economic depression. Where previous historical research has focused on the political consequences of Thatcher’s policies in Scotland, this research connects this discussion to the transformation of Scotland’s civic society in the wake of deindustrialization.</jats:p

Spectacle and spectres: London 7 July 2005

This essay is prompted by some photographs that have haunted me ever since I first saw them, on a train leaving London on 8 July 2005. They were in the Evening Standard newspaper, the day after four bombs exploded on London's public transport system, and they showed the faces of some of the people missing on that day. The same photographs, or photographs very like them, of those people and other people, were published in almost every national newspaper, in one form or another, in the days and weeks that followed the attacks. The faces - pictured on holiday, at graduations, at parties, even the driving licence mugshots - were so vividly alive that they continued to exert a presence even after I knew that almost all of the people pictured had died brutal deaths in a train carriage or a bus that July

Guest editor’s introductory essay: special issue on multi-platform strategies

No abstract available

From television to multi-platform: less from more or more for less?

This article examines economic aspects of convergence and of multi-platform expansion in the media sector. Focusing on television broadcasters in the UK, it analyses the recent migration of conventional media towards multi-platform strategies and asks whether digitization is making content delivery more resource–intensive than before or whether it is facilitating greater efficiency. Findings suggest that adaptation to a multi-platform outlook on the part of conventional media requires investment in staffing and re-versioning of content. Funding this, especially in a period of economic downturn, has encouraged a more selective approach towards content, with concomitant implications for diversity. Notwithstanding generally low commercial returns from online activities so far, the potential economic advantages to be had from multi-platform are significant. The experience of UK broadcasters suggests a well-executed ‘360-degree’ approach to commissioning and distribution will increase the value that can be realized from any given universe of content, partly because of extended opportunities for consumption of that content, but also because modes of engagement in a digital multi-platform context allow for an improved audience experience and for better signalling of audience preferences back to suppliers

The relative influence of above and below ground competition on the growth and survival of ryegrass seedlings transplanted into a hill country pasture : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Agricultural Science in Plant Science at Massey University

In many pasture improvement programmes, for example oversowing in hill country, seedling survival is influenced by competition from the existing vegetation. Competition between pasture plants occurs when resources are limited and may be for factors above or below ground, or both. Technically, the effective separation of above and below ground competition is difficult and considerable problems have been associated with previous studies. A technique developed for field studies combined the treatments of clipping herbage surrounding the transplanted seedling to prevent above ground competition and inserting a metal cylinder (root tube) into the ground to prevent below ground competition, resulting in conditions of shoot, root, full or no competition. Ryegrass seedlings were transplanted in August 1986 into a pasture in summer dry hill country near Wanganui and subjected to shoot, root, full or no competition from the existing vegetation. The duration of the experiment was three months. The effect of competition on the growth of the ryegrass seedlings was assessed by non destructive measurements (plant height, tiller number) taken at approximately weekly intervals. On three occasions, destructive harvests were made and the dry weight of shoots and roots was recorded. Below ground competition occurred before, and was more severe than above ground competition, as exemplified by changes in plant size. Ryegrass plants in the treatments with below ground competition were 80 % lighter, 64 % smaller and had 60 % fewer tillers than plants with either shoot competition or no competition. The distribution of plant size was highly skewed, and indicated that the stress plants encountered when subjected to below ground competition was severe. The effect of above ground competition on ryegrass growth was small except when root competition was also present. Shaded plants were usually taller than those that were unshaded. In conclusion, below ground competition, possibly for soil nutrients, was shown to be the major influence on growth and development of transplanted seedlings at the hill country site studied. The survival of seedlings introduced into pasture was also dependent on environmental factors, especially soil moisture, and therefore important in summer dry hill country. In a second experiment during spring 1986, ryegrass seedlings were grown in tubes and transplanted into a hill pasture at Wanganui. The six treatments consisted of combinations of two planting dates, two tube lengths, two harvest dates and were arranged as a randomised complete block design Seedling survival was high over all treatments (98 %), probably because rainfall during the experimental period was high