‘The importance of being honest’: Switzerland,neutrality and the problems of intelligence collection and liaison

This paper seeks to contribute to a number of debates that have attracted scholarly attention over the last few years. Firstly, by examining the experiences of the Swiss foreign intelligence service, the paper takes issue with what one scholar has dubbed ‘intelligence history snobbery’; a process that has privileged the study of the major powers and overlooked the contribution made to the secret world by the intelligence agencies of small states. Secondly, the paper explores the extent to which a state's engagement in the secret world is affected by its preconceived ideas over its place and standing in the international community. It asks whether the behaviour of a neutral foreign intelligence service is likely to differ from that of any other ‘small’ state, and whether neutrals can be both honest brokers in international affairs, and earnest players in the field of secret intelligence. The final section of the paper looks at the impact of the end of the Cold War and the emerging ‘global war on terror’ on the shape of the Swiss intelligence community.     

Drugs in oral fluid Part II. Investigation of drugs in drivers

As part of the European project, Impaired Motorists, Methods of Roadside Testing and Assessment for Licensing, otherwise known as IMMORTAL (Deliverable R4.2), the University of Glasgow was required to analyse 1396 oral fluid samples, collected from drivers, for a wide range of drugs. A previously described method to include 49 drugs and metabolites was used. To include cannabis in the study a separate extraction method was required because of interferences caused by the collection device. The study group included drivers who were stopped at random and participation was entirely voluntary. The results showed that out of the 1396 samples tested, 16.8% were positive for at least one drug. In the majority of positive cases (85%), monodrug use was found and the most commonly detected drug was 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. This study showed that a significant number of the driving population are positive for at least one drug.     

Education law: Excluding the child

Education law in England and Wales has remained largely immune from the general trend in social welfare legislation to accord children and young people of independence of status and provide opportunities for their participation in some of the decisions that relate to them. This article examines the extent of the denial of children's rights in this context. It focuses, in particular, on the areas of special educational needs and exclusion from school, including the relevant appeal processes. It sees, in developments in Scottish legislation, more positive signs and expresses the hope that similar progress will follow south of the border.     

Empowerment and State Education: Rights of Choice and Participation

Two separate discourses surround the involvement of parents in their children's education in schools. One is concerned with what is often referred to as 'parent power,' based on the conferment on parents of rights to a degree of choice and participation in respect of their children's education, a feature of legislative changes to the governance of state education that started with the Education Act 1980 and which, in part, rests on consumerist and liberal rights based notions. The other focuses on the home-school partnership ideal in which parents and schools have obligations to support each other in realising children's potential. Labour and Conservative 2005 general election campaigns included proposals to 'empower' parents. But social rights such as those in education, which are important to notions of citizenship, tend to be weak. This article concludes that over the past 25 years little power has been ceded to parents, individually or collectively, and that, in the case of rights of choice at least, any further empowerment seems unrealistic. Moreover, the principal mechanism of parental involvement, particularly since 1997, has been the enforcement of parental responsibility, a form of 'technology of citizenship'. The extent to which children hold participation and choice rights is also considered.     

‘It’s Not OK’, but ‘It’ never happened: parental alienation accusations undermine children’s safety in the New Zealand Family Court

ABSTRACT

While the public campaign slogan in New Zealand when referring to family violence, is ‘It’s Not OK’, many women in New Zealand report that the Family Court prefers the catchphrase ‘It never happened’. When women and children escaping violence and abuse reach out to the New Zealand Family Court for protection believing the justice system will help them, they often enter an alternative reality where they are not believed and are subsequently made less safe. This is particularly so for those women whose well-founded fears for their children’s safety get reinterpreted as evidence of a deliberate attempt to alienate the children from their fathers. The Backbone Collective, an independent organisation, surveyed New Zealand women about their experiences in the Family Court, finding that many women reported being accused of parental alienation. This paper investigates the sources of these allegations of parental alienation and how they impact mothers and their children. We argue that the use of parental alienation in the New Zealand Family Court is undermining the international rights of children.