Variations in third/minor party support in English constituencies

Abstract. The paper presents an ecological analysis evaluating two explanatory perspectives on third/minor party advances in recent English general elections. The impact of community cohesion on third/minor party mobilisation is complex and differentiated. Cohesion stemming from the socio-economic homogeneity of constituency environments tends to buttress support for the two main class-based parties. However, communal cohesion stemming from workplace-residence proximity tends to favour the channeling of collective protest into third/minor parties. Third/minor party advances are also shown to be positively related to prior situations of major party dominance in constituencies, particularly in the 1983 election.     

Fashion:Durable Transience

EVER had one of those guilty moments when you’ve just spent a small fortune on an item of "fashion," and you dare not admit it to yourself, let alone to your sensible spouse? After all, it will be outdated by next season, won’t it? As we all know, fashion is the most transient of things, and therefore is one of the great extravagances in life. Or is it?     

What the Nation Expects!

IT was precisely 50 years ago that my parents put me,a skinny but carefree eight-year-old kid,aboard an aeroplane at Nairobi’s Embakasi Airport and sent me away to a boarding school in England.Unlike Rudyard Kipling,who was destined not to see his mother for f ive years after he had been sent from India for a dose of English schooling,I was reunited with my family at least once every year for the next 10 years.I was one of the lucky ones.     

Filling the Bellies of the Billions

MY friend Wu Wei is understandably concerned about the safety aspects of intensified food production. My own particular interest is in how we are going to cope with the ever-increasing demands for food from a global population that threatens to overwhelm the resources of the world’s land mass.