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The research discussed in this paper arose from the writer's interest in United Kingdom (UK) rural policy, government and governance. Its aims were to: 1) find out the extent to which the participants in the research, many of whom are involved in UK local government, were aware of the nongovernmental advisory and support organisations that, from 1909 until 2013, were involved with rural policy; and 2) establish the loci of influence in relation to aspects of rural policy. The data, gathered from interviews and an online questionnaire, suggests that political influence lies primarily with the Conservative Party, whose elected members run the district and county councils. Other sources of influence include the middle and landed classes. There is ambiguity, however. Some clerks and councillors admitted that they do not know where influence lies; suggesting that they, at least, do not believe it lies with them. Awareness of the organisations is unsurprisingly varied according to the participants' backgrounds. Overall, the data suggests that the more remote organisations were physically from 'work on the ground', and the more years that have passed since their closure, the lower the awareness of their existence and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal Carbon Allowances (PCAs) are a policy proposal designed to facilitate carbon emissions reduction and engender carbon consciousness: they were investigated by the UK government in 2006–2008 but subsequently shelved. With continuing growth of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and increasing interest in behaviour change agendas PCAs are worthy of fresh development. Wide variation in energy usage between households of similar incomes implies that under the ‘standard’ model of PCAs significant numbers of low-income high-emitters would have to purchase top-up allowances. If PCAs penalise some of the worst off in society it creates a major political obstacle to their introduction. Solving this distributional problem by allocating additional allowances to certain groups or offering compensatory state benefits has been investigated and appears costly and only partially effective. This paper proposes a new ‘Mean & Max’ PCA model whereby higher usage is necessary before purchase of top-up allowances is required; potentially highly effective but consequently the volumes and values of surplus and top-up allowances become significantly different. This difference renders free market carbon allowance trading unworkable, potentially eliminating a hallmark (but publicly unpopular) PCA feature. The new model potentially offers the first solution to the distributional problem since it was highlighted in 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the British setting, the deployment of the phrase 'doing god' has become increasingly common to refer to an emerging trend whereby religion has acquired an increasingly prominent role in political spaces and discourses. This was particularly prominent while David Cameron was Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party. While historically, religion has not had a prominent place in either the former Prime Minister David Cameron. Here, the findings from critical analyzing a series of Cameron's public pronouncements about religion--and Christianity in particular--is set out to try and better understand his own adherence to Christianity (the personal) how this intersected with his politics and role as Prime Minister (the political), and more importantly how this shaped his views about Britain being a Christian country (the national). Contextualized within the embryonic scholarly literature relating to the phenomenon of 'doing god' in the contemporary British setting, this article concludes by considering alternative and analogous frames through which greater elucidation of the true motivations of his pronouncements might be understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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