K. D. Ewing
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199606078
- eISBN:
- 9780191729720
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199606078.003.0008
- Subject:
- Law, Human Rights and Immigration
Following on an overview of civil liberties during the Cold War, this chapter argues that courts are part of the political constitution and cannot be seen as an obstruction to government, that this ...
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Following on an overview of civil liberties during the Cold War, this chapter argues that courts are part of the political constitution and cannot be seen as an obstruction to government, that this is most clearly the case in times of national security, where there is complete deference to the executive, and that neither the Law Officers nor Parliament provide effective safeguards. In the Westminster system of government, everything depends on the self-restraint of governments and where this is lacking the only remedy is elections.Less
Following on an overview of civil liberties during the Cold War, this chapter argues that courts are part of the political constitution and cannot be seen as an obstruction to government, that this is most clearly the case in times of national security, where there is complete deference to the executive, and that neither the Law Officers nor Parliament provide effective safeguards. In the Westminster system of government, everything depends on the self-restraint of governments and where this is lacking the only remedy is elections.
James Purdon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190211691
- eISBN:
- 9780190211714
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190211691.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter stages a new reading of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907), tracing beyond the novel itself the communications and surveillance networks that traverse Conrad’s London, in particular ...
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This chapter stages a new reading of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907), tracing beyond the novel itself the communications and surveillance networks that traverse Conrad’s London, in particular the Post Office. It analyzes the novel’s interest in postal systems and its pointedly unsuccessful efforts to distinguish between public and private, official and unofficial, forms of communication. Situating The Secret Agent’s anxieties of information leakage and control in an historical lineage with the postal interception scandals of the 1840s, the intelligence leaks of the 1880s, and the 1889 Official Secrets Act, this section of the book re-evaluates the “gratuitous” and “irrelevant” matter disparaged by early critics. By doing so, it shows how Conrad’s work acknowledges the new social and technological extent of communications control while insisting on the prerogative of literary writing to reshape and critique the new systems of textual categorization that emerged in response to the late nineteenth-century information surge.Less
This chapter stages a new reading of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907), tracing beyond the novel itself the communications and surveillance networks that traverse Conrad’s London, in particular the Post Office. It analyzes the novel’s interest in postal systems and its pointedly unsuccessful efforts to distinguish between public and private, official and unofficial, forms of communication. Situating The Secret Agent’s anxieties of information leakage and control in an historical lineage with the postal interception scandals of the 1840s, the intelligence leaks of the 1880s, and the 1889 Official Secrets Act, this section of the book re-evaluates the “gratuitous” and “irrelevant” matter disparaged by early critics. By doing so, it shows how Conrad’s work acknowledges the new social and technological extent of communications control while insisting on the prerogative of literary writing to reshape and critique the new systems of textual categorization that emerged in response to the late nineteenth-century information surge.
Denis Forman
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748617173
- eISBN:
- 9780748671113
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748617173.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
In this lecture, the author, former director of the British Film Institute, argues that while technology has created the new broadcast delivery systems of satellite and cable television, these ...
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In this lecture, the author, former director of the British Film Institute, argues that while technology has created the new broadcast delivery systems of satellite and cable television, these developments are unimportant compared to the quality of the programming which they deliver. He argues that it is crucial to persuade politicians that ‘the true value of our business lies in our programmes’. The collapse of the plan to cable Britain offers testament to this view: ‘not many people are willing to pay…for a service that…is made up of the cheapest television programmes’. Direct broadcasting by satellite will eventually be a success, but the rate of penetration will be slow until ‘you decide on the programme policy’. Consequently, the future of broadcasting seems to rest ‘in the hands of the duopoly’. But there are problems here. For example, senior managers seem more concerned with profits above television programming, but ‘efficiency is the enemy of originality’. Another is the failure to confront government challenges to freedom of expression such as the Official Secrets Act.Less
In this lecture, the author, former director of the British Film Institute, argues that while technology has created the new broadcast delivery systems of satellite and cable television, these developments are unimportant compared to the quality of the programming which they deliver. He argues that it is crucial to persuade politicians that ‘the true value of our business lies in our programmes’. The collapse of the plan to cable Britain offers testament to this view: ‘not many people are willing to pay…for a service that…is made up of the cheapest television programmes’. Direct broadcasting by satellite will eventually be a success, but the rate of penetration will be slow until ‘you decide on the programme policy’. Consequently, the future of broadcasting seems to rest ‘in the hands of the duopoly’. But there are problems here. For example, senior managers seem more concerned with profits above television programming, but ‘efficiency is the enemy of originality’. Another is the failure to confront government challenges to freedom of expression such as the Official Secrets Act.
