The rise and fall of Monica Felton, British town planner and peace activist, 1930s to 1950s

This article reflects growing academic interest in the careers and historical significance of professional women town planners, an interest clearly registered in Planning Perspectives and other publications. Unlike other women town planners, however, the career of Monica Felton remains largely obscure. It was certainly short-lived, beginning as it did on the London County Council in 1937 and ending spectacularly while she was Chairman of Stevenage Development Corporation in 1951. Felton became an outcast from both her profession and her country when she gave up on new town development to campaign against British and American involvement in the Korean War in 1951. This article emphasizes her distinctive contribution to the evolving roles of women in British town planning during the mid-twentieth century and shows how this contribution was obscured by her fall from grace.

Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics

This is the first book of critical essays devoted to post-punk legends Mark E Smith and the Fall, examining the group form a number of different perspectives, including their relations with Manchester and the North, post-punk aesthetics cultural politics, fandom and contemporary media. As John Peel famously said, this group was 'always different, yet always the same', and deserving of more academic attention than they have so far received.

Der Widerspruch zwischen nationalen Berufsbildungssystemen und dem europäischen Arbeitsmarkt: der Fall der Maurerqualifikationen

This paper draws on research into bricklaying qualifications in eight countries to show how equivalence might be established between qualitative differences in occupational qualifications so facilitating the implementation of a European Qualifications Framework (EQF). These differences are associated with different forms of vocational education and training (VET) and related to social partner (trade union and employer) involvement and the significance attached to underpinning knowledge and broader educational components. A main distinction is drawn between countries where bricklaying continues to be predominantly a ‘trade’, based on narrow skills gained at the workplace, and those where it is conceived as a broader occupation with a substantial knowledge base. A contradiction exists between national VET systems and the European labour market, from which stems the necessity for a European Sectoral Qualifications Framework (SQF) if differences in qualification are to be recognised and if the EQF is to function as a meaningful translational device.