Kent County Research Articles

Partnership?a marriage made in Kent

Kent spreads over an area of 354 000 ha with a population of 1·3 million. Kent County Council (KCC) looks after over 8000 km of roads of which 70% are narrow lanes or residential streets but some of the rest are the busiest and biggest roads in the UK. Traffic is growing at over 3% per year, which is significantly more than the average in the UK. The county is home to five ports, the Channel Tunnel and the high-speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Kent is a region of contrasts, being recognised by many romantically as the Garden of England, but is under great development pressure, with Thanet having one of the highest unemployment rates of the entire country. In 1992 KCC directly employed 750 people on Highways and Transportation services. Today it directly employs no more than 150, yet more work is done with less money. This paper gives a brief account of the process of change, what drove it and why partnering is the core principle of the new organisation. It also explores the challenges faced by the complex arrangements and considers what might lie ahead in the future.

Tactical Organisation in a Contested Election: Sir Edward Dering and the Spring Election at Kent, 1640

The document printed below, from a notebook compiled by the prominent Kentish gentleman Sir Edward Dering of Pluckley in Surrenden, was occasioned by the prospect of an electoral contest, and probable poll, in the Kent county election for what became known as the Short Parliament in the Spring of 1640. The contest in question was between Dering and his (second) cousin Sir Roger Twysden. The circumstances surrounding the Kent election are well known, and have been explored thoroughly by scholars such as Mark Kishlansky, Derek Hirst, and Alan Everitt. Indeed, the election has been cited as evidence by historians with very different views on the nature of early seventeenth century elections.

An Evaluation of a Delaware Teen Court

ABSTRACTThe Kent County Teen Court Program (teen court) provides sanctions for juvenile delinquency from a panel of a juvenile's peers rather than from a Family Court Judge. Part of the concept behind teen peer courts is that the sanction from one's peers carries more weight than sanctions from adults. The Delaware Criminal Justice Council (CJC) awarded a grant to Delaware ‐ Teen Courts, Inc. to support the operation of the Kent County Teen Court Program. The teen court program was designed to provide participants with hands‐on education in the judicial process, to create a sanction pro‐ gram that will not create a permanent record for a juvenile, and to foster, a sense of community responsibility in the program participants. The teen court program is an adult model teen court in which all of the judicial actors are juveniles with the exception of the judge. This article reflects the results of an evaluation on the Kent County Teen Court program's first two years of operation (Garrison, 2001).

Research in Progress

Research in Progress by Mary Ellen Chijioke Current research into the Quakerpast covers the usual range ofreligious, cultural and social history. Peter Blood-Patterson (22 Tanguy Rd., Glen Mills, PA 19342) has the mosttheological topic in his study ofthe evolution ofthe query on spirit-led vocal ministry in the discipline/faith and practice of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Interest in abolitionism and African American history remains strong. Eve Lee (2711 Ellendale Place, #114, Los Angeles, CA 90007-2242) is writing abookinvolving Quaker abolitionists. James Driscoll ofthe Queens Historical Society (143-35 37th Ave., Flushing, NY 11358) is studying the involvement of Flushing Monthly and New York Yearly Meetings in abolition onLong Island. Onthe sametheme, WilliamC. Kashatus, Director of Public Programs at the Chester County Historical Society (225 North High St., West Chester, PA 19385) is studying Longwood Progressive Friends Meeting and the Underground Railroad. Ed McPherson (4012 Norwood Street, Roanoke, VA 2401 8), ofVirginia Polytechnic Institute is studying the Christiansburg Institute, one of the schools developed and supported by the Friends Freedmen's Association. Marvin Maurer, Professor Emeritus in Political Science at Monmouth University (WestLongBranch,NJ 07764), is writing abook onthepolitical and foreign policy of Quakers, 1918 to ca. 1991. Tarik W. Kamil (45 Sunnyside Drive, Athens, OH 45701) has chosen a somewhat narrower focus for his doctoral research at Ohio University, Quaker activism during the Vietnam War. Local Quaker history continues to thrive. Leslie B. Potter (56 N. Pennell Rd., P.O. Box 16, Glen Mills, PA 19342-0016), is studying Quakers living in the Saratoga Patent ofNew York, 1770-1780, for a property base-line map of the colonial tenant farmers. Phillis Cole (25 Yearsley Mill Rd., Media, PA 19063), Associate ProfessorofEnglish at Penn State University, Delaware County, is including many Quaker families in her study of the history of Delaware County. William Strickland (3412 Brown Place, Apt. J-10, Wilmington, DE 19802) is writing his MA thesis on Quaker monthly meetings in Delaware. Bradley Skelche, Professor of History, Political Science, and Philosophy at Delaware State University (Dover, DE 19901) is studying settlement patterns ofFriends in Kent County, Delaware in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A. Glenn Crothers (188 Coral Ave., Louisville, KY40206), AssistantProfessoratIndianaUniversity Southeast, is studying the Quakers of early national Northern Virginia. 94Quaker History In the area ofQuakers in the arts, Barbara Karsky, (40 rue Chariot, Paris 75003, France), Professor at the Université Paris VII, is preparing a paper on the correspondence of Benjamin West. Robert Torchia (1604 Arcadia Drive #209, Jacksonville, FL 32207), Professor of Art History at the University ofNorth Florida, studying both the artist Charles Lewis Fussell (1840-1909) and the architectural history of Philadelphia's Old Alms House. In the area ofgeneral Quaker biography, Patrick Erben (683 Scott Circle, Decatur, GA 30033) is writing his doctoral dissertation for Emory University on Quaker/Mennonite Francis Daniel Pastorius. Catherine Murray (221 S. 12th St., Philadelphia, PA 19107) is studying Ann Whitall's diary for her doctoralwork at Temple University. JanetLindman, Associate Professor of History at Rowan University (201 Mullica Hill Road, Glassboro, NJ 08028) is writing an article that includes information on Anne Emlen and Warner Mifflin. ...

Book Review. Coroner's Courts: A Guide to Law and Practice Christopher Dorries

1 Formerly Corner for County of Kent (East Kent District)

Influences of Cropping Practices on Verticillium dahliae Populations in Commercial Processing Tomato Fields in Ontario

ABSTRACT The abundance of Verticillium dahliae in the soil and the incidence of V. dahliae-infected plants were determined for 12 commercial processing tomato fields in Kent County, Ontario. Comparison of the data with those from a previous survey of fields in adjacent Essex County showed that soil inoculum levels and incidence of infection were generally lower in Kent County fields and that race 2 V. dahliae was not common in Kent County. From the two counties, 128 isolates were characterized by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis, using the subspecies-specific repetitive DNA sequence E18. A subset of these isolates was also characterized by vegetative compatibility and DNA hybridization analysis with a second subspecies-specific DNA sequence. Isolates with E18 RFLP profiles highly similar to those of isolates previously collected from potato fields in North America were prevalent in Essex County tomato fields but not common in Kent County fields. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that the group I isolates were introduced into southwestern Ontario with potato and that the different cultural practices in Essex County and Kent County have contributed to the differences in the accumulation of these isolates in the two regions.

What a waste

Shepway District Council is a coastal local authority in East Kent. It has been committed to recycling for nearly 30 years and has been struggling, due to financial limitations, to reach the Government's recycling targets. This paper considers how the council, in collaboration with Kent County Council, has started to tackle organic waste and provides details of trial schemes recently initiated.

WHAT A WASTE.

Shepway District Council is a coastal local authority in East Kent. It has been committed to recycling for nearly 30 years and has been struggling, due to financial limitations, to reach the Government's recycling targets. This paper considers how the council, in collaboration with Kent County Council, has started to tackle organic waste and provides details of trial schemes recently initiated.

Borrelia burgdorferi and the causative agent of human granulocytic ehrlichiosis in deer ticks, Delaware.

During the 1998 hunting season in Delaware, 1,480 ticks were collected from 252 white- tailed deer; 98% were Ixodes scapularis, a significant increase from the 85% reported in 1988. Ticks were tested for Borrelia burgdorferi and the causative agent of human granulocytic ehrlichiosis. Infection rates remained stable in New Castle and Kent counties, but increased from <1% to 8% in sussex county.

Is crime scene investigation forensic science? Are crime scene investigators forensic scientists?

Why ask the question? Well, what's in a name? I was + Generating a line of inquiry; prompted to write this presentation following the Annual + Intelligence. General Meeting of the Society in 1997. At that time disAbove all it should be a search for the truth based on fact. cussions regarding the proposed Registration Council of Forensic Practitioners were under way. One question that Very often we need to look back to see forward. This is a was raised was, should there be one register for forensic scicommon theme throughout this 40th Anniversay meeting. entists and one for crime scene personnel? Should there be just a single register? The concept of scientific support came into being in the early 1990s. Even this is subject to change at the moment with forces such as Kent County Constabulary changing the name of its Scientific Support department to that of Forensic Investigation department as described in this journal by Jim Fraser.

“Chunnel visions”: Unpacking the anticipatory geographies of an Anglo‐European Borderland

This study examines the overlapping ways in which a cross‐channel “Transmanche” region has been envisioned, mapped, promoted, and thereby made part of the fast developing European political and business discourse surrounding border regions. Originally conceived along the lines of connections opened up by the Channel Tunnel, the region links the English county of Kent, the French region of Nord‐Pas de Calais, and more recently, through a larger partnership that created a so‐called “Euroregion,” the whole of Belgium. This study unpacks three distinct future‐oriented modes of visioning the cross‐channel region: the infrastructural, predicated on the tunnel itself and the ties of new rail and road networks; the Eurocratic, predicated on EU funding and protocols; and the entrepreneurial, predicated on the business of promoting the region for economic development. By overlapping and drawing upon one another, these future‐predicting and future‐normalizing “Chunnel visions” have a material force and thus important practical consequences. Among them is the eclipse of other potentially more democratic and environmentally sustainable visions of the region.

Green teams and the management of environmental change in a UK county council

Explores the evolution of a participative, interdepartmental staff “green team” approach to the solving of environmental problems and a move towards a culture change within one of the largest UK local authorities. Reveals how Kent County Council (KCC), over a period of several years, used the largely voluntary effort of a group of dedicated individuals to help with a corporate move towards sustainability. Explores the management of these people in the process of cultural change and acknowledges that grass‐roots participative environmental change can be slow to break through organisational inertia and can be susceptible to collapse. Shows how efforts can be undermined both by a lack of a clear corporate direction and by events beyond their own control. Also focuses on the role of external trainers, as change agents, and their contribution to the environmental management programme, in supporting the emergence, motivation and maturation of these green teams. Finally, in an attempt to measure the success of green teams, some of the major team outputs are mentioned, and concludes with comments on the future of the teams. The use of green teams is an approach now adopted by a number of organisations but “the connection between environmental teams and the management of change is often overlooked”.

Raising awareness of transport issues: The potential to bring about behavioural change?

Changes in the directions of transport policy in the UK in the last few years have led to a wider consideration of possible measures to bring about behavioural change, in particular measures which have the potential to reduce car dependence. Among the measures currently being implemented by local authorities are public awareness or travel awareness campaigns. This paper examines the findings of a research project which evaluated a travel awareness scheme in the context of an integrated transport policy. The research project monitored the attitudes, beliefs and intentions of a sample of the residents who had been targeted by the Maidstone Initiative for Sustainable Transport (MIST) implemented by Kent County Council and Maidstone Borough Council. The research project found some remarkably consistent attitudes about car and bus travel over a period of three years, It also found that whilst people seem to be aware of the impact of travel on the environment they do not consider the environmental impact with the same degree of importance as other attributes of travel. A further finding was a hidden desire to switch modes from the car. The paper will conclude by looking critically at the future for travel awareness campaigns.

“Eat Healthy. Your Kids are Watching.” Pilot Nutrition Campaign

Research shows that too many Americans fail to recognize the diet/health link, while those who do recognize it often lack the information they need to change. A nutrition campaign was developed and used a two-step approach to change negative consumption patterns and the social and cultural influences that contribute to them. First, the program used an innovative, focus-group tested message (“Eat Healthy. Your Kids Are Watching.”) to prompt awareness in parents that they are role-models for children. Second, the campaign provided the activities needed to fulfill this role and make changes in eating habits. The target audience for the campaign was low-income adults in households with children living in Kent County, Michigan. Four weeks of campaign activities were directed by the Kent County partnership, which included over 40 active representatives from local businesses, health care, private practice, non-profit agencies, and schools. The partners strengthened outreach of the campaign by creating an innovative logo and slogan and disseminating it through multiple channels using social marketing techniques, such as television commercials, full-color newsletters in English and Spanish, bus signs, billboards, a toll-free number, posters, and school lunch menus. The activities included distribution of a “partners kit” with programming materials, grocery store tours, cooking demonstrations, and WIC (Women, Infants, Children) modules for nutrition education sessions. An estimated 40,100 residents were reached overall, including some 5,940 in the target population. School lunch menus, billboards, and television commercials were seen as the most effective media for reaching the target population. The telephone survey evaluation (800 respondents) revealed that total awareness of the campaign was 41% in all households, but 52% in the target population - suggesting that the special focus on low-income households was effective. Based on these findings, Michigan now has the rare combination a tested campaign model and a partnership to create a statewide nutrition network.

Geographical distribution of variant CJD in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland)

The agent that causes variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (variant CJD) is indistinguishable from the causative agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The transmission route by which human beings are infected has not been established. One hypothesis is that cases of variant CJD have resulted from exposure to the BSE agent via rendering plants involved in the production of meat and bone meal, the main vehicle of the BSE epidemic. We identified cases of variant CJD through the National CJD Surveillance Unit, and obtained lifetime residential histories of cases by interviewing a relative. The addresses of all rendering plants in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland) in production in 1988 were available from a survey done in that year. We calculated the distance between each case's place of residence on Jan 1, 1988, and the nearest rendering plant from postcode data, and used data from the 1991 UK census to estimate the population living within various distances of rendering plants. We compared the observed number of cases of variant CJD within a particular distance of a rendering plant with the number expected if there is no association between residential proximity to a rendering plant and the risk of developing variant CJD. Up to Aug 31, 1998, 26 cases of variant CJD with onset in the UK (Northern Ireland not included) had been identified. The observed and expected numbers of variant CJD cases living within a specified distance of any rendering plant up to 50 km were almost the same. Two plants in the county of Kent each had four cases within 50 km in 1988, significantly more cases than expected (plant A, 1.04 expected; plant B, 0.74 expected). Multiple significance tests were done, so some tests would be expected to appear significant by chance alone. Computer simulations suggested that the observation of four cases of variant CJD living in an area with a population of 1.5 million (the size of Kent) is not unexpected. There is no evidence that people with variant CJD tended to live closer than the population as a whole to rendering plants in the 1980s. The reported cluster of variant CJD cases in Kent is most probably a chance finding.

‘Hired Hands’ or ‘Local Voice’: Understandings and Experience of Local Participation in Conservation

In recent years, the notion of local participation has emerged as a major force in both policy‐making and political philosophy. This paper explores the role that participation is playing in mediating relations between local people, conservation organizations and the ideas and practices of nature conservation in England. Drawing upon empirical research in the county of Kent, the paper argues that there are systematic discrepancies between the motives, experiences and understandings of the various policy actors towards the theory and practice of a participatory conservation. It argues that these apparent discrepancies have serious implications for both the credibility and the effectiveness of present initiatives, whereby participatory practice serves to reshape existing conceptions of conservation and rural space.

Alan Armstrong, editor. &lt;italic&gt;The Economy of Kent 1640–1914&lt;/italic&gt;. (Kent History Project, number 3.) Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, in association with the Kent County Council, U.K. 1995. Pp. xiv, 318. $63.00

Alan Armstrong, editor. The Economy of Kent 1640–1914. (Kent History Project, number 3.) Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, in association with the Kent County Council, U.K. 1995. Pp. xiv, 318. $63.00 Get access Armstrong Alan, editor. The Economy of Kent 1640–1914. (Kent History Project, number 3.) Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, in association with the Kent County Council, U.K. 1995. Pp. xiv, 318. $63.00. C. H. Lee C. H. Lee University of Aberdeen Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 103, Issue 4, October 1998, Pages 1249–1250, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/103.4.1249 Published: 01 October 1998

The Politics of Principle: Richard Nixon and School Desegregation

In many ways Richard Nixon chose a terrible time to be President. He followed an Administration which comprehensively safeguarded civil rights and financed education. Through Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Higher Education Act of 1965, and Fair Housing Act of 1968, country's leaders finally responded to public's demand for equality of opportunity in school and society. Yet by 1968 leaders were not meeting extraordinary expectations raised by such legislation, and they were losing public's trust. Nixon's challenge was therefore to realistically adjust his expectations without dangerously abdicating his leadership. If he succeeded, he could help accelerate considerable progress which country was making in race relations and educational achievement. If he failed, he might help alienate a generation of Americans from their leaders. Some scholars claim that Nixon succeeded, by leading a principled assault on de jure school desegregation. Others claim that he failed, by orchestrating a politically expedient surrender to de facto school segregation. A close examination of evidence, however, reveals that in area of school desegregation, Nixon's record was a mixture of principle and politics, progress and paralysis, success and failure. In end, he was neither simply cowardly architect of a racially insensitive strategy which condoned segregation, nor courageous conductor of a politically risky not-so-Southern strategy which condemned it. Because of his ambivalent past and his country's ambivalent present on civil rights, President Richard Nixon was both. School Desegregation In 1954, while Richard Nixon was Vice President, Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that de jure segregation violated Equal Protection clause of Fourteenth Amendment. The next year, Court ordered dismantling of such segregation all deliberate speed, leaving implementation to lower court judges. On tenth anniversary of Brown decision, however, only one percent of African-American children in South attended desegregated schools, so Civil Rights Act of 1964 moved to enforce Brown decision. Title IV of Act empowered Justice Department to litigate school desegregation cases, while Title VI permitted Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to withdraw federal money from segregated schools. By 1968, due partly because of Civil Rights Act, fraction of African-American children in desegregated Southern schools had increased to ten percent.(1) In same year, while Richard Nixon was a Presidential candidate, Supreme Court ruled in Green v. New Kent County that freedom of choice voluntary desegregation plans which did not produce significant racial mixing violated Equal Protection clause. For next three years, on important questions of whether a school system must achieve a particular racial balance in order to satisfy constitutional standards and extent to which a school board must reassign students to distant schools in order to overcome segregated residential patterns, High Court would remain silent. But new President Richard Nixon would not.(2) The Strategy Writing in National Review in 1964, William Rusher argued that Party is poised to shatter Democrats' century-old grip on 'Solid South'. Of six states which Republican Barry Goldwater carried in his landslide defeat by Lyndon Johnson that year, five were in Deep South. Four years later, Nixon campaign strategist Kevin Phillips expanded upon Rusher thesis. [Southern] white Democrats will desert their party in droves, said Phillips, the minute it becomes a black party. After Nixon divided Southern electoral vote with independent George Wallace in 1968, Phillips predicted, We'll get two-thirds to three-fourths of Wallace vote in nineteen seventy-two. …

First Report of Fusarium solani f. sp. glycines Causing Sudden Death Syndrome of Soybean in Canada.

Sudden death syndrome (SDS), caused by Fusarium solani (Mart.) Sacc. f. sp. glycines, is a disease of soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) in several central and southern states of the United States. In Ontario, Canada, individual soybean plants with typical foliar symptoms of SDS (1) have been observed annually in Kent County since 1993 but the causal organism was not isolated or identified. In 1996, plants with symptoms of SDS were observed in six fields located in Essex, Kent, and Lambton counties. Interveinal chlorosis and necrosis occurred on top leaves of affected plants and a pale brown discoloration occurred in the vascular system in lower stems and upper tap roots. Slow-growing isolates of F. solani f. sp. glycines with typical blue sporodochia were isolated from symptomatic plants on acidified potato dextrose agar (1). Root inoculation of 15 2-week-old seedlings with colonized oat kernals with each of five single-spore isolates caused typical SDS symptoms on 5-week-old soybean plants of cvs. Conrad, A2540, S19-90, and Ripley in the greenhouse. The severity and incidence of symptoms varied with cultivar and isolate. Of 125 plants inoculated, 6% of Conrad, 10% of A2540, 14% of S19-90, and 17% of Ripley plants developed foliar symptoms. Symptoms did not develop on noninoculated controls. F. solani f. sp. glycines was reisolated from roots of symptomatic plants. Although Ripley is known to have resistance to SDS (2), foliar and root symptoms developed following inoculation with each Ontario isolate of F. solani f. sp. glycines. Yield losses in 1996 were difficult to assess because of the scattered distribution of diseased plants in most fields. Diseased plants had few and poorly filled pods. In two fields, soybean growth was severely restricted in large areas covering 2 ha each; however, soybean cyst nematode (SCN) was present in both fields. SCN was present at all locations. Although total yield losses are currently low, it is evident that F. solani f. sp. glycines causing SDS has become widely distributed in southwest Ontario and disease severity is increasing.

Maps and the assessment of parish rates in nineteenth‐century England and Wales

This paper reviews the role of maps in the assessment of rates levied for the relief of poverty in nineteenth‐century England and Wales and examines the relationships between tithe maps and parochial assessment maps both in general terms and with specific reference to Poor Law unions in the county of Kent. An appendix lists 207 parochial assessment maps made in connection with the levy of poor rates which are extant in the public archives and libraries of England and Wales. Other ‘lost’ examples of this genre awaiting discovery in parish churches and vestries will undoubtedly add to this small but important constituent of the corpus of English and Welsh cadastral maps.