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This paper aims to explore right wing populist government responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

This paper is a narrative overview of right-wing populist policies and strategies, which is loosely structured around fascistic themes set out in Albert Camus’ allegorical novel, The Plague.

Although individual responses to the coronavirus pandemic among right-wing populists differ, they appear to coalesce around four central themes: initial denial and then mismanagement of the pandemic; the disease being framed as primarily an economic rather than a public health crisis; a contempt for scientific and professional expertise; and the “othering” of marginal groups for political ends. Populist responses to the pandemic have given rise to increased levels of xenophobia, the violation of human rights and the denigration of scientific expertise.

This is a narrative overview from a personal viewpoint.

Drawing on themes in Camus' novel The Plague, this is a personal perspective on right wing populist government responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Populist responses to the pandemic have given rise to increased levels of intolerance and xenophobia and the violation of human rights and civil liberties.

This study aims to critically examine the effects of COVID-19 social discourses and policy decisions specifically on older adult volunteers in the UK, comparing the responses and their effects in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, providing perspectives on effects of policy changes designed to reduce risk of infection as a result of COVID-19, specifically on volunteer involvement of and for older adults, and understand, from the perspectives of volunteer managers, how COVID-19 restrictions had impacted older people’s volunteering and situating this within statutory public health policies.

The study uses a critical discourse approach to explore, compare and contrast accounts of volunteering of and for older people in policy, and then compare the discourses within policy documents with the discourses in personal accounts of volunteering in health and social care settings in the four nations of the UK. This paper is co-produced in collaboration with co-authors who have direct experience with volunteer involvement responses and their impact on older people.

The prevailing overall policy approach during the pandemic was that risk of morbidity and mortality to older people was too high to permit them to participate in volunteering activities. Disenfranchising of older people, as exemplified in volunteer involvement, was remarkably uniform across the four nations of the UK. However, the authors find that despite, rather than because of policy changes, older volunteers, as part of, or with the help of, volunteer involving organisations, are taking time to think and to reconsider their involvement and are renewing their volunteer involvement with associated health benefits.

Working with participants as co-authors helps to ensure the credibility of results in that there was agreement in the themes identified and the conclusions. A limitation of this study lies in the sampling method, as a convenience sample was used and there is only representation from one organisation in each of the four nations.

The paper combines existing knowledge about volunteer involvement of and for older adults.

This chapter explains how fundamental organisational change in the UK National Health Service (NHS) is being effected by new practices of digitised information gathering and use. It analyses the taken-for-granted IT infrastructures that lie behind digitisation and considers the relationship between digitisation and big data.

Qualitative research methods including discourse analysis, ethnography of software and key informant interviews were used. Actor-network theories, as developed by Science and technology Studies (STS) researchers were used to inform the research questions, data gathering and analysis. The chapter focuses on the aftermath of legislation to change the organisation of the NHS.

The chapter shows the benefits of qualitative research into specific manifestations information technology. It explains how apparently ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ quantitative data gathering and analysis is mediated by complex software practices. It considers the political power of claims that data is neutral.

The chapter provides insight into a specific case of healthcare data and. It makes explicit the role of politics and the State in digitisation and shows how STS approaches can be used to understand political and technological practice.

Previous research has established that there is a relationship between housing and mental health, however, understanding about how and why housing affects mental health is still limited. The purpose of this paper is to address this deficit by focusing on the experiences of residents of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).

Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 HMO residents who were asked about their housing career and experience of living in a HMO. Participants were recruited with assistance from community organisations and landlords.

The physical properties and social environment of the property, as well as personal circumstances experienced prior to the move into the property, all influenced how mental health was affected. The authors identify and discuss in detail three key meditating factors: safety, control and identity which may affect how living in the property impacts the mental health of tenants.

Good property management can lessen the potential harmful effects of living in a HMO. However, poorly run properties which house numerous vulnerable people may increase the risk of poor mental health due to attendant high levels of stress and possible risk of abuse.

Based on the reports of HMO residents, the authors outline the key mediating processes through which living in HMOs may affect mental wellbeing, as well as illuminating the potential risks and benefits of HMOs, an overlooked tenure in housing research.

This paper analyses how neighbourhood governance of social care affects the scope for frontline workers to address health inequities of older ethnic minorities. We critically discuss how an area-based, generic approach to service provision limits and enables frontline workers' efforts to reach out to ethnic minority elders, using a relational approach to place. This approach emphasises social and cultural distances to social care and understands efforts to bridge these distances as “relational work”.

The authors conducted a two-year multiple case study of the cities of Nijmegen and The Hague, the Netherlands, following the development of policies and practices relevant to ethnic minority elders. They conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with managers, policy officers and frontline workers as well as 295 h of participant observation at network events and meeting activities.

Relational work was open-ended and consisted of a continuous reorientation of goals and means. In some cases, frontline workers spanned neighbourhood boundaries to connect with professional networks, key figures and places meaningful to ethnic minority elders. While neighbourhood governance is attuned to equality, relational work practice fosters possibilities for achieving equity.

Further research on achieving equity in relational work practice and more explicit policy support of relational work is needed.

The paper contributes empirical knowledge about how neighbourhood governance of social care affects ethnic minority elders. It translates a relational view of place into a “situational” social justice approach.

Fashion subscription service is a newly emerged retailing model that provides an innovative way of shopping to meet consumers’ fashion needs. From the perspective of innovation adoption, the purpose of this paper is to provide an insight of consumers’ perceptions as well as adoption intention of this innovative retailing format.

This research is qualitative in nature, utilizing focus group study approach. In this paper, content analysis was applied to analyze the data.

While possessing varying degrees of knowledge about fashion subscription retailing, the participants shared the following perceptions of relative advantages, including convenience, personalization, consumer excitement, opportunities to try new styles, and opportunity to better manage their apparel budget. Concerns mainly focused on missing social shopping experiences and the hassle in the cancellation process. The overall adoption intention was high.

Due to the nature of this research, the sample size was limited and results may not be generalized. This research paid less attention to individual differences, in terms of demographic and psychographic characteristics.

Future marketing could focus more on educating consumers about the attributes of the services they provide. Retailers can strategically leverage the positively perceived advantages in their marketing communications to enhance consumers’ adoption intention of their services.

The paper fills a gap in the literature on consumer behavior toward fashion subscription retailing and sheds light for companies in their endeavors to excel in this new retailing venue.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an electronic solution to effectively lock swivelling wheel steering positions to driver‐control. Simple and affordable systems are described to assist forklift users in steering their walkie type forklifts or pallet jacks across sloping ground.

A rolling road was created as an assessment tool and trials with both the test bed and in real situations were conducted to evaluate the new systems. The small swivel detector that was created could be successfully attached to swivelling wheel swivel bearings.

The new system was successful, robust and was not affected by changeable parameters. The simple systems assisted hand truck operators in steering their forklifts across sloping ground without veering off course. The systems overcame the problems associated with forklifts that steer using two swivelling wheels and meant that less work was required from hand truck operators as their forklifts tended to travel in the desired direction

Experiments demonstrated that calibrating forklift controllers for straight‐line balance and optimizing motor‐compensation did not solve this problem. Instead, swivelling wheel angle was selected to provide feedback. At the point when veer is first detected, a forklift has already begun to alter course and the job of the correction system is to minimize this drift from the desired course.

The forklifts and pallet jacks often steer by having swivelling wheels but problems with this configuration occur when a forklift is driven along sloping ground because they can swivel in the direction of the slope. Gravity then causes the forklift or pallet jack to start an unwanted turn or “veer” and the vehicle goes in an unintended direction. This situation is exacerbated for vehicles with switch controls, as switches cannot provide fine control to trim and compensate.

Each year in the United States, over 100 employees are killed and 36,000 are seriously injured in accidents involving forklift trucks and pallet carriers. This is the second leading cause of occupational fatalities in “industrial” type workplaces. The research aims to make the use of this type of equipment safer and the systems can be attached to many standard forklifts and pallet jacks.