title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Amongst other witnesses to Victor's wrath are tactless family friend Jean Warboys and next-door neighbours Patrick (Victor's nemesis) and Pippa Trench. Patrick often discovers Victor in inexplicably bizarre or compromising situations, leading him to believe he is insane. The Meldrews' neighbour on the other side, overly cheery charity worker Nick Swainey, also adds to Victor's frustration.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Although set in a traditional suburban setting, the show subverts this genre with a strong overtone of black comedy. Series One's "The Valley of Fear" is an episode which caused controversy, when Victor found a frozen cat in his freezer. Writer David Renwick also combined farce with elements of tragedy. For example, in the final episode, Victor is killed by a hit-and-run driver, and although there is no explicit reference that Victor and Margaret had children, the episode "Timeless Time" contained a reference to someone named Stuart; the strong implication being that they once had a son who had died as a child.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: A number of episodes were also experimental in that they took place entirely in one setting. Such episodes include: Victor, Margaret and Mrs Warboys stuck in a traffic jam; Victor and Margaret in bed suffering insomnia; Victor left alone in the house waiting to see if he has to take part in jury service; Victor and Margaret having a long wait in their solicitor's waiting room; and Victor and Margaret trying to cope during a power cut on the hottest night of the year.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Despite Margaret's frequent exasperation with her husband's antics, the series shows the couple have a deep affection for one another.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Victor Meldrew (Richard Wilson) – Victor is the main protagonist of the sitcom and finds himself constantly battling against all that life throws at him as he becomes entangled in complicated misfortunes and farcical situations. Renwick once pointed out in an interview that the name "Victor" was ironic, since he almost always ends up a loser. From being buried alive to being prosecuted for attacking a feisty pit bull terrier with a collection of coconut meringues, Victor tries to adjust to life after an automatic security system made him redundant at the office where he worked as a security guard, but to no avail. He believes everything is going wrong for him all the time and he has the right to be upset because it is always someone else's fault. Victor does not see himself as retired and is always trying to find another job, but most of his attempts end in failure. Victor is a tragic comedy character and sympathy is directed towards him as he becomes embroiled in complex misunderstandings, bureaucratic vanity and, at times, sheer bad luck. The audience sees a philosophical ebb and flow to his character, however, along with a degree of optimism. Yet his polite façade collapses when events get the better of him and a full verbal onslaught is forthcoming. "Victor-isms" include "I do not believe it!", "I don't believe it!", "Un-be-lievable!", "What in the name of bloody hell?", "In the name of sanity!" Despite his grumpy demeanour Victor isn't totally devoid of compassion; in "Hearts of Darkness" he liberates elderly nursing home residents who were being mistreated by the staff, and in "Descent into The Maelstrom" he calls an incident room number and gives the location of an emotionally disturbed woman who abducted a baby and stole Margaret's mother's pearl earrings, which resulted in the woman being picked up by the police. However, because the woman was a friend of Margaret, and knowing she meant a lot to her, Victor never said anything. Victor has also shown a vast amount of loyalty to Margaret as, throughout their entire 42 years of lifelong marriage together, not once has the thought of infidelity ever occurred to him. In "Rearranging the Dust", Victor and Margaret recollect the days of their courtship at a party after which Victor says "You were always my first choice", which leaves Margaret stunned. In another episode, Margaret recounts the time Victor took her to the funfair and they ended up getting stuck in the hall of mirrors for over an hour. Victor had said he did not mind as he was happy to stay there and look at all the reflections of her. Victor's very best act of compassion comes in the episode "The Wisdom of the Witch" in which he ends up saving Patrick's life from his new secretary's psychopathic boyfriend by forcing Patrick's would-be murderer, along with himself as well, out of the window of the house in which they are trapped during a snowstorm.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Margaret Meldrew (née Pellow) (Annette Crosbie) – Victor's long-suffering, tolerant and kind-hearted wife. Margaret tries to maintain a degree of calmness and to rise above her husband's antics. However, she is often engulfed in these follies, mishaps and confusion and often vents her anger at Victor. In early episodes, her character acts more as a comic foil to Victor's misfortunes. Examples include fearfully asking if a cat found frozen in their freezer is definitely dead and mentioning a friend who died of a terminal illness. When Victor reminds her that the woman actually fell from a cliff, Margaret retorts she only did so because "she went to the seaside to convalesce".


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: In later episodes, Margaret develops into a more complex character. She is shown to be fiercely protective of her marriage to Victor by becoming easily suspicious and jealous—for example, of a Dutch marionette that Victor becomes occupied with repairing in the episode "Hole in the Sky", eventually leading her to destroy it. In "The Affair of the Hollow Lady", a greengrocer (played by Barbara Windsor) develops a soft spot for Victor and tries to convince Margaret that he has been unfaithful to her. In revenge, Margaret assaults her with a pair of boxing gloves. However, Margaret herself is shown to have contemplated infidelity with a man called Ben whom she met on holiday in the episode "Warm Champagne". She decides against cheating on Victor. In this episode, she sums up her relationship with Victor by telling Ben, "He's the most sensitive person I've ever met and that's why I love him and why I constantly want to ram his head through a television screen." She also begins to develop a sense of cynicism, slowly coming to see the world the way Victor sees it. This is especially evident in "Things Aren't Simple Anymore" in which she remarks that the world is "all speed and greed" and that "nobody does anything about anything". In "Rearranging the Dust", Margaret recounts the time she first chose Victor at a party and, during a power cut, "shared their bodies" in the garden. After this moment of passion, they went back inside and when the lights came back on, Margaret realised that she had "grabbed hold of the wrong person". Margaret's demeanour seemed to stem from an incident at school when she was a child. When she was five, she had two budgies; one day when she opened the door of their cage, one flew straight out and hit the window, killing itself, while the other stayed in the cage despite her best efforts to get it to come out. The next day at school her teacher asked the class to write a story about something that had happened to them so Margaret wrote her story about the budgies. Her teacher made Margaret read it out loud in front of the whole class which resulted in everyone laughing at her. She then realised that the teacher had done it deliberately just to be cruel to her—whereupon she understood why the other budgie never wanted to leave its cage.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Margaret could be said to have a catchphrase, typically a long, exasperated use of the word "God", usually when coming to a realisation about the reason behind one of Victor's mishaps. These mishaps are occasionally inadvertently aided by herself in some way, such as leaving the phone off the hook or giving permission to someone to enter the Meldrews' house when she is not there. Margaret works at a florist's until series five, when the shop closes. In a later series she has found a new job as a caregiver for the elderly, where she inadvertently discovers on a TV documentary that she has actually been unwittingly used as a sex worker by a man who did not need personal care but just enjoyed being bathed and dressed anyway. It is presumed that she left the job after making this discovery, as it is never mentioned again.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Jean Warboys (Doreen Mantle) – Mrs Warboys is a friend of Margaret's (and a rather annoying one in Victor's eyes) who has attached herself to the Meldrews, accompanying them on many of their exploits. Until the fourth series she is married to (unseen) Chris until he leaves her for a private detective she had hired, believing he was having an affair, and they divorce.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: She often bears the brunt of Victor's temper due to muddled misunderstandings and in part due to her aloof nature. One such occasion saw Victor asking her to pick up a suit of his from the dry-cleaners, only for her to return with a gorilla suit. Another occasion saw her persuading Victor to take on a dog whose owner had just died. Victor spent time building a kennel in the garden and when Mrs Warboys arrives with the dog, she forgets to mention that the dog is stuffed, much to Victor and Margaret's consternation. On another occasion she wins a competition where the prize is either £500 or to have a life-size waxwork model made of herself, which had to be delivered to the Meldrews' house; she chooses the waxwork. As it turns out, she hates it as much as Victor and Margaret do, and the waxwork ends up in the dustbin.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Despite being friends, she has driven Margaret to distraction on several occasions, most notably in "Only a Story", when she stayed with the Meldrews after her flat had been flooded and enraged Margaret with her complaining and laziness. Jean is also shown as a somewhat absent-minded character, as she has a pet cockatiel despite her lifelong allergy to feathers. She would often bore the Meldrews by showing them her complete collection of holiday pictures at the most unwelcome times. A running joke is her beating Victor at board games, including Trivial Pursuit and chess, while having a conversation with someone else. Doreen Mantle described her character as "wanting to do the right thing but always finding out that it was the wrong thing". Victor's annoyance with her is often demonstrated by shouting her name, sometimes repeatedly, in an impatient tone.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Patrick Trench (Angus Deayton) – Patrick and his wife Pippa live next door to Victor from the second series. Patrick often catches Victor engrossed in seemingly preposterous situations, all of which in context are perfectly innocuous. The couple's relationship with their neighbours begins badly after Victor mistakes Patrick and Pippa for distant relations when they arrive outside with three suitcasesnot realising that they are his next-door neighbours, having been on a lengthy holiday from the day Victor and Margaret moved in. Victor subsequently invites the bemused pair to stay; this and later incidents cause Patrick to suspect that Victor is quite insane, possibly bordering on malicious.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: However, Patrick's rift with Victor eventually transforms him into a rather cynical character (much like Victor) and he often responds to him in similarly petty or vindictive ways as a means of trying to settle the score, such as writing complaints and grievances on Post-it Notes. This aspect of Patrick's character came to a head in the episode "The Executioner's Song" where his face temporarily morphs into that of Victor's as he looks into a mirror.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: It is mentioned several times that Patrick would like to have children. After Pippa miscarries and Patrick is, so he claims, rendered infertile by a freak accident (for which he unfairly blames Victor), he adopts a dachshund called Denzil, which Pippa describes as his "baby substitute". Denzil frequently appears with Patrick through series 3–5. Despite their animosity towards each other, Victor ends up saving Patrick's life in "The Wisdom of the Witch".


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Pippa Trench (née Croker) (Janine Duvitski) – Patrick's wife – a bus driver – sought friendly relations with the Meldrews and, after a while, became good friends with Margaret. The two women usually attempt to get their husbands to make peace with each other at least once per series. Eventually Patrick proposes that the Trenches move house, but they soon realise that the Meldrew curse has followed them: Victor sent workmen to their home, thinking they were removal men who had initially come to the wrong house. They were in fact from a house clearance firm Margaret had employed to clear her late cousin Ursula's country mansion. The workmen consequently cleared Patrick and Pippa's house of their entire furniture and sold it for a mere £475. Pippa is slightly dim-witted (Victor once described her as a "gormless twerp" on an answering machine message, unaware she was listening)for example, believing Victor had murdered an elderly blind man simply because the victim had been found clutching a double-one domino in his hand and Victor had two pimples on his nose.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: New neighbours Derek and Betty McVitie replaced the Trenches for the 1997 special "Endgame". However, this turned out to be their only appearances in the series and they were said to have emigrated by the penultimate episode, which caused Nick Swainey to leap straight in with the offer for their old house. Series six saw the Trenches return as prominent characters, albeit living in a house some distance from the Meldrews. Despite appearing in five out of six series and three Christmas specials, neither of the Trenches ever share a scene with Mrs Warboys and Pippa only ever shares one scene with Nick Swainey (in the episode "Who Will Buy?").


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Nick Swainey (Owen Brenman) – The excessively cheerful and often oblivious Mr Swainey appeared in the first episode, encouraging Victor to join his OAPs' trip to Eastbourne and being greeted with Victor's trademark abuse. When the Meldrews move house, they discover he is their neighbour, living on the other side of the Meldrews from the Trenches. He remains continuously optimistic; even his being told to "piss off" by Victor is laughed off. Despite this run-in he later befriends Victor and they frequently chat in their gardens, where Victor is often surprised by Mr Swainey's activities, ranging from archery and preparing amateur dramatics props, to bizarre games he arranges for his senile, bedridden mother, whom the audience never actually see. Despite his cheery demeanour, he does occasionally drop his guard, once displaying apparent depression at being nothing more than "an overgrown Boy Scout". Following his mother's death, he moved house near the end of the series, but only went as far as the Trenches'/McVities' old house, claiming he had "always wanted to live in an end house, without leaving the area". This took Victor by surprise; he did not learn where Mr Swainey was moving to until, while reminiscing in the garden about his departure, Mr Swainey suddenly appeared from the other side.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Ronnie and Mildred (Gordon Peters and Barbara Ashcroft) – Ronnie and Mildred were a constantly cheerful, but incredibly boring, couple who provided yet another annoyance to the Meldrews, who dreaded any upcoming visits to them; Victor once said that he had hoped they were both dead. In "The Worst Horror of All", when the couple attempted a surprise visit, the Meldrews hid in their house to give the impression they were away on holiday and then took the phone off the hook for several days afterwards, though these efforts to avoid them were in vain. They are referenced a number of times in the series for giving the Meldrews bizarre and always unwanted presents that are seldom opened, usually involving a garish photograph of themselves. In the final series, however it was clear that their cheerfulness was a façade and, in a particularly dark scene, Mildred hanged herself "during a game of Happy Families". The shot of Mildred's feet dangling outside the window is usually cut from pre-watershed screenings.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Alfred Meldrew (Richard Pearson) - Victor's absent-minded brother, who lives in New Zealand. During the episode "The Broken Reflection", he comes to visit after 25 years, to the disdain of Victor. Alfred is an eccentric character, often walking around with his hat on fire and bringing over his and Victor's great-grandfather's skull. He is a clumsy character too, mistaking the table cloth for a napkin and dropping the entire contents of the table all over the floor when he stands up and breaking a mirror in the middle of the night after mistaking his own reflection for a burglar. Victor starts to warm to Alfred towards the end of his visit, but Alfred leaves early the next day after finding an unpleasant message about him that Victor had accidentally recorded on a dictaphone. He is not seen again, but keeps in touch with the Meldrews, as Victor is seen looking at some photographs Alfred had sent over in "The Trial".


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Cousin Wilfred (John Rutland) – Mrs. Warboys' cousin Wilfred, first appeared in an episode in the third series. In the final series the character returned, but the effects of a stroke had rendered him mute and forced him to "speak" with the aid of an electronic voice generator. His poor typing on the generator led to several misunderstandings, such as asking Victor for a "bra of soup" (as opposed to a "bar of soap") and describing a visit to his "brothel" (as opposed to "brother").


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Great Aunt Joyce and Uncle Dick - Unseen characters, they are sometimes mentioned by Victor and Margaret, as an aging, grim couple whom Victor and Margaret dread having anything to do with. Great Aunt Joyce is mentioned as having a glass eye and has the habit of knitting bizarre items (such as six-fingered gloves) for Victor. Uncle Dick has a wooden arm; in the final Comic Relief (2001) episode, it transpires that a nurse had mistakenly placed a drip in the false arm for 18 hours after a trip to hospital after trying to remove a kidney stone with a wire coat hanger.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Mimsy Berkovitz - Another unseen character, she is the local agony aunt, whom many of the characters turn to for advice. In the episode "The Secret of the Seven Sorcerers", Patrick is heard talking to her on the radio, seeking her advice on how to cope when Victor and Margaret invite him and Pippa around to dinner.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Mrs Birkett (Gabrielle Blunt) An elderly neighbour in the first series. She accidentally gets trapped in the Meldrews' loft when Victor closes the trap door whilst she is up there looking for jumble that Margaret has prepared. She continues to be mentioned throughout the rest of the series but is not seen again.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Martin Trout (Peter Cook) - A paparazzo in the 1993 Christmas special "One Foot in the Algarve". He manages to take a number of compromising photographs involving a high-ranking politician. Trout compares the potential impact of the photos to the Profumo affair. On his way to sell the images, he loses the roll of film whilst arguing at a phone box with the Meldrews and subsequently pursues them across the Algarve to retrieve it. He suffers a number of disasters both related and unrelated to Victor and Margaret's own misfortunes, only to find that the film had actually fallen into the lining of his jacket and had been with him for much of his journey. He lost it in the door of the Meldrews' car. Retrieving the roll after a brief spell in hospital, Trout attempts to leave the Algarve in a taxi but is involved in a car crash.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The production of the show was in a conventional sitcom format, with episodes taped live in front of a studio audience, interposed with pre-filmed location material.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The series' opening credits were designed by Pete Wane and feature footage of a "Galapagos Giant Turtle", at the request of writer David Renwick, which "[serves] as a metaphor for grumpy old Victor Meldrew." Wane found the footage of the creature to be "not very upbeat visually for a comedy," but he found, "to [his] relief a shot of it stumbling on a rock which gave the sequence a bit of a lift."


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Most of the first five series of "One Foot in the Grave" were produced and directed by Susan Belbin, the exceptions being "Love and Death", which was partly directed by veteran sitcom director Sydney Lotterby and "Starbound", for which Gareth Gwenlan (who in fact had originally commissioned the series in 1989) stepped in to direct some sequences after Belbin was taken ill. Afterward, Belbin retired owing to ill-health, and the final series was produced by Jonathan P. Llewellyn and directed by Christine Gernon. Wilson and Renwick felt that Gernon's experience of working with Belbin on earlier series of "One Foot" as a production secretary and assistant, as well as other shows, meant that her style was similar to Belbin's, aiding the transition between directors.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The show used Bournemouth to film some exterior sequences because of its favourable climate, easy access to London and economical benefits relative to filming in the capital. After the first series was filmed, the house—near Pokesdown, Bournemouth—which had been used for the Meldrews' house in location sequences, changed hands and the new owners demanded nearly triple the usage fees that the previous owners had asked for. Rather than agree to this, the production team decided to find a new house and the first episode of the second series was rewritten to have the Meldrews' house destroyed in a fire (this was filmed on waste ground in Northcote Road, Springbourne). This also gave the opportunity for a new interior set to be designed, as Belbin had been unhappy with the original set designed for the series, which she felt was too restrictive to shoot in.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Beginning with series two, the exterior scenes of the Meldrew's home were filmed at Tresillian Way, Walkford, near Christchurch in Dorset. These later series make extensive use of specific street and garden locations in most episodes, particularly for scenes involving the Meldrew's neighbours. Most outside locations were filmed in and around Bournemouth and Christchurch. These include Richmond Hill, Undercliff Drive and Boscombe Pier, Bournemouth Town Hall, Lansdowne College, Christchurch Hospital and the former Royal Victoria Hospital (Boscombe). Later episodes, such as "Hearts of Darkness", were filmed entirely on location. Victor's death by a hit and run driver in the final episode was filmed at Shawford railway station, Hampshire. Fans left floral tributes at the site.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Over the show's history, it featured a number of notable comic actors in one-off roles. These include Susie Blake, John Bird, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Peter Cook, Diana Coupland, Phil Daniels, Edward de Souza, Hannah Gordon, Georgina Hale, Roy Hudd, Jimmy Jewel, Rula Lenska, Stephen Lewis, Paul Merton, Brian Murphy, Christopher Ryan, Jim Sweeney, Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims and Ray Winstone. Two of Angus Deayton's former "Radio Active" and "KYTV" co-stars, Geoffrey Perkins and Michael Fenton Stevens were cast, in separate episodes, as respectively the brother and brother-in-law of Deayton's character. A few actors little-known at the time also appeared in one-off roles before going on to greater fame, including Lucy Davis, Joanna Scanlan, Eamonn Walker and Arabella Weir.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The "One Foot in the Grave" theme song was written, composed and sung by Eric Idle. A longer version was produced for the special "One Foot in the Algarve", released as a single with five remixes and a karaoke version in November 1994. Idle included a live version of the song on his album "Eric Idle Sings Monty Python". It is preluded by a similar adaptation of "Bread of Heaven" to that used in the episode "The Beast in the Cage" by disgruntled car mechanics.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The title music on the TV series is accompanied at the beginning and end of each episode by footage of Galápagos tortoises.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The series also made extensive use of incidental music, composed by Ed Welch, which often hinted at a particular genre to fit the mood of the scenes, frequently incorporating well-known pieces of music such as "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" or "Intermezzo" from Jean Sibelius' "Karelia Suite". In the Christmas special "Endgame" during Margaret's alleged death scene, a compilation of clips from past episodes are accompanied by the song "River Runs Deep" performed by J. J. Cale. The final episode ended with a montage of some of the mishaps Victor encountered, which were mentioned in the episode – backed by "End of the Line" by the Traveling Wilburys.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The programme received a number of prestigious awards. In 1992, it won a BAFTA as Best Comedy (Programme or Series). During its ten-year run, the series was nominated a further six times. Richard Wilson also won Best Light Entertainment Performance in 1992 and 1994 and Annette Crosbie was nominated for the same award in 1994.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: The series also won the Best Television Sitcom in 1992 from the Royal Television Society and the British Comedy Award for Best Sitcom in 1992, 1995 and 2001.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: In 2004, "One Foot in the Grave" came tenth in a BBC poll to find "Britain's Best Sitcom" with 31,410 votes. The programme also came 80th in the British Film Institute's 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: A number of complaints were made during the series' run for its depiction of animal deaths. For example, in the episode "The Valley of Fear", a dead cat is found in the Meldrews' freezer; in another, a tortoise is roasted in a brazier. However, this was later cited as a positive feature of the programme's daring scripts in "Britain's Best Sitcom" by its advocate Rowland Rivron. The programme was censured, however, for a scene in the episode "Hearts of Darkness" in which an elderly resident is abused in an old people's home and, following complaints, the scene was slightly cut when the episode was repeated. In the DVD commentary for the episode, David Renwick stated his continued opposition to the cuts. Another controversial scene in the episode "Tales of Terror" saw the Meldrews visit Ronnie and Mildred on the understanding that Mildred had gone upstairs during a game of Happy Families and not returned; Ronnie then shows her feet hanging outside of the window, revealing that she has ended her life by suicide. The Broadcasting Standards Commission received complaints about this scene.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: When the final episode, "Things Aren't Simple Any More" originally aired on 20 November 2000 at 9pm, it coincided with the broadcast of the first jackpot winner in the UK version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", which had been filmed the Sunday before the broadcast. ITV was accused of engineering this in order to damage the final episode's expected high ratings, but was later cleared by the Independent Television Commission.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Due to the series' popularity, people who constantly complain and are irritated by minor things are often compared to Victor Meldrew by the British media. Renwick disputes this usage however, claiming that Victor's reactions are entirely in proportion to the things that happen to him.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Renwick integrated some of the plots and dialogue from the series into a novel, which was first published by BBC Books in 1992. A second novel, "One Foot in the Grave and Counting", was published in 2021. Renwick also adapted four episodes for BBC Radio 2, which first aired between 21 January 1995 and 11 February 1995. The episodes are "Alive and Buried", "In Luton Airport, No One Can Hear You Scream", "Timeless Time" and "The Beast in the Cage". They are regularly repeated on the digital speech station BBC Radio 4 Extra and are available on audio CD.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Wilson dislikes saying his character's catchphrase ("I don't believe it!") and only performs the line for charity events for a small fee. This became a joke in the actor's guest appearance as himself in the "Father Ted" episode "The Mainland", where Ted annoys him by constantly repeating his catchphrase. The situation was conceived when "Father Ted" writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews sat behind Wilson at a performance of "Le Cirque du Soleil" at the Royal Albert Hall. They considered how "tasteless and wrong" it would be to lean forward to him every time that an acrobat did a stunt and yell the catchphrase and then they realised that that's exactly what their fictional priests would do. This was also played upon when Wilson made a guest appearance on the comedy TV quiz show "Shooting Stars", in which Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer purposefully misquoted his catchphrase by referring to him as "Richard 'I don't believe you' Wilson".


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: In February 2020, a podcast was created 'One Foot in the Podcast' by a regular fan of the show, Tom Griffith. This brought about an episode-by-episode review of the sitcom with different guests contributing throughout the podcast series. As the podcast grew in popularity, Griffith was able to attract Richard Wilson on for an initial interview, with Wilson making a second appearance in a follow-up fan Q&A discussion.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: Alongside Wilson, Griffith was able to interview Doreen Mantle, as well as writer and creator, David Renwick, who made three appearances on the podcast. Other guests have included actors Michael Fenton Stevens, Gordon Peters and James Dreyfus. In addition to this, Art Director for Series 4, Richard Drew and Series 6 Director, Chris Gernon also interviewed. Most recently, Owen Brenman interviewed, revealing an in-depth insight into his time on the show.


title: One Foot in the Grave

text: All six series and specials were initially available on BBC Worldwide VHS video tapes during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Comic Relief Shorts from 1993 and 2001 have not been released on DVD. A One Foot in the Grave Very Best of DVD featuring five of the greatest episodes was released on 22 October 2001 in Region 2. Then on 8 July 2004, a One Foot in the Grave Very Best of was also released in Region 4. Each series was gradually released on DVD in Region 2 between 2004 and 2006, with a complete series 1-6 box set towards the end of 2006. A slimmer series 1-6 box set was released in 2010 in Region 2. The first slim set (Region 2) were individual series in 7mm cases (rather than the standard 14mm ones) and then re-released where the discs were on trays that could be turned like a book; this reduced the need to print covers for each series.


title: United States antitrust law

text: In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These acts serve three major functions. First, Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade. Second, Section 7 of the Clayton Act restricts the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. Third, Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolization.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Federal antitrust laws provide for both civil and criminal enforcement. Civil antitrust enforcement occurs through lawsuits filed by the Federal Trade Commission, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division, and private parties who have been harmed by an antitrust violation. Criminal antitrust enforcement is done only by the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. Additionally, U.S. state governments may also enforce their own antitrust laws, which mostly mirror federal antitrust laws, regarding commerce occurring solely within their own state's borders.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The scope of antitrust laws, and the degree to which they should interfere in an enterprise's freedom to conduct business, or to protect smaller businesses, communities and consumers, are strongly debated. Some economists argue that antitrust laws actually impede competition, and may discourage businesses from pursuing activities that would be beneficial to society. One view suggests that antitrust laws should focus solely on the benefits to consumers and overall efficiency, while a broad range of legal and economic theory sees the role of antitrust laws as also controlling economic power in the public interest. A survey of 568 member economists of the American Economic Association (AEA) in 2011 found a near-universal consensus, in that 87 percent of respondents broadly agreed with the statement "Antitrust laws should be enforced vigorously."


title: United States antitrust law

text: In the United States and Canada, and to a lesser extent in the European Union, the modern law governing monopolies and economic competition is known by its original name, "antitrust law". The term "antitrust" came from late 19th-century American industrialists' practice of using trusts—legal arrangements where someone is given ownership of property to hold solely for another's benefit—to consolidate separate companies into large conglomerates. These "corporate trusts" died out in the early 20th century as U.S. states passed laws making it easier to create new corporations. Most other countries now call antitrust law "competition law" or "anti-monopoly law".


title: United States antitrust law

text: American antitrust law was formally created in 1890 with the U.S. Congress's passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Using broad language "unequaled in its generality", the Sherman Act outlawed "monopoliz[ation]" and "every contract, combination ... or conspiracy in restraint of trade".


title: United States antitrust law

text: American courts quickly began struggling with the Sherman Act's broad and vague language, recognizing that interpreting it literally might make even simple business associations like partnerships illegal. Federal judges began trying to develop legal principles for distinguishing between "naked" trade restraints between rivals that suppressed competition and other restraints that were only "ancillary" to other cooperation agreements that promoted competition.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The Sherman Act gave the U.S. Department of Justice the authority to enforce it, but the U.S. presidents and U.S. Attorneys General in power during the 1890s and early 1900s showed relatively little interest in doing so. With little interest in enforcing the Sherman Act and courts interpreting it relatively narrowly, a wave of large industrial mergers swept the United States in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The rise of the Progressive Era prompted public officials to increase enforcement of antitrust laws. The Justice Department sued 45 companies under the Sherman Act during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09) and 90 companies during the presidency of William Howard Taft (1909–13).


title: United States antitrust law

text: In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court reframed U.S. antitrust law as a "rule of reason" in its landmark decision "Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States". At trial, the Justice Department had successfully argued that American petroleum conglomerate Standard Oil had violated the Sherman Act by using economic threats against competitors and secret rebate deals with railroads to build a monopoly in the oil refining industry. On appeal, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's verdict and ruled that Standard Oil's high market share was proof of its monopoly power, ordering it to break itself up into 34 separate companies. But the Court also held that the Sherman Act's language outlawing "every" trade restraint actually only banned "unreasonable" restraints on trade. The Court ruled that the Sherman Act's provisions were to be interpreted as a "rule of reason" under which the legality of most business practices would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis according to their competitive impacts, with only the most egregious conduct being illegal "per se".


title: United States antitrust law

text: At the time, many observers believed that the Supreme Court's decision in "Standard Oil" represented an ongoing effort by conservative federal judges to "soften" the still-new antitrust laws and narrow their scope. Congress reacted in 1914 by passing two new laws: the Clayton Antitrust Act, which outlawed using mergers and acquisitions to achieve monopolies and created an antitrust law exemption for collective bargaining; and the Federal Trade Commission Act, which created the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as an independent agency that has shared jurisdiction with the Justice Department over federal civil antitrust enforcement and has the power to prohibit "unfair methods of competition".


title: United States antitrust law

text: Despite the passage of the Clayton Act and the FTC Act, U.S. antitrust enforcement was not aggressive between the mid-1910s and the 1930s. Based on their experience with the War Industries Board during World War I, many American economists, government officials, and business leaders adopted the associationalist view that close collaboration among business leaders and government officials could efficiently guide the economy. Some Americans abandoned faith in free market competition entirely after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Advocates of these views championed the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the centralized economic planning experiments during the early stages of the New Deal.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The Supreme Court's decisions in antitrust cases during this period reflected these views, and the Court had a "largely tolerant" attitude toward collusion and cooperation between competitors. One prominent example was the 1918 decision "Chicago Board of Trade v. United States", in which the Court ruled that a Chicago Board of Trade rule banning commodity brokers from buying or selling grain forwards after the close of business at 2:00pm each day at any price other than that day's closing price did not violate the Sherman Act. The Court said that although the rule was a restraint on trade, a comprehensive examination of the rule's purposes and effects showed that it "merely regulates, and perhaps thereby promotes competition."


title: United States antitrust law

text: During the mid-1930s, confidence in the statist centralized economic planning models that had been popular in the early years of the New Deal era began to wane. At the urging of economists such as Frank Knight and Henry C. Simons, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic advisors began persuading him that free market competition was the key to recovery from the Great Depression. Simons, in particular, argued for robust antitrust enforcement to “de-concentrate” American industries and promote competition. In response, Roosevelt appointed "trustbusting" lawyers like Thurman Arnold to serve in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, which had been established in 1919.


title: United States antitrust law

text: This intellectual shift influenced American courts to abandon their acceptance of sector-wide cooperation among companies. Instead, American antitrust jurisprudence began following strict "structuralist" rules that focused on markets’ structures and their levels of concentration. Judges usually gave little credence to defendant companies' attempts to justify their conduct using economic efficiencies, even when they were supported by economic data and analysis. In its 1940 decision "United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co.", the Supreme Court refused to apply the rule of reason to an agreement between oil refiners to buy up surplus gasoline from independent refining companies. It ruled that price-fixing agreements between competing companies were illegal "per se" under section 1 of the Sherman Act and would be treated as crimes even if the companies claimed to be merely recreating past government planning schemes. The Court began applying "per se" illegality to other business practices such as tying, group boycotts, market allocation agreements, exclusive territory agreements for sales, and vertical restraints limiting retailers to geographic areas. Courts also became more willing to find that dominant companies' business practices constituted illegal monopolization under section 2 of the Sherman Act.


title: United States antitrust law

text: American courts were even stricter when hearing merger challenges under the Clayton Act during this era, due in part to Congress's passage of the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950, which banned consolidation of companies' stock or assets even in situations that did not produce market dominance. For example, in its 1962 decision "Brown Shoe Co. v. United States", the Supreme Court ruled that a proposed merger was illegal even though the resulting company would have controlled only five percent of the relevant market. In a now-famous line from his dissent in the 1966 decision "United States v. Von's Grocery Co.", Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart remarked: "The sole consistency that I can find [in U.S. merger law] is that in litigation under [the Clayton Act], the Government always wins."


title: United States antitrust law

text: The "structuralist" interpretation of U.S. antitrust law began losing favor in the early 1970s in the face of harsh criticism by economists and legal scholars from the University of Chicago. Scholars from the Chicago school of economics had long advocated for reducing price regulation and limiting barriers to entry. Newer Chicago economists like Aaron Director had begun arguing that there were economic efficiency explanations for some practices that had been condemned under the structuralist interpretation of the Sherman and Clayton Acts. Much of their economic analysis involved game theory, which showed that some conduct that had been thought uniformly anticompetitive, such as preemptive capacity expansion, could be either pro- or anticompetitive depending on the circumstances.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The writings of Yale Law School professor Robert Bork and University of Chicago Law School professors Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook, who all later became prominent federal appellate judges, translated Chicago economists' analytical advances into legal principles that judges could readily apply. Pointing out that economic analysis showed that some previously condemned practices were actually procompetitive and had economic benefits that outweighed their dangers, they argued that many antitrust bright-line "per se" rules of illegality were unwarranted and should be replaced by the rule of reason. Judges increasingly accepted their ideas from the mid-1970s on, motivated in part by the United States' declining economic dominance amidst the 1973–1975 recession and rising competition from East Asian and European countries.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The "pivotal event" in this shift was the Supreme Court's 1977 decision "Continental Television, Inc. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc". In a decision that prominently cited Chicago school of economics scholarship, the "GTE Sylvania" Court ruled that non-price vertical restrictions in contracts were no longer "per se" illegal and should be analyzed under the rule of reason. Overall, the Supreme Court's antitrust rulings during this era on collusion cases under section 1 of the Sherman Act reflected tension between the older "absolutist" approach and the newer Chicago endorsing the rule of reason and economic analysis.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The Justice Department and FTC lost most of the monopolization cases they brought under section 2 of the Sherman Act during this era. One of the government's few anti-monopoly victories was "United States v. AT&T", which led to the breakup of Bell Telephone and its monopoly on U.S. telephone service in 1982. The general "trimming back" of antitrust law in the face of economic analysis also resulted in more permissive standards for mergers. In the Supreme Court's 1974 decision "United States v. General Dynamics Corp.", the federal government lost a merger challenge at the Supreme Court for the first time in over 25 years.


title: United States antitrust law

text: In 1999 a coalition of 19 states and the federal Justice Department sued Microsoft. A highly publicized trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that Microsoft had strong-armed many companies in an attempt to prevent competition from the Netscape browser. In 2000, the trial court ordered Microsoft to split in two, preventing it from future misbehavior. Microsoft appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which affirmed in part and reversed in part. In addition, it removed the judge from the case for discussing the case with the media while it was still pending. With the case in front of a new judge, Microsoft and the government settled, with the government dropping the case in return for Microsoft agreeing to cease many of the practices the government challenged.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Preventing collusion and cartels that act in restraint of trade is an essential task of antitrust law. It reflects the view that each business has a duty to act independently on the market, and so earn its profits solely by providing better priced and quality products than its competitors.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The Sherman Act §1 prohibits "[e]very contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce." This targets two or more distinct enterprises acting together in a way that harms third parties. It does not capture the decisions of a single enterprise, or a single economic entity, even though the form of an entity may be two or more separate legal persons or companies. In "Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp." it was held an agreement between a parent company and a wholly owned subsidiary could not be subject to antitrust law, because the decision took place within a single economic entity. This reflects the view that if the enterprise (as an economic entity) has not acquired a monopoly position, or has significant market power, then no harm is done. The same rationale has been extended to joint ventures, where corporate shareholders make a decision through a new company they form. In "Texaco Inc. v. Dagher" the Supreme Court held unanimously that a price set by a joint venture between Texaco and Shell Oil did not count as making an unlawful agreement. Thus the law draws a "basic distinction between concerted and independent action". Multi-firm conduct tends to be seen as more likely than single-firm conduct to have an unambiguously negative effect and "is judged more sternly". Generally the law identifies four main categories of agreement. First, some agreements such as price fixing or sharing markets are automatically unlawful, or illegal "per se". Second, because the law does not seek to prohibit every kind of agreement that hinders freedom of contract, it developed a "rule of reason" where a practice might restrict trade in a way that is seen as positive or beneficial for consumers or society. Third, significant problems of proof and identification of wrongdoing arise where businesses make no overt contact, or simply share information, but appear to act in concert. Tacit collusion, particularly in concentrated markets with a small number of competitors or oligopolists, have led to significant controversy over whether or not antitrust authorities should intervene. Fourth, vertical agreements between a business and a supplier or purchaser "up" or "downstream" raise concerns about the exercise of market power, however they are generally subject to a more relaxed standard under the "rule of reason".


title: United States antitrust law

text: Some practices are deemed by the courts to be so obviously detrimental that they are categorized as being automatically unlawful, or illegal "per se". The simplest and central case of this is price fixing. This involves an agreement by businesses to set the price or consideration of a good or service which they buy or sell from others at a specific level. If the agreement is durable, the general term for these businesses is a cartel. It is irrelevant whether or not the businesses succeed in increasing their profits, or whether together they reach the level of having market power as might a monopoly. Such collusion is illegal "per se".


title: United States antitrust law

text: Bid rigging is a form of price fixing and market allocation that involves an agreement in which one party of a group of bidders will be designated to win the bid. Geographic market allocation is an agreement between competitors not to compete within each other's geographic territories.


title: United States antitrust law

text: If an antitrust claim does not fall within a "per se" illegal category, the plaintiff must show the conduct causes harm in "restraint of trade" under the Sherman Act §1 according to "the facts peculiar to the business to which the restraint is applied". This essentially means that unless a plaintiff can point to a clear precedent, to which the situation is analogous, proof of an anti-competitive effect is more difficult. The reason for this is that the courts have endeavoured to draw a line between practices that restrain trade in a "good" compared to a "bad" way. In the first case, "United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association", the Supreme Court found that railroad companies had acted unlawfully by setting up an organisation to fix transport prices. The railroads had protested that their intention was to keep prices low, not high. The court found that this was not true, but stated that not every "restraint of trade" in a literal sense could be unlawful. Just as under the common law, the restraint of trade had to be "unreasonable". In "Chicago Board of Trade v. United States" the Supreme Court found a "good" restraint of trade. The Chicago Board of Trade had a rule that commodities traders were not allowed to privately agree to sell or buy after the market's closing time (and then finalise the deals when it opened the next day). The reason for the Board of Trade having this rule was to ensure that all traders had an equal chance to trade at a transparent market price. It plainly restricted trading, but the Chicago Board of Trade argued this was beneficial. Justice Brandeis, giving judgment for a unanimous Supreme Court, held the rule to be pro-competitive, and comply with the rule of reason. It did not violate the Sherman Act §1. As he put it,


title: United States antitrust law

text: Although the Sherman Act 1890 initially dealt, in general, with cartels (where businesses combined their activities to the detriment of others) and monopolies (where one business was so large it could use its power to the detriment of others alone) it was recognized that this left a gap. Instead of forming a cartel, businesses could simply merge into one entity. The period between 1895 and 1904 saw a "great merger movement" as business competitors combined into ever more giant corporations. However upon a literal reading of Sherman Act, no remedy could be granted until a monopoly had already formed. The Clayton Act 1914 attempted to fill this gap by giving jurisdiction to prevent mergers in the first place if they would "substantially lessen competition".


title: United States antitrust law

text: Dual antitrust enforcement by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission has long elicited concerns about disparate treatment of mergers. In response, in September 2014, the House Judiciary Committee approved the Standard Merger and Acquisition Reviews Through Equal Rules Act ("SMARTER Act").


title: United States antitrust law

text: The law's treatment of monopolies is potentially the strongest in the field of antitrust law. Judicial remedies can force large organizations to be broken up, subject them to positive obligations, impose massive penalties, and/or sentence implicated employees to jail. Under §2 of the Sherman Act 1890 every "person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize ... any part of the trade or commerce among the several States" commits an offence. The courts have interpreted this to mean that monopoly is not unlawful "per se", but only if acquired through prohibited conduct. Historically, where the ability of judicial remedies to combat market power have ended, the legislature of states or the Federal government have still intervened by taking public ownership of an enterprise, or subjecting the industry to sector specific regulation (frequently done, for example, in the cases water, education, energy or health care). The law on public services and administration goes significantly beyond the realm of antitrust law's treatment of monopolies. When enterprises are not under public ownership, and where regulation does not foreclose the application of antitrust law, two requirements must be shown for the offense of monopolization. First, the alleged monopolist must possess sufficient power in an accurately defined market for its products or services. Second, the monopolist must have used its power in a prohibited way. The categories of prohibited conduct are not closed, and are contested in theory. Historically they have been held to include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing.


title: United States antitrust law

text: In theory predatory pricing happens when large companies with huge cash reserves and large lines of credit stifle competition by selling their products and services at a loss for a time, to force their smaller competitors out of business. With no competition, they are then free to consolidate control of the industry and charge whatever prices they wish. At this point, there is also little motivation for investing in further technological research, since there are no competitors left to gain an advantage over. High barriers to entry such as large upfront investment, notably named sunk costs, requirements in infrastructure and exclusive agreements with distributors, customers, and wholesalers ensure that it will be difficult for any new competitors to enter the market, and that if any do, the trust will have ample advance warning and time in which to either buy the competitor out, or engage in its own research and return to predatory pricing long enough to force the competitor out of business. Critics argue that the empirical evidence shows that "predatory pricing" does not work in practice and is better defeated by a truly free market than by antitrust laws (see Criticism of the theory of predatory pricing).


title: United States antitrust law

text: Antitrust laws do not apply to, or are modified in, several specific categories of enterprise (including sports, media, utilities, health care, insurance, banks, and financial markets) and for several kinds of actor (such as employees or consumers taking collective action).


title: United States antitrust law

text: First, since the Clayton Act 1914 §6, there is no application of antitrust laws to agreements between employees to form or act in labor unions. This was seen as the "Bill of Rights" for labor, as the Act laid down that the "labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce". The purpose was to ensure that employees with unequal bargaining power were not prevented from combining in the same way that their employers could combine in corporations, subject to the restrictions on mergers that the Clayton Act set out. However, sufficiently autonomous workers, such as professional sports players have been held to fall within antitrust provisions.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Second, professional sports leagues enjoy a number of exemptions. Mergers and joint agreements of professional football, hockey, baseball, and basketball leagues are exempt. Major League Baseball was held to be broadly exempt from antitrust law in the Supreme Court case "Federal Baseball Club v. National League". The court unanimously held that the baseball league's organization meant that there was no commerce between the states taking place, even though teams traveled across state lines to put on the games. That travel was merely incidental to a business which took place in each state. It was subsequently held in 1952 in "Toolson v. New York Yankees", and then again in 1972 "Flood v. Kuhn", that the baseball league's exemption was an "aberration". However Congress had accepted it, and favored it, so retroactively overruling the exemption was no longer a matter for the courts, but the legislature. In "United States v. International Boxing Club of New York", it was held that, unlike baseball, boxing was not exempt, and in "Radovich v. National Football League (NFL)", professional football is generally subject to antitrust laws. As a result of the AFL-NFL merger, the National Football League was also given exemptions in exchange for certain conditions, such as not directly competing with college or high school football. However, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in American Needle Inc. v. NFL characterised the NFL as a "cartel" of 32 independent businesses subject to antitrust law, not a single entity.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Third, antitrust laws are modified where they are perceived to encroach upon the media and free speech, or are not strong enough. Newspapers under joint operating agreements are allowed limited antitrust immunity under the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. More generally, and partly because of concerns about media cross-ownership in the United States, regulation of media is subject to specific statutes, chiefly the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, under the guidance of the Federal Communications Commission. The historical policy has been to use the state's licensing powers over the airwaves to promote plurality. Antitrust laws do not prevent companies from using the legal system or political process to attempt to reduce competition. Most of these activities are considered legal under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. Also, regulations by states may be immune under the Parker immunity doctrine.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Fourth, the government may grant monopolies in certain industries such as utilities and infrastructure where multiple players are seen as unfeasible or impractical.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Fifth, insurance is allowed limited antitrust exemptions as provided by the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Sixth, M&A transactions in the defense sector are often subject to greater antitrust scrutiny from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The remedies for violations of U.S. antitrust laws are as broad as any equitable remedy that a court has the power to make, as well as being able to impose penalties. When private parties have suffered an actionable loss, they may claim compensation. Under the Sherman Act 1890 §7, these may be trebled, a measure to encourage private litigation to enforce the laws and act as a deterrent. The courts may award penalties under §§1 and 2, which are measured according to the size of the company or the business. In their inherent jurisdiction to prevent violations in future, the courts have additionally exercised the power to break up businesses into competing parts under different owners, although this remedy has rarely been exercised (examples include "Standard Oil", "Northern Securities Company", "American Tobacco Company", "AT&T Corporation" and, although reversed on appeal, "Microsoft"). Three levels of enforcement come from the Federal government, primarily through the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, the governments of states, and private parties. Public enforcement of antitrust laws is seen as important, given the cost, complexity and daunting task for private parties to bring litigation, particularly against large corporations.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The federal government, via both the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, can bring civil lawsuits enforcing the laws. The United States Department of Justice alone may bring criminal antitrust suits under federal antitrust laws. Perhaps the most famous antitrust enforcement actions brought by the federal government were the break-up of AT&T's local telephone service monopoly in the early 1980s and its actions against Microsoft in the late 1990s.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Additionally, the federal government also reviews potential mergers to attempt to prevent market concentration. As outlined by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, larger companies attempting to merge must first notify the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division prior to consummating a merger. These agencies then review the proposed merger first by defining what the market is and then determining the market concentration using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) and each company's market share. The government looks to avoid allowing a company to develop market power, which if left unchecked could lead to monopoly power.


title: United States antitrust law

text: The United States Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission target nonreportable mergers for enforcement as well. Notably, between 2009 and 2013, 20% of all merger investigations conducted by the United States Department of Justice involved nonreportable transactions.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Despite considerable effort by the Clinton administration, the Federal government attempted to extend antitrust cooperation with other countries for mutual detection, prosecution and enforcement. A bill was unanimously passed by the US Congress; however by 2000 only one treaty has been signed with Australia. On the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission announced it was seeking explanations from a US company, Apple In relation to potentially anticompetitive behaviour against an Australian bank in possible relation to Apple Pay. It is not known whether the treaty could influence the enquiry or outcome.


title: United States antitrust law

text: In many cases large US companies tend to deal with overseas antitrust within the overseas jurisdiction, autonomous of US laws, such as in Microsoft Corp v Commission and more recently, Google v European Union where the companies were heavily fined. Questions have been raised with regards to the consistency of antitrust between jurisdictions where the same antitrust corporate behaviour, and similar antitrust legal environment, is prosecuted in one jurisdiction but not another.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Private civil suits may be brought, in both state and federal court, against violators of state and federal antitrust law. Federal antitrust laws, as well as most state laws, provide for triple damages against antitrust violators in order to encourage private lawsuit enforcement of antitrust law. Thus, if a company is sued for monopolizing a market and the jury concludes the conduct resulted in consumers' being overcharged $200,000, that amount will automatically be tripled, so the injured consumers will receive $600,000. The United States Supreme Court summarized why Congress authorized private antitrust lawsuits in the case "Hawaii v. Standard Oil Co. of Cal.", 405 U.S. 251, 262 (1972):


title: United States antitrust law

text: The Supreme Court calls the Sherman Antitrust Act a "charter of freedom", designed to protect free enterprise in America. One view of the statutory purpose, urged for example by Justice Douglas, was that the goal was not only to protect consumers, but at least as importantly to prohibit the use of power to control the marketplace.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Contrary to this are efficiency arguments that antitrust legislation should be changed to primarily benefit consumers, and have no other purpose. Free market economist Milton Friedman states that he initially agreed with the underlying principles of antitrust laws (breaking up monopolies and oligopolies and promoting more competition), but that he came to the conclusion that they do more harm than good. Thomas Sowell argues that, even if a superior business drives out a competitor, it does not follow that competition has ended:


title: United States antitrust law

text: Alan Greenspan argues that the very existence of antitrust laws discourages businessmen from some activities that might be socially useful out of fear that their business actions will be determined illegal and dismantled by government. In his essay entitled "Antitrust," he says: "No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible." Those, like Greenspan, who oppose antitrust tend not to support competition as an end in itself but for its results—low prices. As long as a monopoly is not a coercive monopoly where a firm is securely insulated from "potential" competition, it is argued that the firm must keep prices low in order to discourage competition from arising. Hence, legal action is uncalled for and wrongly harms the firm and consumers.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Thomas DiLorenzo, an adherent of the Austrian School of economics, found that the "trusts" of the late 19th century were dropping their prices faster than the rest of the economy, and he holds that they were not monopolists at all. Ayn Rand, the American writer, provides a moral argument against antitrust laws. She holds that these laws in principle criminalize any person engaged in making a business successful, and, thus, are gross violations of their individual expectations. Such laissez-faire advocates suggest that only a coercive monopoly should be broken up, that is the persistent, exclusive control of a vitally needed resource, good, or service such that the community is at the mercy of the controller, and where there are no suppliers of the same or substitute goods to which the consumer can turn. In such a monopoly, the monopolist is able to make pricing and production decisions without an eye on competitive market forces and is able to curtail production to price-gouge consumers. Laissez-faire advocates argue that such a monopoly can only come about through the use of physical coercion or fraudulent means by the corporation or by government intervention, and that there is no case of a coercive monopoly ever existing that was not the result of government policies.


title: United States antitrust law

text: Judge Robert Bork's writings on antitrust law (particularly "The Antitrust Paradox"), along with those of Richard Posner and other law and economics thinkers, were heavily influential in causing a shift in the U.S. Supreme Court's approach to antitrust laws since the 1970s, to be focused solely on what is best for the consumer rather than the company's practices.


title: Dudhsagar Falls

text: Dudhsagar Falls () is a four-tiered waterfall located on the Mandovi River in the Indian state of Goa. It is 60 km from Panaji by road and is located on the Belgavi–Vasco Da Gama rail route about 46 km east of Madgaon and 80 km south of Belgavi. Dudhsagar Falls is amongst India's tallest waterfalls with a height of 310 m (1017 feet) and an average width of 30 metres (100 feet).


title: Dudhsagar Falls

text: The falls is located in the Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary and Mollem National Park among the Western Ghats. The falls is a punctuation mark in the journey of the Mandovi River from the Western Ghats to Panjim where it meets the Arabian sea. The area is surrounded by deciduous forests with rich biodiversity. This waterfall is also known as Tambdi Surla to some of the local people. The falls are not particularly spectacular during the dry season but during the monsoon season, however, the falls are fed by rains and form a huge force of water.


title: Dudhsagar Falls

text: The nearest rail station accessible by road to the falls is Castle Rock, Uttara Kannada, Karnataka. Visitors could get in a train from here and disembark at the Dudhsagar stop. The Dudhsagar rail stop is not a station where passengers can expect a platform. Passengers and visitors have to climb down the steep ladder of the rail compartment in a short 1-2 minute unscheduled stop. From this rail stop, visitors have to walk about a kilometre on the tracks to arrive at the falls. While the walk itself is something unexpected for a popular tourist destination, there is a 200 m train tunnel that is totally dark which makes the walk a bit tougher. Recently Indian Railways has banned people from boarding/deboarding passengers at Dudhsagar railway.


title: Dudhsagar Falls

text: One can reach the Dudhsagar Waterfalls with the help of Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife sanctuary Taxi near a Goan Village called Molem. This Association will take you through lush green forest and some heavy flowing streams and get back to you same place. Currently, this is the only access to the Waterfall. The plus point of going through Association is one can see the full view of Dudhsagar Waterfall whereas if you go by Indian Railway you will see half of the waterfall view only.


title: Dudhsagar Falls

text: There has been a lot of hype of Dudhsagar trek being closed for the general public. The Dudhsagar railway trek has been officially closed for the general public but the trek to the Dudhsagar falls bottom is still open for all.


title: Dudhsagar Falls

text: There are two routes to reach there. One is starting the trek from Kulem and follow the jeep trail until the bottom of the waterfall. The second option is via the railway track which is roughly around 11 km. This trek is not allowed by the Government of Goa ( Forest Department) as it is very risk being a railway track with minimum safety. Anyone trekking along the Railway trek can be heavily fined and can even land you in Jail. You can trek up to the Sonaulim station and join back to the Mud route. This route would save 2 km on the Mud road. During the monsoon season, it is mandatory to hire a guide and get a life jacket in order to start the trek, otherwise the entry inside the forest is restricted because the area experiences extremely heavy rainfall, and the water displacement around the fall is potentially very large, so it is always better to carry a life jacket. It is advisable not to venture into the water at the base of the fall during monsoon as the flow of the water is very fast & dangerous.


title: Dudhsagar Falls

text: The best time to visit the fall is between October to May as the access to the fall is open for the Jeep. This jeep can be hired from the local Dudhsagar Jeep Association counter at Collem. You have to pay as much as Rs. 500 per person for a jeep ride and maximum of seven people in one jeep. This jeep will take you to the base of the fall. You will have to pay Entry fees to the department of Forest to enter their area as this Falls comes under their jurisdiction. You get maximum of one & half hours to spend at the fall before you return back to the jeep you came by. The same jeep will then drop you back to Collem for your onward Journey. The Jeep safari is extremely fun and adventurous as there are chances of you seeing Wild life on the way.


title: Debbi Peterson

text: Deborah Mary Peterson (born August 22, 1961) is an American musician and the drummer of the band The Bangles. She sang lead vocals on two of the band's released singles, "Going Down to Liverpool" (1984) and "Be with You" (1989). She is the younger sister of fellow Bangles member Vicki Peterson.


title: Debbi Peterson

text: She had already established her first band in high school, and started a solo career after the separation of The Bangles in 1990. In 1992, she formed the short-lived duo Kindred Spirit with Siobhan Maher, formerly of River City People.


title: Debbi Peterson

text: Peterson has been married to English sound engineer Steven Botting since 1989. They have two children.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: The British Aerospace Harrier II is a second-generation vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) jet aircraft used previously by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and, between 2006 and 2010, the Royal Navy (RN). The aircraft was the latest development of the Harrier family, and was derived from the McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II. Initial deliveries of the Harrier II were designated in service as Harrier GR5; subsequently upgraded airframes were redesignated accordingly as GR7 and GR9.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: Under the Joint Force Harrier organisation, both the RAF and RN operated the Harrier II under the RAF's Air Command, including deployments on board the navy's s. The Harrier II participated in numerous conflicts, making significant contributions in combat theatres such as Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The type's main function was as a platform for air interdiction and close air support missions; the Harrier II was also used for power projection and reconnaissance duties. The Harrier II served alongside the Sea Harrier in Joint Force Harrier.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In December 2010, budgetary pressures led to the early retirement of all Harrier IIs from service, at which point it was the last of the Harrier derivatives remaining in British service. In March 2011, the decision to retire the Harrier was controversial as there was no immediate fixed-wing replacement in its role or fixed-wing carrier-capable aircraft left in service at the time; in the long term, the Harrier II was replaced by the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: Development of a much more powerful successor to the Harrier began in 1973 as a cooperative effort between McDonnell Douglas (MDD) in the US and Hawker Siddeley (in 1977, its aviation interests were nationalised to form part of British Aerospace) in the UK. First-generation Harriers were being introduced into Royal Air Force and United States Marine Corps; operational experience had highlighted demand for a more capable aircraft. The British government had only a minor requirement, for up to 60 Harriers at most and competing pressures on the defence budget left little room for frivolous expenditure such as the Advanced Harrier. A lack of government backing for developing the necessary engine of the new aircraft, the "Pegasus 15", led Hawker to withdraw from this project in 1975.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: Due to US interest, work proceeded on the development of a less ambitious successor, a Harrier fitted with a larger wing and making use of composite materials in its construction. Two prototypes were built from existing aircraft and flew in 1978. The US government was content to continue if a major foreign buyer was found and Britain had a plan to improve the Harrier with a new, larger metal wing. In 1980, the UK considered if the American program would meet their requirements – their opinion was that it required modification, thus the MDD wing design was altered to incorporate the British-designed leading-edge root extensions. In 1982, the UK opted to become fully involved in the joint US–UK programme. The US and UK agreement to proceed included a British contribution of US$280 million to cover development costs to meet their own requirements and to purchase at least 60 aircraft.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: The UK agreement included the involvement of British Aerospace (BAe) as a major subcontractor, manufacturing sections such as the rear fuselage for all customers of the AV-8B. The Harrier II was an Anglicised version of the AV-8B, British Aerospace producing the aircraft as the prime contractor, with McDonnell Douglas serving as a sub-contractor; final assembly work was performed at Dunsfold, England. The first prototype flew in 1981, first BAe-built development GR5 flew for the first time on 30 April 1985 and the aircraft entered service in July 1987. The GR5 had many differences from the USMC AV-8B Harriers, such as avionics fit, armaments and equipment; the wing of the GR5 featured a stainless steel leading edge, giving it different flex characteristics from the AV-8B. In December 1989, the first RAF squadron to be equipped with the Harrier II was declared operational.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: The Harrier II is an extensively modified version of the first generation Harrier GR1/GR3 series. The original aluminium alloy fuselage was replaced by one made extensively of composites, providing significant weight reduction and increased payload or range. A new one-piece wing provides around 14 per cent more area and increased thickness. The wing and leading-edge root extensions allows for a 6,700-pound (3,035 kg) payload increase over a 1,000 ft (300 m) takeoff compared with the first generation Harriers. The RAF's Harrier IIs feature an additional missile pylon in front of each wing landing gear, as well as strengthened leading edges on the wings in order to meet higher bird strike requirements. Among the major differences with the American cousin, was the new ZEUS ECM system, also proposed for the USMC AV-8 (which retained, after an evaluation, the original ALQ-164). ZEUS was one of the main systems in the British design, being a modern and costly apparatus, with an estimated cost of $1.7 million per set.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: The Harrier II's cockpit has day and night operability and is equipped with head-up display (HUD), two head-down displays known as multi-purpose colour displays (MPCD), a digital moving map, an inertial navigation system (INS), and a hands-on-throttle-and-stick system (HOTAS). Like the British Aerospace Sea Harrier, the Harrier II used an elevated bubble canopy to provide a significantly improved all-round view. A combination of the new design of the control system and the greater stability of the aircraft made the Harrier II fundamentally easier to fly than the first generation Harrier GR1/GR3 models.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: The RAF used Harriers in the ground attack and reconnaissance roles, so they relied on the short-range AIM-9 Sidewinder missile for air combat. The Sidewinder had proven effective for Royal Navy's Sea Harriers against Argentinian Mirages in the Falklands War; however, from 1993 the Sea Harrier FA2 could also carry the much longer-range AIM-120 AMRAAM, a radar-guided missile. The Sea Harrier had a radar since its introduction and the USMC later equipped their AV-8B Harriers with a radar as part of the AV-8B+ upgrade; however Britain's Harrier IIs never carried a radar. When the Sea Harrier was retired, it was suggested that its Blue Vixen radar could be transferred to the Harrier IIs. However, the Ministry of Defence rejected this as risky and too expensive; the Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram estimated that the cost would be in excess of £600 million.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: Even prior to the Harrier GR5 entering service, it was clear that alterations were required for the aircraft to be more capable in the interdictor role. A more advanced model, designated as the Harrier GR7, was developed primarily to add a night-time operational capability and avionics improvements. The GR7 development programme operated in conjunction with a similar USMC initiative upon its AV-8B Harrier fleet. Additional avionics include a nose-mounted forward-looking infrared (FLIR) and night vision goggles, an electronic countermeasures suite, new cockpit displays and a replacement moving map system. The GR7 conducted its maiden flight in May 1990 and entered service in August 1990. Following the full delivery of 34 Harrier GR7s in 1991, all of the GR5s underwent avionics upgrades to become GR7s as well.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: Some GR7s were equipped with uprated Rolls-Royce Pegasus engines, correspondingly redesignated as GR7A; these Harriers had significantly improved takeoff and landing capabilities, and could carry greater payloads. In order to guide laser-guided bombs, from 1998 onwards a number of TIALD laser designator pods were made available to the Harrier II fleet, however these proved to be extremely scarce and often unavailable for pilot training. In response to difficulties experienced while communicating with NATO aircraft during the 1999 Kosovo War, the GR7s were upgraded with encrypted communications equipment.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: A further major upgrade programme from the GR7 standard was conducted; the Harrier GR9. The GR9 was developed via the Joint Update and Maintenance Programme (JUMP), which significantly upgraded the Harrier fleet's avionics, communications systems, and weapons capabilities during scheduled periods of maintenance in an incremental manner. The upgrade also replaced the composite rear fuselage of the GR7 with one made of metal which was less vulnerable to damage from engine vibrations. The first of the incremental improvements started with software upgrades to the communications, ground proximity warning and navigation systems, followed by the integration of the AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missile. Capability C added the RAF's Rangeless Airborne Instrumentation Debriefing System (RAIDS), Raytheon's Successor Identification Friend or Foe (SIFF) system and the Paveway guided bombs. The Digital Joint Reconnaissance Pod (DJRP) was added as part of Capability D.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In February 2007, handling trials of the MBDA Brimstone (missile) began, however the Brimstone would remain uncleared for deployment on the GR9 by the type's early retirement. The Sniper targeting pod replaced the less accurate TIALD in 2007, under an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) for Afghanistan. Capability E would have included a Link 16 communications link, an auxiliary communications system, and a Tactical Information Exchange Capability (TIEC) system that was planned to by deployed on both the Harrier II and the Tornado GR4. In July 2007, BAE Systems completed the final of seven Harrier GR9 replacement rear fuselages for the MoD. The fuselage components were designed and built as part of a three-year £20 million programme. In July 2008, Qinetiq was awarded a contract to perform upgrades and maintain the Harrier II fleet until 2018, which was the predicted out of service date for the type.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: The first squadrons to receive the Harrier II were based in Royal Air Force Germany, a standing force maintained to deter Soviet aggression against the West and, in the event of war, to carry out ground attacks. As the Harrier II had significantly greater range and survivability than its predecessor the Hawker Siddeley Harrier, a new emphasis was placed on interdiction operations. By the end of 1990, the Harrier II was approaching full operational status with several squadrons. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Harrier II was considered to be too immature to be deployed. However, several aircraft were dispatched to patrol no-fly zones over Iraq from 1993 onwards. In 1994, the last of the RAF's first generation Harriers was retired, the Harrier II having taken over its duties.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In 1995, hostilities between ethnic Croatians and Serbians in the aftermath of the collapse of Yugoslavia led to the dispatch of NATO forces to the region as a deterrent to further escalations in violence. A squadron of Harrier IIs was stationed at Gioia del Colle Air Base in Italy, relieving an earlier deployment of RAF SEPECAT Jaguars. Both attack and reconnaissance missions were carried out by the Harriers, which had been quickly modified to integrate GPS navigation for operations in the theatre. More than 126 strike sorties were carried out by Harrier IIs, often assisted by Jaguar fighter-bombers acting as designators for laser-guided bombs such as the Paveway II. Bosnia was reportedly the first air campaign in which the majority of ordnance expended was precision-guided.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In June 1994, the newly introduced GR7 was deployed for trials on board the Navy's s. Operational naval deployments began in 1997. The capability soon proved useful: in 1998, a deployment was conducted to Iraq via aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf. In 2000, 'presence' and reconnaissance sorties over Sierra Leone were performed by carrier-based Harrier GR7s and Royal Navy Sea Harrier FA2s. The "Invincible"-class carriers also received multiple adaptations for greater compatibility with the Harrier II, including changes to the communications, lighting and flight deck.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: Cooperative operations between the two services was formalised under the Joint Force Harrier (JFH) command organization, which was brought about following the 1998 Strategic Defence Review. Under JFH, RAF Harrier IIs would routinely operate alongside the Royal Navy's Sea Harriers. The main JFH operating base was RAF Cottesmore, a great emphasis was placed on inter-service interaction across the organisation. The combined Joint Force Harrier served as the basis for future expeditionary warfare and naval deployments. In the long term, JFH also served as a pilot scheme for the joint operation of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: During Operation Allied Force, the NATO mission over Kosovo in 1999, the RAF contribution included 16 Panavia Tornados and 12 Harrier GR7s. On 27 April 1999, during a mission to attack a Serbian military depot, RAF Harriers came under heavy anti-aircraft fire, but did not suffer losses as a result. In April 1999, the rules of engagement were changed to allow Harriers to use GPS navigation and targeting during medium-altitude bombing missions. A total of 870 Harrier II sorties were carried out during the 78-day bombing campaign. The BBC reported the Harrier II had been achieving 80% direct hit rate during the conflict; a later Parliamentary Select Committee found that 24% of munitions expended in the theatre by all RAF aircraft had been precision weapons.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In 2003, the Harrier GR7 played a prominent role during Operation Telic, the UK contribution to the U.S.-led Iraq War. When war broke out, Harriers flew reconnaissance and strike missions inside Southern Iraq, reportedly to destroy Scud missile launchers to prevent their use against neighbouring Kuwait. Prior to the war, the Harriers had been equipped with a new armament, the AGM-65 Maverick missile, which reportedly was a noticeable contribution to the Harrier's operations over Iraq; a total of 38 Mavericks were launched during the campaign.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: During the Battle of Basra, a key Iraqi city, Harriers conducted multiple strike missions against Iraqi fuel depots to cripple enemy ground vehicles; other priority targets for the Harriers included tanks, boats, and artillery. According to Nordeen, roughly 30 per cent of all RAF Harrier operations were close air support missions, supporting advancing allied ground troops. In April 2003, the Ministry of Defence admitted that RAF Harriers had deployed controversial RBL755 cluster bombs in Iraq. Both the British and American Harrier squadrons were withdrawn from operations in Iraq during Summer 2003.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: RAF Harriers would be a regular element of Britain's contribution to the War in Afghanistan. In September 2004, six Harrier GR7s were deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, replacing a US detachment of AV-8Bs in the region. On 14 October 2005, a Harrier GR7A was destroyed and another was damaged while parked on the tarmac at Kandahar by a Taliban rocket attack. No one was injured in the attack; the damaged Harrier was repaired, while the destroyed aircraft was replaced.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: While initial operations in Afghanistan had focused on intimidation and reconnaissance, demand for interdiction missions using the Harrier II spiked dramatically during the Helmand province campaign. Between July and September 2006, the theatre total for munitions deployed by British Harriers on planned operations and close air support to ground forces rose from 179 to 539, the majority being CRV-7 rockets. The Harrier IIs had also switched to 24-hour availability, having formerly operated mostly during the day.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In January 2007, the Harrier GR9 began its first operational deployment at Kandahar, as part of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF); Harrier GR7s would be progressively withdrawn in favour of the newer Harrier GR9. Following five years of continuous operations in Afghanistan, the last of Britain's Harriers were withdrawn from the Afghan theatre in June 2009, having flown over 22,000 hours on 8,500 sorties, they were replaced by several RAF Tornado GR4s.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In 2005, allegations emerged in Parliament that, following the transfer of servicing duties to RAF Cottesmore, the standard and quality of maintenance on the Harrier fleet had fallen dramatically; several airframes had been considerably damaged and one likely destroyed due to mistakes made, the time taken to perform the servicing had risen from 100 days to 155 days, and the cost per aircraft had also risen to more than ten times that of the prior arrangements performed by Defence Aviation Repair Agency (DARA).


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: In 2006, the Sea Harrier was retired from Fleet Air Arm service and the Harrier GR7/9 fleet was tasked with the missions that it used to share with those aircraft. The former Sea Harrier squadron 800 Naval Air Squadron reformed with ex-RAF Harrier GR7/9s in April 2006 and joined by the re-formed 801 Naval Air Squadron in 2007. These later expanded and become the Naval Strike Wing. On 31 March 2010, No. 20 Squadron RAF, the Harrier Operational Conversion Unit (OCU), was disbanded; No. 4 Squadron also disbanded and reformed as No. 4 (Reserve) Squadron at RAF Wittering. All Harrier GR7 aircraft were retired by July 2010.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: The Harrier GR9 was expected to stay in service at least until 2018. However, on 19 October 2010 it was announced in the Strategic Defence and Security Review that the Harrier was to be retired by April 2011. In the long term, the F-35B Lightning II, would operate from the Navy's two new s. The decision to retire the Harrier was controversial, with some senior officers calling for the Panavia Tornado to be retired as an alternative; the decision having left Britain without any fixed-wing aircraft capable of flying from the navy's aircraft carriers.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: On 24 November 2010, the Harrier made its last ever flight from a carrier, incidentally also the last flight from the carrier prior to retirement. The fleet's last operational flights occurred on 15 December 2010 with fly pasts over numerous military bases. In November 2011, the Ministry of Defence sold 72 Harrier IIs, along with spare parts, to the United States Marine Corps for £116 million (US$180 million); the aircraft to be used as a source of components for the AV-8B Harrier II fleet.


title: British Aerospace Harrier II

text: According to a report by "Air Forces Monthly", some of the 72 Harrier IIs were to fly again, as the USMC planned to equip two squadrons with GR.9/9A models due to the well-maintained condition of the airframes when inspected at RAF Cottesmore, where the aircraft were stored and maintained by a skeleton crew of technicians following their retirement. This was contradicted by the US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) in June 2012, who stated that the USMC never planned to operate ex-RAF Harriers.


title: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

text: The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.


text: In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of black freedmen. By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws, but the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency in 1868 convinced a majority of Republicans that protecting the franchise of black male voters was important for the party's future. On February 26, 1869, after rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Republicans proposed a compromise amendment which would ban franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude. After surviving a difficult ratification fight and opposition from Democrats, the amendment was certified as duly ratified and part of the Constitution on March 30, 1870. According to the Library of Congress, in the House of Representatives 144 Republicans voted to approve the 15th Amendment, with zero Democrats in favor, 39 no votes, and seven abstentions. In the Senate, 33 Republicans voted to approve, again with zero Democrats in favor.


text: United States Supreme Court decisions in the late nineteenth century interpreted the amendment narrowly. From 1890 to 1910, the Democratic Party in the Southern United States adopted new state constitutions and enacted "Jim Crow" laws that raised barriers to voter registration. This resulted in most black voters and many Poor Whites being disenfranchised by poll taxes and discriminatory literacy tests, among other barriers to voting, from which white male voters were exempted by grandfather clauses. A system of white primaries and violent intimidation by Democrats through the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) also suppressed black participation.


text: In the twentieth century, the Court began to interpret the amendment more broadly, striking down grandfather clauses in "Guinn v. United States" (1915) and dismantling the white primary system created by the Democratic party in the "Texas primary cases" (1927–1953). Voting rights were further incorporated into the Constitution in the Nineteenth Amendment (voting rights for women) and the Twenty-fourth Amendment (prohibiting poll taxes in federal elections). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided federal oversight of elections in discriminatory jurisdictions, banned literacy tests and similar discriminatory devices, and created legal remedies for people affected by voting discrimination. The Court also found poll taxes in state election unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment in "Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections" (1966).


text: In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of black former slaves freed by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, the latter of which had formally abolished slavery. Following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment by Congress, however, Republicans grew concerned over the increase it would create in the congressional representation of the Democratic-dominated Southern states. Because the full population of freed slaves would be now counted rather than the three-fifths mandated by the previous Three-Fifths Compromise, the Southern states would dramatically increase their power in the population-based House of Representatives. Republicans hoped to offset this advantage by attracting and protecting votes of the newly enfranchised black population.


text: In 1865, Congress passed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1866, guaranteeing citizenship without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude. The bill also guaranteed equal benefits and access to the law, a direct assault on the Black Codes passed by many post-war Southern states. The Black Codes attempted to return ex-slaves to something like their former condition by, among other things, restricting their movement, forcing them to enter into year-long labor contracts, prohibiting them from owning firearms, and by preventing them from suing or testifying in court. Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the bill, President Johnson vetoed it on March 27, 1866. In his veto message, he objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented in the Congress, and that it discriminated in favor of African Americans and against whites. Three weeks later, Johnson's veto was overridden and the measure became law. Despite this victory, even some Republicans who had supported the goals of the Civil Rights Act began to doubt that Congress possessed the constitutional power to turn those goals into laws. The experience encouraged both radical and moderate Republicans to seek Constitutional guarantees for black rights, rather than relying on temporary political majorities.