The war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
The impact is being felt by countries across the globe. African countries are no exception, including those that produce oil.
We asked five scholars from Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Kenya and Ethiopia to answer the question: Is the spike in oil prices hurting your country’s economy?
The answer was a uniform “yes”. The universal fear is the effect the rise in prices is having on fuel, a staple commodity in every one of the countries for ordinary people as well as industries. In some cases, such as Ethiopia, the government has already introduced fuel subsidies to shield people from the impact of having to pay more at fuel pumps.
The fear that higher prices and outright scarcity could have damaging effects, notably on food production, was also near universal.
For some there may be a silver lining: Kenya and Senegal are in the early phases of oil production. But they’re some way off reaping the benefits of higher prices. And in the case of Nigeria, the danger is that any windfall that comes its way won’t ease the economic burden faced by ordinary people.
Ibrahima Thiam works for Iba Der Thiam University of Thies in Senegal.
Rod Crompton, Stephen Onyeiwu, Tsegay Tekleselassie, and XN Iraki do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria
Namibia might not be well known in many parts of the world. But the arid southern African country has an extraordinary history.
Rich in indigenous cultural diversity, Namibians lived for more than a century under German and South African rule. Their anti-colonial resistance shaped the country from 1960 to independence on 21 March 1990 and beyond.
Henning Melber is a political scientist who works with this history. In numerous books he has tried to understand Namibia. His latest effort is a history for German speaking readers. We asked him about it.
What is the German connection?
Namibian and German histories have been entangled since the mid-1800s when German missionaries interacted with local communities. German settler-colonial rule followed in 1884.
The complicated ties with Germany remain alive today. Namibia’s three million inhabitants include an estimated 15,000-20,000 White German speakers. They outnumber those during colonial times and maintain minority rights, with their own institutionalised identity. Namibia has the continent’s only German daily newspaper and a German radio programme by the public broadcaster.
Likewise, Namibia is the most prominent African country in the German public sphere. Hundreds of thousands of German speakers visit the country every year – almost half of Namibia’s overseas tourists are from German speaking countries.
Before independence, the West German parliament adopted a resolution declaring a special responsibility for Namibia. It referred to the German speakers in the country as the reason, without mentioning the colonial history.
The book includes the role Germans played and continue to play. I came to Namibia as the young son of German emigrants in 1967. When I was 24, in 1974, I joined the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), the liberation movement fighting for independence. The book is therefore also partly a personal history.
What is Namibia’s early history?
In contrast to the colonial view, Namibia’s territory has neither been uninhabited (terra nullus) nor unknown (terra incognita).
The country’s world famous rock art has World Heritage Site status. Some of the paintings date back 3,000 years, created by the Bushmen (San) groups as the country’s first peoples. Migration within Africa added to the local ethnic diversity.
As hunters and foragers with high mobility, Bushmen became marginalised when newer groups claimed land. Like other indigenous minorities, some now earn a living as tourist attractions.
What happened under Germany?
Germany’s first colony was based on fraudulent land deals in 1883 and 1884 by the merchant Adolf Lüderitz, acting under German “protection”. He tricked the local Nama chief into giving away much more land than intended.
German negotiations with the Portuguese and British established the borders of the current state in the early 1900s. The British harbour enclave of Walvis Bay was integrated in 1994.
From the early 1890s, local resistance to colonisation was met with brute force. Leaders were executed, and communities forced into “protection treaties”. In 1893 the massacre at Hornkranz was the writing on the wall. Over 80 women and children of the Witbooi Nama were murdered by German troops.
Settler colonial encroachment became an existential threat. In 1904 the Ovaherero resorted to armed resistance. They were joined by the Nama. The German military response ended in the first genocide of the 20th century.
An estimated 80% of the Ovaherero and 50% of the Nama were killed, plus an unknown number of Damara. German settlers organised hunting safaris to exterminate the Bushmen.
Nama and Ovaherero were imprisoned in concentration camps on Shark Island, in Swakopmund and elsewhere. Their land was appropriated, and strict segregation through laws and reserves was imposed.
Apartheid – institutionalised racial segregation – is usually associated with South Africa, where it was entrenched in law in 1948. But I argue it was in fact a German invention.
German colonialism left scars and open wounds, mainly among the descendants of the decimated indigenous communities. In 2015, the German government admitted to genocide. Negotiations between the governments have tried to come to terms with this crime, but reparations remain a contested issue.
How did South Africa end up running the country?
After the fist world war, the League of Nations turned all German colonies into mandates. These were administered by member states of the allied forces until their inhabitants were able to govern themselves.
The Union of South Africa got the mandate over neighbouring Namibia, then named South West Africa. This meant annexation in all but name. South Africa would later refuse to remain accountable to the United Nations (UN) Trusteeship Council, which exercised oversight over the mandates.
This motivated the UN to declare Namibia a “trust betrayed”. In 1971 South Africa’s mandate was revoked by the International Court of Justice.
After long negotiations a one-year transition under UN supervision paved the way for decolonisation. Independence was declared on 21 March 1990 and Namibia became the 160th UN member state.
How did organised resistance emerge?
The genocide had decimated the people needed as labour for the settler economy, so the German administration established a system of contract labour. Workers from the northern region under indirect rule, the so-called Ovamboland, were recruited.
The first coordinated resistance emerged within the ranks of the contract labour movement. It was a nucleus for the formation of Swapo.
Swapo was founded in 1960 after the killing of unarmed demonstrators, who refused forced resettlement from Old Location, a residential area for Africans in the city of Windhoek. In 1966 it began an armed struggle. In 1976 the UN recognised Swapo as “the sole and authentic representative” of the Namibian people.
The warfare against the South African regime mirrored the ambiguities and dilemmas of most armed liberation struggles. Swapo’s military command structure in exile enforced a non-democratic, centralised totalitarian mindset and a willingness to violate human rights. But the war was a relevant factor to end the foreign occupation by a White minority regime.
How has the past shaped the present?
Germans and Namibians share the long shadow of German colonialism. Most Germans know little about German colonial history. But its legacy continues to influence Namibian realities.
This is most visible in the inequality of land distribution. For the descendants of those robbed of their land, colonialism remains present. Many consider German development cooperation as another form of injustice.
Swapo transformed into a dominant party in government. It cultivates heroic narratives and a selective patriotic history. A new Black elite justifies its privileges with the struggle sacrifices.
But Namibians live in relative peace and freedom. The constitution protects civil liberties and democracy. It entrenches the rule of law. These essentials have remained respected in governance since independence. Despite all the shortcomings, it is worth it for the colonised to fight for such a society – not only in Namibia but anywhere in the world.
Henning Melber was a member of SWAPO from 1974 to 2025.
_Pillion_ offers something rare in mainstream cinema: a queer kinky love story that neither pathologizes nor punishes its characters, nor ends with a big fat gay wedding.(A24)
Pillion is a love story about connection and self-discovery through submission, pain and bootlicking.
It’s not the first film to favourably portray kink or BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism). But sympathetic renditions — like the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomena — tend to feature heterosexual couples.
Based on my research into BDSM in filmand popular culture, I see Pillion as marking a striking shift in BDSM cinema: a mainstream romantic comedy that features gay men as complex and utterly endearing kinksters.
Sadomasochism in cinema
Earlier films have often framed BDSM as titillating but deviant, a slippery slope to catastrophe.
In 9½ Weeks (1986), a male dominant draws a woman into sex games that soon degrade into non-consent and humiliation. In Basic Instinct (1992), an alpha female lures men into bondage and, occasionally, stabs them with an ice pick.
In comedy, kinky characters have often been reduced to caricatures. In Eating Raoul (1982) and One Night at McCool’s (2001), kink is associated with sleaze, pathology and violence. In both films, the so-called “perverts” are killed, their deaths staged as punchlines.
A positive spin on perversity
Later BDSM films signalled a broader acceptance of sexual variety. They usually feature a male dominant introducing a woman to whips and chains, while she teaches him to open his heart.
Secretary from 2002 is one BDSM film that sees partners get married. (Lion’s Gate Films)
More recently, Babygirl (2025) revised the formula: a married woman’s libido is unleashed with a younger man who, among other things, handles her like a dog. Their affair ends, but it ultimately revitalizes her marriage.
Poster for ‘Cruising,’ starring Al Pacino, from 1980. (Lorimar Film Entertainment/Warner Bros.)
Kinky gay men have rarely occupied the centre of mainstream film. When they appear at all, it is often as villains.
The infamous male-on-male rape scene in Pulp Fiction (1994) offers a vivid example: the two perps keep a masked, leather-clad “Gimp” on a leash, coding their assault through the esthetics of kink. All three are then murdered by the film’s more sympathetic characters.
It follows Steve Burns (Al Pacino), an undercover cop tracking a serial killer who stalks New York’s leather bar scene, a hub of gay BDSM culture. As the investigation proceeds, Burns begins to struggle with his own emerging queer desires. A final murder suggests Burns may now be the killer’s successor, driven by his own sexual ambivalence.
Under pressure, the director prefaced the film with a disclaimer that it depicted only “one small segment” of the “homosexual world” and was not meant to represent it as a whole.
While a powerful moment in gay activism, the campaign may have also reinforced a respectability politics that distanced “acceptable” homosexuality from leather culture, promiscuity and public sex.
But Cruising had its defenders. As renowned film scholar and critic Robin Wood argued, “the film’s real villain is revealed as patriarchal domination,” visible in the killer’s abusive father and in corrupt police officers whose cruelty and virulent homophobia permeate the film.
While Cruising belongs to the erotic thriller tradition, Pillion unfolds as a romantic comedy. Colin (Harry Melling), a guileless, inexperienced man still living with his parents, discovers his “aptitude for devotion” with Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), a gruff leather dom biker who prefers wrestling to kissing as first base.
Trailer for Pillion.
The opposites-attract trope fuels much of the film’s humour. After their first back-alley tryst, Ray rebuffs Colin’s attempt to spend more time together and walks away. Colin — perfectly polite, even in rejection — calls after him, “Thank you!” It’s funny not because he’s kinky, but because his dogged niceness captures the familiar awkwardness of a post-hookup goodbye.
The films also confront different kinds of discrimination. In Cruising, homophobia is blatant and often brutal. In Pillion, homophobia is beside the point. Colin’s mother isn’t troubled that her son is gay, for example. If anything, she hopes he’ll find a boyfriend. What unsettles her is the structure of his 24/7 relationship with Ray, a form of BDSM in which dominance and submission extend into everyday life.
That tension comes to a head in a memorable dinner scene with Colin’s parents. Ray coolly calls her reaction “ignorant,” casting her discomfort as a form of kink-phobia.
Intimacy and authenticity
In both Cruising and Pillion, kink becomes the catalyst through which the protagonist discovers new dimensions of his sexuality. In Cruising, that awakening is framed through psychic fragmentation. In Pillion, it becomes a story of connection: to a lover, to a community and ultimately to oneself.
In a break from familiar BDSM film conventions, the relationship neither escalates toward violence, as earlier BDSM narratives often did, nor tidy itself into domestic respectability, as more hetero happily-ever-after versions have done.
Crucially, Colin’s submissiveness is not about growing small or effacing himself. Instead, he becomes increasingly able to articulate his needs and assert his own identity.
In sinister portrayals such as Cruising or Basic Instinct, dominance bleeds into violence. But even in positive depictions, such as Fifty Shades of Grey and Secretary, the dominant character is initially closed-off or commitment-phobic.
Pillion largely repeats this pattern. Ray keeps Colin at arm’s length, strictly dictating the terms of their relationship before gradually allowing him closer — at least for a moment.
Pillion offers something rare in mainstream cinema: a queer kinky love story that neither pathologizes nor punishes its characters, nor ends with a big fat gay wedding. Instead, it combines the sweetness of a romantic comedy with the sexiness of the leather scene, capturing the poignancy of two imperfect people grappling toward intimacy.
Ummni Khan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With the recent outbreak of hostilities in the Persian Gulf, the focus of international attention has returned to one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz.
Most news coverage and analysis has focused on the immediate threats posed by missiles, drones and mines, and the global implications of the strait’s closure.
But beneath these headlines lies a much deeper story.
For more than a century, Iran has occupied a powerful place in the western imagination, characterized as a volatile region that sits atop one of the world’s largest oil reserves.
Working within the energy humanities sub-field, my research and teaching focus on the early history of oil in Iran and the development of western oil cultures during the early 20th century.
The discovery that reshaped an empire
The story begins in May 1908, when drillers financed by the British-Australian entrepreneur William Knox D’Arcy struck oil in the rugged foothills of the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Persia, known after 1935 as Iran.
The discovery reshaped the region and the global oil industry. In 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company — the precursor to British Petroleum (BP) — was established to exploit the newly discovered oilfields.
Within a few years, the company constructed a 200-kilometre pipeline network and a vast oil refinery and export complex on Abadan Island in the Persian Gulf. The refinery remains the largest in Iran.
From Abadan, tankers transported oil through the Strait of Hormuz to global markets, eventually powering ships, vehicles and industry across Europe.
Churchill later described the discovery of Iranian oil as a remarkable windfall for Britain: “Fortune rewarded the continuous and steadfast facing of these difficulties…and brought us a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes.”
From that moment onward, oil from Iran became deeply intertwined with the industrial and military power of the British Empire.
After the war, BP shifted its focus from military supply to mass consumption, launching an elaborate marketing campaign to shape how British audiences understood Iran and its oil.
During the 1920s, British newspapers carried thousands of advertisements depicting Persian landscapes, history, culture and natural resources.
Among the most striking was the 12-part “Persian Series” in 1925, which paired evocative artwork with stories of British engineers operating in remote and challenging environments to provide fuel for the modern world.
Scenes of jagged mountain passes, desert caravans and ancient religious sites in Iran were juxtaposed with narratives of western technological mastery.
Persian symbolism was also embedded in the built environment created by BP. The company’s London headquarters, Britannic House (completed in 1925), featured sculptures of Iranian figures in traditional dress, their bodies displayed as captured loot from a distant resource frontier.
In the 1930s, BP further expanded their audience through films about life in Iran, screened for free at trade shows and fairs.
A narrative of commercial conquest
My PhD research describes how BP’s representations of Iran normalized the idea that western societies like Britain depended on energy drawn from the Middle East, and that controlling those resources was necessary and justified.
BP’s interwar marketing campaigns did more than promote its brand of gasoline. They helped construct a broader cultural understanding of Iran, its people and its oil resources.
The Zagros Mountains became the setting for a vast storytelling project about technological and cultural conquest in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Iranians appeared only at the margins, either as labourers or collateral damage in the larger drama of oil. “Gone are the captains and kings,” proclaimed one BP advertisement. “Their citadels are crumbled to dust.”
A century later, the great game for oil continues in Iran
In his 1978 book Orientalism, Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said observed:
“Always there lurks the assumption that although the western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world’s resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”
That presumption has shaped western attitudes toward oil-producing regions for more than a century. In Iran specifically, it has led to a repeating cycle of conflict over its oil resources, with Iranian leaders often characterized as dangerous, unpredictable and greedy.
In 1953, the United Kingdom and the United States conspired to overthrow Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he nationalized Iran’s oil industry.
In the 1920s, the perceived dangers associated with Iran were largely environmental: mountains to cross, deserts to traverse and infrastructure to build.
Today, the dangers are far more complex and geopolitical in nature, with risks focused on nuclear proliferation, religious conflicts and disruptions to global markets.
Yet, the underlying logic of the current war with Iran remains strikingly familiar: western military might is being marshalled to eliminate threats and capture the oil western leaders seek to control.
Ian Wereley previously received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
La Loi sur les langues officielles vise à garantir des services gouvernementaux de qualité égale en français et en anglais. Or, certaines situations récentes révèlent une logique inverse : certaines institutions répondent aux plaintes linguistiques en réduisant l’accès à certains services ou contenus pour l’ensemble du public, plutôt que d’élever les standards pour tous.
En tant que spécialistes de l’histoire, des droits des minorités linguistiques et de l’égalité, nous estimons que cette approche mérite une attention particulière. Elle semble difficilement conciliable avec l’esprit de la Loi sur les langues officielles et pourrait également affaiblir la confiance du public envers les institutions appelées à en assurer l’application.
Un cadre juridique clair
Depuis son adoption en 1969, la Loi sur les langues officielles établit les bases du bilinguisme de l’appareil fédéral et garantit que les minorités francophones et anglophones du Canada puissent recevoir la même qualité de services lorsqu’elles interagissent avec les institutions fédérales. Ces garanties sont enchâssées dans la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, la loi suprême du pays, en 1982.
Depuis sa modernisation en 2023, la Loi sur les langues officielles reconnaît non seulement l’égalité réelle du français et l’anglais dans les services et les communications avec le public, mais aussi l’obligation des institutions fédérales de prendre des mesures positives pour favoriser la réalisation de l’égalité réelle du français et de l’anglais. L’objectif de la loi a toujours été la progression et l’amélioration du niveau des services pour tous, et non de le tirer vers le bas. Or, certains incidents récents illustrent le contraire.
Un des cas les plus récents concerne une plainte contre le registraire de la Cour suprême du Canada pour ne pas avoir rendu disponibles certaines décisions en français. Le juge en chef avait alors affirmé qu’il n’était « pas utile » de traduire en français les jugements rendus en anglais par ses prédécesseurs avant 1969, une position des plus étonnantes.
Une autre illustration récente concerne la Bibliothèque du Parlement : une étude historique sur les interventions des sénateurs francophones au Sénat du Canada a révélé que les comptes rendus officiels des débats n’étaient pas publiés en français avant 1896, contrairement aux obligations prévues par la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867.
Cette loi stipule clairement que « dans la rédaction des archives, procès-verbaux et journaux respectifs de ces chambres, l’usage de ces deux langues sera obligatoire ». Or, le sténographe du Sénat a capté les débats en verbatim de 1874 à 1896 en anglais seulement, ce qui explique en partie l’absence actuelle de versions françaises pour cette période.
Suite à son enquête sur la question, le Commissaire aux langues officielles a recommandé que la Bibliothèque traduise et publie ces débats dans les deux langues officielles du Canada. Toutefois, plutôt que de rendre ces documents accessibles en français, la Bibliothèque a choisi de retirer tous les débats historiques de son site web, un choix qui prive l’ensemble des citoyens d’un pan essentiel du patrimoine politique canadien. Dorénavant, un chercheur souhaitant consulter les ressources en anglais pour cette période de notre histoire devra formuler une demande écrite à la Bibliothèque du Parlement, afin que l’accès ne constitue pas une communication au public au sens de la Loi.
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La suppression d’un contenu disponible en anglais parce qu’il n’existe pas en français, au lieu de le rendre bilingue, constitue un exemple typique de ce que les spécialistes des droits à l’égalité désignent comme du « nivellement par le bas ». Une telle logique rappelle des réactions observées dans le sud des États-Unis lorsque les piscines réservées aux Blancs étaient jugées discriminatoires. Plutôt que de les ouvrir à tous, certaines municipalités, notamment à Jackson au Mississippi, ont choisi de la fermer. Cette affaire est désormais citée comme un exemple classique et tristement célèbre d’égalité vidée de sa substance.
Les institutions fédérales qui sont titulaires d’obligations en matière de langues officielles ne devraient pas s’inspirer des pratiques d’(in) égalité du sud des États-Unis des années 1970, où des arguments techniques servaient à légitimer la ségrégation raciale. Clairement, le retrait de services ou de documents en anglais par la Cour suprême et la Bibliothèque du Parlement ne contribue en rien à la protection des droits des minorités francophones.
Une forme de représailles
Ces mesures constituent plutôt une forme de représailles à l’égard de celles et ceux qui osent faire valoir leurs droits. Pire encore, elles peuvent alimenter le ressentiment de la majorité, qui pourrait à tort leur reprocher de ne plus avoir accès à une communication qui était jadis disponible dans leur langue.
Suivant le principe de l’exemplarité, ces institutions fédérales devraient prendre acte des recommandations du Commissaire aux langues officielles, plutôt que chercher des moyens techniques pour échapper à leurs obligations légales envers les minorités d’expression française. Si même la Cour suprême du Canada considère qu’il est trop coûteux de servir les francophones et de protéger les droits des minorités linguistiques, qu’en sera-t-il des entreprises privées, ou de gouvernements provinciaux ou territoriaux ? Le risque est évident : une normalisation du nivellement par le bas, une réduction des protections et, à terme, une érosion du principe même de l’égalité réelle.
Si une personne à mobilité réduite ose se plaindre d’un bâtiment inaccessible, ne serait-il moins coûteux de simplement fermer le bâtiment pour tous plutôt que de construire une rampe ? Cette manière d’appréhender l’égalité devrait alerter toutes les minorités, et pas uniquement les francophones.
Il est temps que les institutions fédérales prennent leurs responsabilités au sérieux en matière de langues officielles. La protection des droits linguistiques doit être une priorité, et non un fardeau à éviter. La Cour suprême et la Bibliothèque du Parlement ont l’occasion de montrer la voie : au lieu de chercher des excuses et de réduire l’accès, elles doivent investir dans l’inclusion et l’égalité réelle. L’avenir des droits linguistiques au Canada dépend de leur capacité à élever le standard pour tous, et non à le tirer vers le bas.
Yves Y. Pelletier est l’auteur de la plainte déposée au Commissariat aux langues officielles. Historien de formation, il souhaitait analyser les interventions des sénateurs franco‑ontariens. Cette démarche l’a mené à constater que les débats du Sénat n’étaient pas disponibles en français.
Anne Levesque et François Larocque ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur poste universitaire.
The way we watch TV, listen to music, order groceries and take photos has changed in the past decade or so. For many of us, all of these activities involve a monthly payment.
Subscriptions have quietly become a major part of household spending across the world. But many people underestimate how much they actually pay. And there is evidence which suggests that the design of subscription services – combined with common human traits – can make these payments easy to overlook.
In the UK, consumers spend around £26 billion a year subscribing to everything from digital media to cosmetics and coffee. (Around 69% of UK households subscribe to at least one video streaming service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video.)
And a few small monthly payments can quickly add up. Data from Barclays bank suggests that individual consumers spend £50.60 on – so more than £600 a year. It also shows that spending on digital content and subscription services has increased by nearly 50% since 2020. In households where several people hold subscriptions, the combined spending can be considerably higher.
The result is a subscription economy that is growing faster than many consumers realise. And one reason households underestimate their spending is that some subscriptions continue running even when people no longer use them.
The UK government estimates that of the 155 million subscriptions currently active in the UK, nearly 10 million are unwanted – at a cost to consumers of £1.6 billion each year.
The charity Citizens Advice has calculated that over £300 million a year is spent on subscriptions that people are not actually using, often because they automatically renewed after a free trial.
In many cases the individual payments are small, which makes them easy to miss in a bank statement.
Behavioural economics offers one explanation. Research shows that people tend to evaluate spending using what’s known as “mental accounting” – the tendency to treat small payments separately instead of thinking about how they add up overall. As a result, people group purchases into categories rather than looking at the total amount leaving their bank account.
A £9.99 streaming subscription or a £4.99 app service may not feel significant on its own. But when several subscriptions accumulate, the combined cost can become substantial.
Another factor is automatic renewal. Many services continue charging unless customers actively cancel. This interacts with what behavioural scientists call “status quo bias”, the tendency to stick with the default option.
When cancelling requires effort or attention, people often postpone the decision and continue paying.
Consumer groups have also raised concerns about so called subscription traps. These occur when people are unintentionally signed up to recurring payments or find it difficult to cancel them.
It has been claimed that more than 20 million adults in the UK have signed up to a subscription without realising it and about 4.7 million people are still paying for one they did not knowingly sign up to.
These cases often involve free trials that automatically convert into paid subscriptions or online sign up processes where the recurring payment is not clearly explained.
The growing scale of the problem has attracted regulatory attention. The UK government has introduced measures aimed at tackling subscription traps, including clearer information about recurring payments and easier cancellation processes. A consultation is now taking place on how these rules will be implemented before they come fully into force.
The goal is to ensure that consumers understand the financial commitment they are entering when signing up to a subscription service.
The new measures will probably help reduce some accidental subscriptions, particularly those created through unclear sign-up processes or free trials that automatically convert into paid plans. And it seems sensible to make sure that subscription contracts contain clearer information and easier cancellation rights to help consumers avoid unwanted recurring payments.
But behavioural factors such as inertia and automatic renewal mean the problem may not disappear entirely. Even when cancellation is straightforward, consumers often delay reviewing small recurring payments, allowing subscriptions to continue.
For households, digital spending often feels invisible. Subscriptions are typically spread across multiple platforms and paid automatically through bank cards or direct debits. Without a deliberate review of monthly statements, it can be difficult to see how much these payments add up to.
Subscriptions can offer convenience and flexibility. But as the subscription economy continues to grow, it can also quietly increase household spending in ways that many consumers barely notice.
Erhan Kilincarslan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andy J. Green, Professor of Freshwater Ecology, Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC); Manchester Metropolitan University
White storks and gulls feeding at a landfill.Enrique García Muñoz (FotoConCiencia), CC BY-NC-ND
Hungry gulls do not only steal our chips and sandwiches. They learn our habits, and look for reliable sources of food. That includes waste treatment centres, landfill or anywhere food waste is concentrated. Many gull populations have moved inland from the coast to exploit these sources of food.
Wherever our waste is processed, gulls and other birds can forage. At landfills, gulls feed on waste before it is covered up. If there are plastic or glass pieces covered in food that are small enough, gulls will swallow them whole. Only the food itself gets digested, and when the gull flies back to its roost site, the waste gets regurgitated, polluting that site. This movement of pollutants is known as “biovectoring”.
For the first time, scientists like me are now quantifying just how much plastic and other waste is being leaked into important nature areas through the daily movements of birds.
Many lesser black-backed gulls breeding in the UK and other parts of northern Europe migrate to Andalusia in southern Spain, where they form a wintering population of over 100,000 feeding mainly in rice fields and landfills. Fortunately, many of these birds are fitted with GPS tags while breeding. This enables detailed tracking of their movements.
Fuente de Piedra lake in Málaga is a hotspot for migrating lesser black-backed gulls. This wetland has such special natural significance, it’s designated as an internationally important site under a global convention known as Ramsar. It’s most famous for the largest breeding colony of flamingos in Spain. Gulls fly up to 50 miles to landfills to feed, then fly back to roost.
By combining GPS data with waterbird counts, and analyses of regurgitated pellets, scientists have estimated that an average of 400kg of plastics, plus more than two tonnes of other debris such as glass, textiles or ceramics, are deposited by this gull species into the lake each year. This lake has no outflow, making it salty and hence flamingo friendly. Those imported plastics remain in the lake, breaking down into microplastics. They can be ingested by flamingo chicks, aquatic insects and other animals.
Two yellow-legged gulls chase a white stork that is carrying plastic in its bill, which it picked up at a landfill. Enrique García Muñoz (FotoConCiencia), CC BY-NC-ND
In coastal Andalusia, these gulls join the resident yellow-legged gulls (equivalent to our herring gulls) and a mixture of migratory and resident white storks as the three major waterbird visitors to landfills.
In the Cádiz Bay wetlands (another Ramsar site), surrounding the historical city that is now a favourite stop for cruise ships, the three species combine to spread different types and sizes of plastics into different microhabitats. Annually, 530kg of plastics are deposited into wetlands via regurgitated pellets. Although a stork is bigger, so transports more waste per bird, most of the plastic is again moved by the lesser black-backed gulls that winter there in larger numbers.
Plastic film regurgitated by a gull roosting in a field in Atherton, Greater Manchester. Kane Brides, CC BY-NC-ND
This waste ingestion has strong effects on the birds themselves, through direct mortality from diseases, choking or becoming entangled with plastics, and toxic effects of the additives within them. Then after regurgitation in pellets, those plastics are a threat to all fauna and readily enter our food supply through aquaculture and table salt production, both important in Cádiz Bay.
These studies in Spain address a problem that is ongoing all over Europe. There are no comparable quantitative studies yet in the UK, but similar problems occur wherever gulls concentrate to feed on our waste. If white storks become abundant in the UK future, they will probably visit our landfills, together with gulls and perhaps cattle egrets.
The sealing of many landfills, and improvements in waste management may have contributed to recent declines in many gull populations in the UK and elsewhere. But these problems of plastic leakage will continue so long as our consumer society generates so much waste. Reducing waste, and reusing things is better than recycling, partly because food containers may get eaten by birds before they can be recycled. Cleaning our food containers before we bin them, and composting our own food waste, can also help to reduce this phenomenon.
Andy J. Green receives competitive research funding from the Andalusian and Spanish governments to study interactions between birds and plastics.
When brewery and pub chain BrewDog invited customers to become shareholders through its “Equity for Punks” scheme, it appeared to represent a new model of capitalism. It invited beer enthusiasts to invest in the company and become small shareholders. This allowed the Scottish firm to present itself as a community built around rebellion, identity and participation.
For a time, the BrewDog model looked remarkably successful – the company was once valued at £2 billion. But after its sale to American cannabis and alcohol firm Tilray for just £33 million, it is clear that there is more to the story.
The real story here is not about one craft brewer. It is about a broader shift in modern capitalism, where companies increasingly use narratives to mobilise communities and raise capital. But at the same time, the institutional rules of finance still determine who gets what and when.
BrewDog raised substantial capital (said to be £75 million) from thousands of small investors who were already loyal to the brand. Instead of relying exclusively on banks, venture capital or institutional investors, the company mobilised its own community to fund growth. Customers became shareholders, while the firm strengthened its reputation as a disrupter within the industry.
Then came the bar closures, job losses and BrewDog’s sale to Tilray. These developments suggest that small investors from the Equity for Punks programme will see little financial return.
In general, supporters tend to see themselves as partners in an entrepreneurial journey. Yet legally they remain minority investors. And minority investors occupy a very specific position within the institutional architecture of capitalism.
The BrewDog story is a reminder that markets run on stories as well as money. The effect of this has been to blur the boundary between customer and investor.
We believe that people rarely invest only because of spreadsheets. Our research on entrepreneurship shows that economic behaviour is shaped by trust, narratives and shared identity as much as by financial indicators. And the American sociologist Mark Granovetter argued that markets are “embedded” in social networks, meaning that people invest in people – and in their stories.
This resonates with our broader research on how economic exchanges, including investments and purchases, are also often sustained through these factors. BrewDog’s Equity for Punks model captured this dynamic perfectly.
But there’s also a question around what it really means to be part of a community when the balance sheet starts to matter.
Cold beer, cold reality
Community narratives may mobilise people to invest their money, but a body of strict rules and regulations shapes the outcome. Three points here are particularly important.
First, while the equity-public model undoubtedly has appeal, it’s also true that companies operate within legal frameworks that determine ownership rights and the order in which creditors are repaid if the company is liquidated or sold.
Second, lenders and structured investors typically enjoy protections that small retail investors, like BrewDog’s punks, do not.
Third, corporate finance works through a hierarchy, so it should be recognised that this places creditors ahead of shareholders when companies face financial stress. Shareholders are last in line to recoup their money from a company – after lenders, tax authorities, employees and suppliers.
When customers invest in companies they admire, they often interpret their role differently from conventional shareholders. Under BrewDog’s Equity for Punks programme, thousands of customers bought small stakes in the company not just for potential financial returns.
This point resonates with our research on how businesses and communities interact. It shows that economic behaviour is often shaped by the rules, expectations and relationships that surround markets. In practice, this means that people do not make decisions based only on prices or profits.
None of this suggests bad faith on the part of companies like BrewDog. It simply reflects the fact that markets operate through institutions.
Episodes like the BrewDog one serve as a reminder of a basic feature of modern capitalism. That is, when financial pressure appears, institutional rules take over.
All that being said, community-driven investment models will probably become more common. Digital platforms make it easier than ever for firms to mobilise supporters around shared narratives and identities. But at the same time, the institutional rules that govern corporate finance have not evolved at the same pace as these new forms of participatory capitalism.
If modern capitalism increasingly invites people to invest not only their money but also their faith, the gap between narrative and institutional reality will become harder to ignore. Communities may power the stories that fuel entrepreneurship. But when the balance sheet tightens, it is still institutional rules that decide who gets paid.
BrewDog did not respond to a request to respond to the claims made in this article.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Inequality in wealth between men and women has not always received the same attention as similar disparities in employment and earnings. This is perhaps because wealth – things like property, savings and investments – is seen as a private matter. This issue has become known as the “gender wealth gap” and it is a damaging and persistent feature of the economy.
This gap in wealth appears to be growing rather than shrinking. Back in 2019, the UK government published a gender equality roadmap that highlighted the gender pension gap as a key issue. But it did not mention inequalities in other forms of wealth, such as personal investments in stocks, bonds, property and business wealth.
And a recent gender equality strategy from the European Union emphasised the need for women to “thrive” in investing or entrepreneurship, but did not even mention the gender wealth gap. Despite its marginal position in the debate, the gender wealth gap matters enormously for women and girls, shaping their income, financial independence and long-term security.
Estimating the size of the gap is made difficult by the lack of data – most data sets collect information on wealth at the household rather than the individual level. But we know from our own research involving disaggregated data from countries like Germany that assets are often not shared or equally distributed between members of the same household.
According to a 2025 estimate from feminist thinktank the Women’s Budget Group, the gender wealth gap in the UK stood at 21%. This was higher than the gender pay gap, which was estimated to be 13%.
There are also differences in the type of assets held by men and women, with men more likely to hold riskier assets including investments and business wealth. These tend to generate higher returns. And over the course of a lifetime, gender disparities in wealth accumulation grow, peaking at retirement age.
The causes of gender wealth gaps can be mutually reinforcing. Women’s lower engagement in paid work (lower employment rates and shorter hours) is a trend that is closely linked to their greater role in unpaid care and domestic work. This is a key factor in the gender wealth gap. So policies and initiatives to reduce gaps in employment and pay will certainly help.
The confidence question
However, research also points to other factors at play. A consistent finding across countries is that women have lower rates of financial literacy than men and lower confidence in their financial knowledge and skills.
A prime example of this showed up in an experimental study from the Netherlands. This found that women were more likely than men to select the “don’t know” option on survey questions about financial knowledge. But when this option was removed, they often selected the correct answer.
The drivers of this low confidence partly reflect differences in early socialisation, with boys on average receiving more pocket money than girls. Women are thought to be more risk-averse when investing, which could be a result of lower financial confidence (as well as of having less income to invest overall).
Women on average also receive less wealth in the form of inheritance and gifts than men, particularly at younger ages. And timing matters, due to the way in which wealth compounds over the years. Crucially, women on average have less business wealth than men – and female founders face greater barriers when trying to secure funding for their companies, for instance.
Financial education starting in school could encourage more women to start investing. M M Vieira/Shutterstock
It’s true that wealth may be shaped by individual choices that are beyond the purview of governments and regulators. But these choices are not made in a vacuum. Initiatives can shape the context in which decisions are made, paving the way towards a more equal future.
Large-scale, accessible programmes are needed to increase financial literacy and confidence, including in schools. Greater representation of female high-earners and employers could also encourage an investment ecosystem where women would feel more welcome. According to a European study, female CEOs tend to employ more women – but drawing women into higher-paying sectors needs to start early at school level too.
There is no magic bullet that will dramatically reduce the gender wealth gap quickly. But there are things that can be done, and there is a compelling need to act. Without targeted initiatives, women who break down the workplace glass ceiling to become high achievers and high earners could find that they are still disadvantaged compared to their male peers.
Madeline Nightingale led a project funded by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), which examined gender wealth gaps.
Elizabeth Kadar worked on a project commissioned by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA), which mapped the gender investment gap in Europe.
The increasingly urban lifestyles of seagulls in the UK and around Europe has made them experts at grabbing food from unsuspecting outdoor diners. Herring gulls in particular are gaining a reputation for food theft in seaside towns like Falmouth in Cornwall, where I live.
On a day out at the beach last summer, I watched as one rummaged through an unattended bag and hopped off with a packet of crisps. Sadly, the gull didn’t hang around long enough for me to see whether it successfully opened the packaging.
Watching this kind of behaviour led me and my colleague Neeltje Boogert to explore new ways of deterring these resourceful birds. Our new research shows that displaying a pair of eyes on food packaging can be enough to stop some gulls from pinching your food.
This builds on our previous work which showed herring gulls approach food more slowly when someone is looking at them directly, compared with if they are looking away.
Many animals – both wild and domesticated – are very aware of eyes, which can indicate the presence of a predator or be used to communicate intent. Direct eye contact often conveys aggression, while looking away indicates a lack of threat.
Animals generally respond defensively when they see eyes staring at them. This is probably an instinctive tendency, since avoiding being eaten by a predator can be a split-second response.
Some animals may have evolved markings to exploit this behaviour. So-called eyespots are found on many insects, amphibians and fish, and they come in a variety of colour, size and pattern combinations.
Exactly how eyespots might deter predators has been hotly debated by scientists for over a century. They may increase predator wariness by being mistaken for predator eyes, or divert attacks to less important parts of the body.
Given that evolution suggests eyes are a good way of increasing animal wariness, the idea of mimicking nature by using fake eyes to deter other animals has been tried in a variety of settings.
In Botswana, livestock are at risk of being eaten by ambush predators such as lions and leopards, which causes conflict with farmers. To test whether eyespots could reduce the risk of predation, experimenters painted pairs of eyes or crosses on the rumps of cattle, or left them unmarked. This was repeated across multiple cattle herds, and any attacks on cattle were recorded.
During the study, 19 cattle were killed by lions or leopards – but none of the cattle with eyespots on their rumps were among them. They were also attacked less than either cattle with crosses or unmarked cattle, suggesting that eyespots can be an effective deterrent for a wide range of animals.
Put off by the eyes
For our study of herring gulls, we tested this idea in coastal towns in Cornwall where gulls are known to take food from people eating outside. We stuck pairs of eyes onto food takeaway boxes and presented individual gulls with a choice of two boxes placed two metres apart on the ground: one box with eyes and one plain box.
Gulls appeared to be put off by the eyes, as they were slower to approach and less likely to peck at these boxes, compared with the ones without eyes.
We also wanted to know whether gulls would, over time, figure out that the eyes on boxes were not really threatening. To test this, we presented 30 gulls with one takeaway box either with or without eyes, but did this three times for each gull over a short amount of time.
Around half the birds never pecked at the box with eyes, whereas the other half quickly approached and pecked. This suggests there could be a sustained effect from the fake eyes for some gulls that do not realise they are being tricked.
We now want to test this in a more realistic setting, by teaming up with food vendors and asking them to use takeaway boxes with eyes on. While this might only ever deter half of gulls from stealing food, perhaps when paired with other deterrents – including shouting – it can have an impact on the amount of food theft.
Eye-like markings have already been used to exclude birds from certain areas, including keeping starlings away from crops, seabirds from fishing nets and raptors from airports.
Video: SciShow Psych.
Humans respond to eyes too
It’s interesting to note that people, like gulls and many other animals, also pay attention to eyes. Images of human eyes have been found to reduce bicycle theft, reinforce honesty, and even increase charitable donations – all by creating the impression of being watched. This is probably because we are a social species, and tend to act more honestly if we feel we might be judged by an onlooker.
But as with herring gulls, the effect on human behaviour is inconsistent. Images of eyes can nudge behaviour in certain situations, but they don’t work on everyone.
Whether protecting chips, bicycles or cattle, the next step is to understand why some animals (and people) do not find eyes aversive. But already, the evidence is clear that fake eyes can offer a cheap, simple way to mitigate conflict with humans and other animals.
Laura Kelley receives funding from the Royal Society.
