Source: The Conversation – UK – By Quynh Hoang, Lecturer in Marketing and Consumption, Department of Marketing and Strategy, University of Leicester
For years, big tech companies have placed the burden of managing screen time squarely on individuals and parents, operating on the assumption that capturing human attention is fair game.
But the social media sands may slowly be shifting. A test-case jury trial in Los Angeles is accusing big tech companies of creating “addiction machines”. While TikTok and Snapchat have already settled with the 20-year-old plaintiff, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is due to give evidence in the courtroom this week.
The European Commission recently issued a preliminary ruling against TikTok, stating that the app’s design – with features such as infinite scroll and autoplay – breaches the EU Digital Services Act. One industry expert told the BBC that the problem is “no longer just about toxic content, it’s about toxic design”.
Meta and other defendants have historically argued that their platforms are communication tools, not traps, and that “addiction” is a mischaracterisation of high engagement.
“I think it’s important to differentiate between clinical addiction and problematic use,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified in the LA court. He noted that the field of psychology does not classify social media addiction as an official diagnosis.
Tech giants maintain that users and parents have the agency and tools to manage screen time. However, a growing body of academic research suggests features like infinite scrolling, autoplay and push notifications are engineered to override human self-control.
Video: CBS News.
A state of ‘automated attachment’
My research with colleagues on digital consumption behaviour also challenges the idea that excessive social media use is a failure of personal willpower. Through interviews with 32 self-identified excessive users and an analysis of online discussions dedicated to heavy digital use, we found that consumers frequently enter a state of “automated attachment”.
This is when connection to the device becomes purely reflexive, as conscious decision-making is effectively suspended by the platform’s design.
We found that the impulse to use these platforms sometimes occurs before the user is even fully conscious. One participant admitted: “I’m waking up, I’m not even totally conscious, and I’m already doing things on the device.”
Another described this loss of agency vividly: “I found myself mindlessly opening the [TikTok] app every time I felt even the tiniest bit bored … My thumb was reaching to its old spot on reflex, without a conscious thought.”
Social media proponents argue that “screen addiction” isn’t the same as substance abuse. However, new neurophysiological evidence suggests that frequent engagement with these algorithms alters dopamine pathways, fostering a dependency that is “analogous to substance addiction”.
Strategies that keep users engaged
The argument that users should simply exercise willpower also needs to be understood in the context of the sophisticated strategies platforms employ to keep users engaged. These include:
1. Removing stopping cues
Features like infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications create a continuous flow of content. By eliminating natural end-points, the design effectively shifts users into autopilot mode, making stopping a viewing session more difficult.
The issue of social media addiction is of particular concern when it comes to children, whose impulse control mechanisms are still developing. The US trial’s plaintiff says she began using social media at the age of six, and that her early exposure to these platforms led to a spiral into addiction.
Lawyers in the US trial have pointed to internal documents, known as “Project Myst”, which allegedly show that Meta knew parental controls were ineffective against these engagement loops. Meta’s attorney, Paul Schmidt, countered that the plaintiff’s struggles stemmed from pre-existing childhood trauma rather than platform design.
Our study heard from many adults (mainly in their 20s) who described the near-impossibility of controlling levels of use, despite their best efforts. If these adults cannot stop opening apps on reflex, expecting a child to exercise restraint with apps that affect human neurophysiology seems even more unrealistic.
Potential harms of overuse
The consequences of social media overuse can be significant. Our research and recent studies have identified a wide range of potential harms.
Excessive exposure to rapidly changing, highly stimulating content can fracture the user’s attention span, making it harder to focus on complex real-world tasks.
And many users describe feeling “defeated” by the technology. Social media’s erosion of autonomy can leave people unable to align their online actions – such as overlong sessions – with their intentions.
A ruling against social media companies in the LA court case, or enforced redesign of their apps in the EU, could have profound implications for the way these platforms are operated in future.
But while big tech companies have grown at dizzying rates over the past two decades, attempts to rein in their products on both sides of the Atlantic remain slow and painstaking. In this era of “use first, legislate later”, people all over the world, of all ages, are the laboratory mice.
Quynh Hoang 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 Arshad Majid, Professor of Cerebrovascular Neurology, School of Medicine and Population Health, University of Sheffield
An explosion does not need to strike the head to injure the brain. When a blast occurs, it generates a sudden pressure wave that can pass through the body and skull in milliseconds, potentially deforming brain tissue and blood vessels along the way.
For soldiers exposed to improvised explosive devices or other blasts, and civilians caught in industrial accidents or explosions in conflict zones, the neurological effects can be long-lasting – even when brain scans appear normal.
Blast injuries can trigger changes in the brain and its blood vessels that standard medical scans do not always detect. When these injuries go unrecognised, people may receive the wrong care or be left without an explanation for symptoms that persist for years.
Most people are familiar with traumatic brain injuries caused by impacts such as falls, road traffic collisions or sports injuries. In these situations, the brain moves suddenly within the skull, leading to bruising or localised damage that can often be seen on scans.
Blast injury works differently. The rapid rise and fall in pressure created by an explosion can travel through the skull and the fluid that surrounds and cushions the brain. This generates complex mechanical forces that stretch and strain brain tissue. As a result, someone can sustain a brain injury even without any direct blow to the head.
Rather than producing one clearly visible injury, blast exposure tends to cause widespread microscopic damage. These tiny injuries can disrupt how brain cells communicate with each other, and can also damage the blood vessels that keep brain tissue healthy.
Although blast injury is often associated with military settings, it is not confined to war zones. Civilians may be exposed through industrial explosions, terrorist attacks or demolition work. In all these situations, the underlying mechanisms of brain injury are similar.
Despite these differences, blast injuries are often managed in the same way as concussions or other head injuries. When damage to blood vessels is overlooked, the severity of the injury and its long-term impact can be underestimated.
More sensitive diagnostic tools, including advanced imaging and specialised blood tests, could improve detection of subtle blood vessel damage. This would allow for more targeted treatment aimed at reducing inflammation, protecting the brain’s circulation, and ensuring patients receive appropriate long-term care.
Blast-related brain injury can also disrupt the brain’s waste-clearance system. This system normally removes harmful proteins and metabolic waste. When it is impaired, vulnerability to long-term post-concussion symptoms and neurodegenerative diseases may increase.
Brain blood vessels are especially vulnerable
One of the most important, and often overlooked, consequences of blast injury is damage to the brain’s blood vessels.
Blood vessels are thin-walled and flexible, allowing them to cope with normal changes in blood flow and pressure. During a blast, however, the rapid pressure shifts can stretch these vessels beyond their limits. This can cause tiny tears and weaken the protective barrier that normally prevents harmful substances in the bloodstream from entering brain tissue.
This protective layer, often called the blood–brain barrier, plays a crucial role in controlling what passes from the blood into the brain. When it is damaged, inflammatory cells and proteins can leak into brain tissue.
The resulting inflammation may persist long after the initial injury, interfering with normal brain function. Over time, this can contribute to symptoms such as headaches, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, slowed thinking, mood changes and fatigue.
Damage to the blood–brain barrier may help explain why some people experience ongoing symptoms months or even years after blast exposure.
Why scans can appear normal
One of the most frustrating experiences for people with blast-related brain injury is being told that their CT or MRI scan is normal, despite persistent symptoms.
Standard imaging techniques are very good at detecting fractures, bleeding or large areas of tissue damage. Blast injuries, however, often involve microscopic changes such as small vessel damage, disruption to communication between brain cells, and ongoing inflammation. These changes are usually too subtle to be seen on routine scans.
This mismatch between symptoms and imaging can delay diagnosis, complicate rehabilitation and, in some cases, affect access to appropriate support or compensation.
Progress will require close collaboration between neuroscientists, clinicians, emergency services and policymakers. Blast injury is not only a military concern. It offers broader insights into how pressure-related forces damage the brain, and how these injuries might be prevented or treated.
Recognising blast injury as a distinct form of brain trauma, particularly one that affects the brain’s blood vessels, is a crucial step towards improving care for those affected.
Arshad Majid is a NIHR Senior Investigator and his research is funded by the NIHR EME programme and the NIHR Sheffield BRC. His research is also funded by the Stroke Association UK.
Favour Felix-Ilemhenbhio receives funding from the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
Klaudia Kocsy receives funding from Alzheimer’s Research UK.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Byron Hyde, Philosopher of Science and Public Policy, University of Bristol, Honorary Research Associate, Bangor University
The Enhanced Games, slated to commence in May 2026, has sparked outrage across the sporting world. This new competition is the first in history to openly permit performance-enhancing drugs, and sporting bodies aren’t happy about it.
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe called the concept “bollocks”, while World Anti-Doping Agency president Witold Bańka has dismissed it as “dangerous” and “ridiculous”.
Such criticisms might be justified, but they overlook the fact that the Enhanced Games is making obvious what society has always quietly accepted – that most people are willing to watch athletes risk harm when the entertainment is good enough. And that’s something that all sporting bodies should spend more time considering.
This bargain between spectacle and safety isn’t new to sport. Ancient Romans packed the Colosseum to watch gladiators fight to the death. It’s certainly been toned down over the last 2,000 years. But the gladiatorial spirit remains alive in modern arenas. How it’s packaged has merely become more sophisticated.
Consider boxing. Society has allowed professional boxing for more than 100 years despite the dangers to fighters. In one group of amateur and professional boxers, 62% were found to have dementia or amnesia.
Yet arenas still sell out. Fans celebrate knockout victories even though they know they may shorten a boxer’s life. Sporting bodies and fans have decided this trade-off is acceptable. Every time a ticket is bought, a statement is made about acceptable risk.
The multi-sport Enhanced Games simply extends this logic. Held in Las Vegas, athletes will be able to use performance-enhancing substances (approved by the drugs regulator for medical uses) “off-label” under medical supervision. These include testosterone, growth hormone and anabolic steroids.
Long-term use of substances like these can damage the heart and blood vessels, harm the liver, disrupt the body’s natural hormone production (potentially causing infertility) and affect a person’s mood and mental health.
The organisers aim to usher in a “new era of elite competition” and with it “the future of human performance”. Founder Aron D’Souza, an Australian businessman, thinks athletes should be free to do whatever they want to their own bodies. The International Federation of Sports Medicine has challenged the Enhanced Games for putting athletes at risk.
But isn’t the Enhanced Games simply a more dangerous version of traditional athletics? If brain trauma is the potential price of boxing entertainment, why the outrage about pharmaceutical enhancement risks? The moral panic about chemical enhancement seems inconsistent with society’s silence about the proven harms in so many of the sports people already love.
The Olympics already celebrates athletes who push their bodies to extremes through punishing training regimens, strict diets and recovery methods that test the limits of human physiology. Research has documented serious physical and psychological harms in many sports, including some like gymnastics and figure skating where even child athletes have faced high risks of injury and mental illness, including eating disorders, anxiety and depression.
The Enhanced Games just moves the risk threshold further along a spectrum society has already accepted.
Every time a new enhanced athlete is announced, their national sporting bodies issue condemnations. Sport Ireland stated that they were “deeply disappointed” about swimmer Shane Ryan’s decision to join the Enhanced Games. When fellow swimmer Ben Proud announced his intention to participate, governing body UK Sport said it “condemns everything the Enhanced Games stands for” and that they were “incredibly disappointed” with his decision.
But these same bodies preside over sports where athletes routinely suffer serious injuries. When will they acknowledge the risks they’re already asking athletes to accept?
The question isn’t whether the Enhanced Games introduces something morally unprecedented. It doesn’t. What it does is forces sports fans to confront the bargain they’ve always accepted but rarely discuss. Fans want extraordinary athletic performances, and they’re willing to let athletes pay extraordinary prices to deliver them.
The Enhanced Games describes itself as a ‘sports spectacle for the 21st century’.
Being honest about risk
If sporting bodies are serious about athlete welfare rather than just moral posturing, they need to be honest about risk across all of sport. In research ethics, institutional review boards conduct formal risk-benefit analyses before approving human studies. They document potential harms and assess whether benefits justify risks.
Sporting bodies should do the same. This includes the Enhanced Games. So far, they’re failing just as badly as traditional sports, hiding behind claims of medical supervision rather than stating the trade-offs.
Informed consent is central to medical ethics and some ethicists argue it isn’t talked about enough in sport. Athletes should understand the specific risks of their sport based on robust data, not vague warnings.
For example, all boxers should be aware of the dangers they face each time they take a punch to the head. Similarly, all enhanced athletes should understand what prolonged testosterone and growth hormone do to the body. Informed consent requires real information, not liability waivers.
As a philosopher of science, I suggest we need to be consistent about our judgments across different sports. The sporting establishment denouncing the Enhanced Games should look in the mirror. Boxing, rugby and motorsports organisations as well as bodies representing a host of other sports preside over activities with documented long-term harms.
The selective outrage is telling. It suggests this is more about maintaining comfortable fictions than protecting athletes. We prefer our sports wrapped in the language of safety and personal freedom. The Enhanced Games threatens to make that fiction harder to maintain.
Byron Hyde is a member of the Health Research Authority London Chelsea Research Ethics Committee and the Open University Human Research Ethics Committee. This essay does not reflect the opinions of the Health Research Authority or the Open University.
London’s National Gallery has launched a “voluntary exit” scheme for staff to address an £8.2 million deficit, with the possibility of redundancies to follow. The news bodes ill for cultural institutions and cuts, in contrast to the recent announcement of additional cultural funding from the UK government.
If the National Gallery – one of Britain’s leading attractions with over 4 million visitors a year – is struggling to balance its books, it indicates wider structural problems in the arts industry. The National Gallery’s predicament is indicative of pressures that have been building across the arts. Among these are increased operating costs, public funding not keeping pace with inflation, and increased reliance on commercial income at a time when belts are tightening across the board.
Cash injections, when they come, are not enough in the face of longitudinal real-terms decline. Competing needs for infrastructural repairs and capital projects are leaving a gap in the recurring revenues that support educational work, staff and daily activity.
As with the crisis in higher education, years of funding pressure and inflation are catching up with the sector and exposing the underlying fragility. The dawning scale of the problem has prompted a parliamentary inquiry into the financial resilience of government-sponsored museums and galleries. This is an acknowledgement of the deep-rooted nature of the challenge.
As the resources for cultural institutions have shrunk, research shows that the problems are systemic. There is a high level of churn among skilled workers in cultural occupations. Low pay, insecure conditions and limited progression push workers, especially younger workers, out of arts, culture and heritage jobs. This weakens both the sector’s resilience in the face of change and institutional capacity to innovate.
At the same time, access to finance has become a barrier. Cultural organisations face growing difficulty in securing affordable capital, lenders not understanding their businesses and a lack of appropriate financial products.
This undermines entrenched assumptions about arts organisations. High footfall does not necessarily guarantee sustainability. Last year Tate cut 7% of staff even as visitor numbers recovered after the pandemic, albeit unevenly. It also challenges the belief that philanthropy can replace public funding, or that cultural institutions should operate like other businesses. The result is a sector exposed to shocks, with insufficient room to adapt.
Financial fragility and institutional risk
The closure of the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow earlier this year is a case in point. The funding body, Creative Scotland, refused to add to its previous three-year £3.2 million commitment and cited concerns about the centre’s “ongoing viability”. The CCA faced many problems, from a staffing dispute leading to the closure of its café bar, to – more recently – anti-Israel protesters calling on it to endorse a cultural boycott, leading to a temporary closure and further tensions.
Organisations increasingly have to respond to complex and competing social pressures – including objections to their sponsors – while maintaining institutional stability. It’s a task made harder by funding models that leave scarce room for manoeuvre.
At its core, the CCA’s collapse reflected longstanding financial fragility. These additional pressures compounded an already finely balanced situation. When an organisation is reliant on emergency funding and operating with little margin for error, disruptions can have disproportionate effects.
The CCA episode demonstrates how cultural organisations are required to absorb disruption (political, reputational and operational) with diminishing financial buffers. They are expected by policymakers, campaigners and the public to widen access, sustain international partnerships, expand educational programming and generate enough income to survive. These all make sense on their own but, taken together, may pull in different directions.
The arts are expected to, and often do, serve as engines of regeneration. Meanwhile, they increasingly operate with an uncertain mixed economy funding model in which shrinking public subsidy prioritises an entrepreneurial approach to private sponsorship and commercial income.
This suggests that the National Gallery’s difficulties are not an outlier, but an indicator of a deeper fault line – a sign of how exposed even our best-known cultural institutions have become. An organisation of this scale and popularity being forced to cut staff underlines how little room there is to absorb rising costs or unexpected disruption. High visitor numbers and commercial activity can help, but can’t guarantee stability on their own.
Much of the postwar period was shaped by the Keynesian settlement – the consensus in favour of state intervention to support public goods and manage economic and social welfare. There was a broad acceptance that cultural institutions required public support to deliver benefits that the market alone could not. As that assumption has weakened, funding has become more fragmented and reactive, shaped by short-term pressures rather than coherent long-term strategy.
The result is organisations operating with minimal headroom and responding through tactical measures like staffing cuts instead of being able to plan ahead. What gets lost in the process is the capacity to invest in people, programmes and public value beyond the immediate funding cycle.
This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.
Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aimee Ambrose, Professor of Energy Policy, Member of Fuel Poverty Evidence and Trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network, Sheffield Hallam University
Swedish homes are among the warmest in Europe, reflecting high levels of insulation and longstanding strategies that have kept heating costs low for most households.Antony McAulay/Shutterstock
The new year in Sweden began with some record-breaking cold temperatures. Temperatures in the village of Kvikkjokk in the northern Swedish part of Lapland dropped to -43.6°C, the lowest recorded since records began in 1887.
Yet for the majority of Swedish households, heating is not an issue. Those living in the multi-household apartment blocks that characterise Sweden’s towns and cities enjoy average temperatures of 22°C inside their homes, thanks to communal heating systems that keep room temperatures high and costs low. For many households, heating is charged at a flat rate and included in the rent they pay.
*Some interviewees in this article are anonymised according to the terms of the research.
In the UK, meanwhile, home temperatures average just 16.6 degrees, the lowest in all of Europe. At least 6 million UK households fear the onset of cold weather because they are living in fuel poverty – unable to afford to heat their home to a safe and comfortable level.
The problem is exacerbated by the UK’s reliance on natural gas to heat its homes – a fuel which suffers from escalating price volatility. They are also the most poorly insulated in Europe, making them difficult to keep warm.
In Britain, home heating isn’t just a political hot potato; it has been shown to cost lives. In the winter of 2022-23, 4,950 people were estimated to have died earlier than expected (known as “excess winter deaths”) because of the health effects of living in cold homes – including lung and heart problems as well as damage to mental health. In contrast, despite having a much colder winter climate, Sweden’s excess winter deaths index was around 12%, one of the lowest rates in Europe and considerably below the UK’s 18% figure.
The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.
So how did two countries that are geographically quite close end up so far apart when it comes to home heating outcomes? As two professors of energy studies – one British, the other Swedish – we have long puzzled over the stark contrast in how winter is experienced inside our homes in the north of England (Sheffield) and southern Sweden (Lund).
For the last three years, we have been researching the modern histories of home heating in both countries (plus Finland and Romania), gathering nearly 300 oral accounts of people’s memories of the daily struggle to keep warm at home for long periods each year.
By charting these experiences of home heating in both countries since the end of the second world war, we show how Britain now finds itself struggling to keep its citizens warm in winter while also facing an uphill battle to meet its environmental targets. The stories from Sweden, on the whole, suggest how different things could have been.
Post-war memories
The second world war changed many things but not, immediately, the way homes were heated. In the UK coal remained the primary domestic fuel, while Sweden stuck mainly with wood, although coal was becoming more common in cities. Cold homes were still considered normal in both countries, as Majvor* (who is now in her 80s and lives in the Swedish city of Malmö) recalled of her post-war childhood living in a one-room flat:
There was a stove in the room and that was the only source of heat – I have a memory of it being so cold in the winter that my mother had to put all three children in the same bed to keep warm. In the winter, all the water froze to ice, so you had to … heat it on the stove to get hot water.
Despite the cold, many of our interviewees remembered the burning of wood and coal to heat their homes with great affection – although less so the drudgery and dirt that went with it.
“There’s just something about a fire, isn’t there,” Sue (now in her 60s and living in Rotherham, England) told us. “The warmth, the smell, the laughter. It’s that family memory and it was just wonderful. Anyone ’round here will tell you the same: life was hard but it was wonderful. We felt loved.”
Mary (now in her 70s and also living in Rotherham) is among a very small minority who still heat their home using a coal fire. Her reflections were less positive:
I remember going to fetch coal when I was pregnant. I gave birth two days later … It’s the dirt that gets you down, the dirt from the fire. It’s disheartening when your walls are always dirty. That’s why I had them tiled because I was painting them every six months before that.
Carolina* (now in her mid-30s and living in Malmö) also had a negative recollection of her wood-burning childhood – but for a very different reason. She described how her mother had once “got the axe in her foot … She continued to chop wood anyway – but I kind of got PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] from her doing that. So I can’t do it, I’m really scared of it.”
In Sweden, home heating was seen as key to improving social conditions after the war. The emphasis was on good-quality homes for everyone as the social welfare concept of folkhem (“the people’s home”) finally gained traction. The idea had first been articulated by future prime minister Per Albin Hansson in a speech to the Swedish parliament back in 1928, as a way of expressing his vision for a fair and equal society.
From 1946, housing construction was regarded as a key political issue for improving public health and achieving Sweden’s other social welfare goals. In several cities, municipally owned public housing companies played an important role in the initial phase of new district heating systems, in part by guaranteeing a secure market. The introduction of the varmhyra (“warm rent”) policy meant heating and sometimes other utilities were included in the rent – an arrangement that continues to this day in many Swedish apartment blocks.
The UK, like Sweden, suffered the blight of cold homes during the 1940s, exacerbated by fuel rationing that extended long beyond the war. So it is difficult to explain why Britain’s new post-war welfare state did not explicitly address home heating.
Instead, the focus was on public health, with the birth of the National Health Service and recognition that the mass burning of coal was leading to fatal air pollution and unhealthy homes. Heavy city smogs, triggered by widespread coal burning in homes and factories, became increasingly common. The problem reached a climax when the “great smog of 1952” killed approximately 12,000 people, primarily in London, over just five days.
The justification for rapidly phasing out coal as the UK’s primary fuel for homes and industry was centred around ending the public health crisis of these killer smogs, rather than on changing the way homes were heated – leading to the introduction of the Clean Air Act (1956). And as the UK scrabbled for a cleaner form of heating, a game-changing discovery was made. Huge reserves of “natural gas” (methane) were found off the Yorkshire coast in 1965, offering the huge advantage of reducing visible air pollutants compared with coal.
One man in particular, Kenneth Hutchison, saw and seized the opportunity to present natural gas as the panacea the UK had been waiting for. As incoming president of the National Society for Clean Air, Hutchison hailed the gas industry as the driving force in Britain’s “smokeless revolution”. From the late 1960s, he drove the rollout of networks piping natural gas into UK households at an incredible rate, demanding: “We must convince the public that central heating by gas is best” over the grime and drudgery of coal fires.
A 1965 advert for ‘high-speed’ British gas. Video: Anachronistic Anarchist.
The chairman of British Gas, Denis Rooke – not an objective witness, admittedly – described the rollout as “perhaps the greatest peacetime operation in the nation’s history”. Between 1968 and 1976, around 13 million UK homes (of a total of about 15 million) were made ready for connection to the gas network. The cost of converting domestic heating and cooking systems from coal to gas was largely borne by the national gas supplier, making it effectively free to most households.
Our research suggests this transition was presented to UK households as a fait accompli. But most of our UK-based interviewees remembered the advent of natural gas as a major step forward in cleanliness, comfort and convenience. As 75-year-old Rita from Rotherham recalled of moving into a new council estate with gas heating in 1967:
It was like another universe! It was comfortable, everything became less intense – you didn’t need so much clothing … The days of cooking on the fire were gone. Fabulous! The boiler didn’t have to go all the time – the gas fire could take the chill off.
Britain’s gas rollout not only brought gas central heating but other appliances such as gas fridges and fires that further lightened the domestic load. For Rita’s and many other families, it felt like a cascade of liberations which made homes brighter and more enjoyable to live in.
Yet half a century later, Hutchison’s faith in gas appears less justified. While it certainly cleaned up the UK’s visible air pollution, natural gas is methane by another name – a powerful greenhouse gas.
How Sweden ‘futureproofed’
With a much smaller population and less crowded cities, air quality in Sweden had been less of a concern than in the UK in the immediate post-war period. But in the 1960s, proposals for a mass home-building programme raised fears this could worsen air pollution.
Without the option of “clean” natural gas, Sweden turned to district heating – an idea which had originated in New York in the 19th century. But Sweden committed to it in a big way during the 1960s and ‘70s, deciding it was the best way to meet the heating needs of the 1 million homes now being built. This decision shaped the way homes in Sweden are heated: today, some 90% of its multi-family apartment blocks are connected to district heating systems – with heat distributed from power plants (usually on the edge of cities) as hot water via a network of pipes.
Upon its introduction, district heating was celebrated for its efficiency, affordability for households (especially when combined with the warm rent policy), and flexibility – it is easy to change the fuel source. For some municipalities, district heating plants opened up opportunities to produce cheap electricity. Whereas UK households were (and remain) largely individually responsible for paying for their heating, in Sweden it was seen as a collective good.
Even the 1973 oil crisis – when geopolitical tensions in the Middle East quadrupled the price of oil – failed to dent public trust in the Swedish approach to home heating. In response to the oil crisis, Sweden moved quickly to change the fuels used to power district heating, introducing more domestic waste and biomass into the mix – a move that, from a climate perspective, now appears a highly prescient shift.
According to Kjell* (now in his 60s, living in a small town in south-west Sweden), 1973 was “when the whole concept changed because suddenly fossil fuels became expensive”. He explained:
The expansion of nuclear power [meant] electricity became very cheap … The government promoted the idea that ‘now we should use electricity, we should use direct electric heating’ … All you had to do was turn a thermostat, press a button, and it was warm.
As well as nuclear power expansion, Sweden doubled down on hydropower production and was among the earliest European countries to invest in other renewable energy sources. Its government was also an early proponent of the now-familiar concept of energy efficiency – encouraging both households and industry to conserve energy and invest in insulation. By the mid-1990s, every Swedish home was rated by the EU as having comprehensive insulation and double glazing as a minimum. The equivalent figure in the UK in 2025 was only around 50%.
The flagship initiative “Seal up Sweden” encouraged households to insulate homes and restrict room temperature to 20 degrees (still almost four degrees warmer than the average UK home today). And the warm rent system gave landlords a vested interest in improving the energy performance of their properties.
Whether it was realised at the time or not, in the defining moment of the oil crisis, Sweden was futureproofing its urban heating systems – and laying the foundations for its enduring reputation as a leader in clean energy and climate policy. Sweden eschewed energy imports in favour of harnessing its own energy assets through expansion in hydropower, waste and nuclear energy – although this latter commitment would soon be tested by the major 1979 accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the US.
The era of power cuts
In stark contrast, the UK’s rapid natural gas rollout couldn’t move fast enough to protect households from the twin effects of the oil crisis and miners’ strikes in the 1970s. Electricity – mostly still generated by coal and oil – was rationed via rolling blackouts. Many workplaces were required to restrict their operations to a three-day week.
With the average British home heated to 13.7 °C at this time (compared with 20-21 °C in Sweden), there was little scope to ask households to cut back further, so nationwide power cuts were imposed instead. Homes were regularly plunged into darkness. Tony (now in his early 70s, from the English town of Whiston on Merseyside) worked as a social worker during this period. He recalled seeing many interiors without doors or bannisters – they had been burnt to keep the family warm.
Extra candles were imported into Britain in 1972 to cope with power cuts. Video: AP Archive.
Nonetheless, “clean” gas pioneer Hutchison was feeling vindicated as the UK enjoyed an era of falling gas prices throughout the 1980s. Climate change was still, at most, a nascent agenda, so it didn’t seem to matter that British households were living in some of the least energy-efficient (and worst insulated) homes in Europe.
Gas remained affordable through the miners’ strike of 1984-85 and privatisation of the gas industry in 1986, with the average household gas bill six times cheaper in real terms than today. Yet British households continued to modestly heat their homes, with average internal home temperatures slowly rising from 16.1 °C in 1990 to 17.8 °C by 1999.
Over the same period, Sweden went through several momentous changes as concern for the environment grew – amid recognition of the greenhouse effect (the build-up of gases trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere) and acid rain (rainfall made acidic by air pollution). This resulted in another pioneering move: the world’s first carbon tax on fossil fuels in 1991, which further galvanised its move away from oil.
Amid Sweden’s dash for energy independence, electric-powered home heat pumps increasingly came to be viewed as something of a status symbol. Even households living in multi-family urban apartments were growing increasingly concerned about the monopolistic nature of district heating. They started opting out in favour of individual heat pumps, undermining these collective systems that rely on everyone contributing.
Short-lived progress in the UK
Britain was much slower to embrace the need to address the world’s climate crisis. One promising intervention finally came in 2006, when Tony Blair’s New Labour government required all newly built homes to meet stringent environmental design standards (although this did little to lessen the environmental burden of existing homes).
In turn, higher standards of environmental design in new homes helped establish a market for more environmentally friendly, electric-powered heat pumps in Britain. Installations accelerated from 2004, mainly in social housing. The following year, gas connections peaked at 95% of UK households – then slowly started to fall, down to the current level of 74% across England and Wales.
With this reduction of reliance on gas, the level of emissions associated with heating UK homes also began to decline. Those urging Britain to do something about its position as one of Europe’s least environmentally conscious nations celebrated, if cautiously. But this progress, such as it was, proved short-lived.
From 2010, the new Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government began dismantling key initiatives aimed at domestic energy efficiency, including New Labour’s Code for Sustainable Homes as well as financial incentives to install heat pumps and renewables such as solar panels. Sales of these technologies started to fall away.
Since then, initiatives to promote adoption of renewable forms of home heating in the UK have been dogged by controversies – such as the renewable heat incentive in Northern Ireland, which resulted in the suspension of senior government officials.
Heat pump technology explained. Video: Nesta.
Ambitious plans (driven by the UK’s legally binding emissions reduction targets) to install 600,000 heat pumps a year have been met with public suspicion. Uptake is currently at around 50,000 per year – far below the government target.
Since coming to power, the current Labour government has rolled back its manifesto pledge to ban the sale of gas boilers in homes by 2035 – to the consternation of many environmental pressure groups and climate scientists. And while its recent announcement of more comprehensive investment in domestic energy efficiency (as part of the Warm Homes Plan) is a step in the right direction, many experts still consider the level of investment inadequate to secure the scale of change required to meet the UK’s net zero climate targets.
A sizable majority (74%) of UK homes are still heated by gas boilers – which emit around twice as much CO₂ each year as some electric-powered heat pumps.
The clean heating conundrum
The volatile political scene in the UK is hampering its transition to clean energy. Reform UK, which has adopted a strident anti-net zero position, has made strong gains with disenfranchised voters, according to numerous polls. Should it gain power at the next general election in 2028 (even if as part of a coalition), Reform is likely to double-down on fossil fuel extraction and use, dealing a severe blow to efforts to wean the UK off its enduring gas dependency.
However, a shift to electric heating would not be an overnight panacea to the UK’s energy bill woes. Depending on the energy efficiency of the homes in which they are installed, heat pumps could push bills up in the short-to-medium term, because electricity remains up to five times more expensive than gas.
But as more and more of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewable sources, these costs will fall, with some commentators forecasting that from 2028, the UK will start to see positive price impacts of more electricity being generated from renewables. Most UK households will not be able to take advantage of the cheaper clean electricity coming on stream for their heating, though, because they remain locked into their gas boilers.
In contrast, outside Sweden’s cities and towns, heat pumps have seen exponential growth since the 1990s, such that it now has one of the world’s highest penetration rates, with over a third of homes equipped with them. And the heat generated from these sources is effectively conserved within the country’s well-insulated housing stock.
But Sweden is not immune to political controversies around heating. Electricity price spikes in southern Sweden in recent winters have exposed households reliant on direct electric heating (mainly heat pumps) to affordability concerns. These price spikes were driven by a combination of high wholesale electricity prices, the country’s limited transmission capacity between price zones, and periods of low wind generation.
At the same time, energy-efficient district heating networks continue to be challenged by the rapid adoption of heat pumps.
The public debate about the future of nuclear power in Sweden also continues to rage. In recent years, political signals have shifted towards maintaining and potentially expanding nuclear capacity, which has increased uncertainty about whether a full phase-out remains a credible policy objective.
The Swedish city of Lund boasts the world’s largest low-temperature district heating network. Video: Alfa Laval.
Thermal comfort vs thermal restraint
The UK’s gas habit has not served it well in terms of securing thermal comfort for its households, with average indoor temperatures of 16.6°C lagging far behind the European average of 19°C. In contrast, Swedish homes are among the warmest in Europe, reflecting both affordability for many and a cultural expectation of thermal comfort.
But these contrasting expectations could yet play an intriguing role in the two countries’ home heating strategies. Both countries are entering a new phase where electrification via heat pumps may test the resilience of national grids and the fairness of pricing structures.
Despite greater precarity in the UK, an established tolerance of lower indoor temperatures may mean that, as electricity prices are lowered by increased renewable energy production, UK households can achieve warmer homes using heat pumps than they have been able using gas. Heat pumps have been found to produce up to four times more heat than a gas boiler, using the same energy input.
Conversely, Sweden’s cultural expectation of uniformly high indoor temperatures may challenge its future energy sufficiency targets and climate goals, particularly if electrification accelerates as more people – including those living in cities and large towns – seek the independence of heat pumps.
Sweden’s traditional system of cost-sharing through varmhyra (warm rent) and district heating has historically promoted equity, but growing societal disconnections and price variations risk eroding that solidarity.
In contrast, Britain has tended to rely on individual responsibility and market-led solutions when it comes to home heating. The UK Warm Homes Plan, launched in January 2026, makes clear that heat pumps are the government’s (and many scientists’) favoured route to decarbonising domestic heating, with the exception of district heating schemes in a relatively small number of areas. But this requires incentivising households to move to heat pumps while removing short-term financial pain from this move.
Ultimately, our research suggests that many UK households now understand that change needs to come. As Trevor from Whiston told us firmly:
We just can’t be doing that now [burning fossil fuels for heating] … Greenhouse gases – it’s not on … We’ve got to find another way, haven’t we?
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Aimee Ambrose receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Horizon Europe.
Jenny Palm receives funding from Forte under CHANSE ERA-NET which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.
Forecasting earthquakes presents a serious challenge on land, but in the oceans that cover around 70% of the Earth’s surface it is all but impossible. However, the vast network of undersea cables that crisscross the world’s seas could soon change this. As well as transmitting data around the planet, they can also monitor the tectonic movements that cause earthquakes and tsunamis.
The “Fibre Optic Cable Use for Seafloor” project (FOCUS) has demonstrated how we can use existing fibre-optic cables to detect small movements on the seafloor caused by tectonic faults. Our aim is to improve understanding of fault activity, and therefore of possible earthquakes.
The project’s main study area was a recently mapped tectonic fault on the Mediterranean seafloor, about 30 km from Catania, Sicily. Sitting at the foot of Mount Etna, Europe’s highest and most active volcano, the fault is a “strike-slip”, a type of vertical fault in the earth’s crust that is especially prone to causing earthquakes.
The location is important. Eastern Sicily and Catania, an urban region of 1 million people, have been struck by several devastating earthquakes in recent centuries. The 1908 Messina earthquake (magnitude 7.2) and tsunami killed 72,000 people, while the 1693 Catania earthquake (estimated magnitude 7.5, the strongest in Italy’s history) killed about 60,000 people and destroyed most of the large buildings in Catania.
Catania is also home to a nuclear physics institute, the INFN-LNS, which runs an offshore research station consisting of a cabled seafloor observatory. Originally designed as a test site for for the institute’s neutrino telescope located 100km away, the southern branch of this 29km-long electro-optical cable ends just 2.5km from the recently mapped “strike-slip” fault on the seabed.
The FOCUS project worked by deploying a specially designed strain cable across the newly mapped fault in hopes of detecting tectonic movement. Any movement, however small, would tug on the cable and elongate the optical fibres inside. This can be detected by analysing laser light fired into the optical fibres.
First, we connected our specially designed 6km-long strain cable (similar to submarine telecommunication cables but with special sensor fibers) to the seafloor observatory. Using an underwater plough, this cable was then buried about 20 cm below the seafloor, crossing the fault in four different locations about 1km apart.
A set of 8 acoustic beacons was also set in place, 4 on each side of the fault. This was to independently measure any possible fault movement – any change in the baselines between the beacons would confirm there had been movement.
Laser light was then fired at regular 2 hour intervals through the research site’s 29km-long electro-optical cable and into the FOCUS strain cable, which included a triple loop in the fibres, allowing the light to go back and forth three times for a total optical path length of 47km.
The laser used a technique known as BOTDR (Brillouin Optical Time Domain Reflectometry). This has been used for decades to monitor deformation of large engineering infrastructures like bridges, dams and pipelines.
False alarms show the system works
A natural disturbance in the FOCUS fibre-optic cable was detected about 1 month later, in November 2020, representing an elongation of about 1.5 cm at the first fault crossing. At first it seemed the fault might have moved, but the acoustic beacons showed no change.
The most likely cause of the cable disturbance was a submarine landslide, akin to an avalanche of sediment at the bottom of the sea.
21 months of BOTDR observations on the tight fiber in the FOCUS cable, with one curve per month. The suspected landslide in November 2020, as well as the bag drop signals of September 2021 are clearly visible. The first and third fault crossings are marked by the green lines, where elongation should be expected if the fault moves. Author’s own
A second disturbance of the cable occurred in September 2021, but in this case we definitely know the cause. I led an operation that used an unmanned submarine to place weight bags on portions of the cable that were not well buried and lying on the seafloor, or spanning uneven terrain.
Nearly 100 weight bags (weighing 25kg each) were placed on top of the cable in 4 places, pushing the cable down into the soft mud and elongating the fibres inside. The special tight fibres in the FOCUS cable were more sensitive than the standard loose fibres used by the telecom industry, and showed very strong signals.
While these two readings did not show tectonic movement, they clearly demonstrated that undersea cables can help us closely monitor the seabed.
Commercial cables
A secondary study area for the FOCUS project was a network of commercial telecommunication cables connecting the islands of the Guadeloupe archipelago. Over the three-year period between 2022 and 2024 I, along with partners at IDIL fibre optics, conducted a series of BOTDR measurements at 3-6 month intervals from roadside junction boxes.
The islands of Guadeloupe are connected by undersea telecom cables, marked on this map.
We observed seasonal shifts in BOTDR signals in the shallow-water portions of the cable (typically at depths of 10-100m), likely from temperature variations on the seabed. To confirm this, we compared the temperature shifts based on our cable readings to independent satellite data. They were accurate to within about 0.1°C.
We also observed strong mechanical strain in the telecom cables at specific geographic locations such as shelf breaks, submarine canyons and narrow straits between islands exposed to storms and strong currents.
The results from our Guadeloupe study confirmed the accuracy and sensitivity of readings from commercial cables, as opposed to the more specialised cables used at the Catania site. They underscored their potential use for detecting mechanical disturbances to the cable (natural or man-made) and for performing long-term environmental monitoring.
Together, these results offer great promise for transforming much of the world’s vast network of submarine telecom cables into seismological and environmental sensors, to help better monitor earthquake hazard and climate change.
This article is the result of The Conversation’s collaboration with Horizon, the EU research and innovation magazine. In November 2025, the magazine published an interview with the author.
Gutscher Marc-Andre receives funding from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (the CNRS, his employer), and formerly from the European Research Council (ERC) through an Advanced Grant (FOCUS) from October 2018 to September 2025 for the research presented in this article. He would also like to thank Région Guadeloupe, Orange S.A. and University Antilles, Guadeloupe, for their support in his Guadeloupe study.
Another cold snap is approaching. Some people deal with it by taking an invigorating walk outside, while others hibernate with a cozy blanket and biscuits.
But one thing seems to be common when temperatures drop: we like talking about how cold it feels. Comments such as “I am so cold, I can feel it in my bones” are a common greeting in wintertime.
So, is there any truth to this particular complaint?
In the UK, the relatively high humidity even in cold temperatures means moisture in the air moves the warm air next to our bodies away quite quickly. It also sees moisture absorbed into our clothes, which then conducts heat away from the body. Water has an almost 70-fold higher rate of heat transfer than air.
Our bones don’t actually feel the cold as we sense it. They lack the same temperature-sensitive receptors that we have in our skin. There is a good reason for this, given our major bones are buried under layers of muscles, connective tissue and skin, so temperature sensing isn’t really key for them.
However, just because bones don’t “feel” the cold, it doesn’t mean the cold doesn’t have an affect on them. They can sense temperature change, particularly cooling, from nerves in the outermost lining of bone, known as the periosteum. This layer has what many scientists view as a net of neurons (cells that transmit signals) arranged in a fishnet-like pattern that senses distortion or injury of the underlying layers of bone.
Although short-term exposure of the body to the cold isn’t a problem for bones, prolonged exposure over a number of weeks can shorten their length, reduce their thickness, and decrease bone mineral density.
Other musculoskeletal tissues are much more susceptible to the changes in temperature and pressure. Synovial fluid, the lubricant of most major joints, becomes thicker when temperatures decline. This makes it harder and more uncomfortable for joints to move normally, which is exacerbated in people with underlying joint conditions such as rheumatoid or osteoarthritis.
The cold also causes contraction of tissues, making things tighter and stiffer. Tendons, which connect muscles to bone, increase in stiffness. Ligaments, which attach different bones around joints, also become stiffer.
Both of these changes make it harder for muscles to exert their action to move bones, requiring more force and decreasing their range of motion. This is exacerbated with humidity, which is common in the UK all year round.
Don’t even try getting through the cold snap without plenty of hot drinks. AstroStar/Shutterstock
These effects happen in tandem with reduced blood flow to our extremities. This protective mechanism is designed to ensure our core, where all our critical major organs are, doesn’t drop from the optimum operating temperature of 37°C. Reduced blood in these tissues also contributes to the tissue contraction, as less blood is entering them.
All of these changes result in an increase in mechanical strain or pressure upon receptor cells in the bones and surrounding tissues. This can trigger pain receptors, which may be perceived as cold.
The brain also plays a role. In the UK, grey skies often accompany the cold and damp. London averages 3.4 hours of sunshine in December, for example, while the US state of Colorado averages around eight hours of sunlight in the same month.
These dark winter months in the northern hemisphere mean many of us don’t get sufficient sunlight to synthesise enough vitamin D. You may know vitamin D deficiency is associated with poor bone health and conditions such as rickets (in children) and osteomalacia (adults). But it also has other implications in how cold feels.
Sunlight exposes the skin to the Sun’s radiation and visible light, both of which have a natural warming effect. So sunny and dry cold feels very different to damp, grey cold.
The good news is that taking on extra calories can help you ride out the latest cold snap. Wearing lots of layers and moving around as much as possible will also help keep you warm, by generating and trapping as much heat as possible against the body.
Adam Taylor 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.
Imagine someone has chronic pain. One doctor focuses on the body part that hurts and keeps trying to fix that single symptom. Another uses a more comprehensive brain-body approach and tries to understand what’s keeping the nervous system stuck in alarm mode – perhaps stress, fear of symptoms or learned triggers. Because they’re looking at the problem differently, they’ll resort to completely different treatments.
Something similar happens in environmental debates. Experts sometimes argue about which solutions work best and often disagree about priorities and trade-offs. But my colleagues and I recently published a study suggesting that the divide may start even earlier: economists and environmental scientists have different perceptions of which environmental issues are most relevant.
In a global survey of 2,365 researchers who publish in leading economics and environmental science journals, we asked them to list up to nine environmental issues they think are most relevant today. The answers show two fields looking at the same planet through different lenses.
The environmental issues that researchers notice are linked to the solutions they recommend. If they mainly recognise climate change, they are more likely to see potential in conventional, market-based solutions (such as introducing a carbon tax). If they recognise further environmental issues such as biodiversity loss or pollution, they are more likely to see potential in broader, more systemic solutions.
Climate change was by far the most often mentioned issue category across the entire sample. About 70% of respondents listed it. The second most common category mentioned by 51% was biosphere integrity, which is essentially the loss of nature.
Several environmental pressures that are critical for our planet’s stability were mentioned by far fewer researchers. Novel entities, which include synthetic chemicals and plastics, were listed by about 43%. Biogeochemical flows, which include fertiliser, were at about 9%. Ocean acidification was about 8%.
Economists and environmental scientists have different problem maps. When we compared fields, environmental researchers listed more and broader issue categories than economists.
Economists and environmental scientists see the world from different perspectives. World pieces/Shutterstock
Both were equally likely to mention climate change and other closely related issues like greenhouse gas emissions or air pollution. The gaps appeared for issues less directly tied to carbon such as biodiversity, land system change, novel entities and pollution.
One possible reason for these differences is that distinct disciplines are trained to notice different things. Like photographers, we tend to focus on what our field puts in the frame. Economists often study prices, incentives and policies around carbon emissions, so climate change is a natural centre of gravity.
Different solution preferences
We also asked respondents to rate the potential of seven approaches for mitigating environmental issues. All approaches were rated with at least moderate potential.
Overall, technological advances were rated highest and non-violent civil disobedience lowest. Economists rated market-based solutions and technological advances higher than environmental researchers. Environmental researchers rated degrowth of the global economy and non-violent civil disobedience higher than economists.
Then, we looked at whether researchers who named a broader range of environmental issues also tended to favour different kinds of solutions, even after accounting for things like political orientation and research field.
A pattern emerged: naming more categories was associated with higher perceived potential for more systemic approaches such as environmental regulation, degrowth and non-violent civil disobedience. Naming more issues was also associated with lower perceived potential for technological advances.
Economists and environmental scientists often advise governments, sit on expert panels and shape what counts as a solution. If two influential expert groups are starting from different shortlists of what the problem is, it’s no surprise they end up championing different fixes.
It also helps explain why some debates feel stuck. If climate change is the only relevant issue you see, it’s easier to put your faith in cleaner tech and market incentives. If you also see biodiversity loss, chemical pollution and land system change as problems, it no longer looks like an engineering issue. It starts to look like lots of connected pressures that need changes in how we produce, consume and organise the economy.
That topic comes up in our related work on green growth, the idea that countries can keep increasing GDP while reducing environmental harm. Using data from our survey, we found that researchers across disciplines were far from convinced that societies can keep growing GDP while cutting emissions and resource use fast enough.
Economists were generally more optimistic than Earth, agricultural and biology scientists. Those differences lined up with faith in technology and markets.
You can’t agree on the route if you don’t agree on the map. A more shared picture of the environmental crisis, beyond carbon alone, might not magically solve it. But it can lead to more fruitful research and discussions about trade offs and widen the scope of solutions being considered.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Manuel Suter receives funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Postdoc Mobility Fellowship: P500PS_225579) and is a member of the organisation “Degrowth Switzerland”.
The UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, recently visited China to announce what was described as a reset in relations between London and Beijing. Among the economic and diplomatic announcements was a surprising element: a new agreement on border security.
Under the deal, the UK and China committed to closer cooperation to disrupt the supply of engines and equipment used in small boat crossings of the English Channel.
Numbers of small boat arrivals to the UK in 2025 were the second-highest on record. The prime minister is under pressure to deliver on his commitment to “smash the gangs” and reduce unauthorised arrivals.
At first glance, China might appear an unlikely partner in this regard. Chinese nationals are nowhere close to the top nationalities crossing the Channel by small boat.
But the agreement is part of the British government’s efforts to tackle people smuggling by targeting the global supply chain of small boats and engines used for crossings. The aim is to disrupt Channel crossings well before migrants reach the French coast.
Engines and dinghies recovered in the Channel often carry serial or registration numbers. These can be traced back through distributors and intermediaries to manufacturers, many of which are based in China. The UK-China agreement broadly involves sharing intelligence to identify suspect sales of engines by Chinese manufacturers.
For several years, disrupting supply chains has been a central pillar of UK countersmuggling policy. From an enforcement perspective, this approach has obvious appeal. If there are no boats, engines, life vests or fuel, crossings cannot happen.
The logic behind this strategy is to drive up the prices of crossing the Channel, making it unaffordable for migrants and refugees and hijacking the smugglers’ business model.
The deal with China builds on a growing web of agreements the UK has with countries along the migration routes leading to the Channel. In 2023, it signed a similar border security deal with Turkey, focused on sharing intelligence to allow the Turkish authorities to intercept shipments of dinghies and engines manufactured in China.
Both Conservative and Labour governments then went on to expand Project Invigor, the National Crime Agency-led international taskforce, to target organised immigration crime. Border security deals were extended with countries in the western Balkans as well as Iraq, Tunisia, Romania and Bulgaria, and France.
Last year, the Labour government also expanded its global sanctions list, allowing asset freezes, travel bans and other financial restrictions against individuals and companies involved in smuggling from abroad.
Stopping the boats
The crucial question is whether these strategies will achieve the stated goal of reducing Channel crossings. Disrupting supply chains only works if partner states are willing and able to investigate, prosecute and seize.
Research on migrant smuggling consistently shows that deterrence rarely eliminates demand. On the contrary, it increases demand for smugglers’ services. People still attempt the journeys – what changes is how they travel.
Years of independent monitoring by journalists and migrant support groups – including Alarmphone, Captain Support and Calais Migrant Solidarity – point to a clear link between the surge in British and European investment aimed at stopping unauthorised maritime crossings, and the rising number of deaths in the Channel.
Efforts to choke off equipment supplies and intensify policing might lead to reduced number of crossings, but also create the conditions in which they become more lethal: overcrowded inflatables, rushed departures, violence on beaches and a narrowing of options for those unable to pay smugglers.
Supply-chain crackdowns in the central Mediterranean, often driven by European agreements with key transit countries such as Tunisia and Libya, have coincided with shifts towards heavier, improvised and less seaworthy vessels. For example, “metal boats” used to cross the Mediterranean are often assembled by migrants themselves, and are much more prone to sinking than wooden boats.
When more than 380 people shipwrecked in the Central Mediterranean last week during cyclone Harry, political responses focused on accusing smugglers for allowing departures in dangerous weather.
Yet organisations working on the ground, as well as migrants themselves, point out that setting off during rough weather conditions has increasingly become a strategy to evade coastal patrols and pushbacks from Tunisian or Libyan police. Similarly, migrants have reported crossing mountainous borders during winter blizzards to avoid detection on the Turkey-Iranian border.
In the Channel, this pattern is already evident. As boats and engines become harder to obtain, supply tightens while demand remains. The result has been chronic overcrowding, deteriorating equipment quality, and increasingly chaotic launch conditions. Fewer boats do not mean fewer people attempting to cross – they mean more people per boat.
From the government’s perspective, cooperating with China fits neatly into its “smash the gangs” approach to people smugglers. But supply-chain disruption is not a neutral technical fix. In practice, it is likely to make those attempting to cross borders turn to more dangerous methods.
If the UK wants to reduce irregular arrivals and deaths in the Channel, supply chain crackdowns and enforcement will not be enough. The visa schemes for Hong Kong residents, and Ukrainian and Afghan refugees suggest that when lawful pathways are available, irregular journeys like small boat crossings lose their appeal.
Expanding safe and legal routes for the main nationalities seeking asylum to the UK should be tested to see if this holds true.
David L. Suber receives research funding from the Leverhulme Trust and from the John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford.
Pieter Aertsen’s The Pancake Bakery (1560).Wikimedia
With Pancake Day fast approaching, let’s go back in time to look at the history of the humble dish.
Recipes from the first published cookbooks show that in England, pancakes were made very thinly – hence the phrase “flat as a pancake” – from lots of wet ingredients that were forbidden during the impending pre-Easter Lenten Fast. Eggs, cream, butter and animal fats are all products from which people were meant to abstain, alongside all other meats.
It makes sense, then, that the dish, generally eaten year-round, became associated with Shrovetide – the days before Lent – when cooks wanted to clear out their pantries to avoid temptation in the long fast before Easter.
Early pancakes were cooked until crispy and served warm with butter and sprinkled with sugar.
It’s common to see a recipe in old cookbooks that used ale, much like the coating of beer-battered fish we’re familiar with today. One recipe from a book published in the reign of Elizabeth I is a rich affair which mixes:
A pint of thick cream
4 or 5 egg yolks
A handful of flour
2 or 3 spoonfuls of ale
This is seasoned with “a good handful of sugar, a spoonful of cinnamon, and a touch of ginger”.
The batter is set aside while the cook takes a knob of butter “as big as your thumb” in a frying pan and heats it until it is “molten brown”. Now tip the fat out and ladle the batter into the tilted pan as thinly as possible over a low heat. Flip when one side is “baked” and cook the other until the pancake is as dry (crispy) as possible, but not burned.
English poet and writer Gervais Markham’s bestselling book of household management The English Housewife, which ran to at least nine editions from its first publication in 1615, has a recipe for “the best pancakes”.
In this dish, there are two or three beaten eggs to which you mix in “a pretty quantity of fair running water”. The eggy mixture is seasoned with salt, cloves, mace, cinnamon and nutmeg, and thickened with “fine Wheate-flower”. You then fry a thin layer of batter in sweetened butter or seam (pig lard) and serve sprinkled with sugar.
Markham recommends using water over milk or cream because dairy “makes them tough, cloying and not crisp, pleasant and savoury as running water”.
Fritters or pancakes?
On Shrove Tuesday in 1661, which fell on February 26, diarist Samuel Pepys paid a visit to his cousin Jane Turner’s house, where he found her mixing pancake batter with her daughters Theophila and Joyce. After leaving them to their preparations, he later returned to dine “very merry and the best fritters that ever I eat in my life”.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the names pancake and fritter were often used interchangeably, although fritters (like the modern incarnation) were cooked with fruit in them.
One of the reasons Pepys enjoyed his pancakes so much might be found in a contemporary recipe book, The Gentlewoman’s Cabinet Unlocked (1675), which boasts in its title that it will provide “directions for the best way of making pancakes, fritters, tansies, puddings, custards, cheesecakes; and such like fine knacks and other delicate dishes, which are most frequently used in gentlemen’s houses”.
The author doesn’t include a specific pancake recipe, since there is one for fritters. A glance through the ingredients listed shows why these were more likely to end up on the table of a gentleman than a that of a labourer:
Take nine eggs, yolks and whites, beat them very well, then take half a pint of sack [Spanish wine], a pint of ale, some ale yest. Put these to the eggs and beat them all together, put in some spice and salt, and fine flower. Then shred in your apples and let them be well tempered, and fry them with beef-suet, or half beef and half higs-suet dried out of the leaf.
While earlier recipes mention topping pancakes with sugar and sometimes things like rose water, it isn’t until the 19th century that the combination of lemon juice and sugar appears in print. But lemon juice had probably been used for a long time before then.
A 17th-century painting of a family making pancakes, by Adriaen Rombouts. Wikimedia
Elizabeth Hammond’s Modern Domestic Cookery (1819) includes this pancake recipe: “Take eggs, flour and milk, with which make a light batter. Add nutmeg, ginger and salt, fry them in plenty of hot lard. Serve with lemon juice and powdered loaf sugar.”
A modern cook might be surprised to see Hammond recommending substituting “snow” for eggs during the winter, “when they are generally very dear”. This is a tip for making eggs go further by using just the whites beaten until fluffy, leaving you free to use the yolks in another dish.
While Markham and many other cookbooks recommend it, refined wheat flour was the most expensive of grains and largely something that more affluent families ate regularly. It only gradually became the ubiquitous ingredient it is today.
In 1923, the flour brand Be-Ro (founded in 1880 in the north-east of England) began giving away a recipe book to encourage sales of the relatively novel self-raising flour. This small cookbook ran to over 40 editions and is still available.
Like many northern homes, my family still have our copy, which is the 16th edition from 1953. While pancakes aren’t normally made with a raising agent, Be-Ro still offered a recipe for them.
5oz Be-Ro flour
Quarter teaspoonful salt
One egg
Half a pint of milk
The very thin batter was cooked on a “fairly brisk fire” in lard which had been heated to smoking point, and served with sugar or syrup and lemon or orange.
We can see from this how modern recipes became much more precise with their measurements. The pamphlet ends with a warning that all its recipes are especially designed for Be-Ro self-raising flour: “Ladies are warned that unless Be-Ro is used, satisfactory results may not be obtained.”
Whether you’re planning to have a rather austere Be-Ro style pancake or are tempted to switch things up with something a little boozier, perhaps the key takeaway from history is that there is no reason to reserve pancakes just for Shrove Tuesday.
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Sara Read 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.
