Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephen Clear, Lecturer in Constitutional and Administrative Law, and Public Procurement, Bangor University

For the past two years, the Welsh parliament – or Senedd – has been grappling with how to tackle deliberate lying by politicians and how to rebuild public trust in democracy.

There is broad agreement across parties in Wales that the current system offers few real consequences for dishonesty. As one Senedd member put it: “Lying flourishes in politics because we can get away with it”.

That frustration has now translated into legislative action. A bill that would make it illegal to make false or misleading statements during Welsh election campaigns has passed its first stage in the Senedd. But while the principle behind the law commands support, the detail – and the speed at which it is being pushed forward – has triggered growing unease.

The proposed ban will not be ready in time for the next Welsh election in May. Even if the legislation survives its remaining stages, it would not come into force until the 2030 election at the earliest. Ministers have suggested even that timetable may be optimistic.

This has led some Senedd members, including from the governing Labour party, to warn that Wales risks rushing through legislation that may feel symbolically satisfying but is legally flawed. One member cautioned against passing “bad law in a poor way” simply to “make people feel good about themselves”. Others have warned that the bill could unintentionally curtail free speech. If passed, Wales would become the first country in the world to ban political lying.

At the heart of the concern is this: how do you outlaw political lies without undermining democratic debate itself?

What does the bill actually do?

The bill follows recommendations made by the Senedd’s standards committee in February 2025. It called for practical reforms by 2026, alongside longer-term measures to deter deliberate deception by both Senedd members and election candidates.

Crucially, however, the bill does not introduce a general ban on lying by politicians once elected. Instead, it focuses narrowly on statements made during election campaigns. It also gives Welsh ministers the power to create a new criminal offence for false or misleading statements intended to influence election outcomes.

Some safeguards already exist. It is already illegal to make false statements about a candidate’s personal character or conduct during an election. The new proposal goes further. It potentially captures a much wider range of political speech, although exactly how wide remains unclear.

For conduct outside election periods, the committee recommended strengthening the existing system of investigation by the Senedd’s standards commissioner, rather than introducing criminal sanctions.

Why free speech is now the sticking point

The bill’s critics are not objecting to the aim of honesty in politics. Their concern is that the legislation, as currently drafted, does not define what counts as a “false or misleading” statement.

Without clear boundaries, some Senedd members fear politicians may simply choose not to speak – or avoid contentious issues altogether – rather than risk prosecution. This concern is especially acute in areas where evidence is evolving, statistics are contested, or political judgement is required.

Political debate often involves thinking on one’s feet, interpreting incomplete information, or presenting one side of a complex argument. These are not the same as deliberate lies. But critics argue that, without precision, the law could struggle to distinguish between intentional deception and legitimate disagreement.

The Senedd’s standards committee – which was asked by the Welsh government to examine the proposal – went further. It said it was “not convinced” that creating a new criminal offence would restore public trust, warning instead that “the risks and unintended consequences currently outweigh the benefits”.

Among those risks are the pressure already facing the justice system. There is also difficulty proving that a statement is objectively false and there are potential conflicts with freedom of expression.

Under article 10 of the European convention on human rights, people – including politicians – have a right to freedom of expression, particularly in political debate. While that right is not absolute, any restriction must be clearly defined, proportionate and necessary. The committee warned that a vaguely drafted offence targeting political speech could be vulnerable to legal challenge on these grounds.

Even those who support tougher standards in Welsh politics accept this tension. If politicians fear that honest mistakes, forceful opinions presented as fact or strategic campaign arguments could later be judged criminally false, debate itself may be cooled. This may weaken democracy rather than strengthening it.

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Read more:
Wales is overhauling its democracy – here’s what’s changing

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Supporters of legal enforcement argue that these risks can be managed, but only with a much tighter definition and stronger safeguards. They emphasise that any offence must target deliberate, factual deception intended to influence voters, not opinion, rhetoric or political forecasting.

Drawing that line is easier said than done, however. Would competing interpretations of economic data be criminalised? What about optimistic promises based on uncertain forecasts? If such speech were caught by the law, it could narrow the space for open political disagreement.

For that reason, some experts and policy groups have suggested alternative models. These include systems overseen by independent bodies rather than criminal courts, or sanctions focused on correction and transparency rather than punishment.

The challenge facing the Senedd is a delicate one. It must decide whether it can craft a law that is narrow enough to target intentional deception, robust enough to withstand legal scrutiny, and flexible enough to preserve the rough-and-tumble of democratic debate.

Whether that balance can be achieved – and whether the bill survives its next stages – will determine whether Wales becomes a pioneer in political honesty or a cautionary tale about legislating in haste.

Stephen Clear 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.

– ref. One country is trying to outlaw political lying, without curbing free speech – https://theconversation.com/one-country-is-trying-to-outlaw-political-lying-without-curbing-free-speech-273526

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Katie Keddie, PhD Candidate, Urban Transformation, Environment and Society, University of Nottingham

Climate targets have long been treated as technical challenges, focused on infrastructure and behaviour change. Yet as climate movements show, people often need to connect emotionally to the facts in order to be compelled to act by them. Whether goals mobilise action or not depends on how they are felt and negotiated in everyday life.

Nottingham, a city in the East Midlands region of the UK, is one of the most deprived local authority areas in England. Yet the city aims to become the UK’s first carbon-neutral city by 2028 by prioritising social justice as well as environmental sustainability.

My PhD research is based on interviews and collaborative workshops with 50 residents, activists, businesses, third sector organisations and elected officials in Nottingham.

My findings highlight how four emotions frequently shape how people have engaged with action towards a sustainable future, be it through love for place, fear of loss or risk, anger at injustice or hope for something better. These emotional reactions reveal why transformation rarely follows neat plans or frameworks.

Many people in Nottingham are involved in climate action because they care deeply about where they live. Love for neighbourhoods, green spaces and future generations motivates people to grow food, protect parks and work together on local projects.

This kind of care helps turn climate change from a distant, abstract problem into something rooted in place and everyday life.

Love here is a verb. It is about taking action with characteristics of care, affection, responsibility, respect and commitment in service of the futures we want to see and the things we want to protect.

Yet love can also exclude. Strong attachments to place can lead to protection in ways that shut others out.

In community green spaces, for example, efforts to protect allotments have led to suspicion of newcomers and resistance to change, resulting in the exclusion of certain community members. Love can both support and complicate just, city-wide action.

Fear and anger

Fear shapes people’s responses too. Worry about rising bills, the knock-on effects of climate change and political instability pushed some people to act, while for others this fear is paralysing.

Activists spoke about burnout, personal risk due to increasingly draconian policing over activism, and feeling stretched too thin when involved in several projects. Fear shaped how people related in communal spaces.

Much like love, fear around “others”, ownership and control sometimes led to exclusion. These anxieties were often amplified by media narratives about threat and scarcity, making collaboration more difficult. Fear can motivate action but can also limit who is allowed or able to take part.

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Read more:
Why anger, anxiety and anguish are understandable psychological reactions to the climate crisis

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My conversations with people in the city show that anger is prevalent. Citizens expressed frustration with local decision-making, national policy failures and economic systems seen to prioritise profit over people and the environment, signalling important unmet justice claims.

This anger often became a catalyst for action. It fuelled campaigns, community organising and challenges to existing power structures. Yet, if ignored, anger can lead to disillusionment and disengagement.

Hope also plays an important part in transformation efforts in the city. However, citizens note an important distinction between hope and blind optimism. Their hope is often practical and grounded, helping people keep going despite slow progress and uncertainty.

Community gardens, food projects, DIY retrofitting and other local initiatives became places where people could see change taking shape, however small. Yet hope remains fragile – continued austerity, lack of long-term funding and institutional commitments that fail to deliver real change often undermined trust and can threaten hope.

These emotions do not operate in isolation or have fixed consequences. Love often coexists with fear. Anger can fuel hope. Together, they produce complex and non-linear pathways to change.

Nottingham’s experience shows that achieving carbon neutrality is not just about technology or targets. Its success depends on whether people feel included, heard and supported.

When emotions are ignored, climate policies risk becoming superficial or exclusionary. When they are taken seriously, transformation becomes more just and practical for the places in which it is occurring.

This can be achieved through participatory processes and co-production that make space for emotional expression, recognise the labour involved, and resist technocratic approaches that sideline people’s experiences. For Nottingham and other cities around the globe facing similar pressures, attending to how transformation is felt may matter just as much as how progress is measured.

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Katie Keddie 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.

– ref. Love, fear, anger and hope: how emotions influence climate action – https://theconversation.com/love-fear-anger-and-hope-how-emotions-influence-climate-action-270925

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Brian Thornton, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Winchester

Don’t make the mistake of thinking Saipan is a film about the brutal second world war battle on this small Pacific island. It is, in fact, the tale of a ridiculous and heartbreaking football bust-up that almost tore a country apart.

On one side was Irishman Roy Keane, one of the greatest footballers of his generation. Captain of the Ireland team, he was a man with a volcanic temper and an insatiable will to win. On the other was mild-mannered manager Mick McCarthy, a Yorkshireman of Irish descent who had made his name as a brave, no-nonsense defender during his time as captain of Ireland.

The row that exploded on Saipan before the 2002 World Cup had even started was a slow-motion tragicomedy, lurching from one excruciating episode to the next. It began with a spat between Keane and McCarthy over training facilities. It escalated to a national crisis thanks to an ill-timed media interview – then developed into a full-blown international furore after one of the most brutal personal attacks ever seen in sport.

Now the story is being told in a new film starring Steve Coogan as McCarthy and rising star Éanna Hardwicke as Keane.

The row had – and possibly still has – the power to divide people into team McCarthy or team Keane. At the time, battles raged in pubs, on radio phone-ins and in countless newspaper articles.

The level of antagonism the row ignited underlined that this was about more than just football. The “battle of Saipan” somehow exposed deep faultlines in a country that was at a social, political and economic crossroads.

Before qualifying for the 2002 World Cup, Ireland hadn’t been to a major tournament since 1994. While those were wilderness years for the football team, the country was experiencing an astonishing economic miracle.

This once-impoverished country had transformed itself into one of the richest in Europe. GDP growth regularly hit a jaw-dropping 10% a year. Nicknamed the “Celtic tiger”, this economic transformation turned Ireland into a society that valued ambition and despised mediocrity. Keane epitomised this new Ireland – he was a self-made man, rich and with a ruthless drive to succeed.

McCarthy, though born and raised in England, represented old Ireland. He had been captain of the Irish team led by Jack Charlton that took the country on glorious boozy adventures to the European Championship in 1988 and the World Cup in 1990 and in 1994.

A green Irish army travelled the globe like a vast mobile party, while those left at home watched in disbelief as their little nation took its place among the elite footballing nations. It turned the gruff, flat-cap wearing Charlton into a living saint.

It was almost inevitable that these two versions of Ireland would eventually clash – but no one expected it to happen on a small Pacific island on the eve of a World Cup.

The Irish squad arrived in Saipan on May 18 2002 to acclimatise ahead of the tournament in Japan and Korea. Keane’s mood darkened immediately when he saw the training and catering facilities on the island. The pitch was rock hard. There were no goal posts – or footballs. Breakfast consisted of cheese sandwiches.

Keane was outraged at such amateurism, and the next day confronted McCarthy. He said he was going to leave the camp – but was persuaded to stay by others including his Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson.

Keane, still struggling to keep a lid on his rage, then agreed to do an interview with two Irish newspaper journalists. He told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of Ireland’s preparations. “I believed the people at home had a right to know the truth,” Keane would later say in his book.

The interview was explosive, and the story blew up immediately – causing a sensation around the world, but most particularly in Saipan. McCarthy, utterly shocked, called a meeting with the whole squad. To clear the air, the Ireland manager thought Keane should apologise for what he had said in the articles.

But Keane, surrounded by the entire squad, saw this as an ambush and lashed out. His visceral ten-minute attack on McCarthy in the ballroom of Saipan’s Hyatt Hotel has become legendary:

I didn’t rate you as a player, I don’t rate you as a manager, and I don’t rate you as a person. I’ve got no respect for you. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are the manager of my country. You can stick it up your bollocks.

A visibly shaken McCarthy replied: “Roy, either you go or I go – and I am going nowhere.”

Keane left and returned to his Cheshire home, which was now besieged by reporters. His daily walks with his dog Triggs were broadcast live on rolling news channels, as the world waited to see if the player would rethink his decision and return. Despite an offer from Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern to mediate, Keane made it clear there would be no U-turn.

McCarthy and the Irish team went on to perform respectably in the World Cup, losing in a penalty shoot-out to Spain in the last 16. But how far would they have gone in the tournament if Keane had played?

What happened in Saipan is still hotly debated. In Ireland, it is seen as a battle between old and new – the dynamic new age railing against the staid, complacent past. Outside of Ireland, the story is usually framed as a clash between the ideal and the reality – between purity and pragmatism.

As the Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole wrote at the time: “The battle of Saipan is thus a classical tragedy: the inevitable clash of two inexorable forces, each of which has right on its side.”

Saipan is in cinemas from January 23

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Brian Thornton 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.

– ref. Saipan: the story behind Roy Keane’s World Cup walkout on Ireland’s football team – https://theconversation.com/saipan-the-story-behind-roy-keanes-world-cup-walkout-on-irelands-football-team-273420

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Karl Matikonis, Assistant Professor in Accountancy and Taxation, University College Dublin

When Scotland’s finance secretary, Shona Robison, delivered the Scottish budget for 2026-27 on January 13, she framed it as a budget for families that would ease pressure on household finances. Coming only a few months before the Scottish parliamentary elections in May, this budget is especially significant.

On income tax, the message from the Scottish National Party-led government was clear. Hitting out at recent UK national budgets, Robison argued, correctly, that freezing income tax thresholds means that more of people’s pay is taxed, or taxed at a higher rate. She told the Scottish Parliament: “I am making a different choice.”

While it’s true there is a difference, in reality that difference is limited. The Scottish parliament sets income tax rates and bands on most income earned by taxpayers in Scotland. Unlike in the rest of the UK, there are six rates – starter, basic, intermediate, higher, advanced and top – ranging from 19% to 48%.

What matters is not the number of bands but the size of the jump between them. Income in the intermediate band is taxed at 21% up to £43,662. Income above that point is taxed at 42%.

However, the UK parliament still controls key elements of the system, including allowances, reliefs and tax on savings and dividend income.

While some of Scotland’s income tax thresholds have been raised in this budget, others were left frozen. This means many people will still see their tax bills rise over time, even though headline tax rates have not changed. The mechanism behind this is known as fiscal drag.

Fiscal drag occurs when tax thresholds remain fixed while wages rise. As earnings increase, more income falls into higher tax bands and more people cross into higher rates. As such, governments generate more revenue without any explicit tax rise.

This matters because wages in Scotland have been rising in cash terms. In 2024, the median weekly pay for full-time employees was £739.70 (around £38,500 a year), with nominal earnings rising by 4.3% over the previous year. Median pay for men working full-time was closer to £40,000.

And those figures are already dated. Further pay settlements, particularly in the public sector, mean typical earnings in the years 2026 to 2029 are likely to go up further. Scotland’s higher-rate income tax threshold, however, remains frozen at £43,663.

That leaves a narrow gap between average earnings and the higher-rate tax band (42%). A few years of ordinary pay rises can be enough to push someone over the threshold, even if their job and living standards feel largely unchanged. As a result, fiscal drag increasingly affects mid-career professionals in areas like teaching, nursing and the civil service, rather than solely very high earners.

What the budget changed and what it did not

The recent Scottish budget raises the lower limits of the starter, basic and intermediate income tax thresholds, meaning more income is taxed at lower rates. This goes some way to protecting those whose pay falls in these bands. Ministers can say, accurately, that many lower- and middle-income earners will pay less tax than they would elsewhere in the UK.

But the higher-rate threshold remains frozen until 2028–29 at £43,663. Income above that level will be taxed at 42%. The advanced and top-rate thresholds are also unchanged. By freezing these, the Scottish government is ensuring that rising wages continue to translate into higher tax bills over time.

In design terms, it is using the same fiscal drag mechanism (albeit more selectively) that it criticises when Westminster deploys it.

Here’s a simple example. Consider a full-time worker earning £38,500 in 2024, close to the Scottish median. With annual pay rises of around 4.3%, their salary would reach roughly £40,200 in 2025, £41,900 in 2026, and just over £43,700 by 2027. Note that most of this increase in pay reflects inflation, rather than a real improvement in living standards.

But the freeze on the higher-rate threshold remains in place. So by 2027, the worker is already at or just above this higher-rate threshold. A modest further pay rise or promotion would push part of their income into the 42% band (or potentially 45%), where it had previously been taxed at 21% in the intermediate tax band.

No headline tax rate has changed, but more income is taxed – and taxed at a higher rate. This matters politically because it is the point where economics turns into politics.

Fiscal drag is not a technical quirk. It is a political instrument. As my research on UK budgets shows, when governments commit to avoiding headline tax rises, attention shifts to thresholds and design instead.

Politically, the approach allows the SNP to present the budget as both fair and responsible ahead of the May Scottish parliament elections. Ministers can point to tax cuts for lower earners while maintaining that headline tax rates have not increased.

The strategy is also shaped by tight fiscal constraints. The Scottish budget relies on a block grant from Westminster that has been squeezed by inflation, while borrowing powers are limited and spending cuts are difficult. As such, additional revenue has to come from the tax system, making fiscal drag through frozen higher thresholds an attractive option.

Freezing thresholds while nominal wages rise brings in revenue quietly and predictably, without the backlash associated with explicit tax increases. It also blurs responsibility, as higher tax bills can be attributed to inflation or pay growth, rather than deliberate policy choices. In an election year, that combination is especially attractive.

The budget cuts income tax for many people on lower incomes. Further up, it tells a different story. By freezing the higher, advanced and top-rate thresholds – which include many people who are not what most would consider “high earners” – the Scottish government has chosen to let rising nominal wages do the work of a tax increase. The effect is gradual and uneven – and people often notice it only when it appears on a payslip.

Karl Matikonis previously received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for unrelated research.

– ref. Stealth tax rises are on the horizon for Scotland ahead of its election – https://theconversation.com/stealth-tax-rises-are-on-the-horizon-for-scotland-ahead-of-its-election-274163

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nick Whittaker, Tutor of International Relations, University of Sussex

Having thus far taken a highly cautious line with the capricious Donald Trump, Keir Starmer broke with the US president this week over the latter’s desire to acquire Greenland.

With the dust settling on Trump’s address to Davos and his ruling out of military force and tariffs, the UK prime minister congratulated his own approach. Starmer remarked: “We’ve got through the last few days with a mix of British pragmatism, common sense, but also that British sense of sticking to our values and our principles.”

In foreign policy, pragmatism means a lack of ideology or simply “doing what works”. It is related to conservative traditions in political thought, with roots in political philosopher Edmund Burke’s scepticism of the French Revolution.

Twentieth century philosopher Michael Oakeshott characterised his ideal, pragmatic society as a ship in a boundless ocean. The crew should simply be trying to keep afloat and on an even keel, rather than being guided by any grand ideological framework.

Pragmatism has long been associated with UK foreign policy, as both an explanatory framework and something that UK foreign policymakers claim to embody. This was exemplified by Lord Salisbury’s 19th-century posture of “splendid isolation” – having no permanent allies or friends, just permanent interests.

But, as I have written, this approach is problematic – not least because of the significant geopolitical identity that has coloured centuries of UK foreign policy.

All foreign policy is guided by values of some sort, and the UK’s is no exception. Think of the oft-repeated notions of fair play, trading and sovereignty. Prime ministers may come into office wanting to reshape the global or local landscape, only to quickly come up against the need to act in a pragmatic way in response to a sudden crisis.

Pragmatism v idealism

In recent decades, British foreign policymakers have wrestled with an ongoing tension between pragmatism and more ideological approaches. Margaret Thatcher contrasted her own apparently steely-eyed approach to European integration with the “romantic” and “misty” Europeanism of one of her foreign secretaries, Geoffrey Howe.

Thatcher’s successor, John Major, argued that it was his far more positive approach to the EU that represented the truly British posture of pragmatism.

Tony Blair too was wont to burnish his pragmatic credentials, not least over Europe. But this sat uncomfortably alongside his brief flirtation with foreign secretary Robin Cook’s “ethical foreign policy”, and his subsequent part in the highly ideological war on terror, with its unshakeable beliefs in democracy promotion and regime change.

David Cameron rejected the crusading influences of Blair by putting the UK’s involvement in strikes against Bashar al-Assad’s Syria to a Commons vote, which he lost. His subsequent calling of a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU defined anew a long-running debate between pragmatists and idealists. Here, both sides claimed pragmatism as their own.

For Remainers, continued membership of an EU that broadly “worked” for the UK was the sensible, rational and pragmatic course. They saw those who wanted to leave as overly dogmatic and willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater for so-called principles.

Brexiteers pointed to growing patterns of prosperity in markets beyond Europe. They argued that regaining lost sovereignty was nothing if not pragmatic – and that their opponents had been hopelessly duped by the unrealistic (and in their eyes, dangerous) schemes of Europeans and globalists.

Starmer’s pragmatism?

How then can we characterise Starmer’s foreign policy?

The closer alignment with the EU that he has led can be read as the ideological move of a convinced Remainer. Like his Conservative predecessors, he has made much of the UK’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. This signifies the foregrounding of values such as sovereignty, nationhood and the rules-based international order.

Similarly, the 2024 deal with Mauritius over the Chagos islands has been represented as the righting of a historic colonial wrong.

Yet there is a trace of pragmatism in all these policies, too. The realignment with the EU has taken place slowly, with great caution and many accompanying reassurances of red lines. The tough stance over Ukraine can also be read in a pragmatic fashion, given the perceived need to align with European and Nato allies amid Trump’s ratcheting up of tensions.

For all of the appealing whiff of decolonial justice surrounding the Chagos deal, this too was infused with a healthy dose of pragmatism. In spite of Trump’s sudden condemnation of it, he had initially backed the deal precisely because of its pragmatism. It protected the US-led base at Diego Garcia and ensured a vital strategic foothold in the Indian Ocean.

Further instances of foreign policy under Starmer ultimately demonstrate the limits of idealism in British foreign policy. The reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been characterised by outrage and (especially under Boris Johnson) a Churchillian “whatever it takes” attitude in favour of self-determination. But other situations have been approached with far more caution.

Starmer and his first foreign secretary, the usually loudly principled David Lammy, dragged their feet over condemnation of Israel in Gaza, infuriating some of the Labour party’s leftwing base. Lammy had earlier sought to resurrect Cook’s ethical foreign policy. Yet, whatever their instincts, pragmatically siding with the US tends to win out when it comes to Israel.

Statements on Venezuela were also couched with extreme caution: pragmatism recognising the lack of British interest, let alone clout, in South America.

Starmer’s post-Davos remarks exemplify the seemingly contradictory melding of pragmatism with principle. In reality, these concepts can be difficult to entangle. They are (as with Brexit) often a matter for the eye of the beholder: one man’s pragmatism is another’s principle.

When it comes to the cornerstones of UK policy, such as Nato and the transatlantic alliance, the line is particularly blurry. But over Greenland and the rollercoaster relationship with Trump, Starmer has indeed had to walk a careful line between pragmatism and principle. This is a rare example of a politician’s comment that one can take at face value.

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Nick Whittaker 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.

– ref. Starmer’s response to Trump’s Greenland outburst shows good old British pragmatism only goes so far – https://theconversation.com/starmers-response-to-trumps-greenland-outburst-shows-good-old-british-pragmatism-only-goes-so-far-274137

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Behr, Reader in Music, Politics and Socieity, Newcastle University

The UK government has announced a £1.5 billion funding package for the arts, which it says marks a turning point after a decade of underinvestment. Spread across five years from 2025 to 2030, the money includes £600 million for national museums and other organisations backed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. A further £160 million has been set aside for regional and local museums.

While many cultural leaders have applauded the move, others are more critical, pointing to UK National Audit Office reports that the culture department consistently underspends. We asked three industry experts to weigh in.

Wider support is needed

Adam Behr, Reader in Music, Politics and Society, Newcastle University

A £1.5 billion investment is welcome news for a sector buffeted by years of austerity and inflation (not to mention the long tail of pandemic shutdowns). But the devil is in the detail, as ever, and the wider context: definitions of “infrastructure” beyond the landmarks, and its relationship to cultural workers.

While the scale of this settlement is encouraging, it will need to support the wider cultural ecosystems in which headline assets sit. Culture is not a series of isolated institutions; it depends on networks of freelancers, grassroots venues and small organisations operating on tight margins. Many are reeling from rising costs, including increased employers’ national insurance contributions.

The policy ambition here, especially alongside growing recognition of the regions, is a clear step forward. But capital funding that stabilises national and regional flagships will be degraded if the surrounding ecology continues to thin out. Careful deployment of the Creative Foundations Fund for capital projects and Arts Everywhere Fund for local growth will be vital to ensure benefits flow throughout the system, supporting sustainable work and everyday cultural activity.

Consider the artists not just the buildings

Wanja Kimani, PhD Candidate in Fine Art, University of the Arts London

The £1.5 billion government commitment, particularly the £160 million for regional museums, is a vital lifeline. By addressing urgent infrastructure needs, this funding ensures the physical survival of museums and galleries after a decade of strain.

However, these spaces are more than buildings. They provide room to reconnect and reimagine our future, but this potential requires new ways of working that reflect our current reality. To truly serve communities, museums must be willing to interrogate the gap between intention and impact, becoming more experimental and open to new forms of collaboration.

Crucially, I question how this benefits artists, often the most precarious and underpaid members of the cultural ecosystem. For this significant investment to be truly effective, museums and galleries must actively create equitable opportunities, remove economic barriers for visitors and facilitate genuine community-rooted collaborations. We must invest in the people who inspire us, not just the assets that house them.

Questions remain

Charlie Gregson, Senior Lecturer in Museum Studies, Nottingham Trent University

The new funding aims to address foundational issues through its emphasis on repairing cultural venues and creating more sustainable business models. This directly responds to several pressing issues, particularly in context of the Arts Council England suggestion that they will be less prescriptive to artists and organisations and reduce grant administration.

Key details are not yet available, particularly regional distribution of funds, how recipients are prioritised and whether strategic initiatives will fill specialist skills shortages. Criticisms from the sector include lack of funding for core costs, with no news on the continuation of the funding stream for Local Authority museums facing a shortfall.

The funding represents potential opportunities to develop socially engaged decision-making. What happens when a site cannot be saved, what value do communities place in the asset and what might be the impact of radical new approaches such as “adaptive reuse or release” (giving an old building a new purpose instead of tearing it down)? Developing such co-productive approaches could embed sustainability-led practice to create a leap in resilience that the funding seeks to achieve.

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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.

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Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.

Charlie Gregson has previously received funding from Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund, and subsequently worked as for Arts Council England.

Wanja Kimani 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.

– ref. UK earmarks £1.5 billion in arts funding until 2030
– expert panel responds – https://theconversation.com/uk-earmarks-1-5-billion-in-arts-funding-until-2030-expert-panel-responds-274230

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Henning, Chair in Photography and Media, University of Liverpool

Researching in the archives of the British photographic company Ilford Limited, I recently came across a curious memo pasted into an experiment book by one of the company’s chemists. Dated January 19 1923, it appears as a small interruption in the page: a practical instruction that “in future, coating of any kind of emulsion must not be commenced or proceeded with during a fog”.

This brief directive was my first clue to a connection between the photographic term “fogging” and the noxious London fogs which, though often associated with the 19th-century city, persisted well into the 1950s.

The memo was attached to a page otherwise dedicated to photographic fog. In chemical photography, “fogging” describes an effect caused by chemical contamination or light leaks during the processing of prints or negatives, producing a mist-like veil across the image.

In the experiment book, the memo registers the intrusion of London smog itself – laden with chemical pollutants, not least sulphurous compounds – which reacted with the silver in photographic emulsions. The fog therefore disrupted not only photographic manufacture, but also the taking and processing of photographs.

London’s fog literally fogged photographs with the yellowish hue of the capital’s notorious “pea-soupers”. This presented difficulties for early “orthochromatic” photographic emulsions, which were insensitive to orange and red (which appear darker in a positive print).

In the 1920s and 30s, British press photographers sent out to capture the winter fog found it hard to prevent the fog from appearing very dark because of this. But it was also difficult to get decent exposures because of the reduced light.

Press photographers also struggled to protect their glass plates and films within the camera or the darkroom. The fog seemed to penetrate even the interior of portrait studios, via chimneys or even keyholes.

Movie studios similarly found it virtually impossible to keep out the fog, which both softened the picture and muffled the sound, just as the talkies were being introduced. Yet despite these difficulties there is a proliferation of fog photographs from the interwar period and from the 1950s. Many still circulate today in online collections devoted to historical images of London.

The fogs were significant, newsworthy events. They were highly toxic: it’s estimated that more than 4,000 people died as a result of the fog of 1952, which led to the Clean Air Act of 1956. Yet far from communicate the poisonous dangers of urban atmospheric pollution, the press photographs often seem to emphasise the beauty and mystery of the fog.

The photographs in the magazine Picture Post’s photo-feature “Foggy Morning” (January 21 1939), as in many press photos, made the most of the picturesque opportunities given by artificial lighting in the fog: headlamps, flares, neon advertising lights and traffic lights.

They also made use of the ways in which fog transforms familiar figures and landmarks into silhouettes. The accompanying text claimed the images represented a “natural beauty … the beauty of atmosphere”, going so far as to say: “A foggy morning in London is as beautiful as an Arctic night, if shorter.”

One reader of Picture Post, Ernest Restell, wrote to complain about the feature. He objected not simply to the claims made in the article but to the fact that the “pictures were so beautiful, for fog is an ugly harmful thing”. Which – as he goes on to point out, is the concentrated result of the “inefficient combustion of raw coal” (combined with meteorological conditions).

Today, some writers argue that sublime beauty is a way to make photographs of environmental destruction more impactful, while others share Restell’s concern that spectacular images detract from attention to the causes of pollution and climate change.

It’s tempting to see beauty as intrinsic to the photograph or to the scene itself, but it was a technical struggle to photograph the London fog, and photographers drew on existing pictorial traditions to do so, in the process suppressing and concealing the foulness of the air.

The art of fog

There was already a nostalgia associated with the London fog in which the romantic visual effects of the filthy air were inseparable from ideas about the might of the industrial, imperial centre at its 19th-century peak.

Impressionist painters, notably Claude Monet, had been drawn to the London fog. And in photography, the pictorialists (photographers keen to establish the medium as an expressive art form) followed the impressionists in their attraction to mist and fog as a means to convey emotional as well as physical atmosphere.

By the 1930s, pictorialism was a popular aesthetic in Britain. Encouraged by magazines such as The Amateur Photographer and Cinematographer, the amateur photography scene was dominated by an aesthetic of atmosphere. The British Journal of Photography, as early as 1898, lambasted “mud-and-slush photographers” who would seek out bad weather conditions and foggy atmosphere for aesthetic effect.

Fog allowed photography to be expressive, it introduced mystery through softening and blurring effects but also a shallowness to the pictorial space, an aesthetic of silhouettes and lighting effects anticipating film noir, especially films like The Third Man (1949), with their dramatic use of night-time urban lighting, smoke and shadow.

In the hands of the press photographers, it gave rise to a distinctive repertoire, of London buses and archways, policemen with their distinctive helmets and white gloves, lamplighters and classical buildings outlined in the mist. The fog appeared as an opaque backdrop against which an increasingly cliched and nostalgic image of the imperial city could emerge, at a time when Britain’s colonies were fighting for independence.

As the historical geographer Stephen Legg argues, when a severe “black smoke fog” plagued the first India Round Table Conference in November and December 1930, the press commented on developments in the conference in relation to differences in climate and dress, interpreting Indian “difference as inferiority or nonmodernity”.

As Legg and other writers on atmosphere and climate have shown, ideas about weather and climate, and especially fog, go hand in hand with ideas about race and empire. As well as making the polluted atmosphere appear picturesque, and despite the difficulties involved in photographing in fog, photographs of foggy London reproduce and circulate an ideological vision of the British empire.

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The climate crisis has a communications problem. How do we tell stories that move people – not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.

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Michelle Henning received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for some of the work informing this article, under grant no. AH/R014639.

– ref. How romanticised images of London fog shaped the way we see polluted air – https://theconversation.com/how-romanticised-images-of-london-fog-shaped-the-way-we-see-polluted-air-272851

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pauline Sophie Heinrichs, Lecturer in War Studies, Climate and Energy Security, King’s College London

In the middle of Ukraine’s fiercest winter of the war, many Ukrainians are unable to prepare hot meals or are unable to heat their homes while temperatures have dipped as low as -20C in the past few weeks. Harsher weather is forecast.

Russia has once again targeted Ukraine with sustained attacks on power stations, energy grids and heating nodes affecting electricity, as well as heating systems and water pumps.

Following the Russian strikes on January 20, around 5,600 apartment buildings in Kyiv were left without heating and almost half of Kyiv was believed to be without heat and power, affecting around one million people. The situation is so dire that the city has set up “heating tents” to help people stay warm in the freezing temperatures. Other cities have also been attacked.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky declared the situation an energy emergency.

One factor is that as a legacy of Ukraine’s membership of the Soviet Union, Russia probably holds deeper knowledge about Ukraine’s centralised energy systems than an outside nation would generally have.

For decades Ukraine’s energy system was linked to Russia and Belarus as part of a centralised grid, and was “tightly connected to Russia’s energy architecture”. While this did not mean Ukraine was dependent on Russia for its energy supply, it did mean that Russia played the central role in coordinating frequency and balancing supply and demand across the whole network.

Some Ukrainian officials have argued that the nature of these attacks suggests that Russian knowledge of Soviet-era energy systems has helped it to target Ukraine’s energy centres.

There’s another big factor for the Ukrainian authorities to struggle with.

While Ukraine’s authorities were quick to restore heating in around 1,600 buildings, an estimated 4,000 remained without heating on January 21. The challenge in Ukraine is more severe than it might be in other countries because of the centralised systems for water, sewage and heating used by its urban neighbourhoods, known as district heating.

What is district heating?

Ukraine still relies heavily on Soviet-era thermal heating systems using mostly gas. The percentage of households that rely on district heating varies by region and city, with a particularly high percentage of these buildings, mostly built in the 1960s, in densely populated urban cities including Kyiv.

Thermal power plants usually heat water which is then piped around districts and to individual pumping stations. It is then distributed to apartment buildings. But if the pipes are full of water and power for heating is off, the pipes can burst if the water freezes. Right now, with temperatures spiralling downwards this is a major threat.

Each district heating system can serve tens of thousands of citizens across multiple buildings and, when powered with renewable energy, they can be significantly more efficient, cost-effective and low-carbon than individual boilers. District heating systems depend much more on fixed physical infrastructure, including large pipes and pumping stations, to circulate hot water.

But centralised infrastructure is inherently vulnerable to physical attack. Damage to a major transmission pipe or the loss of a key pumping station can disable heating across entire neighbourhoods, particularly during winter.

Russia has damaged around 8.5GW of Ukraine’s power generation since October 2025, or around 15% of pre-war capacity. With the amount available nearly matching the amount generated there’s little room to redistribute energy within the system.

Whatever the system’s weaknesses may be, no energy system in the world is built to sustain continued bombardment.

Ukraine relies on nuclear power

Ukraine’s energy system is also largely dependent on nuclear power. Around half of Ukraine’s electricity is nuclear-powered, with coal-fired power plants making 23% and gas-fired plants 9%. In all cases these are features of a highly centralised energy system.

Patterns of attacks indicate that Russian forces monitor where repairs are under way and then hit the same sites again once they are restored. This has compounded repair costs and prolonged the loss of critical services. Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said that the situation was difficult because most of those buildings that were being reconnected for the second time were damaged as part of a previous attack on January 9.

Russia uses “double-tap” strikes, where a second attack follows closely after the first. This often endangers emergency services and repair crews rushing to restore heat and electricity. Such tactics force officials to balance the urgent need to fix infrastructure with the risk to workers and civilians.

Even before the war, there were weaknesses in Ukraine’s energy and power networks. Old water systems and heating devices — and often entire buildings — need to be reconstructed.

However, Ukraine had already started to reduce technical reliance on Russia before the war. The dependency on the post-Soviet system changed in March 2022, when Ukraine’s grid was integrated with the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, (Entso-E), a Europe-wide association of national electricity transmission system operators.

These attacks have had significant consequences on hospitals, transport systems, and vulnerable people in their homes. This devastating cycle of repeat strikes in the middle of an incredibly cold winter has intensified Russia’s energy terror.

Pauline Sophie Heinrichs 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.

– ref. Russian knowledge of Soviet-era energy systems has helped it to target Ukraine’s heating and homes – https://theconversation.com/russian-knowledge-of-soviet-era-energy-systems-has-helped-it-to-target-ukraines-heating-and-homes-274052

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lucy Gill-Simmen, Associate Dean (Education & Student Experience) Faculty of Business & Law, Royal Holloway, University of London

The UK’s proposed post-16 education and skills policy promises a nation “where nobody is left behind”. The country’s modern industrial strategy 2025 talks of a workforce ready for a decade of growth, green jobs and artificial intelligence. It is the language of momentum and modernity, but beneath the optimism of these papers and policies lies unease.

We have a plan for skills, but do we still have a philosophy of education? The refrain that “nobody gets left behind” only holds meaning if we first know where we are going.

Education is not merely about producing employable subjects, but cultivating human beings capable of judgement, imagination and democratic participation. Without that moral compass, our forward motion risks becoming little more than acceleration without direction.

In 1949, Albert Einstein lamented: “It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”

More than seven decades later, it feels prophetic. Across higher education in the UK, a quiet malaise has taken hold. Universities have become fluent in the language of metrics, policies and dashboards, while students have become fluent in anxiety and debt.

We speak earnestly of agility and alignment, yet without clear direction. Once the moral and intellectual conscience of society, the British university risks becoming something far more ordinary: an institution of conformity, competing for the same diminishing pool of students and, in doing so, becoming indistinguishable from its peers.

This creeping homogenisation reflects the global commercialisation of higher education, where institutions mirror market logics (such as supply and demand) rather than challenge them, often at the expense of curiosity, critical thinking and imagination.

US educational reformer John Dewey described education as “life itself”. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire warned that schooling without liberation (meaning here agency and active learning rather than passively absorbing information) becomes “the banking of facts”, while the feminist author and academic known as bell hooks viewed education as “the practice of freedom”.

These were not romantic slogans; they were blueprints for survival. These people understood that education is not training – it is a process of becoming. Yet today, the language of learning has been colonised by a language of logistics.

Students are “learners”, teachers “deliverers”, and curiosity has no place in key performance indicators. The university system is increasingly one of transaction and we are building a system that can measure everything except meaning.

Opportunity in a crisis

The world is moving faster than the curriculum. Recently leaked documents suggest Amazon could replace up to 600,000 workers with robots – a glimpse of a labour market where efficiency outruns employment. If automation can transform one of the world’s largest employers, then the question for higher education is urgent: what are we preparing young people for?

The answer cannot be “the jobs of tomorrow”, because those jobs may not exist. The task now is to educate for adaptability, imagination and moral judgment, the qualities no algorithm can replace. As the historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote in 1961: “Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.” This is the work before us.

The government has correctly diagnosed a skills shortage. But its policy misses a meaning shortage. We need not only employable graduates but capable citizens – people able to reason ethically, collaborate across cultures and invent purpose where automation erases routine.

Higher education must recover its voice as the space where society asks its most difficult questions. What is progress for? What is prosperity without dignity? What does it mean to flourish or even to matter in an age of intelligent machines? These are not rhetorical questions – they are the foundation of survival strategies for a civilisation on the cusp of reinvention.

The courage to begin again

Universities across the world are banging the drum of transformation, insisting that doing things differently is the way forward. But how many actually are doung things differently? For all the rhetoric of innovation, much of the sector remains bound by inherited models of teaching and governance.

Into this inertia steps a new generation of institutions reimagining what a university can be. The “challenger university” model exemplified by Minerva University in the US and the London Interdisciplinary School in the UK, has begun to disrupt long-held assumptions about place, teaching and purpose.

These universities treat the world itself as a campus, fusing digital delivery, experiential learning and global immersion to craft education around curiosity rather than compliance.

Traditional universities are slowly following suit, rolling out accelerated degrees and hybrid formats with experiential learning embedded in their cities. At Royal Holloway Business School, the BSc Business and Management (London Accelerated) degree was built from this conviction. It is faster – two years all in instead of three – but not shallower.

London itself becomes the campus as students collaborate with businesses and design projects that connect innovation to ethics. They learn to work with artificial intelligence as a creative partner, not a threat.

This is not a course in survival; it is a course in significance. It teaches that employability follows from imagination, and that imagination begins with purpose. At its heart lies the courage of moral imagination: the willingness to envision not only alternative futures, but better ones.

Higher education stands at a fork in the road. One path leads deeper into optimisation: faster courses, tighter metrics, closer alignment to industry. The other path leads back to truth, curiosity and moral imagination. The first path is safe but soulless. The second is uncertain but alive.

And perhaps that is what this moment demands: to make education full of wonder again. When acceleration becomes an end in itself, education becomes soulless; when it is used to support inquiry, reflection and ethical engagement, it can do the opposite.

Universities must not only expand access but redefine ambition. They must teach not just for the labour market but for the human market – the realm of creativity, empathy and responsibility that automation cannot touch.

So yes, let us commit to no one being left behind. But let us also dare to ask: towards what? Towards compliance or consciousness? Towards growth or grace and fulfilment? If we want education to matter again, we must stop treating it as the servant of policy and start recognising it as the architect of possibility.

Lucy Gill-Simmen 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.

– ref. The big higher education question in 2026 ought to be: what are we preparing young people for? – https://theconversation.com/the-big-higher-education-question-in-2026-ought-to-be-what-are-we-preparing-young-people-for-270208

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate Kane, PhD Candidate in Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow

Internationally synonymous with Scottish identity, Robert Burns is Scotland’s national bard, a status he has achieved through his popularity since his death in 1796. He wrote some of the country’s most famous poems, including the satirical ode, Address to a Haggis and the rousing Scots Wha Hae. His most well-known work, the emotive Auld Lang Syne, is belted out the world over every New Year’s Eve.

On the 25th of January each year, Scots celebrate his life with good food (including the haggis he declared “Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race”) and recitations of his poetry. This Burns Night, I urge you to read one of the Bard’s lesser-known works from 1790, Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots, on the Approach of Spring.

A figure who also looms large in the Scottish cultural imagination, Mary, Queen of Scots was executed in 1587 for plotting against her cousin, the English queen, Elizabeth I. Following her execution and the death of Elizabeth, Mary’s son James was crowned king of both countries in 1603, meaning Mary is often viewed as the last distinctively Scottish monarch.

Mary’s legacy has long been contested. In her lifetime, she was depicted as either a papist jezebel, a “monstrous” female ruler, or a Catholic martyr.

Since her death, a slew of writers, including Burns, have written fictional versions of the Queen of Scots according to their own beliefs about her cultural significance. However, Burns’ poem, written 200 years after her execution, played a large part in shaping her legacy.

Mary was the subject of heated debate among Scottish men in the 18th century. Figures such as the philosopher David Hume labelled Mary “a whore” who had “murdered her husband”.

Hume was using the same smears weaponised by Mary’s contemporary political enemies to control her public reputation. The Scottish lords at the time implicated the queen in the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley. Her marriage to the man accused of Darnely’s killing just months after his death seemed to support perceptions of her guilt. They denounced her as a murderer and adulteress, and she was forced to abdicate in 1567.

Burns’ representation of the “amiable but unfortunate” Mary is, by contrast, sympathetic. His lament first appeared in a letter in 1790 to his friend the heiress Francis Dunlop. He went on to describe the work, in another letter, this time to Lady Winifred Maxwell Constable in 1791, as “a tribute to the memory of our greatly injured, lovely Scottish Queen”.

Burns’ sympathy for the queen was probably influenced by the popular defence of her written by his friend William Tytler. Challenging accounts from the likes of Hume, Tytler critically re-examined the evidence used to condemn Mary for her second husband’s death.

Burns’s portrayal of Mary was also influenced by his Jacobite sympathies – he believed that the exiled Stuart dynasty, represented by Mary, should be restored to the British throne. A burgeoning romantic literary tradition, oriented around natural imagery and individualistic emotional expression, also informed his representation of the Queen.

Written in Mary’s voice as she awaits execution, Burns’ Mary contrasts her youthful happiness as “the Queen o’ bonie France” (she became Queen of France through her first marriage in 1558 to the French dauphin, Francis II) with her current imprisonment in “foreign bands” in England. She decries “mony [many] a traitor” in Scotland and wishes “kinder stars” for her son James.

The Lamentation of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots by the female poet Anne Hunter (1742-1821) may also have influenced Burns’ depiction of the queen. Published around 1780, it bears marked similarities to Burns’ later lament.

Hunter and Burns both write as Mary in the first-person, describe Elizabeth I as a “false woman”, use nature-based imagery, and conclude with Mary’s defiant belief that she will live on after her death. Unfortunately, the likely influence of Hunter’s work on the bard has largely been forgotten, as her poem was often published anonymously.

With his lament, Burns cemented Mary’s status as a tragic figure ripe for romantic literary representation. Burns’ work inspired the romantic poet William Wordsworth to write three poems about the queen of “weeping captivity” in the early 1800s – one remarkably similar lament and two works that also appropriated her voice.

With Burns’s Mary declaring Elizabeth to be a lesser woman as “the weeping blood in woman’s breast / Was never known to thee”, he also helped to create an enduring trope that presents womanly, incompetent Mary as having been the victim and opposite of cold and shrewd (unwomanly) Elizabeth.

This idea has been perpetuated in works from Walter Scott’s The Abbot (1820) to Phillipa Gregory’s The Other Queen (2008). Liz Lochhead’s 1987 play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off is the most significant work to date to take issue with this portrayal of the queens as two “mean girls locked in a catfight to the death”.

Both Mary and Burns were poets, both of their corpses were exhumed in attempts to redefine their cultural reputations, and both are now profitable attractions for Scotland’s tourism and heritage industries.

As Burns Night comes around again and Mary’s last letter goes on display for the first time in Perth, now is the time to read Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots, on the Approach of Spring and remember two figures whose lives and mythologies have shaped Scotland greatly.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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Kate Kane receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities.

– ref. Robert Burns and Mary, Queen of Scots: how the poet shaped the enduring cultural legacy of the executed monarch – https://theconversation.com/robert-burns-and-mary-queen-of-scots-how-the-poet-shaped-the-enduring-cultural-legacy-of-the-executed-monarch-273950