Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Milda Žilinskaitė, Senior Scientist, Competence Center for Sustainability Transformation and Responsibility, Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Founding Co-Director of Migration, Business & Society, Vienna University of Economics and Business

The tariff wars between the US and its trade partners have rarely been out of the news since the US president, Donald Trump, revealed his plans for sweeping “liberation day” levies back in April. The uncertainty that followed for businesses worldwide has now morphed into a battle over global supply chains, as the US and China seek dominance over resources and manufacturing.

At the same time, the subject of migration has been high on many countries’ news agendas. In the US especially, there has been growing anger over federal immigration raids and controversial deportations to “third countries”.

Yet it appears that many policymakers and economists aren’t joining the dots. Tariffs are reshaping migration patterns and, as a result, raising the risk of human rights abuses to workers across global supply chains. This is captured by risk-management platform EiQ, which gathers supply chain intelligence to help businesses reach their environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.

Its data is drawn from 30,000 onsite audits annually across more than 100 geographies (countries and provinces). When taken alongside our research on migrant labour, it raises serious welfare concerns.

The US is playing a key role in the shift of global supply chains through “Made in America”, one of its initiatives to bolster the US manufacturing sector. While some American companies are responding by reshoring certain functions to the US, most are taking a different approach. Rather than bringing production to US soil, they are reconfiguring their supply chains in a bid to avoid the highest tariffs or to open up new markets.

One strategy is “China +1” – in which companies maintain some manufacturing presence in China but expand this to alternative locations such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico.

As a result, new global supply chain corridors are forming rapidly. While south-east Asia continues to rise as a manufacturing hub, Latin America is experiencing a surge in global supply chain investments as companies look to minimise their tariffs. For example, Mexico’s proximity to the US, low labour costs and lower tariffs than those imposed on goods made in China will appeal to many businesses.

Not only American but also Chinese firms are accelerating their foreign direct investment (FDI) across the region – most notably in Mexico. Yet these shifts in supply chains are not without consequences.

The surge in investment in Mexico is fuelling demand for labour, but Mexico’s domestic workforce is not unlimited. As a result, the tariff wars are accelerating Mexico’s demographic transition from a country of emigration to one where immigration is on the rise.

This is part of a broader phenomenon known as “replacement migration”, in which labour migration follows a cascade pattern. Workers from middle-income countries migrate to high-income economies, while companies in these middle-income countries fill labour shortages by recruiting migrants from poorer nations. This means much of today’s migration flows from lower to middle-income economies – “one level up” on the development ladder.

The human cost

One of the consequences of this growing global mobility of labour is the rise of “human supply chains”: the systems and practices that multinationals use to manage migrant workers within global supply chains. The implications are profound.

Labour migration relies on complex transnational recruitment networks. In most migrant-receiving countries, visa programmes require companies to hire workers while they are still in their country of origin (Nepali workers recruited to Malaysian factories, for example). Yet few multinationals manage recruitment in-house. Instead, up to 80% of legal, international lower-skilled hires are arranged by labour agencies.

This growing reliance on agencies is increasing workers’ exposure to risk. Migrant recruitment agencies often operate by charging workers for job placements – essentially selling jobs to those seeking employment abroad. Beyond the high upfront fees, many intermediaries have been linked to corruption, including passport confiscation and replacing promised contracts with poorer terms and lower wages upon arrival.

EiQ has uncovered more than 850 major or critical violations, including unlawful salary deductions and recruitment fees that were not reimbursed. According to its CEO, Kevin Franklin: “There are no longer any ‘safe’ or ‘easy’, cost-effective options for supply chain sourcing. We have entered an era of intense and nuanced trade-offs.”

Moving operations from China to India, for instance, increases exposure to the risk of forced and child labour. Likewise, shifting production to Bangladesh raises serious health and safety concerns. And migrant workers in Mexico face heightened risks relating to labour rights, workplace safety and wages – all of which have worsened over the past year.

Even the US has moved from a medium to a high-risk category for all workers, according to EiQ. The Trump government’s Made in America push has driven up demand for labour, but the US workforce is both insufficient and costly, and mass deportations of migrants are only worsening the shortages.

Tighter immigration policies contribute to an atmosphere of fear, discouraging migrant workers from reporting abuse or seeking legal support. And with fewer workers available, those who stay face greater vulnerability. EiQ audits have uncovered forced overtime, serious injuries, hospitalisations and even amputations after people have been injured at work.

Around the world in 2025, more than 45% of geographies slipped down the humane treatment index which EiQ compiles.

As global trade evolves rapidly, businesses must rely on evidence-based insights to navigate this complex landscape. They should map risk, use AI to help them assess trade-offs when they move into new regions, and engage with and train their suppliers. And when they find out things have gone wrong, there must be action plans – including compensation for affected migrant workers.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How tariff wars are reshaping migration and raising the risk of human rights abuses in supply chains – https://theconversation.com/how-tariff-wars-are-reshaping-migration-and-raising-the-risk-of-human-rights-abuses-in-supply-chains-262984

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Veronica Lamarche, Senior Lecturer of Psychology, University of Essex

As I left the screening of the new film The Roses, I became aware of a young couple walking ahead of me. The woman was in tears, and it quickly became clear the themes of the film, and the struggles of Ivy and Theo Rose, had held a mirror to several issues this couple had been going through too.

The Roses is a re-imagining of the 1989 film and book of the same name, The War of the Roses, which follows a wealthy couple as their individual professional failures and successes trigger a chaotic spiral – and ultimately, the destruction of their marriage.

I empathised with the situation this young couple who had just seen the remake found themselves in – how a movie such as The Roses could turn a special evening out into something more bitter tasting.

There’s a reason why watching a group of couples at a dinner party say the nastiest, most degrading and hurtful things to their other halves can be billed as a “comedy”. We can experience a type of schadenfreude (glee at other’s discomfort) when other couples feud.

A natural reaction to interacting with others is to engage in social comparisons, even when the people we’re comparing ourselves to are fictional characters. Upward social comparisons – for example, watching a seemingly “perfect” couple who appear effortlessly in love – can trigger self-doubt in ourselves.

By contrast, the downward social comparison of watching a couple who should have it all seemingly wither in each other’s presence can make us feel better about ourselves and our own relationships.

But for downward social comparisons to be effective, people need to feel as though the flaws they’re seeing in others aren’t representative of what they are experiencing at home. This is where the series of events that propel Ivy and Theo towards destruction may feel all too familiar for some audience members.

For those who do see themselves in this film, it might leave them wondering whether it is better to cut their loses and end their relationship before it is too late.

Trapped on the battlefield of love

Unlike many romantic comedies, one thing I really liked about The Roses is that I genuinely felt Ivy and Theo loved and respected each other at the beginning of the film. They had a mutual admiration, and genuinely wanted each other to thrive and excel in their own ambitions.

These sentiments lie at the core of many successful relationships. Not only can partners help shape us into our best versions of ourselves, but the closer we feel to someone, the more we get to ““bask in the reflected glory” of their successes.

Before everything goes off the rails, Theo and Ivy want each other to succeed, and they feel proud of each other (and for their family) when they do. In many ways, they start as a masterclass in showing how important partners can be in helping us achieve our personal goals.

But then life begins to throw some curveballs, and we see this couple are missing some of the essential tools in their marital toolkit, because they failed to build the arsenal when times were good.

First, Theo suffers a profound setback in his career which shatters his own sense of who he is. When we doubt ourselves, we find it harder to focus on our partner’s positive qualities, and feel more threatened by their successes.

Ivy and Theo are both reluctant to express their concerns or worries to each another. Initially, this is out of fear of burdening the other person. But later, they hold back out of an assumption that their partner is unwilling or unable to give them what they need. Their marriage is no longer a safe haven, where they can safely lick their wounds and rebuild.

When people hold such negative views of their partner, they are more likely to internalise low points and transgressions as meaning something about who they are as well. Clear and vulnerable conversations with a partner are fundamental for restoring trust, cohesion and satisfaction.

So, the more Theo and Ivy avoid confronting what they need to see change in their relationship, the more they lock themselves into a cycle of resentment and abandonment.

Surviving stormy weather

One thing most media portrayals of romantic life seem to often get wrong is the assumption that real, genuine, uplifting love means never feeling hurt, angry, cross or frustrated. This is simply not true.

In fact, conflict can be a really healthy part of a relationship. It shines a spotlight on something that needs improving, and creates an opportunity for action through reconciliation.

But when we doubt our partner has our best intentions at heart, and when we feel badly about ourselves, we tend to pull away from them in a bid to protect our heart from future hurts, rather than risk the potential rewards of reconnecting.

Rewarding, long-lasting relationships require us to be vulnerable and responsive partners. On the red carpet, the podcasters and hosts of the evening, husband and wife team Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo, were asking the star-studded cast what they thought the secret was to a happy marriage. While there were plenty of positive sentiments and tips, actress Belinda Bromilow suggested that we need to remember to “turn towards your partner, not away”.

I couldn’t agree more. We must resist the temptation to pull away, and instead find the courage to ask our partner for a reassuring cuddle. When life gives us lemons, we must embrace the bitterness and use those notes to make a more well-rounded concoction.

---

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

---

Veronica Lamarche’s research has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, and the Royal Society.

– ref. The Roses: what this romcom about a warring couple can teach us about relationship breakdown and divorce – https://theconversation.com/the-roses-what-this-romcom-about-a-warring-couple-can-teach-us-about-relationship-breakdown-and-divorce-264220

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pauline Fairclough, Professor of Music, University of Bristol

At the BBC Proms in September, the Albert Hall will stage a concert performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s controversial 1934 opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.

Based on Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novella, it tells the story of the lonely Katerina Izmailova, who falls in love with one of her husband’s workers, Sergei, and is driven to murder. In his opera adaptation, Shostakovich inserted two shocking scenes: the first, an attack on the housekeeper Aksinya; the second, a violent sex scene between Katerina and Sergei.

Opening in Leningrad and Moscow in 1934, Lady Macbeth was a hit with Soviet audiences, and Stalin himself attended a performance in 1936. Deeply unimpressed by the music’s modern style, he walked out halfway through, allegedly saying: “This is a muddle, not music” – a phrase repeated in the headline of a ferocious editorial in the Pravda newspaper two days later.

All further performances were withdrawn and it was never heard again in Russia during Shostakovich’s lifetime. That we would again be listening to it today would have astonished Shostakovich.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, Shostakovich dusted down the score and revised it, renaming it Katerina Izmailova. Most of the revisions were minor, except one: he removed the sex scene involving Katerina completely.

The updated version was well received in the Soviet Union – but when Katerina Izmailova toured Europe in the 1960s, critics were lukewarm. In the depths of the cold war, there was little appetite for acclaiming Shostakovich as a genius.

Lady Macbeth recast

But in 1979, exiled Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich located a score of the original Lady Macbeth in Europe and recorded it with EMI. Opera houses quickly expressed a desire to stage it, bypassing the Katerina Izmailova version.

In the same year, the book claimed as Shostakovich’s memoir, Testimony, was published, eliciting more interest in the composer. However, its authenticity was immediately queried, and subsequent research has further discredited its claim to be genuine.

But few would dispute Testimony’s overall message: Shostakovich hated the Soviet regime and suffered deep psychological trauma during the Stalin years. From this point on, the way in which people listened to Shostakovich’s music changed. His political disaffection, some claimed, was audible in the notes themselves.

Where critics had yawned at Katerina Izmailova, they were electrified by this new-old, sexy Lady Macbeth. With Testimony’s revelations in mind, the act of staging sex in Soviet Russia of the 1930s – the decade of Stalin’s purges – seemed excitingly radical. Critics even assumed this was why Stalin had been so offended by the opera. Consequently, directors began to stage both the scene of assault on the housekeeper Aksinya and the sex scene between Katerina and Sergei in as shocking a way as possible.

Stage directions for Leningrad and Moscow in 1934 had Sergei rolling Aksinya in a barrel, but in modern productions she is often gang-raped, stripped partially naked and horribly humiliated. Katerina – originally chased around the Leningrad stage, then at the last moment whisked behind a curtain – is now frequently shown simulating rough sex with Sergei. Although in this scene both music and libretto (vocals) suggest rape, directors normally stage the sex as violent but consensual, shielding us from what I believe the composer had intended.

The original Leningrad and Moscow directors, however, understood Shostakovich’s original concept perfectly. In an early (unperformed) draft, the first words Katerina sang to Sergei after sex were “Don’t you dare touch me”. We cannot avoid the conclusion that Shostakovich originally imagined a rape that led swiftly to Katerina’s adoring words: “Now you are my husband.” It was immature, offensive and didn’t make dramatic sense.

The Leningrad director Nikolai Smolich did the best he could with it, cutting the problematic post-coital dialogue completely and hiding the actual sex from view.

The real reason Stalin walked out

Staging Lady Macbeth with shocking levels of sexual violence has become subtly conflated with Stalin’s banishment of the opera – as though the more outrageous the staging, the more anti-Stalinist it becomes.

Yet Stalin’s reaction to the opera wasn’t caused by the sex. As I discuss in my forthcoming book Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the performance he saw had extra directions written on the brass parts: to play with raised bells and increase the fortissimo to quadruple fortissimo – as loud as physically possible.

There was also an on-stage brass band playing which was placed right under Stalin’s box by the side of the stage. He would have been completely deafened. Lady Macbeth was not too sexy for Stalin – it was too noisy.

We don’t make Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk more authentic or more dissident by staging ever-grimmer levels of sexual violence against women, nor do we bring it closer to Shostakovich’s own vision of the opera. The “original” version is not a perfect masterpiece: Lady Macbeth’s first directors knew that, and so did the older Shostakovich. It’s time to listen to them.

---

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

---

Pauline Fairclough receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust

– ref. Sex, Stalin and Shostakovich: the story of the 1934 opera the Soviet leader walked out of – https://theconversation.com/sex-stalin-and-shostakovich-the-story-of-the-1934-opera-the-soviet-leader-walked-out-of-263457

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicholas Westcott, Professor of Practice in Diplomacy, Dept of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of London

The Trump administration’s policies are making life more complicated for US diplomats abroad.

In the past few days, senior US diplomats in two friendly countries – France and Denmark – have been summoned to receive diplomatic protests from the host government. This is unusual.

Denmark has called in the US charge d’affaires (as the ambassador has not yet been confirmed) after intelligence reports suggested there were covert efforts by the US in Greenland to stir up opposition to Danish rule.

And in Paris, the new US ambassador, Charles Kushner, was summoned after publicly criticising the Macron government for not doing more to curb anti-semitism – but sent one of his staff instead.

Trump’s approach to diplomatic relations dispenses with the usual niceties, the traditional courtesies, and cuts to the chase: who’s bigger than who? The suggestion is that if it is Trump, then he expects you to do what he wants. Where a foreign government continues to disagree with his policy, he seems willing to support efforts, as in Greenland, to change the government or publicly pressure them to change.

US president Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) advised his successors to speak softly and carry a big stick. Trump clearly prefers to speak loudly and use the stick liberally, especially on the country’s allies. This is a new US diplomatic game.

All of this prompts the questions: what is the proper role for an ambassador abroad, and how should diplomatic relations be conducted? As I have set out in my recent book How to be a Diplomat – drawing on 35 years as a British diplomat working in Africa, the Middle East, the US and the EU – there are rules, customs and practices, but these are not always observed.

The Vienna Convention of 1961, which sought to codify this practice, made clear that ambassadors should be respected as representatives of another sovereign state through the granting of appropriate diplomatic privileges and immunities. But that in turn, they should respect the host government by not criticising it in public or seeking to interfere directly in its internal affairs.

The role of the ambassador

Ambassadors act as a mouthpiece for their government, and it is common for governments not to agree with each other. Ambassadors are there to represent, but also to explain, persuade and negotiate on points of difference.

For that, you need to be able to talk to the host government. Insulting them in public, as Kushner did through his op-ed in a US newspaper, does not encourage dialogue or lead to fruitful outcomes.

There are well-established ways to manage such differences. Formal protests from one government to another are usually communicated through a diplomatic communication known as a note verbale using a formal course of action called a démarche – delivered either by an ambassador to the host government, or by summoning the ambassador of the country concerned to the foreign ministry to meet the foreign minister or most senior official.

Ambassadors can be summoned too over the misbehaviour of their staff or citizens in the country concerned, or to expel some of their staff for undertaking activities incompatible with their status – the customary circumlocution for spying.

If relations deteriorate further, an ambassador can be declared persona non grata, effectively expelled, or formally “withdrawn for consultations”, though a charge d’affaires will often remain to ensure a means of communication between the governments continues.

While British ambassador to the Ivory Coast, I was PNG’d by President Laurent Gbagbo after I had, together with the rest of the diplomatic corps in Abidjan, asked him to respect the result of the 2010 election and stand down. (In the end, he went before I did.)

The ultimate diplomatic sanction – usually the last step before war is declared – is to break off diplomatic relations entirely, withdraw all staff, and close the embassy.

In Trump’s first administration, his ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, ruffled feathers with implied support for the far-right in Europe, including the AfD, and criticism of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship.

An infuriated German government had as little contact with him as possible after that, though he was never actually expelled. The same fate is likely to befall Kushner in France: he may become politically popular in Washington and Tel Aviv, but could become operationally useless in France.

Trump, however, has not hesitated to dish it out to foreign ambassadors at home as well as governments abroad. In 2019, he effectively forced out the British ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, by refusing to meet him after some mildly critical comments in a classified internal report were leaked to the British press. When then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson refused to back Darroch up, he had no option but to resign.

Foreign affairs

During the cold war, both the US and Soviet governments were, on occasion, actively involved in trying to install more sympathetic governments in third countries – most memorably in Iran in 1953, Czechoslovakia 1968 and Chile in 1973. But ambassadors were usually left out of the action, which was undertaken by other agencies.

The question is whether this US administration’s approach constitutes a re-writing of the diplomatic rules, or just a return to the status quo before 1945. At that point, the world decided through the UN to try to bring more order and rules to international relations, rather than allowing the great power free-for-all which had led to two world wars.

In reality, the balance of power has always underpinned diplomacy. But even great powers (the biggest nations) came to realise that some rules were useful, which is why the UN still exists.

Diplomacy will continue come what may. And the jury is still out on whether Trumpian realpolitik will actually deliver better outcomes for American people than the previous way of working he is trying to ditch.

Nicholas Westcott 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. How the Trump administration changed the rules of international diplomacy – by a former British ambassador – https://theconversation.com/how-the-trump-administration-changed-the-rules-of-international-diplomacy-by-a-former-british-ambassador-264053

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Benton, Professor Emeritus (Human & Health Sciences), Medicine Health and Life Science, Swansea University

When scientists cracked the human genome in 2003 – sequencing the entire genetic code of a human being – many expected it would unlock the secrets of disease. But genetics explained only about 10% of the risk. The other 90% lies in the environment – and diet plays a huge part.

Worldwide, poor diet is linked to around one in five deaths among adults aged 25 years or older. In Europe, it accounts for nearly half of all cardiovascular deaths.

But despite decades of advice about cutting fat, salt or sugar, obesity and diet-related illness have continued to rise. Clearly, something is missing from the way we think about food.

For years, nutrition has often been framed in fairly simple terms: food as fuel and nutrients as the body’s building blocks. Proteins, carbohydrates, fats and vitamins – about 150 known chemicals in total – have dominated the picture. But scientists now estimate our diet actually delivers more than 26,000 compounds, with most of them still uncharted.

Here is where astronomy provides a useful comparison. Astronomers know that dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe. It doesn’t emit or reflect light, and so it cannot be seen directly but its gravitational effects reveal that it must exist.

Nutrition science faces something similar. The vast majority of chemicals in food are invisible to us in terms of research. We consume them every day, but we have little idea what they do.

Some experts refer to these unknown molecules as “nutritional dark matter”. It’s a reminder that just as the cosmos is filled with hidden forces, our diet is packed with hidden chemistry.

When researchers analyse disease, they look at a vast array of foods, although any association often cannot be matched to known molecules. This is the dark matter of nutrition – the compounds we ingest daily but haven’t been mapped or studied. Some may encourage health, but others may increase the risk of disease. The challenge is finding out which do what.

Foodomics

The field of foodomics aims to do exactly that. It brings together genomics (the role of genes), proteomics (proteins), metabolomics (cell activity) and nutrigenomics (the interaction of genes and diet).

These approaches are starting to reveal how diet interacts with the body in ways far beyond calories and vitamins.

Take the Mediterranean diet (filled with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, olive oil and fish, with limited red meat and sweets), for example, which is known to reduce the risk of heart disease.

But why does it work? One clue lies in a molecule called TMAO (trimethylamine N-oxide), produced when gut bacteria metabolise compounds in red meat and eggs. High levels of TMAO increase the risk of heart disease. But garlic, for example, contains substances that block its production. This is one example of how diet can tip the balance between health and harm.

Gut bacteria also play a major role. When compounds reach the colon, microbes transform them into new chemicals that can affect inflammation, immunity and metabolism.

For example, ellagic acid – found in various fruits and nuts – is converted by gut bacteria into urolithins. These are a group of natural compounds that help keep our mitochondria (the body’s energy factories) healthy.

This shows how food is a complex web of interacting chemicals. One compound can influence many biological mechanisms, which in turn can affect many others. Diet can even switch genes on or off through epigenetics – changes in gene activity that don’t alter DNA itself.

History has provided stark examples of this. For example, children born to mothers who endured famine in the Netherlands during the second world war were more likely to develop heart disease, type 2 diabetes and schizophrenia later in life. Decades on, scientists found their gene activity had been altered by what their mothers ate – or didn’t eat – while pregnant.

Mapping the food universe

Projects such as the Foodome Project are now attempting to catalogue this hidden chemical universe. More than 130,000 molecules have already been listed, linking food compounds to human proteins, gut microbes and disease processes. The aim is to build an atlas of how diet interacts with the body, and to pinpoint which molecules really matter for health.

---

Read more:
Do food additives cause symptoms of ADHD? It’s more complicated than you think

---

The hope is that by understanding nutritional dark matter, we can answer questions that have long frustrated nutrition science. Why do certain diets work for some people but not others? Why do foods sometimes prevent, and sometimes promote, disease? Which food molecules could be harnessed to develop new drugs, or new foods?

We are still at the beginning. But the message is clear – the food on our plate is not just calories and nutrients, but a vast chemical landscape we are only starting to chart. Just as mapping cosmic dark matter is transforming our view of the universe, uncovering nutritional dark matter could transform how we eat, how we treat disease and how we understand health itself.

David Benton 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. What exactly are you eating? The nutritional ‘dark matter’ in your food – https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-are-you-eating-the-nutritional-dark-matter-in-your-food-262290

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Lauwerijssen, Researcher in Green Infrastructure, University of Manchester

Look at the front gardens in a typical suburban street and you’re unlikely to be surprised by much. Tidy little lawns and hedges, a few prim flowers, perhaps a well-kept wooden fence. You probably barely notice unless it’s in a poor state – or there’s something eccentric like a stone fountain. “Why would anyone have that eyesore?” people probably tut as they walk by.

The other thing you’re very likely to see is the owners out doing the gardening. Many will surely be out as I write, doing some final manicuring before autumn sets in.

This is fun for gardening enthusiasts, but most of us with front gardens make them boring more out of social pressure than personal choice. They may say our homes are supposed to be our castles, but we treat our front gardens more like they belong to someone else.

This applies across cultures. In recent years, it has been demonstrated by several studies in the UK and US, as well as in my research in the Netherlands.

I interviewed 20 older adults for my 2024 study about their relationship with their gardens. They all lived in the small cities of Breda and Tilburg, about halfway between Rotterdam and Antwerp. When I talked to Josje and Kees, a couple living in the suburbs of Breda who had the luxury of a front and back garden, Josje told me:

Our garden was green, but maintaining it was an obligatory thing … What you did is mowing the lawn and other amenities to keep it tidy, but not because you had green fingers.

This image of the “perfect” suburban front garden forces people into gardening even if they dislike it. As many as 70% of Dutch people have access to a front garden, and on average they spend 45 minutes per week looking after it. For many, these 45 minutes are clearly just a weekly necessity.

I also talked to Gerda and Willem, who lived on the same street, and Gerda’s comments gave an insight into the social pressure that gets attached to front gardens:

The street has become more beautiful now that everyone is paying more attention to the garden and trying to keep it tidy – except for one.

Clearly you wouldn’t want to be that person. And this isn’t all about the middle classes. In a study in an economically deprived area in the north of England in 2021, one respondent said:

You don’t want visitors to think you live in a dump, you don’t want them to pity you … It gives you pride, not just in your house but in the whole area. It makes it look like your area has not just been left to rot.

The sense of community and social control is reinforced when neighbours greet one another in apparently throwaway comments. “Morning – nice weather for gardening, isn’t it?” one of my interviewees said when he saw another outside. It’s friendly on one level, but there’s a subtext about moral duty as well.

The state of someone’s front garden influences how others perceive you and your house. Tidy and manicured garden? You must be middle class and have a nice, tidy house. A garden full of weeds and dirt? You must be working class, antisocial or renting.

There is even stigma around relaxing in your front garden. A 2023 UK study, which did focus-group interviews with people from different social classes and parts of England, had a contributor who said:

I think sitting out the front, people would say either this person’s got too much time or he’s looking at the neighbourhood gossip.

What happens round the back

Back gardens are a whole different can of worms. These are spaces of privacy and self-expression, where homeowners are more likely to go rogue with their designs. If you’re going to see cacti or palm trees, or statues or Japanese rock gardens, this is the place to look.

Among those who take biodiversity more seriously, you’ll maybe see microhabitats like ponds, nests and insect boxes. Those who prioritise self-sufficiency are increasingly setting up greenhouses and allotment-style plots to grow and harvest seasonal vegetables.

Back gardens are where people kick back, talk to family and friends, and let the children play. It’s where we’re less likely to worry if the grass is a bit longer than usual, since there’s probably tall enough fencing or hedging that the neighbours can’t see what’s going on.

Back gardens were particularly vital for restoring people and improving their wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic – for those lucky enough to have them.

So, if you want to know what a person is really like, check out their back garden. Although I should add, it is a little different in the Netherlands – where the culture is to usually have all curtains open, sending out a message that there’s nothing to hide in this house. That may or may not impose a little more conformity than in other countries, but that’s a research question for another day.

Rachel Lauwerijssen 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 tyranny of front gardens: we cut and trim them out of social pressure, not pleasure – https://theconversation.com/the-tyranny-of-front-gardens-we-cut-and-trim-them-out-of-social-pressure-not-pleasure-264136

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peter William Walsh, Researcher, The Migration Observatory, University of Oxford

Speaking to the press in an airport hangar near Oxford on August 26, the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, unveiled his party’s new policy on mass deportations.

There are many elements to the policy, but at its heart is a decision to abandon the UK’s decades-long commitment not to send people to places where they may face torture or death.

At the heart of the global asylum system is one basic principle: countries must not send people to places where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. This rule – known as the principle of “non-refoulement” – derives from the 1951 Refugee Convention but also appears in other human rights laws and agreements. It is why European countries, including the UK, assess asylum claims even when people have arrived without authorisation.

“Look, I can’t be responsible for despotic regimes all over the world,” said Farage, defending the policy in The Times, adding that his responsibility is to the “safety of women and girls on our streets” rather than to those who have entered the UK without permission.

The UK was instrumental in drafting both the European Convention on Human Rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention. For the UK to effectively remove itself from these treaties raises significant questions about whether other states would follow suit, and what sort of protections would exist for persecuted people around the world in the future.

What is Reform proposing?

The plan is indeed, as Farage described, radical. Its main aim is to “detain and deport all illegal migrants” over one parliament. To make this possible, the plan, branded Operation Restoring Justice, entails leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), repealing the UK’s Human Rights Act, and “disapplying” for five years the Refugee Convention and other international agreements that could prevent deportations.

Further, it would greatly expand detention on repurposed military sites, and scale up charter flights for the removal of “up to 600,000” people without the right to be in the UK.

The policy reflects a major departure from the 75-year postwar consensus in Europe that countries should not send people to countries where they could face persecution.

Legal and practical hurdles

Reform’s policy, if implemented, is likely to attract legal challenges. However, as the parliamentary battle over the last government’s Rwanda deportation plan demonstrated, the government has considerable power to prevent the courts from having their say. Leaving the ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and removing all references to non-refoulement in domestic law would make the policy possible, from a legal perspective.

This would not happen overnight. It could take more than a year for Reform’s illegal migration (mass deportation) bill to become law, given that Reform will command no majority in the House of Lords, where the policy is liable to attract strong resistance. Leaving the ECHR requires just six months’ notice – but would probably also require the consent of parliament.

The bigger practical hurdles are logistical and diplomatic. Reform proposes to increase detention spaces to 24,000 within 18 months. As of mid-2024, the most recent available data, detention capacity stood at an estimated 2,200.

The UK’s current system for removals operates at a fraction of the scale Reform envisages. In the year ending June 30 2025, there were around 9,000 enforced returns and 27,000 voluntary ones. Removing hundreds of thousands of people over five years would require a huge expansion of interior immigration enforcement. It also remains unclear how Reform would identify hundreds of thousands of people living in the UK without permission.

Consent from receiving countries (the countries to where people would be deported) is a longstanding barrier to deportations. If a country does not recognise their citizens or refuses to take them back, they cannot be returned.

The government’s recent experience shows documentation and country cooperation are the main practical limits on enforced returns. Questions remain over whether, or on what terms, Afghanistan and Iran would agree to take back their citizens.

Reform has anticipated this potential issue by proposing to pay countries to take back their citizens, or impose sanctions on those that don’t.

Should this not work, Reform’s Plan B would be to deport people to “safe third countries”, a la Rwanda. Plan C: sending people to British Overseas Territories like Ascension Island, something the previous Conservative government was reported to have looked at internally and rejected on feasibility and cost grounds.

Reform estimates that the policy would save over £7 billion in five years. In truth, the policy is so radical that it is impossible to cost with any degree of precision.

What is clearer is that any net saving would depend critically on how many people the policy deters from crossing in small boats. Currently, small boat arrivals and a large asylum backlog generate annual government spending of over £4 billion.

Managing the asylum system has become increasingly challenging over the last decade, as numbers of both unauthorised arrivals and asylum claims have risen rapidly, and the cost of the asylum system has skyrocketed.

However, the most significant part of Reform’s announcement is not the detail, but the essence. It proposes ending the principle of refugee protection – accepting that people would be sent to countries where they could be tortured or killed, as a means of reducing unauthorised migration and cutting the costs of the asylum system.

Peter William Walsh receives funding from the Nuffield Foundation.

Rob McNeil receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is the chair of trustees for the Work Rights Centre, and alongside his role at the University of Oxford, undertakes consultancy work for UN bodies and other international organisations.

– ref. The most radical part of Reform’s deportation plans – https://theconversation.com/the-most-radical-part-of-reforms-deportation-plans-264162

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alice Donald, Professor, Middlesex University

Reform UK has laid out plans for an “emergency programme” to address illegal immigration. The party argues its plans, which include expanding immigration detention capacity from the current roughly 2,200 places to 24,000, would enable the deportation of up to 600,000 people over a parliamentary term.

The plans would require removing legal protections against mass deportation without due process. Specifically, Reform has called for repealing the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 and permanently withdrawing the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Nigel Farage has also proposed disapplying for five years the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against Torture and the Council of Europe anti-trafficking convention, although these treaties do not, in fact, allow for temporary suspension.

Beyond the apparent logistical challenges are serious political repercussions. The Good Friday Agreement requires the rights and freedoms in the ECHR and recourse to the European Court of Human Rights to be part of the law in Northern Ireland. Withdrawing would require a renegotiation of the agreement. A showdown would also ensue with the devolved assemblies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Reform has touted its plan as a “legal reset”. But it is better understood as a total rejection of the UK’s postwar international commitments to protect the human rights of everyone within its jurisdiction.

These commitments, and others, have cemented the UK at the heart of the rules-based international order. This is the foundational idea that countries are bound by the legal commitments they make to each other and everyone within their jurisdiction. Successive governments have viewed this as both a moral imperative and a core aspect of the UK’s foreign and defence policies.

Reform’s plan would be an unprecedented and drastic rupture with almost eight decades of commitment to human rights protections. It would have far-reaching implications for all people in the UK, not just refugees.

How the ECHR protects everyone

If the UK withdrew from the ECHR, everyone living in the UK would lose the ability to take cases to the European Court of Human Rights if they fail to get justice domestically.

ECHR rights have been invoked to protect victims of domestic abuse, children and disabled people. The right to private and family life, the application of which has been (inaccurately) criticised for preventing deportation, is the same right relied on to protect privacy in the workplace or from surveillance, to uphold the dignity of older and disabled people in residential care, and to secure legal protection for LGBTQ+ people.

The ECHR alone has provided redress to victims of crime who have been failed by state investigations, like the survivors and bereaved families of the Hillsborough disaster or the victims of the “black cab rapist” John Worboys. Ironically, Reform UK has repeatedly argued for protection of free speech, which is protected primarily by the ECHR.

The wider cost of UK withdrawal from international treaties would be the loss of influence and reputation. These treaties are benchmarks for international cooperation, and foundational to international order. Pulling out of the UN convention against torture and the anti-trafficking convention would signal the UK’s abandonment of global principles to combat torture, modern slavery, sexual exploitation and trafficking, including the illegal trade in human organs.

Far from enabling the UK to control migration, a do-it-alone stance would harm the ability of future governments to do so. Removing the UK from the negotiating table would forfeit the opportunity to shape and benefit from cooperation to tackle a global challenge. We have seen this before: UK withdrawal from the EU took it out of the Dublin system and ongoing EU-wide efforts to manage migration and returns, just as small boat arrivals increased.

Beyond this, removals require treaties with other countries. Treaties require political will, mutual benefit, time and trust that the signatories will hold to their commitments. Where these are lacking, as evidenced by the failed and costly Rwanda policy, receiving countries can extract a very high price from the UK.

Could the rights be replaced?

To implement these plans, a Reform government would need to pass legislation through parliament to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA). If successful, this would pave the way for the UK to give notice to the Council of Europe to withdraw from the ECHR.

Without the HRA, there is no equivalent protection to the ECHR elsewhere in UK law. The common law, a body of law developed over centuries by judicial decisions as distinct from laws passed by parliament, would continue to provide some protection for rights, including personal liberty, access to justice, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture.

---

Read more:
How the UK could reform the European convention on human rights

---

Common law principles would still guide British judges when making decisions about mass detention and deportation without due process. It is also possible that a new bill of rights could be enacted, containing a similar or identical catalogue of rights to the ECHR.

The most important difference would be how rights would be protected in practice. Would any replacement, like the HRA, oblige public authorities and the government to uphold rights in their decisions and actions? And would it allow higher courts to declare a law incompatible with human rights, flagging to parliament that the law should be reconsidered?

Human rights protections are invisible to most people living in the UK. The expectation that police and your local council must treat you fairly, that health and care services must respect your dignity, and that there will be legal remedy if the state fails you, is so normalised that it would be inconceivable to think it could disappear within the UK.

But it is the invisible integration of individual rights within the UK system that makes this both a lived and legal reality. Stripping away these protections would leave us all naked.

---

Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

Sign up for our weekly politics newsletter, delivered every Friday.

---

Alice Donald is a member of the Labour Party.

Joelle Grogan 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. Treaties like the ECHR protect everyone in the UK, not just migrants – https://theconversation.com/treaties-like-the-echr-protect-everyone-in-the-uk-not-just-migrants-264057

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Manoj Dora, Professor in Sustainable Production and Consumption, Anglia Ruskin University

This year’s drought has once again put farmers in the spotlight, with yields in some crops falling by as much as 50%. But behind the headlines of empty reservoirs and wilting fields lies a bigger problem: the way the UK’s food system is organised, managed and governed.

For generations, UK food policy has prioritised stable, low prices above all else. This dates right back to Britain’s repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the birth of free trade in grain. While the policy was meant to keep bread affordable, its influence has endured. The idea that food must remain cheap and price-stable, often at the expense of resilience in the face of climate shocks, is embedded.

These days, it means supermarket shelves stay full and prices rise more slowly than in many other European countries. But the model comes at a hidden cost: it strips resilience out of the supply chain. When extreme weather hits, the whole system wobbles – and consumers end up paying anyway.

The UK produces about 62% of the food it consumes, but only 53% of the fresh vegetables. The rest comes from imports – often from climate-vulnerable regions such as Spain, Italy and North Africa.

That dependence once diversified risk. Now, when multiple regions are hit by droughts or floods, there are far fewer alternatives.

In the UK, supermarkets run “just-in-time” logistics systems meaning produce is delivered to distribution centres and stores exactly when it is needed, with little or no stock held in reserve.

This model is designed to cut costs and reduce waste, and for highly perishable items like fresh fruit and vegetables it can seem essential. But it also makes the system brittle – when harvests fail or imports are delayed, shelves empty quickly.

Strategic storage – whether in the form of grain reserves, frozen produce or regional “cold-chain” hubs – could provide resilience without undermining freshness for short-life products.

At the moment though, farmers deliver crops straight from the field to distribution centres, leaving no buffer in case of a bad harvest. And contracts are often one-sided. If a crop doesn’t meet strict cosmetic standards, or if a retailer changes its order, farmers carry the loss.

All of this means that as soon as weather reduces supply, shortages ripple through the chain and the consumer sees higher prices. In June 2025, food inflation climbed to 4.5% year-on-year – the fastest rise since early 2024.

But the UK still throws away 9.5 million tonnes of food every year, worth around £19 billion. About 60% of that is wasted by households, but supermarkets are far from blameless.

Retailers discard more than 200,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually, often because it doesn’t meet strict appearance standards. Farmers report ploughing perfectly edible crops back into the soil when contracts are cancelled due to faulty demand forecasts.

This isn’t just bad for the environment, it undermines food security. In a year when farmers are struggling to produce crops, the idea that a third of food is lost or wasted worldwide highlights how poorly managed the system really is.

Should consumer expectations change?

The uncomfortable truth is that resilience may mean less predictability. The current model shields consumers from seasonal variations by spreading risk along the chain – usually on to farmers or overseas producers. But this comes at the expense of long-term stability.

If instead consumers accepted that prices might fluctuate more in the short term – reflecting the true cost of climate shocks – supply chains could be redesigned for resilience. Farmers could be paid fairly to invest in adaptation, and retailers could prioritise secure contracts over the cheapest imports.

In the long run, that would protect households from the more damaging spikes caused when the system fails. But lower-income households already spend a far greater share of their income on food, so short-term price increases must be accompanied by targeted government support to tackle food insecurity.

So, what would a more secure food system look like? Based on my research, three changes stand out.

1. Stronger local networks: Investing in regional hubs for processing and storage would mean that food from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England could be better connected and there would be less reliance on imports. Government should fund infrastructure and planning support, retailers should commit to long-term contracts that make local hubs viable and producers can collaborate to share facilities.

2. Fairer contracts: There’s a need for greater risk-sharing between farmers, processors and supermarkets so that a bad harvest doesn’t bankrupt producers. At present, retailers hold most of the power, often setting strict standards and cancelling orders at short notice. But if farmers keep shouldering all the risk, many could exit the sector – leaving retailers with less choice and more volatility.

3. Policy that values resilience: The government should support producers to adapt for the long term with things like drought-resistant crops and water stewardship. This is a better strategy than one-off subsidies after each crisis – as happens at the moment.

Food security is national security. Yet in the UK, it is still treated as a matter of weekly prices. Every drought, flood or heatwave exposes the same fragility – a system designed to deliver cheap food today, but incapable of absorbing tomorrow’s shocks.

If consumers want affordable food in the long run, it’s time to stop asking how to keep prices low and start asking how to keep food supplies secure. That means fairer treatment of farmers, smarter use of resources and consumers willing to accept some short-term price volatility. Otherwise, the next bad year will not be the exception, it will be the rule.

Manoj Dora 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 UK’s food system is built on keeping prices low – but this year’s droughts show up its failings – https://theconversation.com/the-uks-food-system-is-built-on-keeping-prices-low-but-this-years-droughts-show-up-its-failings-263939

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aisling Pigott, Lecturer, Dietetics, Cardiff Metropolitan University

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you’ve probably been told that cooking your own meals is the way to go. This has been backed up by a recent study, which found that people who ate home-cooked, minimally processed foods lost twice the weight to those who ate mainly ultra-processed, ready-made foods.

The recent study, which was published in Nature Medicine, involved 50 adults who were randomly assigned to eat either a diet high in ultra-processed foods or one with mostly minimally-processed foods. Both diets were designed to meet the UK’s national dietary guidelines.

Both groups lost weight, which makes sense as they consumed fewer calories than they usually did. However, the group that consumed mostly minimally processed foods ultimately consumed fewer calories overall – thereby losing more weight. They also saw slightly greater improvements to other measures of their health, such as having lower fat mass, reduced triglyceride levels (linked to heart health) and fewer cravings for unhealthy foods at the end of the study.

The ultra-processed foods group still lost weight and saw some improvements in blood lipids (fat) and blood glucose (sugar), but these changes were generally smaller than those seen in the minimally processed foods group.

As a dietitian, this is both an interesting and important piece of research – even though the results are not entirely surprising. In fact, a surprising result is that the consumption of ultra-processed food still resulted in weight loss.

The minimally processed diet group consumed fewer calories overall, which would explain why this group lost more weight. But the fact that this group saw greater improvements in other areas of their health highlights how health encompasses far more than calories or a number on the scales.

Why processing matters

Despite the bad press, food processing plays an essential role in food safety and preservation.

But how much processing a food has undergone seems to be the factor associated with worse health outcomes. These foods tend to have less fibre, more added fats, sugars and salt. This is because they’re designed to be tasty and long-lasting.

The most common definition of an ultra-processed foods are foods which are industrially produced and which contain extracts of original foods alongside additives and industrial ingredients. Think crisps or frozen ready meals.

The food system in much of the world has become increasingly reliant on ultra-processed foods, with these foods contributing to about half of food intake in the UK, Europe and the US. But there’s clear evidence that high intake of ultra-processed foods is linked with poorer health outcomes, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

The more calorie-rich, less nutritious foods we consume, the more our health will suffer – as this recent study has confirmed. But how can you work out which foods are classified as “ultra-processed” and which are only “minimally processed”? In short, this depends on how much processing a food product has undergone to be ready for consumption.

Ultra-processed foods are industrially formulated products made mostly from ingredients extracted from foods (such as oils, starches and proteins) and additives.

Examples include: sugary breakfast cereals, flavoured yoghurts with sweeteners and thickeners, soft drinks, instant noodles, packaged biscuits and cakes, mass-produced bread with emulsifiers and reconstituted meat products – such as chicken nuggets.

Minimally processed foods are whole foods that are altered only to make them safer or easier to prepare. Importantly, this processing doesn’t change their nutritional value.

Examples include: fresh, frozen or bagged vegetables and fruit, plain yoghurt or milk, whole grains (such as oats or brown rice), eggs, fresh or frozen fish, and tinned beans or tomatoes without added sugar or salt.

Including minimally processed foods

It can sometimes feel overwhelming to work out whether a food is ultra-processed or minimally processed.

Some advice that is often suggested for working out whether a food is ultra-processed include checking to see if a product contains more than five to ten ingredients and considering if it contains ingredients you wouldn’t use at home.

In addition to the number of ingredients, it’s also the type of ingredients that matter. Ultra-processed foods often contain added sugars, refined starches, emulsifiers, stabilisers and flavourings that serve cosmetic purposes (such as improving colour, texture or taste), rather than preserving the food’s freshness or safety.

Minimally processed foods will not contain these types of ingredients, nor will they have as many ingredients on their label.

It’s also important to be aware of smoked meats. While this is a common preservation method, most commercially available smoked meats – such as bacon, ham or sausages – are considered ultra-processed because of the curing agents and other additives they contain. While plain smoked fish (such as smoked salmon) is still classed as a processed food, it uses fewer curing agents and additives than other smoked meat products.

A diet rich in minimally processed foods usually means more fibre, more nutrients and fewer calories – all of which can support weight and long-term health, as this recent study showed. So if you’re keen to include more minimally processed foods in your diet, here are a few tips to help you get more onto your plate:

• build meals around vegetables, whole grains and pulses
• use tinned or frozen products for convenience and to save time while cooking
• choose plain dairy products without sugar or fruit purees, then add your own fruits, nuts and seeds for flavour
• healthy meals don’t have to be complicated. Aim to include a protein source, a wholegrain carbohydrate and plenty of veggies or fruits at each meal
• batch cook meals when you have time and freeze them if possible.

As a dietitian, it’s important to point out that there’s a distinction between the potential harms of excessive consumption of ultra-processed foods and the essential role processing can play in ensuring food safety, preservation and accessibility.

It’s also important not to panic about enjoying the occasional biscuit or ready meal, and we should avoid demonising convenience foods – especially for those who face barriers such as limited mobility or lack of cooking facilities. Because remember, the group that ate a diet high in ultra-processed foods but met dietary guidelines still lost weight and saw health benefits in the study.

Eating well doesn’t mean that you need to completely eliminate ultra-processed foods. But shifting the balance towards eating more minimally processed foods, with more home-cooked meals where possible, is a step in the right direction.

Aisling Pigott receives funding from Research Capacity Building Collaborative (RCBC) / Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW)

– ref. Ultra-processed foods vs minimally processed foods: how can you tell the difference? – https://theconversation.com/ultra-processed-foods-vs-minimally-processed-foods-how-can-you-tell-the-difference-262669