Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Benedict Morrison, Senior lecturer in Film, Television, Literature, and Queer Studies, University of Exeter

In her 1998 essay What’s a Good Gay Film?, film critic B. Ruby Rich considered what queer audiences were looking for.

She wrote that queer cinema-goers were seeking “films of validation and a culture of affirmation: work that can reinforce identity, visualise respectability, combat injustice and bolster social status”. They were tired, she argued, of stereotypes of queer suffering and trauma. Instead, they required “nothing downbeat or too revelatory; and happy endings, of course”.

But if a straightforward happy ending is what you are after, Departures is not the film for you. This miraculously self-financed and stylish debut feature is not purely affirmative. At times, the screen shimmers with sadness. And yet, wryly and playfully, the film also resists becoming gloomy. Tonally sophisticated, it combines the bleak with the whimsical, ultimately sidestepping the crude dichotomy of happy or unhappy endings altogether.

The film opens with a love-scarred Benji (played by the film’s writer and co-director Lloyd Eyre-Morgan) recalling a recent relationship. In flashback, he remembers meeting handsome Jake (David Tag) in the airport as they both wait for a flight to Amsterdam. Jake bewilders Benji: his flirtation is suggestive but always deniable, never quite declaring itself. Charismatic and assertive, Jake engineers it so that they sit together on the flight, telling the air steward that he is Benji’s carer – a description which quickly becomes grimly ironic.

Later, Jake rejects the suggestion that he is gay but demands that Benji give him a blowjob regardless. Monthly trips to Amsterdam follow and the two men develop a form of intimacy, but one which affords the softer, more pliable Benji little power.

In such a brief synopsis, the scenario risks sounding cliched. Familiar narrative devices pile up: the physically asymmetrical gay relationship in which the self-consciousness of one man makes them susceptible to the coercive manipulations of the more assured partner in a whirlwind of sex and drugs and emotional control. A comparable dynamic played out in another recent queer film, Pillion.

Benji, longing for this to be more than a once-monthly dose of overseas sex, withstands put-downs and disappointments. His quiet, emotional expressions of desire (played movingly by Eyre-Morgan) contrast with Jake’s struggle to accept his attraction to men. Tag is excellent and his portrayal of Jake is sometimes harsh and defensive, but also shows vulnerability, which prevents him from becoming a one-dimensional monster. Because of these tensions, the relationship’s unhappy ending feels like a dead cert.

Lessons from Heartstopper

Departures takes familiar cliches and gives them new life, turning them into something unexpectedly revealing. Its understated story recalls many films about gay suffering – from A Single Man to All of Us Strangers – but it refuses to stay within that familiar emotional frame.

Instead, the film disrupts expectations through bold, stylised touches that feel borrowed, perhaps improbably, from the Heartstopper playbook. The result is a work that plays with recognisable influences while twisting them into something more strange, lively and original.

Heartstopper, the popular Netflix queer teen drama, deliberately avoids the more difficult or painful stories often told about queer life. Instead, it offers the kind of wish-fulfilling, happy endings that Rich suggested many queer viewers have long desired. Every glance, touch and kiss between its characters is punctuated with playful on-screen doodles — bursts of electricity, fluttering butterflies and swirling text that insist we are watching Love with a capital L.

Departures borrows these same twee, saccharine stylistic gestures, but uses them in a very different context. Applied to a darker, sometimes even sordid story about control and sadness, they take on a mischievous, unsettling edge.

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Read more:
Heartstopper: how this joyous teen show contrasts with my bitter memories of school life under homophobic law Section 28

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As Benji’s voiceover details his suffering, scratchy lettering and illustrations dance around the screen. When he first sees Jake and his weary voiceover acknowledges the pain to come, doodled hearts burst around the handsome stranger to the music of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. As Benji submissively performs oral sex for Jake, the Hallelujah Chorus plays and animated fireworks fill the screen. And as Jake prepares to get into a fight with Benji’s friends, the needle of a Toxic Masculinity Meter shoots up to maximum. Here is a version of Heartstopper for an audience which knows that happy endings are often only the stuff of comic books.

In Departures, the collision of the sombre, unsettling narrative with the comic stylings of those twitching onscreen graphics suggests a more complex emotional situation in which neither cynicism nor romanticism is left unchecked. Instead, they synthesise in a complex portrait of Benji, who can neither maintain nor give up his romantic belief that Jake might love him.

Colliding styles

One of the film’s most striking ways of expressing this tension comes in a series of non-narrative sequences. Here, the characters dance – or perhaps merely convulse – under harsh strobe lights, their bodies flickering in and out of view, shifting into new poses and even seeming to become different selves between flashes.

It’s a simple but powerful device, inspired by the club scenes the men encounter on their trips to Amsterdam. Yet it opens up something more unsettling: brief glimpses of gay men caught between pleasure and pain, ecstasy and distress, moving to the uncertain rhythm of a contemporary queer world where nothing quite feels stable or fixed.

In the 1990s, Rich rejected the idea of easy affirmation, describing herself instead as an “old-time outlaw girl” who craved films “that push the edge, upset convention, defy expectation, speak the unspeakable, grab me by the throat and surprise me with something I’ve never seen before”.

Departures may work with familiar characters and a recognisable story, but its force lies in how it collides styles and tones in unexpected ways. It’s the kind of film that, in Rich’s terms, grabs you by the throat. What stays with me most is its sardonic yet romantic energy and the strangely undefeated presence of Benji at its centre.

This film deserves to find an audience who want more than easy viewing. It deserves viewers who will dance along to its tonal shifts and cherish the funny, sad, ironic almost-happy ending it serves up in its closing credits.

Benedict Morrison 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. Departures: this stylish gay love story deftly balances darkness and whimsy – https://theconversation.com/departures-this-stylish-gay-love-story-deftly-balances-darkness-and-whimsy-280497

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

 The day after Péter Magyar ousted Victor Orbán as prime minister of Hungary, he gave a combative press conference. He spoke in Hungarian, but was talking to the world – and particularly to Europe.

“We will do everything to restore the rule of law, plural democracy, and the system of checks and balances,” Magyar said, calling his election a historic moment for Hungary.

During 16 years in power, Orbán and his Fidesz party managed to take control of many of Hungary’s levers of power, from the judiciary to state-owned media, and weakened the institutions that could keep them accountable. Orbán liked to call it an illiberal democracy.

Magyar also urged the Hungarian president to move swiftly to install him as prime minister, before any more damage could be done by Orbán’s loyalists. “We know that people have been destroying documents, just like in the old communist age, that shredders are working full time,” he said.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Zsolt Enyedi, professor of political science at the Central European University and an expert in Hungarian politics, explains how Magyar, a former member of Fidesz, manage to beat Orbán, his former boss.

Magyar’s moment

Enyedi describes Magyar as a centre-right figure with some nationalistic attributes, who is a bit eurosceptic with “some reservations against progressive way of speaking”. However, Enyedi says Magyar changed since first entering politics in 2024, when he gave an explosive interview criticising Orbán’s regime.

Back then he was “clearly someone who reproduced many of the ideological panels of this Orbánist regime, but he was very critical of the corruption that exists in the regime”. He was likened to a clean, young version of Orbán himself.

Since then, Magyar has spent two years travelling around Hungary speaking to people across the country on the campaign trail. “He started to understand better the enormous harm done by the Fidesz regime, and he also became more pro-European in his rhetoric, embracing the democratisation agenda,” says Enyedi.

Magyar is now able to “provide the lowest common denominator for all pro-democratic forces,” says Enyedi. “In that sense, he’s more than simply representative of one political ideological current.”

As European leaders breathe a sign of relief at Magyar’s victory, Enyedi says although Europe has not gained an “enthusiastic partner”, he will be a much more constructive one. “Partly out of conviction, partly because he needs EU money and he needs that money soon. So he cannot play games. He has to make a deal with the EU leadership.”

Listen to the interview with Zsolt Enyedi on The Conversation Weekly podcast. This episode was written and produced by Gemma Ware, Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from CNN, CRM News, euronews and Partizán.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Zsolt Enyedi has received EU Horizon funding.

– ref. ​Who is Hungary’s Péter Magyar and how he overturned Viktor Orbán’s illiberal democracy – https://theconversation.com/who-is-hungarys-peter-magyar-and-how-he-overturned-viktor-orbans-illiberal-democracy-280651

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Toomey, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Glasgow

Hungary’s Tisza party won parliamentary elections on April 12, bringing an end to the 16-year tenure of Viktor Orbán as prime minister. The result is a seismic one for Hungarian domestic politics. But it is also a major development in the trajectory of Hungary’s relations with the EU.

Throughout Orbán’s term, but particularly since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he was consistently a thorn in the side of the EU. He flouted European norms, values and legislation as he went about building what he called an “illiberal state”.

One example was his 2011 decision to lower the mandatory retirement age for Hungarian judges and prosecutors from 70 to 62. This forced a large proportion of the country’s judiciary into retirement, allowing Orbán to replace them with party loyalists. The European Court of Justice ruled against the change in 2013, but many of Orbán’s appointees remained in their positions.

Orbán’s continued defiance of EU policies eventually resulted in the suspension of his Fidesz party from the powerful European People’s Party grouping in the European parliament. Its membership of the alliance was terminated two years later. The European Commission’s 2022 decision to withhold €30 billion (£26.1 billion) in funds from Hungary caused relations to plummet further.

And Orbán subsequently sought to leverage the EU’s need for solidarity and unanimity to support Ukraine and sanction Russia. Hungarian obstinance and disruption became so frequent that the country has been described by some political figures in Europe as not being aligned with European or Ukrainian interests when it comes to Russia.

In a thinly veiled reference to Orbán during a 2024 parliamentary speech, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “There are still some who blame this war not on the invader but on the invaded. Not on Putin’s lust for power but on Ukraine’s thirst for freedom. So I want to ask them: would they ever blame the Hungarians for the Soviet invasion of 1956?”

A true low point in EU-Hungary relations was reached in early April 2026 when leaked audio recordings showed Orbán and his foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, actively coordinating with the Russian government. The recordings show that Szijjártó had used breaks in closed EU ministerial sessions two years earlier to call his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and brief him on the state of internal discussions.

Szijjártó is also accused of sharing confidential documents with Lavrov relating to minority language requirements in Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, has described this as a “betrayal”. Had Orbán managed to prevail in the recent elections, the relationship between the EU and Hungary is likely to have reached a breaking point.

Rupture or continuity?

As it is, EU officials will be breathing a sigh of relief. The incoming prime minister, Péter Magyar, has a huge incentive to restore Hungary’s relations with the EU – if for no other reason than to secure the release of roughly €17 billion in allocated EU funds that are still suspended. Warmer relations would also help Hungary access a possible further €17 billion in discounted defence loans.

Given the global economic ramifications of the war in Iran and the costs Magyar will incur as he reforms and dismantles Orbán’s oligarchic economic system, his government will rely on these funds to ease some of the budgetary pressures they will face.

However, unfreezing these funds is not a foregone conclusion. Von der Leyen has already announced that reforms will need to be made in order to achieve this and has presented Hungary’s incoming government with 27 conditions that will need to be satisfied.

Some of these reforms will be relatively easy for Magyar to achieve. For instance, tackling corruption was an explicit part of Tisza’s election manifesto. However, other EU funds that were suspended due to infringements on LGBTQ+ rights or asylum procedures will be more politically costly to access.

Hungarians remain deeply conservative and more eurosceptic than the average European. According to a 2025 survey conducted on behalf of the European Commission, only 55% of Hungarians consider the country’s EU membership to be “a good thing”. This is lower than the EU average of 62%. Reforms that are seen to be at odds with Hungarian values may thus provoke domestic resistance.

Perhaps of most global interest will be how Magyar approaches the war in Ukraine. He has indicated an interest in rapprochement with Ukraine as part of his broader goal of realigning Hungary with the EU and Nato. Most notably, he has stated that Orbán should lift his veto on the provision of a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine.

However, there may also be more continuity with the Orbán regime than those in Brussels might like. Magyar has stated that he intends to continue importing Russian energy until at least 2035 and that he will need to put any future possibility of Ukrainian EU membership to a referendum.

In a country where opinion polls show 50% of voters – and 36% of Tisza voters – see Ukraine as a threat, such a referendum would be highly likely to upend the entire process of Ukraine’s EU accession.

Orbán’s downfall is undoubtedly a positive for EU-Hungary relations. However, while Magyar himself has asserted his determination to restore a friendly relationship, this reset will face multiple sizeable tests over the coming months and years.

Michael Toomey 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. Orbán’s downfall is a positive for EU-Hungary relations – but the reset will not be smooth – https://theconversation.com/orbans-downfall-is-a-positive-for-eu-hungary-relations-but-the-reset-will-not-be-smooth-280681

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil Reid, Reader (Associate Professor) in Conservation Biology, Queen’s University Belfast

At Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, sand has been dredged commercially for decades. Large vessels remove sand from the lakebed and transport it to the shore. Because this happens underwater, the scale of the activity is largely invisible. Regulation has focused on where dredging is allowed and how much sand is removed.

Sand is used by the construction industry to make concrete. Demand for sand as a raw material is rising globally. Much of it taken from rivers, coasts and lakes.

But my team’s new research shows that this sand dredging is not just disturbing specific parts of the lakebed. That disruption is much more widespread and may be affecting the entire ecosystem.

Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the UK, supplies drinking water to 41% of the population of Northern Ireland and supports fisheries, wildlife and local livelihoods. Yet it is now at the centre of an environmental crisis. Toxic blue-green algal blooms caused by an overgrowth of the cyanobacteria Microcystis aeruginosa clog up the entire ecosystem.

Lough Neagh has experienced severe blue-green algal blooms each year since 2023, which can damage both environmental and public health. These blooms are mainly driven by nutrient pollution, warming waters and invasive species. Cumulative release of phosphorus and sustained sediment disturbance by dredging probably frees up nutrients in the system that could contribute to thresholds necessary for algal blooms to occur.

The current management by the Lough Neagh Action Plan focuses on reducing nutrient pollution and doesn’t yet consider sand dredging as a contributing factor.

To understand what is happening below the surface, my team worked with researchers at Newcastle University using sonar mapping to examine parts of the lakebed. Our findings revealed major physical changes. In some areas, dredging had carved deep depressions into the sediment, lowering the lakebed by up to 17 metres. These are not small disturbances. They reshape the lake’s structure.

The lakebed is a living habitat. It supports organisms such as the larvae of Lough Neagh flies, which form the base of the food web as prey for fish and other animals. It is also where commercially important fish like pollan and eel spawn. When this habitat is removed or repeatedly disturbed, ecosystem recovery can be slow or stall.

Our most striking finding was how far disturbance from dredging spreads. Satellite images showed plumes of sediment trailing behind dredging vessels, sometimes stretching more than a mile at the surface.

Such plumes are not created only during dredging itself, but also when boats move between sites, stirring up sediment in this unusually shallow lake with their powerful propellers. So-called “turbidity corridors” at times cover half of the lake’s surface. Sediment was also seen running off shoreline unloading yards, extending up to more than a mile offshore.

Dredging does not stay where it happens. Its footprint moves with the boats and spreads across the lake.

When sediment is stirred up, the effects ripple through the ecosystem. Cloudy water makes it harder for fish and birds to feed. More importantly, sediments store nutrients, especially phosphorus that may be released back into the water if disturbed.

Lough Neagh holds large amounts of what is known as legacy phosphorus. This has built up as a result of natural processes as well as decades of farm runoff, human wastewater treatment overflows and leaky septic tanks among other sources. When sediments are disturbed, stored pollution could potentially be released back into the water. Because the lake is shallow, that release can quickly affect the whole system.

The consequences for wildlife are significant. Disturbing the lakebed may damage fish spawning grounds and disrupt invertebrates that support the food web. Increased cloudiness can reduce feeding success for fish and birds. Powerful boat wakes could erode shorelines and disturb protected nesting birds. There is also concern for the eel fishery that recently collapsed.

While many factors are involved, widespread disturbance adds further pressure on an ecosystem already at the point of collapse.

Rethinking regulation

Current rules focus on the licensed dredging area and how much sand is removed. Our research suggests that approach is too narrow.

The wider effects including lakebed disturbance, sediment plumes, boat movement, propeller disturbance and runoff from the shore also need to be considered. If efforts to restore the lake focus only on reducing nutrient runoff from the land, other important drivers of decline may be overlooked.

There are practical ways to reduce the environmental footprint of dredging. Adjusting the force of suction used to collect sediment could reduce disturbance. Limiting overflow from the hopper – the part of the flat-bottomed barge used to collect dredged sand and water after suction – could reduce water containing sediment discharging back into the lake. Slower vessel speeds and fixed shipping lanes could confine disturbance.

In shallow waters, boats moving less forcefully – or protecting the lakebed – could stop sediment being churned up. On land, covering sand piles and using ponds or vegetation can help trap runoff before it flows into the lake.

Lough Neagh reflects a global issue. Demand for sand is increasing rapidly, putting pressure on aquatic environments worldwide. This research is the first attempt to measure how far the consequences of sand dredging extend across the UK and Ireland’s largest lake. The effects go well beyond the point of extraction.

If Lough Neagh is to recover, management will need to reflect the true scale of disturbances, including those unseen beneath the surface.

Neil Reid 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 commercial sand dredging is reshaping the largest lake in the UK – new study – https://theconversation.com/how-commercial-sand-dredging-is-reshaping-the-largest-lake-in-the-uk-new-study-279732

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bamo Nouri, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

Israel and the US have maintained a close alliance for decades. Their recent joint air campaign in Iran has once again underscored the depth of this partnership. Yet while the strength of their relationship is widely acknowledged, the reasons behind it remain contested.

At the centre of this debate lies the question of whether US support for Israel is driven primarily by domestic political forces, particularly lobbying organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), or whether it reflects broader strategic imperatives within US foreign policy.

Aipac’s historical influence is well documented. It emerged in the 1950s from the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs and developed into a powerful lobbying organisation. By the 1970s it had become instrumental in securing substantial US military and economic aid, as well as favourable legislative outcomes, for Israel.

US aid to Israel now includes approximately US$3.3 billion (£2.4 billion) annually in military financing and an additional US$500 million for missile defence. Aipac, which has embedded itself across Democratic and Republican political networks, has played a central role in maintaining this flow of support.

But the claim that Aipac drives US policy, which former US counterterrorism official Joe Kent suggested in March when resigning from the Trump administration in opposition to the Iran war, misreads how power operates in Washington.

As scholars of American power, we argue that the US-Israeli alliance has been driven primarily by Israel’s demonstrated value as a strategic asset for the US, rather than solely by the influence of lobbying. Aipac has become effective because it aligns with this existing strategic consensus, not because it created it.

Strategic US asset

This strategic consensus can be traced to the cold war. Israel’s decisive victory in the 1967 six-day war over a coalition of Arab states supported by and aligned with the Soviet Union revealed its utility as a regional proxy capable of advancing US interests in the Middle East.

From that point onward, US policymakers framed Israel as a pillar of their Middle East strategy – part of a broader effort to contain the influence of rival powers, project US power overseas and stabilise a region that is central to global energy supplies.

This framing became institutionalised in US policy in the late 1960s. Washington sharply increased arms transfers, supplying Israel with advanced aircraft such as F-4 Phantoms under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Intelligence-sharing arrangements were also expanded between the two countries.

The US perception of Israel as a strategic regional asset grew further in 1970. That year, the US requested that Israel prepare to intervene in Jordan on behalf of the government in its conflict with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel responded by moving troops to the border, with the presence of Israeli planes overhead often credited as having deterred invasion by Syrian forces.

Then, during the 1973 Yom Kippur war (again fought between Israel and Soviet-aligned Arab states), the US launched a large-scale airlift of military supplies into Israel. The operation signalled that Israel’s security was now directly tied to American strategy.

From the late 1970s, Israel was incorporated into a wider US-led regional security architecture alongside countries such as Egypt and Jordan. This followed the 1978 Camp David accords and 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which brought Egypt into a US-backed regional order. The US subsequently expanded joint military exercises, positioned military equipment in Israel and deepened defence coordination across these states.

Further evidence underscores the primacy of strategy in the US-Israeli relationship. President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 decision to sell surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia, for example, proceeded despite intense opposition from pro-Israel lobby groups. When core US strategic interests have been at stake, US policy has overridden lobbying pressure.

Formal agreements have reinforced the depth of the US-Israeli alliance. A 2016 memorandum of understanding committed US$38 billion in military aid over a decade. The US is also Israel’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade approaching US$50 billion annually.

Cooperation extends across scientific, technological and industrial sectors, while both states are deeply integrated within international organisations. This dense web of ties cannot be reduced to lobbying influence alone.

Israel has played a significant role in destabilising the Middle East in recent years through its actions in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. It has also effectively undermined the current ceasefire between the US and Iran by continuing to bomb Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

In light of these developments, does the core premise of the US-Israeli alliance – that Israel helps underpin regional stability in line with US interests – still hold? Or are the foundations of US support for Israel beginning to strain under the pressures of a more volatile Middle East?

We argue that, instead of undermining the alliance, Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon expose the underlying structure of the US-Israeli relationship. Israel said Lebanon was not included in the ceasefire, a stance that was reinforced by US officials including President Donald Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance.

They backed Israel’s right to act against Hezbollah, with Trump calling the conflict in Lebanon a “separate skirmish”. This alignment suggests not divergence, but coordination within an asymmetric relationship in which the US provides the overarching strategic framework and Israel executes within it.

Rather than adding strain to the alliance, these developments illustrate its durability. Even where Israeli actions risk escalation or complicate diplomacy, US support remains intact – rooted in a broader convergence of interests centred on maintaining regional dominance.

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. Why the US and Israel’s alliance endures – even when it strains – https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-and-israels-alliance-endures-even-when-it-strains-278517

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Erwei (David) Xiang, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Accounting, Newcastle University

When the UK’s biggest private car park company went into administration last month, some motorists might have been surprised. How could National Car Parks (NCP), a company that charged so much for parking, at so many prime sites across the country, run out of road?

Maybe it was down to a drop in commuters and high street shoppers after COVID? Or perhaps the firm suffered from too many long leases and the rise of new parking apps?

All of these reasons will have featured, but the deeper cause of NCP’s demise lies in the way it was financed. This was not simply a business undone by shifting travel habits – it was a business made dangerously fragile by debt.

Any company can suffer when demand falls. But a company carrying a heavy debt burden suffers differently, because the bill for past borrowing does not shrink when customers disappear. Interest still has to be paid and creditors rarely wait patiently for a market to recover.

NCP now looks like a textbook example of just how exposed firms can become when high borrowing meets rising costs and weaker cash flow.

By the time administrators were called in, NCP’s finances were already deeply impaired. Park24, its Japanese parent company, said that last September the company’s debts exceeded the value of its assets by around £305 million.

It later emerged that NCP had faced years of difficult trading and that parking demand had failed to return to pre-pandemic levels, especially in city centre and commuter locations.

In those circumstances, a business with a stronger balance sheet might have had time to close sites, renegotiate leases or absorb a few years of disappointing demand. But with huge debts, NCP no longer had those options. And once a company reaches the point where liabilities tower over assets, strategic choices become financial emergencies.

The roots of the problem go back further than COVID. NCP was bought and sold several times over the past two decades, passing through private equity firms, and gathering debt along the way, before it was sold in 2017 to Park24 and the Development Bank of Japan. So the debt burden of 2026 was not simply the product of recent trading weaknesses. It was, at least in part, an inheritance from an earlier ownership model.

This is the logic of what’s known as a “leveraged buyout”, where a company is bought largely with borrowed money, and the acquired company’s future cash flow is expected to service the debt.

A car park operator may once have looked well suited to that structure. It had assets, was geographically diverse and was supported by predictable demand. And debt is most manageable in businesses with stable and dependable cash flows. In principle, parking should have fitted the bill.

But the model depends on one crucial assumption – that the underlying business will keep generating sufficiently stable cash flow. If that assumption fails, debt can become a trap. And NCP’s stability turned out to be much more fragile than its financiers appear to have assumed.

From leverage to liability

The post-pandemic shift in commuting did not create NCP’s debt problem then, but it exposed it. Fewer people now travel into city centres five days a week, and online shopping has weakened some of the retail footfall that once helped sustain town-centre parking.

What made this fatal was that NCP’s revenues fell while many of its costs did not. The company had a high concentration of long-term, inflexible leases, meaning it could not simply walk away from loss-making sites or bring costs down in line with lower occupancy. Meanwhile, utilities, maintenance, staffing, business rates and structural upkeep all continued to cost more.

High energy costs, as well as high inflation left the business squeezed from both sides: less money coming in and stubbornly high costs going out.

Research shows that once a heavily indebted company begins to look shaky, debt becomes harder to refinance and more punishing to carry. And it’s not just NCP. Thames Water is another example of a company providing an everyday service which is weakened by huge debt.

At NCP, administrators will try to keep things going while they explore options. But whatever happens to that brand, it will not be the last British business pushed to the edge by debt.

The British Chambers of Commerce has already warned that the current conflict in the Middle East could push inflation up, while businesses in energy-intensive sectors are sufferering new cost pressures. For heavily indebted firms, that is exactly the kind of environment that turns vulnerability into collapse.

NCP’s failure, then, should not be dismissed as a quirky casualty of hybrid work or a changing market. It is also a warning about what happens when a business is so heavily loaded with debt that it loses the flexibility to respond when the world changes.

Erwei (David) Xiang 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. National Car Parks is in administration – some big companies are so dependent on debt that they can’t adjust to change – https://theconversation.com/national-car-parks-is-in-administration-some-big-companies-are-so-dependent-on-debt-that-they-cant-adjust-to-change-280092

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tamara Friedrich, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

The Bafta-winning comedy game show, Taskmaster, has returned to Channel 4 for its 21st series. Part of the show’s long-running appeal is its lighthearted exhibition of human creativity.

Recently, I was part of the Warwick Business School Lead out Loud podcast with Alex Horne, the show’s creative mastermind and star, to talk about Taskmaster’s lessons for leadership. His creativity is an inspiration. The show is ripe with insights on how to be more creative in our daily tasks – even if they are more subdued than the ones the contestants must solve in the Taskmaster house.

Below are five lessons in creativity we can all take from the Taskmaster playbook.

1. Thinking inside the box

One of the biggest myths of creativity is that constraints limit our imagination. But decades of research have shown this is not true – constraints actually spur creativity, often through associational thinking where the constraint triggers other related thoughts or ideas.

In the last series of Taskmaster, one task was to bring “a very soft thing that would be most beneficial for Greg [the Taskmaster]”. The constraint of “soft” led to very different mental associations for each contestant, resulting in a hilarious assortment of solutions – a cushion made of cat hair, a bonnet with a manly design, a bird that tells fortunes, a blanket that can be worn and “the hands and voices of the elderly”.

Constraints have also served as inspiration for Horne when developing the tasks. In the Lead out Loud podcast, he described the COVID constraint of keeping contestants two metres apart. “It was a really fun constraint to work with,” he explained. “It gave us something to play with. The whole show is about constraints.”

2. Reframing the problem

When we face a problem, most of us jump immediately into idea generation. However, there is great power in pausing to fully explore the problem and consider how it can be framed and reframed.

This may involve asking the question differently, exploring alternative perspectives, or considering all of the factors associated with the problem. Even more challenging is rethinking assumptions about the problem itself. The most creative contestants often turn the challenge on its head, breaking assumptions about the task’s rules.

In a series two task where contestants were instructed to place three exercise balls on a yoga mat on top of a hill, four contestants assumed this meant the balls must be moved up the hill and placed on the mat. Richard Osman, however, brought the mat down to the balls instead and won the round. Unlike the others, he paused to reread the instructions and reframed how they could be interpreted, capitalising on the ambiguity.

3. Embracing experimentation and failure

The joy and humour of Taskmaster is primarily in the meandering, hilarious journey the contestants take to their final solution. We have a window into how five very different people think through a problem from their unique perspectives.

It also highlights that there is no one right way to solve most problems, whether they are an absurd task on a game show, developing a new sales strategy, or figuring out how to entertain your toddler.

In embracing uncertainty and improvisation, the show also implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) makes failure okay. The key to this is the psychological safety we see on the show – a key component of innovative teams and an intentional part of the show’s design. Psychological safety means, among other things, that you feel it is safe to take risks and make mistakes, you can ask for help and those around you won’t ridicule or reject you.

When asked how contestants respond to moments of failure, Horne said: “The comedians have to feel safe. Because I’m a comedian and a producer on it as well … they feel a bit more in safe hands that they can take risks and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. So from the beginning we’ve tried to create this place where you can muck about, and we’re not going to show you in a bad light.”

Allowing for experimentation and tolerance of what professor of leadership Amy Edmondson calls “intelligent failure” is essential to innovation.

4. Creativity breeds creativity

After coming up with so many tasks, Horne was asked on the Winging It podcast if he feels his well of ideas is drying up. He responded that he often thinks of new tasks when he’s creating other tasks. “That’s when you’re most fertile. Wells don’t dry up. Wells are built near natural springs.”

When generating ideas, it can often feel like we are “running out” of ideas because the pace of idea generation slows down. This is an artefact of the rapid production of the more obvious solutions at the start. However, as the pace of idea generation slows down, the originality of ideas goes up. When the pace slows, we must shift into strategies that require more effort, but ultimately result in more creative solutions.

Generating ideas in teams can help this because it enables cross-fertilisation, where one team member’s ideas spark ideas in someone else, causing the well to fill up again. Team challenges on the show provide many examples of this.

5. It’s all fun and games

At the end of the day, Taskmaster is a game show. Our lives of crafting AI prompts, inbox management and Teams meetings may seem a far cry from the hijinks in the Taskmaster house. You may therefore think that our real work lives are not a fair comparison for lessons on creativity from Taskmaster. But the research on playfulness and creativity in organisations would say otherwise.

Creating a sense of playfulness in teams and organisations can foster creativity, as can humour. Perhaps the key to facilitating your own team or organisation’s creativity could be hosting your own round of Taskmaster!

Tamara Friedrich works for Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick.

– ref. Taskmaster returns: five lessons in creativity from TV’s most absurd challenges – https://theconversation.com/taskmaster-returns-five-lessons-in-creativity-from-tvs-most-absurd-challenges-280383

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher R. Hill, Professor of History, Faculty of Business and Creative Industries, University of South Wales

“The Ministry of Defence has always maintained that it never rained,” said Ken McGinley, founder of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA). “I’m sorry, you’re liars … I was there!”

McGinley, who was a royal engineer, gave this interview in January 2024, shortly before his death, as part of our Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project.

McGinley was present during the Grapple nuclear weapons test series, conducted by the UK on the central Pacific island of Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) in the late 1950s. At the time, this remote atoll was inhabited by 250 villagers as well as thousands of British servicemen.

For decades, many of those present during this and other above-ground British nuclear weapons tests have argued they were harmed by radioactive fallout. McGinley founded the BNTVA in 1983 to “gain recognition and restitution” for the veterans who took part in British and American nuclear tests and clean-ups between 1952 and 1965.

Rain became a key symbol in their argument as one of the only tangible signs of fallout taking place. The nuclear physicist Sir Joseph Rotblat described these alleged post-blast showers as “rainout”, a phenomenon whereby rain and mushroom clouds interact, leading to the contamination of rain droplets by harmful radionuclides.

In almost all cases, any link to subsequent health issues has been denied by the UK government because of lack of evidence of widespread radioactive contamination. However, a review of the evidence – written in 2014 by anonymous government scientists in response to freedom of information requests – was recently leaked by whistleblowers.

It reveals that post-blast radiation readings increased by a factor of up to seven on the island, compared with the normal background level. In our view, this would be more than enough to satisfy the “reasonable doubt” that tribunals require for veterans to receive a war pension due to illness or injury related to their service, as stated in the Naval, Military and Air Forces (Disablement and Death) Services Pension Order.

The top secret review, first revealed publicly by the Mirror newspaper on March 14 2026, also contains new evidence of radioactive contamination of fish in the island’s waters.

The repeated dismissal of veterans’ testimony in court cases and pension appeals caused stress and trauma for many. The majority died insisting they were not deceitful or forgetful – and that it did indeed rain while they were living on Kiritimati.

‘Factually inaccurate’

Kiritimati was monitored for fallout by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) after each detonation over the island – the largest of which, Grapple Y, was 200 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In 1993, environmental monitoring data was collated into a report by a team at the MoD’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). Known as the Clare report, this informed the UK’s official position on fallout: namely, that none occurred over populated areas and that veterans would need to prove otherwise to secure redress.

However, the 2014 review of fallout data concluded the Clare report was “incomplete and, in some cases, factually inaccurate”.

Despite this review being passed on to the MoD, however, it was kept secret for more than a decade. Following its release, the legal implications could be gamechanging. According to the 2014 review: “The instrument readings could potentially be used to challenge the validity of statements made by MoD and UK government regarding … fallout on Christmas Island.”

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Read more:
‘Our nuclear childhood’: the sisters who witnessed H-bomb tests on their Pacific island and are still coming to terms with the fallout

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In a recent House of Commons debate on the issue, the UK minister for veterans and people, Louise Sandher-Jones, confirmed her commitment “to the nuclear test veterans and their fight for transparency … They have had a very long fight, and I really recognise how difficult it has been for them, and I want them to understand that I am committed to them.”

What Merlin reveals

Behind the scenes, the release of newly declassified archival material in the publicly accessible Merlin database has added to calls for government accountability about the nuclear tests.

Compiled by the treasury solicitor during a class action against the MoD between 2009 and 2012, the database was stored at AWE until the journalist and author Susie Boniface discovered it held information about the medical monitoring of servicemen and Indigenous people. Her work led to its release in 2025.

Holding over 28,000 files, Merlin was commissioned by the MoD in response to the compensation claims made by almost 1,000 veterans from 2009. Its contents include official reports and communications, photographs, maps, safety guidelines and health monitoring information. Video footage includes the Grapple X test in November 1957.

A University of Liverpool team based in The Centre for People’s Justice and the Department of History is working with Boniface and campaign group Labrats International to catalogue and analyse the contents of Merlin – combining it with other sources, including personal testimony. Recently released files indicate nuclear fallout in the island’s ground sediment and rainwater, and heightened radioactivity in its clams.

Evidence has also emerged of radioactive waste being dropped from aeroplanes into the sea off Queensland in 1958 and 1959. Although dumping radioactive waste was surprisingly common during the cold war, this revelation raises questions about how risk and danger was understood and managed during Britain’s nuclear test programme.

The files also show workers without protective clothing around a plutonium pit at Maralinga in South Australia, site of seven British atmospheric nuclear tests in 1956-57.

The Merlin releases have galvanised claims that not so long ago may have been interpreted as conjecture. The recent releases suggest that servicemen and islanders were exposed to radioactive fallout – not just from rain showers, but from the fish they ate and the water they drank.

While a causal link with subsequent health conditions would be hard to prove, we believe it is time for the UK government to get behind a public inquiry into the full impact of Britain’s nuclear weapons testing programme.

Christopher Hill was Principal Investigator of ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’, a two-year project funded by the UK Office for Veterans’ Affairs.

Jonathan Hogg receives funding from Research England’s Policy Support Fund to support research into the Merlin database. He was Co-Investigator on ‘An Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans’, a two-year project funded by the UK Office for Veterans’ Affairs. The final report can be viewed here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/humanities-and-social-sciences/research/projects/nuclear-test-veterans/

– ref. What secret report reveals about British nuclear weapons tests – veterans claimed they were harmed by the fallout – https://theconversation.com/what-secret-report-reveals-about-british-nuclear-weapons-tests-veterans-claimed-they-were-harmed-by-the-fallout-280189

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Harper, Lecturer in International Relations, University of East London

The Trump administration’s decision to carry out a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has raised tensions in the Persian Gulf to new and more perilous levels. The move was announced by the US president, Donald Trump, after negotiations over a ceasefire with Iran broke down on April 11, partly due to Iran wanting to retain control of the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil transits.

The blockade is designed to neutralise Iran’s efforts to close the strait to shipping it deems unfriendly to Tehran and implement a toll system for other vessels transiting the strait.

The US blockade can be seen as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to project strength. But it also throws down a challenge to Beijing. China has been the main purchaser of Iranian oil in recent years and is one of the few nations whose shipping can enter the strait unchallenged.

It appeared very likely that this status would be tested on April 14 when the Rich Starry, a Chinese owned and operated tanker under US sanction for transporting Iranian oil, transited the strait unchallenged by the US warships in the region.

But it has since been reported that the vessel turned back in the Gulf of Oman and headed back to the Strait of Hormuz. The US now claims that six vessels that attempted to transit the strait were turned around.

The Rich Starry’s willingness to avert a potential Sino-American clash, suggests that Beijing is still unwilling to challenge Washington’s red lines, particularly so close to a state visit by the US president next month, a trip postponed from March 31 as a result of the conflict in Iran. China has called the US blockade a “dangerous and irresponsible act”.

But what appears to be a deliberate decision not to challenge the blockade may be interpreted as another instance of Chinese weakness, which will probably embolden Washington to take more active measures against China’s tanker fleets.

However, the US seizure of any Chinese shipping could certainly provoke a more dangerous outcome, with the prospect of increased tensions or even conflict with Beijing. Should the US seize a Chinese vessel, Beijing could see this as an act of war on Washington’s part, if it chooses to interpret such an incident as an American effort to strangle the Chinese economy.

While an armed clash between the US and China in the Persian Gulf is unlikely, it is possible that Beijing may deploy its fleet stationed in Djibouti to the region. China’s base in Djibouti is home to its 48th escort group which has previously performed anti-piracy operations in the region as well as escort duties for Chinese-owned ships in the region. This which raises the question over whether Washington would be willing to fire on Chinese warships to enforce its blockade.

China’s challenge to the US

China’s response to an American blockade may be more indirect in nature. One form this could take is the provision of Chinese weapons systems to Iran.

China’s Beidou satellite navigation system has already played a significant role in guiding Iran’s existing stockpile of missiles against American and Israeli targets. Further Chinese military assistance, especially in the form of missiles and drones, can help Beijing retaliate indirectly through Iran.

The New York Times recently reported intelligence sources alleging that China may have shipped shoulder-launched missiles to Iran – but this was strenuously denied by Beijing.

On the other hand, a potential Chinese retaliation may not even take place in the Middle East. Instead, it is possible that Beijing may target American assets and interests in the Asia Pacific.

This comes at a time where several American allies in the region have become increasingly vulnerable, with some missiles system being deployed to the Middle East from South Korea. Coupled with fuel shortages as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the region is potentially even more exposed to China’s moves should Beijing choose to act.

While Beijing prefers a more stable Middle East and global economy, having been one of the key beneficiaries of globalisation, there are several opportunities for China’s wider goals. One of the biggest is the status of the Renminbi. It has become prominent in the oil trade in the Persian Gulf, with Iran primarily dealing with transactions in the currency. This is in line with the emergence of the petroyuan in the 21 century to challenge the dominance of the petrodollar.

Alongside China’s position as a supplier of aviation fuel in the Asia Pacific, the conflict has entrenched and strengthened China’s role in the global economy.

In addition, the potential shortage of petroleum can open the door for wide-scale adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), with Chinese firms such as BYD being potential beneficiaries of a future EV boom. This echoes the popularity of Japanese cars during the Opec crisis of the 1970s, due to their comparatively high fuel efficiency in contrast to American and European models.

As a result, a prolonged Middle East oil crisis may see firms such as BYD become household names, furthering the influence of “Brand China”.

Alongside these, the crisis may further China’s push to present itself as a more stable partner in contrast to Washington’s more chaotic approach. This has gained traction due to the perceived unpredictability of the Trump administration over the past 15 months.

China already has a comparatively favourable global image when compared to the US. A wider conflict with Iran will probably take this further. As a result, the path of the Rich Starry may chart the course of the Sino-American competition and the world that this competition will shape.

Tom Harper 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. US blockade of Strait of Hormuz ratchets up tensions with China ahead of Trump visit to Beijing – https://theconversation.com/us-blockade-of-strait-of-hormuz-ratchets-up-tensions-with-china-ahead-of-trump-visit-to-beijing-280674

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Talar Moukhtarian, Assistant Professor in Mental Health, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick

It’s 3am. The room is dark, the house is silent, but your brain is suddenly wide awake.

Many people find themselves waking at roughly the same time each night and start to wonder whether something is wrong with their sleep.

Waking during the night is actually a normal part of sleep. Most people wake briefly several times, but usually fall back asleep so quickly they do not remember it the next morning. It becomes more of a problem when those awakenings last longer, or start happening at the same time every night, leaving you less refreshed the next day.

Sleep does not unfold in one long, uninterrupted stretch. Throughout the night, the brain moves through repeating sleep cycles that last around 90 to 110 minutes. Each cycle includes several stages: light sleep, deep sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when most dreaming occurs. Most adults go through four to six of these cycles each night.

Towards the end of each cycle, sleep becomes lighter, making brief awakenings more likely. Deep sleep also occurs mostly in the earlier part of the night and becomes less frequent as morning approaches. That means waking in the early hours is not unusual.

Stress can make these awakenings feel much more noticeable. In the early morning, the body begins preparing to wake up and levels of cortisol, a hormone involved in alertness, start to rise. This increase is part of the body’s normal daily rhythm and helps us feel more awake as morning gets closer.

But if your mind is already crowded with worries about work, relationships or everyday pressures, a brief awakening can quickly turn into a full spell of overthinking. At night there are fewer distractions, so thoughts that might seem manageable during the day can feel louder and harder to escape. Unsurprisingly, stress and rumination are strongly linked to insomnia symptoms, and can make it much harder to fall back asleep after waking.

Daily habits can also shape when and how often people wake during the night. Alcohol, for example, may help people fall asleep faster, but it often fragments sleep later on and increases awakenings in the second half of the night. Caffeine can have a similar effect. Even when consumed in the afternoon, it can linger in the body for hours, making sleep lighter and increasing the likelihood of waking. Caffeine taken up to six hours before bedtime can still interfere with sleep.

Other factors matter too. Irregular sleep schedules, going to bed much earlier than usual to catch up on rest, late-evening light or screen exposure, or a bedroom that is too warm or too cold can all reduce sleep quality and make waking during the night more likely.

For some people, repeated awakenings can become part of a vicious cycle and, if they persist, develop into insomnia. After enough nights spent lying awake and worrying about sleep, the brain can start to associate nighttime with stress and alertness rather than rest. The more someone worries about being awake, the harder it can become to drift off again.

Small habits can strengthen this pattern. Checking the clock during the night, for example, can increase frustration and make the mind more alert. Treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia aim to break this cycle by changing the thoughts and behaviours that keep the brain switched on at night.

Small changes in routine can help the body settle into a steadier rhythm. These are often referred to as good sleep hygiene: habits that support healthy sleep. Keeping a consistent wake-up time, even after a poor night, helps anchor the body clock and stabilise sleep patterns.

Allowing time to unwind before bed, limiting caffeine and alcohol later in the day, and creating a calm sleep environment can also reduce night awakenings. If you lie awake for a long time, it can help to get out of bed briefly and do something relaxing until you feel sleepy again. That helps break the link between bed and wakefulness.

Managing stress during the day can also make a difference, reducing the chance of going to bed already tense and alert. Journaling, yoga, meditation, breathing exercises and mindfulness can all help calm the mind before sleep.

So while waking at 3am can feel unsettling, occasional nighttime awakening is part of how sleep works. Understanding what is happening in the body, and how stress and daily habits can shape sleep, can make those middle-of-the-night moments feel a little less alarming.

Talar Moukhtarian has received funding from the Medical Research Council.

– ref. Waking at 3am every night? Here’s what may be going on – https://theconversation.com/waking-at-3am-every-night-heres-what-may-be-going-on-278264