Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Ridge-Newman, Associate Dean And Associate Professor School of Humanities, Liverpool Hope University

In the wake of the 2024 general election, media headlines, public discourse, and Reform UK’s consistently favourable electoral and polling results have suggested the party poses an “existential threat” to the Conservatives.

The Conservatives have seen off and subsumed major threats in their long history. But Reform UK is a well-oiled machine. Its leader is a political juggernaut who has honed his skills in a new era of populist political communication and looks better connected to voters as a result. The contemporary Conservative party, meanwhile, is a deer caught in headlights.

The decline in the relevance of the Conservative party and the rising relevance of Reform UK as the de facto opposition party was demonstrated by Prime Minister Keir Starmer during his party conference speech when he placed primary importance on battling Farage and did not even mention Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, by name.

It is pertinent to note that the rise of Reform UK, formerly the Brexit party, is not an isolated phenomenon. Since Brexit entered our lexicon, scholars have observed political fragmentation and new divides appearing across the political spectrum.

Several nascent political entities have risen and declined, such as the fleetingly registered Change UK party. The European Research Group, a eurosceptic grouping of Tory MPs limps on, but with dramatically reduced influence and activity since the last election.

New political groupings continue to form on both the left and right of British politics. Despite some recent infighting, former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana are starting a new party, currently known as Your Party.

But what seems comparatively different on the right is Reform’s fairly rapid, real and successive electoral successes. The outcome of Brexit in 2016 and Reform’s rise in the UK reflects similar recent trends across the world. Voters are turning away from conventional and centrist politics towards more disruptive forces. Trumpism in the United States might be the most notable example.

Historically, at times of significant cultural, technological and social change, we have observed seismic shifts in the political landscape. The most comparable example in the UK might even be the rise of the Labour party at the outset of the 20th century, which came at a time when the right of the British political system was undergoing upheaval.

Around that period, what we now know as the Conservative party was a parliamentary coalition undergoing a process of evolution. Various political groupings, including older Whigs and Tories, and newer Liberal Unionists and National Liberals, linked with Conservatives to form what formally became the Conservative and Unionist party.

Students of the Conservative party, such as historian Richard Cockett, argue the party is like a “Darwinian” organism. It has the ability to adapt and survive – and indeed has survived many crises. It survived the birth of Labour, having weathered a major split, almost a century prior to that, under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel over the repeal of the corn laws.

Many experts cite the Conservative party as the world’s most successful democratic political party in history. To describe Reform as an existential threat in this context is therefore all the more striking.

Reform continues to lack concrete plans in several key areas. Its annual conference primarily focused on immigration, without delivering policies on other pressing issues, such as housing and health. But unlike the Tories, Reform enjoys outsider credibility, further enhanced by Farage’s media-savviness. This clean-slate status allows Reform UK to tap into emotional and cultural discontent – a hallmark of populist politics.

Now, the Conservative party, which has historically absorbed or neutralised political threats, may face a challenge it cannot subsume. If Reform UK was to outperform the Tories at the next election, it would amount to a fundamental realignment of the right in British politics. It would raise the spectre of something that goes against conventional academic wisdom: that the Conservative party always adapts to survive.

Adapt or die

Reform UK’s success suggests it is not simply a fringe distraction, but a genuine existential threat to the political dominance and identity of the Conservative party. Its survival ultimately depends on its ability to evolve and adapt in this new political context.

Currently, the Conservative party seems lost in the wilderness. It is far too laboured in its thinking about how to reshape its identity in an era of superfast social, political and technological change.

It is failing to resist the urge to emulate aspects of the Reform UK agenda, and seems to be lurching further to the right towards its rival. In so doing, the Tories are losing their unique selling point.

The modern Conservative party has been at its strongest when it is able to show a combination of party unity and an image of competent leadership (echoing a sense that it is the party of good and prudent governance), all housed within a catchall and centrist offering. Lurching to the right simply plays into the hands of Reform UK – they risk losing more moderate supporters and splitting the harder right vote with Reform UK.

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Anthony Ridge-Newman 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 Conservatives always adapt to survive – or do they? – https://theconversation.com/the-conservatives-always-adapt-to-survive-or-do-they-265255

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Claire Jowitt, Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of East Anglia

Like afternoon tea, red pillar boxes and bracing walks on crisp autumn days, there is something reassuringly British about the Shipping Forecast, broadcast twice a day on Radio 4, and three times at weekends.

Dogger; Rockall; Malin; Irish Sea: with its distinctive poetic rhythm, the bulletin consists of a gale warning summary, a synopsis of general conditions at sea and forecasts for each of the weather areas including wind direction and force, sea state, weather and visibility. All are essential information to ensure safe sailing for ships and fishing vessels.

This year marks a century since the BBC first broadcast on radio a dedicated shipping forecast from its station 5XX at Daventry on a wavelength of 1,600 metres. Now one of the longest-running radio programmes in the world, for many in the UK it has achieved national treasure status, not least due to its soothing theme tune Sailing By, composed by Ronald Binge in 1963 and added to the broadcast in 1973.

The forecast is produced by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, and covers sea conditions around the British Isles for the next 24 hours. The waters around the UK and Ireland are divided into 31 weather areas, each with a quixotic-sounding name which often refers to a local geographic feature. Starting with Viking (Viking Bank), the forecast proceeds on a clockwise route around the map of the British Isles to finish at Southeast Iceland (Iceland).

Each broadcast comprises a maximum of 380 words, depending on whether Trafalgar (Cape Trafalgar) is included. This is the weather station furthest from the United Kingdom and is usually only mentioned on the 00:48 forecast. It takes precisely nine minutes for practised BBC announcers to read the bulletin.

With its rhythmic nature and formulaic repeated phrases and structure, the forecast has even been adapted into a fortnightly BBC podcast, The Sleeping Forecast. Advertised as “a soothing blend of classical and ambient music” interspersed with bulletin excerpts, the podcast recognises the forecast’s calming qualities and hypnotic ability to lull the nation to sleep.

The Shipping Forecast has also entered popular culture, inspiring countless songs, novels, films, TV shows and works of art. One of the most memorable is the sonnet The Shipping Forecast by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney in his 1979 collection Field Work, which captures how beauty and routine intersect. It was memorably read out on national poetry day in 2016 on Radio 4’s Today Programme by King Charles, then Prince of Wales.

There are legions of other famous fans too. In 1988 Stephen Fry, with obvious fondness, parodied the forecast: “Malin, Hebrides, Shetland, Jersey, Fair Isle, Turtle Neck, Tank Top, Courtelle,” he deadpanned.

Former merchant-navy seaman and ex-deputy prime minister John Prescott read the 5.20am broadcast on Red Nose Day 2011, to support Comic Relief. Michael Palin, who viewed the forecast as poetry, picked Alan Bennett to read it out when he was guest editor of the Today Programme on December 29 2013. Bennett, with his distinctive Yorkshire accent took obvious relish in repeating the words “rough” and “very rough” when reading this lyric poem of places to the nation.

Early origins of weather warnings

Despite the Shipping Forecast’s comforting nature and importance as a national cultural icon, it should be remembered that first and foremost it is intended to help save lives at sea.

The first public weather forecast – published in The Times on August 1 1861 – was inspired by the tragedy of the steam clipper Royal Charter, sunk in a storm in 1859 with the loss of more than 400 lives.

The storm-warning service was the brainwave of the meteorologist Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who established 15 land weather stations using the recently invented telegraph to transmit to him daily reports of conditions at set times. According to Historic England, the public body that advises the government on important historic sites, there are more than 37,000 known shipwreck sites and recorded losses in England’s territorial sea. Without FitzRoy’s innovation, it would be much higher and more people would have lost their lives. In 2002, the weather area Finisterre (Cape Finisterre) was renamed FitzRoy in honour of the man who created the forecast.

Today, the Shipping Forecast is still listened to by many mariners around Britain, providing a safety net of good weather information to supplement the more advanced weather detection technologies available via satellite systems.

Yet, in 2025, with navigating the sea safely becoming increasingly challenging due to extreme weather caused by climate change, the 10,000 Ships for the Ocean global coalition initiative was launched at the UN’s ocean summit in June. It aims to raise the number of ships equipped for weather monitoring at sea, providing data that improves weather forecasting and the effectiveness of responses to extreme weather events.

Such initiatives underline the crucial importance of global collaboration across maritime communities to continue to further improve safety at sea for the next 100 years.

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 BBC’s Shipping Forecast still entrances people after 100 years – https://theconversation.com/why-the-bbcs-shipping-forecast-still-entrances-people-after-100-years-265702

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Lees, Reader in French Studies, University of Warwick

French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has resigned after less than a month in the role, making him the fourth to leave the office in the past year and a half.

When he was first elected in 2017, President Emmanuel Macron was supposed to be a figure of calm. After five turbulent years under the presidency of François Hollande, Macron heralded a new dawn. The first centrist president of France’s fifth republic managed to amass huge support through his nascent political party La République en Marche, which included many representatives who were entirely new to politics.

For the first year, this steadiness prevailed. Macron had defeated the extreme-right’s Marine Le Pen in the second-round run-off of the presidential elections that year. Le Pen’s supporters seemed stunned into submission. Opposition to Macron was limited. Now he can’t hold on to a prime minister, can’t pass any legislation and faces calls to resign.

The problems really began for Macron in 2018. First came the gilets jaunes in 2018, the mass protest movement opposing fuel prices and Macron’s economic plans, including changes to retirement rights.

Then there was the pandemic, a challenge unlike anything Macron’s predecessors had faced. Then, in 2022, a resurgent Le Pen made it yet again into the second-round of the election. This time the gap between the two was closer than it had been back in 2017.

In an attempt to freshen up his offering, Macron appointed Gabriel Attal as prime minister in January 2024 – the youngest person to hold the role since the fifth republic began in 1958. This approach failed. Macron’s party lost dismally in the European elections of June 2024.

This led Macron to take the decision that plunged France into the unrelenting political chaos that has been on display for over a year. In a bid to halt the progress of the far right, specifically Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Macron called the now infamous snap elections of July 2024.

Stalemate in the National Assembly has been the norm ever since. None of the three major blocs (the centrists under Macron, the far right under Le Pen and her acolyte Jordan Bardella, and the leftwing alliance comprised of socialists, communists and La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed) have a majority.

Attal resigned and was replaced by the rightwing Michel Barnier, who survived just a few months in the job before losing a confidence vote in the assembly. Barnier gave way to François Bayrou, who survived slightly longer in office before also losing a confidence vote in September 2025.

Finally, the centrist Lecornu took over before resigning less than a month later. He did not even have time to chair his first cabinet meeting, let alone try to corral parliament into an agreed position on any important matters, most of all the economy. Lecornu cited a lack of willingness to compromise among the various parties in the assembly as the main reason for his decision to stand aside.

The calm Macron appeared to embody in 2017 has transformed into volatility. The recent bloquons tous! (block everything) protest movement has shown signs of echoing the earlier gilets jaunes, bringing large parts of the nation to a halt with strikes and transport disruption.

Indeed, France has not seen scenes of such political chaos for some time. The prime ministerial churn is more akin to the lowest moments of the third republic – a regime that ended in defeat to the Nazis – than to anything since Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958.

All this comes at a time of constant reports of corruption, scandal and sleaze. Both former president Nicolas Sarkozy and Le Pen have recently been found guilty of corruption. For Sarkozy, this means becoming the first former president to face a custodial prison sentence. For Le Pen, it means a probable end to any hope of the presidency in 2027 thanks to a ban on her even entering the race.

The future seems to lie in youth. Macron may now well turn to someone like Attal, who could be capable of working with two of the three blocs, but who would need to steer clear of major reforms to the economy: the price for the backing of the far-left.

The other option is to look for a way forward through a legislative election, where the main contenders for a majority would all be youthful. Whether the far-right Bardella, Mathilde Panot (the current leader of La France Insoumise in the National Assembly) or a figure like Attal leading the centre, the main players are likely to be under the age of 40, and free of the images of corruption tainting some of the veterans of the political scene.

Macron will no doubt continue to see his role as a statesman on the world stage and hope that one of his followers can bring the left on board, or else hope the prospective legislative election could bring some change. If not, these conditions means two years is a long time to wait for a change in president. Calls for Macron to go will only intensify if a way forward is not found – and soon.

David Lees 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. France’s latest prime minister has resigned after less than a month – what will Emmanuel Macron do now? – https://theconversation.com/frances-latest-prime-minister-has-resigned-after-less-than-a-month-what-will-emmanuel-macron-do-now-266817

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Mabon, Professor of International Relations, Lancaster University

The morning of October 7 2023 set in process a series of events which have profoundly changed the Middle East.

At the beginning of that month, the region looked very different to today. Saudi Arabia appeared ready to normalise with Israel, having recently set aside longstanding differences with Iran.

With the normalisation of relations between the region’s two preeminent military powers would come the possibility of curbing Iran’s influence. This, in turn, could bring peace to Yemen and Lebanon.

But thanks to the events of that day, this vision is in tatters. As the sun rose, Hamas fighters launched a brutal terror attack in southern Israel, killing 1,195 people and taking a further 251 hostages. The attack opened up a wound at the heart of the Israeli psyche, evoking memories of the Holocaust and of repeated terror attacks across the 2000s.

In the past two years, the destructive reverberations have been felt across the entire Middle East as Israeli forces have sought to assert unilateral and hegemonic dominance. Beyond Gaza, Israel has engaged in military strikes across the region, causing thousands of deaths and widespread destruction and sowing the seeds of division.

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Read more:
Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza is deeply flawed but it may be the best offer Hamas can expect

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In Lebanon, Israeli strikes on Beirut and across the south led to more than 3,100 deaths – including senior Hezbollah leaders such as Hassan Nasrallah. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a military campaign in southern Lebanon in October 2024, pushing Hezbollah fighters north of the Litani river. Though a ceasefire was reached on November 26, Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon continues, with the Israeli government citing Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm.

With Hamas and Hezbollah on the ropes, Netanyahu’s attention turned to Iran. Given Israel’s longstanding view of the Islamic Republic as an imminent threat to Israel’s security, this is hardly surprising.

The so-called shadow war that had taken place between the two states across the previous decade erupted. The outbreak of open conflict between the two states on June 13 2025 – since dubbed the 12-day war – had a devastating impact on the Iranian regime.

Netanyahu had called for the Iranian people to overthrow the Islamic Republic. But while many Iranians are unhappy with the regime, Israel’s strikes appeared to have the opposite affect as people rallied around the flag.

Hostilities culminated in bombing raids launched by the US on Iran’s nuclear installations. While the success of these raids has been open to question, the raids allowed the US president, Donald Trump, to claim a US victory.

He demanded an end to hostilities between Israel and Iran and Iran’s retaliation to the US strikes was confined to a carefully orchestrated attack on a US base in Qatar, which was telegraphed in advance and was more performative than escalatory.

Israel has also conducted regular strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, which had targeted Israeli (and other countries’) shipping in the Red Sea. And since the fall of the Assad regime, the Israeli military has occupied large tracts of southern Syria, seizing the demilitarised buffer zone around the contested Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 treaty between the two countries.

More recently, Israel struck targets in Doha, Qatar, in an effort to assassinate senior Hamas leaders which ultimately failed. The strike prompted a united front from the Gulf monarchies who called for a real discussion about ending the war. With US officials furious at the Israeli strike on a major non-Nato ally, diplomats sensed an opportunity for a breakthrough.

Peace plan

Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to enact a ceasefire has the potential to be an impressive feat of diplomacy, bringing together a wide range of disparate actors with a real chance of ending the fighting – despite its multiple flaws. But as a feat of peace building, it rings hollow.

The plan does not indicate how a Palestinian state will emerge. It does suggest that the Palestinian Authority will, in the right circumstances, play a role in the governance of Gaza – but this is something that Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected.

Instead, the Gaza International Transition Authority will resemble a mandate of the sort imposed by the League of Nations over a century ago. And even if Trump’s plan brings about a ceasefire and the release of the Israeli hostages, the contours of regional order have been dramatically affected.

Without a Palestinian state there can be no Saudi normalisation with Israel. This is a point that Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, has made abundantly clear.

Popular anger across the region will remain. The failure to secure a viable Palestinian state after the Abraham accords provoked anger and resentment among some. That feeling is now growing with the death and destruction meted out to people in Gaza.

If a ceasefire doesn’t emerge, the destruction of Gaza will continue at a pace which will continue to have a catastrophic impact across the Middle East. Israel will remain diplomatically isolated while its citizens will continue to live in fear of Houthi and Hezbollah rockets or attacks from what remains of Hamas, as well as having to deal with the memory of October 7 for years to come.

All the while, Palestinians continue to die on a daily basis and there are still Israeli hostages (and in some cases bodies) waiting to be brought home. Gaza is devastated and rebuilding the enclave will take decades. And the so-called international rules-based order may never recover.

Simon Mabon receives funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Henry Luce Foundation.

– ref. The two years of fighting since October 7 have transformed the Middle East – https://theconversation.com/the-two-years-of-fighting-since-october-7-have-transformed-the-middle-east-266804

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tracy Hussell, Director of the Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation, University of Manchester

Three scientists have been awarded the 2025 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering how the body stops its own immune system from turning against itself.

Shimon Sakaguchi from Osaka University in Japan, Mary E. Brunkow from the Institute for System Biology and Fred Ramsdell from Sonoma Biotherapeutics, both in the USA, identified specialised “security guard” cells that keep our immune system in check. These discoveries have been important for understanding how to treat and prevent autoimmune conditions. The trio will share a prize sum of 11 million Swedish Kronor (£870,000).

An effective immune system is critical. It sculpts tissues as they grow and clears away old cells and debris. It also eliminates dangerous viruses, bacteria and fungi, keeping us healthy.

But the immune system faces a delicate challenge: it must attack thousands of different invading microbes each day, many of which have evolved to look remarkably similar to our own cells – yet it must never mistake our own tissue for the enemy.

So how does the immune system know what cells it should attack and which ones it shouldn’t?

This question has been studied by immunologists for decades. But it was the groundbreaking work by this year’s Nobel laureates that led to the discovery of the specialised immune cells – called regulatory T cells – which prevent immune cells from attacking our own body and keep the immune system running as it should.

For decades, immunologists weren’t certain why some immune cells functioned as they should, and why others went rogue and attacked the body’s own tissues. When this happens, it can result in autoimmune conditions – such as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

For a long time, scientists believed the thymus – a small gland in the chest – was solely responsible for immune tolerance. Immune cells (specifically a type of cell called a T lymphocyte) that recognised the body’s own proteins too strongly were initially thought to be eliminated in the thymus in early life. Those immune cells that only showed mild reactivity were then released into the bloodstream to patrol the body.

But work conducted in the 1980s and 1990s by Sakaguchi showed that there was a specialised class of immune T cells that played a critical role in suppressing immune responses and preventing the immune system from attacking the body’s tissues.

In Sakaguchi’s first experiment, he surgically removed the thymus organ from newborn mice, then injected T cells into them from genetically similar mice. He hypothesised that the mice would have a weaker immune system and develop fewer T cells.

Instead, he discovered that there appeared to be T cells that protected the mice from developing autoimmune diseases.

Over the next decade, Sakaguchi set out to uncover whether there were different types of T cells that played different roles in immune response. In 1995, Sakaguchi published the paper that detailed a new class of T cell, called a “regulatory T cell”. It showed that T cells carrying a specific type of protein on their surface actually eliminated harmful T cells.

There was initial scepticism among scientists about the existence of regulatory T cells. But work from Brunkow and Ramsdell published in the 1990s and early 2000s showed how regulatory T cells work.

Brunkow and Ramsdell’s research showed that regulatory T cells prevent immune cells from attacking the body by secreting immune dampening proteins or by directly delivering anti-inflammatory signals.

They also discovered a specific protein that identified these regulatory T cells (called FoxP3). This meant scientists could work out when a cell was regulatory and also isolate them for study.

These discoveries showed how important regulatory T cells (also called T-regs for short) are in regulating other inflammatory immune cells in the body.

The work of this year’s Nobel laureates has also massively opened up the field of immunology, going far beyond merely understanding the process of immune tolerance.

Their work has revealed that immunity and inflammation is actively regulated. It has provided a raft of new ideas to control inflammatory disease, whether caused by infection, allergens, environmental pollutants or autoimmunity.

It has even provided new ideas to prevent rejection of transplants and has opened up new ways of improving immune responses to cancer treatments and vaccines.

Tracy Hussell is affiliated with the British Society of Immunology as President

– ref. Nobel prize awarded for discovery of immune system’s ‘security guards’ – https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-awarded-for-discovery-of-immune-systems-security-guards-266833

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gulnaz Anjum, Assistant Professor of Climate Psychology, Centre for Social Issues Research, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick

When the daytime air feels like an oven and night brings no relief, people in Karachi, Pakistan, say the heat “goes straight to the head”. They mean more than dizziness or sweat.

It’s the creeping panic of a body that cannot cool down: restless nights, frayed tempers, a household on edge. Here, a heatwave is not simply a matter of high temperatures. It’s a public health emergency that seeps into every corner of life: physical health, sleep, mood and the invisible care work that keeps families and neighbours alive.

Our research in Pakistan and Kenya (Karachi, Lahore and Nairobi), shows how extreme heat affects local communities.

For families living on informal and unstable incomes and in fragile housing, such heat is not just uncomfortable; it can be deadly.

Heatwaves occur when temperatures push daily highs past 40 °C inland and above 35 °C on the coast. In 2015, a single heatwave killed more than 1,200 people in Karachi during just one week in June. But the quieter psychological toll which is rarely counted in official statistics builds with every wave of extreme heat.

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India and Pakistan’s heatwave is a sign of worse to come – podcast

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In our research, residents describe lying awake in stagnant air, waking drenched in sweat and starting the next day already exhausted. Sleeplessness makes emotions harder to manage, fuelling conflict in homes stretched thin. Many, especially women, speak of a sense of suffocation and dread; fearing their bodies won’t cope or that a loved one will collapse. For people with asthma or anxiety the symptoms are magnified, and mothers often feel an acute worry for children and elderly relatives.

This mental strain is no overreaction, it reflects harsh realities. Outdoor workers lose wages when extreme heat makes it unsafe to stay on the job. At the same time, food and water prices climb as supply chains falter and demand spikes, just as family incomes shrink. Hospitals and clinics can be difficult to reach because high temperatures often lead to power cuts, overloaded transport systems and an increase in heat-related illness, all of which slows emergency care.

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Read more:
Heatwaves don’t just give you sunburn – they can harm your mental health too

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Women often shoulder the heaviest burden because in many households, especially in low- and middle-income countries, domestic and caregiving duties still fall largely to them. Social norms often expect women, not men, to stay home with children, care for older relatives and organise water or food supplies. When a heatwave strikes, those tasks become more physically demanding and more time-consuming: fanning overheated children through sleepless nights, checking constantly on elderly neighbours, and answering calls for help.

In low- and middle-income countries, women also face disproportionate health risks from climate change, particularly during extreme heat, precisely because these gendered roles and socio-cultural expectations expose them to greater stress. The unpaid labour that holds households together – caring, fetching water, preparing food – is carried mainly by women. As one Karachi resident explained, on the hottest days she and her neighbours watch over pregnant women:

Women here may be poor, but they support each other, sharing water, looking after each other’s children and cooking for each other. It’s our way of surviving…

Such neighbourly care surfaces again and again. Families pool money to buy safe drinking water when supplies run short. In some informal settlements, one of the most immediate ways people cope with rising heat is by increasing their reliance on water, often through hand pumps that serve as vital lifelines during prolonged heatwaves. Neighbours check on older people during power cuts. Women take turns cooking when kitchens become unbearable for elderly or pregnant relatives. These are not feel-good tales of “bouncing back,” but acts of collective survival: immediate, exhausting and often invisible. They reveal how vulnerability is shaped by poor housing, patchy healthcare and weak governance – factors that leave people exposed when crises strike.

Extreme heat also compounds heat related health risks and financial costs. In crowded settlements and displacement camps, food spoils quickly, appetites wane and clean water becomes harder to find and more expensive to acquire. Pregnant and breastfeeding women struggle to maintain nutrition. International research shows that heat stress can deplete micronutrients, hinder growth and increase the risk of early labour and premature childbirths. When these pressures collide with poverty and displacement, the dangers of malnutrition and long-term harm can only grow.

Residents’ requests are strikingly simple. They want electricity that stays on through the night, clean water that they can afford and clinics that remain open when symptoms worsen. These are not luxuries. They are the difference between anxiety and peace of mind, between starting the day rested or already exhausted.

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Read more:
Climate change and mental health: How extreme heat can affect mental illnesses

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Even small interventions help: a working fan, a shaded community space, advice on hydration and sleep. Women-led groups already organise water-sharing, neighbour check-ins and shaded play areas. Strengthening these networks, and centring polices on women’s health could save lives and protect mental health during future heatwaves.

Counting only hospital admissions or heat-stroke cases misses what people say matters most: a child kept hydrated, a safe place to sleep, the absence of panic on the hottest days and nights of the year. These everyday markers of dignity and survival are where real adaptation begins. As one resident put it: “We cannot stop the sun. But we can stop each other from being alone in the heat.”

Gulnaz Anjum is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Limerick.

Mudassar Aziz 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 extreme temperatures strain minds and bodies: a Karachi case study – https://theconversation.com/how-extreme-temperatures-strain-minds-and-bodies-a-karachi-case-study-262983

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel O’Brien, Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Earlier this year I created a video essay about Arnold Schwarzenegger. While making it, I realised that Commando, Schwarzeneggers’ most excessive one-man-army film, was about to turn 40 – so I decided to rewatch it.

I found that the film’s mature age contrasts with its juvenile absurdity, which I absorbed all too easily when I first saw it, far too young, as a pre-teen. It was one of the few VHS tapes I had access to (thanks to an older sibling) and I watched it more than I should probably admit.

By the time The Matrix arrived in 1999, it took genuine effort for me to separate it from Schwarzenegger’s Commando character, John Matrix, the musclebound soldier saving his kidnapped daughter from terrorists, which was deeply etched in my brain. If that setup sounds familiar, you might also be thinking of Liam Neeson’s character in Taken (2008) – a film for which Commando is an obvious blueprint.

Beyond inspiring a wave of rogue hero revenge movies, Commando became a key cultural touchstone for kids on the cusp of adolescence. The film is pretty much the celluloid equivalent of playing with G.I. Joe action figures, only to put them down when you discover computer games.

In The Terminator (1984), Schwarzenegger played a cyborg from the future sent to the present. Meanwhile, Conan the Barbarian (1982), Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Red Sonja (1985) all situated him in the distant, fantastical past of sword-and-sorcery epics. Commando, by contrast, was the first film to present him as a native inhabitant of a recognisably modern setting.

In the film he navigates suburban America, shopping malls and airports – albeit all with his signature ability to casually lift and rip a phone booth out of a wall with someone in it, and jump from a moving plane during its ascent.

Toy soldiers

Commando deliberately introduces Schwarzenegger through his body before anything else. The opening sequence is a montage of close-ups – bulging biceps, ropey veins – before revealing Matrix moving through the woods. He has an entire tree trunk balanced on one shoulder and a chainsaw hanging from the other hand.

Body and machinery appear before character – a choice that feels like a deliberate echo of The Terminator. Schwarzenegger’s expression is almost like an automaton at first, and his movements mechanical, until his daughter Jenny appears and the hardness dissolves instantly into playful melodrama.

That the film’s opening foregrounds Schwarzenegger’s body (returned to again in later scenes) is significant for several reasons. One is that it recalls Thomas Edison’s 1894 “actuality films” of German strongman Eugen Sandow, where the display of muscle wasn’t just part of the film – it was the entire attraction.

The treatment of Schwarzenegger’s body as spectacle is also a reminder of the exaggerated physiques of 1980s toy action figures. Commando arrived just as Mattel’s Masters of the Universe line (1982–present) reached peak popularity, with He-Man, Skeletor and most of the range sharing the same hyper-muscular form.

There’s a persistent misconception that the Masters of the Universe toy line began as a Conan the Barbarian tie-in, hastily reworked once the film was deemed too adult for children. In reality, events unfolded differently. While the Conan film’s rights holders did approach Mattel about a toy line, Masters of the Universe was reportedly developed independently, drawing only loose inspiration from Conan Properties Inc – which was already in the public domain – rather than the Conan movie.

Even so, the overlap led to legal trouble and in 1982 the film’s rights holders sued Mattel for infringement, a case dismissed in 1989. Regardless of the legal grey area, the cultural link between Schwarzenegger’s physique and the action figure aesthetic was firmly cemented.

Another strong link between Commando and 1980s play can also be seen in the rise of arcade video gaming and later, home consoles. One striking example is Capcom’s Commando, released just months before the film. Like the movie, the game drops the player into enemy territory as a lone soldier armed with an assault rifle and limitless ammunition, mowing down wave after wave of faceless, expendable enemies.

In the film, close-ups of Matrix’s body and face, combined with over-the-shoulder camera angles, draw the viewer into this perspective, which at times seems to anticipate the immersive framing of first-person shooters, later popularised by id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993) and many more.

Commando never takes itself seriously and is all the stronger for it. Instead, the film embraces its reflexive absurdity like a badge of honour, serving as a template for the blend of action and comedy that would come to define much of Schwarzenegger’s later career.

Commando’s humour also owes much to Rae Dawn Chong’s performance as Cindy, a reluctant partner to Matrix. Through her incredulous reactions to the escalating mayhem, she grounds Matrix’s over the top rampage and frames the chaos as part of the joke, inviting the audience to revel in the film’s outrageous excess, or add some of her own with a mishap with a rocket launcher.

Add to that the comically menacing turns from Bill Duke and David Patrick Kelly, the endless one-liners, the A-Team-style montage sequences and James Horner’s steel-drum score, and there’s more than enough reason to revisit this cult classic.

So let off some steam, rewatch Commando, and drive back into the world of John Matrix – an action-figure-avatar, who could take down an entire army with punches, and entire audiences with punchlines.

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Daniel O’Brien 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. Commando at 40: Schwarzenegger’s bonanza of bullets, bad guys and biceps rewards a rewatch – https://theconversation.com/commando-at-40-schwarzeneggers-bonanza-of-bullets-bad-guys-and-biceps-rewards-a-rewatch-266734

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nicholas Barnes, Professor, Translational Pharmacology, University of Birmingham

Once synonymous with hippies and hallucinatory experiences, psychedelic drugs are now being explored for their medical potential. The stigma of that era resulted in research being suppressed by drug laws, yet with mental health treatments hitting limits, scientists have returned to this controversial corner of medicine.

Substances like psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) and ayahuasca are now being taken seriously by scientists and doctors, not for the visions they induce, but for the healing potential they possess.

Initially, this focused on treating mental health conditions like depression, where currently prescribed drugs only help a minority of patients. But these investigations have now expanded to include diseases driven by inflammation, which psychedelic drugs may help reduce by calming down the immune system.

In both human cells grown in laboratory dishes and animal studies, psychedelic drugs like DMT, LSD, and a compound called (R)-DOI can block the release of inflammatory molecules called cytokines. These protein molecules fuel conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and even depression, as well as increasing brain damage following traumatic brain injury.

Advantage over steroids

But these drugs have a considerable advantage over typical anti-inflammatory medications like steroid drugs because psychedelics appear to work without suppressing healthy immune function, which is a major problem with steroids.

Significantly, these laboratory findings are beginning to be confirmed in studies in humans. Evidence is growing that psychedelics could hold the key to managing inflammation, one of the body’s central drivers of many chronic diseases, including depression, arthritis and heart conditions.

Take psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. In a study involving 60 healthy participants, just one dose was enough to significantly lower levels of two key inflammatory molecules – TNF-alpha and IL-6 – over the following week.

However, not all studies have shown the same clear results. Some only had a few participants and others were complicated by the fact that some participants had previous drug experience, which could affect the results.

One big challenge with studying psychedelics in medical research is that it’s very hard to hide who got the real drug and who got a placebo. When someone has a strong psychedelic experience, it’s obvious they didn’t just take a sugar pill.

That makes it challenging to interpret the results, especially for aspects like mood, which can be significantly influenced by expectations. Even changes in the body, such as inflammation, might be affected by this placebo effect.

Meanwhile, the powerful Amazonian brew ayahuasca, which contains the psychedelic drug DMT, showed promising results in both healthy people and patients with hard-to-treat depression. In one study, those given ayahuasca had reduced levels of an inflammatory marker called CRP.

The bigger the drop in CRP, the greater their mood improvements. This suggests that reducing inflammation may play a role in improving mental health and adds to growing evidence that conditions like depression and schizophrenia are connected to inflammation in the body.

Scientists think psychedelics mainly work by acting on something called the 5-HT2A receptor, a part of brain cells that usually responds to serotonin, often nicknamed the “happy hormone”.

This receptor sets off a chain of chemical reactions inside cells. But here’s the surprising part: the anti-inflammatory effects of psychedelics might not rely on the same processes that cause the mind-altering experiences, such as certain calcium signals and other well-studied pathways. Indeed, researchers believe different, less-understood mechanisms may be involved – though they haven’t figured out exactly what those are yet.

In one animal study of asthma, a chronic inflammatory condition, two drugs with similar psychedelic effects, (R)-DOI and (R)-DOTFM, had vastly different anti-inflammatory results. The first drug completely reversed inflammation, while the other did nothing. This further suggests that anti-inflammatory effects may be separate from psychedelic effects, potentially opening the door to developing safer medication.

The next generation of anti-inflammatory treatments may come from what I call Pipi drugs – psychedelic-informed but psychedelic-inactive compounds. These are medications designed to mimic the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics without causing hallucinations.

Several such drugs have now been identified, such as DLX-001 and DLX-159, which are being developed by Delix Therapeutics, an American pharmaceuticals company. These experimental drugs show responses indicating antidepressant effects without causing a “trip”. This could transform how we treat a host of conditions tied to inflammation, without the regulatory complications or patient reluctance often associated with psychedelics.

Although research is still in the early stages, evidence is building that psychedelics – or new drugs developed from them – could become an entirely new type of anti-inflammatory treatment. As studies begin to include people with long-term inflammatory illnesses and use more rigorous and innovative placebo-controlled designs, we may find that the mind-bending world of psychedelics holds unexpected tools for fighting disease.

The potential to separate the healing properties from the hallucinogenic effects could revolutionise treatment for countless patients suffering from conditions where inflammation plays a central role.

Nicholas Barnes owns shares and is a Director of Celentyx Ltd; a pharmecuetical R&D company that performs research aimed at identifying new and improved ways to treat diseses involving the immune system.

– ref. From trips to treatments: how psychedelics could revolutionise anti-inflammatory medicine – https://theconversation.com/from-trips-to-treatments-how-psychedelics-could-revolutionise-anti-inflammatory-medicine-264610

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Kenny, Research Fellow (Public Engagement with Climate Change), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

To keep global warming below 1.5°C, greenhouse gas emissions had to peak no later than 2025. That was a key finding of the IPCC’s most recent major report on the topic, published a few years ago. Yet when we surveyed UK MPs and members of the public in four countries, fewer than 15% could identify this deadline correctly.

This matters. If politicians and voters underestimate how urgently we have to fight climate change, they are less likely to back the tough policies needed. Instead, they risk assuming we have more time, all while climate change targets slip further out of reach.

Our study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, found that across Britain, Canada, Chile and Germany, about one-third of respondents thought emissions only had to peak by 2040 or later. In the UK, we also surveyed MPs. We found Labour politicians were more likely than Conservatives to answer correctly, but overall awareness was low in both groups.

Among the public, younger people, those worried about climate change, and those less prone to believing conspiracy theories were the most likely to know the right answer. But overall, the pattern was clear: most people – and most MPs – don’t grasp the urgency of the situation.

Why awareness matters

Knowing the scientific facts does not automatically spur action. But political priorities are shaped by what MPs or their constituents consider as urgent (MPs sometimes cite a lack of urgency from constituents as an excuse for not taking climate actions even when they are concerned about it).

If neither MPs nor their voters realise how pressing the problem is, climate change risks being overlooked in favour of other issues. That MPs were largely not aware that much more immediate action was required may help explain why, by mid-2024, the UK was already behind the pace required to meet its own emissions reduction targets.

Partisan divides reinforce the problem. In our survey, 2019 Labour voters were more likely to know the correct 2025 deadline than those who voted Conservative. Political differences in knowledge were greater than the gap between MPs and the public, suggesting that party identity or political ideology, not just parliamentary expertise, is a factor in level of awareness.

Many of those Conservative MPs were replaced by new Labour MPs in the 2024 election, so perhaps a repeat survey today would show greater awareness of climate change among parliamentarians. But even Labour MPs are still not very likely to appreciate the urgency.

The communication challenge

The IPCC and other big institutions produce authoritative reports, but they are not always written in a manner accessible to non-specialists. Policymakers are inundated with these reports and are expected to absorb huge amounts of information, digest it, and act on it. Crucial findings can get lost in the detail. If the urgency of climate action is not communicated clearly and memorably, it is less likely to be a factor in forming policy.

In the UK, scientists have long made “global greenhouse gases need to peak by 2025 for 1.5°C” a centrepiece of public and political communications. For example, it is there in the slogan of the Tyndall Centre, the major climate research hub where we work, that this is a Critical Decade for Climate Action.

But our findings suggest this message is not cutting through, with either politicians or the public. If deadlines are misunderstood, policies will inevitably not go far enough.

Make timelines impossible to ignore

The science is clear: emissions really did need to peak this year for a chance of staying within 1.5°C. A number of studies suggest this target is now effectively unreachable given the lack of substantial progress in recent years, but the urgency remains.

To close the gap between science and politics, communications must be sharper. Reports need to highlight timelines and consequences in ways that are impossible to ignore. Politicians and the public need to understand not just the scale of the climate crisis, but how immediate it is.

John Kenny receives funding from the European Research Council (via the DeepDCarb Advanced Grant 882601). He is an affiliate member of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST).

Lucas Geese receives funding from the European Research Council (via the DeepDCarb Advanced Grant 882601). He is an affiliate member of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST).

– ref. We surveyed British MPs – most don’t know how urgent climate action is – https://theconversation.com/we-surveyed-british-mps-most-dont-know-how-urgent-climate-action-is-266703

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield

Keir Starmer’s legacy in British politics is already assured. No one in modern British history had managed to come to power with a massive majority and then become the least popular prime minister on record in just over a year.

As the Institute for Government’s report The Precarious State of the State underlined at the time of the last general election, whoever claimed the keys to No 10 was going to inherit a complex set of tricky challenges – creaking public services, fragile public finances, a longstanding productivity problem. The list went on.

The Labour government’s response was to dampen public expectations, blame the previous government, emphasise the existence of a financial black hole and generally sink into a funk of doom and gloom. This miserablism was never going to be a winning strategy.

Looking back, the government’s honeymoon-period focus on “fixing the foundations” encapsulated what has, over time, come to be known as Starmerism. Policies emphasised long-term technocratic fixes, reflecting a pragmatic worldview (digital identity cards, one-in-one out pilot immigration projects with France, artificial intelligence as the answer to everything, etc). But these fail to resonate with the emotionally charged short-term demands of large sections of the British public.

Miserablism, coupled with the air of incompetence wrought by various policy U-turns and self-inflicted injuries , has been a highly effective strategy for one party leader: Nigel Farage. Recent polling places Reform on the brink of a majority and suggests disaster for the Labour party.

This really is Starmer’s last chance. And how did he respond in his annual party conference speech? By trying to promote positivity in an age of despair, talking of “renewal” and attacking the pessimism of populist politics – “when was the last time you heard Nigel Farage say anything positive about Britain’s future?”

“Britain stands at a fork in the road,” said Starmer. “We can choose decency or division. Renewal or decline.” Reform was condemned for promoting a polarising form of grievance politics; as little more than “a competition of victims”.

But having built an expectation that he was about to present his long-awaited positive and principled vision for Brtain, the high rhetoric about “our age of insecurity” dropped to a more familiar focus on rather mechanical matters: “we do need a more muscular state”, “growing our economy from the grassroots”, “asset bubbles”.

The mass ranks of Labour ministers, neatly corralled on the front rows, all looked slightly confused.

And the big positive vision? Industrial policy: “government and business bringing the future closer” – a highpoint strapline that sent dull thuds echoing around the conference hall. The pause for applause lasting what felt like an eternity as the audience digested the full force of their leader’s visionary focus.

This is not intended to be a flippant point.

Economic growth is central to the United Kingdom’s focus. An effective industrial strategy can undoubtedly play a role in delivering growth. It’s also important to acknowledge that the role of the prime minister has arguably grown to become an impossible office. There is also a need to avoid the boosterism and bullshit that defined the performative repertoire of certain former prime ministers.

But there is a politics of positivity that Keir Starmer possibly needs to understand, and which explains why Nigel Farage’s Reform party is hoovering up support. Humans are hardwired to focus on failure.

This negativity bias (or “negativity effect”) has been demonstrated by a range of disciplines in relation to individual and group behaviour. It ensures that negative events, threats and risks tend to have a far greater effect on attitudes than positive events, achievements and opportunities. So when it comes to generating interest, controlling the agenda or shifting emotions, bad is stronger than good.

This helps explain the success of populism’s generally negative and crisis-laden discourse. The repeated recourse to narratives of crisis, failure and collapse. Promoting fear and loathing and engaging in grievance politics sparks a defensive reaction amongst sections of society who already feel overlooked or left behind.

The paradox is that the Labour government can claim several successes – from securing contracts to save shipyards and steelworks through to increasing free childcare and cutting NHS waiting lists. But shifting public opinion and working against the intensity of the negativity bias demands far more than Starmer has so far proved able to provide.

It demands a clear, simple and positive vision of where the country is going and why. Even just a three-word tagline that sets out unifying principles that bind each separate project into a unified project would be more effective – finances, fairness and families. But that’s just not Starmer’s style. And maybe that’s the problem. It’s not easy promoting positivity in an age of despair.

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

Matthew Flinders does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Starmer overlooks the negativity bias that makes Farage’s tactics so potent – https://theconversation.com/starmer-overlooks-the-negativity-bias-that-makes-farages-tactics-so-potent-266493