Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Antony Black, Lecturer, Life Sciences, University of Westminster

The US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, believes that aluminium in vaccines can cause health issues, such as neurological disorders, allergies and autoimmune diseases. This contradicts scientific evidence from many studies that have confirmed the safety of vaccines and aluminium “adjuvants” – substances that boost vaccines’ effectiveness.

In November 2025, RFK Jr “personally ordered” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to alter its webpage on autism and vaccines, with several sections now casting doubt on vaccine safety. For example, where it previously stated that “studies have shown there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism spectrum disorder”, it now reads “‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”.

To write this on a public-facing website represents an about-turn for the CDC, whose advice is often sought by people looking for clarity and guidance. It also feeds into the anti-vaccine narrative that is opposed by most scientists.

Pressurising the CDC represents only one of RFK Jr’s strategies to undermine the public’s trust in vaccines. This is extremely concerning, given the influence that he holds in his current position, and the effect this will have on vaccine policy, demand, manufacturing and, ultimately, the spread of infectious diseases.

Adjuvants are a key addition to vaccines and help to increase the body’s response to vaccination, enhancing the level of protection that the recipient gains. Without adjuvants, many vaccines simply wouldn’t work or would provide only short-lasting protection.

Aluminium salts, such as aluminium sulphate and aluminium hydroxide, have been used as adjuvants for almost a century. They are a key component in several vaccines, including those that protect against hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus and human papillomavirus. They have enhanced hundreds of millions of vaccine doses worldwide, which saves millions of lives annually.

---

Read more:
Adjuvants: the unsung heroes of vaccines

---

We are all exposed to aluminium daily in food, water, soil and, for babies, in breast milk. For example, some processed cheese contains up to 15mg per slice. Aluminium ingested in this manner enters the bloodstream and is filtered out via the kidneys. Aluminium salts in vaccines (between 0.25 and 1.2mg of aluminium) also enter the bloodstream and are removed from the body in the same manner.

Studies have shown that the amounts of aluminium that enter the body after vaccination are extremely small, pose no risk of toxicity, and the amount of aluminium in the body is not linked to how many vaccines you’ve had.

A recent study from Denmark examined aluminium exposure in the first two years of life in over 1 million children. This study confirmed that there is no link between exposure and any of 50 diseases that were looked at, including autism.

But what about the other claims – such as the purported link to autoimmune disease?

Autoimmunity is an umbrella term encompassing a broad spectrum of diseases where the body’s immune system attacks itself. Some people have claimed that vaccines can induce autoimmunity. However, studies in vaccine recipients have shown convincing evidence that this is not the case.

Similarly, it is thought highly unlikely that vaccines cause asthma, allergies or other serious harms. Vaccine safety is thoroughly evaluated before any vaccine is approved, and safety monitoring continues for all vaccines after they become available.

Still, it is apparent that diagnoses of autism, asthma and allergies are on the rise. If vaccines are not the reason, then what is?

Too clean?

One idea that has been proposed is the “hygiene hypothesis”. It suggests that society has become too clean. As such, lack of exposure to many germs during childhood may deprive the immune system of essential “training” and therefore it reacts excessively to otherwise harmless particles, such as pollen, dust and nuts.

Other factors probably also play a role, including improved detection and diagnosis, environmental and prenatal influences, and, in the case of asthma, increased air pollution.

Increasing vaccine hesitancy and reduced vaccination rates lead to more vulnerable people and more infectious diseases, illnesses and deaths. It is important to question medical interventions, but this questioning should be informed, rational and open.

Vaccines remain one of the most cost-effective, safe and important public health interventions – and we undermine public trust in vaccines at our peril.

Antony Black 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. Aluminium in vaccines: separating RFK Jr’s claims from scientific evidence – https://theconversation.com/aluminium-in-vaccines-separating-rfk-jrs-claims-from-scientific-evidence-270601

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Roman Birke, Assistant Professor in Modern European History, Dublin City University

Ukraine is facing two scenarios, and both look bleak. For any peace agreement to be accepted by Russia, Ukraine will almost certainly have to give up some of its territory. This would confirm that, in the 21st century, European borders can be redrawn by military force once more. If no deal is reached, the war will drag on.

Whichever outcome emerges, it appears that no position rooted in the defence of core international legal principles can prevail. This position would be the denial of territorial gains achieved through warfare and the prosecution of crimes committed during the conflict. International relations appear to have reverted to raw state power.

The peace negotiations have revealed that parts of the US government are willing to hand Moscow major concessions, including impunity for war crimes. Europe, including neutral countries like Ireland and Austria, now faces a growing obligation to stop what could be the biggest setback for international law since the cold war.

To understand the current state of international law, it is useful to look at the longer historical arc of how warfare has been regulated. Hugo Grotius, a Dutch lawyer born in 1583, became one of the most influential European thinkers on the laws of war.

He argued that only “just” wars – where one side resorts to violence to defend itself or enforce property rights – should be legal.

But after years of work on a list of just and unjust causes for war, Grotius came away disillusioned. He concluded that any state would always claim its wars were just and that such determinations might increase violence overall.

From the outside, other states couldn’t easily judge the real reasons behind a war. And if they chose a side, they would feel obliged to back the state they believed was in the right. Grotius warned that this would only drag more countries into conflict.

Grotius ultimately came to believe that societies had little choice but to accept conflict and treat its results as justified. As Yale University law professors Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro show in their 2018 book, The Internationalists, Grotius’s position remained dominant for centuries.

The late-19th and early-20th centuries did bring attempts to regulate warfare. This included the creation of organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross that provided medical aid to soldiers. But the fundamental idea that war was legitimate persisted.

Later initiatives seemed to overturn Grotius’s logic. These included the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 in which 15 ratifying states promised not to use war to resolve disputes, the UN Charter of 1945 and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002.

Despite its obvious later failure, the Kellogg-Briand pact declared that war should be renounced as an “instrument of national policy”. And in 2018, the ICC criminalised the “planning, preparation, initiation or execution” of aggressive wars. The hope was that this definition would deter future invasions, including actions like Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

The return of Grotius

Does the current state of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine signal a return of Grotius’s view that military gains, once consolidated, will ultimately be recognised? And might this view even be the wiser position as it acknowledges Russia’s military strength instead of prolonging – and possibly widening – the war in Ukraine?

For a time, such conclusions seemed unnecessary. As Hathaway argued one year into the war, there was no doubt that Russia had blatantly violated international law. But she emphasised that law was not powerless.

The imposition of sanctions, widespread military support for Ukraine and ICC arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials showed that international law can fight back. While conflict could not be prevented, coordinated international action could inflict heavy costs on states like Russia for waging aggressive wars.

However, this argument is now hard to uphold. The Trump administration’s original 28-point peace plan, which was unveiled in November, included not only the acceptance of Russian territorial gains but also the lifting of sanctions and the granting of amnesty for perpetrators of war crimes.

In such a form, it would constitute a Grotian outcome: less powerful states can be attacked with impunity and, without risking wider war, there is little Europe and its partners can do about it. Such a deal would reward perpetrators without inflicting any costs and would be a dangerous signal in a volatile world.

Whatever the outcome of the peace negotiations, Ukraine will need continued European support to defend the remaining parts of its territory. And if a peace deal is signed, Europe must build enough deterrence to ensure that Russia will not attempt another major push to extend its borders.

In the face of the growing detachment of the US, it will also be up to Europe to inflict costs on Russia over its war of aggression when a peace deal is reached. This may include using frozen Russian assets to support the rebuilding of Ukraine and insisting on legal accountability.

Whether a deal is reached or not, these scenarios will require a major overhaul of European security and defence policy – something Europe repeatedly aspired to do after 1945 but failed to implement. As part of this, EU countries like Ireland and Austria that maintain military neutrality need to articulate a clear position regarding what they are willing to contribute.

While there can be space for neutral states within a wider European security framework, the starting point should be unity across European countries about a rejection of the idea that Russia’s actions should go unpunished and that international legal principles can simply be set aside.

With waning US support, Ukraine is pinning its hopes on Europe. In his recent speech to the Irish parliament, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky emphasised legal accountability and called on Ireland to support “all efforts to make the tribunal for Russia’s aggression a reality”.

Europe should use its weight to keep this point on the agenda. It is in the interest of all European countries to stop the return to the world of Grotius.

Roman Birke 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. Ukraine peace talks reveal a world slipping back into an acceptance of war – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-peace-talks-reveal-a-world-slipping-back-into-an-acceptance-of-war-269999

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

A few days after Donald Trump boycotted a G20 summit in Johannesburg, he announced South Africa would not be invited to the next G20 meeting, taking place at his resort in Miami in March 2026.

Trump said it was a “total disgrace” that South Africa hosted the November event, citing allegations of a “white genocide” against Afrikaner farmers. This is vigorously denied by the South African government which says such claims are “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence”.

Trump’s fixation on South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority has become a central plank of US refugee policy, with their applications now given priority under a new refugee system.

This preoccupation by some Americans with white Afrikaners has a long history dating back to the publication of a large sociological study focusing on poor white Afrikaners in the 1930s.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Carolyn Holmes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to trace the history of the links between white nationalists in the US and South Africa. She says:

South Africa has always been a shadow case for the US. It has been for a century … It’s a way of talking about US politics without ever saying civil rights, without ever saying United States.

Listen to the interview with Carolyn Holmes on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany, Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from PBS Newshour, The Hindustan Times, CNN, CBS News, ABC News and Forbes Breaking News.

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

Carolyn Holmes has received funding in the past from the Institute for International Education. The Conversation Africa receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

– ref. The American fixation on white Afrikaners in South Africa stretches back nearly a century – https://theconversation.com/the-american-fixation-on-white-afrikaners-in-south-africa-stretches-back-nearly-a-century-270145

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Abi Lafbery, PhD Candidate, Sociology, Lancaster University

Centuries after the upper class flocked to the coast for therapeutic sea bathing, outdoor swimming is having a renaissance. Swimmers enter cold water for the many physical and mental health benefits it offers.

Despite the dangers – hypothermia, cardiac-related death and drowning – for many women, outdoor swimming feels like a safe space. My PhD research, which explored outdoor swimming in north-west England, found that some women experience their swimming as a form of liberation, from what they see as a male-centric culture, the male gaze and social convention.

Despite recent gains in women’s sport, men are still participating in higher numbers, especially in outdoor activities. However, approximately two-thirds of outdoor swimmers are women.

In this environment, stripping off at the water’s edge can feel like stripping back notions of how female swimmers feel they “ought to” look or behave.

This is particularly relevant in a context where more than half of women feel that the UK has become more dangerous in the past five years, and reports of violence against women are increasing.

While men are loved and valued members, founders of and advocates for outdoor swimming communities across the UK, female swimmers comment on enjoying a female-majority atmosphere. Compared to perceived male-dominated environments such as the city, where women may feel that they need to take precautions to ensure their safety, or change how and where they exercise during darker winter months, one woman described outdoor swimming as, “a sense of freedom that I don’t think I would necessarily have elsewhere”.

Outdoor spaces are widely perceived to be a male domain. The outdoors is where tropes of masculinity, including stoicism and the conquering of nature, are performed.

Through the practice of outdoor swimming, female swimmers are rewriting outdated ideas of how women might be, do and what they look like in the outdoors.

As late as the Victorian era, many outdoor sports were imagined to threaten a woman’s femininity and fertility. Recent research has shown that mainstream media often portrays women as passive or requiring male assistance during outdoor activities.

Outdoor swimming is a sport in which female physiology provides a significant edge, and women can feel athletic and empowered, no matter their body type.

Many of the swimmers in my research are between their 30s and 60s, and several are experiencing the menopause or ageing bodies. In each other’s company and in the water, patriarchal and capitalist ideals of a “good body” (slim, able-bodied and cisgender), are felt to wash away.

Female swimmers laugh heartily about their “bioprene”, a beloved euphemism for the body fat that allows them to outlast their husbands in cold water. As one swimmer in my study said:

When you’re swimming outdoors, there’s no glamour … it’s a levelling thing and I think in a world where we’re just bombarded with what we should be doing and what we should look like, it’s the way that people can just be themselves.

The outdoor swimming movement is known for its self-proclaimed non-conformist and subversive roots. For some female swimmers, their personal practice is a way to be unconventional. One swimmer commented:

I’ve got this concern about convention and what I ought to be doing, what people expect me to do, but I’ve got more concerned with what I need to do to find pleasure and peace.

For this swimmer, letting go of social norms is a way to find peace within herself.

Finding community

A sense of peace also comes in the form of the friendships that are forged in the water. Previous research has indicated that the social and communal elements of outdoor swimming are an important factor in the sense of wellbeing associated with the practice.

My research indicates that the femininity of some swimming circles can be a harbour for emotional intimacy.

One swimmer described how she and her fellow swimmers have had beautiful exchanges while immersed in the waves, including singing together:

That lovely little moment, which, had it been a male-dominated environment, we perhaps wouldn’t have felt comfortable to be like that. Lots of women around you, you just feel freer… it was spontaneous, it was beautiful.“

The rivers, lakes and seas of the UK offer energising and emboldening spaces where many women feel safe to be fully and unapologetically themselves. As outdoor swimming grows in popularity, and grassroots organisations such as Mental Health Swims have closed due to a lack of funding, nurturing female communities in the outdoors is increasingly important, such that more women may find safety, joy and more of themselves in the outdoors.

Abi Lafbery received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership, ES/P000665/1.

– ref. Outdoor swimming is becoming a sanctuary for female swimmers in the UK – https://theconversation.com/outdoor-swimming-is-becoming-a-sanctuary-for-female-swimmers-in-the-uk-268009

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Renzo Lanfranco, Principal Researcher, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet

Most of us go through the day without thinking much about our bodies – until something goes wrong. Yet beneath that apparent simplicity lies a remarkable achievement: the brain must constantly knit together sights, touches and signals from muscles and joints into a coherent sense of “this body is mine”.

Psychologists and neuroscientists call this body ownership. It is a key part of self-consciousness: the feeling of being a self located in a particular body, separate from the world around you. It’s partly what makes us different to AI.

For decades, theories have proposed that a lot of this bodily processing happens outside awareness. It’s a kind of unconscious process that quietly guides our movements while consciousness focuses on other things. Now our new study challenges this idea – giving interesting insights into theories of consciousness.

Most experiments on consciousness have used flashes of light or sounds, asking when and how these external stimuli reach awareness. Surprisingly, very little work has directly tested how conscious awareness relates to the bodily self.

Rubber hand experiments

To investigate this, we used a modern version of the famous rubber hand illusion. In this illusion, a participant’s real hand is hidden from view while a lifelike rubber hand is placed in front of them. If both hands are stroked in synchrony, most people begin to feel that the rubber hand is, strangely, part of their own body.

We built a robotic set-up that allowed us to control this illusion with millisecond precision. In our main experiment, 32 participants saw two rubber hands side by side, while a robot tapped their real, hidden hand.

On every trial, one rubber hand was tapped in perfect synchrony with the real hand and the other was tapped with a slight delay – from 18 to 150 milliseconds. After a short sequence of taps, people had to choose which rubber hand felt more like their own. Then they rated how clear that feeling was.

This gave us two things to compare. One was objective performance – how accurately people’s feeling of hand ownership could tell which hand matched their real hand’s timing. The second was subjective awareness – how clearly they reported feeling that sense of ownership.

If a lot of body ownership processing happens unconsciously, we might expect people to be more likely to pick the correct rubber hand, even when they report only a vague or unclear feeling of ownership.

That is not what we found. As we increased the lack of synchrony between the real and fake hands, people became better at picking the “correct” hand. Crucially, their awareness ratings improved in lockstep.

Both objective performance and reported clarity started to rise at around 30 milliseconds of mismatch. Below that, people were essentially guessing; above that, they both chose more accurately and reported clearer feelings of ownership.

In other words, as soon as the brain started to reliably tell the difference between “my hand” and “not my hand”, people’s conscious experience reflected that difference. We did not see the common pattern reported in visual studies, where unconscious processing can occur before stimuli reach awareness.

Body ownership vs timing

To test whether this was really about body ownership – rather than simply noticing timing – we ran two control experiments. When we rotated the rubber hands into an anatomically impossible position, the illusion disappeared and people mostly reported no clear feeling of ownership, regardless of timing.

And when we replaced the hands with wooden blocks and asked people to judge simultaneity instead of ownership, their awareness no longer tracked their performance as tightly. This suggests that strong conscious access is specific to body ownership, not just to any kind of multisensory integration.

In further experiments, we asked whether the same close relationship holds when body ownership builds up gradually. In one study, we varied how many taps people received before making their choice. More taps meant more sensory evidence. As expected, their ability to discriminate ownership improved with more touches. But again, their awareness ratings improved proportionally.

Taken together, our findings point to a simple but powerful conclusion: for body ownership, consciousness seems to have continuous, privileged access to the relevant information.

This contrasts with many studies of vision and hearing, where stimuli can be processed and influence behaviour without ever entering awareness. It suggests that the bodily self may occupy a special place in our conscious lives.

One reason may be that body ownership is intrinsically self-related: it anchors a first-person perspective in space and underpins almost everything else we experience. Another is that it depends on complex integration across many senses, which may require the kind of widespread brain activation associated with conscious experience.

Implications for mental health

Understanding how body ownership and awareness are linked is not just a philosophical exercise. Distortions of bodily self-perception are common in conditions such as schizophrenia, eating disorders, borderline personality disorder and autism spectrum disorders, where people may feel alienated from their bodies or misperceive their size, shape or boundaries. Our work offers new tools to study how finely tuned the system is.

The findings also resonate with rapidly developing technologies in virtual reality and prosthetics. Many applications aim to “embody” a user in a digital or artificial body. Knowing that body ownership is tightly tied to awareness suggests that successful embodiment will depend on keeping multisensory signals aligned in a way that sustains a clear, conscious sense of “this is me”.

Finally, our results speak to big-picture theories of consciousness. If information about our own body is almost always admitted into awareness, this supports the idea that maintaining a stable, embodied self may be one of the core functions of conscious experience. This perspective ultimately highlights a key gap between humans and current artificial systems, challenging the idea that AI – at least in its current forms – could resemble human consciousness.

Renzo Lanfranco receives funding from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and the Strategic Research Area Neuroscience (StratNeuro).

– ref. Why our physical bodies may be a core part of conscious experience – new research – https://theconversation.com/why-our-physical-bodies-may-be-a-core-part-of-conscious-experience-new-research-270836

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University

The UK government makes a lot of money from cars. It taxes car ownership, it taxes the fuel, and it is about to charge drivers of electric vehicles by the distance they travel.

But Britons’ reliance on their 34 million cars also comes at great expense to the economy. Heavy traffic and congestion costs £7.5 billion a year in wasted time. An estimated £17 billion is needed to fix the worn out road network.

In the last 30 years, as the UK population has grown by 19%, the number of cars has exploded by 56%. Outside of London, 81% of British households own at least one car.

Fitting all of these vehicles into a fairly small country means that driving has clear priority over other forms of transport. In Germany, 90% of people living in large cities have access to a tramway or underground train system. In France, it’s 80%.

In the UK, the figure is less than 20%, a similar level to the US.

But the US has vast amounts of space, where brand new roads are regularly built to ease congestion. And so the UK has to deal with a population density comparable to the Netherlands (at least for England) and the urban transport choices of Texas.

This lack of decent public transport is expensive to sustain for all sorts of reasons – like the councils forking out £2.3 billion a year transporting 470,000 children to school, mostly in taxis. Or the cost of subsidising 800,000 motability vehicles, which accounted for one in every five new cars sold in 2024.

While the government should absolutely support the travel needs of people with disabilities and help children get to school, in a strange case of state-provided individualism, the UK has become a country where only cars can deliver these vital public services.

Designated drivers

Yet urban design is ultimately a choice. While the UK has a system which allows for 560 cars per 1,000 people, other places have taken a different route.

In Singapore, there are 146 cars per 1,000 people. This came about after the government implemented a quota system to release a limited number of (expensive) car-ownership licenses to limit congestion and finance public transport.

A ten-year “certificate of entitlement” to own a car in Singapore now costs more than US$100,000 (£76,000) on top of an additional congestion tax.

The result? Singapore’s public transport is cheap, fast, reliable and efficient.

People without cars are fine, because the number of overall cars is so small that buses and taxis don’t get stuck in traffic. People with cars subsidise the buses and trains, while enjoying smooth traffic.

The Netherlands used a different strategy. In the 1970s, Dutch streets were dominated by cars and had become dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Protests led to a reorganisation of cities to become far less car friendly.

My research with a fellow economist demonstrated that if you decrease the space given to cars, they go slower, public transit goes faster, and walking and cycling become safer.

Then, as more people turn to public transport, the higher uptake makes it a faster and more reliable form of transit. It gets to a point where people who would never have taken public transport end up using it and getting to their destination much more quickly than when the car was dominant.

So for the UK to be more like Singapore, the government needs to make motorists pay much more for their car use. To be more like the Netherlands, it must take away their space.

The UK, and especially England, which invented the railway and used to be full of electric tramways, has the population density to make a dramatic switch away from cars actually work. In fact, it’s hard to think of a country better suited to public transport, or where it is more needed. It just hasn’t been built.

Or at least, it has not been built outside of London, the only place in the UK where most households don’t own a car.

So London is rich, well connected and people don’t need cars. Elsewhere, people park on pavements in derelict high streets and drive to supermarkets and places of work.

With stretched public finances, doing nothing about this state of affairs is a risky option. The UK has been described by the Local Government Association as a “country in a jam”, where productivity is held back by car traffic, with no hope for improvement. Lost time on roads is set to increase by 27% in the coming decades.

Moving to a situation where cars are not considered the fastest and most convenient mode of transportation will take ambition and imagination. But the alternative is a very expensive dependency, which clogs up the UK economy.

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

– ref. How the UK’s dependency on cars slows down the economy – https://theconversation.com/how-the-uks-dependency-on-cars-slows-down-the-economy-270393

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sven Batke, Associate Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange – Reader in Plant Science, Edge Hill University

If you walked into a supermarket during a supply hiccup, storm, fuel protest, or even the early days of the COVID pandemic, you will remember the sight of empty shelves. For most people in the UK, these moments are surprising, even unsettling, precisely because they are rare. We are a generation largely spared the rationing, shortages and hunger our grandparents and great-grandparents once endured.

But that rarity is exactly why we must not become complacent. Food security (the reliable availability, access and affordability of food) should be recognised as a major national concern. That means placing it firmly on the UK’s national risk register.

The national risk register is the UK government’s openly available list of the most serious risks that could affect the country in the short to medium term. These risks range from flooding and heatwaves to threats such as cyberattacks and energy shortages.

Being listed on the register does not mean the event is likely to happen tomorrow (but it could). It means the government has assessed it as significant enough, based on impact and probability, to require planning and mitigation measures.

Think of the national risk register as the country’s official “what could really go wrong?” list. If a threat is on the register, policymakers, emergency planners and critical industries take it seriously and plan accordingly. If it is not, the risk can drift into the background (even when it should not).

For all its importance, food security occupies a limited and somewhat indirect presence in the risk register. It only appears within broader categories such as supply-chain disruption, fuel shortages and animal disease. It’s not mentioned as a clearly defined risk in its own right.

Placing food security on the national risk register as its own defined category would send a clear signal that safeguarding stable, affordable food is a national priority – on par with energy, health and security. My team’s recent white paper for the government highlights this urgency.

Our modern food system is more complex, interconnected and vulnerable than many people realise. The UK imports around half of its food.

Some categories, such as fruit and vegetables, depend on imports for as much as 80–95% of supply. We rely on long, intricate supply chains involving overseas farming conditions, global shipping routes, international labour markets and constantly changing energy prices. When any of these are disrupted, our food system feels the shock.

In 2023, extremely bad weather in Spain and Morocco reduced crop yields, leaving UK supermarkets rationing tomatoes and peppers. The war in Ukraine has caused spikes in grain and sunflower oil prices. And the COVID pandemic and subsequent labour shortages have exposed how reliant farming and food distribution are on migrant workers.

An uncomfortable truth lies behind each of these disruptions: we are more dependent on global systems than the public think. Those systems are under pressure from climate change, geopolitical instability and resource competition.

Food systems also operate with tight margins. Fresh produce is harvested, shipped and sold quickly. Livestock feed supply needs to be constant. Fertiliser production depends heavily on natural gas for providing both the hydrogen feedstock and the energy required to make ammonia, the key ingredient in most nitrogen fertilisers. All of these dependencies create points of vulnerability. When several of those break at once, shortages can cascade.

---

Read more:
How unsustainable global supply chains exacerbate food insecurity

---

For many households, even small disturbances lead to real consequences: higher prices, reduced choice and increased stress about meeting weekly food bills. Families on tight budgets feel these effects most sharply.

While we are nowhere near the wartime rationing experienced by earlier generations, food banks across the UK are already serving record numbers, and food-price inflation has recently reached levels not seen in decades. Food insecurity is not a hypothetical risk for millions, it is a reality.

Lessons from the past

Historically, Britain has faced food insecurity before. During the second world war, German U-boats targeted supply ships, leading to rationing that lasted until 1954. Earlier still, crop failures and poor harvests in the 19th century caused widespread hardship. Today we benefit from refrigeration, global trade, advanced agriculture and data-driven logistics, but those advantages can create an illusion of invulnerability that our supply chains are robust.

Food security, even in the UK, is more fragile than it might seem. Our shelves look full until suddenly they do not. A combination of climate-driven harvest failures, rising energy prices and trade disruptions could create national shortages or unaffordable prices much more quickly than many people may expect.

Including food security on the national risk register would prompt government departments to plan coordinated responses. It would drive investment in resilient agriculture, storage and domestic production while encouraging diversification of food imports to avoid overreliance on just a few regions.

Better risk planning would also support households through better safety nets and targeted interventions such as emergency rations and direct support to vulnerable households. Raising public awareness that food security is a shared national responsibility does not suggest panic – it means preparation.

---

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

---

Sven Batke is affiliated with the Greenhouse Innovation Consortium.

– ref. The UK’s food supply is more fragile than you might think – here’s why it should be a national priority – https://theconversation.com/the-uks-food-supply-is-more-fragile-than-you-might-think-heres-why-it-should-be-a-national-priority-270709

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Manal Mohammed, Senior Lecturer, Medical Microbiology, University of Westminster

You might think good sleep happens in your brain, but restorative sleep actually begins much lower in the body: in the gut.

The community of trillions of microbes living in your digestive tract, known as the gut microbiome, plays a powerful role in regulating sleep quality, mood and overall wellbeing. When the gut microbiome is balanced and healthy, sleep tends to follow. When it is disrupted, insomnia, restless nights and poor sleep cycles often appear.

Gut and brain communicate constantly through the gut-brain axis. This communication network involves nerves, hormones and immune signals.

The best known part of this system is the vagus nerve, which acts like a two-way communication line carrying information between gut and brain. Researchers are still studying how important the vagus nerve is for sleep, but evidence suggests that stronger vagal activity supports calmer nervous system states, steadier heart rhythms and smoother transitions into rest.

Because of this intimate connection, changes in the gut influence how the brain regulates stress, mood and sleep.

So, how does the gut actually communicate these signals to the brain?

Gut microbes do more than digest food. They produce neurotransmitters and metabolites that influence sleep-related hormones. Metabolites are small chemical by-products created when microbes break down food or interact with each other. Many of these compounds can influence inflammation, hormone production and the body’s internal clock. When the gut is in balance, these substances send steady, calming signals that support regular sleep. When the microbiome becomes imbalanced, a condition known as dysbiosis, this messaging system becomes unreliable.

The gut also produces several key sleep-related chemicals. Serotonin, for example, regulates mood and helps set the sleep-wake cycle. Most of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut, and healthy bacteria help keep its production stable. Melatonin, which makes you feel sleepy at night, is made not only in the pineal gland but also throughout the digestive tract. The gut helps convert serotonin into melatonin, so its condition directly shapes how efficiently this happens.

The gut also supports the production of Gaba (gamma-aminobutyric acid), a calming neurotransmitter made by certain beneficial microbes. Gaba quiets the nervous system and signals that the body is safe enough to relax. Together, these chemicals form part of the body’s circadian rhythm, the internal 24-hour cycle that regulates sleep, appetite, hormones and temperature. When harmful bacteria dominate, that rhythm becomes less stable, which can contribute to insomnia, anxiety at bedtime and fragmented sleep.

Another major route linking gut and sleep is inflammation. A healthy gut maintains a balanced immune response. It does this by protecting the gut lining, hosting microbes that regulate immune activity and producing compounds that calm inflammatory reactions. If dysbiosis develops or a poor diet irritates the gut lining, gaps can form between the cells of the intestinal wall. This allows inflammatory molecules to escape into the bloodstream, creating chronic, low-grade inflammation.

Inflammation is known to interfere with sleep regulation. It disrupts the brain’s ability to coordinate smooth transitions between the stages of sleep because inflammatory chemicals influence the same brain regions that control alertness and rest. People with inflammatory gut conditions often experience this in very practical ways.

Irritable bowel syndrome, food sensitivities or increased intestinal permeability, often called leaky gut, all involve irritation or loosening of the gut lining. This allows immune-triggering substances to enter the bloodstream more easily, which increases inflammation and interferes with sleep. Inflammation also raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which makes the body feel primed for action rather than rest.

Stress, sleep and gut health continually reinforce each other. Stress alters the gut microbiome by reducing beneficial microbes and increasing inflammatory compounds. A disrupted gut then sends distress signals to the brain, which heightens anxiety and disrupts sleep. Poor sleep raises cortisol further, which worsens gut imbalance. This creates a cycle that can be difficult to break unless the gut is supported.

Strengthening the gut can make sleep noticeably better, and the changes do not need to be complicated. Eating prebiotic and probiotic foods, particularly fermented foods, supports beneficial microbes because fermentation creates live cultures that help repopulate the gut. Reducing sugar and ultra-processed foods lowers inflammation and prevents dysbiosis because these foods tend to feed bacteria that promote irritation or produce inflammatory by-products.

Keeping consistent meal times helps the gut maintain a steady daily rhythm because the digestive system has its own internal clock. Managing stress makes a difference. Staying well hydrated helps the gut microbiome because fluid supports digestion, nutrient transport and the mucus layer that protects the gut lining. Together, these changes create a more stable gut environment that supports deeper and more restorative sleep.

Good sleep does not begin the moment you climb into bed. It begins long before that, shaped by the health of the gut and the messages it sends to the brain throughout the day. When the gut is supported and balanced, the body is better able to settle, recover and shift into the rhythms that allow sleep to improve naturally.

Manal Mohammed 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. Good sleep starts in the gut – https://theconversation.com/good-sleep-starts-in-the-gut-270487

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emma Humphries, Research Fellow, School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast

“Pink goes good with green.” This is a lesson we learned from Glinda (Ariana Grande) in Wicked part one. But do you remember the line that comes after that?
“Goes well with green.”

A small, easily missed comment from the green-skinned outsider Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), but one that reveals something important about language and common usage. Hierarchies of “correct” and “incorrect” language are not just found in grammar books and classrooms, but in popular culture too.

From “holding space” to “sex cardigans”, Wicked continues to dominate popular culture, but one thing that has been overlooked is Elphaba’s insistence on correct language.

In the first film, we see Elphaba ostracised and eventually positioned as public enemy number one by the Oz propaganda machine. From the film’s very opening, a flashforward to citizens celebrating Elphaba’s death, her unpopularity is made clear in the song No One Mourns The Wicked.

One way in which the filmmakers signal Elphaba’s unlikeability is through her often awkward, borderline rude social encounters, including when she first meets her frenemy, Glinda. It’s safe to say that the two characters don’t hit it off and Elphaba’s correction seems to upset Glinda.

Glinda: I could care less what others think.

Elphaba: Couldn’t.

Glinda: What?

Elphaba: You couldn’t care less what other people think. Though, I … I doubt that.

In the land of Oz, where people “pronuncify” and “rejocify”, are “disgusticified” and “moodified”, Elphaba’s comments demonstrate the idea that there is only one correct way to use language and that incorrect language should be corrected.

From stage to cinema

Elphaba’s corrections are not in the original stage musical. They were added to the film. The adaptation of a stage show for film offers an opportunity to modernise and change parts of the story that have been controversial or become outdated.

One excellent example of this in Wicked is its improvement of the stage show’s depiction of disability. The addition of language policing, however, is more disappointing. Because when we correct someone’s language, it’s about much more than the words themselves.

Correcting language is not neutral. When we place value on using language correctly, those who fall short often find themselves judged and discriminated against.

The policing of correct language can be seen as a gatekeeping tool, deciding who belongs and who is excluded. This has inevitable consequences for diversity. The way we speak, write and sign can reflect many aspects of our identities: where and how we grew up, our gender, age and race.

Rules and rebellion

With the run time of the films almost doubling that of the stage show, there is much more time devoted to character development in the films. Elphaba’s language pedantry has been added to demonstrate how she can rub people up the wrong way. However, it also suggests an adherence to authority and to socially constructed rules that stands in contrast to her character more broadly.

Elphaba is an outsider who starts the film wanting to be “degreenified”, but by the end of Wicked part one and as a main storyline in Wicked: For Good, she is willing to sacrifice her safety and reputation to do what is morally right, rather than what is socially acceptable.

Adherence to the strict rules of correct language suggests the opposite: a tendency to want to be accepted and to uphold the societal status quo. Elphaba resists social norms in every other respect, yet the film makes her a standard grammar enforcer.

Given that this trait is absent from part two, rather than undermining her personality as a resister, perhaps this further signals Elphaba’s journey from wishing to fit in to fully embracing her outsider status. Indeed, Elphaba’s insistence on correctness speaks to a broader challenge facing anyone positioned as an outsider: having to work that much harder to be accepted.

Glinda’s (famous) need to be popular and her interests in social climbing align with traits of a language enforcer, yet her behaviour tells a different story. She corrects language only once and it concerns her original name, Galinda. When Dr Dillamond, a professor at Shiz University – who also happens to be a goat – struggles to pronounce the “gah” in Galinda, Glinda corrects his pronunciation and berates him.

This moment, present in both the stage musical and the film, does not reflect a desire to uphold the prescriptive rules of the language, but rather a personal motivation. Glinda’s name is central to her self-image and public persona, and protecting that matters to her.

Beyond Oz

In an era when equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives are being rolled back, and languages other than English face renewed marginalisation, Wicked offers a case study in how linguistic hierarchies operate under the radar of popular culture. But there are plenty other examples. Think about Ross in Friends, Ted in How I Met Your Mother and Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory – all notorious language correctors.

Elphaba’s corrections are more than just a shorthand to signal an abrasive character. They reflect the linguistic hierarchies and gatekeeping that exist beyond Oz. Using language “correctly” is a marker of belonging and shows adherence to societal norms.

Across the two films, Elphaba moves from wanting to conform and erase a stigmatised part of her identity, her skin colour, towards rebellion against convention. It’s clear she questions blind adherence to political power, but perhaps this extends further to questioning the rules we construct around language.

---

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

---

Emma Humphries receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust and is currently employed by Queen’s University Belfast.

– ref. Wicked: For Good – what lies beneath correcting the way people speak? – https://theconversation.com/wicked-for-good-what-lies-beneath-correcting-the-way-people-speak-270639

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Strawson, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of East London

The interesting thing about Benjamin Netanyahu’s call on Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to pardon him for charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, is that he has not been found guilty on any of them.

The trial is made up of three separate but related cases and began in May 2020. They’ve been paused regularly, especially since the country began its military campaign in Gaza, and are thought likely to continue for years.

Netanyahu’s 111-page pardon application does not admit guilt. Instead it’s a sustained attack on Israel’s legal system. In particular it alleges that the cases against him have involved illegal interrogations and unlawful manipulation in the collection of evidence. He argues that the charges against him undermine national unity and impair his ability to do his job as the country’s leader.

In short this is not Netanyahu asking for a pardon so much as an attempt by the prime minister to portray himself as a great man wronged by the elite.

Significantly it comes just a few months before the next election will have be called in Israel. As Herzog has said the application will could “unsettle” the Israeli public.

The latest developments in the long-running saga of the Israeli prime minister’s trial began in October. The US president, Donald Trump, in his speech to the Knesset to celebrate the apparent success of his peace plan for Gaza, called for the pardon.

Having recently humiliated Netanyahu at a meeting in the White House by making him apologise to Qatar for his airstrike on Hamas officials in Doha, Trump – ever the deal maker – thought he could sweeten things for his staunch ally by making such a public appeal. The US president has since followed this up with a formal letter to the Israeli president.

Trump seems to be under the impression that Israel’s president has the same widely discretionary powers that he exercises. He has just pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been sentenced to 45 years during the Biden years for drug trafficking and has a well established track record of pardoning his allies.

But Israel has a complex system that may take weeks to work through. First the pardon must be submitted to the Ministry of Justice to consider before it goes to the president. The president then has to ask his own legal advisor for her view.

The reaction to Netanyahu’s pardon application has predictably divided Israelis along political lines.

Opposition party leaders are overwhelmingly opposed to the grant of a pardon, especially as Netanyahu has not accepted guilt. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has said that no pardon can be given unless Netanyahu admits guilt. Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats, also says that only the guilty can apply for pardon.

Former prime minister, Naftali Bennett – a frontrunner to succeed Netanyahu should the opposition coalition win the election – has a more nuanced view. He argues that a pardon should be given but on condition that Netanyahu retires from office.

Netanyahu’s government colleagues have of course welcomed the application and agree with Netanyahu’s criticisms of Israel’s justice system. Environment minister, Idit Silman – a fellow member of Likud, Netanyahu’s party – has gone so far as to suggest that any refusal to grant the pardon will result in the justice officials involved being sanctioned by the Trump administration.

Undermining due process

All of this places Herzog in a delicate position. The judicial reforms which the current government initiated when it took office in December 2022, which have drawn the anger of many in Israel who perceive them as an attempt to emasculate what was once a robust legal system, have continued during the war in Gaza.

The government and its supporters already treat Israel’s Supreme Court with contempt. This was amply demonstrated on December 1 when a hearing on the government’s attempt to sack the attorney general was cancelled after the government boycotted the hearing.

It is also a moot point whether the president is legally able to pardon anyone who has not been convicted of a crime or at least been admitted guilt. There have been two cases where pardons were granted without convictions.

These related to a 1984 trial in which two operatives working for Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet were charged with the summary execution of two Palestinians who were hijacking a bus. It was considered that a full trial could compromise security – so on the basis of the admission of guilt a pardon was given.

It has been suggested that Herzog could offer a conditional pardon dependent on Netanyahu not returning to office after the next election, whatever the result. But the Israeli prime minister seems in no mood to admit to any wrongdoing on his part – let alone retreat from political life. Instead, his application for a pardon is a demand that the Israel public rally round him and a statement that disunity has been caused by the trial not by his actions.

This has echoes of the way in which Trump dealt with the litigation against him after his first term. He used it as proof of the bias and indeed the corruption of the legal system at the service of the elite.

In this period of populist politics this stance evidently did him no harm as he was reelected. Netanyahu must be hoping the same politics work for him. But unlike Trump, it was under his watch the most catastrophic intelligence and military failures took place on October 7 2023.

The Israeli electorate may well not accept his excuses for that traumatic day. They may instead see his pardon application as another self-serving act of a politician who is putting himself first.

John Strawson 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. At Donald Trump’s prompting, Benjamin Netanyahu seeks a pardon – but insists he has done nothing wrong – https://theconversation.com/at-donald-trumps-prompting-benjamin-netanyahu-seeks-a-pardon-but-insists-he-has-done-nothing-wrong-271136