Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Powell, Teaching Fellow in Strategic and Air Power Studies, University of Portsmouth

Like so many conflicts before it, the Russo-Ukraine war has forced both sides to innovate. Since they have been able to gain control of opposition air space, neither side has made wide use of traditional air assets such as fast fighter jets. which take much time and money to manufacture and so can’t be risked in active operations.

Instead, drones are now dominating the war. According to figures emerging from Ukraine, drones are causing an overwhelming percentage of all the casualties the country is suffering, amounting to between 60% to 70%.

However, history shows that this kind of technological advance in warfare is often followed by the development of counter measures. And we’re now seeing the emergence of anti-drone weapons that could reduce the importance of unmanned aerial vehicles in the Ukraine conflict and beyond.

The use of drones has changed the character of warfare with the zone in which ground forces are vulnerable to lethal attack extending to between six and nine miles behind the front lines. This has made trenches, fortified positions and armoured vehicles much more vulnerable than they would have been previously.

It is not just in the attack role that drones have proved their value, although their use in the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance role is remarkably similar to that performed by aircraft and balloons in the first world war. Drones have been used to provide real-time intelligence and situational awareness of the battlefield to aid planning and mid-level command, control and communication on the battlefield.

The ability for drones to loiter for prolonged periods of time, combined with the difficulty in successfully targeting these assets, has also seen their use in artillery spotting.

It has been argued that drones – and uncrewed aerial vehicles more generally – represent a radical change in the way moderns wars are fought and that these assets will shape the future of aerial warfare for a significant period. But what this argument fails to take into account is that when new technologies are deployed in warfare, counter measures and innovations can often quickly emerge that reduce their effectiveness.

The first use of tanks on the western front was during the five-month Battle of the Somme in 1916. Despite the radical boost the first tanks gave the allied forces, the Germans had soon negated this effect through the use of anti-tank guns by early 1917.

Countering drones

Similar developments are being seen in Ukraine where simple countermeasures such as netting are being used to reduce drones effectiveness. While this is providing a limited degree of protection, more technologically sophisticated countermeasures are being developed elsewhere.

The UK’s navy has recently announced it will deploy a direct-energy weapon that has been named DragonFire. DragonFire is a laser-based defensive capability that has the capability to target and destroy small offensive weapons such as drones.

While there are limitations to Dragonfire, such as the requirement to be able to see the target in order to engage it, it demonstrates the continual tit-for-tat developments that widely encompass warfare.

The cost per shot of Dragonfire is as low as £10 and it can engage a target the size of a one-pound coin from a distance of one kilometre. This will mean that assets such as drones more vulnerable to defensive capabilities and calls into question the claim that drones are the future of aerial warfare. The Royal Navy plans to begin deploying DragonFire from 2027.

The UK is also experimenting with another form of direct-energy weapon that relies on radio-frequency systems. This new defensive weapon, which is currently undergoing trials, would use a pulse of directed radio waves in order to disable the internal electronics of assets such as drones.

This system has advantages over Dragonfire. The first is that it is not a line-of-sight weapon, so it can be deployed in bad weather and in low cloud cover. DragonFire has to be able to see its target in order to be able to engage it effectively.

The second is that a radio pulse weapon can engage several targets in a specified area, whereas Dragonfire is only able to engage one target at a time.

But the major disadvantage to a radio pulse weapon is that it cannot discriminate between the targets which it engages. This means that friendly aircraft cannot fly when this target is being utilised.

The traditional tempo of technological developments and countermeasures that is a major character in warfare shows no sign of abating in 21st-century conflicts. So while drones are likely to remain important weapons, the idea that they will revolutionise warfare and make crewed warplanes obsolete is still to be seen.

Matthew Powell 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. Drones have changed warfare. Two new weapons might be about alter its course again – https://theconversation.com/drones-have-changed-warfare-two-new-weapons-might-be-about-alter-its-course-again-267895

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Dryden, PhD Candidate in Economics, SOAS, University of London

Rachel Reeves’s second budget landed in an unusual fashion. Before she delivered it, most of the key details had already been revealed accidentally by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

This meant many observers – including the financial markets – had an unprecedented preview of the chancellor’s announcement. But what are these markets that governments are so mindful of when they come up with economic policy, and why does it matter what they think or do?

Generally, “the markets” refers to a broad set of investors who buy, sell and set the price of financial assets such as shares, bonds and currencies.

Key among them are the buyers of UK government bonds (commonly known as “gilts”), which is a form of government debt. Investors effectively lend money to the government, which pays it back with interest.

Buyers of gilts include pension funds, insurance companies, asset managers, banks and overseas investors. Their willingness to hold UK debt determines how much it costs the government to borrow (the more willing the investors, the cheaper it is for the government).

Alongside them are currency traders, who buy and sell the pound based on how they view the UK’s economic outlook. Their decisions feed directly into the value of sterling. A third group are equity investors, who assess how tax and spending changes will influence the profitability of companies listed on the stock market.

These different groups don’t coordinate with one another, but together they form the landscape described as “the markets”.

Rachel Reeves will have been relieved that the fairly muted reaction from all of the markets, despite the unprecedented preview, was striking mainly for its lack of drama. Traders still watched the chancellor’s speech line by line, but because so much of the package had been briefed in advance, there was very little for investors to reassess.

The £26 billion increase in taxes helped calm the markets’ fears of reckless fiscal giveaways. As a result, the bond markets barely moved.

Currency traders responded in much the same way. Growth estimates have been downgraded but with no unexpected measures, the pound held steady against other major currencies. This signalled that investors saw nothing in the announcement to shift the UK’s inflation outlook or expectations over interest rates.

Equity markets too were largely unchanged, as the measures affecting specific sectors were already anticipated and mostly priced in. Overall, investors appeared to take the view that the budget simply confirmed what they already knew.

Mute market

Even a muted reaction carries meaning for the wider economy. Small declines in gilt yields (the interest paid to investors) still help lower government borrowing costs, easing the pressure on the public finances at the margin. And because gilt yields serve as a benchmark for mortgages and business loans, even modest downward movements can help gently soften borrowing conditions across the economy.

A stable pound also matters. When exchange rates remain steady, the cost of imports becomes more predictable, which supports efforts to control inflation. It also reinforces the sense that markets see no new risks on the horizon, which is a form of reassurance in itself.

Behind these movements lies a broader judgement about credibility. Markets constantly assess whether the government’s plans are coherent, deliverable and consistent with long-term economic goals.

They do not demand austerity, but they do look for fiscal plans that add up and do not introduce unnecessary risk. The absence of significant volatility after Reeves’ announcement suggests that investors concluded the budget was neither a breakthrough nor a cause for concern. It simply met expectations.

In financial markets, credibility sits at the centre of every reaction. The muted response implies that investors were broadly satisfied that the government’s plans were realistic and contained no unwelcome surprises.

But credibility is not something won permanently. It can take years to build in the eyes of bond markets, yet it can evaporate in a single misstep. The UK still has a long road back to genuine fiscal sustainability – but for now at least, the financial markets seem content with what they heard.

Alex Dryden 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 financial markets reacted to the UK budget (and why they matter) – https://theconversation.com/how-the-financial-markets-reacted-to-the-uk-budget-and-why-they-matter-270820

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will de Freitas, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.

Cop30 was never just another UN climate summit. Its setting in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, was a reminder that negotiations now unfold within the crisis they are meant to solve.

Ultimately the summit, which wrapped up last weekend, was a disappointment. The core negotiations on emissions reductions produced an underwhelming deal, and many academics argue that these days the most exciting progress happens in the side events. Yet even as political negotiations faltered, Cop30 revealed the rising power of first-hand experience – from indigenous leaders and youth negotiators to people using stories not spreadsheets to cut through climate fatigue.

The ‘people’s Cop’ that wasn’t

Brazil promised this would be the “implementation Cop” – one with more action than words, focused on the people most affected by climate change. But Simon Chin-Yee, who was at the negotiations in Belém, and his colleagues at UCL say it failed on that count.

They note that over 5,000 indigenous people were at the summit, but that “only 360 secured passes to the main negotiating ‘blue zone’, compared to 1,600 delegates linked to the fossil fuel industry”.

With the US having withdrawn from the Paris agreement (again), China became “one of the loudest voices in the room” in an attempt to cement its status as a green technology superpower. The absence of America came as a relief for some delegates, say Chin-Yee and colleagues:

“Without the distraction of the US attempting to ‘burn the house down’ … the conference was able to get on with the business at hand: negotiating texts and agreements that will limit global warming.”

But, nonetheless, they say the agreement reached – the Belém package – is “weak” and won’t get us anywhere near limiting warming to 1.5˚C.

“Most striking,” they write, “is the absence of the words ‘fossil fuels’ from the final text even though they were central to the Glasgow climate pact (2021) and the UAE consensus (2023).”

---

Read more:
Cop30: five reasons the UN climate conference failed to deliver on its ‘people’s summit’ promise

---

The Amazon speaks

If the main negotiations were disappointing, perhaps Cop30 will be mostly remembered for its location. “The pivot from the two previous conferences in petrostates Azerbaijan and UAE … was jarring.”

That’s according to Alexander Lees, who researches tropical ecology at Manchester Met and has lived in Belém for many years. Lees, with two colleagues, says the city’s climate even “became a protagonist in its own right”. “A huge thunderstorm during one afternoon flooded many roads and brought down trees across the city, causing power outages.”

Meanwhile, Belém’s oppressive heat and humidity was noticeable even in the negotiating rooms: “This catalysed an official complaint from UN climate chief Simon Stiell about the climate conditions in the Cop venue, asking for ‘a clear delivery plan on how temperatures will be brought down within the next 24 hours’. The parallels to the goals of the wider negotiation process were hard to miss.

---

Read more:
Why hosting the UN climate summit in the Amazon was so important, despite the disappointing outcome

---

Stories cut through the noise

The image of climate diplomats wiping sweat from their brows as they struggle to focus in a stuffy room is compelling. And it’s this sort of stuff that often gets people interested.

Until the final few days of Cop30, the biggest stories to emerge from the summit all had a human angle: the floods, an indigenous protest, a fire that briefly evacuated the negotiations.

That makes sense. The negotiators speak in mitigation pathways and emissions curves, while people speak in memories, anecdotes and daily struggles shaped by a changing climate. The latter is just much more compelling.

Indeed, stories of personal experience cut through “climate fatigue” in ways that global negotiations can’t, according to climate psychologists Gulnaz Anjum of the University of Limerick and Mudassar Aziz of the University of Oslo.

“Psychology research consistently shows that people engage more deeply when they can recognise themselves, their families, their fears and their hopes in climate stories. Without that human connection, climate messages often become background noise.”

One problem is that people are often exhausted by gloomy climate news. This isn’t them being disengaged, say Anjum and Aziz, it’s a sign they are overwhelmed. “Years of catastrophic headlines, stalled policies and political gridlock create a sense of powerlessness. This ‘climate fatigue’ is often mistaken for apathy, yet it is more accurately a form of emotional self-protection.”

What works, they say, is “grounded hope”, and “stories that reflect their own struggles and resilience: a family rebuilding after a hurricane; neighbours sharing water during heatwaves; young people restoring mangroves to protect coastlines; mothers comforting frightened children as storms approach.”

---

Read more:
How stories of personal experience cut through climate fatigue in ways that global negotiations can’t

---

We gambled and lost

With all that said, let’s end on a gloomier note. Our final story doesn’t open with a personal narrative, but it does have a nice metaphor: the lost gamble.

Ten years ago the world placed a bet, say James Dyke of the University of Exeter and Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute in Germany. The Paris agreement, and its system of voluntary emissions cuts and agreement by consensus, would put humanity on a path to avert dangerous climate change.

A decade on, after another underwhelming summit, they reckon “we can definitively say humanity has lost this bet.”

Referring to scientific attempts to map out plausible scenarios for the future, they say the best on offer is now “a future where peak warming reaches 1.7°C before returning to within 1.5°C in 75 years”.

That’s certainly better than the scenario in which we do nothing. But even that modest win will require “immediate action” on multiple fronts: a fossil fuel phase out; a food system that absorbs carbon instead of emitting it; removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on an unprecedented scale.

Belém may have failed politically but it highlighted something academics have been saying for years: narrative and symbolism can sometimes be as powerful as facts and laws. If Cop30 taught us anything, it’s that the era of negotiating climate change at arm’s length is hopefully coming to a close. The crisis is no longer outside the venue – it’s flooding the streets and overheating the negotiating rooms. Whether world leaders listen is one question hanging over the road to Cop31 host Turkey, and beyond.

---

Read more:
Turkey will host the next UN climate summit – here’s how it plans to use its moment in the spotlight

---

---

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.

---

– ref. Cop30 saw important developments amid huge disappointment – https://theconversation.com/cop30-saw-important-developments-amid-huge-disappointment-270712

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas recently revealed that she’d “thought that was it” after a fish bone became lodged in her throat. Ballas’s terrifying ordeal lasted for 20 minutes, with the judge struggling to breathe until her hair and makeup artist managed to dislodge the bone using the Heimlich manoeuvre (also known as abdominal thrusts).

Ballas certainly isn’t the first person to make the news for such an ordeal. Even the late Queen Mother had experienced something similar.

Fish bones are actually one of the most common reasons people end up in the emergency department. This phenomenon is particularly common in Asian countries, where diets tend to include a lot of fish. The problem is so great, in fact, that in China specialist fish bone removal clinics have popped up.

Although fish are a good source of many minerals, protein and heart-healthy fatty acids, they also contain multiple small, delicate “pin” bones – usually in the fillet.

Cod have approximately 17 pin bones and salmon have around 30 – though some fish can have over 100. Eel bones have also frequently been linked to emergency room trips, while flounder bones are particularly dangerous because of the number and size of them – making it easy for them to get lodged far down the throat.

This means that despite the care taken during the food prep process, some may inadvertently slip through. These bones can be dangerous if swallowed accidentally – and choking is just one of the serious complications that they can cause.

Fish bones typically become lodged in the tonsils at the back of the throat, in the pharynx at the back of the mouth, the piriform sinus (a small hollow that plays a role in swallowing) and, of course, the oesophagus (the canal which connects the throat to the stomach).

If you do accidentally swallow a fish bone, you’ll probably experience coughing, a prickly or “something stuck” sensation in the throat, as well as pain or difficulty swallowing and spitting up blood.

However, they don’t always cause symptoms – and some people end up living unknowingly with a fish bone stuck in their throat. For instance, in 2012 a 69-year-old Japanese woman went to hospital complaining of a swollen neck – only for doctors to discover she had a 32mm fish bone which had been lodged in her throat for nine months.

Undiscovered fish bones can also migrate around the neck. Repeated swallowing can also result in the bones penetrating the wall of the oesophagus and moving into the tight spaces in the neck.

Here, the bone poses a high risk to the vast number of critical nerves and blood vessels that pass through the neck – such as the carotid artery, which is one of the major vessels that supplies blood to the brain.

Bones can also pierce the thyroid gland, which can cause abscesses and inflammation. This can also lead to sepsis, a rare but incredibly dangerous complication.

In some cases, lodged fish bones have even managed to migrate into the neck’s muscles and under the skin. They can even pop out the skin too – as happened recently to one Thai woman.

Any bones that manage to migrate out of the throat are a surgical emergency as there’s no way to dislodge it otherwise. These bones can also cause infections in the spaces around the heart, or migrate into the spinal cord leading to secondary infections which could cause paralysis.

This is why it’s imperative that if you do accidentally swallow a bone, you try to remove it as soon as possible.

What to do

Stuck fish bones can be removed in a variety of ways.

For some people, a forceful cough will be enough to eject it. This technique is most effective in cases where the bone is stuck in the airway, rather than the oesophagus.

But one problem with coughing is that instead of ejecting it, it could dislodge the bone and allow it to pass into the stomach and through the intestines, where there’s a risk of perforation.

Bones that are stuck in the wall of the oesophagus could potentially move through the body, but many cases will require endoscopic removal.

Some tips suggest that eating something such as bread or banana can force the bone down, but there’s no scientific evidence to support this remedy. It may even further block the airway or oesophagus – and could potentially make things worse by lodging the bone further into the tissue. So if coughing doesn’t help and you still have symptoms, seeking medical advice is the next sensible step.

Where a person is unable to speak or breathe then abdominal thrusts may be needed to help dislodge the offending fish bone (or other item). If it comes to this, you should call emergency services and seek urgent medical support.

Adam Taylor 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. Why it’s so easy to choke on fish bones – and the other dangers they pose – https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-easy-to-choke-on-fish-bones-and-the-other-dangers-they-pose-270613

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Inge Schrijver, PhD researcher, Wellbeing Inclusivity Sustainability & the Economy, Leiden University

Climate change is already shaping our wellbeing. It affects mental health, spreads infectious diseases, disrupts work, damages food supplies and forces families to leave their homes because of conflict, hunger or flooding.

Wellbeing refers to everything that enables people to live healthy, safe and meaningful lives. It includes physical and mental health, access to food, clean water, hygiene and income, as well as work, leisure, culture and education.

It also involves personal safety, freedoms, trust in institutions and how people feel about their own lives. Environmental quality, biodiversity and the degree of inequality in society are part of wellbeing too. Climate change touches every one of these areas.

Our new study, written with René Kleijn of Leiden University, examined the many ways climate change affects wellbeing and assessed whether these impacts are reflected in the climate policy models that guide global decision-making.

These models are large computer simulations that explore how society and the economy might change under different climate and policy scenarios. Policymakers use them to test “what-if” questions, such as introducing a carbon price or expanding renewable energy, before making real decisions.

We found that although researchers have documented a wide range of climate-related harms, very few of these factors appear in the most influential models used by governments and international agencies. Newer experimental models do include wellbeing, but these are not the ones shaping today’s climate policies.

This gap matters because climate policy models influence real-world choices. For example, the International Energy Agency’s modelling informs energy investments. The models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s scientific advisory body, have shaped global interest in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, sometimes at the expense of rapid emissions cuts.

If wellbeing is not represented, the benefits of climate action will be undervalued because the models cannot account for them.

Research from more than one hundred institutions through the Lancet Countdown – one of the world’s leading annual assessments of how climate change is already impacting human health – shows that heat is now responsible for around 550,000 deaths each year. This is 63% more than in the 1990s. Four out of five heatwave days today would not have occurred without climate change.

Rising temperatures are changing the nature of work. In 2024, 640 billion potential working hours were lost in sectors such as agriculture and construction because conditions were too hot to work safely. This represents more than $1 trillion US dollars (£755,725,000) in lost income.

Heat and drought threaten global food systems as well. According to Lancet Countdown projections, if the planet warms by 2°C, around 500 million more people could face food insecurity within the next two decades.

If warming reaches 3.6°C by the end of the century, the number could rise to 1.1 billion. These estimates do not yet include the effects of sea-level rise, damaged infrastructure, agricultural pests or reduced nutrient content in crops.

None of these impacts – heat deaths, lost working hours, or rising food insecurity – are systematically included in the major climate policy models used today. That means decisions about climate action may be overlooking some of the most important human consequences.

Failing to cut emissions costs lives and livelihoods but climate action protects both.

Why climate models still miss wellbeing

Despite extensive research, most climate policy models ignore impacts on wellbeing. When wellbeing is included, it is often measured in narrow economic terms that miss what matters most to people.

Yet many areas have already been studied in ways that could be incorporated into models. Research has quantified the damage from diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea and cardiovascular illness, as well as mental health conditions including depression and suicide.

For example, a large systematic review examined the link between extreme heat and worsening mental health, including hospitalisations for psychiatric conditions.

Other work shows how climate change affects worker productivity, leisure, conflict, migration, air quality and biodiversity. Studies have demonstrated clear connections between rising temperatures and reduced labour productivity, and between climate change and biodiversity loss, with implications for human health and food systems. These issues are central to people’s lives and should be represented in policy modelling.

Some areas have been explored in research but still cannot be included in climate policy models because they lack the numerical data needed for modelling. These areas include education, cultural heritage, subjective wellbeing (how people evaluate and feel about their own lives), and governance.

Some reviews describe how climate change affects these aspects of life. However, they also emphasise that these impacts remain difficult to quantify in consistent, comparable ways, which is why they are not yet represented in most climate models.

Inequality must be part of the picture

Climate change does not affect everyone equally. Women, children and older adults are often more exposed. Evidence from the United Nations and global health research shows that these groups face higher mortality and displacement risks during climate-related disasters.

---

Read more:
How stories of personal experience cut through climate fatigue in ways that global negotiations can’t

---

Some people face greater risks because they do not have safe housing, live in regions already experiencing extreme heat, work outdoors or lack the financial resources to prepare for future impacts.

People who contributed least to climate change often face the most severe consequences, particularly in regions with limited means to adapt. This pattern is described extensively in literature on climate vulnerability and justice, such as the 2026 Global Climate Risk Index. Almost no climate policy model includes these inequalities.

Climate change is not only about emissions and temperature limits. It affects how people live, work, eat, breathe, learn and feel. When models ignore wellbeing, they underestimate the benefits of climate action and overlook the true costs of inaction.

To create climate policy that reflects real human lives, wellbeing needs to move from the margins to the centre of modelling efforts. Climate action is not only an environmental necessity. It is an investment in global health, safety, dignity and fairness.

Inge Schrijver’s PhD is part of the WISE Horizons project, which is funded by Horizon Europe (grant number 101095219).

Paul Behrens receives funding from The British Academy and REAPRA.

Rutger Hoekstra receives funding from the Horizon Europe “WISE Horizons” Research & Innovation Action (GA 101095219).

– ref. Climate action saves lives. So why do climate models ignore wellbeing? – https://theconversation.com/climate-action-saves-lives-so-why-do-climate-models-ignore-wellbeing-269879

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

Twice a year, 40 scientists gather together for five days to decide what strains of influenza to vaccinate against for the next flu season. It takes around six months to prepare the vaccine – which usually includes protection against three different strains of flu. So in February, the group’s decision affects the northern hemisphere’s flu season, and in September, it’s about the southern hemisphere.

Europe and the US are heading into a flu season that some are warning could be particularly severe this winter. While even as summer approaches in Australia, the country is still registering high numbers of cases after a record-breaking flu season earlier in the year.

So how does the process of deciding on a flu vaccine each year actually work? And does what happens in the southern hemisphere influence the way the virus circulates in the northern hemisphere?

In this episode ofThe Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Ian Barr, deputy director for the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, based at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, part of the University of Melbourne. Barr is one of those 40 scientists who attend the meetings to decide what strains to focus vaccination efforts on.

After a tour around his lab, Barr explains how the different parts of the global flu monitoring system cooperate – and why it can be misleading to think that what happens in the southern hemisphere influences the northern hemisphere, and vice versa. Barr says that might be the case in some years – including in 2025 – but in “other years, I think it’s less clear that the viruses are coming from south to north … they may come from other places that have had unseasonable outbreaks during the summer or autumn.”

Listen to the interview with Ian Barr on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

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

Newsclip in this episode from 7News Australia.

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

Ian Barr owns shares in an influenza vaccine producing company, and his centre receives funding from commercial groups for ongoing activities.

– ref. Flu shots: how scientists around the world cooperate to choose the strains to vaccinate against each year – https://theconversation.com/flu-shots-how-scientists-around-the-world-cooperate-to-choose-the-strains-to-vaccinate-against-each-year-270621

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thomas Caygill, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Nottingham Trent University

Rachel Reeves’s budget was seen as a “make or break” moment for the chancellor and the government, which is suffering from low approval ratings and rapidly fading public confidence. At the same time, threats of a leadership challenge and the impending May elections mean Keir Starmer has a tricky path to navigate.

Can this budget save the chancellor and the prime minister’s careers? Here’s what our panel of politics experts has to say.

Breathing room before tough May elections

Thomas Caygill, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Nottingham Trent University

The two main audiences for this budget were backbench Labour MPs and the financial markets. The morning after, both appeared broadly content. This gives Starmer and Reeves some short-term breathing space.

But local elections in England and Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections in May mean this won’t last long. The current polling for Labour is not pretty, particularly in Wales. This is where the longer-term impact of the budget will be key.

The scrapping of the two-child benefit cap is popular with Labour MPs and will be popular with Labour members and their core voters. However, across the electorate overall, retaining the cap was popular.

Reeves announced a £150 cut to fuel bills, which will give Labour something to campaign on, along with a financial boost to both the Scottish (£820 million) and Welsh (£505 million) governments, and the freeze in rail fares. But some of these measures will not come into effect until April. This means that voters will not really have felt the benefit of them by the time they go to the polls.

It remains to be seen whether these measures can improve the party’s fortunes in time for May’s election and save the prime minister and chancellor beyond next summer (another key moment of danger, if May’s election results are as bad as feared).

Stability now, spending later

Despina Alexiadou, Reader at the School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde

The budget delivered by Rachel Reeves prioritises income redistribution over business incentives and macroeconomic stability over ambitious public investments.

But it fails in two central promises made during the election: first, to not raise income tax, and second (I think even more importantly) to kickstart the economy through large public investment in ambitious projects, such as the now seemingly abandoned green prosperity plan to invest billions in transitioning the economy to net zero. UK public investment lags behind most OECD countries
and the new budget does not address this.

The government cannot achieve its goals for economic growth unless it survives. And being still early in the legislative cycle, Reeves had to prioritise the government’s popularity in parliament rather than in the polls.

---

Read more:
What will the budget mean for economic growth? Experts give their view

---

Democratically-elected governments time policies to stabilise themselves early in the electoral cycle, hoping to deliver a stronger economy closer to the elections.

If Reeves’s plans work out, she will be able to moderately grow the economy through economic stability and the improvement of public services. If the government brings public debt down, she might be able to cut taxes during the next election, though this is probably too optimistic as many of the new tax rises do not kick-in until 2029, (an election year).

This budget has saved the government for now and should mute backbenchers’ demands. But for her to deliver a more ambitious budget next year, she will have to grow the economy, against the meagre projections.

The government still needs a narrative

Alex Prior, Lecturer in Politics with International Relations, London South Bank University

Even before the budget was delivered, there was an impending sense of doom. At best, it was seen as a “last chance” for the chancellor. At worst, there was an assumption of it already being over for Labour before it had begun. One Labour MP told the BBC that they were “on a four-year walk to the guillotine”.

If the narrative of doom has set in, it’s because Starmer and Reeves haven’t supplied a more convincing one. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s leak of its budget analysis ahead of Reeves’s speech also meant that the information was in the public domain before the chancellor could “set the scene”.

The budget itself did little to salve the feeling that this Labour government is sorely lacked a uniting narrative – a reason why we should all get behind higher taxes to rescue our stagnating public services.

---

Read more:
What the budget could mean for you – experts react to the chancellor’s announcement

---

Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein argues that “so powerful is a feeling of purpose that support for difficult decisions can even go up the harder people are being hit” because of “our ability to rationalise the sacrifices we make”.

Similarly, economist Jo Michell concludes: “With a clear understanding of the destination, Labour could articulate a narrative that balances pain … with gain, by explaining how peoples’ lives will improve.”

Budgets can work when leaders convey purpose, and rationalise sacrifices in a narrative that people believe and feel part of. If Starmer and Reeves want saving, their narrative and destination need to be made clear, for themselves and for citizens.

They might regret not taking more risks

Colm Murphy, Senior Lecturer in British Politics, Queen Mary University of London

This was a survival budget, not a salvation budget.

In a sulphurous political atmosphere, Reeves needed to satisfy three audiences: mutinous Labour MPs, markets and target voters. This explains, respectively, the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, the £26 billion of tax rises (largely through threshold freezes), and the choice of symbolic taxes on the wealthy and energy bill reductions.

The political narrative accompanying each decision could unravel. Lifting the two-child cap will give over half a million families an extra £5,000 a year on average. But Labour MPs might baulk at implied later cuts, for example to special needs provision.

Markets reacted positively, but the fiscal consolidation is backdated to the end of forecast. If there is another shock, the headroom could vanish.

The government’s political opponents will claim that, through freezing tax thresholds, it has effectively killed its manifesto pledge not to tax “working people” through a back-alley assassination.

Reeves and Starmer swerved the alternative of a righteous public execution: breaking the letter of their pledge by openly raising tax rates to enable a fast delivery of “change” in public services. This is therefore a defensive budget, and their caution is understandable.

But if global and domestic conditions do not improve, it may be remembered as a missed opportunity to take a greater political risk – with bigger potential costs, but also rewards.

Thomas Caygill has previously received funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Alex Prior, Colm Murphy, and Despina Alexiadou 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. Will the budget save Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer? Experts give their views – https://theconversation.com/will-the-budget-save-rachel-reeves-and-keir-starmer-experts-give-their-views-270519

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sabah Suhail, Research Fellow, School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queen’s University Belfast

Earlier this year, a cyberattack on British retailer Marks & Spencer caused widespread disruption across its operations. Stock shortages, delayed deliveries, and logistical chaos rippled through the retailer’s network.

In 2025 alone, several other UK food businesses, including Harrods and Co-op, have been targeted by cyber-attacks.

The food sector is highly dependent on different links in a chain. This makes it an appealing target for hackers, because a single weak link can compromise an entire supply chain. Because of the essential role of food for public health and safety – and its importance to the economy – it is regarded as critical national infrastructure.

So how can the UK’s vital food sector be made more resilient to cyber-attacks? One possible way is to use what’s called a “digital twin”. A digital twin is a virtual replica of any product, process, or service, capturing its state, characteristics, and connections with other systems throughout its life cycle. The digital twin will include the computer system used by the company.

It can help because conventional defences are increasingly out of step with cyber-attacks. Monitoring tools tend to detect anomalies after damage occurs. Complex computer systems can often obscure the origins of breaches.

A digital twin creates a bridge between the physical and digital worlds. It allows organisations to simulate real-time events, predict what might happen next, and safely test potential responses. It can also help analyse what happened after a cyber-attack to help companies prepare for future incidents.

For companies in the food sector, becoming resilient to cyber-attacks involves the ability to detect suspicious activity early, and keep operations running, even under attack. This will ultimately protect food quality and consumer trust.

Simulating an attack

Let’s focus on the example of a strawberry packhouse, where strawberries are sorted, cooled, and packed for distribution. Due to strawberries spoiling easily, controlling the temperature and humidity in these areas is essential to ensuring a high quality product. Sensors and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems maintain these conditions to keep the fruit fresh from the field to the shelf.

But what happens if the HVAC system gets hacked, perhaps through weak passwords or software that isn’t regularly updated to account for new computer security vulnerabilities. Temperatures could rise unnoticed, causing spoilage before the fruit even reaches the supermarket. The results: food waste, lost revenue, delayed deliveries, and reputational harm. A single breach can reverberate through the chain, leading to wasted produce and empty shelves.

A digital twin might be able to avert disaster under this scenario. By combining operational data such as temperature, humidity, or the speed air of flow with internal computing system data or intrusion attempts, digital twins offer a unified view of both system performance and cybersecurity.

They enable organisations to simulate cyber-attacks or equipment failures in a safe, controlled digital environment, revealing vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.

A digital twin can also detect abnormal temperature patterns, monitor the system for malicious activity, and perform analysis after a cyber-attack to identify the causes.

Over time, these insights can enable the strawberry packhouse, in our
example, and by extension the broader supply chain, to strengthen its defences against hackers and reduce the future risk of a cyber-attack.

As cyber-threats become more sophisticated, the question is no longer whether the food sector will be targeted again, but whether it will be ready when further attacks inevitably happen.

Digital twins cannot prevent every cyber-attack, but by turning uncertainty into foresight, they give the food sector a fighting chance to stay safe, sustainable, and secure.

Salil S. Kanhere receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Department of Defence and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Sabah Suhail 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 ‘digital twins’ could help prevent cyber-attacks on the food industry – https://theconversation.com/how-digital-twins-could-help-prevent-cyber-attacks-on-the-food-industry-267667

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura O’Flanagan, PhD Candidate, School of English, Dublin City University

Zootropolis 2 arrives in cinemas with real confidence: a fun, fast-paced sequel bursting with sharp gags, lovable characters, beautiful animation design and a heartwarming central message which avoids turning syrupy. The film, titled Zootopia 2 in the US, will delight younger viewers and, thankfully, has more than enough charm for adults too.

This new chapter returns to the first instalment’s central duo, Nick (Jason Bateman) and Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin), a mismatched fox-and-bunny partnership working in the Zootropolis Police Department.

Bateman brings knowing, mischievous charisma to the roguish Nick, while Goodwin’s Judy is energetic and flawed, with an endearingly warm dollop of emotional depth. Nick and Judy spend much of the story at odds, creating many of its most poignant moments.

Early on, they are ordered to attend “partner therapy” in a wonderfully over-the-top scene which sets the tone for the rest of the film, prompting giggles from little ones and knowing laughter from the adults, while the surprisingly insightful advice lands with the pair. This is Zootropolis 2’s strength: the humour is blended with heartfelt moments, always preventing it from tipping into the saccharine.

The world of Zootropolis is expanded in this sequel as Judy and Nick leave the confines of the city for the countryside in pursuit of a mysterious snake. This gives the film’s production team ample opportunity to stretch their design muscles, and the result is breathtaking.

Vast animated expanses recall the most stunning snowscapes of Frozen and dazzling twilight skies of Tangled. Vibrant colours and countless animals with individual quirks create genuine playfulness which feels fresh and inventive.

At times the jokes steal the spotlight, leaving our lead duo a bit shortchanged and the central reptile mystery a little muddled and under-explained. But this never undermines the film’s appeal. The script delights in its new, exuberant characters, who bring a generous dose of joy and entertainment.

Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster) – a beaver who has a podcast investigating mysterious reptiles – steals every scene she is in, with slapstick physical comedy and hilariously odd questions like “Do snakes wear half a pant or just one long sock?” (which she later answers).

Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), an electric blue, heat-sensing pit viper, is animated with a dynamism that recalls The Jungle Book’s villainous Kaa. But he manages to pull off the impossible: making snakes likeable.

There are so many Easter eggs, quick quips, action set-pieces and fast-paced jokes that even the keenest-eyed viewer won’t catch them all on first viewing. Puns and visual gags abound and will keep the audience smiling throughout.

We get a macho pair of zebras calling themselves “Zeebros”, a carrot logo on Judy’s phone, and even a weather “furcast”. A music festival cheekily named Burning Mammal pokes fun in all the right ways and the high-octane tube transport system is begging to be a theme park ride.

Especially fun are several call-backs to other Disney films. A loving riff on Ratatouille’s rat chef and an uproariously awkward parody of Lady and the Tramp’s spaghetti scene give the film the comic sensibility of the best of DreamWorks’ Shrek, but with a gilded Disney flair that is both nostalgic and hilarious at the same time.

Behind all of the thrills and jokes lies a message of community and harmony between species. This is gently woven through the film, never becoming didactic. Nick and Judy’s strained partnership mirrors the wider anxieties of Zootropolis itself, while the reptile mystery quietly explores prejudice and fear of the unfamiliar.

Nick says, “Our differences don’t make a difference.” It’s a resonant and powerful idea in 2025’s zeitgeist, shaped by war, conflict, political and cultural unrest.

Zootropolis 2 is a sharp, funny sequel with a heartwarming and vital idea at its core. Confident and imaginative, it bursts with colour and heart, offering crowd-pleasing thrills without losing sight of something worth saying.

By keeping sentimentality at bay and balancing its spectacle with humour-laced sincerity, it proves the world of Zootropolis is still as vibrant and rewarding as ever.

---

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.

---

Laura O’Flanagan 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. Zootropolis 2: this funny, heartfelt crowd-pleaser is a worthy sequel with something to say – https://theconversation.com/zootropolis-2-this-funny-heartfelt-crowd-pleaser-is-a-worthy-sequel-with-something-to-say-270484

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Barry Langford, Professor of Film Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London

What does the familiar film tagline “based on a true story” really mean? Leaving aside questions of historical fidelity versus poetic license, what does an audience get from the assurance that a given story “truly happened”?

At best, these claims remind us that – however fantastic or horrific – these events were once realities for other people very much like ourselves. At worst, they exercise a kind of moral blackmail: guilt tripping the audience into thinking that criticising the film’s storytelling somehow disrespects the real people who endured those traumatic events.

Every story of Holocaust survival and rescue is unique and, against the backdrop of ubiquitous slaughter, uniquely miraculous. Annabel Jankel’s new film Desperate Journey, based on the experiences of Austrian-born Holocaust survivor Freddie Knoller (1921-2022), is certainly as extraordinary a story as any.

Freddie (played by Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) escaped his parents’ fate through a circuitous and often picturesque journey across Nazi-dominated Europe, ultimately landing late in the war in Auschwitz-Birkenau and surviving a death march.

Such accounts can all too easily topple into cliches of wartime derring-do, or fall victim to sentimentality and sensationalism. What inoculates them against these perils is precisely the unique and often tiny details that ground wildly improbable tales of survival in gritty reality. (The French film-maker Claude Lanzmann, best known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah, once remarked that “there is more truth for me in some trivial confirmation than in any number of generalisations about the nature of evil”.)

However, Desperate Journey – which focuses almost exclusively on the most colourful part of Freddie’s tale, his time working under a false identity in German-frequented nightclubs in occupied Paris – leaves out almost all of this granular detail. As a consequence, it ends up feeling almost as divorced from the hard-to-fathom realities of the Holocaust as much-derided fantasies like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)

For example, shortly after Freddie’s escape from Austria, at the urging of a friendly farmer’s wife (Niamh Cusack), he burns his Austrian passport, stamped with the lethal “J” (for Jew). From this point on he is stateless and without papers in a continent-wide trap. But, bar a narrow escape on board a train, in the film his fugitive status seems to cause him remarkably few problems.

Numerous survivor accounts attest to the grinding daily fear and the incessant improvisation needed to stay one step ahead of the Gestapo. Yet courtesy of a friendly Jewish landlady and a tolerant employer, Freddie enjoys a life – albeit precarious – of sleazy glamour in the demi-monde of wartime Parisian nightclubs and brothels.

Despite a screenplay by Michael Radford (1984, Il Postino), and handsome if somewhat overblown production design, almost nothing in Freddie’s story has a ring of authenticity. Nazi officers are uniformly leering sadists. The nightclub dancer (Sienna Guillory) with whom Freddie strikes up an ill-starred and dramatically unconvincing romance performs improbably elaborate routines that evoke Josephine Baker and harbours her own tragic secret to match Freddie’s. The French Resistance fighters he encounters are hard but honourable tough guys in leather jackets and crew-neck sweaters (including an enjoyably hammy turn from Steven Berkoff).

Viewers who favour historical precision will be dissatisfied to find Freddie fleeing Austria days after the March 1938 Anschluss and arriving apparently a few weeks later in occupied Paris (France surrendered to Germany in June 1940; the real Freddie Knoller spent two years in Belgium before fleeing to France ahead of Hitler’s advancing armies).

To those with an aversion to cliche, Freddie’s arrival there, emerging from the Metro to the strains of accordion music and the overtures of improbably glamorous street prostitutes and a cartoonishly Mephistophelian pimp (Fernando Guallar), will be equally grating.

Perhaps the film’s most fatal flaw is its refusal even to try to dramatise the trauma that Freddie – only 17 when his six-year trans-European odyssey began – underwent. He sees his family torn apart, sees his companions mown down by German border guards, lives with the ever-present threat of capture and deportation, and ultimately survives (offscreen) the death factory of Auschwitz and the nightmare of the death marches. Yet his principal character note, from early on in the film, is his adolescent fascination with the imagined lubricious pleasures of Parisian nightlife. His exploits there play more as a slightly risky caper than a struggle for survival.

Desperate Journey feels like a throwback – a 1950s Hollywood version of the war. It is far too light and conventionally melodramatic to hold up against decades of scholarship and public understanding of the real costs of survival amid inconceivable terror and against overwhelming odds.

---

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.

---

Barry Langford 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. Desperate Journey: wartime cliches overwhelm this extraordinary true account – https://theconversation.com/desperate-journey-wartime-cliches-overwhelm-this-extraordinary-true-account-270531