Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Federico Iannacci, Senior Lecturer in Management, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex

Police officers often work with partial information under severe time constraints in situations that can change in seconds. Whether investigating a crime or patrolling a neighbourhood, they regularly have to make predictions based on instinct.

This “gut policing” isn’t just guesswork – it’s fast pattern recognition. It comes from training and years of dealing with real incidents, learning from colleagues, and building an instinctive sense of what matters and what doesn’t.

But instincts are no longer the only way police connect the dots. Many police forces are investing in AI-enabled tools, including predictive policing algorithms that forecast crime hotspots and offender assessment systems designed to support decision-making.

---

Read more:
A ‘black box’ AI system has been influencing criminal justice decisions for over two decades – it’s time to open it up

---

This reflects a wider global trend: police forces are integrating AI into everyday policing. These AI-enabled tools draw on large volumes of data and patterns that would be impossible for any single officer to analyse in real time. The aim is straightforward: to help ensure decisions are based on strong evidence and reliable data, rather than relying solely on instinct or experience.

Many people appear to accept the use of AI technology by police forces – so long as there are clear guidelines in place first.

---

AI has long been discussed as a threat to jobs and livelihoods. But what’s the reality? In this series, we explore the impact AI is already having on specific occupations – and how people in these jobs feel about their new AI assistants.

---

In England, police forces are already using AI tools in day-to-day work. These include Untrite Thrive, which helps staff in police control rooms decide how to allocate resources. Another example is Qlik Sense, used by Avon and Somerset Police for monitoring the likelihood of reoffending or perpetrating a crime. These developments align with a broader government agenda focused on efficiency and cost reduction.

But once you swap human judgment for more automated predictions, the value of officers’ traditional connect-the-dots police logic can be lost. There have been plenty of examples where AI tools have flagged the wrong people, the wrong places, or the wrong risks.

Unverified information

A House of Commons select committee recently highlighted serious failings in West Midlands Police’s use of the AI assistant Microsoft Copilot in its decision to stop Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv football club from travelling to Birmingham for a Europa League match against Aston Villa last November.

Claims made by this force about alleged disorder involving Maccabi fans at past matches were based on inaccurate information generated by Copilot, including a supposed game between the Israeli club and West Ham United that never happened.

“Information that showed the Maccabi fans to be a high risk was trusted without proper scrutiny,” explained the committee’s chair Karen Bradley. “Shockingly, this included unverified information generated by AI.”

This inaccurate AI‑generated information was repeated by senior police officers in safety advisory group meetings and even in oral evidence to MPs, demonstrating a lack of due diligence and overreliance on unverified AI outputs. The case is now subject to an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

And this was not an isolated incident. The Harm Assessment Risk Tool deployed by Durham Constabulary was found to have displayed many flaws, from overestimation of the likelihood of reoffending to discrimination in its datasets.

And the Metropolitan Police’s now-discontinued Gang Matrix, a database that recorded intelligence related to alleged gang members, was heavily criticised by the Information Commissioner’s Office for unfairly labelling young black men as high‑risk based on flawed scoring.

Relying on AI-driven tools can be a double-edged sword in policing. They can improve decisions, but can also reinforce bias and amplify mistakes. In our experience of working with police forces in England, AI‑supported decision‑making works best when police officers combine their operational experience with data‑driven insights.

Reinforcing biases

Our ongoing study of AI use in policing shows that uncritical reliance on AI risks reinforcing existing biases, disproportionately affecting the poorest and most marginalised communities.

Our research, which is yet to be published, suggests that effective use of AI requires a difficult balance: officers must both trust and mistrust AI recommendations at the same time, maintaining a vigilant mindset.

To prevent biases creeping into AI‑supported decisions, police forces should invest in bias‑awareness training that prepares officers to question AI outputs regularly and constructively.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council covenant mandated that AI should support rather than replace human judgment. This is a step in the right direction. Yet even this principle can backfire if police officers treat AI recommendations as objective truth, rather than guidance that requires careful scrutiny.

These concerns take on renewed urgency in light of the government’s introduction of a national predictive policing prototype, announced in August 2025. The system, scheduled for nationwide deployment by 2030, combines AI‑powered crimemapping with behavioural‑pattern analysis, supported by a £4 million initial investment.

It draws on data from police forces, local councils and social services, and builds directly on the expanding fleet of live facial recognition vans now operating across seven forces across England and Wales.

---

Read more:
Facial recognition technology used by police is now very accurate – but public understanding lags behind

---

At the same time, developments inside policing organisations highlight the limits of technological oversight. The Met was recently reported to have begun using AI tools to flag potential officer misconduct by analysing internal data such as sickness records, absences and overtime patterns.

While the Met argues that such systems help raise standards and rebuild public trust, critics warn that such monitoring risks misclassifying workplace pressures as misconduct and eroding accountability rather than strengthening it.

Ultimately, whether AI technology improves policing outcomes depends on the governance surrounding it. Ensuring there is a vigilant human in every AI loop should be a non-negotiable safeguard.

Federico Iannacci has received funding from the British Academy for a small research grant entitled “Investigating the future of work in policing: a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of police forces in England and Wales.”

Stan Karanasios 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. Will AI tools make better police officers? – https://theconversation.com/will-ai-tools-make-better-police-officers-277258

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Erhan Kilincarslan, Reader in Accounting and Finance, University of Huddersfield

The UK’s trade deficit of goods is the widest it has ever been. In 2025, the country spent £248.3 billion more on things than it sold to the rest of the world.

This is not just some abstract number, of interest only to markets and economists. The UK’s trade deficit has practical consequences which help to explain why global events show up so quickly in people’s food and energy bills.

Nor is this a new situation. While the UK runs a strong surplus in services such as finance and professional consulting, it consistently imports more goods than it exports.

On its own, that is not necessarily a problem. Many advanced economies run trade deficits of goods. The more important issue is what a country imports, and how essential those imports are to daily life.

For example, the UK relies heavily on imports for many things that households cannot easily live without, such as 40% of the food they consume.

It imports much of its energy too – and although the UK produces some domestic oil and gas, wholesale energy prices are strongly influenced by international markets.

Food and energy are not optional purchases. Households cannot simply stop eating or heating their homes when prices rise. Economists describe these goods as “inelastic”, meaning that demand does not tend to fall even when the price increases.

And this creates a direct link between global volatility and household vulnerability. When global supply chains are disrupted, whether it’s because of geopolitical tensions, extreme weather or commodity price spikes, any country which is dependent on imported essentials (Germany, Italy and Japan are other examples) feels the impact quickly.

The Bank of England has highlighted how global energy and food price shocks played a major role in the recent surge in UK inflation. International adjustments feed quickly into domestic cost-of-living pressures.

Currency changes

The UK’s trade deficits also mean it needs plenty of foreign currency to pay for all of the things it imports. When financial markets become volatile, the pound can weaken, increasing the cost of these imported goods – which leads to rising inflation.

For an economy that depends heavily on imported food, fuel and manufactured goods, currency movements can amplify inflationary pressure. Households may not follow exchange rate fluctuations, but they do notice higher supermarket prices and energy bills.

Not everything is in deficit, though. The UK runs a significant surplus in services, particularly in finance.

But this creates a disconnect between the UK’s overall national economic performance and household experience. While the export of services supports national income and employment, it does not directly reduce the prices people pay for imported food or energy.

This is why everyday price vulnerability can remain high even when overall trade figures appear manageable.

Also, import-driven price shocks do not affect all households equally. Lower-income households spend a larger share of their income on essentials such as food and energy. When prices rise, they have less flexibility to absorb the increase. Higher-income households may cut back elsewhere, but lower-income households often cannot.

When import costs rise, the financial strain is therefore more intense for those people with the least. The same global shock can be manageable for some households but seriously disruptive for others.

Part of the reason for this general situation is that since the early 1990s, global trade policy has prioritised efficiency through trade liberalisation and manufacturing processes being spread across multiple countries.

Importing goods from the most competitive global suppliers reduced prices in stable periods. But efficiency often comes at the expense of resilience. When supply chains are disrupted, countries that rely heavily on imports for essential goods have fewer domestic buffers. Politicians may then struggle to stabilise prices because the source of volatility lies abroad.

Trade off

The result is something many households recognise. Events far away can rapidly translate into higher bills at home.

But the issue is not trade itself. International trade brings clear benefits, including lower prices, greater choice and access to global goods and services.

The question is whether the UK’s balance between efficiency and resilience leaves households overly exposed to volatility. Recent cost of living pressures have demonstrated how quickly global shocks can reach household budgets.

Trade policy is therefore not just about competitiveness or GDP growth. It is also about economic resilience – how well households are protected from forces beyond their control. But this does not mean reversing global trade or pursuing full self-sufficiency, which would be likely to increase costs.

Instead, the government should be working on the UK’s resilience through things like diversified supply chains and stronger strategic reserves. Clearer contingency planning for essential goods would reduce the UK’s vulnerability to global shocks.

While the UK’s trade deficit is often treated as an abstract macroeconomic statistic, for many households its consequences are felt in something far more tangible – grocery and energy bills.

Erhan Kilincarslan 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 the UK’s trade deficit makes household bills so vulnerable to global shocks – https://theconversation.com/why-the-uks-trade-deficit-makes-household-bills-so-vulnerable-to-global-shocks-276991

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maryam Lotfi, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Cardiff University

The escalating conflict between Iran, the US and Israel has taken a critical turn. The strait of Hormuz – one of the most important shipping routes for oil and gas – is facing significant disruption. The strait is the main route connecting Persian Gulf ports in Iran and some of the region’s other oil producers to the open ocean.

The strikes on Iran are already having tangible effects: energy flows are slowing, markets are reacting and supply chains are under pressure. This is not just a regional conflict – it is a global supply chain crisis unfolding in real time.

As an expert on supply chains, I am acutely aware of how central the strait is – not only for the stability of the region but also to the functioning of the global economy.

This narrow corridor is one of the world’s most critical chokepoints – around a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait daily. Its sudden disruption represents a “chokepoint failure” – a breakdown at a critical node that triggers cascading effects across global systems.

Tanker traffic has dropped sharply, with vessels waiting in surrounding waters as ship owners reassess the risks. Oil prices surged in response to the strikes and the threat to shipping routes. Analysts have warned that prices could climb significantly higher if the disruption persists.

But crucially, this reaction was not driven solely by actual shortages. Markets respond to uncertainty itself. The mere possibility that several million barrels per day could be disrupted is enough to push prices up, even before supply is properly hit. This reflects a broader feature of geopolitical risk: expectations and perceptions can be as economically powerful as material disruptions.

Because energy underpins almost every sector, these price increases transmit rapidly through supply chains. Higher fuel costs raise transportation expenses, increase production costs and ultimately feed into inflation across goods and services that eventually land with consumers.

The strategic importance of the Gulf states

The disruption is not confined to the strait. Instability across the wider Gulf region also affects the United Arab Emirates, as well as other strategically important energy producers and logistics hubs, such as Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

This dimension matters because the Gulf functions not only as an energy supplier but also as a crossroads in global trade and logistics.

Ports such as Dubai handle vast volumes of international shipping, linking Asia, Europe and Africa. As tensions spread, the reliability of these logistics systems is increasingly called into question.

The result is a shift to more widespread insecurity, where both energy flows and trade infrastructure – things like major container ports, shipping lanes, export terminals and storage facilities – are simultaneously at risk.

Energy is the heart of global supply chains. Manufacturing depends on electricity and fuel, transport relies on oil-based logistics and agriculture depends heavily on natural gas-derived fertilisers. When energy flows are disrupted or become more expensive, the effects propagate across entire networks.

Research on geopolitical crises shows that disruptions to key inputs such as oil and gas quickly translate into broader supply chain instability. This affects production, trade and the availability of goods far beyond the conflict zone. The Iran crisis reflects this dynamic. What begins as disruption in a maritime corridor can become a global economic issue within days.

For decades, global supply chains have been optimised for efficiency. This means that they concentrate sourcing and production in regions that minimise costs. This model has delivered large economic benefits, but it has also created weaknesses in the structure.

The concentration of energy flowing through a single chokepoint such as the strait of Hormuz exemplifies this trade-off. When it is disrupted, the system lacks resilience.

In response, supply chains are likely to accelerate efforts to diversify and invest in alternative energy routes and sources. Countries that are heavily dependent on oil transiting through the Gulf will seek to expand strategic reserves, diversify their import routes and invest in pipelines that bypass maritime chokepoints.

But at the same time, geopolitical instability strengthens the case for renewable energy, electrification and regional energy integration. Expanding solar, wind and green hydrogen capacity reduces exposure to concentrated fossil fuel corridors. And cross-border electricity connections can improve flexibility during shocks. In this sense, resilience is also an energy transition issue.

At the same time, instability in conflict-hit regions can fuel the rise of informal and illegal supply chains, particularly where governance is weakened. These can include things like unregulated oil trading, goods being smuggled through informal maritime routes and labour exploitation hidden within subcontracting chains.

What’s more, supply chains themselves are increasingly shaped by geopolitical forces, as states use trade, energy and logistics networks as instruments of power.

For consumers, this could mean greater price volatility, shortages and reduced choice as firms adjust sourcing strategies in response to sanctions, trade restrictions or security risks. In some cases, it may also mean higher costs over the long term, as businesses prioritise resilience over efficiency.

A turning point for globalisation?

The situation in the strait of Hormuz may mark a turning point in how global supply chains are understood. It has shone a light on a fundamental tension at the heart of globalisation. Efficiency depends on sourcing and production being concentrated in a few locations, but resilience depends on diversification. When critical links in the chain fail, the consequences extend far beyond their immediate location.

This war demonstrates that supply chains are not merely economic systems. They are deeply embedded in geopolitical realities. The challenge ahead is not simply to manage disruption, but to redesign supply chains and energy sources for a world in which geopolitical risk is no longer exceptional, but structural.

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

– ref. The oil price surge is just one symptom of a supply chain network that is not fit for this age of global tensions – https://theconversation.com/the-oil-price-surge-is-just-one-symptom-of-a-supply-chain-network-that-is-not-fit-for-this-age-of-global-tensions-277277

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Geraint Hughes, Reader in Diplomatic and Military History, King’s College London

The British government confirmed on Monday that the RAF base at Akrotiri, Cyprus, had been hit in a drone strike. The resumption of US and Israeli air attacks on Iran – and Iranian reprisal strikes on its neighbours – also highlights the risks to around 300,000 British citizens in the Persian Gulf.

And there is clearly a danger of wider, direct UK military involvement in what appears to be an escalating regional war. Following the launch of “Operation Epic Fury” – the US and Israel’s coordinated strikes across Iran – on Saturday, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, confirmed that RAF aicraft were flying missions to protect allies in the region from Iranian retaliation.

Starmer has also allowed the US to use UK military bases in the Middle East, strictly for “defensive” strikes on Iranian missile sites. He initially refused to allow the US to use the joint military base at Diego Garcia, prompting criticism from Donald Trump. The prime minister said his position changed as it became clear Iran’s retaliatory strikes in the region were putting British lives at risk.

---

Read more:
Iran has been attacked by US and Israel when peace was within reach

---

The UK’s armed forces have long had a presence across the Middle East. Bahrain hosts the United Kingdom Naval Support Facility, which supports Operation Kipion, the Royal Navy’s longstanding maritime security mission in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. This operation dates back to the Armilla Patrol during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The base and its 300 personnel were close to the Iranian missile strike that targeted the US Fifth Fleet’s headquarters on February 28.

Operation Kipion has effectively been suspended as the Royal Navy has withdrawn its two vessels from the Gulf. The frigate HMS Lancaster was decommissioned in December 2025, and the minesweeper HMS Middleton left the Gulf the week before US and Israeli airstrikes began, to return to the UK.

The RAF has a joint squadron with the Qatari Emiri Air Force – 12 Squadron – which is currently deployed to the emirate. One of the RAF’s Typhoon jets with 12 Squadron shot down an Iranian drone launched against Qatar (which also hosts a US air base at Al Udeid) on March 1.

Oman has longstanding defence ties with the UK dating back to the establishment of its armed forces – initially under British command – in July 1958. It has frequently hosted British army and RAF exercises. The port of Duqm has been developed into a logistics hub and a naval base. Britain’s signals intelligence service, GCHQ, also reportedly has three listening posts in the sultanate.

In the wider Middle East and Mediterranean region, the Royal Navy has been an active participant in Operation Prosperity Guardian. This is a US-led mission to protect commercial shipping passing in and out of the Red Sea via the Bad el Mandab Strait from missile and drone attacks by the Houthis. The Houthis are aligned with Tehran and have targeted shipping bound for Israel since November 2023.

Britain also has two Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus (Akrotiri and Dhekelia), with a GCHQ listening post reportedly at Ayios Nikolaos, part of Dhekelia.

As part of the Five Eyes alliance related to intelligence-sharing, GCHQ closely coordinates its eavesdropping operations with its US counterpart, the National Security Agency.

Future UK involvement

The Labour government’s position is that British military assets are being used to support the defence of the Gulf states against Iranian reprisal attacks. But, as I have previously written, the issue of whether Britain should support US military action against Iran is politically controversial.

There is very little domestic support for Britain actively supporting Operation Epic Fury. A YouGov poll taken February 20 found 58% oppose allowing the US to launch air strikes Iran from RAF bases in the UK. And yet, figures on the right, including Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, have accused the Labour government of weakness for not getting more involved.

Since seemingly refusing to initially allow the US to use Diego Garcia, Starmer has announced that the US can use British bases to target Iranian ballistic missiles, on the grounds that these pose a threat to the UK’s Arab allies. The Greens and Liberal Democrats have called for Starmer to put this decision to a vote in parliament.

Starmer has emphasised that Britain will not join in “offensive action”. But Tehran is unlikely to acknowledge this distinction between “defensive” operations and more “offensive” ones targeting its leadership, armed forces and suspected nuclear facilities.

The Iranian missile strike on the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain demonstrates that British military personnel could potentially be at risk from an Iranian attack, even if indirect. The two ballistic missiles fired in Cyprus’s direction may well have been aimed at the USS Gerald Ford and its task group, which is currently in the eastern Mediterranean.

Fundamentally, however, the Islamic regime in Iran is profoundly Anglophobic. It presumes that the US and Britain will always collaborate with each other – just as they did when the CIA and SIS orchestrated the coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq in July 1953.

It is therefore possible that Tehran has assumed British complicity in the launching of Operation Epic Fury, and may well target the UK’s military assets in the Gulf and beyond as a result. Whatever the UK government’s intentions, Britain may find itself drawn into a war it had no say in starting.

Geraint Hughes 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. Britain’s military presence in the Middle East – and how it could be dragged into war – https://theconversation.com/britains-military-presence-in-the-middle-east-and-how-it-could-be-dragged-into-war-277316

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Danielle Turton, Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics, Lancaster University

Imagine time-travelling to Manchester, England in the late 1700s. What do you think people would sound like?

That’s the challenge facing Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee: portraying a working-class Mancunian accent from three centuries ago.

When historical linguists reconstruct past speech, it is an interpretative process. It relies on written evidence, including spelling, poetic rhymes, criticisms in old pronouncing dictionaries about how people ought to speak, and dialect descriptions. From these fragments, we can piece together a historically informed reconstruction.

In the late 18th century, English certainly sounded different, but not unrecognisable. Manchester would have been variably rhotic at this time. This is the pronunciation of the strong “r” sound in words like “star” or “bird”. Rhoticity is a feature shared with present-day American English.

In terms of vowels, the northern pattern in which words like “good” and “blood” are exact rhymes was present then as it is today. Both of these features are present in Seyfried’s portrayal.

Another feature Seyfried exhibits, but which is no longer typical of 21st-century Manchester accents, is her lack of what linguists call diphthongs, or gliding vowels. You can hear this in words she says like “great” and “clothed” where she uses vowel sounds that viewers might recognise from traditionally Lancashire or Yorkshire speech. These sounds were entirely consistent with 18th-century Mancunian accents but not today’s.

Seyfried has said she based her accent on actor Maxine Peake’s – although Peake is from Bolton, and not Manchester proper, this is not a bad decision. Bolton has its own distinct accent, but smaller towns often retain older features for longer while urban centres tend to experience accent changes more quickly.

In that sense, Peake’s accent may reflect features that Manchester has since moved away from, making her a more suitable reference point than a present-day speaker from the city.

Historic accents on screen

Seyfried’s performance sits within a broadly plausible northern English frame. Viewers online are divided: some praise the accent, others find it distracting. The difficulty is that without recordings we cannot know exactly how a Manchester accent sounded in the 18th century. It is though, entirely possible that her pronunciation is closer to historical reality than modern ears expect.

To this end, dialect coaches on historical films face a dilemma: do they recreate the speech of the time as faithfully as possible and risk losing the audience, or use something more contemporary? How far back could we go and still understand English?

We would manage 18th-century English reasonably well. For instance, it’s easier to understand Robinson Crusoe in 1719 than the 1500s English in Shakespeare or even the late 1300s and early 1400s middle English in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. But recognisable does not mean identical, and reproducing it, accent and all, too strictly could alienate viewers.

Most historical films don’t try to recreate how people actually sounded in the past. In Hamnet, which is set in the 1580s, the characters speak in modern received pronunciation instead of the kind of English spoken in Shakespeare’s time.

Even in stories set closer to the 18th century, such as The Favourite, Olivia Coleman’s Queen Anne still sounds distinctly modern – arguably, even more so than her Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown. Actors playing Tudor courtiers, medieval knights and even Shakespeare himself are routinely given modern accents on screen. Audiences rarely question it – or even notice.

Sociolinguistic research has long shown that southern and “prestige” accents, like that of royalty or the upper classes, are often treated as neutral and timeless while regional varieties are more readily linked to place and class. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that when Manchester appears on screen – especially in a historical setting – audiences listen more closely.

Part of that scrutiny might stem from its rarity. Working-class accents are under-represented in major films, and are even less often heard in leading roles. When they do appear, they carry the weight of representation. That scrutiny is understandable. Accent carries belonging, and carelessness can feel dismissive.

Amanda Seyfried seems aware of this sensitivity, noting in interviews that she originally suggested Olivia Cooke, who is from Oldham in Greater Manchester, for the role of Ann Lee. That comment, I think, shows that she recognises something important: these accents signal place, history and belonging and they matter to people.

So how authentic is the accent in The Testament of Ann Lee? In the absence of recordings from that time, certainty is impossible. But perhaps the more interesting question is not whether Seyfried’s accent is perfect, but what it means to hear a northern voice carry a feature film. It shifts our assumptions about what the past sounded like, and about who we imagine at its centre.

Danielle Turton has received funding from The Leverhulme Trust.

– ref. Amanda Seyfried nails the 1700s Manchester accent in The Testament of Ann Lee – a linguist explains how we know – https://theconversation.com/amanda-seyfried-nails-the-1700s-manchester-accent-in-the-testament-of-ann-lee-a-linguist-explains-how-we-know-276917

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Ford, Professor of Biology, University of Portsmouth

A new three-part factual drama, Dirty Business, highlights the murky world of the English water industry. This Channel 4 docudrama follows the lives of two concerned citizens from Oxfordshire in south-east England: a retired police detective called Ash Smith and a retired university professor called Peter Hammond, who is an expert in deciphering patterns in big data sets. Together, they have been investigating sewage discharges into their local river for more than a decade.

The series spotlights their struggles to get information from their water company about releases of untreated sewage, and for the Environment Agency (EA) to take their concerns about pollution seriously. Interwoven with their accounts are tragic stories of several families whose lives have been turned upside down through exposure to contaminated water.

During a beach holiday in Devon in 1999, for example, eight-year-old Heather Preen died after contracting a deadly strain of E. coli. The cause of the outbreak was not identified and a verdict of misadventure was returned by a jury. However, several others who visited the beach that day had also contracted that specific strain of E. coli, making causes such as food poisoning unlikely. Elsewhere in England, the series shows rivers depleted of life and discoloured with sewage.

Water bills are increasing by as much as 47% to improve the failing infrastructure. Customers are angry that some of their money is servicing the debts of the water industry. Meanwhile, reports point to large profits for some water firms.

Dirty Business captures the sense of anger and frustration felt by many people.

As a water pollution scientist with more than 25 years’ experience, I worry about the lack of corporate and political accountability across this sector. That includes financial accountability, accountability for human health, nature and water security.

England’s water industry has been privatised since 1989. As such, water company boards exist to make money for their shareholders.

Many water companies have been fined millions of pounds for polluting discharges, failure to maintain infrastructure and withholding evidence from investigative authorities. However, critics have argued that these fines have been built into the business model, as dividends are not related to environmental performance. The water industry is also now lobbying government against further regulation and fines.

Between 2019 and 2024, water companies in England discharged sewage for a total of 16.3 million hours. This is equivalent to sewage being constantly released from one pipe for more than 1,850 years.

Profit drives pollution

Since privatisation began, water companies in England have paid out an estimated £76 billion in dividends to shareholders while accruing approximately £56 billion in debts. Dirty Business highlights not only what went wrong with the water industry, but the tactics used to deny, deflect and distract from its poor environmental performance.

I have studied the disinformation and misinformation by water companies with Hammond, a professor in computational biology. Our peer-reviewed article in the journal Nature Water highlights how companies maintain their profits by controlling the narrative and influencing the regulatory process.

Our study involved analysing water company communications – including company websites, social media, evidence given to parliamentary committees and public reports. We compared their strategies with a list of 28 tactics commonly used by tobacco, alcohol, fossil fuels and chemical industries to distract from serious environmental and human health issues.

We found that the English water companies and their sponsored lobbyists appeared to be using at least 22 of those tactics to deny, deflect or distort the facts. This results in the delay of civil, regulatory and political scrutiny.

Investigations ongoing

Since 2021, the EA in England has been conducting its largest ever criminal investigation into the water industry – which is still ongoing after five years. The House of Lords has been investigating the industry regulator, Ofwat. There are several other ongoing judicial reviews and civil court cases against several water companies.

A new government watchdog, the Office of Environmental Protection (OEP), has been conducting investigations into the financial and environmental regulators of the water industry. It concluded that “there have been failures to comply with environmental law by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the EA and Ofwat relating to the regulation of network CSOs [combined sewer overflows]”.

CSOs are overflow pipes which discharge untreated sewage into rivers and coasts at times of increased rainfall. These are permitted under certain conditions by the Environment Agency, such as exceptional rainfall, to prevent sewage backing up our drains.

But many swimmers, surfers and other concerned citizens have noticed these CSOs discharging sewage even on days when there was little or no rainfall.

An independent water commission set up by the current government has recommended “a complete overhaul of England and Wales’ water sector” and suggested merging Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and parts of the EA to create one new regulating body. Frustratingly for many, this commission was not given the scope to look into the pros and cons of bringing water back into public ownership.

The UK government halved the EA’s environmental protection budget from £170 million in 2009-10 (following the banking crisis) to £76 million in 2019-22.

Since 2009, the water industry has been left to police its own pollution incidences through a process known as “operator self monitoring” – whereby water companies are responsible for carrying out their own environmental monitoring. Evidenced by whistleblowers, the documentary portrays the shock and frustration within the EA to the rolling back of regulation by senior management.

Dirty Business illustrates how corporate greed and the fundamental lack of governance and regulatory oversight across the nation’s water industry allowed this sewage crisis to happen – at the cost of environmental and human health, and our future water security.

Alex Ford has received funding from UKRI research councils, EU, charities and industrial partners including the water industry. He has co-authored a scientific article with one the main characters serialised in the documentary drama ‘Dirty Business’.

– ref. England’s sewage scandal hinges on lack of water industry regulation – new docudrama reveals how profit drives pollution – https://theconversation.com/englands-sewage-scandal-hinges-on-lack-of-water-industry-regulation-new-docudrama-reveals-how-profit-drives-pollution-276699

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lisa McNally, Honorary Professor and Director of Public Health, University of Birmingham

Anyone born after January 1 2009 will never be able to legally buy tobacco in the UK thanks to the tobacco and vapes bill, which is expected to become law in March 2026. When it does, it will mean that the legal age for tobacco sales will rise by one year every year from 2027 onwards.

I have spent much of my career working on smoking cessation and prevention, including supporting the roll out of England’s indoor smoking ban and leading local health improvement programmes. In 2006, a man once called me a “leftwing, do-gooder, fascist bitch!” after I spoke in the media in support of that ban. He wasn’t the only one to object.

The introduction of the new legislation will likely trigger similarly fierce opposition from supporters of the tobacco lobby. But this time, their arguments may be harder to land.

The government’s aim is to create a “smokefree generation”. The bill will not ban smoking outright, nor affect current smokers. Instead, it will gradually phase out legal sales to younger generations.

From a public health perspective, the logic is well established. Most smokers begin when they are young, and preventing uptake has long been the most effective way to reduce smoking rates. The policy is designed to stop new people starting, including the 127,500 young adults (aged 18 to 25) who take up smoking each year in the UK.

The world will be watching. Aside from the Maldives, the UK is now among the few nations proposing laws aimed at creating a smokefree generation. A similar approach was planned in New Zealand, but it was scrapped following a change of government. There were also reports of sustained lobbying against the new policy.

Those of us working in tobacco control recognise this pattern. Expect warnings about losing £8 billion in tobacco tax receipts, despite the far higher economic costs of smoking through its impact on the NHS, social care and productivity. It is claimed that legal challenges have already begun seeking to undermine the generational approach.

Attempts to invoke fears of a “nanny state” are inevitable. In practice, this argument often centres on defending young people’s right to buy tobacco, a position that has become harder to sustain as evidence of harm has accumulated.

The legislation will initially apply to those aged 18 and under, before extending year by year. Current smokers would not be directly affected. This helps explain the strong public backing for the policy. Opinion polls show support from over two-thirds of the UK population, including many people who smoke.

Enforcement

Responsibility for enforcing tobacco sales laws sits largely with local Trading Standards teams. They inspect retailers, investigate illegal sales and take action against non-compliance, including fines and prosecutions. However, these services have faced years of cuts and staff shortages, limiting their capacity.

From a public health delivery perspective, enforcement is where legislation succeeds or fails. If capacity is weak, rogue retailers may continue to profit from illegal tobacco sales, undermining the policy’s intent.

A recently announced £10 million investment in Trading Standards should strengthen their ability to act, but sustained resourcing will be essential if the law is to work as intended once in force.

Other concerns centre on changes to vaping regulation. The bill introduces new powers to restrict flavours and advertising, and vaping may be banned in some outdoor spaces. These measures aim to reduce the appeal of vaping to children. However, some fear they could also discourage adults from switching away from cigarettes.

Vaping currently plays a significant role in smoking cessation in the UK. Research evidence suggests it can be more effective than standard nicotine replacement therapy for quitting. Policymakers have attempted to balance youth protection with harm reduction, and vaping products will remain widely available. Debate will continue over whether the new restrictions strike the right balance or risk slowing the shift away from smoking.

Whether the UK will achieve a “smokefree generation” is not guaranteed. The legislation will need to be backed by effective enforcement, sustained investment in local public health services and continued support for smoking cessation once it becomes law.

Even so, it represents a significant step forward. The policy is grounded in prevention, supported by public opinion and informed by decades of tobacco control research and practice. If enforcement and cessation support keep pace with legislative ambition, the UK has reason to be cautiously optimistic that this could mark the beginning of a long-term endgame for tobacco.

Lisa McNally is responsible for managing public health budgets received by her employer from the UK Government . She is employed by Worcestershire County Council and is an Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham.

– ref. The UK is about to start an experiment that could end smoking for good – but it won’t be easy – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-is-about-to-start-an-experiment-that-could-end-smoking-for-good-but-it-wont-be-easy-276114

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ahmed Elbediwy, Senior Lecturer in Cancer Biology & Clinical Biochemistry, Kingston University

When South Korean doctors launched a nationwide thyroid cancer screening programme, diagnoses shot up 15 fold. Yet the death rate from thyroid cancer didn’t budge. More patients were being created than lives were being saved.

It is a clear illustration of a problem that is quietly reshaping how doctors think about cancer: overdiagnosis. Not misdiagnosis but the accurate detection of tumours that would not actually harm the patient.

Modern cancer screening is rightly celebrated as one of medicine’s great achievements. Finding cancer early saves lives. But as technology has become ever more sensitive, are we sometimes doing more harm than good?

Better detection

A cancer doesn’t spring from a single rogue cell flicking a switch. It develops through multiple steps, and many clusters of abnormal cells never complete that journey.

Some sit quietly in the body for decades. Only a fraction ever become life threatening. The problem is that once an abnormality is detected and labelled as cancer, it triggers a chain reaction – anxiety, aggressive treatment, serious side-effects – for a condition that might never have caused the patient any trouble at all.

Twenty years ago, many of these abnormalities would have been impossible to find. Today, state-of-the-art imaging and highly sensitive detection tests can identify tiny clusters of abnormal cells, faint genetic changes, and the smallest growths. As that technology improves, the boundary between a dangerous cancer and a harmless biological quirk becomes increasingly blurred.

This raises an uncomfortable question about rising cancer rates, particularly the well documented increase in diagnoses among the under-50s. Is this a genuine biological shift – cancers becoming more aggressive and appearing earlier in life – or is it partly a reflection of the fact that today’s younger adults are being screened, scanned and monitored far more intensively than previous generations?

Thyroid cancer is the starkest example. In South Korea in 2011, that 15-fold surge in diagnoses came almost entirely from screening, not from any real increase in disease. Researchers and clinical bodies eventually revised their guidelines in 2013, moving away from screening slow-growing lesions and towards monitoring rather than immediate surgery.

Prostate cancer tells a similar story. The introduction of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test produced a large jump in diagnoses, but death rates stayed flat – suggesting many men were being treated for cancers that grow so slowly, they never would have become life-threatening.

The consequences were serious. Surgery left many men incontinent or impotent, with no improvement in survival. Guidelines now favour active surveillance for many prostate growths.

For these two types of cancers, also those of the colon, the evidence increasingly points in the same direction: “watchful waiting” is often safer than immediate intervention. Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy all carry significant risks and long-term side effects. Exposing a patient to those risks for a tumour that was never going to threaten their life is difficult to justify.

None of this means early detection should be abandoned. For fast-moving cancers – pancreatic, lung, some breast cancers – finding the disease early remains critical. The challenge is learning to distinguish between the cancers that demand urgent action and those that can safely be watched. That requires not just better technology, but better judgement about when to use it.

Fairness and transparency

Shifting towards a risk-based approach to screening also raises difficult questions about fairness and transparency. Who gets screened, how often and on what grounds? Those decisions carry real consequences, and they deserve a more open public debate than they currently receive.

What is becoming clearer, though, is that the old logic of cancer screening – find it, remove it – is no longer sufficient on its own. Overdiagnosis is a genuine harm, even if it is a less visible one than a missed diagnosis. For some patients, learning to live carefully with a monitored cancer may turn out to be safer than trying to eliminate it entirely.

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

– ref. Overdiagnosis? Why finding cancer isn’t always the same as saving lives – https://theconversation.com/overdiagnosis-why-finding-cancer-isnt-always-the-same-as-saving-lives-275869

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gabriele Aroni, Senior Lecturer in Games Art at the School of Digital Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University

Hironobu Sakaguci, one of the creators of the long-running Final Fantasy game series, once observed: “The game itself is fun to play, but its strongest characteristic is the visual entertainment the game provides.”

This aesthetic appeal is a big part of the enjoyment players take from their favourite games. Far from the simple graphics of early games, players can now explore photorealistic forests in Kingdom Come Deliverance II (2025), cross neon-drenched cities in Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), or explore alien planets in No Man’s Sky (2016) – all while taking pictures of them.

Players have long documented their adventures in virtual worlds. The practice of taking “screenshots” – still images captured from the screen during gameplay, like a single frame from a film – predates today’s culture of live streaming. At the turn of the millennium, players were already sharing screenshots on forums and early social media platforms. Some wanted to show how they had overcome a difficult section of the game, while others highlighted interesting locations, or captured funny moments.

Game developers noticed, and over time “photo modes” became a standard feature in many games. These allow players to pause the action and take pictures of the game as if they were using a virtual camera.

This feature is implemented in different ways. In Grand Theft Auto V (2013), the player character can equip the camera like any other in-game item. They can frame the shots and tune the settings as in a real camera, and export the images from within the game world. Western game Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) even equips the player with a period-accurate 1898 Kodak camera.

Other games still provide a photo mode without tying it to the in-game world. A camera appearing in the inventory of the 13th century samurai of Ghost of Tsushima (2020) would be out of place. But with the powerful photo mode, the player can still modify numerous image settings, and also the game world itself, such as time of day, weather and the character’s facial expressions, to get the “perfect shot”.

In-game photography as art

Video games are a visual medium, and promotional screenshots remain central to how they are advertised. But several artists have now turned in‑game photography into a serious artistic practice, with radically different approaches.

British in-game photographer Duncan Harris is a pioneer. Already active in the early 2000s, his photographic works are collected in the blog Deadendthrills. Harris also produces promotional imagery for major games-publishers. His images push game-engines to their limits, often using custom tools to showcase impressive graphics of detailed characters and sweeping vistas.

Other artists have taken more critical or experimental approaches. Dutch artist Robert Overweg takes pictures from impossible angles: inside a wall, underground or inside buildings that are not meant to be accessed by players. His series Flying and Floating, showing visual glitches and the impossible structures of the 1950s Chicago-like city of the game Mafia 2 (2010), was exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2015.

Los Angeles-based artist Kent Sheely adopts a documentary approach and subverts the gameplay accordingly. For his DoD series, inspired by war photographer Robert Capa, he modified the second world war online shooter Day of Defeat (2003). His character carried no weapons, no user interface cluttered the screen, and the “shoot” button was converted into a screenshotting key, as if he were an actual war photographer on the field.

Sheely’s works have been exhibited at venues including the Fotomuseum Winterhur in Switzerland. Ubisoft commissioned his abstract shots, dubbed “Phantom Arrays”, for the Photomode: Out There in Games exhibition in 2022, which showcased what artists can do with the photo mode of their games.

Swiss artist Pascal Greco occupies yet another position between documentary and the avant-garde. A self-taught filmmaker, cinematographer and photographer, Greco has staged live performances in which he plays Death Stranding (2019) while capturing in-game photographs in front of an audience. His photobook Photography, Video Game, Landscape (2025) presents pristine virtual natural landscapes, devoid of human elements, interjected by glitches – fragmented vistas of these landscapes, between the sublime and the abstract.

Questions of authorship

In 2024, the first academic conference dedicated to in-game photography was held in Milan. Among the key topics was authorship. Who owns the rights to in-game photographs: the photographer who takes the picture, or the developers who created the game?

The work of Italian artist Leonardo Magrelli is emblematic in this regard. His photobook West of Here (2021) collects screenshots taken by other players in Grand Theft Auto V. Magrelli edited them into a black-and-white photobook, echoing the traditions of American documentary photography and appropriation work such as Sherrie Levine’s After Walker Evans (1981).

The project provoked strong reactions from online users, who argued that Magrelli had no right to use images he had not personally captured. Subsequent legal enquiries suggested that, in principle, only Rockstar Games – the developer – could pursue legal action regarding the use of its intellectual property. At the time of writing, no such action has been taken.

In-game photography is an innovative artistic medium that sits at the intersection of play, technology and artistic expression. It is not merely an aesthetic exercise, but rather an experimental terrain where the barrier between spectator and creator is removed, and players become artists, chroniclers or archivists of ever-changing virtual universes.

---

Gabriele Aroni 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. When players become artists: the rise of in-game photography – https://theconversation.com/when-players-become-artists-the-rise-of-in-game-photography-275966

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chris Waiting, Chief Executive Officer, The Conversation

The Conversation UK is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Paul Boyle, Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University, as the new Chair of its Board of Trustees.

Professor Boyle succeeds Professor Nishan Canagarajah, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, who stepped down in December 2025.

Professor Boyle has been Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University since 2019. Prior to this, he was President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, and formerly Chief Executive of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK’s largest funding agency for social science research. He has recently completed a nine-year term as Vice-President of the European University Association, which represents over 800 universities in 48 countries, and eight years as a UUK Board Member. He has previously served as International Champion of Research Councils UK, with responsibility for international strategy across all seven UK research councils, and as President of Science Europe, representing over 50 European funding agencies.

A Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences, Professor Boyle currently chairs Jisc, the not-for-profit organisation providing digital services and solutions to the UK’s higher and further education sector, the British Council Wales Advisory Committee and the UKSA’s Research Accreditation Panel.

Dr David Levy, Deputy Chair of The Conversation UK, who has chaired the Board in the interim, said: “Following a wide search process, the Board was extremely impressed by Paul’s vision for The Conversation and his deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing UK Higher Education. He is the right leader to guide us through the next phase of our development, and we’re thrilled to welcome him.”

Chris Waiting, Chief Executive of The Conversation UK, said: “I’m delighted by Paul’s appointment. His experience spanning research funding, university leadership and international collaboration makes him uniquely placed to champion The Conversation’s mission to make research accessible. I’m looking forward to working with him as we continue to evolve and expand our impact.”

Stephen Khan, Editor of The Conversation UK said: “Since we launched in the UK in 2013, The Conversation has grown into a critical international channel for taking academic knowledge direct to the public. Paul joins us at a key moment, and his combination of research leadership and deep roots in UK higher education makes him a fantastic person to help us shape what comes next.”

Professor Paul Boyle said: “The Conversation is an organisation that I have long admired, and it is a privilege to take on this important role. At a time when universities face unprecedented challenges, The Conversation has a critical mission in connecting research with new audiences and demonstrating the real-world value of academic expertise is vital to the UK Higher Education sector; I therefore very much look forward to the opportunities ahead.”

Professor Boyle will join the Board in May 2026.

About The Conversation

The Conversation is the world’s largest platform for public engagement with research, transforming how universities share knowledge with society. Launched in the UK in 2013, it is now part of a global network of ten editions reaching more than 40 million readers each month.

The Conversation connects academic expertise with public understanding, working with researchers across the UK Higher Education sector and a team of professional editors to produce rigorous, accessible journalism that shapes public debate, informs policy and drives social change. It is funded by more than 90 university members across the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, as well as through grants from UKRI, Research England and Medr, and reader donations. All content is freely available and republished under a Creative Commons licence.

– ref. Professor Paul Boyle appointed Chair of The Conversation UK – https://theconversation.com/professor-paul-boyle-appointed-chair-of-the-conversation-uk-277285