Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robert Simmons, Professor of Economics, Lancaster University

The 2025 summer football transfer window was a record for the English Premier League with teams spending £3.9 billion on transfer fees for new players. That’s more than the top divisions of France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined.

The most expensive transfer was Alexander Isak’s drawn out switch from Newcastle United to Liverpool, who forked out £125 million for the forward and will also pay him a salary of around £13 million a year (plus bonuses).

So there is plenty of money being spent at the top end of English football. But it’s a very different story in the tiers below, where the likes of Morecambe FC and Sheffield Wednesday have spent the summer in crisis over financial issues.

In fact, all three divisions below the Premier League (Championship, League One and League Two) make a financial loss every year. The economic chasm between the teams at the top and those at the bottom is only getting wider and there is an ever-increasing chance that some clubs will soon become insolvent.

And though the economic strife affecting teams in the lower leagues might not seem like such a big problem for the Premier League giants and their fans – any fans of any team, in fact – it should be.

The four divisions (92 clubs) of English league football are linked every season by promotion and relegation. Such is the fluidity of this system that Brighton and Hove Albion and Bournemouth are now enjoying life in the Premier League having gradually clawed their way up from the fourth tier.

In the other direction, Luton Town has been relegated twice in the past two years from the Premier League to League One. The jeopardy attached to the hope and dread of going up or going down is part of what makes English football so captivating – and attractive to broadcasters and sponsors.

If clubs are weak financially, and unable to afford to develop or bring in fresh talent, the whole system risks becoming static. In recent years, even promoted sides struggle (all the teams promoted to the Premier League in the last two seasons have been immediately relegated again), often resulting in unappealing fixtures where weaker teams are thrashed by stronger ones. This kind of competitive imbalance could undermine the value of future broadcast rights fees.

Those fees are important part of the football economy, although again, it is the teams at the top of the tree which benefit the most.

Championship, League One and League Two clubs received negligible fee income from broadcast rights until recently, after a new broadcast deal with Sky TV started in 2024 which is worth £935 million over five years. (The current domestic Premier League deal is worth £6.7 billion over four years.)

Sharing is caring

So lower division clubs now have games accessible to viewers and a new income stream that should help offset financial losses. But the real financial win comes from getting as far up the football pyramid as possible

For the lower leagues then, promotion is always the biggest goal. The new celebrity-backed owners of Birmingham City and Wrexham have the explicit ambition of reaching the Premier League. The end of season playoff final between two Championship teams fighting for promotion to the Premier Leagues is estimated to be worth around £200 million, given the increased broadcast incomes that would follow.

For its part, the Premier League has often restated a commitment to keeping the 92-team hierarchical structure of English football intact, and currently supports teams in the lower leagues through a mechanism of “solidarity payments”.

As of the 2024-25 season, these payments were £5.5 million per club for Championship teams (apart from those relegated from EPL which receive much larger “parachute payments” instead), £1 million per club for League One and £0.75 million per club for League Two.

Nevertheless, many EFL clubs still rely on loans and capital injections, often by their owners, to get by. And the gap in economic power remains vast.

In 2023-24, Liverpool’s total revenue was £614 million while Morecambe’s was £4.57 million.

If the EPL is serious about sustaining the 92-team hierarchical structure in England then there is scope for dramatically increasing these solidarity payments – which could be made conditional on sound financial practices by receiving clubs. Like a wealth tax for football, more generous payments would essentially help to reduce economic inequality across English football as a whole, and make for a financially much healthier sport.

Robert Simmons 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. Big-spending Premier League needs to spread more of its wealth to poorer clubs or everyone loses – https://theconversation.com/big-spending-premier-league-needs-to-spread-more-of-its-wealth-to-poorer-clubs-or-everyone-loses-263750

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Hastings Dunn, Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the visit he made six years ago, while Elizabeth II was on the throne.

Although it’s unprecedented for a head of state to visit twice, Trump’s second visit, from September 16 to 18, is consistent with royal protocol. This dictates that a head of state can make one visit to the UK per monarch, so given that Charles III is now the UK’s head of state, the protocol allows for Trump to make a second visit.

Much has changed in the world and in the US president’s approach in the years since Trump’s first visit. From a British perspective the aim will be to gloss over the differences between the two leaders and stress continuity in UK-US relations.

This means underlining the historic relationship between the UK and the US, their common heritage, cultural and political traditions, and their shared values and international outlook. State visits are a pictorial narrative of symbolic connectivity, both cultural and political, a visible link to past visits and relationships.

To achieve this, the Trumps will visit St George’s Chapel at Windsor, inspect the guard of honour and be taken on a tour of the Royal collection in Green Drawing Room of Windsor Castle, where they will be shown objects which relate to British and American shared history.

A joint flypast of British and American air force F-35 aircraft will symbolise both industrial and military collaboration as the embodiment of the “special relationship”. As with last time, the programme has been choreographed to keep Trump a safe distance from protesters and politics.

This – as last time – will be the “heritage and high life” version of Britain. This visit represents a high point in Trump’s journey from the outer boroughs of New York to the heart of what he regards as elite society.

Symbolically, it seems to complete his mother’s journey, after fleeing poverty in Scotland in the 1930s, for her son to now be hosted and feted by the British monarch. Trump’s love of the royal family is well documented; their global fame, celebrity and high regard are aspects of performative public life that he aspires to emulate.

Potential pitfalls

Trump’s visit comes as the UK grapples with a number of issues in which the US has a significant interest. First is the removal of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US.

Mandelson is known to have developed a friendly relationship with the US president, so the subject of his dismissal and its circumstances – over a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein – may be at the front of Trump’s mind as his opponents at home press to discover more about the nature of his own relationship with the disgraced financier.

Another issue is the UK government’s pledge to recognise Palestinian statehood alongside other G7 allies such as France and Canada.

The official US position, repeated recently by the American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is that recognition of the state of Palestine would be “disastrous” and “rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”. And you’d imagine the UK government will be keen for Trump to avoid references to recent anti-immigration marches.

For Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, the hope must be that Trump and his team will be on their best behaviour during the visit for fear of spoiling the celebratory mood. Perhaps repeatedly stressing the “special relationship” will help insulate the UK from Trumpian criticism.

The real test of this will be after all the royal pageantry of honour guards, flypasts and state banquets, when Trump is due to meet Starmer at Chequers on September 18. Starmer will want the narrative to focus on a new “landmark” deal on building nuclear reactors between the two countries. He will be hoping to negotiate a more favourable tariff regime on UK steel exports.

It’s unlikely, though, that Mandelson’s sacking and Palestinian statehood will not be raised. The potential for the US president to air his views in public is one which must be worrying the UK prime minister and his advisers.

The US president has demonstrated his tendency to try to dominate every news cycle by provocative acts and statements – what’s known as “flooding the zone”. On his first state visit to the UK, he preceded the trip with an interview in The Sun newspaper, in which he intervened in the leadership contest underway in the Conservative party.

He endorsed Boris Johnson, saying he would make an excellent new premier. On Trump’s arrival he immediately engaged in a Twitter exchange with London Major Sadiq Khan, who had opposed his visit, calling him “a stone cold loser”.

A very different president

In his first term of office, Trump’s presidency was largely managed by the so-called “adults in the room”. He was surrounded by establishment advisers who protected the novice president and the wider world from some of his more erratic impulses and wilder instincts.

His second term, however, represents a very different version of Trump in power. Surrounded by loyalists and enablers, Trump has set about dismantling the traditional idea of what American power represents, at home and abroad. From the domestic turmoil as his policies repeatedly challenge US constitutional norms to his erratic and often dangerous trade and foreign policies, the contrast is striking.

Part of the way in which this manifests in foreign policy is a willingness to leverage American power to advance US national interests, apparently without concessions to America’s allies. Trump’s willingness to demand support for the fossil fuel industry, to press for a tougher approach to China, and his championing of an absolutist approach to free speech are all features of this second-term strategy – and may well be on the agenda when he meets Starmer.

With a US president who appears willing to change his foreign policy approach based on how he may feel on any given day, it’s a visit fraught with potential pitfalls.

David Hastings Dunn has previously received funding from the ESRC, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Open Democracy Foundation and has previously been both a NATO and a Fulbright Fellow.

– ref. Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK: the pageantry, politics and pitfalls – https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-second-state-visit-to-the-uk-the-pageantry-politics-and-pitfalls-265295

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Naomi Baker, Senior Lecturer in English Renaissance Literature, Manchester University

Women have been describing their experiences of male abuse for centuries – we just haven’t always been ready to listen to them.

In the 17th century, Anne Wentworth (1630-c.1693) spoke out against her abusive husband and the religious institution that protected him. She knew it was risky to reveal the shocking truth about an outwardly charming man who was regarded as a pillar of the community. Yet she felt compelled to tell her story.

Not only was her own life – and that of her daughter – on the line, but William Wentworth’s abusive behaviour was evidence of corruption within the Baptist church of which they were both members. Wentworth believed herself to be on a divinely appointed mission. God was using her as his “battleaxe”, she claimed, the instrument with which he would excise the rottenness at the heart of this religious community.

The remarkable Wentworth, who published accounts of her experience of spousal abuse, is one of a dozen dissenting 17th-century women whose incredible stories I tell in my book, Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century.

Like the other women in the book, Anne prioritised her sense of God’s voice speaking in her conscience above all else – a stance that empowered her to stand up to institutional forms of power and oppression. William and his powerful Baptist allies did everything they could to silence and to discredit her. But no amount of intimidation could divert her from her quest to bring the truth about her husband to light.

Originally from Lincolnshire, Anne married William, probably a glove dealer, in around 1652. They lived in London, where they were members of a “Particular” (or Calvinist) Baptist congregation. For almost 20 years, William “grossly abused” Anne both mentally and physically, being such a “scourge and lash” to her that she “lived in misery”.

By the time she was 40 years old, she was physically and emotionally spent. After so many years of suffering “great oppression and sorrow of heart”, Anne collapsed with a “hectic fever”. Narrowly escaping death, she believed that God had spared her life for a reason. No longer willing to live a lie, she decided that it was time not only to leave her husband but to declare her “testimony” to “the world”.

For years she had suffered in silence but now the truth poured out of her. In just four years she published four searing accounts of her experiences, including A True Account of Anne Wentworth’s Being Cruelly, Unjustly, and Unchristianly Dealt With by Some of Those People Called Anabaptists (1676) and A Vindication of Anne Wentworth (1677).

‘Mad’ women

Anne knew that publishing her story would enrage her husband and would alienate her from the church community that “could not bear the truth to be spoke” about him.

Her story was met with hostility, as she knew it would be. In the eyes of the Baptists, she wrote, she was a “proud, passionate, revengeful, discontented, and mad woman”, one who had “unduly published things to the prejudice and scandal of [her] husband” and had “wickedly left him”. She had given an account of decades of abuse, but it was Anne rather than William who was hauled before the leaders of their church, charged with “rejecting and neglecting their church” and with “dissatisfying” her husband.

Soon afterwards, Anne’s husband locked her out of her home. And then on September 25 1677 he committed what to Anne’s mind was his worst crime to date. Determined to suppress her testimony, William ran off with all her manuscripts, destroying six-years’ worth of writing. So “cruel” and “unchristian” had he become that by the following month Anne and her daughter were in hiding, having been forced to run for their lives. Her only so-called crime, she pointed out, was her writing: “Oh, injustice!”

It was Anne’s spiritual convictions that inspired her to speak out against oppression and injustice. She believed that God had spoken to her personally, calling her to fight not simply against her husband or the Baptist church but against wider forces of evil and oppression. Like many in her era, she believed herself to be living in the end times, when the battle against Antichrist spoken of in the biblical book of Revelation would reach its climax.

As a religious hypocrite, William in Anne’s view embodied the spirit of Antichrist, meaning that her crusade to expose the truth about him became to her mind nothing short of an apocalyptic struggle. It was this sense of the cosmic significance of her “testimony” that empowered her to tell her story.

Anne’s account of her experiences ends on a happy note. A year after being locked out of her home, she managed to regain entry, immediately changing the locks so that her husband no longer had the “power to come and put her out”. Supported by her remaining friends, she was back in the home where she had first put pen to paper, risking her reputation, home and community for the sake of speaking the truth.

Anne faced severe repercussions for telling the unvarnished truth about her life, but her determination to do so means that her story remains available to us today. It stands as testimony to one 17th-century woman’s refusal to be silenced.

---

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.

---

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org, so if you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Naomi Baker 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 17th-century woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse – https://theconversation.com/the-17th-century-woman-who-wrote-about-surviving-domestic-abuse-260128

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julie Curtis, Professor of Russian Literature (Emerita), University of Oxford

While Vladimir Putin imposes ever-harsher restrictions on freedom of speech some people still seek to voice opposition to him, inside and outside Russia. The exhibition NO in Berlin was dedicated to these people – “to all those who have the courage to disagree.”

Its main focus was the respected media organisation Meduza, established in Latvia in 2014 by journalists fleeing the increasingly restrictive policies of oligarch media moguls and the Russian security services after the annexation of Crimea.

Meduza’s coverage has remained a trusted source for those in the west and in Russia (where it has yet to be blocked) wanting closely to follow events under the Putin regime. The significance of Meduza’s work, which is published in Russian and English, has only been heightened by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

NO, held in Berlin’s Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien cultural centre, was a multidisciplinary exhibition that wove together contemporary art and documentary testimonies. The first section of the exhibition featured the works of 13 artists from Russia and elsewhere reflecting upon key themes inspired by Meduza’s work: dictatorship, censorship, exile, war, resistance, fear, loneliness, polarisation, and hope.

The second featured a specially commissioned documentary by Russian playwright and exile Mikhail Durnenkov. The video project reflects on the last ten years of Meduza and uses the testimonies of its journalists and collaborators.

As soon as the invasion of Ukraine began, the Russian authorities announced that publishing any account of the events which did not correspond to official versions could incur up to 15 years in prison. The journalists of Meduza, naturally, have not respected these constraints. As the film critic Anton Dolin puts it in the documentary: “I’m a product of the 1990s [after the collapse of the USSR], I’m used to feeling like an adult, a person who chooses his own trajectory.”

Telling the truth, and thereby inevitably expressing solidarity with Ukraine as the victim of Russian aggression, led to Meduza being proclaimed an “undesirable organisation” in 2023. This now means that criminal charges may be brought against anybody who so much as mentions Meduza’s existence on their social media. Those anonymous contributors who are still working within Russia are therefore taking extraordinary risks.

The Russian authorities have started to restrict access to VPNs (virtual private networks, used for confidential access to websites), banned the Meduza app and, as the testimonies in the documentary attest, have also deployed spyware to harass individuals and mounted relentless cyber-attacks to try and close the Meduza site down.

Even abroad, Meduza’s journalists take care not to reveal their office’s address, not to bring visitors there or even have food delivered. All this only serves, of course, to underline the significance of Meduza’s work, and the extent of the threat the Russian government perceives from its fearless reporting.

Life in exile

Most of the journalists interviewed for the exhibition now find themselves involuntarily in exile. While over 6 million Ukrainians have fled to Europe as refugees because of the war, around 650,000 Russians have also left Russia during the same period.

Once in Europe, they are left wondering just what their status is abroad: are they themselves refugees? Political émigrés? Have they become effectively the opposition to Putin in exile? Will they ever return to their native country, for which some have a love-hate relationship?

Life in exile is a contradictory existence. There are benefits of a material kind, and journalists are for the most part physically safe. And yet, as the exhibition shows, they feel profoundly rootless, cut off from their normal lives and environments, welcome neither at home nor entirely in their new countries. They maintain a bridge to their home country, yet it is a bridge they cannot imagine themselves crossing in the foreseeable future. Many of the journalists are still young, many of them women.

Galina Timchenko, co-founder and publisher of Meduza, reflects on the paternalism of dictatorship, which guarantees security and stability for the national “family” at the expense of individual freedom. And the war correspondent and writer Elena Kostyuchenko adds: “War is a concentration of patriarchal culture, its manifestation.”

One anonymous contributor from within Russia comments:

“At the beginning of the war, I thought that people supported the war because they didn’t know what was really happening. […] It turns out the problem isn’t so much that journalists can’t tell the truth about the war, but that people to whom that truth is addressed don’t want to hear it.”

One Meduza editor reported utter dismay upon discovering that even their own family members believed the attack on Ukraine to be justified. And yet the journalists persevere.

There is little optimism in this exhibition. Most contributors acknowledge that they have little chance of overcoming the Leviathan that is Putin’s police state. The violent deaths of several journalists within Russia, the murder of politician Boris Nemtsov in Moscow in 2015, and the suspicious death of the politician and vocal critic of Putin Aleksey Navalny in prison in 2024 were shattering blows to liberal hopes for a more democratic future.

The Meduza journalists live with fear and guilt about what might happen to them physically, or to their loved ones back home. As Meduza’s co-founder Ilya Krasilshchik puts it:

Inside the country, we have a decimated civil society, opposition leaders killed or imprisoned, and people who have fallen into a state of apathy. Externally, there is the attack on Ukraine and an alliance with the worst political regimes on the planet…But even now, we know of people who have spent years speaking out against authoritarianism, dictatorship and war…Even when it’s impossible to win, we can save ourselves, our family, friends, values and sense of self-esteem.

These émigrés fall back on a personal code of ethics, a belief in the transformative power of non-violent acts of resistance, solidarity with fellow dissidents and a genuine sense of community. Saying “no” powerfully outweighs the dangers of saying nothing at all.

---

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.

---

Julie Curtis 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. Meduza: Berlin exhibition highlights the publication speaking truth to Putin while in exile – https://theconversation.com/meduza-berlin-exhibition-highlights-the-publication-speaking-truth-to-putin-while-in-exile-263006

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elsa Devienne, Assistant Professor in History, Northumbria University, Newcastle

In October 1984, volunteers on the coast of Oregon hauled away 26 tonnes of waste in a single day, most of it plastics. It was the first beach cleanup of its kind – part scientific survey, part environmental action – and it helped expose how the plastic industry was polluting the ocean.

Today, however, beach cleanups risk becoming feel-good exercises that let the industry off the hook. Over the decades, the focus shifted. And up until fairly recently, associated reports no longer named companies, but blamed “people” or “us”.

But in the 1980s, three unsung women had a different vision of cleanups as citizen science, aimed squarely at corporate polluters. They wanted hard evidence of where the litter came from and who was responsible. This is a key conclusion of my academic research: if beach cleanups are to fulfil their promise, they must go back to their roots and hold producers – not careless people – accountable.

That was the original strategy. Back in 1984, 47-year-old Judie Neilson was working at her desk at the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department when she happened upon a specialist magazine containing an article on ocean plastics.

Neilson knew that marine animals got stuck in fishing nets but, she told me recently in an interview for the Plastisphere podcast, she “didn’t know they had an appetite for Styrofoam”. The story of a brown bear found dead in Yakutat Bay in Alaska with 13 plastic cups in its stomach stuck with her. She had to do something.

Armed with decades of experience as an environmental volunteer, the cleanup Neilson designed was a collective experiment, an opportunity not just to clean, but to collate data on the number and type of trash. Neilson was adamant: this “[was] not an anti-litter campaign.”

Not only did the 2,100 volunteers collect those 26 tonnes of trash, but they returned 1,600 questionnaires, detailing the number and type of garbage. The data revealed a shocking state of affairs: 60% was expanded polystyrene.

The Oregon cleanup made the headlines and soon spread to other states. In 1985, there were “Debris-A-Thons” in New Jersey, “Beach Sweeps” in North Carolina, and “Get the Trash Out of the Splash” in Alabama.

But 1986 was when the cleanup took on a truly national and scientific dimension. That year, the campaign group Ocean Conservancy organised the first “Coastal Cleanup” along the Texas shoreline. Two women were at the helm. One of them, marine biologist Kathy O’Hara, was writing a scientific report on marine litter for the US Environmental Protection Agency, which identified plastics as the number one marine debris.

The other, Linda Maraniss, had just relocated to Texas with her husband and two children. As a newcomer to the state, she had been shocked when visiting Padre Island National Seashore, a wild coastline on the Gulf of Mexico: “This isn’t a beach,” she thought, “it’s a landfill”.

Inspired by Neilson’s efforts, Maraniss and O’Hara organised a statewide coastal cleanup on September 20 1986, hoping it would provide hard facts on, to quote O’Hara’s report: “what types of plastic is out there, where it comes from, what it does, or who controls it”.

So where was all the plastic from? Beachgoers? In contrast to the the “Crying Indian” campaign in the 1970s – a famous advert, funded by the soda and packaging industry, that blamed pollution on individual litterbugs rather than corporations – the plastic trash could not only be blamed on beachgoers.

Volunteers found salt fishing bags, hard hats, fishing nets. This was evidence that plastic pollution was mainly caused by the fishing, petroleum, boating and cruising industries. Ocean dumping (from boats and oil platforms) was rife.

A shift in focus

By the early 1990s, International Coastal Cleanup Day had become a major global effort involving almost all US states, and 12 countries across the globe. It also had won important victories, including the enforcement of the ocean dumping ban on plastics. But it hadn’t made a dent in the marine pollution problem.

So, in the early 2000s, Ocean Conservancy changed its strategy. First, cleanups now focused on “land-based” sources of waste – a change backed by the data.

But the exact origin of land-based garbage was much harder to ascertain. Since land-based waste was usually made up of consumer items (plastic bottles, bags and the like), consumers, who had largely been absent from earlier reports, were now visible.

Second, cleanup reports stopped classifying the type of trash by material. Instead, they shifted to linking beach waste to activities, with “shoreline and recreational activities” in first place.

Counting plastics, depending on the method adopted, can lead to different conclusions. In the 2000s, the word “plastic” almost disappeared from cleanup reports. Instead, beach picnickers or, even more vaguely, “people” were blamed. By focusing on individual behaviour rather than the material, cleanups tended to obscure the responsibility of the companies selling plastics.

Today, Ocean Conservancy still runs International Coastal Cleanup Day (in fact, this year is the 40th cleanup) and the classification by material type has been reintroduced. Meanwhile, activists from the Break Free From Plastic coalition run different kinds of cleanups.

Their “brand audits” use citizen science to document the brands whose products end up in the ocean and hold them accountable. In their last cleanup report, volunteers found 31,564 coke bottles, with The Coca-Cola Company and Pepsico being the corporations whose brands were by far the most commonly found.

As plastic production soars, beach cleanups can’t just tidy up the mess. Like the pioneers from the 1980s, cleanup organisers need to confront the industries behind it, and demand we move away from unnecessary single use plastics.

Elsa Devienne receives funding from a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant.

– ref. Meet the women who turned beach cleanups into a global movement – and what was forgotten along the way – https://theconversation.com/meet-the-women-who-turned-beach-cleanups-into-a-global-movement-and-what-was-forgotten-along-the-way-264652

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Putu Agus Khorisantono, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet

Taste is often thought to be controlled solely by our tastebuds. But maybe you’ve noticed how food can taste bland when you have a cold and and your nose is blocked? This common experience highlights just how important our sense of smell is when it comes to taste – and how strongly the two are connected.

When we eat something, two processes happen simultaneously. First, the taste buds on the tongue are activated by the food. At the same time, the odours from these foods travel up through the mouth and into the back of the nose – a process called “retronasal smelling”. These two processes combine in the brain to create the sensory experience we call flavour.

The connection between these two processes is extremely powerful. Just as blocking your sense of smell can alter the way your food tastes, aroma alone can also be perceived as a taste.

But though this phenomenon is well established, the mechanism behind it remained unknown. So we conducted a study that set out to understand why smell can control our taste. We discovered that aroma triggers a similar response in the brain as taste does – even if a person hasn’t actually “tasted” anything.

To conduct our study, we recruited 25 people to our laboratory. For the first part of the study, each person was given a variety of different beverages to test. These tasted and smelled of different sweet and savoury flavours. For the sweet flavours, participants were given beverages that tasted and smelled like golden syrup, raspberry or lychee. For the savoury flavours, the beverages tasted and smelled of bacon, chicken broth or onion.

Our tasters then performed a learning task where they had to correctly remember the abstract visual cues each flavour had been assigned. This helped the participants to establish a strong connection between the taste and smell components of each flavour.

Next, we scanned each person’s brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This allowed us to see the brain’s responses to the various stimuli by measuring changes in blood flow. During these scanning sessions, we presented our volunteers with drinks that had only one type of sensory input – either taste or smell, but not both.

Then we used machine learning to identify unique patterns in how different areas of the brain responded when it was exposed to a sweet or savoury taste, or a sweet or savoury aroma.

As expected, we saw that the insula (the brain area that is the primary taste hub) showed different responses to sweet and savoury tastes. But it also showed a pattern of response to both sweet and savoury odours.

Most importantly, the odour response patterns overlapped with the taste patterns. This means that the insula responds to odours in a similar way as it responds to taste. So if a person smells something sweet, the brain would respond in the same way as if you’d actually eaten something sweet.

This overlap was even more pronounced when we looked specifically at the insula’s “dysgranular” and “agranular” regions. These regions are involved in processing perceptual signals from within the body. Since hunger and thirst signals also come from the body, this could suggest that the brain uses the odour of a food to determine whether it would satisfy the body’s nutritional needs.

Flavour response

This changes what we think about the insula’s role in food perception. It was once thought to just be a taste processing site, but our research shows it’s a far more sophisticated structure that takes in taste information and integrates it with other sensory components to create flavour.

These results were also the first ever to directly show the overlapping brain response between tastes and smells in the brain’s taste centre. Essentially, this indicates that when we eat something, we perceive food odours as tastes because they induce the same response patterns in the insula as actual tastes.

Our findings have exciting implications for understanding sensory experiences and could lead to advances in the field.

The clearest application is creating innovative foods and drinks that use aromas to compensate for the removal of less healthy ingredients – such as sugar, salt or fat. But there’s still a lot we need to learn about how odours and tastes affect our dietary habits.

Understanding how this mechanism works could also help people with a reduced sense of smell (anosmia) since they may form flavour preferences differently than the rest of the population.

We’re currently conducting a follow-up study to see if this phenomenon also occurs with odours that are perceived outside of the mouth (known as orthonasal smelling). This happens when we sense an odour by sniffing it. Orthonasal smelling plays a pivotal role in food anticipation. If this does lead to a similar activation as taste, it would mean that smell is crucial to hunger regulation.

In fact, rodent research indicates that food smells encourage eating by activating a subgroup of neurons. And, this activation is inhibited when that food is eaten. Understanding how this works would unlock a host of techniques to manage eating behaviour.

Our study also showed that while responses to tastes and odours overlap, this flavour response changed throughout the course of the experiment – becoming less distinct as time went on. This suggests that when you’re repeatedly exposed to a smell without tasting it, the brain stops associating the two over time. So you might stop “tasting” these aromas if you don’t reinforce the connection occasionally.

Better understanding just how the brain processes our sense of taste and smell could have important implications for influencing eating behaviour. Some day, it could be possible to reduce cravings and guide food choices using smell alone.

Janina Seubert receives funding from the European Research
Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme (grant agreement n° 947886) and from the
Swedish Research Council (VR 2018-0318 and VR 2022-02239).

Putu Agus Khorisantono 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. Smell triggers the same brain response as taste does – even if you haven’t eaten anything – https://theconversation.com/smell-triggers-the-same-brain-response-as-taste-does-even-if-you-havent-eaten-anything-264922

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Benedict Michael, Professor, Infectious Neuroscience, University of Liverpool

A school-age child has died from a devastating brain complication of measles in Los Angeles, highlighting the deadly consequences of declining vaccination rates.

The child, who was too young to receive the measles vaccine, developed subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) – a progressive and almost always fatal brain condition that strikes years after initial measles infection.

SSPE affects around one in 10,000 people who contract measles, but the risk soars to one in 600 for infants infected before their first birthday. The condition causes progressive brain scarring and inflammation, typically emerging six to eight years after the original measles infection.

Early symptoms can be mistaken for learning difficulties or concentration problems. But over months, patients develop rapidly worsening dementia, uncontrollable jerking movements and seizures. Despite treatment attempts with antiviral and anti-inflammatory drugs, nearly all patients die within five years.

The tragedy underscores growing concerns about measles outbreaks in countries with previously high vaccination coverage. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported nearly 1,500 measles cases so far this year alone.

The anti-vaccine legacy

Declining vaccination rates stem partly from fraudulent research attempting to link the MMR vaccine to autism – claims by a now-discredited doctor that have been thoroughly debunked. Social media misinformation has amplified these fears, potentially worsened by COVID pandemic scepticism around vaccines.

Before measles vaccination began in the 1960s, the UK saw between 100,000 and 800,000 cases annually. Globally, the disease killed around 2-3 million people each year. Measles remains one of the most contagious viruses known, infecting nine out of ten unvaccinated people exposed to it.

The measles vaccine is 97% effective and prevented more than 60 million deaths worldwide between 2000 and 2023. Crucially, high vaccination rates create “herd immunity” that protects infants too young for vaccination – like the child who died in Los Angeles.

Medical experts can diagnose SSPE through brain scans, electrical activity tests and spinal fluid analysis to detect antibodies against the replicating measles virus. However, treatment options remain extremely limited due to the condition’s rarity, which prevents large-scale clinical trials.

It comes about because the measles virus can lie dormant in the body after infection, later mutating and attacking the brain. This causes irreversible widespread brain cell death and inflammation – the “panencephalitis” that gives SSPE its name.

While SSPE was once common in developing countries, it has become rare in nations with robust childhood vaccination programmes. However, falling vaccination rates now threaten to bring back this and other preventable diseases.

Given the years-long delay between measles infection and SSPE development, health officials warn that more tragic cases may follow current outbreaks. By the time SSPE cases become common, it will be too late to prevent a great many more through vaccination.

The death in LA serves as an important reminder that measles is not a benign childhood illness. It can cause serious complications, including pneumonia and, as this case shows, delayed but deadly brain damage years later.

Benedict Michael is affiliated with Encephalitis International.

– ref. Child dies from complications of measles years after infection – SSPE explained – https://theconversation.com/child-dies-from-complications-of-measles-years-after-infection-sspe-explained-265220

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt Barlow, Lecturer International Political Economy, University of Glasgow

In his first real electoral test since sweeping to power in October 2023, the party of Argentina’s right-wing populist president, Javier Milei, has suffered a landslide defeat. The result can be read as an emphatic reminder of the remarkable endurance in Argentina of Peronism – the movement named after former president Juan Perón.

The ideology is grounded in the state taking a leading role in the economy through progressive policies to deliver social justice – the antithesis of Milei’s mission to cut the state down to size.

Elections in the province of Buenos Aires on September 7 left Milei’s Liberty Advances party on 34% of the vote with the various factions of the Peronist party (under the banner of Homeland Force Front) on 47.4%.

While it was essentially a provincial election, the contest took on a symbolism nationally. Milei himself had framed it as a life-or-death battle between his libertarian movement and the left-wing wealth redistrubutive politics of Peronism.

Since 2003, the movement has often been called Kirchnerism because of its association with Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Both were once president of the country representing the Peronist party.

Despite being barred from seeking public office due to corruption charges, Fernández de Kirchner continues to dominate left-wing progressive politics in Argentina. Before the vote in Buenos Aires province, Milei argued that it was a chance for voters to put the final nail in the coffin of Kirchnerism by backing his liberal policies.

This idea of putting an end to Kirchnerism is an interesting one. Speaking with an Argentinian academic friend after Milei’s 2023 victory – the biggest vote margin since the return to democracy in 1983 – my friend said: “Kirchnerismo is dead”. In his eyes, the scale of the defeat meant that politically it could not come back from it.

I disagreed, because social justice and wealth redistribution underpin Kirchnerist progressive policies. This is certainly polarising, but it maintains significant support. Kirchnerism has been the left-wing identity of the Peronist party since 2003, and the Peronist ideology is deeply embedded in Argentinian society.

The recent vote was Milei’s first litmus test since taking his “chainsaw” to the Argentinian state through his programme of deep austerity. The 13 percentage point loss was a clear rejection of his policies in the most populous province, which accounts for 40% of the Argentinian population.

And while Buenos Aires province is traditionally a Peronist stronghold, in 2023 Milei came within 1.5% of taking it, showing that his anti-establishment appeal had gained widespread support. But after less than two years in office, the political pendulum looks to be swinging back to the Left.

Página 12, a left-wing Kircherist newspaper, summed up this idea of the battle between two social and economic visions. Its headline, “Peronism had defeated the austerity and hunger of Milei”, pointed to the extreme spending cuts for which he is now infamous.

---

Read more:
Kemi Badenoch says she wants to be Britain’s Javier Milei – but is the Argentinian president a model to follow?

---

But what does this defeat mean for the president ahead of Argentina’s October mid-term legislative elections?

First, it suggests the political capital that Milei held in 2023 has quickly eroded. When campaigning, Milei took advantage of disillusionment with the political status quo. Then, he had the advantage of being a political outsider with radical ideas that could, perhaps, work.

Now, for nearly two years his rhetoric has shaped policies that directly impact the lives and livelihoods of citizens.

Milei’s policies have managed to tame inflation. The level of rampant monthly price rises has been brought down to around 2% from the more than 7% seen in 2022. But this figure is of little comfort to many for whom his policies, such as freezing pensions, disability benefits and wages below inflation and cutting energy and transport subsidies, has made lives much harder.

In June 2025, unemployment figures reached 7.9% – the highest level since 2021. Surveys show that more than 50% of Argentine workers fear losing their jobs. Milei’s cuts to state spending on education, social care, healthcare and infrastructure have all contributed to the unemployment figures.

Real wages are being eroded as salaries fail to keep pace with inflation. And Milei’s removal of currency controls has meant that the Argentine peso has appreciated significantly against the dollar.

This is pushing up the cost of living in dollar terms, which is bad news for Argentinians. For years, many have saved in dollars to avoid the plummeting value of the peso.

Argentina is now one of the most expensive countries in Latin America – with some of the lowest salaries. All of this means that 63.7% of Argentinians are finding it more difficult to make it to the end of the month financially.

Political headwinds

Second, Milei’s hopes of expanding his minority in the country’s congress, in order to deepen his project of economic liberalism, have taken a big hit. Opposition politicians watered down his package of economic reforms, so gaining influence in the senate and chamber of deputies is essential if he is to go further.

The Peronists are the largest bloc in the country’s congress, so Milei must make significant gains in the mid-terms to counter this.

Many political commentators are suggesting that this defeat should be a point of reflection, leading Milei to change course. The president has no such plans for now though, and instead has vowed to double down on austerity.

But herein lies the problem. Milei promised that his radical policies were the answer to Argentina’s longstanding economic problems. But while making substantial progress in his agenda – with strong support from the IMF – his policies to tame inflation, balance the budget, and to deliver stability and growth are not yet being felt by Argentinians.

And reports of corruption against his sister Karina Milei (also secretary-general of his presidency) have rocked this anti-establishment president. This is the man who promised to fight the corruption.

It has been a tumultuous few weeks for the Argentine president. But does it spell the beginning of the end for Milei’s radical economic policies? The extent to which the Buenos Aires province is a barometer for national sentiment will become clear on October 26.

Matt Barlow 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. Is Milei’s electoral blow the beginning of the end for his radical economic vision? – https://theconversation.com/is-mileis-electoral-blow-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-his-radical-economic-vision-265099

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pinky Jain, Head of Teacher Education, Leeds Beckett University

Some children at primary school, as they head into a new school year, will find themselves learning alongside children of different ages. Year one and year two might be educated in the same classroom, for instance.

Many schools have mixed year group teaching for a range of reasons. It might be because of the size of school: in schools with a small number of pupils, it may be more practical to combine classes.

In other situations, the school may have expertise that they would like to use in the best possible way, and they feel that putting year groups together would be the best way to support all children. This might be because both year groups need to build strength in a particular subject, which a certain teacher specialises in. Or it might be the best way to make use of the school’s resources, such as teaching assistant expertise, to support children.

The routine and structure of the class will be set up to support each child and also ensure that the right level of learning is provided to children.

Much of the research carried out on mixed-age classes is based in small rural schools, as that is where there tends to be the most mixed-age classrooms. It is worth noting that the outcomes of these small schools are generally as good as schools nationally. Research has found limited impact on children, their learning and outcomes as a result of mixed-age classes.

A review of research findings on mixed-age classrooms has found that there is no empirical evidence that student learning suffered from this style of learning. In fact, some students in mixed-age classrooms have reported higher scores in their attitudes towards school and self-concept (how they feel about themselves) compared to their peers in single-age classrooms.

Reflecting the real world

In the world outside school, children regularly interact across a wide range of ages. At home, they often live alongside siblings and relatives spanning multiple generations. In after-school clubs and activities, children may differ by several years in age. Public spaces for play and learning such as parks and museums are open to children of all ages.

Beyond childhood, it is uncommon to encounter higher education or professional environments composed of people from only a single age group. Even during the primary school day, it is typical for children of all ages to share break times. In nearly every context, mixed-age interaction is the norm except for one notable exception – the school classroom.

There are some additional benefits to mixed-age classes. They may help enhance social skills, promote individualised learning, and help children thrive socially and emotionally.

They can create a more realistic approach to learning, where older children work more independently and can mentor younger children, and enhance children’s communication and collaboration skills. They can also support a greater sense of belonging and community in schools, when children across year groups form friendships.

A new school year is full of excitement but also apprehension. There will be a lot of new things for parents and their child to manage and cope with. Having your child go into a mixed-age class is a supportive start and one which, if managed well, may enhance children’s experiences in school.

It is important that communication between school and parents is open and honest. Schools will consider a wide range of resources that will support all children’s development over the time that they are in school.

So it is important that if you are unsure about sending your child into a school where there are mixed-age classes, that you have conversations with the school about what they are planning, and how they will be supporting children to develop their learning. Parents and school working in collaboration is the best way to support children as both school and parents have a key role play in supporting children’s development.

Children who are in mixed-age classes will not feel any different to single age classes. As a lot of mixed-age classes are in small schools, there is an additional benefit in that it prepares children to move to high school where they will encounter and mix with children of all ages. Being in a mixed-age class will support and offer a variety of friendships and support their time in school.

Pinky Jain 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. Is your child in a classroom with other year groups? Here’s how it could help them – https://theconversation.com/is-your-child-in-a-classroom-with-other-year-groups-heres-how-it-could-help-them-263071

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

American voters often rank inflation as the most important issue facing the US. But something odd has happened to inflationary expectations since Donald Trump became president in January. Americans believe inflation is much higher than it is, and are bracing themselves for further increases.

The difference between real inflation and what the public think it is has diverged by a significant amount – much more so than under former president Joe Biden.

In December 2024, while Biden was still in office, respondents in surveys conducted by the University of Michigan predicted a rate of inflation of 2.8%, when it was actually 2.7%. However, by May 2025, five months into Trump’s second term, the public was estimating inflation at 6.6% when inflation had fallen to 2.4%.

The inflation expectations surveys included the following question: “By about what percent do you expect prices to go up/down on the average, during the next 12 months?”

The chart below shows the average response to this question over four years. This tells us what the average American feels about price increases, rather than what is actually happening in the economy. These views directly affect spending by consumers and therefore growth and employment in the US economy.

Expectations and actual inflation 2021 to 2025:

The red line on the chart above shows the actual inflation rate in the US, measured by the annual change in the consumer price index. It starts from former US president Joe Biden’s inauguration as president in January 2021 when the pandemic had a big impact on inflation. Subsequently, the rate has been declining since early 2022 although there was a modest increase from the start of Donald Trump’s second term from January 25 this year.

Some of these expectations can be explained by specific items. For example, food prices in the US have continued to increase as the chart below shows. The increases were rather rapid after the end of the pandemic, and they have continued but at a slower rate from the start of 2023, even though the broader inflation rate was falling at the time. Food prices are a particularly sensitive item because food is an essential.

Another item is the rapid rise in house prices that started after the pandemic and has continued under the Trump administration. This has put home ownership beyond the means of many Americans. However, neither of these can fully explain why the public believe inflation is so much higher than it actually is since the start of Trump’s second term in office.

Consumer food price index in the US 2021 to 2025:

A reason for this concern among the US public could be the financial uncertainty among businesses and financial markets and consumers.

Donald Trump’s attempts to sack Lisa Cook, the governor of the Federal Reserve, currently held up by the courts, is one example of a factor creating economic instability. The Fed is an independent institution that controls inflation via changes in interest rates and so dramatic changes there are likely to create worries about what happens next.

What about tariffs?

The introduction of high tariffs on goods from other countries by the Trump administration is probably another factor. Put simply, tariffs are a tax on imports and so have a direct impact on the price of goods on sale in the US.

This, coupled with a fall in the value of the dollar in recent months, will be pushing up prices in American shops. A dollar would buy 98 euro cents in January of this year, almost a one-for-one exchange rate. By August 25, it would buy only 85 euro cents, a fall in value of around 15%.

Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill”, which passed Congress in July, could be another source of inflationary expectations. This extends the tax cuts introduced in Trump’s first term, reducing taxes by US$4.5 trillion (£3.3 trillion) over ten years while cutting welfare spending and reducing investments in green energy projects.

The Yale University Budget Lab, a research centre studying financial policy, estimates that the bill will add US$3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the period 2025-2034 and US$12.1 trillion from 2025-55. This means that the US Treasury has to pay higher rates to encourage lenders when they become nervous about the inflationary consequences of the deficits.

If a country has to borrow large amounts to balance the books, it creates a temptation to print more money, which then boosts inflation.

When it comes to the political consequences of this, inflationary expectations are really important. This is because the public’s judgment about the president’s handling of inflation are largely the same as judgments about his overall presidency.

This can be seen in the chart below, which comes from successive surveys conducted by YouGov for the Economist newspaper since Trump came to office.

Approval ratings for the president’s handling of inflation and his overall job ratings:

The chart compares Trump’s overall job approval with his approval ratings for handling inflation. They track very closely – and both are rapidly falling, indicating that the failure to combat inflation is tarnishing the president’s approval ratings.

Presidential job approval is closely related to voting behaviour, so if inflation continues to rise and the public believe it will be even higher in the future, then this is likely to damage both Trump and the Republican party in the midterm elections next year.

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

– ref. Americans expect inflation to be far higher than it really is, polling shows – https://theconversation.com/americans-expect-inflation-to-be-far-higher-than-it-really-is-polling-shows-264070