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Liz David-Barrett argues that, by making rule-breaking a selling point, Reform UK is signalling it's open for influence trading: "It is no coincidence that some of Reform’s biggest donations have come from individuals in cryptocurrency, keen to ward off the threat of regulation."

"Our findings lay bare the reality of an industry that operates without regulation. Some companies are run by people with no previous experience in care work: directors are security bosses, or come from the music business or the military. One company in our dataset is owned by an overseas private equity firm." Tom Wall reveals the vast scale of England’s £255m illegal care industry.

"Eight in ten of the UK public think mobile phone thefts have increased since 2010 and around six in ten believe both vehicle-related thefts and burglary have increased. In fact, all are down by 50 per cent or more over that time period." Bobby Duffy says that, though crime is falling, the public doesn't feel safer.

Nik Popli takes us inside the attempt to remake the Democratic Party in the US.

"Everyone who knows Muir’s work knows that he grew up as the son of a peasant farmer in the Orkneys, in one of the last communities in Europe practically untouched by Renaissance and Enlightenment culture—and that his poetry and prose are greatly affected, one might even say determined, by the struggle Muir underwent when circumstances landed him in the middle of several modern industrial and political nightmares." Andrew Frisardi mourns the eclipse of Edwin Muir's poetry.

Mari Wilson on how she made Just What I Always Wanted.

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"This is a staggering death rate of 130 per 100,000 care leavers, a figure at least three times higher than the general population. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the failure that has led to this point. There are a range of causes of death, but the single largest cause is suicide." Michael Sanders looks at a new government report that lays bare the tragedy of care-leaver deaths.

Keenan Malik says the Grenfell Tower fire has "exposed a social and legal landscape shaped by an exaggerated contempt for ordinary people. It is the story of a corporate world displaying, in the words of journalist Peter Apps, 'a callous indifference to anything – morality, honesty, life safety – that was not related to the bottom line."

Ed Conway explains why the cod on your plate has probably been round the world: "Follow this cod on its way and you begin to see why so many regions in Europe and America feel like they have been 'left behind'; you begin to see why it is so difficult to take on Vladimir Putin and the Russian economy... all from a simple pack of fish fingers."

"If you’ve had a sugary treat and you’re feeling good, you’re probably feeling good because you’re having fun with family and friends, rather than from the sugar." Talitha Best on the myth of the sugar rush.

"Suddenly, he was 43 years old with a solo career that plenty of pundits thought had reached the end of the road. According to his detractors, Simon’s signature sound had nowhere else to go and, based on where he went next, maybe they were right." Matt Fish considers Paul Simon and Graceland.

JacquiWine reads The Bell by Iris Murdoch, "a sophisticated, richly textured novel that explores complicated feelings between complex individuals, encompassing faith, guilt, resentment, anger, fear, and perhaps most importantly, love. Love can take many forms, from a pure, spiritual type of love to a platonic or romantic love to a more carnal, possessive love – and Murdoch touches on all of them here to a greater or lesser extent. It’s also a radical novel for its time, particularly as Murdoch centres her storyline on a provocative moral dilemma: what happens when a person’s sexual orientation (in this instance, their homosexuality) is at odds with their religious beliefs?"

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"Profound isolation contributed to the deaths of more than 100 care leavers in England in a year, with a dramatic drop-off in support from social services at 18 leading to catastrophic consequences, a review has found. A government-commissioned report into the early deaths of young people who left care described the problem as a national tragedy and said many were left on their own 'at the height of vulnerability' before they died." Jessica Murray reports on the continuing scandal of Britain's care system for children.

William Lane tells it like it is: "Liberalism in Britain has been and always will be a centre-left tendency, and British history is littered with the corpses of right-Liberal projects. Any successful Liberal government or coalition in Britain must come through the centre-left, and a Lib Dem shift to the right would alienate the very voters it needs to be reaching out to if the party is to expand over 100-odd seats."

Justine Pedussel and Jim Dickinson argue that the Treasury is bankrupting universities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

"Despite being diagnosed with ADHD in 2020, I remain somewhat agnostic about the disorder. Many friends have since been diagnosed. When I was in America in 2023, it seemed that most of the young people I spoke to had been diagnosed with it. Procuring Adderall was about as easy as buying a packet of cigarettes. But that does not mean that ADHD isn't real, and Pemberton’s documentary seemed to elide this distinction throughout." James Bloodworth reviews The Great ADHD Myth?

"What is the future for the Tower of Power? No-one knows. It’s not listed, and you know what people are like about postwar buildings. These places frighten them for the different ways of living they suggest, and the ambition of an age we no longer feel directly connected to." John Grindrod celebrates the tower that houses the offices of Buckinghamshire County Council in Aylesbury.

Candice Bailey collates of collection of reviews of the 25 best folk horror films of the 2020s (so far).

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"In 2008, I met the Ukrainian diplomat and journalist who would go on to bribe Nathan Gill: Oleh Voloshyn. At the time he was working as press attache at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow, where I was based as the bureau chief for the Guardian. Voloshyn made no secret of his pro-Kremlin views. He was clever, chatty and spoke impeccable English. He later went back to Kyiv to work for the Putin-backed administration of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych." In his new book, Luke Harding joins the dots of a continent-wide Kremlin influence network that was disrupted by the jailing of a former leader of Reform UK Wales.

Josh Gabbatiss, Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans find ten flaws in the new Conservative report on "cheap power": "The report relies on a series of questionable assumptions to claim that gas and nuclear will be cheaper than renewables – including the idea that gas prices will be low and stable."

Caroline Scott meets a few of the thousands of young people who leave the care system each year with no home and little support.

"Trees are planted because they cool streets. Wetlands are protected because they can hold floodwater. Parks are funded because they improve our health. All of those benefits are important. But they can also leave nature looking like a service provider for people. If a tree no longer provides enough shade, or a wetland becomes more valuable as development land, what happens to the argument for protecting it?" Saman Sobhani believes our cities should be designed for wildlife as well as people

Weilong Zhang reports the results of an inadvertent scientific experiment conducted in Britain between 1951 and 1956: "We found that people who experienced longer periods of sugar rationing during their first 1,000 days had a lower incidence of five types of cancer: breast, prostate, liver, rectal and lung cancer."

"Dancing Queen is the absolute summit of the purest pop. It’s almost a tasting menu of the greatest components. Its descending glissando is one of the most exciting moments in music history – you know exactly what it is and instantly beam on hearing it." Ian Wade revisits the brilliance of ABBA.

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"Every week I read of people seeking planning permission for children’s homes whose backgrounds are in real estate, building, motor dealerships, pubs, caravan parks and light engineering. The one thing they don’t have is experience in the care of children and young people." Illegal children’s homes are thriving because profit has broken the care system. argues Martin Barrow.

Russell Brandom says Mark Zuckerberg’s AI manifesto shows exactly why people don’t like AI: "Even as Zuckerberg tries to paint a picture of the wonderful future abundant superintelligence will bring, he keeps reminding us of all the ways it’s likely to go wrong."

Erin Clabough on the reasons for student anxiety: "Grades aren’t the only source of pressure that students experience. Social comparison plays a role, too, along with the pressure to only answer questions when they’re already sure, to never seem confused and to stay constantly productive. Based on my experience and research, kids pick up on the message that they should keep their curiosity at a 5 out of 10 scale, instead of a 10 out of 10, especially if it strays outside the curriculum."

"The web had not yet become a pure retrieval machine. It still had a culture of exploration, and many services were designed to help users browse topical categories rather than fire a query into a universal index. In that world, a webring or directory was not a compromise. It was often the main event." Alan Bradley remembers life before Google.

"The suits don’t own cricket. The suits just manage the top floor. The soul of the game lives right here on the grass, kept alive by the people who simply care too much to let it go. And as long as there’s a Saturday afternoon, a cold drink, and a game to watch at Barnes, my heart isn’t going anywhere else." Elizabeth Ammon loves club cricket.

Nathen Amin travels to Lisbon on the trail of Perkin Warbeck.

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"The idea that England has always been governed from a single political centre is surprisingly recent. Westminster may now appear almost inseparable from the state, but for much of English history, government was far more mobile." Stephanie Brown says Andy Burnham’s No 10 North has a precedent in medieval York.

Nafeez Ahmed examines the links between George Cottrell’s Reform UK network in Montenegro and sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

"When social workers become involved with a family, the focus is often on parenting, safeguarding concerns or family relationships. But new research suggests that one of the strongest drivers of repeated involvement with children’s services is something more basic: whether families have enough money to live on." Rick Hood explains the findings of his research.

Jennifer Rubin Grandis confronts the systemic bias in academic publishing: "I’ve been studying sexism in academic medicine since 2019, and I’ve learned from countless interviewees that my experience as a woman in medicine is common. Women are rarely mentored well—in fact, when they ask for advice from senior faculty, they’re often discouraged from submitting their papers to high-impact journals, despite making just as many scientific discoveries as men."

Boak & Bailey recommend pub crawling as a way of practising psychogeography.

"Few science fiction relationships stick in my mind better than the love/hate between Dr. Zachary Smith and Robot in the original 1960s version of Lost in Space." J.G. Follansbee on one of television SF's great double acts.

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Aveek Bhattacharya argues that Andy Burnham is Labour's Boris Johnson: "The two men share a tendency to be led by instinct over doctrine, a talent for building coalitions, and a rare capacity to resonate emotionally with an audience. They also share a common vulnerability: a reluctance to bring their own side bad news. Both are men for the big picture rather than nitty-gritty details, happiest channeling grievance and hope into a broad political story."

A disproportionate number of children and young people growing up in care in Scotland are dying prematurely, Yet, despite Scottish government policy, almost two-thirds of such deaths over the last five years have not been reviewed, reports Karin Goodwin.

"If I can get 15 minutes with parents and policymakers, the argument becomes much more nuanced. Parents actually breathe a sigh of relief. They can make all the decisions they want to about how tech-free or tech-full they want to be, based on their values and what they want for their family – but they don’t have to make it with this threat that it's going to lead to horrible outcomes for their children." Amelia Gentleman interviews the psychologist Candice Odgers, who is a sceptic on social media bans for teenagers.

Alan Lester looks at the politics behind arguments about the teaching of the history of the British Empire in schools. 

Ferdinand Mount writes about M.R. James, ghosts and sex.

"As the narrator lies on the doctor’s couch, revealing her thoughts in a candid, unguarded manner, a harrowing picture begins to emerge. We learn how every aspect of her life has been dictated by men, from her upbringing to her choices of husbands and the nature of their marriages to the control of her physical and mental health." JacquiWine says Penelope Mortimer's The Pumpkin Easter is the best novel she has read this year.

Gilbert Adair: The orphan has lost not only his parents but his status

Embed from Getty Images

This post is about another essay by Gilbert Adair, but first a quotation from Sammy Going South by W.H. Canaway. If you've not seen the movie, this is a novel about a 10-year-old British boy whose parents are killed by an RAF raid on Port Said during the Suez Crisis of 1956:

Reminded by the scene he had witnessed, he thought, I’m an orphan! The idea intrigued him. He said aloud, "I'm an orphan!" savouring the words in the air. Then he said, experimentally, “My mummy and daddy are dead,” and wished he hadn't said it, for it made him feel sad. To say "I'm an orphan" sounded not sad, but – well, important. He repeated the words again.

In his essay 'Dr Barnardo's Orphans', Adair discusses this status once enjoyed by orphans:

The prominence accorded to the orphan by nineteenth-century novelists - not only Dickens, not only in this country - became in consequence rather hypertrophied when compared to his actual footing on the social hierarchy, both qualitatively and quantitatively; and, in a much-quoted witticism from The Importance of Being Earnest (Lady Bracknell's observation that the loss of both parents resembled 'carelessness'), Wilde, no devotee of Dickensian sentimentality, mocked what might be called the rampant orphanomania of the Victorians.

But, as Adair says, time moved on and the absence of war and disease meant there were no longer the waves of orphans there had once been. After the Second World War the term came to acquire a foreign, Third World connotation - Korean orphans, Vietnamese orphans. Meanwhile, Barnardo's was diversifying its childcare activities, moving far beyond just the provision of homes for orphans.

Adair, emphasising he means to respect to the children and that he is concerned only with their public image, says the result is that:

There now strikes one as something dated and irreducibly kitschy about an orphan: a Barnardo Boy reminds one of nothing so much as a Bisto Kid. In effect, the social specificity of a nineteenth-century orphan was contingent upon an uncompromisingly normative conception of society, from which he was therefore – if in this manner alone – not alienated, since he had been assigned a codified place within it, however luckless.

Today, or at least in 1986, when Adair's Myths & Memories was published:

When what would have been regarded until quite lately as unimaginable anomalies compete with each other for the attention of the sociologist, the social worker and the investigative journalist (single-parent families, lesbian mothers, test-tube babies), the orphan has lost not only his parents but his status.

It's worse than that. The Children and Young Persons Act 1969 sought to remove the stigma if criminality from children who broke the law and treat them like any other children who are in need of care. But its effect was to spread that stigma to all children in public care.

So it is thar, today, orphans being moved between care placements are likely to find themselves put in handcuffs. We have turned being an orphan into a crime.

Reader's Voice. So your diagnosis is that we have lost the concept of the "well-behaved orphan".

Liberal England replies: Precisely. But I can console myself that I did manage to slip the phrase into my book chapter on Oliver Twist.

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"The plunder of children’s services by business is one of the big scandals of our time. Children’s homes, special schools and foster care services are increasingly run for profit. Almost every time a child is removed from their family, somebody, somewhere cashes a cheque." Martin Barrow looks at one company that received £500m from local councils last year for the care and support of children and young people.

Rory Jones finds that "England is beginning to develop a cooling divide, one in which access to protection from extreme heat increasingly depends on where people live, how much they earn and the type of home they occupy."

Does becoming a parent lead politicians to focus more on the future? Research by Chris Hanretty and Sarah Childs questions the assumption that it does: "There is no single effect of parenthood upon future focus: rather, parenthood affects men and women differently. Fatherhood causes a small increase in future focus sustained across a range of topics. ... Motherhood, by contrast, causes a decline in future focus.

"The exhibition showcased Freud’s lifelong fascination with human faces and figures, covering several different types of drawings – from pencil, pen, and ink portraits to charcoal works and etchings. In addition, several paintings were also included in the exhibition to illustrate the relationship between Freud’s works on paper and those on canvas." JacquiWine went to the Lucian Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Sean Burns on Alexander Mackendrick's 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success, which bombed at the box office on release but is now recognised as a classic: "I was struck by how relevant Sweet Smell of Success seems today, when we’re seeing people who know better grovel and prostrate themselves for proximity to power on a daily basis, submitting to humiliation rituals live on cable news the way Sidney dutifully jumps to light Hunsecker's cigarettes."

Quentin Shaw on the miracle of glow worms and the threat to them from artificial light at night: "It is something of a mystery that glow worms came to be so widespread. Surveyors have noticed that the places where the beetles survive today are often sites of ancient human habitation. Perhaps people deliberately introduced them, to brighten their lives and to chase away the dark."

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"Multiple sources inside the children’s home division said that, as they prepared for sale, they were pressed to rapidly open more homes and take on more children, even when they didn’t have the staff to keep up. They claim they were told this was so the company could be sold for the maximum amount of money." Jessica Murray says that when private equity takes over a UK care home it can mean the children are treated like cattle.

Ben Worthy argues that, if he is to succeed as a prime minister who takes over in mid-parliament, Andy Burnham will need to create a clear sense of change and offer new policy quickly.

"Surbiton itself is no longer a byword for Toryism. Each of its councillors is a Liberal Democrat, with only two Conservatives elected across the entire Royal Borough of Kingston. At a parliamentary level, the successor seat of Kingston and Surbiton has been Tory for just two years since 1997, that brief period of 2015-17 when the Lib Dems fell away. An area which was once considered a safe base for Conservatives with ministerial ambitions and ability is now the home seat of Sir Ed Davey." John Oxley mourns the Conservatives' loss of the Margot Leadbetter vote.

Danielle Williams on how the US lost its public swimming pools to racism: "When legally required to share public pools with Black children, many white families decided they’d rather not go at all. Closing public pools to avoid racial integration became official policy for many cities across the US."

Sintija Brence salutes the Queen Of Southern Gothic, Bobbie Gentry.

"About most of the rescues Gregory is brisk but particular. An elderly couple in a broken-down yacht press biscuits on the crew; a woman makes eyes at the coxswain ('the problem was an open seacock, swamping their bilge'); in failing light a small boy – 'my mum said I should stay with the boat' – is scooped from a flimsy inflatable dinghy just in time." Susannah Clapp meets a literary lifeboatman at Dungeness.

Duncan Dunlop MSP on the failings of the child care system

Here's the powerful maiden speech on the Scottish child care system made by the Lib Dem MSP Duncan Dunlop. He was elected from the South of Scotland region, thanks to the more sensible electoral system that pertains north of the border.

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"Why, if the homes are unregistered and therefore illegal, are English councils still placing children in them? And how can the system be reformed so this doesn't continue to happen?" Noel Titheradge investigates a continuing scandal.

James Meek looked at housing in Andy Burnham's Manchester om the eve of the last general election: "Burnham presides over a scale model of a future Starmer Britain, one where a social democratic leader full of genuine desire to mend the broken, over-marketised public realm is hamstrung by lack of resources and constrained by fear of frightening away the wealth-holders. Like England, Greater Manchester has its richer south, the Cheshire fringes where the golfing set and superstar footballers live, its great main city of hedonism and cranes and sky-high rents, and its decapitalised, struggling northern towns."

Rachel Dixon on the revival of the River Mease (rises in Leicestershire, flows through Derbyshire and joins the Trent in Staffordshire) by the communities on its banks.

"Old buildings give places a uniqueness that cannot be imported, exported, or copied. They contain distinctive details and period-specific materials that carry forward long-standing building traditions and preserve something intangible at first glance – the touch of time." Anita Straub makes the case for conserving historic buildings.

Daniel A. Kaufman distinguishes the 13 different social media personalities.

"The falling-off of the last few chapters is due to the need to fill the three-decker’s third volume, but that must surely be forgiven when Bevis and Mark and Frances make their winter ride through the ice-floes of The New Sea in the final stunning paragraphs." Brian Alderson pays tribute to Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies.

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Roderick Lynch says the Liberal Democrats have a serious problem in urban Britain and pretending otherwise will only make it worse.

"A few months after winning the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer pledged to stop 'powerful people using ... Slapps to intimidate journalists away from their pursuit of the public interest'. But in February this year, anti-Slapp measures were shelved from a civil justice and courts bill, reportedly following interventions from Downing Street." Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy on the government's abandonment of libel law reform – Slapps are "strategic lawsuits against public participation".

"A child living in an illegal care home is being used by an organised crime gang. He may be moving drugs around the country, transporting weapons or laundering money through his bank account. He reaches out for help but the home he’s living in has been infiltrated by the same gang. They refer him to a counsellor – who feeds their conversation back to the criminals controlling his life." Tom Wall has read a new report that sets out the acute dangers faced by children living in unregistered settings.

David Howarth explains what the investigation of Nigel Farage's £5m gift will consider.

"Gianni Infantino arrived at Fifa masquerading as a reformer. Instead, he has gone to great lengths to concentrate and consolidate his power. And yet, despite all the skulduggery, hardly any of the people to whom he ultimately owes his position are holding the Fifa president and his cabal to account." Josimar condemns the Fifa president's attempts to avoid press scrutiny.

Tom Service pays tribute to incomparable Kathleen Ferrier: "Ferrier's voice is still an inspiration, not least because she ought to inspire singers to properly inhabit the contralto register rather than push upwards into mezzo-soprano-dom, as so many singers today think they have to do. But most of all, it's that voice that seems to resonate inside you when you hear it, as if you're physically connected with Ferrier's voice, and which makes everything she sings so direct, so powerful, and so contemporary."

A review of Terry O'Neill's life story in a social work journal

Twenty years ago, every branch of Waterstones had a section called "Painful Lives" that carried memoirs of abuse in childhood. The success of Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It in 1995 had awakened a public appetite for such literature, and publishers were happy to satisfy it.

It was in this climate that Terry O'Neill, the younger brother of Dennis O'Neill, whose death I have often written about, posted his life story on the website Authonomy under the title Never Again in 2009. This was a site where authors could post their manuscripts in the hope that its owner Harper Collins or another publisher would see it and be interested.

Fortunately, Harper Collins did recognise what a treasure they had. and published a rewritten version of Terry's book as Someone to Love Us. Despite this very "Painful Lives" title, and a cover that also made it look as though it belonged to that genre, my impression when I read it was that the ghost writer had done a good job. But I do remember things in Terry's original version that didn't make it into the published book, so I hope that manuscript still exists somewhere.

My reason for writing this post is that I've come across a review of Someone to Love Us in a social work journal. It was written by Dave Burnham and appeared in The Bulletin of the Social Work History Network (Vol. 3, No. 1, June 2016).

Here is an extract:

There are recognisable themes:

• Children never being told of decisions about them – not just by officials, but by anybody. 

• The number of placements and the yo-yo emotions associated with moving between caring family homes and rulebound institutions. 

• Although Reginald Gough’s beatings were by far the worst, the punishments meted out later to Terence in homes (beating, deprivation of food) bore a sinister similarity to Bank Farm practices. 

• The rich collection of characters involved in child care: the careful, kind leaders, the charismatic role models, the thoughtless, the demanding bullies. 

• The still silence of the scared children in the face of adult authority.

• The years of guilt Terence felt after Dennis’ death about what he might have done to save him. 

• The official emphasis on attempting to place the boys with a Catholic family, even though, as Terence said until he was in care he'd never been to church in his life. 

• The heartlessness of the press.

Most notably, during the boys’ six month stay there were perhaps ten visits by various officials, a Boarding Out volunteer, two senior Shrewsbury Council [in fact Shropshire County Council] officials, an 18 year old clerk from Newport and social workers dealing with other foster children at the Goughs. Not one of these people went upstairs to the freezing room where the boys slept on a straw pallet with one blanket. Monckton recommended some changes in Boarding Out visiting, but his report is most notable in proposing that people should simply do their jobs properly – seeing where boarded out children slept, for instance. had been expected for fifty years by then.

Burnham ends by saying Someone to Love Us should be read in conjunction with Sir Walter Monckton's report on the affair, but that this is hard to find.

You can find the Monckton Report online, but his statement that "no evidence came to my notice of any exploitation of the boys in the work of the farm" does not accord with the story Terry O'Neill tells.

Terry died in 2023. You can hear him speak in the award-winning BBC Radio Wales documentary The Mousetrap and Me.

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"These settings are not registered – as they should be by law – with Ofsted. They are meant to be temporary, but a recent report by the children’s commissioner found the average placement lasted six months – one child had been in a 'holiday camp/activity centre' for almost nine months." Alexandra Topping explains why social workers are forced to place children in unregistered homes.

Heather Stewart analyses Labour's crabwise approach to closer economic ties with the EU.

Richard Kemp condemns the snobbery behind the use of classical music to disperse groups of young people: "I have instead asked the Council and Police to support the 'In Harmony' programme of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic which is taking music playing into some of the most deprived areas of Liverpool both during the day and evening. During the day they ensure that every child in three schools gets to play a musical instrument for an hour a week for three years."

"I hope what comes across at the end is an invitation for people to consider the aspects of British culture that they want to celebrate. Albion can't be determined by me; this is a personal quest and a personal vision of the aspects of Britishness that I feel need to be celebrated. It's an invitation for people to say: "I have a stake here, and what do I want to champion?" Zakia Sewell talks to Michaela Makusha about her first book, Finding Albion.

Rob Hakimian reports on a scheme to use the Grand Union Canal to transfer water from the Midlands to London and the South East.

"I have a soft spot for Waddon (1937). Beneath garish commercial signage is a striking Modernist building which can hold its own against any inter-war Tube station." Daniel Wright takes us on a tour of the South London railway stations built between the wars to rival the striking architecture of those on the Underground.

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Bee Boileau, Lucas Conwell ans Peter Levell find that Help to Buy schemes don't help the people who most need it: "The affordability gains from the equity loan schemes were concentrated among higher-income individuals. Since these individuals would normally be expected to be able to save for a minimum deposit quite quickly even without Help to Buy, it is likely that these schemes accelerated their first home purchase by a few years rather than making the difference between becoming a homeowner or not in the longer term."

"Rebekah Pierre, deputy director of the charity Article 39, said ... posters advertising payments of 'up to £932 per week per child' 'stopped me in my tracks' when she encountered them in a local shopping centre." Joanne Parkes on criticism of a fostering recruitment campaign by Croydon Council, arguing that its messaging risks reducing children in care to a "price tag".

Emma John reports that some researchers say that the common framing of ADHD as a characteristic for success can be unhelpful for those who are struggling.

James Cracknell says that AI is being used to undermine real local journalism: "North London News features stories about Enfield and Barnet and other boroughs that are put together by AI bots using existing stories published on other websites, including our own. This is bad enough – but what's worse is that they are also adding fake quotes, fake people (including fake councillors), fake organisations and fake facts into these stories as well. Whatever AI system they are using, it is massively flawed."

"Several startling passages of dialogue have sent me scrolling through the week’s listings to unveil an author. Katie Hims can nail a character through their choice of confectionery: of course, the trad Jim Lloyd would go for wine gums. Nick Warburton scripted a bonkers visit by a character obsessed with train timetables and pebbles, then cleverly had one of the most stolid residents complain that the incomer was a bore." Susannah Clapp praises The Archers scriptwriters.

"In Britain hauntings occur in ancient manor houses, old inns, and Gothic asylums – places whose very age makes them groan and creak, where shadows sit deep, and which are scarred by the lingering imprint of lives lived and lost. And yet arguably the most famous British ghost story of the 20th century took place somewhere quite different: in a humble council house, only half a century old, in Enfield, north London." Ray Newman considers the haunting of social housing.

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Richard Reich argues that employers will not share the gains from AI unless they are made to: "If the five-day workweek with five days of pay shrinks to four days with four days of pay, and then to three, and to two, and perhaps one, AI will supplant most people’s work and drive down our take-home pay. We may see a dazzling array of products and services spawned by AI, but few of us will be able to buy them."

"In opposing these children’s homes, neighbours resort to language about children in care that they would not use for other groups of people, such as same-sex couples or people who are not white. Children in care are trouble makers, they complain; they bring down house prices, they are not from our community, they make too much noise." Martin Borrow asks why proposals to open new homes, which often for only two or three children, are met with such hostility.

"This part of south-west England, much of which is currently under water, used to be known as the 'land of the summer people'. Historically, frequent flooding was the main reason for purely seasonal occupation in this area bordered by the Bristol Channel and the Mendip, Quantock and Blackdown Hills." Jess Neumann sets out the threat that climate change poses to Somerset.

Lottie Wood explores gender fluidity, rural landscapes and the Women’s Land Army, introducing us to E.M. Barraud's memoir Set My Hand Upon the Plough.

"It is deeply troubling that the drive of Brontë’s Isabella, a survivor of domestic abuse, has been reread to dramatically absolve her abuser. The girl sobbing behind me as the credits rolled attests to the success of this exoneration. Really, she should be crying over the scripting of violent abuse as consensual play." Anna Drury is concerned by Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

Richard Elliott celebrates a new box set that brings together live and studio recordings of the Scottish folk singer, guitarist and songwriter Dick Gaughan.

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Jessica Valenti sounds the alarm about the Heritage Foundation's plan for American women: "Like the conservative movement more broadly, the organisation wants young women to believe this is all being done for their benefit: that work is soulless and unfulfilling, that feminism has made women miserable, and that the real path to happiness is being a stay-at-home mom. The latest right-wing mantra for women? 'Less burnout, more babies.'"

The government’s proposed model for mandatory reporting of suspected child sexual abuse bears no resemblance to the frameworks used in the 82 per cent of countries that have enacted such legislation, argues Tom Perry.

Jonathan Cook believes the jury was right to acquit the Palestine Action defendants.

"It was the only post-war building on London’s South Bank to remain unlisted, refused protection on six separate occasions by successive culture secretaries, who since 1991 had repeatedly rejected Historic England’s (formerly English Heritage) recommendations." Richard Waite on the Listing of the South Bank Centre – that's the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Hayward Gallery and their associated terraced walkways and stairs – after 35 years of refusals.

"The shifting appeal of The West Wing during the past quarter century raises a sobering question: Is political competence and an idealized respect for democratic norms losing popularity in 2026?" Karrin Vasby Anderson and Nick Marx track the political drama's move from bipartisan hit to a polarised comfort watch.

Mansel Stimpson enjoyed Nouvelle Vague as I much as I did: "The casting ... which uses mainly relatively unfamiliar faces is one of the film's great successes. It is quite easy to accept Guillaume Marbeck as Godard and Aubry Dullin catches the essence of the young Jean-Paul Belmondo. Even more surprisingly given that Breathless contains an iconic performance by Jean Seberg, we find this film’s best-known name, Zoey Deutch, creating a Seberg in whom we really do believe."

After reading this column you will never think of Barbara Cartland in the same way again

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Another of my columns for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. 

Barbara Cartland has her own label on this column, and I think all this material had appeared on Liberal England before, but I suspect it is not common knowledge among radical mental health professionals.

Barbara Cartland as a political activist

The writer Damian Le Bas once interviewed a man whose mother, a Conservative county councillor, had fought for travelling families to have somewhere to live and for their children to be educated. 

"People offer all sorts of reasons why they don’t want a Gypsy site near them,” said Le Bas. "You’ve referred to it as old-fashioned racism, and your mother compared it with the situation in the South of the United States of America."

The man replied: “It was definitely prejudice. It was really, really nasty. My mother had a lot of hate mail and people were rude to her, but she persevered. She was not one to be deterred, my mother, in any way. She stuck to her guns."

Her name? Barbara Cartland.

When I told someone who I was writing this column about, they dredged up Clive James’s description of her on television in old age:

Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.

But then if Barbara Cartland is remembered at all today, it is for this late eccentricity of appearance. 

Matthew Sweet, who is writing her biography, has observed that, though you would expect her romantic novels, of which there were hundreds, dictated from a chaise-longue to relays of secretaries, to be a staple of charity shops, but they have not lasted. Not lasted physically, that is: they were cheaply produced and fell apart in the hands of a vigorous reader.

So, though Barbaraville Camp, a permanent site for Gypsies on the outskirts of Hatfield named in her honour, is still open, we have to look further back to pay Barbara Cartland her due.

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The hero of The Glamour Boys, Chris Bryant’s study of the group of gay – if that’s not an anachronism – MPs who opposed appeasement in the run up to World War II, was meant to be Major Ronald Cartland, who died at Dunkirk aged 33. But doesn’t his sister keep breaking into the story?

Their father’s death had left Barbara and her two brothers in straitened circumstances, but they weren’t for long once she started writing. First there was a racy High Society novel with a fair amount of sexual innuendo, Jig-saw (1923), then a column for the Daily Express and risqué plays, one of which was initially banned by the Lord Chamberlain.

Bryant writes:

Barbara was no prude. She wrote wry and naughty copy for Bystander under the pseudonyms Miss Hamilton or Caviare, she turned out gossipy pieces for Tatler as Miss Scott and passed on titbits of society news as Miss Tudor in the Daily Mail. The copy she filed was invariably bubbly and enthusiastic, with no hint of the prim coyness that was so common at the time. Her advice to young women in her book of modern morals, Touch the Stars: A clue to happiness, was remarkable: 

Remember that you are not a miserable sinner… nor were you born in original sin; the sex instinct is one of the most beautiful things in the world. It is sent to inspire us, and help us understand Nature and the workings of the Divine. It is the nearest approach we get to the beauty, the intensity and the power of Life.

And in between all this writing, she found time to be the darling of the fast set at Brooklands motor racing circuit and a pioneer of gliding.

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What first made me take Barbara Cartland seriously were her wartime memoirs, The Years of Opportunity, as they showed her to be a notably sensible voice in welfare work.

She defended servicewomen, saying the remarkable thing was how few unwanted babies there had been, given wartime conditions. And when women did become pregnant:

It was nearly always a case of being brought up in ignorance, of being given a new and exciting freedom in the Services, and often of being “stood a drink” for the first time in their lives! Many of them didn't know what was wrong with them, and when the Medical Officer told them they were going to have a baby they were stunned and astonished.

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Not that the men were much better informed:

I know one RAF padre who had a straight talk with every man on his station who came to him wanting to get married or in domestic trouble. He said the abysmal ignorance of the average man about women and love was appalling.

She also wrote with understanding and compassion about the needs of children, particularly those in public care. In 1945, the death of Dennis O’Neill, a 12-year-old foster child, on a farm in Shropshire had scandalised the nation:

How many Dennis O’Neills who don’t actually die are living a life of cruelty and torture, of privation and utter hopeless misery? How many little boys and girls are existing in filth and degradation in Public Institutions without any knowledge that there is love and kindness in a world which to them is only harsh and horrible?

She remembered a little boy who had come from a public institution to live in the cottage next to hers:

He was three years old, but he had never seen a toy of any sort, and when my boys gave him some of theirs, he didn’t know what to do with them. 

One of those boys was Ian McCorquodale, who was interviewed by Damian Le Bas.

And Cartland writes of her friend Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who deserves a column of her own: 

As chairman of the Nursing School Association she visited homes and institutions and what she found was appalling.

It wasn’t all words either. In this volume of memoirs Cartland describes bursting into a stranger's hotel room to stop a little girl being beaten.

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The moral of this story is that someone who ends their days on television in a pink chiffon ballgown and caked with make-up – as I fully intend to do – can still be worthy of your respect.

The Joy of Six 1466

Jess Asato, Labour MP for Lowestoft, says AI nudification is the latest weapon of violence against women and girls: "Using AI to strip a woman of her clothes is the modern equivalent of locking her in stocks in the town square and throwing rotten fruit at her. It is a weapon of shame, designed to humiliate. Like other pillories, it is meant to send a message to everyone else: do not do what this woman has done."

"The shortage of legal children’s homes across the UK is fast becoming a national crisis. Last week, a Public Accounts Committee report revealed that nearly 800 children were sent to live in illegal accommodation in 2024, staying an average of around six months each." Gareth Davies and Tom Wall report on a national scandal.

Chris Grey on Donald Trump, Greenland and Mark Carney: "Carney’s speech can be read as a general prescription for middle powers, of which the UK is one, in the rapidly emerging new order. It can also be read, not coincidentally, as a devastating repudiation of the core propositions of Brexiters and of Brexitism."

Emma McClarkin argues that Britain's tax regime is forcing pubs to raise the price of a pint.

"After she finished The Left Hand of Darkness in 1968, she worked for Eugene McCarthy’s primary campaign, stuffing envelopes and writing newsletters in his Oregon field office. In 1972, recovering from the first draft of her novel The Dispossessed, she did newsletters for McGovern." Julie Phillips on Ursula Le Guin the political activist.

"As I walk, I wonder what one ought to put on the grave of a cat." Natalie Guest visits Ilford pet cemetery.