The Joy of Six 1572

"How did a former lawyer-turned theologian become Reform UK’s lead ideologue and political heavyweight on so many issues? To understand that, you have to follow a covert combination of faith and finance, of evangelical doom-mongering and disruptive tech and media, from the two real kingmakers in right-wing British and American politics – the deeply religious and deeply wealthy owners of GB News and Palantir: Sir Paul Marshall and Peter Thiel." Peter Jukes and Nafeez Ahmed map the strange rise of James Orr.

Elaine Craig has researched family carers' attitude to the use of restraint in mental hospitals: "A mother discovered her son was restrained 33 times in six weeks. Another was told her distressed daughter is 'aggressive' as six staff pin her to the floor and inject her with medication. Through tears, families describe images they cannot forget: bruises, broken bones, loved ones left sitting in urine-soaked clothes, isolated and afraid."

"Students in England’s least deprived areas are three times as likely to enter GCSE PE and drama as those in the most deprived areas. There are also large disadvantage gaps in music, food preparation and nutrition, design and technology and the separate sciences, with the pattern continuing into A-level subjects such as geography." Jabed Ahmed reports.

Garrett M. Graff on the 17 minutes before America changed: "The earliest moments of the 9/11 attacks did not unfold in the way you’ve been taught to think of them: a plane striking a tower, a city looking up in horror, a nation gripped by panic. Instead, for the briefest of windows, the unfolding drama of September 11, 2001, wasn’t yet a calamity but merely a strange accident."

Greg Cwik celebrates the "gleeful terror" of Tim Curry's Pennywise.

"Several residents had paid the considerable sum of three guineas for the privilege of accompanying the celebrity aeronaut on his ascent. As Coxwell now battled to complete his preparations, some of these passengers decided to vent their disapproval at the delay by climbing into the basket and staging a protest. According to Coxwell, one passenger, using 'gestures and foul language', even proceeded to incite the crowd still further by telling them that the aeronaut was refusing to continue with the display." Margaret Brecknell discovers Leicester's balloon riot of 1864.

The Joy of Six 1568

Tom Perry links to a review of the duty to report child sexual abuse brought in by the Crime and Policing Act 2026. It finds that because of the way the law is framed, this new duty will have little effect.

Anand Kumar is part of the team writing the next edition of psychiatry's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This edition will, for the first time, attempt to draw on findings from neurobiology – a reminder of how little we currently know about the biology of mental health and neurodevelopment.

"In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for 'traditional' Idaho values." But, as Audrey Dutton shows, between the 1880s through the early 1970s it was illegal for parents in in the state to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake."

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite reviews four books on the General Strike of 1926: "The miners said that if some pits really were uneconomic, they should shut. The owners wanted to make all pits profitable again by squeezing the workers. The president of the owners' association freely acknowledged that in mines producing for export, wages would fall to levels that he did not shrink from describing as miserable'."

"Eaton was keen on a different director and format for each film. It meant each had its own reference points. I thought about Chinatown a lot with 1974. The design and costumes were all smoky and brown, like the 70s. The cast went for the material big time. David Morrissey really did his research and Sean Harris is nothing if not method. It’s a very masculine story but we wanted strong female characters too – we had Maxine Peake and Rebecca Hall. I kept the most horrendous violence off-screen. Violence you imagine is much worse than anything you’ll see. Your mind does the work." Michael Hogan talks to people involved in the making of the trilogy of television plays Red Riding.

"Sounds fascinated Joe from an early age. He would build circuit boards and take radios and record players to pieces, even creating his own recording equipment (there’s a tale that he put speakers up trees so that the local cherry pickers could listen to the radio whilst they worked, which is brilliant if true). Signing up for his National Service, he became a Radar Technician which also helped nurture another of his fascinations – outer space." Samantha Veal discovers the mercurial Joe Meek.

Under the Influence? A new report on alcohol at Westminster

When the newly elected Hannah Spencer – the Green victor in this year's Gorton and Denton by-election – voiced her shock at the role alcohol played at Westminster, other MPs and social media users queued up to patronise her and assure us that everything was fine there.

But perhaps they will pay more attention to a new report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies entitled Under the influence? Perspectives of alcohol in the parliamentary workplace among UK MPs and staff. 

You can read a media release on the institute's website and download the report from there too.

The release says:

Westminster is a unique workplace where alcohol is woven into the working environment. Staff members based in constituency offices were far less likely to report being offered alcohol at work meetings or events compared to staff based in Westminster and MPs, and participants also drew stark comparisons with the presence of alcohol in other workplaces.

The foreword is written by Beccy Cooper, who was a public health consultant before she won Worthing West for Labour in 2024. She says:

Two findings stood out to me. Almost one in ten respondents reported a negative experience because of someone else’s drinking at work, and 70 per cent either didn’t know, or weren’t sure, how to raise a concern about a colleague’s drinking. 

That combination – real, measurable harm, and no clear route to address it – is exactly the kind of gap we need to address. While social and networking elements are important in a healthy workplace, colleagues describing how the drinking culture plays a distinct role in career progression raises significant concerns about wellbeing, inclusion, and professionalism. 

The Guardian story on Under the Influence? emphasises its tales of excess and the claim by one MP that other members have had their stomachs pumped after consuming so much alcohol that they ended up in hospital.

I am reminded of another British institution that has seen better days: cricket.

This is from a blog post I wrote in 2017:

In the course of my day job I went to an event on the psychology and wellbeing of military personnel.

A session on mental health saw general agreement that the biggest issue facing the Forces in that field was alcohol misuse. ...

Cricket shares many features with military life – slightly awkward male camaraderie, periods of boredom followed by periods of nerve-shredding excitement, public school officers – and alcohol seems to play the same central role in it.

Alcohol is used as a reward and a consolation, to oil the wheels of socialisation and quite possibly to ease the nerves of the battle-scarred too.

One of the attractions of political activism for me, I will admit, was that after delivering, canvassing or committee meetings generally ended in the pub. In fact, there was a theory that political meetings all ended an hour before "Last orders", no matter when they began.

These days pubs are open later but no one can afford the beer prices, so I suppose everything has changed. By the sound of it, the only place where nothing has changed is Westminster.

You don't have to be a Puritan to think it has the wrong attitude to alcohol.

The Joy of Six 1555

Benjamin Goodair says Andy Burnham is right to want for‑profit firms out of social care: "The majority of social care in England is run for-profit. The consequences of this go far beyond unfair profiteering. It actually worsens many of the core problems with England’s social care systems – making it less available, of worse quality and widening inequalities."

Children from poorer families do worse at school. Nadia Siddiqui explains why and what can be done to narrow the gap in attainment.

Steff Aquarone makes the case for a minister for coastal communities: "Too many coastal towns face lower than average wages, poorer transport connections, seasonal economies, shortages of affordable housing and increasing pressure from coastal erosion and climate change. Despite their enormous contribution to our economy, our heritage and our identity, they are too often overlooked when national investment decisions are made."

"Growing up there in the early 60s, the countryside never seemed too far away. We kids were often out and about, playing in the woods, making dens and tree swings, watching cows graze in farmers' fields and scrumping in nearby orchards where Warwick University and Cannon Park shopping centre now stand. There were brooks to jump across (or fall into regularly in my case) and an old Roman ford near to the busy A45." Ruth Cherrington celebrates Coventry's Camley Estate.

Ben Duckett is puzzled that attendances for cricket's Hundred tournament are falling, despite the presence of more star names, reports The Sports Encounter. What he and the games administrators need to grasp is that British sports fans' attachment is to teams, not to individual players.

Claire Madge has been to see the Richard Dadd exhibition at the Royal Academy: "There is no moment of finding 'madness' in Dadd's work, whether it was completed before his breakdown or after. Even the eyes of his figures from scenes of Hamlet completed in 1840 and the strange fairies that ring a sleeping Titania from 1841 show an artist with an ability to capture the uncanny and one who could easily get lost in the detail even before his psychosis came to the fore."

Richard Dadd and Victorian treatment of lunatics

Jonathan Jones wrote about the painter Richard Dadd, who spent much of his life as a patient at Broadmoor Hospital, in the Guardian earlier this week:

You can’t escape the tragedy of a gifted artist who spent so much of his life locked up, albeit in more liberal conditions than our stereotype of Victorian asylums might lead you to expect.

When I went on my guided walk around Desford in May, the guide stopped at the top of hill above the village's railway station and told us that doctors would bring patients from a local asylum by train for picnics in a nearby field. She also remarked that this isn't how we usually think of the Victorians treating what they called lunatics.

Yes, I think I may have found another myth about the Victorians – or at least a partial myth.

As I've argued before, part of the trouble is that the Victorian age lasted for more than 60 years. There's a limit to the number of useful generalisations you can make about such a long period that saw so much change. And there was both kind and brutal treatment of mental patients in the 19th century, just as there was in the 20th. Frequently they occurred side by side in the same institutions.

What you can say, I think, is that there is no simple, Whiggish tale of progress to be told here. Some of the worst abuses of such patients – lobotomy, leucotomy, electroshock – date from the 20th century, not the 19th.

While Edward Elgar began his musical career in 1879 at Powick Lunatic Asylum near Worcester. There he rehearsed and conducted the staff orchestra that played at dances for the patients and also gave concerts for their entertainment.

Sighcology: The Snake Pit, Out of True and Nellie Bly

It's time to post another of the Sighcology columns I write for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. It used to be called Changes, which must have saved a lot of typing.

You can watch Out of True for free on the British Film Institute Site, and The Snake Pit is not hard to find online.

The Snake Pit, Out of True and Nellie Bly

Olivia de Havilland is sitting on a bench in the sun. We hear a man asking her questions, de Havilland’s thoughts and then her replies. The camera pans a little, but we still don’t see the man. Suddenly a young woman is in shot, talking to her. Then we hear the voice of an older woman calling them both in.

They’re in an institution, but what kind? Seeing some open balconies with bars on the upper storeys, de Havilland decides it’s a zoo. Once inside, she fears it’s a prison. “How did I get here?” A kindly man tells her not to be afraid. She is reassured and explains she is a novelist, in the prison for one day and now it’s time for her to go home. The man asks what her name is and she finds she does not know. She’s in a mental hospital.

This is the opening of the 1948 Hollywood film The Snake Pit, which tells the story of de Havilland’s recovery thanks to the gentle psychotherapy of Dr Kik – her problems turn out to originate in early childhood trauma. How much of his reputation did Freud owe to Hollywood? His work suggested stories whose endings were as surprising and as neat as that of any detective story.

Dr Kik, it seems worth recording, was played by the British Jewish actor Leo Genn. Before the war he combined a stage and screen career with work as a barrister. His last forensic employment was investigating and prosecuting the war crimes committed at Belsen.

The ward from which patients can go home is Ward 1, but de Havilland falls foul of a nurse jealous of the attention the doctor pays her and finds herself dispatched to the most distant back ward of all, the snake pit of the title. There she is forced into a cold bath and then into a straitjacket. 

******

De Havilland is rescued by her kindly psychiatrist and eventually taken home by a model American husband, but this was not the first time such scenes had been laid before the American public. In 1887, Nellie Bly, an ambitious young freelancer, doorstepped the editor of the New York World.

He turned her ideas down, challenging her to investigate instead the notorious New York mental asylum Blackwell’s Island. Bly accepted, feigning mental illness convincingly enough to fool the doctors and have herself admitted. What she saw there was revealed in a series of articles for the World and then collected in a book, Ten Days in a Mad-House.

The articles created a sensation – this is from a paraphrase in a rival newspaper:

Weak, shivering women were plunged into baths of ice cold water, one after another in the same water until the fluid was so thick that it had to be changed. … The bath over, the helpless ones were thrust into their garments wet and so they shivered through the long night. Nurses swore at the patients and beat them. Complaint to the physicians had no other effect than to increase the beatings in number and ferocity until the poor creatures promise to tell the physicians no more.

Bly spoke to as many women as she could and found many were immigrants who didn't understand English and had been sent there in error. Others were just poor and thought they were going to a poorhouse, not an insane asylum. 

Nurses, she reported, administered "so much morphine and chloral that the patients are made crazy," and “attendants seem to find amusement and pleasure in exciting the violent patients to do their worst". The asylum was also hopelessly overcrowded: 400 inmates had to sleep on the floor each night, and 300 had to stand while they ate.

Bly’s investigation brought about reforms at the asylum and then its closure seven years later.

******

For a few years after the war, the British censors were more relaxed than their American counterparts, yet The Snake Pit was shown over here in butchered form. Out went the straitjackets and scenes of what was decreed inappropriate humour – there had been a campaign to ban the film altogether.

In 1951 a British response to The Snake Pit appeared, made by the Crown Film Unit and sponsored by the Ministry of Health as a training aid and to raise public awareness. Out of True told the story of a woman who attempted suicide after a nervous breakdown and of her recovery in a mental hospital.

This is no Freudian detective puzzle: it’s clear from the outset that the woman’s problems are an overcrowded flat and the pressures of running the household. She is played by Jane Hylton, a graduate of the Rank charm school and a little too genteel to convince in the role. Her husband, puzzled but sympathetic, is better and his mother, who is living with them, is no caricature. She senses that her presence is one of her daughter-in-law’s difficulties and takes herself off to live with another relative.

The tone is hopeful, though it’s admitted that not every patient gets better and goes home, and the stigma of being a mental patient is acknowledged. I suppose we should not be surprised that Hylton is given ECT on entry to the hospital without warning, anaesthetic or any mention of consent. Her husband does question the treatment, saying it has affected her memory, but he’s told this is normal and she will soon recover.

Out of True can be watched on the British Film Institute website without charge.

******

Nellie Bly stopped acting when she arrived at the asylum, but the staff assumed her normal behaviours were symptoms of insanity anyway. And if she had told them the truth, that she was there to research an article,  wouldn’t she have sounded just like Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit? The newspaper gave her 10 days as a patient before it informed the authorities of the deceit.

Rosenhan would have understood.

Searching for Normal by Sami Timimi

This review appears in the new Liberator – issue 435. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

Searching for Normal: A New Approach to Understanding Mental Health, Distress and Neurodiversity

Sami Timimi

Vintage, 2026, £12.99

Many years ago, through my then day job, I encountered the ideas of professionals who challenged the dominant account of serious mental health problems. It was wrong, they argued, to see these problems as caused by one or more of a collection of discrete mental illnesses. The term “schizophrenia”, for instance, now describes a quite different set of symptoms from those it did when it was coined in the 19th century, and despite all the advances made in neuroimaging, physical signs that would allow schizophrenia to be securely diagnosed remain as elusive as ever. And homosexuality ceased to be a mental disorder in the US in 1973, not because of any scientific discovery, but because of a vote among psychiatrists. Of those eligible to take part, 21 per cent said it was a disorder, 32 per cent said it wasn’t and 47 per cent failed to return their ballot paper.

Because the charge is often made, it’s worth emphasising that critical professionals don’t seek to minimise the suffering of people diagnosed with mental illness. What is true is that they are more likely to look for the causes in people’s life experiences, such as abuse, discrimination and poverty. They find the most useful question to ask a new client is not “What’s wrong with you?” but “What’s happened to you?” They also recognise that the treatments often prescribed, from psychoactive medication to electroconvulsive therapy, are not without distressing side-effects.

These critical mental health professionals are a heterogeneous group, but it’s fair to number the psychiatrist Sami Timimi among them. He writes well about what he calls the “mental health industrial complex (MHIC)” – which is in part what we used to call Big Pharma – and how it affects society:

Problems that are socio-political can easily be converted into problems that are psychological. The devastating consequences of discriminations, together with the persistent and pervasive inequities in society, are turned into mental disorders that need mental health care rather than political action. The diminishing boundaries for normal also mean that, over recent decades, the MHIC has continued to benefit from billions in revenue through individualising and psychologising mental suffering.

Where Searching for Normal will be controversial for many is that Timimi includes conditions like ADHD and mild autism in this analysis. Again, he is not denying people’s problems: one of the best things in the book are his case studies of young patients. (They are composites to protect individual clients’ confidentiality) They bring home that each person’s difficulties and suffering are different and that giving a patient one, two or half a dozen diagnoses – and some do receive that many – tells you little about them or what is likely to help them. 

Yet it is undeniable that both ADHD and mild autism are fluid concepts. ADHD has gone from a condition affecting small boys, whose symptoms sounded very like a list of those things about children that most irritate adults, to one found in both sexes and in adults as well as children. And, in online discourse though not psychiatric manuals, from one characterised by inattention to one that can equally well be characterised by paying too much attention. Who, we need to ask, is to say what too much attention is? The neurodiversity movement promised more acceptance of differing personalities, but it too often seeks a medical diagnosis for anyone who differs from an ever-narrowing and ever more stereotypical idea of what is “neurotypical”.

I was pleased to see that in looking at alternative frameworks for helping people, Timimi commends the Power Meaning Threat Network, which was published in 2018 by a group of clinical psychologists and service-user campaigners. He describes it as providing “a way of helping people to create more hopeful stories about their lives and the difficulties they have faced or are still facing, instead of seeing themselves as blameworthy. Weak, deficient or ‘mentally ill’.” It has its roots, to return to my old day job, in a project I once helped to initiate.

The Joy of Six 1511

"Opinion polls consistently suggest that after the elections on 7 May, England will be flanked by countries run by restless centre-left nationalist parties – Plaid Cymru in Cardiff, the Scottish National party in Edinburgh and, in Belfast, Sinn Féin, which shares power with the Democratic Unionists." Severin Carrell and Bethan McKernan say next week's elections could reshape UK.

"Real names becomes a tool for bullies online – and will force victims either to accept the bullying or avoid using the internet. This, of course, is not just true for bullies, but for overbearing parents, sadistic teachers and much worse. It is really important not to just think about good parents and protective teachers. For the vulnerable children, parents and teachers can be exactly the people they need to avoid." Paul Bernal argues that children need anonymity and encryption online. 

Catherine Heseltine asks if we can build crisis care outside the mental health system: "Being violently locked away and forcibly drugged made my mental health crisis many times worse – an experience shared by far too many people who have been subjected to standard NHS crisis 'care'.  Yet the mental health system seems to resist change like a train with no brakes."

Emma Peplow, with the help of the History of Parliament blog's oral history archive reminds us that Hannah Spencer is not the first new MP to remark on Westminster's drinking culture disapprovingly.

"Football Focus lasted almost two decades after its mothership Grandstand finally came off the air in 2007. The falling number of top flight 3pm kick offs certainly didn’t help though, and that trend might in time make it harder for even Final Score to endure, too." Richard Jones discusses what the BBC's axeing of Football Focus tells us about trends in sports broadcasting.

Londonist takes us to North Korea's London embassy, which stands just off the North Circular in Ealing

The Joy of Six 1506

"A project that ought to be broad, open and compassionate has come to be dominated by a narrow set of ideological demands which leave little room for genuine diversity of political perspective." Vlad Vexler and Rupert Read argue that if the climate movement does not embrace pluralism it risks handing the future to the far right.

Laura López-Aybar reminds us of the way society can turn a blind eye to the human rights violations involved in psychiatry.

Melinda Wenner Moyer on studies that suggest young people are in many ways doing better than previous generations: "In addition to their interest in helping people, youths today also appear to be more accepting of others and their differences. Some research suggests that youths are becoming more open-minded and inclusive across various realms."

"While the directors express confidence in future revenue growth exceeding £700 million, the margin for error is non-existent. Any sustained failure on the pitch, or a further tightening of regulatory loopholes by the Premier League or UEFA, would jeopardise the entire capital structure of the Group." Paul Quinn digs deep into Chelsea's troubled and byzantine finances.

"Forteanism is not the same as 'skepticism', it is not front-loaded with an agenda of debunking, but it might end up doing some if the evidence (or lack of it) points that way. Skepticism is generally quite boring because the Skeptic is not the fearsome character who has haunted western philosophy for at least 500 years (and also philosophy in other times and places), but a person who thinks religion is A Bad Thing and science is A Good Thing." Yesterday Discontinued Notes went to an event at Conway Hall organised by the London Fortean Society.

 Gyles Brandreth remembers how Hayley Mills snatched the child role in Tiger Bay from his grasp. "This is another film with Mills, but set in South Wales. It’s about a young boy who witnesses a murder. Quite dark. Lovely script. You’ll be the boy. John Mills is the detective. They’ve seen your photograph, Gyles. They like the look of you."

GUEST POST To realise the health benefits of nature we must first admit we are part of it

Stuart Whomsley reminds us that, though we evolved as a species surrounded by the blue and green stuff, we also have the power to destroy it.

Let me start by stating what should be obvious, but it is something that can be lost in the way the discourse on this topic is constructed, humans are part of nature. We are not an entity separate from the rest of nature. 

We need to break the demarcation of humans as separate from nature, humans vs nature. This includes where the aims are positive, such as nature as a treatment that can be applied to humanity or to a human to restore wellbeing. It is by addressing humanity as being part of nature we get the deepest appreciation of why it is beneficial.

The dichotomy of humanity as separate from nature has a deep cultural heritage. The Abrahamic tradition had God create man, and give him, and maybe her, the rest of nature to rule over and use. It was separate. 

The theme was further developed in the Enlightenment, with God perhaps taken out of the equation. Nature was now a resource, often represented as feminine Mother Nature, for man to plunder and use her resources at his pleasure. 

this  masculine approach has led to the destruction of the rain forests and the plundering of the earth for fossil fuels and now rare metals.  I find myself wondering what is it about the burning of marine microorganisms, whose remains have been heated and compressed for millions of years, that seems to make some men feel so potent – call it "petro-masculinity". 

When we compare the effects on health and wellbeing of being in man-made environments and of being in nature, those man-made environments are made by humans who are part of nature. However, man-made environments have tended to have forms that do not fit with the rest of creation in the natural world. 

There is an interesting question: why have human environments have been developed in ways that go against the structures elsewhere in nature? Anthropogenic environments have been created to meet short-term needs rather than following the patterns of slower ecological adaptation to a place. 

When people talk about being in nature they are thinking about the green and blue stuff which has different properties to what humans have tended to create.

So let's consider the health benefits, both for physical and mental health. from being in nature of the blue and green kind. Put simply, there is good evidence for this, which is hardly surprising given that we are part of nature. There is a natural fit between human beings and certain environments.

In our species history we have evolved to be surrounded by the green and blue stuff, we have evolved to be surrounded by the soft and curvy, under the light of the sun. We have evolved to cease activity when the sun has move around the other side of the globe. We have evolved in these environments to function best in these conditions.  

So it is predictable that mental and physical health face challenges when people are living and working in boxes, away from the green and blue, with artificial lights taking them into continuing activity beyond natural daylight.

The key messages from research into the health benefits of being in nature are predictable and reassuring. The benefits can be seen through a biopsychosocial and spiritual framework: cortisol levels go down, anxiety reduces, self-esteem increases, cognitive abilities go up, mood is improved, a sense of connection to something greater than the self and awe experiences occur.

Little and often is a key message, which for me was both predictable, but also a bit of a surprise.  This makes it something that is more possible for more people.  You do not have to be planning a weekend in the Lake District.

However, to get the benefits you must give yourself to the experience. It is no good standing before a view of herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain if you are busy engaging with your mobile phone. 

In contrast, if you fully engage with experiencing being part of nature, you can gain the benefits through a dandelion growing through the cracks in the pavement – though it probably comes easier if you are in a verdant park and engaging with nature there than if you are on your knees looking at cracks in pavements. But verdant parks are closer to some people than others.

Research suggests there are social inequities in being able to access green and blue spaces. Those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have further to go to get to a recognised green space than their financially and socially more advantaged fellow citizens. 

A case could be made that one layer in the damage to mental and physical health came at a population level when people were forced to move from the countryside to cities for work. The effects of that could be transgenerational and interacting with other factors across the years. 

That is not to say living and working in the countryside is free from stress or health risks, but research continues to demonstrate that mental health problems occur more frequently in cities than in rural areas.

There needs to be equity and a democratic approach in citizen participation in nature. Such an approach will not be accepted by all. It will be seen as wokery and left wing by the fossil fuel, anti-Net Zero advocates. However, the science and most of the population cross culturally around the world would be in line with it. 

People have more hope and are more resilient if they can feel connected to the thing that they are already connected to, nature.  But need to feel it in a real and engaged way. That is a message people can connect to.

It is not only necessary for the health and wellbeing of humans, but also for the vast bulk of nature that is not human. As a species we have the capacity to destroy most, if not all, of the other species on the planet, something no other species can do. A specific virus might wipe out all humans, but it would not touch most of the other species, and a virus that would destroy humans would not harm plants at all. So, humans have that special, unpleasant privilege. 

Yet they are still part of nature. A part of nature of high risk to the rest.

You can follow Stuart Whomsley on Bluesky.

The Joy of Six 1492

"It’s a well-worn tactic: Say something obviously offensive and watch as the media debates whether you were right, actually. The result is that the state of general discourse moves further to the right, the ratchet effect in action." Don't fall into the Nick Timothy trap, warns Mic Wright.

Helen Maguire exposes planners' failure to consider women's safety: "Simple issues like lighting dictate who feels able to use public space after dark. Many women plan their routes based on lighting, avoiding dark shortcuts or taking longer paths home simply to stay on well-lit streets. Some pay for taxis to avoid walking along unlit roads altogether, a luxury that not everyone can afford."

"Quietly, our country is moving, state by state and executive order by executive order, towards policies that all but dismantle the rights of those deemed mentally ill. In the US, both Republican and Democratic legislators have applauded the trend toward seemingly humane policies that lower the threshold for involuntary psychiatric commitment and assertive, non-consensual treatment in the community." Nancy Burke on mental health and the assault on autonomy in Trump's America.

Georgina Brewis and Sam Blaxland consider the long history of student finance: "It is hard to see successive campaigns against repayable loans or fee increases as anything other than a series of failures. But it is also clear that many of the support systems students today take for granted arose out of such activism, from student discounts to subsidised canteens to union shops and hardship funds."

Emily Temple tells how J.R.R. Tolkien stopped W.H. Auden writing a book about him.

A run of Japanese films released around the millennium, and bracketed together as 'J-Horror', gave new life to the ghost story. In 2026, says Ray Newman, they’re still exciting.

The Joy of Six 1483

Taylor Lorenz argues that there is little evidence that social media is driving a mental health crisis among young people and a banning them from it would effect us all: "Removing anonymity from the web, which will inevitably happen when tech companies are required to identify and ban children, allows for easier government tracking and censorship of journalists, activists and whistleblowers, who rely on online anonymity."

Opponents of traffic-reduction measures in cities sometimes claim that such policies discriminate against people with disabilities because they need cars to get about. In reality, Julia Métraux finds, walkable communities are good for them too.

Jim Waterson, Sophie Wilkinson and Polly Smythe dissect the panic in London over 'school wars': "On Monday night the Metropolitan police confirmed to London Centric that there have been no reported incidents that the force has linked to the supposedly all-pervasive ;school wars'. Despite this, it said it would continue to provide reassurance in the form of a 'strong, visible presence around schools', issuing dispersal orders, and asking social media sites to remove videos."

Is there a Christian revival underway among young adults in the UK? Conrad Hackett thinks the recent surveys suggesting there is may be misleading.

"Research in the humanities is not confined to academic institutions. Particularly in history and archaeology there are many communities focused on the study and interpretation of the past that engage in different ways with academic research." Ben Earley challenges the simplistic view of research impact flowing from institutions to public users.

Leah Broad on the rediscovery of Dame Ethel Smyth and other women classical composers.

The political effect of our "silent epidemic of loneliness"

The Liberal Democrats have proposed a network of "Hobby Hubs" to combat what they call a "silent epidemic of loneliness", as a lack of community spaces is forcing people to find human interaction online.

These hubs could libraries, community centres and pubs where groups could meet for activities. The network would be integrated the into NHS social prescribing programmes, giving GPs additional options when recommending activities for their patients.

The BBC News report on this plan says the party estimates that £42m of funding per year could help hobby hubs in England stay open for an additional 300,000 hours.

It also quotes Ed Davey

"The Liberal Democrats want to breathe new life into British high streets and community centres to give everyone a place to do what they love, with other people who love it too. 

"It is so important that we do not allow isolation to become the new normal."

This is an important issue, and one that has political implications. Diane Bolet has written about her own research into the decline of community centres for The Conversation:

The decline of the high street has been hollowing out British town centres in recent years. When pubs, community centres, libraries and banks close, it adds to a sense of local decline. In my recently published research, I found that local decline contributes to a rise in support for radical-right political parties – and that the loss of local pubs plays a surprisingly important role in the shift.

A couple of other links seem relevant too. Here's Andrew Saint reviewing The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol. III: 1840-1950. in the London Review of Books:

Edwardian Market Harborough, a town just short of 8000, boasted Sunday schools, friendly societies for young men and girls, a Church Lads’ brigade, a Territorial Army branch, a debating society, a reading society, a choral society, an opera society, a brass band, an angling 'society', clubs for cricket, football, tennis, golf, polo, water polo, bicycling and point-to-point riding, a swimming-bath and a roller-skating rink, and regularly put on carnivals, flower, produce and horse shows and swimming galas. I abridge. There can have been little room for masterly inactivity in Market Harborough.

And here is Simon Titley, writing in Liberator 331, on the world that the concept of "cool" is producing:

A world where it is no longer permissible to have hobbies or intellectual pursuits. A world where enthusiasm or erudition earns contempt. A world where, if you commit any of these social sins, you will immediately be slapped down with one of these stock sneers: "sad", "trainspotter", "anorak", "anal" or "get a life".

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"By-elections follow their own logic, not Westminster narratives, and Gorton and Denton has all the makings of a classic contest - a divided seat, polarising candidates and four different parties with a credible local claim. ... Gorton and Denton is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, formed ahead of the last general election when remnants of the abolished Manchester Gorton seat were stitched onto a chunk of the also abolished Denton and Reddish seat ... with Burnage ward, formerly in Manchester Withington, chucked on at the South West edge for good measure." Rob Ford marks your card for the coming by-election.

Mental Health Cop is not impressed by the new white paper on police reform: "It’s rather spectacular in all the wrong kinds of way because it misses rather a lot of important points, it plays undergraduate essay games with what policing actually is and what the public want it to be, and yes: it touches upon mental health as it’s primary example of the police doing non-police things which need to be cleared out of the way so they can 'fight crime and catch criminals'."

Miranda Sheild Johansson on how abolishing its wealth tax changed Sweden for the worse.

"Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, MOOCs (“Massive Open Online Courses”) were the exciting new technology that would revolutionize education – and perhaps even kill off the university as we knew it. With a MOOC, a single star lecturer would give the definitive course on topic X, and students everywhere would learn from the MOOC. Why replicate thousands of near-identical versions of Biology 101, each taught by a local lesser light, when students could all tune in to a masterpiece by the best instructor in the world?" Stephen Heard asks what happened to MOOCs.

James Kenney examines a favourite film in depth: "Breaking Away – a film that runs well under two hours and yet feels fuller than most contemporary movies – doesn’t linger, nor does it inflate moments to announce their importance. Themes aren’t announced in heavy-handed speeches. It moves generously and with grace through characters in motion and leaves them alive in our minds long after it ends."

"The chancel glows in green and gold, its walls painted with stylised flowers and leaves. The decoration, if overwhelming, also does an excellent job of defining the chancel as the most sacred space." Philip Wilkinson visit Wilmcote and its 19th-century Gothic Revival church. 

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"Almost a quarter of pupils say they 'never' feel safe or 'only on some days'. ... Half of all secondary school pupils say they 'only sometimes' or 'never' enjoy school, and parents aren’t always aware – they underestimate this figure by a factor of three." Cara Cinnamon on the Department for Education’s newly published pupil experience data.

Prem Sikka states the bleeding obvious – to tackle child poverty the government must deal with parental poverty – but isn't it rare to see it stated?

Is your car journey suspicious? Police forces are trialling AI technology that enables them to identify and track “suspicious” journeys by drivers on Britain’s road network. Mark Wilding and Charles Hymas have the story.

Kathryn Rix explains the legislation that bound MPs suffering with prolonged periods of mental illness from 1886 until legislative reform in 2013.

Starr Charles reports that the Twentieth Century Society has selected 10 UK buildings as part of its annual list highlighting 30-year-old buildings it says deserve to be nationally listed. The society says: "Given that around 30 years after construction is often the point at which buildings are likely to require their first major refurbishment, any listing designation at this point would provide a timely opportunity to ensure that such works recognise and respond to what makes a building significant." 

"Reading the poems now, it is the lyricism that stands out and still surprises. Sometimes it seems as though the subjects Larkin writes about are merely placeholders for the poet’s deeper fascination with poetry, and its relationship with the passing of time." Jeremy Wikeley looks at Philip Larkin's early collection of poems, The Less Deceived.

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"Almost all workers (98 per cent) at SOSE [South of Scotland Enterprise] believed the four-day week trial improved motivation and morale, while there was a decrease in workers taking time off sick and a 25 per cent fall in those taking sick days for psychological reasons." A Scottish government trial of a four-day working week finds that it improves productivity and staff wellbeing, reports Joanna Partridge.

Sam Whewall, Avril Keating and Emily Clark say young people in seaside towns are being left behind and set out what could be done to help them: "Our professionals made two key suggestions for improving the lives of the young people they work with. The first is to invest in safe spaces and leisure activities that are available outside of the short summer season. ... The second suggestion is to invest in and rebuild youth services."

Jonquilyn Hill on the rise of the wellness industry: "Nowadays, in many parts of North America, wellness is everywhere and anywhere, and the definition has really ballooned to include anything and everything. If we ask one wellness guru to define wellness, we’ll hear a different answer from another one."

"There has been a rise in privately operated tournaments set up as little more than vehicles for illegal betting. Organisers are theoretically expected to monitor betting markets for signs of suspicious movements, but problems with manipulation have been manifest." Steve Menary reveals that cricket has been flooded with betting sponsorship since the Covid pandemic.

Adrian Teal examines the eccentricities of the great portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough.

"'The Wolves are running…' is the mysterious message the boy Kay Harker is given by the old Punch and Judy man in Masefield’s The Box of Delights; it was a potent image from Joan Aiken’s childhood reading, complete with snow… and re-reading the book became one of the Christmas traditions that remained with her until she was able 'to write the wolves out of her  subconscious' and into her own story many years later." Lizza Aiken traces the links between The Box of Delights and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

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Sam Bright looks at new research that suggests effective attack lines to use against Reform UK: "Farage’s shtick is to pose as a champion of the working man, fighting against out-of-touch elites and corrupt institutions. But this new research shows the importance of exposing Farage’s foundational myth: namely, that Reform isn’t a grassroots rebellion; it’s a vehicle bankrolled by the financiers who crashed the economy in 2008 and the austerity-obsessed corporate vandals who have profited ever since."

Like it or not, Britain's membership of the European Convention on Human Rights is going to be an issue at the next general election, and we're going to need better arguments than we were able to come up with during the European Union referendum. Here, George Peretz makes a social democrat case for Britain's continued membership of the ECHR.

Dan Friedman counsels Democrats against getting entangled in conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein as there are more than enough real Trump scandals to expose.

Michaela James and Mayara Silveira Bianchim find that it's not so much activity as feeling confident and in control when they’re active that boosts children’s wellbeing: "autonomy, confidence and competence – were stronger predictors of wellbeing than more traditional measures like deprivation (normally we’d expect deprivation to positively or negatively affect wellbeing) or even total time spent being active."

"Nowadays, it’s hard to believe that Durrell was once ranked among the best prose stylists of the postwar period. Such is the fickle nature of literary legacies that the main charge made against his writing – its luscious language and bewildering structure – was originally considered its unique achievement." Guy Stagg on the decline of Lawrence Durrell's literary reputation.

"I contend that The Rising of the Moon is Gladys Mitchell's greatest stylistic achievement: she sets out to create a world filtered through the eyes of her thirteen-year old narrator, Simon Innes, and to that end she succeeds on every page. It's not just a perspective, it's an entire ideology that Miss Mitchell offers in her young protagonist. Simon and Keith have scruples; they are cunning and resourceful, in the best meaning of those words; they have their own particular code of honor. They also have a thorough understanding of how their world operates (parental laws; omissions which are not the same as lies), and Simon's subdued narrative prose bolsters this point." The Stone House celebrates an extraordinary book.

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Chaminda Jayanetti examines the hidden impact of Labour's disability benefit cuts - from carer's allowance to railcards.

"When they receive the annual service charge statements, they find costs that bear no relation to the services they receive - street lighting for a block of flats, access to facilities they are not allowed to use, or simple paint jobs costing tens of thousands of pounds with no say over who carries out the work or how it is done." Labour MP Kate Osborne says the end of the feudal leasehold system cannot come soon enough.

Seventy years before congestion pricing landed in New York City, Lewis Mumford sounded the alarm on letting automobiles run amok in America’s downtowns. David Zipper tells his story.

Tim Radford reviews The Age of Diagnosis by the neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan: "How do you take on a real set of problems in medicine, concern about which can be seen as conservative-coded, without getting into bed with the vibes-based bores who will bang their hammy fists on tables in prejudiced agreement? The answer is: carefully. O’Sullivan is an excellent, fluid writer, and an eloquent speaker, but I’m bracing myself for braying allyship from right-wing broadcasters during her very well-deserved media appearances."

"At first, we didn’t know why Jamie, the perpetrator of the attack, did it. We knew he wasn't a product of abuse or parental trauma. But we couldn’t figure out a motive. Then someone I work with, Mariella Johnson, said: 'I think you should look into incel culture.'" Jack Thorne on writing Adolescence.

Luka Ivan Jukic casts light on an unexpected corner of European history: Latin remained a live language in Croatia until the middle of the 19th century.

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"The government is trying to solve the wrong problem. They are focusing on those who are out of work, when it is increasingly clear that one big reason people with disabilities are not in employment is because work environments have fewer roles they can fill." Ruth Patrick and Aaron Reeves argue that cuts and caps to benefits have always harmed people, not helped them into work.

Fred Garratt-Stanley, writing for The Lead, finds malaise, discontent and the rise of Reform UK at the English seaside. "When you take away someone’s belief in the place they live in, you lay the groundwork for radicalisation. And when progressives lose the argument and subscribe to the right-wing view on the roots of this deprivation, it creates a vacuum waiting to be filled."

Wendy Chamberlain reviews The List - a moving documentary about one family’s attempt to rescue hundreds of artists from the Taliban during the fall of Kabul in 2021.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the state-controlled international news channel RT has all but disappeared from Western screens. But, report Rina Nikolaeva, Anastasia Korotkova and Dmitry Velikovsky, vloggers are being paid to spread the same pro-Russian propaganda.

"In 1968, when I was 28, I wrote the first English book on art deco." Bevis Hillier talks to dezeen about the centenary of the style.

Jim McCarthy, in an extract from his book Flowers in the Rain: The Untold Story of The Move, writes about the band and drugs: "Trevor Burton was definite and truthful, about the path into drug taking, 'It was only Ace and me that took drugs in The Move. We were like kids in the sweet shop. Our other thing was amphetamines. When you’re gigging six nights a week - you don’t mind a little help.'"

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"With just two days until we mark three years since the invasion, we need to talk about this man, because no one truly knows what could have happened if he hadn’t been there to lead. This is a man who could have left. A man who was expected to leave. The world was really expecting he would run." Victor Kravchuk pays tribute to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Jennie Kermode is worried that US politicians are again talking about mass sterilisation: "The US first began sterilising people with mental illness - requiring neither their consent nor that of their next of kin – in Pennsylvania in 1905, and in 1927 this was formally ruled to be in accordance with the constitution. Although never actually banned, it decreased dramatically after 1978, when new regulations ruled that consent was ... necessary."

When did rock 'n roll die? Chris Dalla Riva and Daniel Parris offer a statistical analysis.

"In an unnamed city, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) keeps his head down in the Department of Records, covering for ineffectual boss Mr Kurtzmann (a brilliant Ian Holm). Meanwhile in his dreams, he is a winged warrior, who soars amongst the clouds, battling a giant samurai creature and rescuing a Botticelli Venus from her aerial cage." Tim Pelan celebrates the chaotic genius of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Londonopia finds that the grazing of sheep in London's parks has a long and complex history: "Just when you thought sheep had permanently retired from their park-keeping duties, along came World War II. With food shortages rampant and every inch of available land needed for practical use, parks across London were repurposed for the war effort. Victory gardens sprung up in many green spaces, and in some cases, sheep were reintroduced to provide both wool and meat."

Ben Austwick takes us to Lud’s Church, a natural geological feature in the Staffordshire Peak District, with rich literary and religious connections.