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 1548

Sam Bright explains what is missing from the Covid Inquiry PPE report: "Long before the pandemic struck, the governing party had established a fundraising system that handed influence to those with the fattest chequebooks. The Conservatives, and Westminster as a whole, created the conditions for the PPE scandal long before even the first whiff of Covid in Wuhan."

Andrew Page shares his thoughts on the reaction to the death of Ann Widdecombe: "It has been deeply depressing to see some people going much further than this and celebrating her death online. Quite apart from the cruelty shown towards her family and friends, there is something profoundly corrosive about a society in which the death of another human being becomes an occasion for applause because we happened to dislike their opinions."

"Whilst working in public libraries, I experienced several attempts to censor library stock including a parent wishing me to withdraw art books from the library’s shelves, because they featured paintings or sculptures of nudes. Books featuring Black people of note were the subject of complaints as well as those about political figures of the time. I had parents complaining about Judy Blume’s books, which were aimed at a teenage audience, because they featured girls going through puberty and parents who were divorced." Meg Gain on Reform-led Warwickshire County Council's proposal to censor what children read.

"Residential family assessment centres have become a major part of England's child protection and family justice system, yet surprisingly little is known about whether they improve outcomes for children and families." King's College London reports research by Mary Baginsky and Rick Hood.

Tim Adams says Jude Bellingham is channelling the spirit of Duncan Edwards, his 1950s Black Country counterpart.

"In 1951 he helmed an adaptation of Josephine Tey’s bestselling The Franchise Affair. In it, a teenage girl accuses two respectable women living in a remote country house of having kidnapped, beaten and starved her in an attempt to force her to become their servant. The movie starts on a remote highway with a wild thunderstorm, and the young girl (Ann Stephens) pops up in the middle of the road in a startling close-up." Self-Styled Siren praises the neglected British director Lawrence Huntington.

The Joy of Six 1540

"I am speaking out today because many more asylum-seeking children are at risk due to plans to withdraw support and forcibly remove children whose families have failed asylum claims." The children’s commissioner Rachel de Souza says no child should be made destitute to enforce harmful immigration rules.

Zoe Grunewald finds that Brexit has made worse the very problems it was promised it would solve: "What comes in the next decade depends entirely on whether Britain’s mainstream politicians can finally do what it has spent the previous decade refusing to: tell the truth about what Brexit did, who bears the cost, and why the man promising to fix it helped cause it all in the first place."

"That Tory share was its lowest in all 17 sets of full London borough council elections ever held. It was also smaller than every vote share won by the Conservatives in the Greater London administrative area – formally created in April 1965 – in the 16 general elections held since that year." Barnaby Towns finds that the Conservatives are still going backwards in London.

Susanna Crossman sets out to learn more about the beliefs and practices of the folk healers called 'fire-tamers' who operate an "alternative, unofficial and ancient grassroots system of care" across France.

"He swiped, slogged and occasionally savaged, under the guise of scoring 'easier' runs against the new ball given how this pitch is playing. Instead, his 30 off 20 balls created a febrile storm that swept up Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook and Ben Duckett." Vithushan Ehantharajah watches Ben Stokes' last Sunday as England's captain.

Moreau Vazh finds that Witchfinder General, despite its place in the folk horror canon, most closely resembles a Sam Peckinpah Western.

No, Leave didn't win the Brexit referendum because of Northern working class voters

There are so many myths, and so much snobbery, surrounding the result of the 2016 referendum that I've a good mind to post this every week.

The Joy of Six 1529

Chris Dillow on Labour's mistaken strategy: "All good businesspeople know that it’s easier to keep a customer than to win a new one; that you can’t always choose your customers; and that one must never 'do a Ratner' and insult your customers. In ignoring all this Labour has been simply grossly amateurish.

Keyvan Hosseini and Dawn-Marie Walker say their research shows that the electric SUV boom is a problem for climate, health and equity: "Larger vehicles can also make streets more dangerous, especially for children. A study using Great Britain crash data found that children aged 0-18 hit by SUVs, rather than passenger cars, had 77 per cent higher odds of fatal injury. For children under nine, the odds were more than three times higher."

"Too many inspections end up evaluating whether schools are good at being inspected. That is not the same thing as being good at educating. We mistake performance for learning." David Didau argues that systems designed to raise standards too often teach schools to look good rather than get better.

"Boudicca and co surprised the Reserve staff by digging canals. Because there are plenty of trees on the edge of the lake, the presumption had been that they would not require canals. The beavers knew otherwise, and the ditches are altering the way water flows around the site. They’ve built two lodges and, as well as stripping bark and eating foliage, have begun to fell some larger trees. In one area, they have cut down most of the young saplings." Isabella Clarke reports on the remarkable success of the Nene Valley beavers.

Discontinued Notes has been to Somerset House to see the the M.C. Escher exhibition.

"The Station Hotel, the original home of the Crawdaddy Club where the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds played some of their earliest gigs, is now a gastro-pub. L'Auberge, the coffee bar at the bottom of Richmond Hill where beatniks and then hippies gathered to trade gossip and other substances, has become a branch of Nando’s. A little further up the hill, there is no trace of Sandover Hall (another early venue for the Stones), Potter’s Music Shop, or the Hanging Lamp, one of the key sixties folk clubs." David Buckingham goes in search of the South West London venues that fostered British rhythm and blues.

The Joy of Six 1525

"Unlike Blair, he was deeply and passionately engaged in the current moment. He had not fossilised his world view. He was intellectually present. He spoke clearly and trenchantly about what populism is and the threat that it poses. 'They are careless of the strife they cause,' he said. 'They trade on grievances in our society. Where ills exist, they exaggerate them. They then blame those ills on minority groups of a different race or religion. It is ugly politics that deserves no place in our country.'" Ian Dunt says John Major is a better former prime minister than Tony Blair will ever be.

Hannah Fearn argues that there is no sudden epidemic of laziness: "What’s not being discussed at all is how young people are the hardest hit by huge external barriers to employment, however hard they want to work."

Stefan Collini examines the roots of Britain's higher education crisis: "The coalition government, the chief architect of this system, aimed to create a market among ‘providers’ which would be driven by the choices of students as ‘consumers’, with the aim of breaking the so-called 'producers' cartel' that had, allegedly, for so long enabled universities to protect their traditional practices."

"But when it comes to AI chatbots, the doctors have learned to proceed with caution. People may tolerate the idea of talking to a computer when booking a holiday or motor insurance but discussing something as personal as your health is quite a different matter." Rory Cellan-Jones on one GP surgery's mixed experience of introducing AI.

Gill Pain discusses what made Agatha Christie so successful: "There was noir Christie, a writer of disturbing, manipulative psychological fiction; comic Christie, a sharp and witty deconstructor of social mores; and uncanny Christie – a crime writer whose familiar voice has a curious knack of making the reader feel at home, while pulling the rug from under them."

"In order to attract puffins to the island, they created 100, lifelike weather resistant decoy puffins and anchored them to the cliffs. To make the illusion as convincing as possible, the team also installed solar powered speakers to blast continuous puffin calls out to sea to catch the attention of passing juveniles." Eva Cahill reports an ingenious attempt to attract puffins back to an islet off the Isle of Man where they once thrived.

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 1521

"Look at our responses to three of Labour’s flag ship pieces of legislation: the Employment Rights Bill, Great British Energy and taking the railways into public ownership. On each of these pieces of legislation, the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons abstained on them. Why? I gather we attempted to amend each of them, but how? I could not tell any voter whether the Lib Dems supported or opposed Labour’s landmark legislation on employment, energy or transport, because I genuinely have no idea." Paul Hindley convicts the Lib Dems of timidity.

Sacha Hilhorst has interviewed Reform voters and she found them much more progressive than you think: "While it is true that Reform is building its base in former mining and manufacturing areas, the local people who can be won over to progressive politics will only be convinced by being less like Reform, not more. Winning in post-industrial England requires connecting with its popular radicalism."

"MPs who support the change have called for the bill to be brought back in the new parliamentary session, which begins on May 13. They have reportedly been joined in their demands by almost 200 peers in the Lords." Daniel Gover looks at the plans to reintroduce the assisted dying bill at Westminster.

Mark Urban on the effect decades of cuts have had on the BBC and its workforce.

Joy O'Toole introduces the work of Ngaio Marsh, one of the four Queens of Crime: "While she followed many of the same rules of the Golden Age-mystery genre, Marsh focused more on characterization and literary technique than plot. Inspector Alleyn is from an aristocratic family and well educated, like Sayers' Peter Wimsey and Allingham's Campion, but he’s a professional policeman and more down to earth."

"I think you have to decide for yourself whether both the Sufi and the Catholic aspects of Burton are equally represented; the freethinker is not. The outside of the it carries very clear Christian and Islamic symbolism in the shape of the cross and the crescents and stars. Inside the story is more complex." Mathew Lyons takes us inside the explorer Sir Richard Burton's mausoleum in Mortlake.

The Joy of Six 1520

"I saw a man wearing what seemed to be a hybrid of Hell’s Angels and Crusader outfit, with horns protruding from his shoulders, but I can’t be sure whether this was a political identity or Game Of Thrones fancy dress. Those two are very close together in the imagination of 'Western crusaders', judging from some of their on-line output." Discontinued Notes was in London on Saturday, the day of the Unite the Kingdom march.

James Graham suggests Andy Burnham's attempt at a political heist may turn out more Fargo than Ocean's Eleven: "He’s already watered down his commitment on rejoining the EU, something Wes Streeting is having fun undermining. This follows the 'Red Wall' seat logic of not challenging Reform on their favourite topic. We should not be at all surprised therefore if he waters down his criticisms of Labour’s hostile policies on immigration."

John Lanchester is our guide to the extraordinary world of money laundering. He explains why, when we're all using cash less and less, there is more of it in circulation than ever.

"The government has kept tight controls on the research into cannabis-based medicines, making it prohibitively expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare for scientists to build up the evidence base that would be needed for a wide rollout of the treatment on the NHS." Kojo Koram explains why the legalisation of medical cannabis has had so little effect on the patients who might benefit from it.

Amy Boucher explores the Devil's immanence in Shropshire: "Throughout Shropshire, the Devil is referred to in familiar terms, with epithets such as 'Uncle Joseph', 'Owd Nick', 'Owd Scratch' and 'Owd Mon' used to describe him. These appellations portray a stark familiarity and provide a sense of personhood to the forces that the Devil may represent."

"Beyond his unusual appearance and miraculous shots, there was further mystique because everyone thought they were watching an Indian prince. His skills were clearly a product of the East: mystical, unusual, magical. To many, he was a conjurer. And Ranjitsinhji played on the association, knowing that it helped to paint the picture he wanted. Because nothing was quite as it appeared." Giles Wilcock on the Edwardian conjurer of runs and myths.

Andrew Wakefield, autism and MMR: A forgotten aspect of the affair

It's been called "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". On 28 February 1998 a research paper primarily written by physician Andrew Wakefield, was published in The Lancet. It suggested there was a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and autism.

As the Wikipedia article on the affair explains, that paper was later found to be fraudulent:

The fraud involved data bias and manipulation, and two undisclosed conflicts of interest. It was exposed in a lengthy Sunday Times investigation by reporter Brian Deer, resulting in the paper's retraction in February 2010 and Wakefield's being discredited and struck off the UK medical register three months later. 

In the paper, Wakefield fabricated evidence to suggest a new "syndrome" existed, which he called "autistic enterocolitis". Wakefield had been employed by a lawyer representing parents in lawsuits against vaccine producers, and had reportedly earned up to US$43 million per year selling diagnostic kits for the non-existent syndrome he claimed to have discovered. He also held a patent to a rival measles vaccine at the time.

What's now largely forgotten is that Wakefield was for a time a hero of... well, the sort of people who are now members of Bluesky.

Private Eye took up the idea of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and pursued it long after most of Wakefield's supporters (including most co-authors of Lancet study) had walked away.

Eventually, the Eye's editor asked his own medical correspondent to conduct what he optimistically termed a "peer review" of its coverage of the affair. You can read it online.

Stephen Brook, writing in the Guardian, was not impressed:

For a magazine that often accuses newspapers of "burying" corrections, the boot seems on the other foot this week as we have to wait until page 29 and after eight other articles from its In The Back section to get the Eye's take on the Wakefield verdict.

An editor, particularly of what is partially an investigative publication, has to be prepared to follow hunches and go against the consensus sometimes, but you hope their hunches will be good ones and that they change course when it becomes obvious they've backed the wrong horse.

But it wasn't just Private Eye that backed Wakefield: a television film was made for Channel 5 with him as the hero. Titled Hear the Silence it starred Juliet Stevenson as the mother of an autistic child and Hugh Bonneville as Wakefield. (You can find it online, but I didn't tell you that.)

Though some praised the acting and the drama, there was much adverse criticism:

Jon Joseph in The Times wrote "there are definitely no shades of grey" with Wakefield's assertions treated as if they are "a law of nature, like gravity". 

Of the supposed plot presumed to originate with the drug companies as a means to discredit Wakefield, Ben Goldacre wrote in The Guardian of its utter implausibility as the patent on the MMR vaccine had lapsed, it was now generic and no longer highly profitable.

I've written this, not to heap blame on anyone, but to recapture a surprising and largely forgotten aspect of the affair.

The Joy of Six 1512

Chris Dillow lays bare the stupidity of Westminster politics: "If your final shortlist for a job comprises Mandelson, George Osborne (and maybe Bear Grylls) but not anyone with direct relevant experience such as career diplomats then you’ve probably not even bothered to do a detailed job description; you’ve not asked 'what’s the shape of the hole we want to fill and who is that shape?' One of the most prestigious jobs in government seems to have been filled with less care than an investment bank would take over the hiring of a junior analyst."

"Every child is met at the door with a handshake and direct eye contact. This is one of the strategies we use to 'fill the emotional piggy bank' - a deliberate, personal connection that ensures every child feels seen as a human being, not just a data point. We’ve doubled down on the 'analogue' joys of childhood. We try to prioritise the outdoors and Forest School, getting muddy, play and physical movement. Every one of our pupils plays a musical instrument every single day." Primary school headteacher Ruth McManus on educating digital-native children.

Alissa Walker brings good news from France: "Paris's school streets are effectively sculpting out instant parks in the locations where they'll provide immense public health benefits to the city's most vulnerable populations. But it's true, they really stand for something else entirely: a city brave enough to prioritise children."

Amanda Cole has found there's not just prejudice against regional accents by people in the South East of England, there's also prejudice against the wrong sort of South-Eastern accent.

"The Ipcress File (the book) came out around the same time as Dr No (the movie). Reviews of the novel pointed out the contrast between the glamour of James Bond and the grime of Deighton’s spy world: there are no Aston Martins or high-rolling casinos in The Ipcress File, just ‘a little grey rusting Morris 1000’ and a grimy strip-joint on Wardour Street." Thomas Jones explores the world of Len Deighton.

Emma Linford sees Great Expectations as an early exploration of the effects of romance fraud.

For the JCPCP: Norma Varden, the Norman Yoke, Being Normal and Norman Bowler

I've just sent another of my columns off to the The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, so it's time to publish an earlier one here again. The theme for this issue was "Norma, Norman or Normal".

Goodbye Norma Jean. This obviously had to begin with someone called Norma, but Marilyn Monroe didn’t make the cut. Instead, I’ve gone for the English-born piano prodigy turned Hollywood actress Norma Varden, who appeared in both Casablanca and The Sound of Music.

In Casablanca she’s the wife of the Englishman who has his wallet stolen right at the start of the film. In The Sound of Music she’s the housekeeper who tells Julie Andrews, who has just found a frog in her bed, “You're lucky. With Fraulein Helga, it was a snake.”

There was talk of Varden playing the Mother Superior, but Hollywood elbows get very sharp when a top nun role is up for grabs.

******

Our next caller is Gerrard Winstanley. Gerrard, what’s on your mind this evening?

O what mighty Delusion, do you, who are the powers of England live in! That while you pretend to throw down that Norman yoke, and Babylonish power, and have promised to make the groaning people of England a Free People; yet you still lift up that Norman yoke, and slavish Tyranny, and holds the People as much in bondage, as the Bastard Conquerour himself, and his Councel of War.

Winstanley was the leader of the Diggers or True Levellers during the Civil War and Commonwealth. His words here are a quotation from The True Levellers Standard Advanced, published in 1649.

The idea that the people of England laboured under the Norman Yoke – ruled by the descendants of William I and his generals – had a shadowy existence through the Middle Ages and came into the light when central authority broke down during the Civil War.

And that yoke is still round our necks today. In 2011, Gregory Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California, published research showing that people with Norman surnames – Mandeville, Percy, Darcy – live three years longer than the rest of us and leave significantly larger estates.

Studying the probate records of those with "rich" and "poor" names for every decade since the 1850s, he found the extreme differences in accumulated wealth had narrowed over time. Yet his conclusion was still that:

Over the last 150 years, the rate of social mobility revealed by surnames is slower than most social scientists have estimated – and is possibly slower than in the middle ages.

Or to put it another way, the wealthy hold us as much in bondage as "the Bastard Conquerour himself, and his Councel of War".

******

I’ve never been that keen on being normal, so I was heartened by the rise of the neurodiversity movement and its insight that conditions like autism, ADHD and dyslexia weren’t disorders to be fixed, but part of the rich spectrum of human cognitive diversity.

But that movement worries me now, both because it accepts the coherence of such diagnoses, even welcomes them as providing an identity, and because it takes it as axiomatic that cognitive differences are a reflection of differences in people’s brains.

When I began to consider these questions, I was sceptical about the concept of ADHD. Weren’t the disorder’s supposed symptoms just a list of the things about children that most irritate teachers? Don’t pharmaceutical companies famously “sell the disease, not the drug”? Wasn’t Ritalin marketed as a treatment for depression and fatigue – particularly “Tired Housewife Syndrome” – before ADHD was invented? I once wrote an article for OpenMind along just these lines.

This view is deeply out of fashion now, but I’m not convinced it’s wrong. When I see a headline like “Third of UK parents have sought special needs assessment for their child, survey finds,” it still seems to me that we should look at the social and educational pressures on parents and children rather than unthinkingly locate the problem inside the child’s brain.

Not only has the concept of ADHD won near-universal professional acceptance, it has escaped into the wild, evolved and bred with autism to sire AuDHD. This diagnosis may not have received its clinical imprimatur, but it’s everywhere online.

You may see its arrival as an important new insight into the causes of cognitive differences, or you may reflect that when the symptoms of ADHD and high-functioning autism are as loosely drawn as they are, at least online, there’s bound to be some overlap between the two clusters.

These days I don’t get to see the professional literature so often, so the ADHD discourse I come across is on social media or in conversations overheard in coffee shops. What strikes me about it is the confidence with which people refer to “the ADHD brain” or even “the ADHD nervous system”. That confidence, I believe, runs far ahead of the scientific consensus on how far the condition can be identified by neuroimaging or any other technology.

People obviously derive comfort, meaning and membership of a community from their diagnoses, but that in itself doesn’t guarantee their validity. I don’t have a conclusion to offer here, but I’ll remain an interested, if worried, observer of developments.

******

I can remember the Sixties and lying in bed at eight o’clock, hearing the theme music of the police drama Softly Softly and wishing I could stay up to watch it.

When I did get to see it, I adopted Harry Hawkins, played by Norman Bowler, as my hero. Clive James once suggested he did little but open and close doors:

In any given episode, he would open or close every door in the police station. Sometimes he would open and close the same door in rapid succession. He would leave the room just so that he could open the door, close it behind him, open it again, and come back in.

But I liked him. And years later he reappeared as Frank Tate, the keystone of the relaunched soap opera Emmerdale, so he must have been able to act. 

What I didn’t know then was that, in the Fifties, Bowler had been a member of the Soho set alongside Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and John Minton.

So never despise a Norman – unless it’s Norman Wisdom, of course.

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

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 1490

"Our reviewers found that the guests or 'experts' are predominantly drawn from a pool of right wing commentators, politicians, polling organisations, or think tanks. The supposedly counterbalancing minority voices often have little real stature or expertise and are challenged or interrupted much more than the guests who agree with the presenter’s views." Alan Rusbridger introduces The New World's special investigation of GB News and of Ofcom's abdication of its role.

Thomas Worth sets out the threat the invigorated Greens pose to Liberal Democrat ambitions: "While it isn’t likely the Greens will take seats from us, it is possible they will prevent us from making gains by splitting our vote and allowing Reform or a wounded Conservative Party to slip through the middle. In Sussex, signs of this happening were occurring even before Zack Polanski took over the Greens."

Annabel Hoare argues that Louis Theroux's Inside the Manosphere opted for superficial spectacle over serious scrutiny.

"British children are not getting shorter, despite claims to the contrary. In fact, they are getting taller. But this is not good news. When my colleagues and I analysed national data on child height, we found that the trend is largely explained by rising childhood obesity and widening inequalities." Andrew Moscrop shares his research.

"Pym’s comic novels, on the surface, are simple, sometimes even silly, stories about sisters, village life, petty church and office politics, and the quiet lives of maiden aunts. But underneath, these are novels about love, loneliness, and longing; social connections, or lack thereof, plus that curiosity about others which is fuel for gossip; and the precarity of an unmarried woman’s place in society." Kerry Clare on the importance of Barbara Pym.

Philip Wilkinson discovers an "Edwardian baroque monster, which housed police, ambulance, and fire stations, together with a coroner’s court, for much of the 20th century," in Manchester's London Road.

The Joy of Six 1488

"It’s what happens when the NHS has run out of room. It means intimate conversations about cancer, stroke, or dementia in earshot of strangers. It means delays to assessment and treatment, including pain relief, become more likely – dignity stripped away through lack of capacity." Danny Chambers says corridor care will continue for another three years – and that’s not good enough.

Nick Bowes reckons political fragmentation could lead to the most interesting London election results since the 32 boroughs were formed.

"When e-cigarettes first appeared around 2010, they were hailed as a breakthrough: nicotine delivery without the toxic tar and combustion byproducts of traditional cigarettes. Public health bodies cautiously endorsed them as a tool for adult smokers to quit, often citing early claims that vaping was 95 per cent less harmful than smoking. More than a decade later, with millions now vaping regularly, the picture is less clear." Vikram Niranjan reports on warning signs that vaping may not be as benign as we thought.

Black female footballers are praised for their strength, white female footballers are praised for their intelligence. Paul Ian Campbell and Allison Thompson discuss the findings of their research.

Jude Rogers chooses her 10 best folk albums of 2025.

Ray Newman follows in the footsteps of Henry VII, who made a pilgrimage to the holy well of St Anne  near Bristol in 1486: "If you want to stick to something like Henry’s route, you have to push past rows of signs and columns cones, squeeze between temporary fences, evade robotic security sentinels that shout at you if you linger too long, and leap muddy puddles in a road surface turned into no-man’s-land by the constant passing of concrete mixers."

The Joy of Six 1487

"On this occasion Starmer has taken both the correct and popular position and stuck to it despite relentless attacks from the right. The result is that it is now his opponents, rather than him, who is having to embark on a humiliating U-turn." Adam Bienkov argues that the government should learn from Farage and Badenoch's reversal on Iran.

The Lancet dissects Robert F. Kennedy Jr's year of failure.

Michael Webb and Rebecca Flook say the choices universities and colleges make about AI are political: "The systems now being woven into education are shaped by a remarkably small group of people. Not 'the internet' as the source of training material. Not 'society' influencing the way we use these tools. It’s shaped by a small leadership class in a handful of companies, operating within specific political and economic pressures."

"I lived in a suburb on the very edge of London, far away from Soho’s Piano Bar or the Waterloo WHSmith glimpsed in the video to ‘West End Girls’. I was a lonely boy at the back of the garden. There weren’t out gay people or role models in my white working class neighbourhood, just an expectation that you would be the same as everyone else, and fit in – or else." John Grindrod reveals how Pet Shop Boys sold city glamour to queer suburban kids.

Parker Henry on Iris Murdoch as a philosopher. It seems to me she is being discovered in this role as her reputation as a novelist fades.

"Two Italian former amateur radio operators, Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, claimed to have recorded audio from an orbiting capsule in the days before Gagarin made his flight, and it was actually the fourth slice of startling audio released by the pair." Was Yuri Gagarin really the first Soviet cosmonaut? David Crookes considers the theory that the USSR launched earlier, unsuccessful manned missions.

Ed Davey flattens Nigel Farage on human rights

On 29 October last year, Nigel Farage put forward his European Convention on Human Rights (Withdrawal) Bill. You can read his speech in Hansard.

This, in full, was Ed Davey's reply:

The speech we just heard totally misrepresents the European convention, and the failure of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) to mention the huge benefits and rights that the European convention has brought to millions of British people says it all. Let me give those attracted by the argument we have just heard one strong reason to think again. Russia under Vladimir Putin is the only country to have withdrawn from the European convention on human rights. Maybe that is what attracts the hon. Member—after all, he said that Putin is the world leader he most admires.

Russia: a country where those who oppose the regime are mysteriously pushed off balconies, and where, if it is not enough to murder a political opponent like Alexei Navalny, Putin has even jailed lawyers who dared to represent him—things not allowed under the European convention. As we have seen Nathan Gill, a leading political ally of the hon. Member for Clacton, imprisoned for taking Russian bribes, perhaps we should not be surprised that the Reform party is so keen to follow Russia.

Besides Russia, where else are people’s hard-fought-for rights under attack? Trump’s America. Of course, the US is not part of the European convention, yet its citizens have benefited from something similar: the US constitution, which was designed to check the power of tyrants and protect the individual from the state. Just as the hon. Member for Clacton desires to remove people’s rights here, his hero Donald Trump is doing the same in America, attacking the courts and the rule of law, and even inciting a violent mob against the US Congress to overturn an election. But of course, the hon. Member has called President Trump “an inspiration”. If we want to know the hon. Member’s intentions for British people’s basic rights and freedoms, we only need to look at Putin’s Russia or Trump’s America. That is not patriotic. It is deeply un-British, and he should be ashamed.

Unlike the hon. Member for Clacton, I am proud of our country; I love our country. I am proud that Britain helped to create the European convention on human rights, championed by Winston Churchill himself. The convention protects the very people who need it most: our elderly and most vulnerable, so that they may live and grow old with dignity; and our children, so that those facing horrific abuse have better protection. It also upholds our freedom of speech so that the press and public can criticise those in power without fear, and it protects our right to peaceful protest.

Seventy years ago, Britain became the first country to ratify the convention, as a leading voice on the global stage for human rights and the rule of law. That is our history. That is who we are. That is Britain at our best. Yet the hon. Member for Clacton wants us to forget our history, dump British values, undermine the rule of law and row back on people’s hard-won rights. I say no.

To help get across how wrong the hon. Member, the Reform party and the Conservatives are on this, let me give some examples. When people died because of poor care at Stafford hospital, their families secured change—because of these laws. When British troops died in Iraq because of poor equipment, the Supreme Court ruled that the Government were accountable—because of these laws. After 96 people were killed in the Hillsborough disaster and the victims themselves were blamed, their families finally got to the truth—because of these laws. When the Metropolitan police failed to properly investigate the horrific assaults of John Worboys, his victims were able to take the police to court—because of these laws.

Time and again, the European convention and its British twin, the Human Rights Act, have brought justice for our people, and protected them from gross misconduct and unfair treatment. These laws help individuals hold the powerful to account—to hold Governments to account. These laws can get justice when the elite and powerful cover up and abuse their power. So it is clear, is it not, that the hon. Member for Clacton is not about standing up for the individual—for the ordinary person, for the people with no voice—but that he is the friend of the elite and the powerful?

If we do not defend our human rights here at home, how can we possibly persuade other countries of the importance of human rights for their own people? If we do what Reform wants, the biggest cheers will come from the Kremlin, from Beijing, from Tehran, from Pyongyang, and from dictators and authoritarian regimes the world over. That would be a betrayal of everything our country stands for. The hon. Member’s plan would damage our country’s ability to shape our world.

Leaving the convention would be another nail in the coffin of Britain’s unique soft power. We have so often influenced world events for the better by being part of international agreements, by upholding international law and by leading. Of course, the hon. Member for Clacton has made his career by damaging our country and our influence. Remember how he led the campaign for Brexit with his Conservative friends? We know what a total mess that has turned out to be. He and his friends argued that Brexit would cut immigration, but immigration has gone up. Just look at how badly he has betrayed the people he claims to speak for. Brexit made the small boats crisis possible.

Before Brexit, we effectively had a returns agreement with every EU country: the Dublin system—a deterrent that worked. Now, undocumented migrants are trying to reach the UK because they know they cannot be returned. Thanks to the hon. Member, his Brexit ripped up Britain’s rights to return people with no right to be here and people who should have claimed asylum elsewhere in Europe. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may shout—they caused it!

Let us look at one of our closest allies, the Republic of Ireland, and a vital part of our country, Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement references the European convention seven times. The guarantee of basic rights and freedoms in the convention was fundamental to securing the Good Friday agreement, to ending the conflict, to stopping the bombs and to getting peace, yet the hon. Member for Clacton stands here today prepared to risk peace in our country—how utterly shameful.

As we approach Remembrance Sunday, let us never forget the sacrifices made for our freedoms today, and let us never forget the lessons that that greatest generation of British people learned and passed on to us— Interruption.] I think the veterans will notice this barracking. Our greatest generation showed us that we needed these laws to protect people from state abuse, to stop authoritarian Governments and tyrants, and to defend people’s rights. The post-war generation knew how costly far right-wing populism had been for our country and our people, so for our greatest generation, for British people today and for our democracy, I urge Members to vote against this Bill.

If the Liberal Democrats could talk about the economy with the same clarity and passion we display when talking about foreign policy and civil liberties, we would sweep the country.

When Bonkers Hall was a fashionable spa

Nevill Holt Hall has been many things: the family home of the Cunards, a notoriously abusive prep school, the chief model for Bonkers Hall. But in the 18th century it was a fashionable spa.

This feature from the Leicester Daily Mercury (Friday 21 September 1934) tells the story

When Society Descended on a Leicestershire Spa 

The Doctor Bottled its Waters and Let His Imagination Go

In a wood in one of the highest parts of Leicestershire, where wild pigeons seek the topmost branches of fir trees, rabbits scamper unheeding of alien eyes through an autumn carpet of leaves, and an earthy tang brings a curious peace to traffic-jangled nerves.

That is the sylvan setting of an ancient spa where once Society leaders used to flock to sip the health-giving waters.

You will find it Neville Holt, a few miles from Market Harborough, but its fame died with the crinoline. 

To-day it is a mere trickle as a result of a dry summer, and its crumbling brickwork is a danger adventurous boys of the neighbouring Neville Holt School.

How the spa became nationally famous is a curious story. In 1728 a tenant farmer of the owner of the estate of Neville Holt Italian Count Migliorucci, dug a pond in Holt Wood where his cattle could slake their thirst.

Much to his dismay, however, after all his hard work, the cattle would not drink the water. 

Curious as to the reason, he had the water analysed and it was found to contain a medicinal mineral known as nitro-alluminous.

He imparted this information to Count Migliorucci, who caused an arch to be built over the spring, making it a grotto of two compartments.

A Doctor Short of Sheffield came to hear of this wonderful spa, which was found to cure all inflammatory diseases, and as result of energetic advertising in London and elsewhere it soon became famous. 

Society and fashion hurried to the spot in search of a cure for their ailments, either real or imaginary and a road was constructed from Neville Holt to the wood for them to ride in their carriages to the spa. A search is now necessary to find the road, which is moss and weed covered through long disuse.

The water was bottled and sent to London for sale. Dr Short, who was actually something of a knave, advertised on a pamphlet that the spa waters could cure among other things "enlarged liver through excess of drinking anaemia and even corns."

His illustration of some of the cures effected could scarcely be credited by even the most gullible modern people.

The popularity of the slow-flowing health-spring waned after a few years. Perhaps the doctor’s patients found him out! 

The pamphlets are in the possession of Mr. F.S. Phillips, headmaster of Neville Holt School, and form a curious link with yesteryear.

F.S. Phillips, it turned out, was no more to be believed than was Dr Short of Sheffield. (There's a heavy content warning - child abuse - for that link, particularly the comments below the story.)

Pedestrian deaths are increasing because of the rise of SUVs

Embed from Getty Images

Other transport modes such as aviation and railways have become almost accident free as a result of improved safety measures and better technology. Yet, motor vehicles have moved in the opposite direction. 

The long term improvement in casualty figures as a result of, for example, seat belt legislation and reduction in drunk driving has stalled because cars are becoming more dangerous – not for their occupants but for those outside them.

So writes Christian Wolmar in his latest Substack post. 

He says road casualty deaths in the UK have remained annually at around 1600-1700, but the number of pedestrian fatalities increased from 385 to 409 between 2022 and 2024. This rise, he says, is part of a wider phenomenon in many countries and the cause reason for it is all too obvious. 

He continues:

A recent report in The Age newspaper about road deaths in the state of Victoria in Australia is unequivocal about the cause, the rise of the SUV. Pedestrian deaths in the state are at a 17 year high having increase by more than a quarter since 2015 with, the article says, ‘concerns the growing dominance of large SUVs and utes [utility vehicles] is reversing years of road safety gains’.

The Age cites Milad Haghani, a transport safety researcher at Melbourne University who said ‘there was a growing body of evidence to suggest that vehicle size was causing a nationwide increase in pedestrian deaths’, Indeed, he pointed out that Australia was in danger of following the same path as the US where pedestrian deaths hit an all time low in 2009 but then grew 77 per cent to hit a 40 year high in 2022 – a period in which there had been a massive increase in the adoption of SUVs.

Wolmar doesn't give links to his sources, which is enough to get him thrown out of the Ancient Order of Bloggers, but I've found what looks like the story he is quoting here. It's behind The Age's paywall.

He also cites research on deaths in child pedestrians after they are stuck by SUVs:

While SUVs are 44 per cent more likely to kill an adult pedestrian or cyclist in a crash compared with an ordinary ‘sedan’, for children the figure is a shocking 82 per cent. This is the story of bull bars (which I have cited in a previous substack, here) being repeated, but this time no one is, so far, making a fuss about it. 

A quote from a local police officer sums up the extra danger: "They are large vehicles, designed for a certain specific task that are being used on roads that perhaps aren’t fit for that task". In London, they are dismissively called Chelsea tractors and they serve no rational purpose in an urban environment.

The quotation from the police officer, at least, appears to come from behind another Australian newspaper paywall – this time the Sydney Morning Herald.

And cites a research from nearer home:

The evidence over the extra danger posed by these vehicles is mounting which hopefully will put pressure on governments to act. According to a recent study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, children under the age of 10 are three times more likely to be killed if struck by an SUV rather than a standard sized cars. 

The link I've provided will take you to a news story about the research on the LSHTM website. You can read the academic paper that contains it on the British Medical Journal site.

Christian Wolmar reminds us that this government came to power promising a new road safety strategy, but it has yet to appear:

I suspect the delay over the road strategy is the result of ministers’ concerns that the motoring industry is not going to like what it might recommend. The growth in sales of SUV has boosted the profits of the car manufacturers as these bigger vehicles are more expensive and, indeed, massively overpriced, and trying to rein back on their sales will not go down in an industry that Labour sees as crucial for its growth agenda.