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Dominic Bryan, who has researched the politics of flags in Northern Ireland for decades, sets out what England needs to understand: "We’ve heard predictable claims that the flags are just a display of pride in a British or English identity. This is an easy claim to make as it clearly is, in part, to do with nationalistic pride. The point is that they are being hung in particular places, by particular groups of people and in a particular way that clearly links them to the ongoing debates and hostility to migration."

"Not only have reports of McSweeney’s political genius become as rare as hen’s teeth, but many Labour MPs are coming to the realisation that any recovery for this Government is now wholly dependent on his removal from Number 10." Adam Bienkov on Morgan McSweeney's reverse Midas touch.

Natalie Bennett makes the case for a national play strategy for England: "The sell-off of playing fields and closure of swimming pools is well-documented, but less noticed is the way in which informal play spaces and child-friendly public spaces are often overlooked or treated as expendable; many communities just don’t have accessible, safe places for play." 

"In 1995, after a local school had been destroyed in an arson attack, the MP Roy Hattersley (a former chair of Sheffield’s Housing Committee in the sixties) dubbed the Manor Estate 'the worst estate in Britain' – quite a comedown for an estate which had once been one of Sheffield’s showpieces. The truth, as ever, was more complex but the reality of decline on the now troubled estate was undeniable." Some fascinating social history from Municipal Dreams.

"Sid isn’t simply passable in these films from the 40s – he’s already very, very good. Critic Barry Norman summed up what made him so convincing. 'He never appeared to be acting,’ he noted. ‘And to act without appearing to be acting is an enormous skill.'" Hammer reminds us that Sid James was a tremendous actor long before the Carry On films claimed him.

Bobby Seal remembers Ron Chesterman, an original member of The Strawbs who later became county archivist for Cheshire.

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"Humiliation is not 'merely' symbolic. It is an immoral act that has serious, long-lasting consequences. The effect of it is the destruction of our status claims. Even the most desperate among us try to present themselves with a certain amount of dignity. Humiliation removes that. It also isolates us from other  people, makes us feel more alone, and leaves a deep and lasting anger." Toby Buckle argues that humiliation has moved to the center of the reactionary project under Donald Trump.

Nick Cohen on the right's abandonment of law and order: "Conservatives used to support the forces of law and order. Now they equivocate. They treat the police and courts as the coercive arm of the liberal elite – just as leftists once viewed them as the coercive arm of the capitalist class."

"Places where children commonly used to play, such as streets and local neighbourhoods, have been transformed into car-only spaces where traffic and parking take priority. Likewise, city spaces frequently 'design out' children by prohibiting skateboarding, ball games and other kinds of play." Michael Martin looks at ways of giving children the freedom to play all across cities, not just in playgrounds.

Will Tavlin explains the economics of Netflix: "For a century, the business of running a Hollywood studio was straightforward. The more people watched films, the more money the studios made. With Netflix, however, audiences don’t pay for individual films. They pay a subscription to watch everything, and this has enabled a strange phenomenon to take root. Netflix’s movies don’t have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don’t have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made, or anything else that pulls audiences into theater seats. "

" The last hostile invasion of mainland Britain took place in south-west Wales on 22 February 1797. The French revolutionary force, led by an Irish-American colonel, William Tate, were captured two days later. The initial plan had been a three-pronged attempt to liberate Ireland but various misadventures meant that the landing of a rump force in Pembrokeshire, planned as a distraction, was all there was to be – a disconsolate arrival on the wrong island." Gillian Darley visits Fishguard to see a locally produced tapestry that records this failed invasion.

Jamie Evans remembers the ghost photographs that frightened him to his core as a boy, but also imparted a lifelong love of horror.

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"Years of historic underinvestment in favour of profit has run the business into the ground. It now finds itself on the brink of collapse despite a financial lifeline that it ought not to have been awarded, when a court last month allowed the company to take on another three billion pounds of debt." Thames Water is failing, Ofwat is toothless and the public is paying the price, says Luke Taylor.

Tim Bale explores the motives that led David Cameron to call the EU referendum and the subsequent impact Brexit has had on the Conservative Party.

Laura Laker asks why the BBC published 22 negative articles on a 300m bike lane in Somerset.

"Following the Second World War, considering where and how children could play was an intrinsic part of the narrative of rebuilding the country. 'Attitudes towards play fitted within the political and social context at the time,' she writes, 'representing the freedom societies had fought for and optimism for the future'." Julia Thrift reviews All to Play for by Dinah Bornat, which makes the case that child-friendly design creates housing that benefits everyone.

Philippe Auclair on the Premier League's closed circle of promotion and relegation and the illusion of competitiveness - it's in French, but your browser will translate if for you: "Ipswich est toujours assis dans l'antichambre, mais son entrée est imminente. Il suffira pour cela que les Tractor Boys perdent à Newcastle ce weekend, ce qui n'étonnerait pas grand monde, ou que West Ham ramène un point de Brighton."

"In Brazil there is no plot against Sam. On the contrary, he’s a well-connected man from a wealthy family; people in authority go out of their way to help him. The regime ends up targeting him because of a series of completely random mix-ups, starting with a fly getting caught in a typewriter and changing the subject of an arrest warrant from a 'Mr Tuttle' to a 'Mr Buttle'. Buttle gets tortured to death, Sam has to take his widow a check as an apology, at which point he runs into Jill - and things spiral from there." Noah Berlatsky argues that Terry Gilliam was more prescient than George Orwell.

Lib Dems win £100m in concessions for allowing Labour's budget for Wales to pass

Jane Dodds, the only Lib Dem member of Senedd, allowed Labour's budget for Wales to pass today by abstaining on the vote. As a result it was passed by 29 votes to 28.

Deeside.com reports the concessions that the Welsh Lib Dems won in return for allowing the budget to pass:

The deal with Ms Dodds, the Lib Dems' only Senedd member, included a promise to ban greyhound racing in Wales and allocate £15m for a pilot of £1 bus fares for under-22s.

The MP-turned-Senedd member secured £30m for childcare, £30m for social care, £10m for playgrounds and leisure centres, £10m for rural investment and £5m to address pollution.

Ministers also committed £8m to a "funding floor" to reduce variation across Wales’ 22 councils, with each set to receive a minimum increase of 3.8 per cent.

Jane Dodds told Senedd:

"If we don’t pass this budget, we risk losing billions for the people of Wales and I cannot in good conscience let that happen."

But, explaining her decision to abstain, she said: 

"I cannot fully support a budget that falls short of delivering the investment and radical change Wales needs."

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"As even some of his most sympathetic supporters in the media are now coming to realise, Starmer's Labour is neither red, nor blue, nor green, nor indeed any other easily recognisable colour on the political spectrum. Let there be no mistake about it: these are the days of Grey Labour." Alex Niven was disillusioned with this Labour government even before it came to power.

Jane Green and Raluca L. Pahontu present research that contradicts the idea that Brexit was voted through by the economically left-behind: "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."

M.F. Robbins tells the tale of two playgrounds: "One is closing soon while the other - brand new - has stood empty for nearly a year, ringed with steel fencing to stop people from using it. Their stories aren’t the most important thing you’ll read today, but they illustrate something much bigger - the collapse and retreat of local government, and the profound effect it will have on our public spaces."

Mother Jones talks to Daniel Immerwahr about what the history of American expansion can tell us About Trump’s threats.

"Unexpected visitors to the Director’s Box that day were ex-goalkeeper and US Secretary Of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, quite literally one of the most famous men in the world at that point and in the UK for talks on Rhodesia, and UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland. A step down from Raquel Welch’s appearance a few years back, possibly, but enough to get pictures of Kissinger, Chelsea Chairman Brian Mears and his wife June in a number of national newspapers." Tim Rolls takes us back to Stamford Bridge in 1976, when the Chelsea team had only one player who had cost the club a transfer fee.

Ian Visits on Heathrow Junction, the London station that came and went in six months in 1998.

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Madeleine Davies reports on the Makin Review of the Church of England's response to the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth: "Among the conclusions reached by Dr Elly Hanson, the clinical psychologist whose psychological analysis of Smyth is appended to the review, is that 'the beliefs and values of the Conservative Evangelical community in which John Smyth operated are critical to understanding how he manipulated his victims into it, how it went on for so long, and how he evaded justice.'"

"Though Farage has been forced to justify his past praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, there are much deeper questions beyond ideological support that he has to answer about his Kremlin connections, especially given the current war in Ukraine." Peter Jukes lists five questions journalists should ask the Reform UK leader.

Yvonne Jewkes argues that conditions in most prisons mean rehabilitation is impossible.

"Suddenly, the modern approach to children’s play, in which parents shuttle their kids to playgrounds or other structured activities, seemed both needlessly extravagant and wholly insufficient. Kids didn’t need special equipment or lessons; they just needed to be less reliant on their time-strapped parents to get outside." Stephanie H. Murray on the wonder of play streets.

Pamela Hutchinson explains why I Know Where I'm Going is her feelgood film: "Powell had been besotted with the Scottish islands ever since making The Edge of the World in 1937, and he shares that passion here – it’s a film that will make you fall head over heels in love with its landscape."

"Good antiquarian ghost stories emerge from an author’s unsettling experience of dwelling with and delving deeply into the tangled roots of the past." Francis Young reviews The Lammas Ghosts: Fifteen Norfolk Ghost Stories by Barendina Smedley.

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"Labour’s recent creative industries plan, published in March, avoids any talk about new horizons or radical change, either in the country or the wider world. Rather, it presents arts and culture as an existing 'part of 'our national story' and 'our sense of national pride.' References to technology are always balanced with something more traditional." Wessie Du Toit reminds us that Labour has lost Tony Blair's faith in creativity and the future.

Anno Girolami looks at the Flixborough disaster and its place in the battle for workplace safety: "Fifty years ago, at tea time on a Saturday in June, the Nypro chemical plant near the North Lincolnshire village suffered an explosion that killed 28 of the 72 people on site and seriously injured a further 36. Had it been a weekday, many more people would probably have died."

Stuart Whomsley on being a working-class professional: "When a person enters clinical psychology as working class, they are taking on more than a job role; they are entering a culture of middle-class professionalism where the values and way of being in the world of the middle class are the norms."

Children's playgrounds are part of the solution to many problems, argues James Hempsall.

Philippe Broussard searches for a mysterious photographer who snapped occupied Paris and mocked the Nazis.

"No writer before T.H. White, I think, had been so flamboyantly anachronistic in fantasy. The Sword in the Stone (1938) is rooted in anachronism, steeped in it, inhabits it as its element. The clash of periods is embodied in Merlyn, the ancient wizard, who not only lives backwards ... but seems to have lived for hundreds of years, since he remembers all the major incidents and changes of fashion between White’s lifetime and the fifteenth century." Rob Maslen accounts for the magic of The Sword in the Stone.

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"The middle-income professionals in the seats we have just won will take a lot of persuading to pay more for better prisons, probation officers and children’s services, even if told that alienated teenagers turn into rioters, and criminals without rehabilitation reoffend. Those saving to send their children to private schools will be reluctant to pay more tax for the state sector. Getting comfortably-off taxpayers in the home counties to contribute to regeneration of the north will be very difficult." William Wallace says the Liberal Democrats need to have a clear position on public spending.

Alex Krasodomski argues that the UK riots have forced Western democracies to confront their reliance on technology giants.

"The Peak District and Exmoor were found to have concentrations of antibiotics at a level that could be of concern for human health as they were beyond the threshold that can contribute to antimicrobial resistance. This could affect anyone entering the water for swimming or water sports, the researchers said." Lucie Heath on new research into pharmaceutical pollution of English rivers.

Charlotte Llewellyn celebrates the very English anarchist Colin Ward, who "put people, especially those most marginalised by society, at the centre of his work. He recognised the creativity, knowledge, and talent of ordinary people and their ability to make change happen, as well as emphasising the importance of working co-operatively towards a better future."

Ingrid Skeels explores the history and benefits of 'playing out', where children enjoy informal sport for free in the community where they live, and She how 'play streets' are revitalising communities across the UK and further afield. And she does it on the England and Wales Cricket Board site too.

"We could ask if Yoda's Theme would be Yoda’s Theme without Yoda. Or, does Jaws' theme need a shark to be frightening? Do we need to see E.T. fly across the moon in order to be moved by the film’s soaring theme? Does the Close Encounter’s five-note motif only work if we see Richard Dreyfus playing with mashed potatoes?" Edwardo Pérez discusses the film music of John Williams.

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"Easy though it is to mock the quality of the Tory leadership hopefuls, enabling and encouraging the worst impulses of the far-right carries dangers for our country and our democracy, as we have seen just this week. We need a serious government, but we also need a serious opposition. Right now the Tories cannot and will not fulfil the latter role." Alistair Carmichael says the Tory leadership contest is revealing that the party’s lurch to far-right is terrifyingly real.

Lauren Crosby Medlicott on what life's like inside a UK women's prison and the need to find other ways of dealing with female offenders.

"To be happy and healthy, children need a decent amount of everyday, sociable play and physical activity. To grow into independent, capable, resilient young adults, they need a chance to experience real life, explore and take risks. To develop a sense of belonging and responsibility for others, they need to be seen and heard in their communities." Alice Ferguson presents a manifesto for restoring children’s freedom and outdoor play.

Corinne Segal takes us to four cities - New York, Baltimore, Auckland, Istanbul - that are bringing buried rivers back into the light of day.

"Detoxification" is a popular concept in wellness but, says Adrienne Matei, it's just another lie.

Rohan Amanda Maitzen understands what it is that makes T.H. White's The Once and Future King great: "The novel’s most ridiculous, delicious flights of fancy (the thwarted romance of the Questing Beast, for instance) are narrated in the same down-to-earth way as the most extreme moments of betrayal or grief or psychic torment ... and so we experience them both as part of the same world of people who may transform into animals, trap unicorns, and perform miracles, but are somehow, bizarrely, wonderfully, just like us."

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"There is no disguising the fact Sunak well knows when Williams, his ex-PPS, first learnt of the election date. The same, unsurprisingly, can be said of his director of campaigns, Tony Lee (Laura Saunders’ husband). But still the PM refuses to act, nobly cognisant of independent inquiries - but entirely ignorant of the episode’s raw politics." Josh Self says that if Tory England is dead, then Rishi Sunak killed it.

Peter Jukes sets out five questions that Nigel Farage needs to be asked about Brexit, Trump and Russia.

"Former Soviet states have not been expanded ‘into’ by NATO, but joined at their own request. The Kremlin attempts to present NATO as a Western plot to encroach upon its territory, but in reality the growth in Alliance membership is the natural response of those states to its own malign activities and threats." Ben Wallace on NATO, Ukraine and Russia.

Harriet Grant takes us to a Brighton primary school that is fighting to provide children with enough play: "We played football recently against a private school. Their children play football for an hour four times a week. How do they have time for that? It’s simple. Because they don’t have to do Sats."

June Thoburn argues that social workers need to understand their power: "One prospective adoptive parent told her, 'If the social worker says jump, I jump'. The fear of the social worker's power to remove children was present in all families she spoke with."

"The absolute avatar of this new generation of eccentric, hip, clever, spoilt, sexy, sometimes pretentious young actors was Donald Sutherland, a Canadian (and thus already an outsider) who had a career in the non-new, non-transgressive, sludgy cinema of the previous era (and in the theatre) but who really thrived once things got freaky in the 1970s." Steve Bowbrick pays tribute to Donald Sutherland.

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"The UK and EU cannot help but matter to each other. Regardless of the formal terms of the relationship, developments on one side of the Channel do affect what happens on the other." Brexit boredom is one thing, but there’s a real problem when Britain’s leaders won’t even talk about Europe any more, says Simon Usherwood.

Anusha Singh profiles Hina Bokhari, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats in the London Assembly. Hina is the first ethnic minority woman to lead a group at City Hall since its establishment in 2000, and also the first ethnic minority woman to lead a group in any of the UK’s devolved institutions.

"The idea that Labour’s electoral success depends on its ability to win back imagined hordes of socially conservative voters in the distant north and Midlands remains central to the party’s self-image." Alex Niven on the myth of the 'red wall'.

Hannah White argues that whether a government’s majority is enormous or merely substantial the more significant factor for democracy is the attitude a government takes to the role of parliament and the value of scrutiny.

Ben Highmore discusses the postwar adventure playground movement: "What if you gave children and young people their own space? A third space that wasn’t school and wasn’t home. Somewhere not orchestrated by obedience ... . A place where young people might have a great deal of autonomy in how they occupied the space and what they did with their time."

"Bringing psychoanalysis into the conversation explains so much, not only about Mitchell’s 1970s preoccupations, but about the looping, overflowing structure of her songs as the decade progressed. I wasn’t surprised to discover that Mitchell's own experiences with therapy were at best mixed." Ann Powers finds that the preoccupations of Joni Mitchell's work mirror those of American society throughout her career.

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"He is the large container ship threatening to ram into the foundation of European security established after the Second World War - the NATO alliance. Trump was reportedly only narrowly dissuaded from pulling out of NATO during his first term in office." Alexandra Hall Hall says Baltimore’s Francis Scott Bridge is a perfect metaphor for the crisis Europe may face if Trump is re-elected.

Daniel Goyal exposes the agenda behind the rise of physician associates in the NHS.

 Annina van Neel on her fight to honour the Africans buried on St Helena: "Between 1840 and 1872, more than 25,000 enslaved Africans were brought on to St Helena from slaving voyages intercepted by the British Navy. About one-third died shortly after and were buried on the island in unmarked graves."

If we want children to spend less time online then we must make space for them in the real world, argues Gaby Hinsliff: "As a society we nag kids to get off their phones into the real world, but won’t make room for them here; we put adult convenience first, and are then surprised when children don’t flourish. The tech giants could and should do vastly more to create a healthy environment for children. But in that, they’re very much not alone."

For two and a half years, cinematic treasure hunters have made repeated trips to Brazil in search of the fabled lost, longer cut of Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons, reports Ray Kelly.

The Hex Blog looks at the career of Ferenc Puskas. "In 1952, Puskas captained his country to Olympic gold in Helsinki and Gusztav Sebes’ side arrived at the 1954 FIFA World Cup undefeated in four years. Their most resounding victory came on 25 November 1953 at the 'home of football', the historic Wembley Stadium, where England had never lost to a team from outside of the British Isles. Hungary emerged emphatic 6-3 victors in a contest that would go down in history."

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"The erosion of democracy in Hungary took time, and the political takeover came from within, in part, because the pushback by the political opposition was ineffective and at times apathetic. Recent protests in Hungary in support of LGBTQ+ rights are an indication that the Hungarian people are beginning to push back against Orban, but this effort must be expanded and sustained if it is to succeed. Much damage has been done already." Viktor Orban’s Hungary shows how democracy dies, argues William Danvers.

Andrea Coomber reminds us that there are twice as many women in prison as there were 30 years ago: "Nearly two-thirds of women in the criminal justice system have experienced domestic abuse; many have experienced childhood trauma, mental health problems or homelessness. And entering the criminal justice gateway invariably makes things worse, not better. It can mean women lose their jobs and their homes, making it harder to address the problems which brought them into contact with the police in the first place."

"Good play can take many forms – physical, creative, logical, imaginative, sensory. A young child chases around a park pretending to be a dragon, a teenager hangs out with friends in a safe warm space, a child with disabilities uses something to interact with their senses in a new way; in all cases, the child perceives it as fun, uncertain, and non-directed by adults." Psychologist Jennifer Wills Lamacq talks about the importance of children's play.

Jennifer Yule explains the decline in supermarket sales of vegan products.

Fursan Sahawneh expresses concern at the use of telemedicine for diagnosing and treating ADHD in the US: "Telehealth’s expansion is particularly relevant to the behavioural health sector. Without definitive or prerequisite biological markers, psychiatric diagnoses, like ADHD, are especially vulnerable to inflation and exploitation by economic interests."

"Maybe it’s not a masterpiece but it still packs a punch, and the scene at the end, where the audience overhears some awful news just before Joe does, is very powerful." Peter Bradshaw on the 1958 British film Room at the Top