The Joy of Six 1550

Jonathan Simons fears that Labour have picked a new leader who communicates well, but whose instincts are wrong: "This easy, reflexive tilt back to the left being about class, and steel mills and coalfields and shipyards and dockyards, and Northern men in Northern towns, is politically weird in 2026."

"Two weeks ago, the Sunday Times published a scoop: that Farage had failed to declare donations from George Cottrell, a convicted money launderer. In doing so, it thrust a new character on to the national stage. Only George Cottrell isn’t a new character. He has operated at the highest levels of UK politics, in plain sight, for more than a decade. And that includes playing a central role in the Brexit campaign." Carole Cadwalladr on the way the media allowed Nigel Farage to operate without scrutiny for so long and why things have suddenly changed.

"The phenomenon of ever-bigger cars has not come about accidentally. It has been sustained by an aggressive marketing campaign, as they are far more profitable for manufacturers than conventional-sized vehicles. They are sold on the basis that they are safer. Extra safety for your family is a key marketing strategy. But while Daddy drives Olivia and Rufus to school in perfect safety, other pupils are in greater peril. And that risk is growing as the cars get ever bigger." Christian Wolmar calls for a halt to carspreading.

Karina Colombo and Elisa Failache find that the rapid expansion of high-speed internet in Uruguay led to a reduction in children's test scores in communication, problem solving and social skills. But it wasn't because the children were spending too long online: it was because their parents were.

"Each retelling reflects contemporary concerns about technological risk, climate uncertainty, social inequality, disaster preparedness, media spectacle and the ethics of dark tourism while maintaining the same underlying core narrative." Jonathan Peter Skinner explains our undying interest in the sinking of the Titanic.

Lucy Janes says the River Clyde is central to modern Glasgow’s identity. "It flows through the core of the city and, as you look downstream, a moment's reflection can lead your mind’s eye out to sea and the wider world."

The Joy of Six 1536

"Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of right-wing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grown ups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured." This seems a good day to air again this Neal Lawson theory.

Prem Sikka on the curse of the finance industry: "Private equity takes over existing businesses with finance from banks, insurance companies, pension funds and wealthy individuals seeking higher returns. It acquires control but injects little share capital. Takeover targets are loaded with the secured debt, often routed through opaque offshore entities, and are expected to pay it off."

Matt Gallagher says the Online Safety Act is forcing us to hand over personal data to unregulated overseas corporations with questionable privacy records.

"Behind every great director ... is a great editor – and as the tributes paid earlier this month to the late Marcia Lucas, Oscar-winning editor of Star Wars: Episodes IV to VI, and former wife of creator George Lucas, reminded us, that editor is often a woman." Bethany Elliott investigates a familiar dynamic in male-dominated Hollywood.

Carrie Marshall goes to see the B52s.

"She grows smaller. Was she approximately human-sized in her wearing-a-pinny-and-doing-the-laundry phase, but then hedgehog-sized at the end? In the final image, she is a completely naturalistic hedgehog4. She looks like a little brown aubergine. So it's possible that at the end of his story – shudder – Samuel Whiskers has grown bigger." Sam Leith is worried: how big are Beatrix Potter's animals?

The Joy of Six 1533

James Ball argues that Labour's social media ban for teenagers is an admission of total and utter failure to govern online spaces: "The UK government has lots of powers to govern the internet that it simply isn’t using. Hosting images of child abuse is a strict liability offence, one that Elon Musk’s X platform blatantly breached with its Grok chatbot. The government gave itself extensive powers to regulate social platforms under the Online Safety Act, which it has never even made an attempt to enforce."

"This week contained two stories, which dominated the headlines. One took place on the streets of Belfast, the other in the hallways of Whitehall. One concerned race riots and the other a defence funding plan. But they were in fact the same story. They both concerned security – one at home, the other abroad. And they were both the result of a prime minister who refuses to lead." Ian Dunt says Keir Starmer's inertia threatens national security.

Anja Krstic and Ivona Hideg find that men's careers benefit when they take parental leave but women’s do not.

"Ten years on from the referendum, the tired stereotype of the 'Northern Brexit voter' is one we should retire." J.P. Spencer has the figures that explode a widespread myth.

"Undoubtedly the most important members of the audience were a group of families from formerly occupied territories affected by the abductions: mothers with teenagers they had recovered from Crimea or elsewhere; families who were still trying to get their children back." Charlotte Higgins and Mariana Matveichuk on the Kyiv premiere of Mothers of Kherson, an opera about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian occupiers.

Kenneth George Godwin finds innocence and corruption in the films of Alexander Mackendrick: "The clearest expression of Mackendrick’s worldview is perhaps apparent in the three films he made which centred on children: Mandy (1952), Sammy Going South (1963), and A High Wind In Jamaica (1965). Unsentimental, unafraid of the darkness kids face in a harsh world, unafraid to see the potential for darkness in the kids themselves … these are three of the most adult films about children ever made."

The Joy of Six 1530

"The big red 'stop nudes' button is appealing because it’s a lot easier than investing in proper services to protect children and in the kind of education that will help them grow up in the world as it exists rather than the sterile bubble of Starmer's imagination. Bad actors will circumvent these measures while ordinary people's privacy is undermined, and health information and even art is censored. The design choices that have led to this environment are the same choices that the government courts when it tries to partner with these tech companies." Mic Wright looks at the media's uncritical coverage of government plans to prevent children viewing or sharing nude images online.

Claire Jones analyses the creeping misogyny of Reform's agenda: "To enshrine women’s demotion to second class citizens, Reform has pledged to drop the 2010 Equalities Act which provides legal recourse for maternity leave, sexual assault, domestic abuse and employment discrimination. Reform also plans to ditch the ECHR thus thwarting it’s use by women as another court of appeal. You can hear the sound of doors closing."

David Eddy asks who is protecting our drinking water as an energy company seeks permission to drill through the chalk aquifer beneath the Yorkshire Wolds in search of gas.

"You may heard that if you’re under 25, your brain isn’t fully developed yet. It's an adage supposing that individuals under 25 can’t think things through or make rational decisions, and so are less responsible than older folk. This logic has now formed the basis of official government advice, sentencing, and more. The only problem with this fact is... it’s not a fact. Never has been. No matter how many TikTokers insist otherwise." Dean Burnett takes aim at a scientific myth.

Oliver Bray has been to an exhibition at the Dickens Museum in London: "It reframes Dickens not only through the women he knew, but through the theatrical culture they collectively inhabited. Stepping outside, I felt his familiar voice linger, now joined by the sense that the women behind the scenes were finally stepping into the light – something the dramatist in Dickens might have appreciated." 

"On one level, this is a song about a man who, losing his mother, seeks to make his lover a surrogate maternal figure. On a larger level, it is about the need to find an escape, a haven, from the brutal realities of life. But it must be mentioned that this is a song about the power and necessity of movies... that was written for a movie." Another Paul on That's Why God Made the Movies, one of my favourite Paul Simon songs.

The Joy of Six 1527

"In the Wigan constituency, which has always been Labour-held but where Reform picked up 24 out of 25 seats in last month’s local elections, the governing party’s by-election message is focused squarely on Burnham. It is a cartoon of his face emblazoned across leaflets and Correx boards, along with the words “ANDY FOR US”. Labour branding is limited, pretty much, to what is legally required." Sienna Rodgers takes us inside the Labour campaign in the Makerfield by-election.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley interviews Gisèle Pelicot, whose courage transformed the debate around abuse, about survival, reclaiming confidence – and shutting down the tools of sexual exploitation.

Flip Chart Fairy Tales notes the end of the right's state-shrinking dream: "Far from Brexit being the cue for the Thatcher revolution’s last phase, it may mark the end of it altogether. ... It’s no wonder the small-staters are so exercised. They have now realised that tomorrow belongs to someone else."

"When you launch a product that's designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn't that you haven't told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them." Brian Phillips nominates the 40 most rage-inducing problems in tech.

JacquiWine praises Rumer Godden's novel The Battle of the Villa Fiorita: "I loved this evocative, immersive read, a psychologically astute exploration of the impact of a woman’s adulterous affair and subsequent divorce on her two adolescent children, fourteen-year-old Hugh Clavering and his younger sister Caddie, who is almost twelve."

"Born in 1918, Denys Fisher was raised in a railway carriage in a field in Leeds in a family full of inventors, free thinkers, and social reformists with connections to women's suffrage." Eleanor Tait talks to Duncan Fisher about his father, the man who invented Spirograph.

People who never use AI are very bad at spotting AI-generated text

AI use is seeping out of business and science writing and into the  world of literature. And that, says Malin Hay in a post on the London Review of Books blog, is a problem, because literary editors may be the worst equipped to spot text generated by it:

Experimenters in the US last year showed nine subjects a series of articles, half written by humans and half generated by ChatGPT, Claude and other large language models. Asked to guess which of the texts were human, the four subjects who rarely or never used ChatGPT in their daily lives scored "at a similar rate to random chance", while the five who used chatbots almost every day at work collectively misidentified only one in three hundred texts.

So how do you spot AI-generated fiction? Hay says familiar tells include a fondness for em dashes and for the formulation "not x, but y", which it has favoured since GPT-3. But at the start of her post Hay quotes three passages that use neither of these but still have a distinct whiff of AI.

She offers suggests some more sophisticated indicators of the use of AI fiction:

Some of the markers seem to be lexical: AIs like talking about sweetness, loudness, quiet, age and beauty. There is a lot of insisting in AI-generated texts, as well as a lot of promising, a lot of permitting and a lot of filling up. 

Another sign is the overuse of tricolons ("something neat, something pleasing, a quiet violence made beautiful"). And bots often leave out definite articles from phrases where they’re not strictly necessary: "Coffee and cocoa leaned wild", "rain in teeth" or, from later in The Serpent, "Sita became obstacle by existing."

There is a flatness or evenness to AI-generated texts: Wikipedia's guide to detecting AI says that LLMs "tend to omit specific, unusual, nuanced facts" and "replace them with more generic, positive descriptions". 

The strange thing about this evenness is that it isn’t usually couched in neutral language: "a flood that chokes but insists upon being swallowed" is violent, but not vivid. Even if you had your face shoved into a cake, it wouldn’t "flood" your mouth. The prosody is so smooth that you feel a lack of pressure despite the description of gross or vile acts; it rings hollow. It fills you with its nothing.

The Serpent is a short short by Jamir Nazir called The Serpent in the Grove which recently won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, only to give rise to suspicions that AI played a part in its production. You can read it and judge for yourself.

Incidentally, I have long been fond of parenthetic dashes myself, but use en dashes for the job on this blog. That's because em dashes tend to look clumsy in online text. 

This fondness dates back to the days when I wrote for David Boyle at Liberal Democrat News. I noticed that whenever I used brackets in my writing he struck them out, but he let dashes through.

The Joy of Six 1524

"You will know them. They are in every policy working group, every conference fringe, every strategy call. They are the people who hear a proposal for genuine economic reform and say 'that’s outside the Overton window' as if they have ended the argument rather than ducked it. They treat the boundaries of current political acceptability as load-bearing walls, when in fact they are furniture, and we are allowed to move them." Liberal Democrat Tom Reeve introduces us to the Overtons.

"Since 2021, Ellison’s personal foundation – the Larry Ellison Foundation – has donated or pledged at least £257m to the Tony Blair Institute, making it a think tank like no other in the UK. Ellison donations have helped it grow to more than 900 staff, working in at least 45 countries." Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin take us inside the Tony Blair Institute and introduce us to its main funder.

Steve Webb says the triple lock cannot last forever, but scrapping it now would trigger a retirement disaster.

"What happened to the master con man? For one thing, as the former reality show star should know, people get bored. The same old Trump shtick gets tiresome; the public's patience with his excuses wears thin. They have heard all the lies, all the Biden blame-shifting, all the 'two weeks away' deadline-shifting. It’s stale." Jennifer Rubin says Donald Trump is losing his grip on US voters.

Chloe Duteil, Daniel Cumming and Jon Winder look back to how London, Paris and New York coped with past heatwaves: "When seeking outdoor relief, most 19th-century New Yorkers headed to the beach – the city is an island, after all. But by the 20th century, they were also planing block parties with plenty of ice from corner store bodegas. On occasion, they also cracked open fire hydrants – a relief strategy that has become a classic trope of New York City summers."

Morgan Jeffery talks to people from Film is Fabulous!, the organisation that recently found, preserved and screened two lost Doctor Who episodes.

The Joy of Six 1518

Alexandra Hall Hall writes the big reset speech she wishes Keir Starmer had made after Labour’s local elections defeats: "I know that much of what I have said today will be controversial or unpopular. But good leadership requires the courage to say the hard things. What I took from last week’s election results is that I – we all – need to raise our game. We need to be more honest, more forthright, and more willing to take the hard choices."

"Lowe was educated at Radley. He built a career in financial services. He owns substantial agricultural land. He was chairman of Southampton Football Club. He speaks in the measured cadences of a man who has chaired many meetings and expects to chair many more. When he stands on a stage and talks about mass deportation, he sounds like he is presenting a business case. That is the innovation. Not the policy. The presentation." Simon Pearson warns of the threat posed by Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain.

"The real danger that artificial intelligence poses to work is not just job loss – it is the growing divide between people who use AI to extend their skills and those whose working lives are increasingly shaped by opaque, AI-powered systems of surveillance and control." Nazrul Islam on real threat that AI poses to workers.

Jon Rainford and Alex Blower set out their research on what working-class boys need to succeed at school.

Helen Kingstone says the 19th-century novelist Margaret Oliphant has much to teach us about our attitude to ageing: "Her novels (100 of them!) were largely forgotten in the twentieth century, but are now being celebrated by scholars and fellow-novelists. She wrote astutely and sometimes bitterly about society’s failure to recognise women’s capabilities. And she had surprisingly prescient views on ageing, which can offer valuable tools for contemporary campaigners."

"Flowing with an engaging warmth throughout, this wholesome evening not only showcases evidence of Tikaram's timeless talent as a songwriter and sound ability to orchestrate a band of incredible musicians, but it also seems to offer a beautifully open celebration of her queer identity; each song bringing with it its own unique sense of joy and pride." Mari Lane celebrates the music of Tanita Tikaram.

"Oligarchs" all live in countries we don't like

A footnote from Sami Timimi's Searching for Normal:

There is a habit of referring to oligarchs as the super-rich in countries we don't like, but not to extend a similar label to such a stratum in our own countries; on the contrary, individuals like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates are often seen in more heroic terms as great innovators.

I'm not sure about the gramar, but the point is a good one.

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 1510

Charlie Young, Carole Cadwalladr and Ian Tucker have discovered "a 'revolving door' that has led to dozens of highly experienced UK government officials, former ministers, intelligence service chiefs and members of the House of Lords taking up key roles in the controversial Silicon Valley surveillance tech company co-founded by Peter Thiel, the libertarian friend and ally of Donald Trump."

"There is no need for the UK to replace its warheads. A Holbrook’s maximum yield is ninety kilotons of TNT-equivalent, about six times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. But the US Navy wants a new warhead in the mid-2030s and the UK has to follow suit even though there are no good reasons to do so. No one in Britain played any part in choosing the parameters of the W93." Norman Dombey dissects Britain's nuclear subservience to the US.

Because of the way they are trained, large language models capture only a slice of human language. But it's feared that this slice will come to dominate how humans communicate, report Ada Palmer and Bruce Schneier.

Pam Jarvis offers a personal memoir of the Blair-era widening participation policy for higher education, which promised opportunity but left a complex legacy.

"It is impossible not to talk about The Reckoning in the same breath as Get Carter. Both films are about men who have left their working class roots to become successful in their various professions in London, and who are then forced to come home due to a family tragedy. Liverpool, like Newcastle in Get Carter, is depicted as a tough, rainswept working class town. And much like Jack Carter, Marler is intensely uncomfortable in its bleak surrounds, the tiny council house that his family still live in, with its wood panelling and flocked wallpaper, the raucous smokey pubs they drink in, with their bad torch singers and cheap bingo games." Andrew Nette watches Nicol Williamson heading north before Michael Caine.

Chris Baker on an 18th-century plan to build Britain a new capital – in Rutland.

The Joy of Six 1508

"Between calling for an end to 'the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan' and a reinstatement of the draft, Palantir also demanded an end to cancel culture and more competitive pay for civil servants. One particularly disturbing point makes the claim that some cultures are objectively superior due to the advances they've made in technology, while 'others remain dysfunctional and regressive'." Cydney Hayes reports on the backlash against Peter Thiel's company Palantir.

Tanya Park defends Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire and its four-day week: "Its staff complete 100 per cent of their work in 80 per cent of the time, for 100 per cent of the pay. The government told them to stop. They didn’t. The results came in: £371,500 in annual savings, a 120 per cent rise in job applications, a 40% fall in staff turnover. Services maintained. Budget improved. Staff retained."

"Building more homes is necessary. But announcing that the mechanism for financing this expansion will unlock £53 billion of additional private lending into the housing market is not a break from the pattern. Channelling more bank credit into residential property is the pattern. If the credit mechanics are left intact, developers and existing owners will capture the gains while affordability ratios drift further from wages, exactly as they have done after every previous supply intervention." Vincent Gomez analyses Rachel Reeves' attempt to make housing more affordable.

"To remove benches, or to curate who gets to sit, is to abandon the work of defining a civic ideal and determining, together, how to live up to it. When seating disappears, our relationship with public space becomes more grudging and utilitarian. Benches are symbols of hospitality, an invitation to participate in the civic realm." Gabrielle Bruney on the disappearance of benches from public space and what it means.

Henry Jeffreys supports the right of English whisky producers to do things differently from the giant Scottish whisky industry: "There are now 69 whisky distilleries in England, up from 61 in 2025, with 40 having mature whisky available for sale. It seems bizarre to tie this tiny, fledgling industry so closely to its northern behemoth."

Marc Morris slays some myths about England and St George - he didn't gain popularity in England until the 15th century, and Richard the Lionheart had nothing to do with his adoption as our patron saint.

The Joy of Six 1493

"Australian politics is beautifully, exquisitely, delightfully boring. It is boring in the way it used to be back home - sane, predictable, restrained, broadly rational, and consisting mostly of retail offers to voters rather than screeching rhetoric about identity and culture war." Ian Dunt says Australia can teach Britain how to kill populism.

Rose Runswick fears the Liberal Democrats have accidentally voted for a surveillance state: "Let us be clear, the tech lobby wants this ban to happen so they can have more data to push their agendas. We have seen this with Peter Thiel, an American plutocrat who claimed, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible," and the use of medical data to help create the ICE raids we see now in America."

"She traces the rise in entrepreneurship to changes in working patterns since the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020, when large numbers of people realised their jobs could be done from anywhere with a laptop. Across the UK, coastal towns saw a surge in interest." Zoe Crowther asks if digital nomads can breathe new life into failing resorts.

George Palmer-Soady warns against complacency about the regeneration of Nottingham's Broad Marsh: "Not only would any 12-storey building of its kind block the sunlight from shining over the beautiful Green Heart park, but it would serve as a grim reminder of everything the Broad Marsh had set out not to become."

George Scialabba salutes the moral beauty of George Eliot's Middlemarch.

"A couple of weeks ago I was asked on Times Radio whether I believe in fairies, and I suspect it is a question I will get asked a lot more now that Fairies: A History is published." Francis Young introduces his new book.

The Joy of Six 1491

Mariano delli Santi is concerned by the Information Commissioner's Office and its enthusiasm for age-verification: "The ICO are actively encouraging platforms to adopt more invasive verification technologies, at a time when privacy violations and malpractice are starting to emerge within the industry. Further, the ICO characterisation of age assurance technology as 'advanced' and 'readily available' comes as hundreds of computer scientists call for a moratorium on the roll out of this technology and warn about the technical limitations and infeasibility of this approach."

"The parental rights movement frames the conflict as parental rights versus government control, completely disregarding children's rights, but the actual constitutional balance has never been between parents and the state alone. It is more of a triangular structure in which the child is a distinct rights-bearing person, the parent exercises authority in trust, and the state acts as a backstop when that trust is fundamentally breached." Steve Kennedy examines the American right's enthusiasm for parents' rights.

Brian McHugh welcomes the growth of repair café culture in the UK.

Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri pays tribute to Jürgen Habermas by highlighting his study of the coffee houses of Georgian London.

"Watkins' film has only gained in relevance, with the US once again caught in endless foreign conflict, the undermining of civilian freedoms by the Patriot Act, the untold horrors of US detention compounds in Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, and an Administration exploiting the politics of polarisation to its own ends ('You're either with us, or you're against us') in a land where domestic 'Culture Wars' continue to reflect bloodier struggles abroad." This article by rantbit on Peter Watkins' film Punishment Park was written 10 years ago, but it and the film sound even more relevant today.

"Craven House, a fledgling novel by ... Hamilton, fits right into this groove, set as it is in a West London boarding house during the early part of the 20th century. While Craven isn’t as polished as Hamilton’s later work – he was only twenty-two when the book was first published in 1926 – there is still much to enjoy here, particularly in the use of the setting as a vehicle for fiction." Jacquiwine looks at Craven House by Patrick Hamilton.

The Joy of Six 1478

"In a sense, Clegg is right: politicians are more focused on narratives than data. But it’s data they use to justify their policies these days. Indeed, far from modern politics being a vibrant competition of ideas in the way Clegg suggests, modern anglophone politics has been dominated by just one since the 1980s: There Is No Alternative." James Graham takes apart Nick Clegg's book How to Save the Internet.

Sam Bright is puzzled by the contradictions of right-wing journalists: "These journalists are neoliberals – they preach the free market gospel. You can’t get them to shut up about the Industrial Revolution and how deregulated enterprise supposedly birthed Britain as an economic superpower. And yet they’re stuck in the Middle Ages – terrified of the advances in science and engineering that also spawned from their favourite period of history."

"Trade unions are civil society organisations. They give working people a way to voice their concerns, secure representation, and exercise lawful leverage. In a country where bargaining is often fragmented and workplace voice is weak, that is not a threat to liberalism; it is a condition of it." Jack Meredith states the Liberal case for the government's Employment Rights Act,

Tracey Spensley on veterinary medicines and the decline of Britain's songbirds.

Darren Chetty looks at the current BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies: "The decision to include a diverse cast, including the excellent Winston Sawyers who plays Ralph, will probably be viewed by many as a progressive move, ensuring that not only white actors are offered roles and not only white people are represented on screen. But for all its progressive aspirations, an adaptation like this obscures some of the most interesting themes discernible in the book."

"Barrie was always ageless, with a kind of supernatural vibe about him that makes me think perhaps he wasn’t quite of this world. And in a way, he wasn’t: he belonged to a London long vanished, full of glamour and promise. Did Barrie disappear along with it?" Melissa Blaise searches for a Chelsea socialite she once knew.

The Joy of Six 1467

Claire Jones says Britain is sliding backwards into open racism: "Shame has evaporated. With skin colour as their yardstick, the UK’s self-appointed 'defence warriors' are having a field day shouting at anyone brown-skinned, from ordinary folk to celebrities and political figures, to 'go home'."

"While it’s relatively easy for regulators to monitor the actions of Snapchat or TikTok, it’s impossible to police the millions of websites that might contain forums and chats. Any policy shift will have failed if it ends up pushing kids into even less regulated places on the internet." A social media ban for under-16s would be popular but, asks James Clayton, would it really help?

"Off 16 planned non-London LTNs tracked by the researchers, just one was fully implemented – a failure rate of around 94 per cent." Megan Huws argues that councils lack resources to deliver Low Traffic Neighbourhoods amid the culture wars.

Leanne Tritton on the difficulty of reusing redundant buildings in Britain today.

James Bloodworth looks at what the fame Russell Brand enjoyed until recently tells us about our society.

"It's a shot of such pure emotion and simple poignancy that it is regularly cited as the greatest ending in cinematic history. In the 95 years since City Lights' release, numerous films have tried to replicate its subtle artistry and the power of its performances." Gregory Wakeman watches a Charlie Chaplin masterpiece.

The Joy of Six 1462

"America has become a place where it is no longer entirely safe to speak freely. Where criticizing the Government can get you into trouble, perhaps even cause you to be fired from your job, or deported. Where engaging in public protest can get you arrested. Where every day you wake up with a clenching stomach, wondering what new Government outrage has happened overnight." Alexandra Hall Hall on living in the US today.

Thomas Lockwood says Robert Jenrick's Newark constituency "is now is now a live laboratory test for the future of the British right – and for the fragmentation and reinvention of British politics".

Zoe Crowther talks to Imran Ahmed, the British-born campaigner against online hate who is threatened with deportation from the US. He fears the "tendrils of Big Tech" have already reached Westminster.

Foluke Ifejola Adebisi reflections on the life and death of Patrice Lumumba. "We often decry our current African leaders, their incompetence, corruption, complete lack of willingness to stand up for the good of their countries or their people. But while we decry them – and we must do that with all that we have – let us not forget that we sometimes had leaders who gave their all to the struggle. Their blood, their lives, their spirit, their souls. Let us not forget what happened to them." 

"This myth of 'boy books' does real harm. It narrows reading down to one-dimensional stories built around aggression or dominance. The overwhelming message boys receive is that reading is fine, as long as it reinforces orthodox masculinity and does not ask you to feel too much or think too deeply." Louis Provis on the wrong way to encourage boys to read.

"Hayley Mills was quickly growing out of her childhood film roles and this was an ideal production that helped transition her into more mature teen roles." Silver Scenes celebrates The Moon-Spinners (1964).

The Joy of Six 1454

"At its core, A Christmas Carol is the transformation of a man without empathy, to a man with empathy. It accomplishes this through forcing the character Ebenezer Scrooge to remember the past, witness the present, and to consider the future. It is through seeing other human beings as human beings with lives equal in worth to his own, that forms the basis of Scrooge's transformation." Scott Santens sets out the science behind Charles Dickens' famous story.

Barbara Speed on the shocking scale of the abuse perpetrated by the Jesus Army: "The ... coroner returned an open verdict, but noted his 'concern' about the two strange deaths and the letters he had received from parents of young people in the fellowship, who were worried about their children’s safety. These incidents were closely reported by local media but never became national news."

Welcome to the working week - Microsoft Teams will soon start telling your boss where you are, reports Zak Doffman.

"I think, therefore I am" isn’t the best translation of Descartes’s famous pronouncement "cogito, ergo sum", argues Galen Strawson.

Owen Hatherley has been watching a new box set of immediately post-war films from the DDR: "'Rubble films' were sponsored by the Soviet occupiers of Eastern Germany and East Berlin as part of the project of de-Nazification, with the theory being that mass market film was uniquely suited to forcing ordinary Germans to understand and come to terms with what they had done. It was a brief moment, necessarily compromised ... but the films are fascinating as attempts to make antifascist commercial blockbusters, in a devastated society that would have preferred to think about almost anything else."

Gavin Speed looks at the latest research into Saxon Leicestershire: "Along the River Welland in south-east Leicestershire, extensive fieldwalking surveys have identified several settlements close to the north of the river, and close to former Roman roads."

The Joy of Six 1451

"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.

The Joy of Six 1450

"Millions of teenagers would lose the freedom to enjoy games and social interaction in the name of 'safety'. Even complaining on family WhatsApp would be impossible, as they would be banned from that too. Such a restriction would severely impact not just young people’s ability to play games or socialise, but also access support services, or engage in or discuss political content or ideas." James Baker argues that Liberal Democrats should not support Baroness Benjamin's amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Sophia Alexandra Hall explains why care leavers need better access to childhood records: "Among the papers was a photocopy of a photograph of Jackie and her sister. The council initially refused to give her the original, saying it belonged to them. She persisted. When she finally received it, she discovered a date and time written on the back. Those details had never appeared in the copy."

Anglican Ink has an anonymous post by an anonymous retired Church of England that paints an unflattering portrait of the young Justin Welby.

We hear a lot about making cities child friendly, but Max Western and Afroditi Stathi remind us that the modern urban landscape isn't kind to old people either.

"The public story of Google Maps is that it passively reflects 'what people like'. More stars, more reviews, better food. But that framing obscures how the platform actually operates. Google Maps is not just indexing demand – it is actively organising it through a ranking system built on a small number of core signals that Google itself has publicly acknowledged: relevance, distance, and prominence." Lauren Leek on how Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants and how she built a dashboard to see through it.

Scott Shea chooses six songs that tell the story of Sam Cooke.