tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/england-549/articles
England – The Conversation
2024-03-07T17:23:54Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225199
2024-03-07T17:23:54Z
2024-03-07T17:23:54Z
Copa 71: how the first women’s World Cup was erased from footballing history
<p>The young Gail Emms, who would later become world badminton champion, was great at sport. At school, she once proudly gave a detailed presentation about how her mother, Janice, had played football for England in a World Cup in the early 1970s. Her teachers enjoyed the story but thought Gail was fantasising. There was no official record of any such event taking place. </p>
<p>However, Janice Emms did indeed play for an England football team in Mexico City in 1971 – and in front of a crowd of 90,000 at that. The women and girls concerned hid their involvement because football’s world governing body, Fifa, disapproved, and England’s Football Association (FA) sought to ban those who had participated in this “unsanctioned” tournament. </p>
<p>The players involved seldom talked about Mexico later, even among themselves. But those who had been there would never forget it.</p>
<p>Copa 71, a new documentary film about this long-forgotten landmark tournament, lists US soccer star Alex Morgan and tennis legends Serena and Venus Williams as executive producers. It premiered recently at the British Film Institute and, to some acclaim, at the Toronto International Film Festival. </p>
<p>Released on March 8, it interviews some of those involved and emerges at a moment when the women’s game is experiencing unprecedented commercial and popular success. The Women’s World Cup is now a major money-spinner and a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/04/womens-world-cup-2023-hailed-as-most-successful-in-history-at-halfway-point">global TV event</a>, and Fifa has even <a href="https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/womens/womensworldcup/australia-new-zealand2023/news/bareman-women-will-play-vital-role-in-football-s-future">embraced</a> women’s football as the “future” of the game. Times have changed.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tXx5usO4v2E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The extraordinary story of the 1971 Women’s Football World Cup.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘British Independents’</h2>
<p>In the early 1970s, Italian drinks company Martini Rosso identified untapped commercial and marketing potential in women’s football. It argued for a privately funded international tournament in Mexico in 1971 – promising to pay for the kit, travel and accommodation of any Europeans willing to be involved. </p>
<p>Six countries took part, including four from Europe. In England, there was little point engaging with the FA on such matters: women’s football had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/13/how-the-fa-banned-womens-football-in-1921-and-tried-to-justify-it">banned</a> there for 50 years, and it was barely on the national agenda again. So, a Mr Harry Batt from Luton was contacted instead. </p>
<p>Early women footballers remember Batt fondly as a chain-smoking, rather sweary bus driver in his sixties. He and his wife, June, had started up the Chiltern Valley Ladies football club in 1969. An unlikely moderniser, Batt had recognised the demand among young women in his area for a chance to play, and built a successful and competitive regional club. </p>
<p>So, when the man from Martini Rosso came calling and asked Batt if he could put a squad together to represent England in Mexico, he jumped at the chance. Batt’s scratch team of so-called “British Independents” ranged in age from the 13-year-old Leah Caleb to a handful of more mature women players. Parental approval was needed for some squad members even to travel.</p>
<p>Did Batt really know what he was doing? His inexperienced and youthful team had only ever performed in charity matches or on uneven park pitches in front of a smattering of dogs, friends and family members. Children played alongside adults because of the paucity of women players; there was nowhere decent even for female players to change. </p>
<p>In Mexico City, this patchwork 14-player squad – by now re-labelled as England – played between daft pink-and-white goalposts in some of the largest stadia in the world, in front of enormous and enthusiastic crowds. The England women suffered injuries and lost their matches, but respect for them abroad grew.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An image of a crowd gathered outside a large football stadium." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580231/original/file-20240306-18-fgv5q1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1971, Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca was the world’s largest football stadium, hosting 112,000 fans for the women’s final.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Women%27s_World_Cup#/media/File:Mexico_stadium_1986.jpg">Karl Oppolzer/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Disappearing from view</h2>
<p>And Batt’s reward for all this promoting of women and girls’ football in the international spotlight? A rebuff from Fifa and a lifetime ban from the FA. Thanks for nothing.</p>
<p>The New York Times had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/27/archives/soccer-goes-sexy-south-of-border-womens-world-cup-aimed-at-the-2.html">billed</a> the Mexico tournament as “Soccer Goes Sexy South of Border”, with women’s football depicted as “a mixture between a sports event and a beauty contest … the shorts will be as close as possible to hot pants”. </p>
<p>But in fact, these international women footballers appear to have been as revered in Mexico as were men players. Some 112,000 fans watched Denmark defeat Mexico 3–0 in the final. Autograph hunters and TV presenters followed every step of the visiting England team. </p>
<p>After this sort of adulation, coming home was a real let-down. Mexico ‘71 had barely registered in England.</p>
<p>It took the dinosaurs at the FA another decade, under protest, to take the <a href="https://www.englandfootball.com/england/womens-senior-team/Legacy/History">women’s game</a> in-house, and a blundering Fifa 20 years to organise the first official Women’s World Cup, in <a href="https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/womens/womensworldcup/chinapr1991">China</a>. So many wasted years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Thousands of fans packed out stadiums for the 1971 women’s World Cup, but it has been virtually erased from history.
John Williams, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Leicester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221155
2024-03-07T13:03:45Z
2024-03-07T13:03:45Z
Why schools need to take sun safety more seriously – expert explains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577546/original/file-20240223-16-azytla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C0%2C4195%2C2788&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The World Health Organization recommends formal school programmes as the key to preventing skin cancer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-boy-having-sunscreen-applied-339150182">Paul Higley/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite the UK’s rainy climate, there is a one in six <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ski2.61">risk</a> of developing skin cancer. Children, especially, should take extra care as severe sunburn as a youngster more than <a href="https://www.skincancer.org/risk-factors/sunburn/">doubles</a> the chance of developing skin cancer later on. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ced/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ced/llad458/7507665">new research</a> my colleagues and I conducted shows that less than half of primary schools in Wales have a formal sun safety policy.</p>
<p>With skin cancer rates continuing to rise by <a href="https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/medical_specialties/dermatology/">8% annually</a> in England and Wales, it’s a problem that’s not going away and the disease now accounts for half of all cancers. In 2020 alone, the cost of treating skin cancer in England was <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23554510/">estimated</a> to be more than £180 million.</p>
<p>There is hope, though. It is estimated that around <a href="https://www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-information/skin-cancer-facts">90% of skin cancers</a> are due to ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure from the sun. This means they can be prevented through safer behaviour. </p>
<p>In the UK, though, many people still <a href="https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/5/579/611761">underestimate</a> the link between sunburn and skin cancer. Research paints a worrying picture, revealing disparities in sun protection awareness and behaviour across different groups. Notably, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/5/579/611761">men</a>, people living in <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26875569/">low-income neighbourhoods</a>, those belonging to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/her/article/20/5/579/611761">lower socioeconomic groups</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28125871/">people of colour</a> are often found to be less informed about sun safety and are more likely to put themselves at risk. </p>
<p>With childhood a crucial time for learning healthy behaviour, teaching all children from a young age about sun protection could be one way to reduce future skin cancer rates. And the <a href="https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/42678/9241590629_v1.pdf?sequence=1">World Health Organization</a> recommends formal school programmes as the key to prevention. </p>
<p>Overall, school-based interventions have been <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743521000438">shown</a> to positively influence sun safe knowledge and behaviour. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyt105">schools in Australia</a> with written policies show better sun protection practices than those without.</p>
<p>But in UK schools, the situation varies. The UK government’s Department for Education has issued <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/physical-health-and-mental-wellbeing-primary-and-secondary#by-the-end-of-primary-school">statutory guidance</a> for England that children should leave primary school knowing about sun safety and how to reduce the risk of getting skin cancer. </p>
<p>In Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is not a legal requirement to teach sun safety in schools. And in Wales, while sun safety is recommended as part of the Welsh Network of Healthy Schools scheme, again there is no mandatory requirement to have a sun safety policy or to teach skin cancer prevention. Nor are there central UK resources provided to help schools in this area. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The red, peeling sunburnt back and shoulders of a young girl." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578006/original/file-20240226-21-2xd3jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Being severely sunburnt as a youngster more than doubles the chance of developing future skin cancer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dangerous-sunburn-shoulders-young-girl-601094933">Alonafoto/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My colleagues and I wanted to know how many schools have a sun safety policy, a formal document that sets out a school’s position with respect to the education and provision of sun safety. We also wanted to understand whether the existence of a policy varied by area or school characteristic, and what support schools need. </p>
<p>In 2022, we sent a survey to all 1,241 primary schools in Wales. In total, 471 schools responded. </p>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>We found that only 39% of responding schools had a formal sun safety policy. And of these, not all enforced them. Schools that had more children receiving free school meals and with lower attendance rates were less likely to have a sun safety policy.</p>
<p>We asked schools that did not have a policy to tell us the reasons why not. Thirty-five per cent of schools were “not aware of the need”, while 27% of schools had “not got around to it just yet”. Thirty schools (13%) said that a sun safety policy was not a priority at this time. Clearly, there is work to be done on raising awareness among schools and school leaders on the role they can play in this area.</p>
<p>Of course, schools are busy places. So, when asked to indicate what would encourage them to create a sun safety policy, 73% of schools said assistance with development, while 56% said resources to aid the teaching of sun safety. </p>
<p>Previously both Cancer Research UK and the Wales-based Tenovus Cancer Care charities have offered support and guidelines for schools but this support is no longer easily available. The England-based charity <a href="https://www.skcin.org/ourWork/sunSafeSchools.htm">Sckin</a> has a comprehensive and free sun-safe schools accreditation scheme. Some schools told us they based their policies on resources supplied by the local authority, but this was not consistent across Wales.</p>
<p>UV levels will soon rise in the UK and now is the time for schools to start thinking about sun protection. Having a formal sun safety school policy sets out the position of the school when it comes to sun safety. When enforced and communicated properly, this makes it clear to everyone (governors, teachers, carers and pupils) their individual responsibilities when it comes to staying safe. </p>
<p>But with fewer than half of schools in Wales having formal policies, and not all enforced, awareness of the importance of this issue and the potential role of schools is lacking. </p>
<p>It is therefore time for sun safety policies to become mandatory for primary schools across the UK. This could help to improve knowledge and behaviour for all age groups. But adequate support and guidance must be also given to schools to help them educate children about sun safety and protect them while they are at school.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Peconi received funding for the Sunproofed Study from Health and Care Research Wales through a Health Research Grant Award. She is also a volunteer with the charity Skin Care Cymru, a charity working to raise the profile of skin health in Wales. </span></em></p>
Being severely sunburnt as a child more than doubles the chance of developing future skin cancer but less than half of primary schools questioned in new research have a sun safety policy.
Julie Peconi, Senior Research Officer in Health Data Science, Swansea University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219140
2024-02-27T12:41:39Z
2024-02-27T12:41:39Z
Could a couple of Thai otters have helped the UK’s otter population recover? Our study provides a hint
<p>Otter populations crashed in Britain around the 1960s from the lethal effects of chemical pollution in rivers and lakes – or so we thought. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/40/11/msad207/7275014">Our research</a> has looked more closely at what happened to otters in Britain over the last 800 years and has revealed a more complex picture. </p>
<p>Since Eurasian otters (<em>Lutra lutra</em>) are at the top of the aquatic food chain in Britain, any contamination consumed by their prey, and by the prey of their prey, <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c05410">accumulates in otters</a>. So otters are particularly susceptible to any toxic chemicals in their environment. </p>
<p>Following the banning of many chemical pollutants, otter populations began to recover, and we now have otters in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eva.13505">every county in Britain</a>. National otter surveys have been conducted in Wales, Scotland and England since 1977 and have helped to track population recovery. </p>
<p>However, we didn’t have a good grasp on what population sizes were like in the decades before this time. We only had anecdotal evidence that otter hunting was becoming less “successful” over time, and that both sightings and signs of otters were rarer. </p>
<h2>Otter population decline</h2>
<p>Our research shows that roughly between 1950 and 1970, an extreme population decline happened in the east of England, and a strong decline in south-west England. They were probably caused by chemical pollution. </p>
<p>In Scotland, otter populations showed a long-term, but smaller decline, which suggests less chemical pollution. There was a smaller population decline in Wales, which started around 1800, possibly linked to otter hunting and changes in how people shaped and used the landscape. </p>
<p>While both deal with DNA, genetics focuses on individual genes and their roles, while genomics examines the entire set of an organism’s DNA. Although there have been genetic studies of otters in Britain, our research was the first time genomics was used to study Eurasian otters anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>Working with scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Wellcome Sanger’s Darwin Tree of Life project, we looked at the entire otter genome. The upgrade from genetics to genomics threw up a few surprises. </p>
<p>First, there was a mitochondrial DNA sequence found in the east of England, which was very different to the sequences in the rest of Britain. Mitochondrial DNA is a sequence of DNA found in a cell’s mitochondria, which is what generates the energy. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother, while the rest of the DNA is a mix of both the mother’s and the father’s DNA.</p>
<p>Another <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19768354.2023.2283763">recent study</a> by our research group, in collaboration with colleagues in South Korea, suggested a divergence between these two lineages at least 80,000 years ago. Finding this mitochondrial lineage (that, based on our data, is otherwise restricted to Asia) in the UK was surprising. </p>
<p>Second, we found high levels of genetic diversity in the east of England. Normally, after an extreme population decline such as the one we identified in this area, genetic diversity decreases. Yet we saw much greater diversity here than in the population in Scotland, where there was no clear evidence for such a decline. </p>
<h2>Thai otters</h2>
<p>With a little detective work, we discovered that a pair of Eurasian otters (the same species that we have in the UK), were brought to Britain from Thailand in the 1960s. Populations of Eurasian otters range right across Europe and Asia. Although they are the same species, there are several genetically distinct subspecies, particularly in Asia. </p>
<p>It seems possible that these genetically different otters from Thailand bred with otters in the east of England. At the time of the population decline, when native UK populations were at their smallest, even a few individuals introduced into the population may have made a big difference. And they left unexpected marks on the genome. </p>
<p>We don’t know for sure if this is what happened, and we need to do more work to find out what effect this may have had on otters in the east of England. High genetic diversity is usually good for a population or species. But on the other hand, conservation often strives to maintain genetic differences between populations, rather than mixing distinct populations.</p>
<p>One way to find out more would be to compare the genome of a Eurasian otter from Thailand to the otters we see in the east of England. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Since the 1960s, otters in Thailand and across Asia have become increasingly rare. This is due to habitat loss, pollution and the illegal otter trade. So getting samples for genome sequencing is very difficult. It highlights the importance of conserving the species in Asia, despite population recoveries in Europe.</p>
<p>Our work shows the value of using modern genomic tools to look at the genetic diversity of a threatened species. The application of such tools can uncover surprising facts, even in supposedly well-studied species.</p>
<hr>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
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<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Hailer receives funding from NERC and Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Chadwick receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council and from the Environment Agency</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah du Plessis receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council and the Global Wales International Mobility Fund.</span></em></p>
Research has revealed how British otters may have been able to recover from species loss in the 1950s with the help of otters from Asia.
Frank Hailer, Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, Cardiff University
Elizabeth Chadwick, Senior Lecturer at the School of Biosciences, Cardiff University
Sarah du Plessis, PhD Candidate, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221256
2024-01-23T15:13:04Z
2024-01-23T15:13:04Z
UK constituency boundaries are being redrawn to make them more equal – but it won’t save the Conservatives
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569531/original/file-20240116-29-25lkrf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=214%2C372%2C3539%2C2009&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Steve Mann</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thanks to political scientists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, we now know how the 2019 election would have turned out if it had been contested using different constituency boundaries. Spoiler alert: the Conservatives would still have won – with a <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/constituency-boundary-changes-give-keir-starmer-a-tougher-route-to-number-10-find-out-why-with-our-swingometer-13044055">slightly larger majority</a>.</p>
<p>Rallings and Thrasher have not been idly running simulations of the 2019 election just to pass the time, however. The boundary changes they were using are about to become reality for the next election, which means we can start to look at how the electoral map might change in 2024.</p>
<p>The new boundaries, prepared by the independent boundary commissions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, constitute the most radical redrawing of the UK’s electoral map for decades. Their impact will be felt almost everywhere, with only 65 of 650 constituencies remaining entirely unchanged geographically.</p>
<p>Some of the biggest changes will be in <a href="https://bcomm-wales.gov.uk/news/06-23/wales-new-parliamentary-constituencies-published">Wales</a>, where 40 constituencies will be cut to 32. There will, meanwhile, be more constituencies in England. In some localities, a <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/braverman-wins-battle-of-waterlooville-in-selection-for-proposed-new-hampshire-constituency-12850830">brutal game of musical chairs</a> has been triggered as sitting MPs from the same party <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/welsh-labour-mp-losing-seat-27842895">directly compete</a> for selection as the candidate for a redrawn constituency. </p>
<p>The purpose of the changes has been to <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/boundary-review-2023-which-seats-will-change/">rebalance the map</a> so that the number of entries on the electoral register in each constituency is as similar as possible. All but five of the 632 parliamentary constituencies in Great Britain are now required to have between 69,724 and 77,062 electors each. Exemptions were given to five island constituencies: Na h-Eileanan an Iar (the Western Isles), Orkney and Shetland in Scotland, Ynys Môn in Wales and two on the Isle of Wight, all of which are permitted to have fewer electors. A slightly wider band of electorate variation was also permitted for the 18 constituencies in Northern Ireland. </p>
<h2>Why boundary changes are needed</h2>
<p>Given the upheaval involved, it might seem easier to just leave constituency boundaries as they are. But regular boundary reviews really are necessary. The distribution of the UK population is not static. Ongoing population movement causes the electorates of some constituencies to grow and others to shrink. Left unchecked, huge disparities would arise in the number of electors represented by each individual MP in the House of Commons.</p>
<p>A failure to redraw boundaries regularly would also affect the operation of the electoral system, potentially introducing a source of relative bias towards any party performing disproportionately well in areas where populations are declining. </p>
<p>These changes are as long overdue as they are far-reaching. The same boundaries were used at four elections from 2010-2019, even though a full set of new constituencies had been mapped out in <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06229/">2013</a> and again in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-boundary-commissions-boundary-review-2018">2018</a>.</p>
<p>A key reason for the delay has been the radical nature of these previous schemes. Both would have levelled out constituencies by implementing a maximum 5% variation from the mean constituency electorate, but they also would have reduced the number of MPs sitting in the House of Commons from 650 to 600. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the volatile political conditions of 2010-19 proved less than ideal for getting MPs to agree on how to implement a reduction in their number.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A map of the UK with pins and flags scattered across it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569532/original/file-20240116-27-mw7g0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569532/original/file-20240116-27-mw7g0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569532/original/file-20240116-27-mw7g0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569532/original/file-20240116-27-mw7g0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569532/original/file-20240116-27-mw7g0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569532/original/file-20240116-27-mw7g0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569532/original/file-20240116-27-mw7g0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The redrawing of the electoral map is a lengthy, complex process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Alexander Lukatskiy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The two failed attempts to get changed constituency maps through parliament prompted a new approach by government. The plan to reduce the number of MPs was dropped, as was the role of parliament in approving the final recommendations of the boundary commissions. What remained was the need for constituency electorates to be equalised, which has been achieved in the latest review. </p>
<h2>What happens in 2024?</h2>
<p>Rallings and Thrasher’s re-run of the 2019 election provides an indication of the extent to which the new boundaries rebalance the scales. The counter-factual scores on the doors show there would have been an additional seven Conservative MPs overall. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru would have had seven fewer MPs between them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Labour candidates would have finished a more distant second in numerous marginals. This all indicates that, under the new boundaries, Labour’s path to a majority in 2024 is slightly harder than it would have been previously. </p>
<p>However, when absorbing these details, some perspective is needed. That new boundaries would, all things being equal, slightly advantage the Conservatives does not make up for the enormous <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c7b4fa91-3601-4b82-b766-319af3c261a5">shifts in party support</a> since December 2019. The marginal gains the Conservatives might enjoy from the boundary reviews are dwarfed by the scale of the changes indicated by current polling. </p>
<p>Nor should any of this be taken as evidence of <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gerrymandering">gerrymandering</a> – the practice of drawing electoral maps in a way that would be politically advantageous to one party. The UK’s boundary commissions are fully independent. They alone determine where to draw the lines on electoral maps.</p>
<p>Boundary changes aren’t all about political parties. They matter to voters too, even if only in relation to where they live. A modest move of the boundary commissioner’s mouse might relocate your home from one constituency to another. Try to embrace your new electoral experience – it’s all in the service of democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Wilks-Heeg has previously received funding from the Electoral Commission, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust for research relating to UK electoral processes. </span></em></p>
The number of constituencies across the UK will remain the same but the vast majority will be redrawn to make them more balanced.
Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Head of Politics, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218878
2023-12-11T13:13:40Z
2023-12-11T13:13:40Z
The Napoléon that Ridley Scott and Hollywood won’t let you see
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564552/original/file-20231208-29-g15j8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C6%2C1388%2C1023&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 1802 Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot was part of Napoléon's effort to retake Haiti − then known as Saint-Domingue − and reestablish slavery in the colony.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Haitian_Revolution.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Critics have been raking Ridley Scott’s new movie about Napoléon Bonaparte over the coals for its many <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/heres-why-historians-are-not-a-fan-of-ridley-scotts-napoleon/articleshow/105540885.cms">historical inaccuracies</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar of French colonialism and slavery who studies <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/tropics-of-haiti-9781781381854">historical fiction</a>, or the fictionalization of real events, I was much less bothered by most of the liberties taken in “Napoleon” – although shooting cannons at the pyramids <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/science/napoleon-movie-ridley-scott-egypt-pyramid.html">did seem like one indulgence too far</a>. </p>
<p>I have <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5292/">argued elsewhere</a> that historical fictions need not necessarily be judged by adherence to facts. Instead, inventiveness, creativity, ideology and, ultimately, storytelling power are what matter most.</p>
<p>But in lieu of offering a fresh and imaginative take on Napoléon, Scott’s film rehearsed the well-known <a href="https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/12/04/battle-of-austerlitz-reenactment-draws-record-numbers-of-participants">battles of Austerlitz</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Wagram">Wagram</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/world/europe/200-years-after-battle-some-hard-feelings-remain.html">Waterloo</a>, while erasing perhaps the most momentous – and consequential – of Bonaparte’s military campaigns. </p>
<p>As with <a href="https://collider.com/great-napoleon-movies/#39-love-and-death-39-1975">every other Napoléon movie</a>, Scott’s version will leave viewers with no understanding of the <a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/all-devils-are-here">genocidal war to restore slavery</a> that Bonaparte waged against Black revolutionaries in the French colony of Saint-Domingue – what’s known as Haiti today. </p>
<p>To me, leaving out this history is akin to making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust. </p>
<h2>‘I am for the whites, because I am white’</h2>
<p>France’s seemingly eternal on-again, off-again war with Great Britain did not change the immediate boundaries of either country. These wars were often fought over land in the American hemisphere and included a historic contest over Martinique, a small island in the Caribbean, whose fate had far-reaching repercussions for slavery.</p>
<p>In 1794, following three years of slave rebellions in Saint-Domingue – events now known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-kingdom-of-haiti-the-wakanda-of-the-western-hemisphere-108250">the Haitian Revolution</a> – the French government <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/d/291">abolished slavery</a> in all French overseas territories. </p>
<p>Martinique, however, was not included: The French had recently lost the island to the British <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/martinique-british-occupation-1794-1802">in battle</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/L_Europe_pendant_le_consulat_et_l_empire/9MROAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA1-PA234&printsec=frontcover">a 1799 speech to the French government</a>, Bonaparte explained that if he had been in Martinique at the time the French lost the colony, he would have been on the side of the British – because they never dared to abolish slavery. </p>
<p>“I am for the whites, because I am white,” Bonaparte said. “I have no other reason, and this is the right one. How could anyone have granted freedom to Africans, to men who had no civilization.” </p>
<p>Once he rose to power, Bonaparte signed the 1802 <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/treaty-amiens">Treaty of Amiens</a> with the British, which returned Martinique to French rule. Afterward, he passed a law permitting slavery to continue in Martinique. And in <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9tablissement_de_l%27esclavage_par_Napol%C3%A9on_Bonaparte">July 1802</a>, Bonaparte formally reinstated slavery on Guadeloupe, another French colony in the Caribbean. Slavery then persisted in France’s overseas empire until 1848, long after his death in 1821.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in Saint-Domingue, Bonaparte <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963447/f210.item">authorized</a> his <a href="https://unsansculotte.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/repression_revolt_and_racial_politics_ma.pdf">generals</a> to <a href="http://www.manioc.org/gsdl/collect/patrimon/tmp/NAN13043.html">eliminate the majority</a> of the adult Black population, and he signed a law to <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f457.image">reinstate the slave trade</a> to the island.</p>
<h2>A Black general’s rise</h2>
<p>For the mission to succeed, Bonaparte’s troops would have to contend with a formerly enslaved man called <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/loverture-toussaint-1743-1803/">Toussaint Louverture</a>, who had become a prominent leader during the early years of the Haitian Revolution. </p>
<p>After general emancipation, when the Black population had become citizens – rather than slaves – of France, Louverture joined the French army. He went on to play a key role in helping France combat and eventually defeat Spanish and British forces, who had since invaded the colony in an attempt to take it over.</p>
<p>Recognizing his military prowess, the French consistently promoted Louverture until he became the second Black general in a French army – after <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/people-global-african-history/dumas-thomas-alexandre-1762-1806/">General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas</a>, father of the famous French novelist Alexandre Dumas. (Thomas-Alexandre Dumas incidentally appears in the film as a character with a nonspeaking part.) </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of Black man dressed in military regalia opposite a man in religious garb. They are surrounded by soldiers and citizens, and a god-like figure looks over them from the clouds." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564546/original/file-20231208-18-oomc5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A print of Toussaint Louverture holding a copy of the Constitution of 1801.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.31021/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1801, as a testament to his growing authority, Louverture issued a <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/haiti/1801/constitution.htm">famous constitution</a> that appointed him governor-general of the whole island. Yet he still professed fealty to France even as the colony became semi-autonomous. </p>
<p>By then, however, Bonaparte had assumed power as first consul of France – and had made it his mission to “<a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f330.image">annihilate the government of the Blacks</a>” in Saint-Domingue so he could bring back slavery.</p>
<p>In January 1802, Bonaparte sent his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc to Saint-Domingue with tens of thousands of French troops. </p>
<p><a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62963462/f424.image">Bonaparte’s instructions</a>? </p>
<p>Arrest Louverture and reinstate slavery. </p>
<h2>The fall of Louverture</h2>
<p>One of the film’s writers, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/awards/consider-this/ridley-scott-napoleon-writer-david-scarpa-true-false-1234931486/#:%7E:text=There's%20a%20dangerous%20allure%20to,affair%20with%20his%20wife%2C%20right%3F">David Scarpa</a>, said Napoléon represents for him “the classic example of the benevolent dictator.” </p>
<p>If that Napoléon ever did exist, Louverture never met him.</p>
<p>In June 1802, Napoléon’s army arrested Louverture and deported him to France. As Louverture wasted away in a French prison, Bonaparte refused to put Louverture on trial. Throughout his incarceration, the guards at the jail denied Louverture food, water, heat and medical care. Louverture subsequently <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/wrongful-death-toussaint-louverture#:%7E:text=On%20the%20morning%20of%207,captive%20for%20nearly%20eight%20months.">starved and froze to death</a>.</p>
<p>With Louverture gone, Napoléon’s army operated with more bloodlust than ever before. In addition to conventional weapons, his troops fought the freedom fighters with <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Historical_Account_of_the_Black_Empir/CTpAAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22assumed+a+complexion+more+sanguinary+and+terrible+than+can+be+conceived+among+civilized+people%22&pg=PA326&printsec=frontcover">floating gas chambers</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Literary_Magazine_and_American_Regis/9BwAAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E2%80%9CSeven+or+eight+hundred+blacks,+and+men+of+colour,+were+seized+upon+in+the+streets,+in+the+public+places,+in+the+very+houses%22&pg=PA447&printsec=frontcover">mass drownings</a> and <a href="https://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Ecavitch/pdf-library/Johnson_dogs_and_torture.pdf">dog attacks</a> – all in the name of restoring slavery.</p>
<p>The Black freedom fighters, now calling themselves the armée indigène, led by Haiti’s founder <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-haitis-founding-father-whose-black-revolution-was-too-radical-for-thomas-jefferson-101963">General Jean-Jacques Dessalines</a>, definitively defeated French forces in the historic <a href="https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/the-battle-of-vertieres/">Battle of Vertières</a> on Nov. 18, 1803. On Jan. 1, 1804, they <a href="https://haitidoi.com/doi/#:%7E:text=IT%20is%20not%20enough%20to,act%20of%20national%20authority%2C%20to">officially declared independence</a> from France and changed the name of the island to Haiti.</p>
<h2>‘A fatal move’</h2>
<p>If the filmmakers had included Napoléon’s failed mission to restore slavery in Saint-Domingue, it could have served as a propitious moment to tie the movie back to one of its only coherent arcs: Napoléon’s undying love for <a href="https://www.history.com/news/napoleon-josephine-bonaparte-love-story-marriage-divorce">Joséphine de Beauharnais</a>, his first wife.</p>
<p>In one memorable scene in the film, Joséphine tells Bonaparte that he is nothing without her, and he agrees.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Painting of woman with short brown hair wearing two necklackes and a white ruffled blouse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564547/original/file-20231208-29-3a2n46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joséphine de Beauharnais advised Napoléon to let Saint-Domingue operate as a semi-autonomous colony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Jos%C3%A9phine_de_Beauharnais_vers_1809_Gros.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, Joséphine’s posthumously published memoir suggests that Bonaparte disregarded his wife’s most prescient counsel. Joséphine wrote that she urged her husband not to send an expedition to Saint-Domingue, prophesying this as a “fatal move” that “would forever take this beautiful colony away from France.” She <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9636609r/f112.image">advised Bonaparte</a>, alternatively, to “keep Toussaint Louverture there. That is the man required to govern the Blacks.” </p>
<p>She subsequently asked him, “What complaints could you have against this leader of the Blacks? He has always maintained correspondence with you; he has done even more, he has given you, in some sense, his children for hostages.” </p>
<p>Louverture’s children had attended Paris’ storied <a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/dhs_0070-6760_2000_num_32_1_2364">Collège de la Marche</a>, alongside the children of other prominent Black Saint-Domingue officials. Although Bonaparte ended up sending Louverture’s children back to the colony with Leclerc, another Black general from Saint-Domingue who fought to oppose slavery’s reinstatement was not so lucky. </p>
<p>Just before Bonaparte’s troops began their genocidal war in the name of restoring slavery, Haiti’s future king, <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-king-of-haiti-and-the-dilemmas-of-freedom-in-a-colonised-world">General Henry Christophe</a>, sent his son, François Ferdinand, to the Collège de la Marche. </p>
<p>After the Haitian revolutionaries defeated France and declared the island independent in 1804, Bonaparte ordered the school closed. Many of its Black students, like young Ferdinand, were then thrown into orphanages. The abandoned child <a href="https://archive.org/details/rflexionspolitiq00vast/page/6/mode/2up?q=Ferdinand">died alone in July 1805</a> at the age of 11.</p>
<p>Only at the end of his life, during his second exile on the remote island of St. Helena, did Napoléon express remorse for any of this. </p>
<p>“I can only reproach myself for the attempt on that colony,” the <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4710580&seq=533&q1=Toussaint">defunct emperor</a> said. “I should have contented myself with governing it through Toussaint.”</p>
<h2>A missed opportunity</h2>
<p>By including some of this rich material, Ridley Scott could have made a truly original film with historical and contemporary relevance. </p>
<p>After all, Napoléon’s history of trying to stop the Haitian Revolution – the most significant revolution for freedom the modern world has ever seen – has never been depicted on a Hollywood screen.</p>
<p>Instead, hiding behind beautiful cinematography, magnificent costuming and Vanessa Kirby’s masterful portrayal of Joséphine, Scott ultimately produced an unimaginative film about the already well-trodden military successes and failures of the man depicted as having literally crowned himself France’s emperor.</p>
<p>If “Napoleon” doesn’t exactly glorify its main subject, its creators certainly seemed to sympathize with the man whose wars were responsible for more than 3,000,000 deaths, as the film’s final caption reads. </p>
<p>The film did not say whether that number includes the tens of thousands of Black people Napoléon’s army killed in Saint-Domingue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marlene Daut does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Leaving out the history of Napoléon’s brutal subjugation of Haiti is akin to making a movie about Hitler without mentioning the Holocaust.
Marlene Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218974
2023-12-01T14:06:47Z
2023-12-01T14:06:47Z
Why some people from the north of England end up leaving everything to King Charles when they die
<p>What connects an ex-miner and lifelong republican, who once manned the protest lines at Orgreave, with King Charles III? The surprising answer, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/23/turn-in-his-grave-the-dead-whose-assets-went-to-king-charles-estate">the Guardian reported</a>, is that the ex-miner’s estate now forms part of a fund which generates private income for the monarch. </p>
<p>The reason is the legal principle of <em><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/bona-vacantia">bona vacantia</a></em>. This is loosely translated as “ownerless goods” and refers to a process through which the estates of people who die without heirs in England and Wales are claimed by the crown. </p>
<p>The principle of <em>bona vacantia</em> operates when a person dies in England and Wales without leaving a valid will disposing of all of their assets and there is no heir to their estate under the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/inherits-someone-dies-without-will">intestacy rules</a>. These rules, set out in the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/15-16/23/contents">Administration of Estates Act 1925</a>, set out the classes of people who can inherit the property of an intestate (or partially intestate) person. </p>
<p>These classes are ranked and then gone through in order to see if an heir can be found. In broad terms, no surviving relative further away from the deceased than a first cousin can inherit. Remoter family members are generally excluded. When no one closer than a cousin can be found, the unclaimed part of the estate (the <em>bona vacantia</em>) passes to, and is collected by, the crown. </p>
<p>Most of these estates are claimed by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/susanna-mcgibbon">Treasury solicitor</a>, the government legal department which handles the administration of the estate and then passes the surplus to the government for its general expenditure. </p>
<p>However, the estates of people who died resident in the historic County Palatine of Lancaster (including greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire and the Furness area of Cumbria) pass under the <em>bona vacantia</em> rules to the Duke of Lancaster. That is, the current reigning monarch, King Charles. </p>
<p>The estates collected by the Duchy of Lancaster are incorporated into its private estate of land, property and assets, with the function of providing private income for the monarch. </p>
<p>This is an extremely ancient power, dating back to a 1377 grant made by Edward III to John of Gaunt when he was Duke of Lancaster. Today, it is part of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/15-16/23/contents">Administration of Estates Act 1925</a>. </p>
<p>A similar rule applies to the estates of those dying within the county of Cornwall. These estates pass to the Duke of Cornwall, who is also the Prince of Wales, Charles’s son, William.</p>
<p>Although many of these unclaimed estates are not large, the aggregate sums received by the duchies are considerable. The Guardian reports that over the past ten years, the Duchy of Lancaster alone <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/24/kings-estate-facing-questions-over-14m-in-bona-vacantia-not-donated-to-charity">has collected around £61.8 million</a>. </p>
<p>The Treasury solicitor and the two duchies will advertise for any entitled relatives to come forward, and will make transfers to those entitled under the heirship rules. All three also have a discretion to make payments from the estate to those who may have a legitimate claim on it otherwise than through heirship, particularly under the provisions of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/63">Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975</a>. </p>
<p>These include carers for the deceased person, or cohabitants. Some of the remainder is used for investment and to maintain duchy assets, and the surplus given to charity. </p>
<h2>A controversial change apparently benefits King Charles</h2>
<p>Many people are broadly aware, and broadly satisfied, that if they die without heirs, their property will go to the state in the form of the crown. However, when the Law Commission last consulted on the principles of intestacy and <em>bona vacantia</em> in 2011, some public unease about the point was detected. </p>
<p>A significant minority thought that the rule was anachronistic and that unclaimed assets should be given <a href="https://lawcom.gov.uk/document/intestacy-and-family-provision-claims-on-death-report/">directly to charity</a>. The Law Commission did not take this up, in part because the latest available reports and accounts at that time showed that the net proceeds of <em>bona vacantia</em> in both duchies passed entirely to charity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A row of houses in a northern English village next to a bridge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Property in an area of the Duchy of Lancaster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Fencewood Studio</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Guardian’s reporting has now revealed that there was an apparent significant shift in the administration of the Duchy of Lancaster’s funds in 2020. One particularly controversial change has been the alleged use of money to improve historic property within the Duchy’s portfolio, which is then rented out for profit. </p>
<p>The paper has also raised questions about how much of the duchy’s income is currently being paid to charitable causes, as this appears to have dropped. </p>
<p>There is the further question of whether it is fair, or relevant, that the estates of those who happen to die resident in Lancashire or Cornwall should become private assets of the monarch or his heir, while those who die resident elsewhere have their estates passed to the British state more generally. </p>
<p>Whatever the resolution of these issues may be, there is a clear message for those who strongly wish their estates to go to charity and not to the crown: make a will. </p>
<p>All wills can be drafted so that if there are no living heirs left, the estate can be given to a charity of the deceased’s choice as a fallback. Many charities offer will writing services which can help. When it comes to legacies, it’s essential to plan ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218974/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheila Hamilton Macdonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Legal expert on the obscure law that makes King Charles and Prince Williams the heirs of people who die without wills or close relatives in Lancashire and Cornwall.
Sheila Hamilton Macdonald, Senior Lecturer, specialising in Probate, Wills and Land, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216469
2023-11-01T11:35:18Z
2023-11-01T11:35:18Z
Dear England: ‘feelgood’ Gareth Southgate play reviewed by a sports coaching expert
<p><a href="https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/dear-england/">Dear England</a>, a play about football manager Gareth Southgate, immaculately encapsulates the light and dark sides of the game.</p>
<p>At the start of the play – which recently transferred to the Prince Edward Theatre – Southgate watches his earlier self <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pytk8d_yBTI">missing the crucial penalty against Germany</a> that sent the men’s England team crashing out of the Uefa Euro tournament in 1996. It’s an old wound that refuses to heal. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ImSrTQnJHII?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Dear England.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The loss sparked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iikWy2iwFeM">dejected England fans</a> to vandalise German cars, and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/dear-england-prince-edward-theatre-review-joseph-fiennes/">burn Southgate effigies</a>. Despite his emotional baggage, circumstances thrust Southgate into the managerial role 20 years later. </p>
<p>The play shows how he selected a young, talented, multicultural squad. But also how he sensed that for them to survive the pressures of expectation, he needed to cultivate <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew-Slater-3/publication/342530780_LEADERSHIP_AND_SOCIAL_IDENTITY/links/5efa0ea245851550507b2ffd/LEADERSHIP-AND-SOCIAL-IDENTITY.pdf">a supportive, collective culture</a> that transcended violent, racist, hyper-masculine football narratives.</p>
<h2>Sport on stage</h2>
<p>Portraying football on stage is tricky, but the superb staging – featuring a centre circle and a hovering illuminated halo intimating the iconic Wembley arch – provides an evocative setting. </p>
<p>Joseph Fiennes’s portrayal of Southgate is masterful, embodying his essence with nuanced mannerisms and timbre, without resorting to caricature. Southgate is portrayed as self-deprecating, an unlikely leader and a reluctant figurehead. Brought in to provide stability, he enacts revolutionary change.</p>
<p>Playwright James Graham’s script is witty. Harry Kane’s (Will Close) depiction as an awkward communicator with a curious voice steals the most laughs. This poignantly pays off later when the audience is humbled by listening to the character lamenting that people denigrate him for his vocal shortcomings. </p>
<p>Jordan Pickford’s (Josh Barrow) character adheres to the stereotype of the goalkeeper as a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdqcCARcDDY">crazy man</a>”, but is amusingly endearing. A liberal amount of swearing had the audience creasing up, while epitomising the gritty underbelly of football. There was a broad range of famous character cameos, adding interest and jovial familiarity, but sometimes smacking of <a href="https://theconversation.com/spitting-image-the-puppet-satire-that-captured-thatchers-britain-107241">Spitting Image</a>.</p>
<h2>Southgate’s tactics</h2>
<p>The play also explores the existential crisis of what it means to be the England team. In an age of increasing societal division and inequality, who and what do the team want to be, and represent? </p>
<p>Southgate urges the players to contribute to the vision and take responsibility for co-constructing a modern football identity. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17430437.2020.1810021">Their challenge</a> is to move beyond the football superiority complex of the past, to forge a spirit of togetherness and belief.</p>
<p>Psychologist <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/07/21/meet-pippa-grange-doctor-helped-transform-england-football-team/">Pippa Grange</a> (Dervla Kirwan) is recruited to help players confront their fears and confide in one another about insecurities. Southgate displays much soul-searching in overcoming his own traumas, and in attempting to bind the group together. Grange’s character is almost a manifestation of Southgate’s consciousness, as he attempts to enact change in himself and others.</p>
<h2>Penalties in the play</h2>
<p>Penalties, the ultimate high-pressure football test, are a significant part of this drama, acting as a vehicle through which Southgate encourages the players to <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Fear_Less/NqGwDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Fear+Less:+How+to+Win+at+Life+Without+Losing+Yourself&printsec=frontcover">fear less</a> and to find strength and love in unity. </p>
<p>England broke their run of bad penalty shoot-out luck under Southgate in the 2018 World Cup. But they then lost the subsequent one in the Euro 2020 final, where Southgate’s decisions unintentionally exposed unsuccessful penalty takers Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/12/football/england-racist-abuse-bukayo-saka-jadon-sancho-marcus-rashford-euro-2020-final-spt-intl/index.html">to racist abuse</a>.</p>
<p>In Dear England, Southgate comes across as a quietly heroic, decent man, cultivating a culture where players are empowered to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029220301497">take the risks necessary</a> to achieve greatness. Ultimately, Southgate and England learn how to play with joy, lose with dignity, survive trauma and emerge in more meaningful roles. </p>
<p>For Southgate that means supporting others compassionately to achieve in the psychologically safe environment he did not experience himself. </p>
<p>We still lack the unwritten final act denouement, which for England managers is rarely satisfying. Euro 2024 is likely to be Southgate’s last tournament as national manager, but he will surely embrace the challenge, and try once more.</p>
<p>Fundamentally, Dear England is a feelgood play, as evidenced by the enthusiastic standing ovation, clapping and singing of Sweet Caroline at the performance I attended. Dear England exceeded my expectations, and its unusual fare might attract a non-traditional theatre audience to bravely shelve their doubts and with an open-heartedness, connect with a different story.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The play captures the light and dark sides of the beautiful game.
David Turner, Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching, Anglia Ruskin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216028
2023-10-26T10:39:21Z
2023-10-26T10:39:21Z
Five witchcraft myths debunked by an expert
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555782/original/file-20231025-29-zmv3lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C3000%2C1706&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Three women executed as witches in Derneburg Germany in October 1555</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/three-women-executed-witches-derneburg-germany-237235090">Everett Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>About 400 years ago, the European witch hunts were at their peak. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, an estimated <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810872455/Historical-Dictionary-of-Witchcraft-Second-Edition">50,000 people</a>, mostly women, were executed for witchcraft across Europe. They were accused of devil-worship, heresy and harming their neighbours by using witchcraft.
The 1620s was the most intense phase of persecution in places like <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/12801?language=en">Eichstätt</a> in Germany, where almost 300 witches were executed between 1617 and 1631. </p>
<p>The witchcraft trials have endured as a matter of curiosity, entertainment and debate. But despite this interest, popular understandings of the European witch-hunts are riddled with error and misconceptions. So, given it’s the season of the witch, it’s time to dispel some myths.</p>
<h2>1. Witchcraft is a medieval idea</h2>
<p>It isn’t – it’s modern. The Christian church was <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/witchcraft-and-magic-in-europe-volume-3-9780485891034/">sceptical</a> about the reality of witchcraft until the 15th century. Even then, many theologians and clergymen did not believe that witchcraft was a threat. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/263689">first trials</a> of people who were believed to be malevolent worshippers of the Devil who actively caused harm happened in the 15th century. The most intense period of witch hunting ran from about 1560 to about 1630. </p>
<p>Before that there were very few witchcraft trials, because acts of witchcraft were believed to be an <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/witchcraft-and-magic-in-europe-volume-3-9780485891034/">illusion</a> caused by the Devil with the permission of God.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woodcut of witches on broomsticks cavorting with the Devil." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555779/original/file-20231025-21-gw57iy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C1507%2C1264&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555779/original/file-20231025-21-gw57iy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555779/original/file-20231025-21-gw57iy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555779/original/file-20231025-21-gw57iy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555779/original/file-20231025-21-gw57iy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555779/original/file-20231025-21-gw57iy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555779/original/file-20231025-21-gw57iy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Witches on broomsticks, featured in The History of Witches and Wizards (1720)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/abkab8tq/images?id=hbe9wc8m">The Wellcome Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Witchcraft trials occurred everywhere</h2>
<p>Most witchcraft trials happened in central, western, or northern Europe. These were the areas which were the cradle of the Protestant and Catholic <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/115/2/351/10371?searchresult=1">Reformations</a>, which saw the transformation of the religious geography of Europe. And the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/abs/witches-of-durer-and-hans-baldung-grien/5839650C1787984F1CAA1A9CD1B4B06E">northern Renaissance</a> and the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300260953/the-decline-of-magic/">scientific revolution</a> had transformed how the world was understood. </p>
<p>More than 50% of all trials in Europe happened in Germany. But even there, witch persecution was limited to a few of the very many autonomous and semi-autonomous territories of which it was comprised. </p>
<p>In places like <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/early-modern-european-witchcraft-9780198203889?q=Early%20Modern%20European%20Witchcraft%20Centres&lang=en&cc=gb">Iceland</a> and <a href="https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/a-history-of-magic-and-witchcraft-in-wales/9780752428260/">Wales</a>, there were very few witchcraft trials at all. It seems that local beliefs about magic and witchcraft, alongside the attitudes of clergymen and judges, may be the reasons for this. </p>
<h2>3. The Inquisition tried and executed most witches</h2>
<p>The Roman, Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, established in the 16th century, were responsible for dealing with matters of heresy. They have become notorious for their rigour in rooting out opposition to Catholic orthodoxy. Yet, they burned very few witch suspects. Across the whole of the <a href="https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/8436?language=en">Iberian</a> and <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/3515/">Italian</a> peninsulas, the inquisitions executed fewer suspects than were hanged in England.</p>
<p>The Spanish Inquisition put a stop to the witchcraft trials that had spilled over from France in the early 17th century by assuming jurisdiction over witchcraft accusations.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An illustration of witches being burned while a man stokes the fire." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555777/original/file-20231025-21-87mzxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555777/original/file-20231025-21-87mzxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555777/original/file-20231025-21-87mzxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555777/original/file-20231025-21-87mzxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555777/original/file-20231025-21-87mzxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555777/original/file-20231025-21-87mzxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555777/original/file-20231025-21-87mzxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The execution of alleged witches in central Europe, 1587.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Wickiana3.jpg">Zurich Central Library/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Only women were tried for witchcraft</h2>
<p>It’s true that 80% of those tried and executed for witchcraft were women. Many witch hunters, like those in <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/12801?language=en">Eichstätt</a>, also selected female suspects over male ones, even though the evidence could be very similar. </p>
<p>However, in some places, like <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/male-witches-and-gendered-categories-in-seventeenthcentury-russia/F9FA9F79E0576D4F0AC5EA29E3EFF59A">Russia</a>, it was men who formed the majority of witch suspects. This was primarily because Russians conceptualised gender very differently to people in western Europe.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether the witch suspects were accused before magistrates or denounced under torture, their female neighbours were the ones most likely to accuse them. </p>
<p>In England, women on the margins of society were more vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft when things went wrong for their neighbours, such as inexplicable deaths or harm. This was the case with Ursley Kemp, one of the two witch suspects of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/136/578/26/6121677">St Osyth</a>, Essex, who were hanged in 1582. Kemp was a marginal figure in the town, a woman with an illegitimate son making ends meet through her healing skills. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/12801?language=en">Eichstatt</a>, it was a product of the processes of torture. When the suspects (more than 90% of whom were women) had to name names under torture, they gave those of their neighbours. The suspects’ networks were founded on their sex; women named women and the few male suspects named men. </p>
<h2>5. Witches were really the followers of a pagan fertility cult</h2>
<p>This myth was promoted by the Egyptologist <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.1994.9715877">Margaret Murray</a> in the early 20th century and was then <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Witchcraft_and_Demonism/Tm12ngEACAAJ?hl=en">debunked</a> by the historian C. L'Estrange Ewen almost as soon as it appeared. It was founded on a partial reading of the available witchcraft evidence. </p>
<p>It persisted because Murray wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on witchcraft that remained in print for 40 years, until 1969, and actively supported the new <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-triumph-of-the-moon-9780198870371?q=triumph%20of%20the%20moon&lang=en&cc=gb">Wiccan religion</a> in print in the 1950s. This new religion was founded by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27782244">Gerald Gardner</a> who revived what he believed to be ancient pagan witchcraft in the 1930s. But it has no material connection to any form of historic witchcraft.</p>
<p>Most witches were ordinary Christian women who found themselves accused of witchcraft by their neighbours, or denounced by other suspects under torture.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216028/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Durrant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Witchcraft is an enduring source of fascination but also prone to popular misconceptions.
Jonathan Durrant, Principal Lecturer in History, University of South Wales
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/211370
2023-09-14T16:15:21Z
2023-09-14T16:15:21Z
Should you send your child to an academy or a council-run school? Why Ofsted results don’t mean much
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545739/original/file-20230831-21-n7bhi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4984%2C3325&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-elementary-school-pupils-on-climbing-284502623">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Helping your child choose a new school is a daunting process. You have to take into account catchment areas, how your child will travel to school, and where their friends are going. You may be looking at Ofsted results, exam performance or even the universities that pupils from particular schools go to. </p>
<p>What’s more, there are different types of state school – and you might be wondering if your child would be better off at an academy or a locally controlled, council-run comprehensive school. </p>
<p>There are also a few free, grammar, secondary-modern, specialist, foundation, or university-led schools, which might play into your choice. This (needless) variety of schools applies particularly to the secondary age group in England, but the split between academies and locally controlled schools applies also to the primary sector.</p>
<h2>Academy or council-run?</h2>
<p>Locally run schools are able to work with the local authority and to cooperate between themselves to provide experts to deal with learning challenges or disability. Roaming teachers serve more than one school for rarer topics such as musical instrument tuition. </p>
<p>Academies, on the other hand, have meant different things across different government administrations. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/may/26/what-is-an-academy">academies</a> were first established in 2002 there were only meant to be a few of them. They were designed to be a way to turn failing schools around, through new buildings, new management, new curriculum, and standalone independence. They were answerable directly to central government and so were not part of their local authority. And they were given additional initial and recurrent funding. </p>
<p>Then existing schools, including private ones, were allowed to choose to become academies, even when not deemed to be failing. These were often not disadvantaged schools, and the reason for the scheme became confused. Then came several pushes to make all schools into academies, whether they wanted it or not.</p>
<p>The reason for all of these changes by a Conservative government may have been to remove more schools from Labour local authority control. Another reason given was that the independence of academies was a benefit. </p>
<p>But it was soon learned that schools cannot operate alone. Instead of moving them back to local authority control, the decision was made to group them in chains or <a href="https://www.gov.uk/types-of-school/academies">academy trusts</a>. There is no evidence that the often scattered schools in such chains are better off than they would have been as local cooperative communities.</p>
<h2>Ofsted results</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/analysis-ofsted-inspection-outcomes-school-type-2023">recent report</a> has suggested that schools in England classified as academies had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/03/council-maintained-schools-in-england-outperforming-academies-in-ofsted-ratings">somewhat worse</a> Ofsted inspection grades than schools still controlled by their local authorities. Ofsted is the government-appointed body used to inspect and judge the quality of schools. </p>
<p>This might suggest that parents should look to choose local council-run schools ahead of academies. But a <a href="https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/08/are-la-schools-more-likely-to-get-top-ofsted-ratings-than-academies/">re-analysis</a> of the same Ofsted data suggests that the difference between academies and locally controlled schools is much less clear-cut than in the initial report. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Pupils playing musical instruments" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545742/original/file-20230831-23-porohz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545742/original/file-20230831-23-porohz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545742/original/file-20230831-23-porohz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545742/original/file-20230831-23-porohz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545742/original/file-20230831-23-porohz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545742/original/file-20230831-23-porohz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545742/original/file-20230831-23-porohz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">School results depend more on pupil intake than the schools themselves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/teen-student-playing-saxophone-her-school-585788390">DGLimages/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Either way, Ofsted grades are not trustworthy or reliable estimates of school quality. They are far too strongly influenced by the nature of the pupils attending each school. </p>
<p>On average, but only on average, schools find it more challenging to deal with pupils who have additional learning needs or a disability, are low-attaining, come from poor homes, have separated parents, live in state care or are otherwise heavily disadvantaged.</p>
<p>Ofsted does not seem to take these factors into account sufficiently. This means that good Ofsted scores are not fairly spread but are far more likely for suburban, girls-only, selective schools with no long-term poor pupils, for example. Perhaps <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/education-policy">70% of the variation</a> in Ofsted grades can be explained by these factors. </p>
<p>If Ofsted grades do not tell us whether academies or local schools are better, perhaps we should look at exam results. The same problem arises here. School exam outcomes are largely the result of their pupil intake. </p>
<h2>Differences between pupils</h2>
<p>Schools that take high-attaining pupils at age 11 get good exam results when those pupils are aged 16. Schools that take heavily disadvantaged pupils tend to get lower results. So the early academies based on the most disadvantaged schools in the country had lower-than-average results. </p>
<p>Once the disadvantage requirement was dropped, and private schools also became academies, the situation changed. Note that this did not mean that academies had improved educationally – merely that their pupil intake had changed. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244018825171">best estimates</a>, taking prior attainment and all relevant school and pupil characteristics into account, suggest that there are no systematic differences between school types. There is no evidence that either academies or local schools produce better results with equivalent pupils. </p>
<p>As more and different kinds of schools became academies, they became less disadvantaged than many local schools. Now some areas with more academies, especially those that have more recently converted to become academies, take more advantaged pupils. This means that the intakes of council-run schools <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305764X.2015.1045446">become more disadvantaged</a>.</p>
<p>This kind of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Making-Schools-Better-for-Disadvantaged-Students-The-International-Implications/Gorard-See-Siddiqui/p/book/9781032262499?utm_source=individuals&utm_medium=shared_link&utm_campaign=B029454_te1_1au_7pp_d876_october2022inproduction">social segregation</a> is undesirable for a national school system. It damages average attainment, pupil prospects, and social cohesion.</p>
<p>So there is no particular educational reason for a family to choose either type of school for their child. But the system would be improved at a stroke if only academies or only local schools existed. All in all, the evolution of the academy programme appears to have done more harm than good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gorard has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate the impact of schooling. </span></em></p>
There is no evidence that either academies or local schools produce better results with equivalent pupils.
Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208891
2023-08-04T13:54:29Z
2023-08-04T13:54:29Z
Women’s World Cup: what still needs to be done to improve the lot of elite female footballers
<p>The <a href="https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/tournaments/womens/womensworldcup/australia-new-zealand2023">Fifa Women’s World Cup</a> is just 32 years old and on its eighth official edition, while the men’s competition began 93 years ago and has enjoyed 22 tournaments.</p>
<p>After the success of the 2019 WWC in France, the women’s competition has progressed to new heights for 2023 in Australia and New Zealand. There are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49184181#:%7E:text=The%20Women%27s%20World%20Cup%20will%20increase%20from%2024,the%20process%20opens%20on%204%20October%20this%20year.">more teams than ever competing</a>, in front of the <a href="https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/womens/womensworldcup/australia-new-zealand2023/media-releases/fifa-womens-world-cup-2023-tm-breaks-new-records">biggest TV audiences</a>, with each player to be paid directly, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jun/07/fifa-2023-womens-world-cup-australia-new-zealand-fee-payments">guaranteeing prize money for the first time</a>.</p>
<p>It’s fair to assume that this Women’s World Cup is probably the most significant women’s sporting event in history, although this won’t be the last time we hear that phrase. The trajectory of women’s sport is <a href="https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/about-documentary">continually rising</a> – and arguably there has never been a better time to be involved in sport as a woman.</p>
<p>But for so long women have fought for a more equal footing within the male-dominated world of sport, and researchers have long highlighted the <a href="https://books.emeraldinsight.com/book/detail/the-professionalisation-of-womens-sport-by-ali-bowes/?k=9781800431973">lack of equality in the game</a>. So, as participation levels rise, TV viewing figures increase and sponsorship income improves year on year, we might ask: what’s left to achieve for women in football?</p>
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<p>Alongside other researchers, I have written about the <a href="https://books.emeraldinsight.com/page/detail/women%EF%BF%BDs-football-in-a-global-professional-era/?k=9781800710535">gender gap</a> in professional and elite-level women’s football in the last few years. This body of work pays attention to some key – and in many ways overlapping and interlinked – issues in women’s sport, including equal pay, injury, menstruation and maternity rights.</p>
<p>One of the most significant developments for women’s sport is the <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-80071-052-820230013/full/html">discussion on equal pay</a> in football, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2021.1977280">advanced mainly</a> by the US women’s national team.</p>
<p>This World Cup has seen the <a href="https://fifpro.org/en/who-we-are/what-we-do/foundations-of-work/collective-action-fifpro-celebrates-players-improved-women-s-world-cup-pay-and-conditions/">biggest investment of money from Fifa</a> yet: US$152m (£118m) to ensure that all players are paid and prize money is increased and on a “<a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/womens-world-cup-prize-money-equal-pay-142958181.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJkNUU2zeIuTwaYlfa4w7yVRFrmraWk2tEOmxXtg2nhBCPf4_TXou7cnjOA0R0P_y9tBH3swhVijtZ-VQd7ttQUG3k_yfwa6oIOrU2qhZeixMtHSn144AXirq_WY_GNJ71faGZz9gZ7AisV7ezmcxRfcw0wd4m9zcoXRkzj5UZTh">pathway to equality</a>” with the men’s tournament. Fifa has also ensured that standards across staffing, base camps, accommodation and travel are delivered to the same level as the men’s competition.</p>
<h2>Facilities and healthcare</h2>
<p>However, despite the starry heights reached by the qualified teams, a recent report by the world players’ union <a href="https://fifpro.org/en/">Fifpro</a> found that there remain <a href="https://fifpro.org/en/who-we-are/what-we-do/foundations-of-work/new-fifpro-report-warns-of-uneven-women-s-world-cup-qualifying-across-confederations">stark inequalities in women’s football</a> across the globe.</p>
<p>A total of 362 women across teams attempting to qualify for this World Cup were surveyed, with 70% reporting poor gym facilities, 66% reporting poor or non-existent recovery facilities, and 54% saying they were not provided with a pre-tournament medical. </p>
<p>In addition 66% players had to take unpaid leave or vacation from work and almost 33% did not receive any compensation. So there is work to be done in the elite women’s game.</p>
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<h2>Injuries</h2>
<p>Given the <a href="https://fifpro.org/media/iv2cvxt5/2023-qualifying-conditions-report_en_web.pdf">findings</a> from Fifpro on facilities, pitches and payment, it comes as no surprise that injury has become a hot topic of interest within women’s football. According to sports medicine specialists, women are <a href="https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/12926431/future-of-football-why-acl-injuries-have-been-on-rise-in-womens-game-and-the-technology-and-solutions-to-fix-it#:%7E:text=Football%2Dfocused%20studies%20suggest%20women,likely%20to%20return%20after%20recovery.">six times more likely</a> to rupture their anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), and for this World Cup, <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-80071-052-820230013/full/html">nine of the top players</a> are <a href="https://www.skysports.com/football/news/35730/12748748/inside-the-wsl-why-are-acl-injuries-so-common-in-womens-football">absent with the injury</a>.</p>
<h2>Gendered environment</h2>
<p>The field of sport science has been heavily criticised for its <a href="https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/wspaj/29/2/article-p146.xml?alreadyAuthRedirecting">male-dominated approach</a>, where only 6% of research looks exclusively at women. Only now are we seeing a drive to develop female-specific equipment in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65985681">response to player concerns</a>, as scientists start to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12283-022-00384-3">address the gender imbalance</a> in sports technology.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/17/984.full">powerful piece</a> published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine highlights a gendered environment approach to understanding ACL injuries. This work describes how the social construction of gender affects the ACL injury cycle across the whole life of the athlete.</p>
<p>This includes how boys and girls learn to move (often differently) alongside inadequate training and competition environments for girls, and gendered cultural body norms – often women competing in sport are considered “unfeminine”, with athletic, muscular bodies traditionally associated with masculinity. </p>
<p>In some countries, like Brazil, for example, female players in the past have <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/equityDiversityInclusion/2012/07/the-body-image-of-female-athletes-diversity-in-sport/">struggled to be accepted in the face “cultural disapproval”</a>. It’s an interesting and useful approach that highlights the complexity of women and girls’ involvement in sport.</p>
<h2>Proper football kit</h2>
<p>Menstruation, menopause and female hormone profiles across puberty, have been thought to have some impact on <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-020-01319-3">sports performance </a>and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/03635465980260050301?casa_token=vanOJh635i8AAAAA:7K0VbM-p8AiFY-dE0RRTmWXlj9EbkMnWU-jXcq3zoGNAOf7vAVPaSr1Qkl17CgRcAHAAp4rrYptz">injury</a>. However, we’re only now seeing changes made to player uniforms – <a href="https://www.femtechworld.co.uk/news/ditching-white-shorts-only-touches-on-the-support-women-need-in-sport-say-experts/">namely no white shorts</a> – in response to player fears around menstruation and leaking, to take one example.</p>
<p>This is part of a broader shift in sportswear manufacturers finally creating women-specific kit instead of the “<a href="https://www.msn.com/en-au/sport/other/women-s-world-cup-from-hand-me-downs-to-period-proofing-the-matildas-kits-reflect-the-evolution-of-women-s-football/ar-AA1ezeqQ">hand-me-down men’s kit” culture</a> many ex-players experienced.</p>
<h2>Women’s bodies and experiences</h2>
<p>This World Cup will see a number of players <a href="https://keepup.com.au/news/mom-squad-behind-us-quest-for-world-cup-glory/">taking to the pitch as mothers</a>. Despite the increasing number of professional women footballers, their employment rights as mothers have often been overlooked. This has led to numbers of women quitting the sport early to have children, and research has shown that players have <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2021.730151/full">struggled</a> to combine professional football careers with motherhood.</p>
<p><a href="https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/033101649cc3c480/original/f9cc8eex7qligvxfznbf-pdf.pdf">Fifa regulations launched at the end of 2020</a> provided players with paid maternity leave for the first time. However, we know in some cases <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2021.730151/full">players have concerns</a> about taking maternity leave. </p>
<p>For example, would their clubs think they are less committed to the sport? Would their bodies recover to their pre-pregnancy form? Here, access to health support and adequate facilities, as well as being properly paid, becomes key, as well as broader cultural change within the sport to normalise pregnancy and motherhood.</p>
<p>It’s clear that women’s football has never been in a better place, and the World Cup is currently a fine showcase for it, but it’s crucial that the female game to continues to strive for improvement in areas that fundamentally affect the lives and careers of its players.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ali Bowes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As participation levels rise, TV viewing figures increase and sponsorship income improves year on year, what’s left to achieve for women in football?
Ali Bowes, Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Sport, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208919
2023-08-01T00:49:01Z
2023-08-01T00:49:01Z
Bazball by the numbers: what the stats say about English cricket’s ambitious but risky change of pace
<p>The leisurely sport of Test cricket, in which matches last for several days, has been around for almost 150 years. Over the course of that century and a half, cricket has been reshaped by a few crucial events: the “bodyline” era of the 1930s, the invention of one-day matches and World Series Cricket in the 1970s, and the introduction of the even faster-paced Twenty20 cricket in 2005. </p>
<p>We may be living through another pivotal moment in the history of Test cricket: the advent of “Bazball”, a freewheeling, attacking style of play developed by England coach Brendon “Baz” McCullum. </p>
<p>The aggressive approach is seen as carrying high risk and high reward, with the goal of scoring runs quickly and forcing a conclusive result in a game that often ends in draws when time runs out.</p>
<p>Bazball is only about a year old, and some debate its merits and even its very existence. As statisticians, we can’t determine whether Bazball will transform the sport or fade away – but we’ve crunched the numbers and found evidence England’s new approach does represent a genuine break with the history of Test cricket.</p>
<h2>What is Bazball?</h2>
<p>After a lacklustre 4-0 loss to Australia in the Ashes series two summers ago, England sacked head coach Chris Silverwood. His replacement was the relatively untested McCullum, a former captain of the New Zealand team known for his fast scoring as a batsman.</p>
<p>McCullum only retired from playing in 2019. He is the first international head coach to have played the majority of his career in the era of the frenetic, high-scoring Twenty20 cricket format. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ashes-how-england-crickets-head-coach-brendon-mccullum-developed-his-bazball-style-207949">The Ashes: how England cricket's head coach Brendon McCullum developed his 'Bazball' style</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With this appointment, England has adopted an extremely attacking style dubbed “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/2kHhXVRPCrT1Qap1fG6sWW">Bazball</a>” by Cricinfo editor Andrew Miller. The name has taken off in discussions of the stark shift in England’s play, which has attracted attention among cricket fans around the world.</p>
<p>So what is Bazball? McCullum himself recently <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/england-test-cricket-brendon-mccullum-i-don-t-really-like-that-silly-term-bazball-1323779">told</a> a Perth radio show “I don’t have any idea what ‘Bazball’ is”.</p>
<h2>Run rates</h2>
<p>To understand what Bazball is, and whether it even exists, we turned to the voluminous statistical history of the game.</p>
<p>At the conclusion of the first Test of this Ashes series, 2,507 <a href="https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;orderby=matches;spanmax1=16+Jun+2023;spanval1=span;template=results;type=aggregate">matches</a> of Test cricket had been played and nearly 2,500,000 runs scored. Across all those matches, the average number of runs scored per six-ball over (known as the “run rate”) has been remarkably stable. </p>
<p>From 1910 to 1919, on average, 3.03 runs were scored every six balls. By the 1950s this had fallen a little to 2.32 runs per six balls, but it has been slowly increasing ever since. </p>
<p>Over the past 20 years, the run rate has averaged 3.29 runs per over, the highest in Test cricket’s history. </p>
<p>What kind of numbers have we seen in Bazball matches?</p>
<h2>Comparing Bazball to the past</h2>
<p>It might be tempting to compare run rates directly, but run rates can be affected by many factors, such as the total number of runs scored in an innings and the pitch conditions. </p>
<p>For example, an innings with a larger run total will tend to correspond to more runs per over, as there are a limited number of overs. As a result, there is less variety in run rates for innings with larger totals.</p>
<p><iframe id="AYHSw" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/AYHSw/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>We built a statistical model to predict, and capture the variability of, run rates in Test matches. The model took into account the innings total, the year of play, and the location where the match was played. </p>
<p>We fitted the model to the data for run rate per innings. We only included data since 2000, which we define loosely as “modern cricket”. </p>
<p>Further, we excluded data where the innings total was less than 200, as it can be easier to maintain a very high run rate for a shorter innings. This left a total of 2,659 innings for analysis.</p>
<p><iframe id="oJ9Rb" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/oJ9Rb/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><iframe id="IJ4Cx" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/IJ4Cx/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>As the charts above show, the model does well at capturing how the mean and variance of run rates changes with year and innings total. </p>
<h2>Putting Bazball in context</h2>
<p>Next, we can measure how far a given innings deviates from the model’s prediction with a number we call the “run rate score”. If the model represents business as usual, the run rate score shows how “unusual” the innings is.</p>
<p>We are interested in high run rates, so we focused on data points larger than what the model predicts (that is, the highest positive run rate scores). We used a statistical approach that can also capture the estimated uncertainty in the run rate scores.</p>
<p><iframe id="z5Rei" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/z5Rei/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>In the chart above, you can see the top 30 estimated run rate scores. There are some uncertainties in estimating a run rate score, so these are shown by the shaded areas. As you can see by the highlighted bars, there are eight Bazball innings in the top 30. This is quite remarkable, given there are only 20 Bazball innings altogether in our data set of 2,659 innings.</p>
<p>This demonstrates strong evidence that Bazball is a very real phenomenon. Whether Brendon McCullum knows it or not, his team is up to something very unusual </p>
<p>So now that Bazball has faced its toughest challenge yet – the Australian pace attack – and seemingly survived, the final hurdle will be an away series in India in February next year. For now, we will be keeping a close eye on whether other teams follow suit in this revolutionary style of cricket.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Drovandi is a Professor of Statistics at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and is an Investigator in the QUT Centre for Data Science. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Newans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Statistics show how a change of approach by England’s team marks a dramatic break with the history of Test cricket.
Tim Newans, Lecturer, Griffith University
Christopher Drovandi, Professor of Statistics, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207862
2023-07-11T15:59:32Z
2023-07-11T15:59:32Z
Scotland’s medieval Declaration of Arbroath is too important for cherry picking by politicians
<blockquote>
<p>As long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.</p>
<p><em>From <a href="https://cotr.ac.uk/viewer/?group=declaration&blocks=34:transcription;">The Declaration of Arbroath</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Medieval Scotland’s most iconic document, <a href="http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/1320/4/1">the Declaration of Arbroath</a>, recently went on display at the <a href="https://www.nms.ac.uk/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/national-museum-of-scotland/declaration-of-arbroath/">National Museum of Scotland</a> in Edinburgh for the <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/declaration-of-arbroath-to-go-on-show-for-first-time-in-18-years/ar-AA1c2251">first time in 18 years</a>.</p>
<p>The Declaration is a letter written in 1320 to Pope John XII by various Scottish aristocrats and “the whole community of the realm of Scotland”. At this time, the papacy did not recognise Robert Bruce as the true king of Scotland.</p>
<p>The letter was a sophisticated diplomatic response by the Scots against claims from English kings that <a href="https://theconversation.com/these-medieval-battles-prove-britains-nations-have-never-been-truly-separate-159556">they were the ultimate sovereigns of Scotland</a>. The declaration is both a masterful piece of propaganda and one of the earliest statements of national sovereignty found in Europe.</p>
<p>It is a keystone of Scottish history, similar to <a href="https://magnacartaresearch.org/">Magna Carta in England</a> which held that the English king was subject to the law of the land. The declaration has not been as widely (even comically) <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-fascism-to-parking-tickets-some-odd-magna-carta-moments-38807">misunderstood as Magna Carta</a> but it is still a contested piece of medieval history in today’s politics.</p>
<p>Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser claimed a few years ago that Scots who opposed independence should <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/why-scottish-unionists-can-celebrate-the-declaration-of-arbroath-murdo-fraser-2532137">celebrate the Declaration of Arbroath</a>. This is part of a <a href="https://britishidentities.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/william-wallace-unionist-nationalist-or-both/">tradition within Scottish unionism</a> that sees Scotland’s victory in the <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-AngloScottish-Wars-or-Wars-of-Scottish-Independence/#:%7E:text=The%20Anglo%2DScottish%20Wars%20were,the%20years%20of%201296%20%E2%80%93%201346.">wars of the early 14th century</a> as necessary to bringing about the perfect <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18358125.struan-stevenson-declaration-arbroath-laid-foundation-stone-treaty-union-1707/">union</a> between the two countries in 1707.</p>
<p>SNP MP Joanna Cherry recently praised the document as “a statement of the <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23562534.union-odds-declaration-arbroath/">sovereignty of the Scottish people</a>”. For Cherry, this statement of popular sovereignty means the Declaration of Arbroath is incompatible with the “peculiarly English doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty”. This refers to the tradition that places parliament at the centre of English political history.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A very fragile old document, the Declaration of Arbroath, on faded yellowed paper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536341/original/file-20230707-29-apk50j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536341/original/file-20230707-29-apk50j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536341/original/file-20230707-29-apk50j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536341/original/file-20230707-29-apk50j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536341/original/file-20230707-29-apk50j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536341/original/file-20230707-29-apk50j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536341/original/file-20230707-29-apk50j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 700-year-old Declaration of Arbroath is rarely displayed because of its extremely fragile state.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Arbroath#/media/File:Declaration_of_arbroath.jpg">National Archives of Scotland</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why the declaration really matters</h2>
<p>Both unionist and nationalist views of the declaration tell us very little about the declaration itself. They are a reminder that the past is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charles-iii-coronation-what-the-controversy-over-an-ancient-stone-tells-us-about-historical-symbols-in-the-modern-age-202171">powerful weapon in political arguments</a>. </p>
<p>We must remember that the declaration’s authors had little desire to see an Anglo-Scottish union centuries later, nor had a high opinion of popular sovereignty. Democracy too was an alien concept at this time. This was a document written for the elites, by the elites.</p>
<p>Indeed, there was also no concept of <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/parliamentary-sovereignty/">parliamentary sovereignty</a> in England at this time. It was not until the 17th century that such doctrines emerged in response to the absolute political power of the <a href="https://www.royal.uk/stuarts">Stuart kings</a> (ironically, in this context, a family who were initially kings of Scotland).</p>
<p>The Declaration of Arbroath was not a law or a treaty but a letter to the pope. It had no legal weight but was a statement of political intent, and a product of political circumstances. </p>
<p>Robert I’s <a href="https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files/research/NRS_DoA_English_booklet_700_Spreads_WEB.pdf">position was unstable</a> at this time. An <a href="http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/1318/23">act of parliament in 1318</a> tried to control rumours that were spreading questioning his claim to be king.</p>
<p>When the document was written, Robert’s brother Edward had been killed in Ireland two years earlier and the king had no sons to take over if he died. His grip on power was more precarious than he realised. A few months after the declaration was sent to the pope, several individuals were executed or imprisoned for <a href="https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/handle/1893/2106">conspiracy to assassinate the king</a>.</p>
<p>The declaration really gives us an insight into the development of written agreements to ensure loyalty and support. At this time, nobles across Europe, including Scotland, were beginning to write down the terms of their alliances and keep identical copies. The Declaration of Arbroath was an early example of this.</p>
<p>Earlier studies of the declaration concluded that nobles were encouraged to <a href="https://scottishhistorysociety.com/the-declaration-of-arbroath/#:%7E:text=The%2520deposition%2520clause%253A%2520%25E2%2580%2598Yet%2520if%2520he%2520%2528King%2520Robert%2529,who%2520was%2520able%2520to%2520defend%2520us%2520our%2520king.%25E2%2580%2599">send their seals to Newbattle</a>, just south of Edinburgh, where initial drafts were made. The final copy was drawn up at the <a href="https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/an-essential-guide-to-the-declaration-of-arbroath/">king’s writing office in Arbroath Abbey</a>.</p>
<p>The nobles may have given their seals to the document, and it may have claimed to be from the whole community of Scotland, but this was very much written for the king’s own ends. </p>
<p>In this respect it was the opposite of Magna Carta, in which the English king was forced to accept a document in his name forced upon him by his barons. Robert I was a king who forced his barons to accept a document in their own name.</p>
<p>The fact that the document was produced to serve the immediate interests of the king should not diminish its importance. The Declaration of Arbroath is a fascinating document because it tells us so much about how politics and ideas of sovereignty played out in the 14th century.</p>
<p>It drew on <a href="https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/an-essential-guide-to-the-declaration-of-arbroath/">biblical and classical precedents</a>, developing a story about the kingdom’s origins. The origin myth given in the declaration may seem like fanciful fiction today, but it resonated with the sensibilities of the time. In the 14th century, myths about history were valuable political weapons and, even though those myths have changed, they still remain powerful today.</p>
<p>Events of the intervening seven centuries have allowed people with opposing political ideas to call on it for their own purposes. Yet, history is too important to allow certain bits to be <a href="https://bkw488.wixsite.com/highmedievalpast/post/reclaiming-history">cherry picked for modern day purposes</a>. It is only when considered in their immediate historical context that documents like the Declaration of Arbroath, can be understood.</p>
<p>The fact that there are many ways of viewing this fascinating document remind us that the historian’s job is never-ending.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon McKelvie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Both unionists and nationalists cite this keystone document of Scottish history.
Gordon McKelvie, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Winchester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202997
2023-06-30T14:09:06Z
2023-06-30T14:09:06Z
‘Dehumanising policies’ leave autistic people struggling to access health, education and housing – new review
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534448/original/file-20230627-31322-i8q760.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4160%2C3120&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Autistic people often don't receive the correct healthcare to meet their needs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-woman-many-people-waiting-medical-1033246597">toodtuphoto/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html">Around 3% of people</a> are estimated to be autistic and it is a lifelong disability. Most autistic people experience the sensory world differently, such as places being too loud or too bright. We also typically communicate in a more direct way than is usual.</p>
<p>In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 means that autistic people should receive reasonable adjustments – meaning organisations must make changes to how they provide their services to remove environmental and social barriers. Despite this, autistic people often experience society as highly disabling. We die between 16 and 30 years younger than non-autistic people, and have a suicide rate <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362361318764742">nine times higher</a>.</p>
<p>Autistic people are often misunderstood by non-autistic people who <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613221129123">fail to recognise</a> how autistic people show empathy. This misunderstanding is embedded in many government bodies, which can result in dehumanising policies and services that do not meet autistic people’s needs.</p>
<p><a href="https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63401">We reviewed</a> the evidence from a range of government and non-government research and reviews to understand how well autistic people fair in relation to government services. We looked at the areas described by William Beveridge, founder of the UK welfare state, as <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/coll-9-health1/coll-9-health/#:%7E:text=By%20the%20outbreak%20of%20war,%2C%20disease%2C%20squalor%20and%20want.">“the five giants”</a>: health, education, employment, poverty and housing. Our findings, which focused on England and Wales due to differences relating to devolution, were bleak.</p>
<p><strong>1. Health</strong></p>
<p>Many government services designed to support autistic people are not available without diagnosis. However, in the UK, most autistic people <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613211059674">aren’t yet diagnosed</a>.</p>
<p>We found diagnosis waiting lists were long – for example, <a href="https://cavuhb.nhs.wales/our-services/integrated-autism-services/diagnostic-assessments-for-autism/">more then 20 months</a> for people served by the Cardiff & Vale health board in south Wales. Across England, between June 2021 and 2022, the waiting list for an autism assessment rose from <a href="https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/autism-statistics/july-2021-to-june-2022">88,000 people to more than 122,000</a>. </p>
<p>Even with a diagnosis, autistic people often don’t receive healthcare that meets their needs. Some people don’t even tell doctors they are autistic, because they expect to be treated badly. Of those who have told their GP, more than 75% said their GP didn’t make <a href="https://westminsterautismcommission.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/ar1011_ncg-autism-report-july-2016.pdf">any reasonable adjustments</a>, such as allowing extra processing time during appointments. </p>
<p>Being expected to phone to book appointments is also difficult for <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/2/e056904">nearly two-thirds of autistic people</a>, yet many GP surgeries insist on phone calls to book appointments. Autistic people also report that clinical spaces <a href="https://www.ndti.org.uk/resources/publication/its-not-rocket-science">are painfully bright, busy and loud</a>, which can make it harder for us to explain what is wrong to the doctor.</p>
<p><strong>2. Education</strong></p>
<p>Autistic people often struggle in educational institutions because they rarely meet our needs. This can mean, for example, that autistic children are labelled as “troublemakers” by teachers, rather than disabled.</p>
<p>Despite autistic people accounting for only 3% of the population, around <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/send-review-right-support-right-place-right-time">80% of those sent to pupil referral units</a> are autistic. This has lifelong effects, as <a href="https://lordchrisholmes.com/report-disabled-students-allowance-dsa/">only 8% </a> of students with a “statement of special educational needs” or an education, health & care plan progress to university, compared with 50% of non-disabled people. </p>
<p>For autistic people who do make it to university, the disabled students allowance (DSA) should pay for extra costs – but <a href="https://lordchrisholmes.com/report-disabled-students-allowance-dsa/">less than one-third </a>of eligible students get DSA. In addition, the support provided by universities is often <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14703297.2020.1850320?journalCode=riie20">poor quality or absent</a>, leaving autistic students disadvantaged.</p>
<p><strong>3. Employment</strong></p>
<p>The UK’s <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/15/contents">Autism Act 2009</a> says that autistic people should be supported to be able to work. However, autistic people are <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/disability/articles/outcomesfordisabledpeopleintheuk/2021">less likely to be in work</a> than non-autistic people. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/access-to-work">Access to work</a> is a UK government scheme to pay disabled people for the extra costs of working, but the application and claiming processes are complicated. Of the 42% of autistic adults who say they need help to access work, <a href="https://s4.chorus-mk.thirdlight.com/file/1573224908/61601577629/width=-1/height=-1/format=-1/fit=scale/t=443899/e=never/k=a402a7d4/nas_appga_report.pdf">only 12% are getting it</a>.</p>
<p><strong>4. Poverty</strong></p>
<p>Autistic people are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/AIA-01-2022-0004">more likely</a> to live in poverty than non-autistic people. <a href="https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/39649/dont-write-me-off-campaign">A 2009 report</a> found one-third of autistic people in the UK were not in paid work or getting benefits. One reason for this is that the benefits designed to stop disabled people living in poverty, such as the personal independence payment (PIP), can be hard to apply for, especially for autistic people. </p>
<p>And for people who manage to apply for PIP, autism falls within the “psychiatric disorders” category, which means they are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-statistics-to-april-2022/personal-independence-payment-official-statistics-to-april-2022#pip-statistics-by-disabling-condition">least likely to receive the award</a> and most likely to lose their PIP upon renewal. </p>
<p><strong>5. Housing</strong></p>
<p>Around <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2021.2004881">12% of autistic people are homeless</a>. As rent typically costs far more than the amount of money awarded in housing benefit, and autistic people are less likely to be in work or have access to benefits, they are more likely to struggle to pay for housing. </p>
<p>This can be made worse by the “<a href="https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/resources/bedroom-tax">bedroom tax</a>”, which is when tenants in social housing have their benefit reduced if they have spare bedrooms. This affects <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19491247.2021.1964253">single people under 35</a> especially, as they are only eligible for the <a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/benefits/benefits_for_under_35s_in_shared_housing">shared accommodation rate</a>. Autistic people can find it hard to live with other people due to their sensory needs, and there are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616718.2014.992681">few one-bedroom properties</a>. </p>
<p>Autistic people who do not have somewhere to live are more likely to be <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201919/jtselect/jtrights/121/121.pdf.">placed in secure residential care</a>, where they are subjected to similar confines to people in prison, by staff who may have <a href="https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/stories/stories-from-the-spectrum-alexis-quinn">limited understanding of autism</a>. They can also be subjected to clinical “treatment” that has the same <a href="https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/29579/23427">questionable origin</a> as <a href="https://www.stonewall.org.uk/everything-you-need-know-about-conversion-therapy">gay conversion therapy</a>, and which guidance states <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/bild/ijpbs/2022/00000012/a00101s1/art00001?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf">should not be used</a>.</p>
<p>The research supporting this approach, known as applied behaviour analysis (ABA), is often riddled with <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676303/full">undeclared conflicts of interest</a>. Those who experience ABA have been found to be <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AIA-08-2017-0016/full/html">more likely to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder</a> (PTSD).</p>
<p>Worse, some autistic people in residential care have experienced <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/28/parents-of-former-mendip-house-resident-claim-they-were-misled-over-scale-of-abuse">abuse by staff</a>. In the most severe cases, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/30/seven-years-winterbourne-view-learning-disabled-people-abuse">autistic people have died</a> due to abusive and/or negligent treatment while in residential care. </p>
<h2>A cumulative impact throughout life</h2>
<p>In every area of government services, we found policies that failed to account for known autistic needs. These failures have a cumulative impact throughout life. A lack of accommodations in education leads to less likelihood of securing accessible employment and greater reliance on benefits and social housing. </p>
<p>To improve this, the policy-making process needs to be made accessible to disabled people so that services meet our needs. This could include ensuring that consultation processes reach out to a broader range of autistic people, and then meet their needs to submit evidence.</p>
<p>It is also important that policy-makers put evidence from the autistic community ahead of evidence provided by non-autistic “experts” who fundamentally misunderstand autism, can have conflicts of interest, and thus can not speak on our behalf. </p>
<p>Autistic lives depend on it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aimee Grant receives funding from UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and the Research Wales Innovation Fund. We wish to thank Dr Gemma Williams and Richard Woods, co-authors of the chapter this article is based on.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Williams receives funding for her PhD studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council. She is affiliated with Autistic UK CIC, where she is a voluntary non-executive director. </span></em></p>
A review of government services has found that autistic people are being failed in health, education, employment, poverty and housing.
Aimee Grant, Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea University
Kathryn Williams, PhD Candidate, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207812
2023-06-19T06:01:06Z
2023-06-19T06:01:06Z
Ashes rivalry is as alive as ever. But when it comes to the economics of cricket, India is in the box seat
<p>The first test of the 2023 Ashes is well underway at Edgbaston in Birmingham, featuring England’s aggressive “Bazball” style of play (named after New Zealand-born coach Brendan “Baz” McCullum) and a surprise early declaration by the hosts at the end of the first day. This invited an Australian fightback inspired by Usman Khawaja, who notched a 141-run haul before being bowled by paceman Ollie Robinson (whose <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/18/ollie-robinson-defends-outburst-after-usman-khawaja-dismissal">expletive-laden send-off</a> is making headlines).</p>
<p>England currently leads by 35 runs on the end of day three, and it all sets the scene for an exciting series.</p>
<p>It comes just a week after Australia won the World Test Championship, defeating India in comprehensive style at The Oval in south London.</p>
<p>The Ashes always excites the traditionalists, as the Australia-England rivalry is the oldest in cricket.</p>
<p>But while playing the old enemy for the Ashes is, for many, the pinnacle of Australian cricket, Australia-India is developing as a modern rivalry.</p>
<p>This is significant because when it comes to the economics of cricket, it’s India that’s in the box seat, not England.</p>
<h2>India is the new cricket powerhouse</h2>
<p>The 2023 season of the Indian Premier League <a href="https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/trends/story/ipl-2023-records-massive-viewership-of-half-a-billion-viewers-on-television-384783-2023-06-08">drew more than 500 million viewers</a>, a 32% growth in television ratings on last season.</p>
<p>The very first IPL game of the 2023 season in fact attracted more viewers than the Super Bowl, the climax of the NFL’s American football season and one of the biggest dates on the world sporting calendar.</p>
<p>The first IPL match attracted <a href="https://www.livemint.com/sports/cricket-news/ipl-2023-opening-match-tv-viewership-up-29-digital-claims-peak-concurrency-of-1-6-cr-11680511069925.html">130 million viewers</a>, compared with a record <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/nfl/news/super-bowl-attracted-record-audience-this-year-revised-data-shows/articleshow/99938268.cms?from=mdr">115.1 million</a> for the 2023 Super Bowl.</p>
<p>The 2023 IPL champions the Chennai Super Kings are valued at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2022/04/26/indian-premier-league-valuations-cricket-now-has-a-place-among-worlds-most-valuable-sports-teams/?sh=5d6347833951">about US$1.15 billion</a> (A$1.67 billion), according to Forbes in 2022. They’ve been <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/ipl/top-stories/can-chennai-super-kings-be-crickets-manchester-united/articleshow/87248328.cms">touted</a> as the “Manchester United of the IPL”, and may one day become one of the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2022/09/08/the-worlds-50-most-valuable-sports-teams-2022/?sh=31715bcc385c">top global sporting franchises</a> like the Dallas Cowboys (A$11.7 billion) and Real Madrid (A$7.4 billion).</p>
<h2>So how did India do it?</h2>
<p>When T20 took off in England and spread to the cricketing nations, everyone thought test cricket would die. But it didn’t. In fact, it’s stronger than ever.</p>
<p>If anything, it’s the game in between T20 and test cricket, the 50-over game, that’s likely to become obsolete – with only the World Cup played every four years attracting significant attention (although now the T20 World Cup overshadows that too).</p>
<p>India acted fast to surf the T20 wave. The IPL was formed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) following India’s victory in the 2007 World Cup, after a breakaway league had been mooted to break the BCCI’s grip on the game.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/franchises-for-board-s-new-twenty20-league-310819">According</a> to the BCCI Vice President Lalit Modi, at the time the IPL was</p>
<blockquote>
<p>designed to entice an entire new generation of sports fans into the grounds throughout the country. The dynamic Twenty20 format has been designed to attract a young fan base, which also includes women and children</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Part of India’s success is its size, overtaking China this year to have the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/un-desa-policy-brief-no-153-india-overtakes-china-as-the-worlds-most-populous-country/">largest population of any country</a> with 1.4 billion people, as well as its economic success in recent decades with a growing middle class. By 2025, India’s middle class will number <a href="https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/3021/Great%20Expectations_The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Indian%20Middle%20Class.pdf">583 million</a>, or 41% of the country’s projected population.</p>
<p>This has been supercharged by the digitisation of the Indian economy, with televisions and smart phones giving the average cricket lover access to their favourite teams.</p>
<p>The IPL has attracted the top cricketers from around the world, mainly off the back of <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/sports/ipl-how-india-became-home-to-the-biggest-baddest-cricketing-league-in-the-world/articleshow/99885321.cms?from=mdr">private franchises</a>, many of which are owned by billionaires. This gives teams deep pockets when buying players from all over the globe, with the TV broadcast rights topping up IPL coffers too. </p>
<p>This has also <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/how-one-auction-catapulted-women-s-cricket-to-a-whole-new-level-20230214-p5ckat.html">boosted women’s cricket</a>, including their pay packets, with the launch of the Women’s Premier League in India earlier this year.</p>
<h2>Cricket diplomacy</h2>
<p>It just shows the power of India in world cricket, and more generally the power of sport in today’s global economy.</p>
<p>Indeed, sport is no longer about small talk, but an intrinsic part of the global economy and geopolitics.</p>
<p>I was in India last month hosting the “Cricket, Collaboration and Commonwealth” conference for the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in New Delhi. There was a robust discussion on the economics of the IPL and the role of “cricket diplomacy” in Australia-India relations.</p>
<p>While I was in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Australia speaking to packed houses of India diaspora in Sydney. Modi wanted to build on the momentum of the blossoming India-Australia partnership, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited India in March.</p>
<p>Cricket diplomacy was on display then too, spawning now famous images of Prime Ministers Modi and Albanese on a chariot before the fourth test match in Ahmedabad.</p>
<p>Albanese used the trip to announce a <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/anthony-albanese-india-visit-australia-india-education-agreement-qualifications/cad0b5f1-b692-48d7-b33d-daaa77bddf79">new education deal</a> with India. Nearly 50% of Indians are <a href="https://www.livemint.com/news/india/more-than-50-of-india-s-population-25-yrs-or-older-survey-11593793054491.html">under the age of 25</a>, and only <a href="https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=IND&treshold=5&topic=EO">21% of Indians aged 25-34</a> have a tertiary qualification, so there are immense opportunities for Australian universities and TAFEs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/albanese-visit-hopes-to-strengthen-ties-with-india-amid-chinas-rise-but-differences-remain-201369">Albanese visit hopes to strengthen ties with India amid China’s rise. But differences remain</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Cricket diplomacy has been central to the Modi-Albanese partnership, which highlights the role of sport in political and economic relationship building.</p>
<p>And the rise of the IPL has boosted India’s ascendancy as a superpower in world cricket. Its economic power has been as important as the improved on-field performance of Team India.</p>
<p>What’s more, the large attendances at The Oval for the ICC World Test Championship and now the raucous crowds at the Ashes shows the supposed death of test cricket has been greatly exaggerated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Harcourt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
While playing the old enemy for the Ashes is for many the pinnacle of Australian cricket, Australia-India is developing as a modern rivalry.
Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202058
2023-05-25T12:05:43Z
2023-05-25T12:05:43Z
How online grocery shopping is making Britain’s urban-rural inequality worse
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528225/original/file-20230525-25-4slr26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Nvo5xeoccVg">Jan Kopriva/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before the pandemic, online grocery shopping was typically something younger and more affluent people living in cities indulged in. When COVID hit, though, <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-years-into-the-pandemic-which-of-our-newly-formed-habits-are-here-to-stay-178204">the market exploded</a>. </p>
<p>In the first week of the first UK lockdown, demand for Ocado home deliveries was reportedly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-supermarke-idUSKBN21H210">ten times higher</a> than it had been the week before. But when COVID restrictions were re-imposed in September 2020, the online supermarket, like its competitors, was <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8750427/Ocado-warns-running-delivery-slots-second-lockdown-looms-Britain.html">still warning customers</a> that slots were selling out fast. So fast, in fact, one staffer <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-supermarke-idUSKBN21H210">said</a> they were going “like Glastonbury tickets.”</p>
<p>Households struggled to book delivery slots, as supermarkets rightly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/25/supermarkets-use-database-to-prioritise-deliveries-to-elderly">prioritised</a> deliveries for elderly and vulnerable consumers. And retailers hustled to <a href="https://www.mintel.com/press-centre/click-spend-90-of-brits-plan-to-continue-online-grocery-shopping-even-after-peak-covid-19-passes/">capitalise on this rapid growth</a>. </p>
<p>In April 2020, Tesco told its customers it <a href="https://www.tescoplc.com/news/2020/our-latest-response-to-covid-19-29-april/">had hired</a> 12,000 extra staff and 4,000 new delivery drivers. Six months in, Sainsbury’s said it was delivering 700,000 online orders per week, having effectively <a href="https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/news/latest-news/2020/28-09-20-sainsburys-dials-up-digital#:%7E:text=Sainsbury's%20will%20deliver%20700%2C000%20online,since%20the%20beginning%20of%20March.">doubled</a> its capacity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A cat amid bags of shopping." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526585/original/file-20230516-29-z6wabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526585/original/file-20230516-29-z6wabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526585/original/file-20230516-29-z6wabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526585/original/file-20230516-29-z6wabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526585/original/file-20230516-29-z6wabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526585/original/file-20230516-29-z6wabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526585/original/file-20230516-29-z6wabp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">COVID lockdowns saw new demographics turn to online deliveries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/DPC8oN2IMcY">Daniel Romero/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2019, prior to the pandemic, my colleagues and I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09593969.2021.2017321">mapped online groceries coverage</a> by all the major UK grocers, using the “check if we deliver to your area” tool on their websites. We found that where you live affects your choice and availability of online groceries. </p>
<p>People in rural areas have <a href="https://www.cdrc.ac.uk/cdrc-analysis-uncovers-new-rural-e-food-deserts/">less access to supermarkets in general</a> and, when it comes to online grocery shopping, just over 11% of those people have no choice at all. </p>
<h2>Lack of choice</h2>
<p>When households order groceries online from the major supermarkets, their orders are usually assembled in a local supermarket, what industry insiders term an “online fulfilment store”. These have dedicated staff, storage space, vehicles and drivers. </p>
<p>This model, however, means that online groceries are <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/0718-1876/17/2/33">not available</a> in all locations. Rather, they are concentrated around the network of stores that each grocer operates. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A cottage in a valley with fog overhead." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528238/original/file-20230525-15-sg2yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528238/original/file-20230525-15-sg2yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528238/original/file-20230525-15-sg2yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528238/original/file-20230525-15-sg2yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528238/original/file-20230525-15-sg2yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528238/original/file-20230525-15-sg2yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528238/original/file-20230525-15-sg2yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People living in rural Scotland have very few online options.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/XwjICmfI0SQ">Antoine Fabre/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On each supermarket website we inputted one postcode from each of the 41,735 neighbourhoods in Great Britain – representing 25.7m households – and recorded the result. We then counted the number of retailers delivering to each neighbourhood.</p>
<p>We found that 98% of households in Great Britain are served by at least one of Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Asda. These three grocers offer the greatest delivery coverage, particularly in urban and suburban areas where households have a choice of grocer providing home delivery. </p>
<p>Other grocers have more restricted coverage. Iceland, a budget retailer with stores in urban areas, serves only 86% of households. Ocado, meanwhile, which is more upmarket and online only, delivers to only 77% of households. </p>
<p>Many neighbourhoods – in south-west and northern England, south and mid-Wales, and in Scotland’s borders, highlands and islands – suffer poor coverage of online groceries. </p>
<p>Households in many neighbourhoods in Argyll and Bute (Scotland), for example, have a single online groceries provider (Tesco). By contrast, in nearby Glasgow, most neighbourhoods have a choice of six online grocery providers. </p>
<p>Across Great Britain, we found that
<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09593969.2021.2017321">over 11% of households</a> in the most remote rural areas have no choice of provider. They must rely on a single grocer (typically Tesco) for online groceries. </p>
<h2>Why retailers are not expanding into rural areas</h2>
<p>Rural areas that are underserved by supermarkets in general are precisely those that could benefit the most from better online provision. In urban contexts, the older, higher spending consumer demographic was newly <a href="https://www.efoodinsights.com/uk-online-grocery-report/">converted</a> to online grocery shopping. </p>
<p>In rural areas, this same demographic could therefore represent untapped demand. In other words, there is an incentive for retailers to expand there.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A row of beach huts on a beach." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528230/original/file-20230525-23-py6r8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528230/original/file-20230525-23-py6r8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528230/original/file-20230525-23-py6r8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528230/original/file-20230525-23-py6r8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528230/original/file-20230525-23-py6r8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528230/original/file-20230525-23-py6r8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528230/original/file-20230525-23-py6r8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supermarket coverage across Wales is much thinner than for England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Xvh4JikjajI">Llio Angharad/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that is not happening. We had rare access to data about the nationwide network of Sainsbury’s stores. <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/0718-1876/17/2/33">Over 180 of those supermarkets</a> are in London and south-east England, 85 of which are used as online fulfilment stores. This means the retailer is able to deliver groceries to all neighbourhoods in these regions. </p>
<p>In Wales, by contrast, there are only <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/0718-1876/17/2/33">four Sainsbury’s online fulfilment stores</a> concentrated around the major towns and cities in south Wales. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09593969.2021.2017321">We found that</a> home delivery by Sainsbury’s was unavailable to 162,000 Welsh households (12%). </p>
<p>Even if all existing Sainsbury’s supermarkets in Wales were used for online deliveries, over 25% of neighbourhoods would still be <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/0718-1876/17/2/33">more than 40km</a> from their nearest fulfilment store. Drivers could have to travel over 100km to make their deliveries. This is prohibitively expensive and inefficient. </p>
<p>To expand online groceries coverage beyond the store network, retailers would need to fork out considerable sums to build more stores. Most, however, <a href="https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2023/03/09/plans-supermarkets-expanding/">have cut back</a> on supermarket expansion plans, focusing instead on smaller convenience stores to reflect changing shopper behaviours. </p>
<p>Amid changing consumer behaviours, online remains a key battleground for grocers. However, it <a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/01/23/an-online-sales-boom-is-killing-supermarket-profits">offers lower profit margins</a> than in-store shopping due to the higher costs of order preparation and delivery. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A cab with an ad for an online grocery company." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528227/original/file-20230525-27-z4t2n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528227/original/file-20230525-27-z4t2n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528227/original/file-20230525-27-z4t2n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528227/original/file-20230525-27-z4t2n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528227/original/file-20230525-27-z4t2n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528227/original/file-20230525-27-z4t2n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528227/original/file-20230525-27-z4t2n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Turkish online grocer Getir expand into rural areas?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/IXOqVutVfdM">Metin Ozer/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another solution is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/16/sainsburys-signs-deal-with-food-delivery-app-just-eat">partnership model</a> between grocers and <a href="https://theconversation.com/rapid-delivery-grocery-apps-have-flourished-during-the-pandemic-but-will-they-permanently-change-how-we-shop-162391">online platforms</a> such as Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo, who collect customer orders from smaller convenience stores (such as Tesco Express). </p>
<p>New players like the Turkish <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/getir-europe-delivery-wars">online-only grocer Getir</a> offer <a href="https://theconversation.com/fast-grocery-deliveries-are-likely-to-get-more-expensive-heres-why-177502">rapid delivery services</a> using smaller, more efficient warehouses located close to the customers. However, these, too, are confined to urban areas, for now. </p>
<p>Not being able to choose where you shop has several adverse impacts. It can restrict <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-blocks-merger-between-sainsburys-and-asda">competition</a> in online groceries, which in turn can see customers faced with less choice of delivery slot or higher charges for home delivery. </p>
<p>And, as highlighted by the consumer choice champion <a href="https://campaigns.which.co.uk/affordable-food/">Which?</a> and the <a href="https://www.cdrc.ac.uk/priority-places-for-food-index/">Consumer Data Research Centre</a>, it can hamper access to affordable, healthy groceries, by limiting customers’ opportunity to shop around for the best deals and widest range. </p>
<p>Quite how this might change though boils down to whether the major grocers or the new innovators <a href="https://theconversation.com/inflation-the-supermarket-business-model-is-too-fragile-to-shield-customers-from-rising-food-prices-183408">are able</a> to make the investments needed to better cater to rural demand. Until then, customers in these areas will <a href="https://www.cdrc.ac.uk/cdrc-analysis-uncovers-new-rural-e-food-deserts">face the dual disadvantage</a> of poor access to larger supermarkets and fewer online grocery options to improve things.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The research reported here has been undertaken by a team based at the University of Leeds, with support from the Consumer Data Research Centre, Leeds Institute for Data Analytics and Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Analytics and Society. Specific acknowledgement is given to Dr Nick Hood, School of Geography, University of Leeds for his contribution to this work.</span></em></p>
People in rural areas have less access to supermarkets in general. When it comes to online grocery shopping, just over 11% of those have no choice at all.
Andy Newing, Associate Professor in Applied Spatial Analysis, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205364
2023-05-11T15:16:51Z
2023-05-11T15:16:51Z
A painful picture for the Tories: forecasting the general election from the local results
<p>Nils Bohr, the Nobel prize winning physicist, once said: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Electoral forecasting, the science of predicting politics, is a case in point. It’s difficult to do and easy to get wrong. </p>
<p>However, it’s a fact that many people now want to know what England’s May 2023 local election results tell us about next year’s general election.</p>
<p>All forecasting relies on projecting information from the past and for most of the time polls measuring voting intentions are subject to a lot of inertia. This means we can use last month’s voting intentions to predict this month’s, as long as some unexpected shock does not come along to disrupt things. </p>
<p>Equally, we can use voting data from the past to forecast future election outcomes. Unfortunately, the UK has seen a lot of these shocks in recent years.</p>
<p>Currently there is considerable disagreement among forecasters about the outcome of the next election. The website <a href="https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/">Electoral Calculus</a> forecasts that Labour will win 409 seats, the Conservatives 169 and the Liberal Democrats 16 seats. </p>
<p>It uses a technique known as MRP (multi-level regression post-stratification analysis). This is a big-data technique using information from many sources and was first applied to election forecasting by the <a href="http://www.stat.columbia.edu/%7Egelman/research/unpublished/MRT(1).pdf">American statistician Andrew Gelman</a> and colleagues.</p>
<p>In contrast, Sir John Curtice and his team, working for the BBC, produced a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65475817">national share of the vote measure</a> from the local elections that compensates for the fact that they did not take place across the entire country. They forecast that Labour would win 35% of the vote, the Conservatives 26% and the Liberal Democrats 20% and others 19%. </p>
<p>Applied to the task of predicting a general election, Curtice concluded that Labour would be the largest party, but not necessarily win an overall majority.</p>
<p>In the past <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/%20article/abs/pii/S026137941500222X">colleagues and I have argued</a> that it is better to focus on seat shares when forecasting general elections in Britain rather than vote shares. This is because a general election is won by gaining a majority of seats in the House of Commons, not a majority of votes in elections. </p>
<p>In the 1951 and February 1974 elections, the party winning the most votes did not win the most seats and so lost the election. This makes it important to focus on seats rather than votes.</p>
<h2>1974-2023</h2>
<p>The chart below shows the relationship between Conservative seat shares in the House of Commons in general elections since 1974 and the party’s share of council seats won in the local elections a year before these general elections took place. The summary line shows a strong performance in the local election correlates closely with a strong performance in the subsequent general election (r=0.67). </p>
<p><strong>Conservative seats won in general elections, and in local elections in the preceding years:</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Chart showing local election seat share tends to correlate with general election seat share." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525228/original/file-20230509-21728-c74vee.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Locals and generals since the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/">House of Commons Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The relationship can be used to forecast seats in the next general election. The correlation is not perfect, so using it to forecast in this way is subject to errors.</p>
<p>There are a couple of complications to this exercise. Adjustments have to be made for the fact that the local elections on May 4 took place in England, which has 533 seats in the House of Commons. </p>
<p>With no results from Scotland and Wales, and results from Northern Ireland delayed until May 18, the forecast is for the English seats rather than all 650 seats in the Commons.</p>
<p>The second complication is that nearly 18% of the council seats in the local elections were won by independents, including resident association and minor party candidates. </p>
<p>In the House of Commons there is only one MP who can be described as an independent or minor party MP in the same sense – Caroline Lucas from the Green party. Accordingly, the results have to be adjusted to compensate for this difference.</p>
<p>The Conservatives took 28.6% of the seats, Labour 33.3% and the Liberal Democrats 20.2% in the local elections. With this in mind, the prediction from the modelling is that the Conservatives will win 210 of the 533 English seats. A similar analysis for Labour forecasts that the party will win 281 seats and the Liberal Democrats 41 seats.</p>
<p>If the same proportions apply to Scotland and Wales, (which of course is a big if), then Labour would win 333 seats, and so have an overall majority of 15 seats. In this scenario the Conservatives would win 249 seats, and the Liberal Democrats 49 seats out of the 632 seats in Britain.</p>
<p>Obviously, a big source of uncertainty in this scaled-up forecast is how the parties will do in Scotland. <a href="https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/9yxa6z6y1e/TheTimes_VI_230504_W.pdf">A YouGov poll</a> conducted just prior to the local elections puts Labour on 36%, the Conservatives on 13% and the SNP on 38% in voting intentions.</p>
<p>Whether or not Labour wins an overall majority in the next election is likely to be decided north of the border. That said, if it fails to win such a majority, there is the possibility of a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government forming on the basis of these results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC. </span></em></p>
Forecasting is a tricky art but looking back at the relationship between local elections and subsequent general elections puts Labour on course for House of Commons majority.
Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205061
2023-05-10T13:47:52Z
2023-05-10T13:47:52Z
Labour take note: red-wall voters want an ambitious plan for renewal – not tough talk and flag waving
<p>If <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65475817">projections</a> can be relied on, Labour has good reason to feel confident of supplanting the Conservatives as biggest party at the next general election. Yet it remains far from clear that Keir Starmer is heading for a House of Commons majority. </p>
<p>A Tory-to-Labour swing of <a href="https://labourlist.org/2023/05/bbc-labour-would-win-312-seats-and-tories-226-at-general-election-now/">4.5%</a> in 2023’s local elections fell marginally short of the 5% switch-around he needs to enter single-party government at Westminster. </p>
<p>Labour made gains in this year’s <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/20419058211045127">red wall</a> salvage operation, which included the successful recapture of councils in Stoke-on-Trent and Blackpool. But it still stuttered in post-industrial areas where it might have been expected to capitalise on broken Tory promises about <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1095544/Executive_Summary.pdf">levelling up</a>. </p>
<p>Among its tally of mixed results were only modest advances in once deep-red heartlands such as Bassetlaw, Sandwell and Darlington, as well as other <a href="https://localtrust.org.uk/insights/research/left-behind-understanding-communities-on-the-edge/">“left-behind”</a> places New Labour annexed in 1997, such as Great Yarmouth. </p>
<p>That’s to say nothing of the party’s failure to sway <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/election-97-worcester-woman-gets-the-elbow-1266047.html">“Worcester woman”</a>. The fabled floating voter credited with propelling Tony Blair to victory voted Green in 2023. Party co-leader Carla Denyer mused that “deep dislike of the Tories” had failed to translate into enthusiasm for “Starmer’s uninspiring Labour”.</p>
<p>So what exactly do people want from Labour? And why is it still struggling to fully exploit the mix of ennui and anger felt by so many voters who turned Tory in <a href="https://www.survation.com/latest-data-shows-rishi-sunak-losing-2019-conservative-voters-lags-starmer-on-key-issues-for-the-public/">2019</a>?</p>
<h2>Buses, doctors, jobs</h2>
<p>While carrying out fieldwork for my recent book, <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745344621/the-left-behind/">The Left Behind</a>, I interviewed residents, business owners, community activists and parish councillors in several post-industrial areas contested in the local elections this year – from Stoke and Great Yarmouth to Leigh in Greater Manchester. Doing so gave me a clear sense of the concerns preoccupying voters in the regions that switched to Conservative MPs in 2019 but are still waiting for promises of levelling up to materialise.</p>
<p>Most apparent was the need for a vision of a more socially just, interventionist approach to regulating the economy and reviving public services. This is the most likely way to motivate a resurgence in Labour support.</p>
<p>The “anyone-but-the-Tories” backlash witnessed in the locals followed a campaign dominated by party-political point scoring over who could talk toughest on <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/starmer-crime-tories-labour-prosecution/">crime</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/02/labour-announces-plans-to-crack-down-on-antisocial-behaviour#:%7E:text=Labour%20has%20announced%20a%20series,who%20breach%20antisocial%20behaviour%20injunctions">antisocial behaviour</a>. But my interviewees were much more likely to complain about poor-quality, precarious jobs, lack of opportunities for young people, unaffordable housing and the impact of long years of austerity on overstretched schools and GPs, desolate high streets and unreliable or non-existent bus services. </p>
<p>Labour may have comfortably won the council election in the ward covering the sprawling post-war Stoke housing estate of Bentilee, but it did so on a paltry turnout of <a href="https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/labour-sweep-board-bentilee-ubberley-8408425">16%</a>. Here there is a deep-seated disillusionment with politicians of all hues which was described by a local pensioner who told me: “So many people on the estate now say, ‘I’m not voting; they’re all a waste of time’”. </p>
<p>She despaired of the fact that an area once characterised by “employment, and plenty of it” in pottery factories (where she worked as a manager’s PA) now had few jobs other than in a single area of “rejuvenation”: distribution centres. </p>
<p>A retired ex-miner had a similar tale in Leigh. Lamenting the collapse of its once thriving coal and cotton industries, he asked despairingly, “How can you have an apprentice in Tesco?”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, villagers from Forsbrook, near Stoke, and Belton, outside Great Yarmouth, united in condemning the threadbare state of local buses. Belton parish councillors despaired at how a village of 4,000 (mainly elderly) residents now had no GP, and the nearest surgery was three miles away with no connecting bus link. </p>
<p>A carless foodbank volunteer, from nearby Gorleston, said she had been forced to turn down several paid jobs in town because she had no way of reaching work in time for the start of her shifts.</p>
<p>On the rare occasions when people did mention crime or antisocial behaviour (key concerns, according to team Starmer) they tended to view them as symptoms of under investment, not delinquency. Though critical of “gangs” that drove her and her son out of Bentilee, a working single mum reflected that young people had “nothing to do” there thanks to the closure of its youth club. </p>
<h2>Asking the wrong questions</h2>
<p>As ever, perceptions of which issues are most salient to voters depend on what exactly you ask them and how you frame your questions. The “deep-dive” focus groups that pollster Deborah Mattinson conducted in ex-Labour strongholds for her 2020 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Red-Wall-Labour-Conservatives/dp/1785906046?asin=B084H6DRSR&revisionId=f2a0e275&format=1&depth=1">Beyond the Red Wall</a>, were almost exclusively concerned with asking why so many people had abandoned the party in 2019. </p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, three factors featured prominently: dislike of Jeremy Corbyn; a sense of being ignored and patronised by middle-class, socially liberal Labour leaders; and frustration at the party’s nebulous position on Brexit. </p>
<p>In the three years since, Mattinson, now Starmer’s director of strategy, seems to have continued asking herself (and subsequent focus-groups) much the same questions. As a result, instead of addressing the evident material interests of red-wall voters, Labour is still fighting the last war. </p>
<p>It is straining to distinguish itself from Corbyn’s party by out-toughing and out-flag-waving the Tories. All this is guided by the alliterative triad of “pride, place and patriotism” Mattinson sees as integral to contemporary working-class values. </p>
<p>Starmer is fond of reminding journalists <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-conference-pledges-b1928605.html">“the world has changed”</a> whenever he is asked to justify abandoning the pledges he made on standing as Labour leader. When the time comes to write his manifesto for the coming election, he would do well to apply this same rationale to memories of contests past – and not just 2019’s.</p>
<p>While Britain’s economic outlook might well be bleaker than when Blair took office (as Starmer often observes when asked why he is scaling back Labour’s ambitions), so too is the state of its collapsing public realm. </p>
<p>The people in lost constituencies want Starmer’s Labour to spend more, not less, than New Labour. This is the most significant aspect of “red-wall sentiment”, and yet the one Starmer seems reluctant to recognise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Morrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Labour strategists seem determined to cast Starmer as the sensible ‘adult in the room’, but in order to win lost areas he needs to be much more radical than that.
James Morrison, Associate Professor in Journalism, University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205056
2023-05-05T16:16:10Z
2023-05-05T16:16:10Z
Local elections: Labour gains suggest the tide has turned in many marginal constituencies
<p>The 2023 local council elections are potentially the last major test of public opinion before the next general election, which is most likely to occur <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2022-09-05/when-is-the-next-general-election">some time next year</a>. </p>
<p>These votes are of course shaped by local issues but national influences are never far away. The main parties have been engaging with nationwide campaign themes during the campaign, possibly as a trial run before the main event, and it’s impossible not to draw conclusions about the potential link between how the public is voting now at a local level and the verdict it will deliver at the national poll. </p>
<h2>Is Labour really on course for Downing Street?</h2>
<p>Labour has done well, as would be expected of an opposition party competing against a governing party that is facing significant problems after 13 years in power. But its performance does not necessarily indicate that it is doing well enough to win outright at the next general election. </p>
<p>On a positive note, Labour gained control of councils in Medway, Plymouth, Stoke-on-Trent and Swindon. These areas contain multiple marginal parliamentary seats that the party must gain in 2024 if it hopes to form a majority government in its own right. Signs of a shift towards Labour in these local elections is therefore heartening for Keir Starmer – although turnout at local elections is always lower than general elections and this should be factored in to any conclusions drawn from the results. </p>
<p>On the downside for Labour, it failed to take control of other target councils, namely Peterborough, Bolton, Worcester and Hartlepool. These also represent marginal parliamentary seats that it must win if it hopes to gain an outright majority in a general election. It has also failed to oust the Liberal Democrats from their control of urban councils such as Hull, while the Greens have been picking up seats and left-leaning votes from Labour in some of their urban strongholds. </p>
<h2>It don’t mean a thing if you don’t get that swing</h2>
<p>Early results from the locals suggest the swing from the Conservative would not be sufficient for an outright Labour general election win.</p>
<p>The swing has been seen as one of the most important indicators of success in this election. This is the <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02608/SN02608.pdf">average change in voter support</a> for political parties between elections. </p>
<p>The initial 2023 swing marks a lower level of Labour performance than recent opinion polls have suggested – a similar level of support to last year’s local elections. It would ultimately not amount to the “knockout blow” that some think is needed to show that Labour is on course for a general election win. </p>
<p>For context, Labour requires a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/02/to-win-an-outright-commons-majority-labour-will-have-to-gamble">7-8% swing</a> on its 2019 result just to become the biggest party in parliament at the next general election. It needs a swing of approximately 10% to win an outright majority that would allow it to govern alone. Such is the scale of its electoral task.</p>
<p>So on the basis of these local results, Labour’s swing of an estimated 4-5% in these elections evidently suggests progress, but not at the peak levels enjoyed by Tony Blair in the buildup to the party’s historic 1997 general election triumph. However, Starmer’s team would say they are recovering from a major electoral setback in 2019, when it took just 32% of the national vote. On that basis, a predicted 35% of the national vote, close to a double digit poll lead, and potentially 1,000 council seat gains, represent movement very much in the right direction. </p>
<h2>Conservative fortunes</h2>
<p>Ahead of these elections, Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-course-lose-1000-seats-29723467">pessimistically</a> (or <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2023/04/tories-begin-expectation-management-local-elections-in-style">strategically</a>, depending on your view) declared that his party could lose 1,000 council seats of the more than 3,000 the party was defending. This would be on top of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/tories-lose-over-1200-seats-in-local-elections-as-major-parties-suffer">terrible losses</a> incurred under Theresa May the last time these particular seats were fought.</p>
<p>Even with such expectation management in play, this year’s results confirm what a difficult position Rishi Sunak’s party finds itself in. Gains made by the Liberal Democrats might not equate to Labour success but they <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ousted-tories-could-make-general-election-tough-for-rishi-sunak-7rhdnb92v">do indicate the potential for Conservative failure</a>. If support for the Lib Dems is back on the rise after its years in the post-coalition doldrums, that has the potential to eat into the governing party’s vote at the national level at a time when it needs all the support it can get. </p>
<p>Sunak’s challenge going forward will be whether he has both the time and the capacity to turn this electoral decline around before the general election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205056/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Williams is a member of UCU and Amnesty International.</span></em></p>
Not a knockout blow but important gains for the opposition.
Ben Williams, Lecturer in Politics and Political Theory, University of Salford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204710
2023-05-02T13:42:00Z
2023-05-02T13:42:00Z
Local elections: what does a good night look like for Keir Starmer’s Labour or Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives?
<p>Thursday May 4 sees one of the biggest English local elections in recent memory.</p>
<p>These are huge contests, covering 237 councils, of which 151 are holding all-out elections, with every seat up for grabs. In the other 86, one-third of the seats are being fought. A total of 8,000 seats are up for grabs across nearly 5,000 wards.</p>
<p>The battles represent the biggest verdict on the Conservative government this side of the looming general election, which must be held before the end of January 2025 and is realistically to take place next year.</p>
<p>The Conservatives have most to lose since the poll includes “shire” councils in rural locations, which are traditionally fertile Tory territory. The Conservatives are defending 83 local authorities and 3,366 seats – 42% of those being fought. Labour holds 49 councils and is defending 2,142 seats. </p>
<p>The Lib Dems hold 17 councils and 1,223 seats. There are nearly 1,000 independent or “hyper-local” councillors trying to retain wards and the Green party is defending 240.</p>
<h2>What does a good night look like?</h2>
<p>These seats were last contested in 2019, which seems a political lifetime ago. Theresa May was prime minister and was battling to get her Brexit deal through parliament after losing her majority in an ill-fated election two years previously. Jeremy Corbyn led Labour and Vince Cable led the Liberal Democrats. </p>
<p>May’s Conservatives managed to lose 1,330 council seats and poll only 28% of the vote that year, ensuring they would be the last local elections fought under her leadership.</p>
<p>That the Conservatives went on to win a handsome majority at the general election seven months later shows how a party can recover from an appalling local election. But within 100 days of the 2019 debacle, May had resigned from office and the Conservatives had installed Boris Johnson as their new leader. If the Conservatives do badly this year, changing the skipper is hardly an option.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that Corbyn’s Labour managed to lose seats in 2019, quite a feat for the opposition at that stage of the electoral cycle.</p>
<p>For Keir Starmer, expectations are way higher than under his now banished predecessor. They need to be lofty. Starmer needs a swing the size of Tony Blair’s in 1997 to win an outright majority in the next general election. </p>
<p>Gains of more than 600 seats and 30 councils on Thursday would indicate Labour is on course. For the Conservatives, keeping losses well below 700 seats would be a triumph of sorts, an indication Rishi Sunak is still in the game.</p>
<h2>Which are the regions to look out for?</h2>
<p>The prime minister faces a pincer movement. Labour could regain northern councils that had been lost to <a href="https://lgiu.org/who-runs-the-councils-in-no-overall-control/">no overall control</a> in places where the party has also lost parliamentary seats in recent years. Think Bolton and Burnley for starters. This could indicate a fight back in the areas that delivered such a devastating loss for Labour in the last general election.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A map showing where local elections are taking place in the UK on May 4." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523854/original/file-20230502-3102-th08g1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523854/original/file-20230502-3102-th08g1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523854/original/file-20230502-3102-th08g1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523854/original/file-20230502-3102-th08g1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=819&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523854/original/file-20230502-3102-th08g1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523854/original/file-20230502-3102-th08g1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523854/original/file-20230502-3102-th08g1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1029&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Institute for Government analysis of Democracy Club local elections 2023 data.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Institute for Government/Democracy Club</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the south, however, the battle is often blue versus orange, as the Liberal Democrats pose the biggest threat to the Tories. Look out for Dacorum, West Berkshire and East Cambridgeshire councils which could all fall to Ed Davey’s party. </p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats are reviving. They have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61349440">made gains at the last four local elections</a> (nearly 800 at the comparison election of 2019). Their triumph in the <a href="https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3804/election-history">Tiverton and Honiton by-election</a> last year, on a massive 30% swing, hastened the end of Johnson.</p>
<h2>Will voter ID change things?</h2>
<p>For the first time, voters in these English elections will need to prove their identity to cast their ballot. Photographic identification is mandatory.</p>
<p>Not everyone likes the idea. The <a href="https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/campaigns/voter-id/">Electoral Reform Society</a> thinks it has been introduced to solve a problem of impersonation that does not exist. Take up for voter authority certificates, available to those not holding appropriate ID, <a href="https://voter-authority-certificate.service.gov.uk/performance/live_usage">has been low</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, identification has been required at polling stations in Northern Ireland for two decades without causing problems. If fraud were the problem, arguably a more pressing focus would be postal voting, used to cast one-in-five votes and not subject to photographic checks.</p>
<p>Only one in three eligible voters will take part in Thursday’s elections. That’s a pity because local elections matter. Who controls your council is important. That’s unless you think bins, burials, green spaces, housing, leisure facilities, libraries, planning, schools and social services are all trivial.</p>
<p>Next year the UK chooses its central government – but local ones matter as well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204710/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There’s a lot to play for in the final big electoral test before the next national vote, especially in northern regions where Labour hopes to make a comeback.
Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204507
2023-05-02T11:20:35Z
2023-05-02T11:20:35Z
DNA study sheds light on Scotland’s Picts, and resolves some myths about them
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523315/original/file-20230427-20-enm6fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C21%2C4716%2C3137&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pictish stones feature distinctive symbols.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Cathy MacIver</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The people known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts">the Picts</a> have puzzled archaeologists and historians for centuries. They lived in Scotland during the early medieval period, from around AD300 to AD900, but many aspects of their society remain mysterious.</p>
<p>The Picts’ unique cultural characteristics, such as large stones decorated with distinct symbols, and lack of written records, have led to numerous theories about their origins, way of life, and culture. </p>
<p>This is commonly referred to in archaeology as the “Pictish problem”, a term popularised by the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Problem_of_the_Picts_Edited_by_F_T_W.html?id=EWZEtwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">title of a 1955 edited book</a> by the archaeologist Frederick Threlfall Wainwright.</p>
<p>Our genetic study of human remains from this period challenges several myths about the Picts. These include a proposed origin in eastern Europe, as well as a longstanding idea that the inheritance of wealth passed down the female side of the family.</p>
<p>We attempted to shed light on the Picts’ origins and legacy by sequencing whole genomes – the full complement of DNA in human cells – from skeletons excavated at two cemeteries. </p>
<h2>Stone monuments</h2>
<p>These cemeteries, at Balintore in Easter Ross and Lundin Links in Fife, date to between the 5th and 7th centuries AD. The results of our research have been <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1010360">published in PLOS Genetics</a>.</p>
<p>The Balintore burials are not well understood, but Lundin Links is characterised by <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00766097.2017.1296031">exceptional stone monuments</a>. The burials take the form of round or rectangular cairns – where numerous stones are piled up as markers – and long cists. Cists are stone-built “boxes” that hold the remains of the dead. </p>
<p>The cemetery probably housed people of a high-status, but this is still hypothetical due to the limited knowledge of these burials and society more generally during this period. Human remains in general from the Pictish era are relatively scarce and often poorly preserved.</p>
<p>There is no known settlement associated with Lundin Links. This is a common issue in Pictish archaeology, as the extent of their settlements is still largely unknown. Recently, however, excavations led by Professor Gordon Noble at the University of Aberdeen have <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Picts/J1iZEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">discovered several new Pictish sites</a>, frequently hillforts, around Scotland.</p>
<h2>Origin myths</h2>
<p>In our study, we looked at how genetically similar the Pictish genomes were to other ancient genomes from Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and mainland Europe dating to the Iron Age, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods. Our findings support a prevailing view that the Picts descended from Iron Age groups in Britain and Ireland. </p>
<p>This contrasts with older, often elaborate, myths of exotic origins, such as the one recounted in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_History_of_the_English_People#:%7E:text=The%20Ecclesiastical%20History%20of%20the,Roman%20Rite%20and%20Celtic%20Christianity.">Ecclesiastical History of the English People</a>, written by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Bede-the-Venerable">Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede</a> in AD731. This claimed that the Picts migrated from Scythia (a historical region around the northern coast of the Black Sea) to northern Britain.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="DNA double helix" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523394/original/file-20230428-16-hmppm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523394/original/file-20230428-16-hmppm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523394/original/file-20230428-16-hmppm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523394/original/file-20230428-16-hmppm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523394/original/file-20230428-16-hmppm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523394/original/file-20230428-16-hmppm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523394/original/file-20230428-16-hmppm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The researchers used a method that involves looking at long stretches of DNA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/blue-helix-human-dna-structure-1669326868">Billion Photos / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other theories include an origin in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrace">Thrace</a> (a historical region in south-east Europe) and islands to the north of Britain.</p>
<p>We sequenced two genomes to medium or high coverage, meaning that we determined the order of the “letters” in the DNA code multiple times while piecing together the highly fragmented genetic sequence. This allowed us to “zoom in” on the genetic diversity – or variation – in the ancient and modern people from our study, gaining greater analytical resolution.</p>
<p>We were able to look at fine-scale differences among ancient and modern groups across Britain and Ireland. We applied a method that investigates something called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_by_descent">identity-by-descent (IBD)</a>. This involves looking at relatively long stretches of DNA (“chunks” of chromosomes) that are shared by different individuals. </p>
<p>IBD is an indicator of relatedness via shared genetic ancestors. While we all share ancestors, sometimes we share more recent genetic ancestors with some individuals than with others. In this scenario, we would also share more IBD segments of DNA. </p>
<h2>Female inheritance</h2>
<p>The Pictish genomes share more long DNA chunks with present-day people from western Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We interpreted this as a sign of genetic continuity from the Pictish period to the present-day. </p>
<p>But present-day populations in Britain and Ireland also share relatively high amounts of IBD segments with Anglo-Saxon genomes from southern regions, suggesting mixture between populations in a south-to-north direction.</p>
<p>This fascinating insight provides a glimpse into the demographic processes that have shaped genetic diversity and population structure in present-day populations. However, there were also small but significant differences in the genetic similarity between Pictish genomes and other ancient groups, such as Iron Age genomes we compared them with. </p>
<p>This suggests that “Pictish genetic ancestry” was not static or homogenous. Instead, the genetic variation among ancient people reflects dynamic and complex communities.</p>
<p>Lastly, we managed to address an intriguing question. Bede stated that when the Picts stopped off in Ireland before settling in Britain, they were allowed to marry local women on the condition that Pictish succession passed down the female line. </p>
<p>This led to the notion that the Picts followed a tradition of “matrilineal succession”, where the sister’s son inherits the wealth instead of sons on the male line – a system often associated with women marrying locally. Scholars now believe this idea was probably fabricated to boost Pictish identity and validate specific rulers.</p>
<p>We sequenced complete genomes of mitochondria – structures in cells, often described as biological “batteries” – in seven samples from Lundin Links. They all carried unique mutations, meaning that none of the individuals were closely related on the maternal line. </p>
<p>This is more consistent with female exogamy, where women marry outside their social group. This is just one population sample from one location, though, so more research is required to test whether this holds elsewhere.</p>
<p>The study fills gaps in our understanding of the genetic landscape of Britain and Ireland during the early medieval period. It provides a baseline for future studies to investigate the complex genetic ancestry of present-day populations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linus Girdland Link was supported by the school of geoscience, University of Aberdeen. Kate Britton was supported by the Leverhulme Trust during production of this manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adeline Morez was supported by ECR strategic support of early career researchers in the faculty of science at LJMU, awarded to Linus Girdland-Flink.</span></em></p>
The genetic study challenges previous theories about the origins and culture of the Picts.
Linus Girdland Flink, Visiting lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, lecturer in biomolecular archaeology, University of Aberdeen
Adeline Morez, Post-doctorate researcher, Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier, visiting lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200311
2023-02-20T20:33:41Z
2023-02-20T20:33:41Z
Pancakes and football: a brief history of Shrove Tuesday in the UK
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511215/original/file-20230220-28-a01g4m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C2%2C1979%2C994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">"Medieval football" is still played annually on Shrove Tuesday in some parts of the UK.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/illustration-of-a-game-of-football-being-played-in-the-streets-of-london-during-the-14th-century-football-of-this-time-played-without-rules-in-narrow-medieval-streets-was-both-fantastically-popular-and-equally-violent-in-1314-a-group-of-london-merchants-petitioned-king-edward-ii-to-ask-him-to-ban-the-playing-of-football-due-to-the-impact-it-was-having-on-their-business-the-king-was-happy-to-ban-the-game-feeling-that-many-evils-might-arise-from-the-playing-of-football-colourised-version-of-10219013-date-1905-image472815923.html?imageid=570E79E3-0A57-46B9-97F3-AB70EFD906E4&p=1912084&pn=1&searchId=87694fee2da257e1fbe19c02e78f2dd4&searchtype=0">Shutterstock/Alamy</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/politics-pancakes">Pancake Day</a>, or Shrove Tuesday is once again upon us. Celebrated in many countries around the world, for Christians, Shrove Tuesday marks the last day, or the feast day before Lent - the 40 days leading up to Easter. </p>
<p>This is traditionally a time of abstinence associated with clearing your cupboards of things like <a href="https://theconversation.com/egg-shortage-a-nutritionist-on-the-best-egg-alternatives-195248">eggs</a>, sugar and fats. Pancakes are eaten on this day to use up these foods before the fasting season of Lent begins.</p>
<p>But Shrove Tuesday isn’t just about pancakes. Indeed, historically in the UK, it formed part of a more elaborate pre-Lent festival called <a href="https://ludicrushistories.wordpress.com/research/">Shrovetide</a>, which was all about feasting and sports. </p>
<p>Shrovetide games ranged from cruel animal blood sports like <a href="https://ludicrushistories.wordpress.com/2021/02/18/kings-of-the-school-britains-carnival-monarchs-and-social-inversion/">cock-fighting</a> to tug-o-wars and <a href="https://www.scarboroughsmaritimeheritage.org.uk/article.php?article=699">skipping</a>. Yet no Shrovetide sport was more widespread and longstanding than football.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-behind-making-a-perfect-pancake-54371">The science behind making a perfect pancake</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511225/original/file-20230220-946-v8u3e1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Village Ba’ Game by Alexander Carse, 1818: a village football match in Jedburgh, Scotland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Village_Ba%27_Game_by_Alexander_Carse.jpg">Painting of a large group of men playing football in front of a large rural building.</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>According to players from <a href="https://calendarcustoms.com/articles/duns-ba/">Duns</a>, a town in the Scottish Borders, in 1686, <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103825529&view=1up&seq=184&q1=football">it was</a> “an ancient custom throughout all this kingdom to play at football upon Fastens Eve (Shrove Tuesday)”. </p>
<p>Shrovetide ball games are documented from the 12th century onwards, in scores of communities throughout Britain and northern France – several of which in <a href="https://www.visitpeakdistrict.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-ashbourne-royal-shrovetide-football">England</a> and <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16042850.pictures-battle-crowned-jedburgh-handba-champions/">Scotland</a> still play it today. Shop windows are <a href="https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/rules-ashbourne-royal-shrovetide-players-8151777">boarded up and businesses are closed</a> for the day as whole towns take to the streets to join in the annual Shrovetide football game.</p>
<h2>Shrove football</h2>
<p>As ancestors to our modern games, folk football matches varied considerably in the manner of play. But generally, players contested a ball with hand and foot, usually towards a goal. </p>
<p>Shrovetide games were often the big matches of the day, featuring sometimes hundreds of participants. Whether town versus country, or married against bachelors, teams battled to move the ball through streets and countryside, towards goals like mills, streams or even the church.</p>
<p>Due to its destructive potential, <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.3138/9781442654044-013/html?lang=en">football often fell foul</a> of authority and was banned outright. Medieval royal prohibitions called it “vain, unthrifty and idle”, while <a href="https://theconversation.com/bites-brawls-and-severed-heads-footballs-history-of-violence-28429">Puritans deemed it</a> “a bloody and murdering practise”. But others in power obviously saw its appeal, to judge from its festive sponsorship in many cities and towns. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JRQahGlunXU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>In Chester, for example, every Shrove Tuesday in the early 16th century, the Merchant Drapers’ Company received a football from the Shoemakers’ Company, a wooden ball from the Saddlers’ Company and a small silk ball from each man from the city married within the last year. Under the mayor’s supervision, the Drapers tossed up the balls (which doubled as prizes) for the craftsmen and crowd to play from the common field to the city’s Common Hall.</p>
<p>Chester’s Shrovetide sponsorship was mirrored throughout the British Isles. Craftsmen and guilds played key roles as participants and providers of the ball(s). On Shrove Tuesday 1373, for example, skinners (who skin animals) and tailors played in the streets of London. Butchers did the same in Jedburgh, Scotland. </p>
<p>While in the late 18th century in the market town of Alnwick in Northumberland, England, the Skinners’ and Shoemakers’ companies paraded the ball to the match between married and bachelor men. Indeed, leather workers like shoemakers were especially important, crafting Shrovetide footballs in 15th-century London, 16th-century Glasgow and 17th-century Carlisle.</p>
<h2>An ancient custom</h2>
<p>Newlyweds also fronted the ball in many communities. In Dublin, recently married men had to present a ball to city magistrates every Shrove Tuesday during the 15th and 16th centuries. Newlywed members of trade guilds in Perth in central Scotland, and Corfe Castle in Dorset also paid a Shrovetide “football due”, while a similar custom seems to have existed in medieval London. </p>
<p>These were part of a broader folk tradition, where newly married couples owed a “bride ball” or “ball money” to their community. Since weddings were customary during Shrovetide (and prohibited in Lent), it was an ideal time to collect this money. Local governments would gather the “wedding ball” dues, hire drummers and pipers to pump up the crowds, or pay for the footballs directly. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of crowd playing football in a tonw" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511208/original/file-20230220-28-678g79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of Shrove Tuesday football in Kingston Upon Thames (1865).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shrovetide_Football_Kingston_upon_Thames_1865.png"> Penny Illustrated Weekly News (London), p. 636, 1865-03-18</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Failure to pay your football dues could result in imprisonment, heavy fines or the forced closing of a craftsman’s shop. These harsh consequences reflect the worth of Shrove Tuesday football to these communities. To them, it was not a “vain and idle” game, but an “ancient and laudable custom” of “goodly feats and exercise” where participation was often obligatory. </p>
<p>Officials thus sponsored games that were technically illegal because Shrovetide football equated with the “common wealth of the city”. Participation and patronage of the game <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/203974643/Taylor_Aucoin_Doctoral_Thesis_When_the_Pancake_Bell_Rings_Final_Copy.pdf">reinforced the status and privilege</a> that came with civic membership. </p>
<p>Gradually, authorities in most major cities did withdraw their support from Shrovetide football. Some cities like St Andrews in Scotland simply banned it because of the “many ills” and “disorder”. </p>
<p>Others “reformed” the games into less dangerous entertainments, like foot and horse races in 1540s Chester, or a fire-engine display in 1725 in Carlisle. By the middle of the 18th century, officially sanctioned Shrovetide ball games were mostly confined to smaller market towns and villages, which is where some live on to this day.</p>
<p>So as you reach for the batter this Shrove Tuesday, remember the history of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-violent-peasants-to-multi-million-pound-megastars-the-history-of-football-27348">riotous game</a> we call football and its lesser-known origins as a prelude to pancakes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Taylor Aucoin currently receives funding from the British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies. His PhD research was partially funded by grants from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Royal Historical Society, Society for Renaissance Studies, Richard III Society, Sidney Perry Foundation, the Humanitarian Trust, the Bristol Graduate Research Centre, Bristol Alumni Foundation, Sir John Plumb Trust, Sir Richard Stapley Trust, Folklore Society, Society for Theatre Research, and the Medieval Academy of America.
</span></em></p>
Pancake Day isn’t just about pancakes.
Taylor Aucoin, British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History, The University of Edinburgh
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197666
2023-01-19T16:37:09Z
2023-01-19T16:37:09Z
Why do we read about accidents? Lessons from 18th-century English newspapers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505218/original/file-20230118-14-cf083o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=85%2C100%2C5090%2C3344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">18th-century London newspapers frequently reported on the tragic and curious accidents that befell the city's residents.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“If it bleeds, it leads” is a well-known maxim associated with journalism. Accident reports often attract readers, even when their headlines give away the plot. This has been true for over three hundred years, since <a href="https://londonist.com/london/history/320-year-anniversary-daily-courant-elizabeth-mallet-first-newspaper">reading the news became part of daily life in 18th-century Britain</a>. </p>
<p>Just four pages long, British newspapers of the 1700s had few images, no headlines and little separation between articles. Their random arrangement of news paragraphs is reminiscent of modern social media feeds without their algorithms. Jostling with news ranging from foreign military reports to book reviews, accounts of accidents occur as random shocks, nearly as surprising for the newspaper’s readers as the original accidents must have been for their subjects. </p>
<p>As a scholar who studies 18th-century British media, I often encounter accounts of accidents as I read old newspapers. Despite the different look of these newspapers, their readers evidently possessed an interest in spectacular, unusual and gory accidents that feels very familiar. The accidents most frequently reported in newspapers of the 1700s arise from traffic, working conditions, natural disaster and human error. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1502198900240916484"}"></div></p>
<h2>Traffic accidents</h2>
<p>18th-century London’s narrow roads were congested with horse-drawn vehicles, pedestrians and panicky animals. Traffic accidents were frequent. Readers of the <em><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=qVrUTUelE6YC&pg=PA426&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Morning Chronicle</a></em> on March 9, 1784 could trace a runaway ox’s destructive path <a href="https://www.grubstreetproject.net/london/#map=63/@-9662,0,119324z">through the city:</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Yesterday morning an over-drove ox tossed a boy in Smithfield, but fortunately was not much hurt; the ox then ran down Cow-cross, and opposite Mr. Booth’s, the distiller, tossed an ass, carrying a pair of panniers, filled with dog’s meat, nearly to the height of the one pair of stairs windows, and before he could be secured terribly gored a young man, who was taken to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Readers were no doubt reassured that the ox was unhurt after tossing a small boy and amused that the animal ran amuck down the appropriately-named street “Cow-cross.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting featuring people holding a lantern next to a damaged carriage next to a fire." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505187/original/file-20230118-12-hy9pqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Night’ by William Hogarth circa 1738 depicts a damaged carriage on a London road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Wikimedia)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Traffic incidents involving notable people were particularly popular. The <em>Morning Chronicle</em> of April 9, 1800 reported that the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-Augustus-duke-of-York-and-Albany">Duke of York</a> had been enjoying a ride when “a dog belonging to a driver of cattle ran across the road, and impeding the progress of the horse, the animal fell on his Royal Highness, and the Duke unfortunately being entangled in the stirrup, was dragged a considerable way.” </p>
<p>Luckily, two patriotic men in a passing chaise made room for the injured Duke and tipped the post-boys two guineas to carry him to a surgeon. </p>
<p>Waterways were equally treacherous. Pity the poor father who, having placed his child and his nurse in a boat, then saw them fall into the Thames. He “with great Difficulty took up the Nurse, but the Child was drowned: The Child had been brought that Day from Wandsworth to be seen by its Parents, and was returning when this melancholy Accident happen’d,” lamented the <em>Daily Post</em> of Sept. 16, 1729. </p>
<h2>Sympathy or laughter?</h2>
<p>Eighteenth century readers were often given emotional cues from newspapers’ descriptions of accidents as “unfortunate,” “melancholy” or “shocking.” These small adjectives had the power to transmute unseemly gawkers into sympathetic witnesses. On March 1, 1801 <em><a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/titles/bells-weekly-messenger">Bell’s Weekly Messenger</a></em> reported the tragic fate of Lady Hardy: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[S]itting alone after dinner reading, but falling asleep, her head dress approached too near the flame of the candle, and caught fire; it communicated to other parts of her dress before her Ladyship awoke. On awaking, and perceiving her situation, she inadvertently ran out into the passage, where the draught of air so much increased the flames, that she was found entirely in a blaze… she was rolled up in a carpet, which instantly extinguished the fire; but her Ladyship was so dreadfully burnt, that she lingered till four o’clock the next morning in the most excruciating agonies, and expired.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old newspaper titled: The London Chronicle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505190/original/file-20230118-11-tl7djn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A copy of The London Chronicle from Oct. 16, 1759.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Occasionally, a newspaper’s tone seemed more amused than sympathetic. “A few Days since as the Son of Mr. Mitchell … was felling a Tree, it fell on him,” reported the <em>General Evening Post</em> of Dec. 17-19, 1747. The unfortunate Mr. Bacon was struck by lightning so violently that it “made his body a most shocking spectacle,” punned the <em>Public Advertiser</em> of July 18, 1787.</p>
<p>Present-day journalists’ codes of ethics stress sensitivity and avoid <a href="https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/the-do-s-and-don-ts-of-reporting-on-death-and-grief/s2/a954028/">intruding into others’ grief</a>. Eighteenth century Britons’ sense of humour, however, could be <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25098027">ruthless</a>. </p>
<h2>Workplace accidents</h2>
<p>Accounts of work-related accidents abound in the news of the 1700s. Bricklayers and carpenters plummet from scaffolding. Painters and glaziers fall through windows. Watermen drown. </p>
<p>As <em>Fog’s Weekly Journal</em> reported, one poor currier, “as he was standing on a Stool to hang up some Skins in his Shop … fell with his Neck upon the Edge of a sharp Iron used in that Trade.”</p>
<p>Modern journalists have a <a href="https://accountablejournalism.org/ethics-codes/british-national-union-of-journalists">duty to inform the public</a> about accidents, to provoke investigation into their causes and offer strategies for increased public safety. In 18th-century newspapers, there is less emphasis on preventative legislation and institutional culpability and more focus on personal diligence.</p>
<p>Articles often also stressed the admirable fortitude of an accident’s victim or responder. The <em><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3020548">London Evening Post</a></em> on Jan. 1, 1760 reported a courageous post-boy’s efforts to deliver the mail:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[M]istaking the Road, [he] got into a Wood where there was a great Declivity, and both Horse and Lad fell into the River, broke the Ice in one of the deepest Places, and sunk to the Bottom; the Horse could not get out, but was drowned; the Boy got hold of a Twig, and by that Means saved his Life, yet exposed it again to the greatest Danger, by endeavouring to recover the Mail, which he did, with the Saddle, to the Surprize of every one.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Better still, the boy delivered the mail the next day. In the newspaper record, pluck and valour are celebrated characteristics.</p>
<p>Accidents interrupt our daily routines with their disturbing novelty. Like fables, 18th-century newspapers’ short tales of accidents deliver moral lessons on the value of diligence, empathy and courage. Stories of fatal accidents are <em><a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/memento-mori">memento mori</a></em>: in their remembrance of death, they prompt us to seize hold of life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leslie Ritchie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
News reports about accidents can deliver important moral lessons and remind us to value life.
Leslie Ritchie, Professor of English Literature, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196129
2023-01-04T13:27:28Z
2023-01-04T13:27:28Z
William Wordsworth and the Romantics anticipated today’s idea of a nature-positive life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502403/original/file-20221221-12-9wf35m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C6%2C1491%2C1129&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wiliam Wordsworth lived and wrote in Grasmere, in England's Lake District, from 1799-1808.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Grasmere_from_Stone_Arthur.jpg">Mick Knapton/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Musical performances usually happen in concert halls or clubs, but famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma is exploring a new venue: U.S. national parks. In a project called <a href="https://www.yo-yoma.com/news/yo-yo-ma-at-the-grand-canyon-big-time-and-our-common-nature/">Our Common Nature</a>, Ma is performing in settings such as the Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. By making music and bringing people together in scenic places, Ma aims to help humans understand where they fit in the natural world.</p>
<p>“What if there’s a way that we can end up thinking and feeling and knowing that we are coming from nature, that we’re a part of nature, instead of just thinking: What can we use it for?” Ma mused in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/arts/music/yo-yo-ma-our-common-nature.html">recent New York Times article</a>. </p>
<p>There’s a buzzword for this outlook: nature-positive. And it’s cropping up at high-level meetings, including the 2021 <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/50363/g7-2030-nature-compact-pdf-120kb-4-pages-1.pdf">G-7 summit in Cornwall, England</a> and the COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal that adopted an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/climate/biodiversity-cop15-montreal-30x30.html">ambitious framework for protecting nature</a> in December 2022.</p>
<p>As a group of environmental leaders <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/what-is-nature-positive-and-why-is-it-the-key-to-our-future/">wrote in 2021</a>: “A nature positive approach enriches biodiversity, stores carbon, purifies water and reduces pandemic risk. In short, a nature positive approach enhances the resilience of our planet and our societies.” </p>
<p>This is a dramatic shift from the mentality that has driven industrialization and global economic growth over the past 250 years. But it’s not new. As a researcher in the humanities and author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Wordsworth-Poet-Changed-World/dp/0300169647">Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World</a>,” I see nature positivity as a welcome revival of an outlook that English poet William Wordsworth and other Romantics proposed in the late 1700s.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cEavsIoMxn8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cellist Yo-Yo Ma plays ‘In the Gale,’ an original piece for The Birdsong Project, a collaboration to support bird conservation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The birth of the sublime</h2>
<p>In the preindustrial era, when life was dominated by hard manual labor, wild nature wasn’t viewed as a terribly attractive place. In the 1720s, writer Daniel Defoe, <a href="https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/tour-through-the-whole-island-of-great-britain-ebook.html">touring across the island of Great Britain</a>, denounced the mountains and lakes of northwest England as “the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over.” </p>
<p>The mountains were horrible to look at, impossible to pass over and, worst of all, had “no lead mines and veins of rich ore, no Coal Pits,” Defoe wrote. They were “all barren and wild, of no use or advantage either to Man or Beast.” </p>
<p>Attitudes began to change a generation later, with the expansion of a middle class that had the leisure and resources to enjoy a spot of tourism. Early guidebooks gave directions to viewpoints, or “stations,” that opened onto spectacularly beautiful vistas. </p>
<p>Philosophers and poets began to view natural phenomena such as ocean waves, lightning flashes over a mountain or the darkness of old-growth forests with awestruck pleasure rather than fear. They called these sights the “sublime,” a word that we still reach for when contemplating, say, the vastness of the Arctic or the Amazon. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/obituaries/barry-lopez-dead.html">Barry Lopez</a>, author of “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/103565/arctic-dreams-by-barry-lopez/">Arctic Dreams</a>,” once wrote, the “sublime encounter” with such places offers us a profound “resonance with a system of unmanaged, nonhuman-centered relationships”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cyUGplrq4eY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The aurora borealis, or northern lights, have become a modern tourist draw that attracts people to remote northern locations.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Romanticism emerged as the steam engine and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/spinning-jenny">spinning jenny</a> were driving mass urbanization. As workers flocked from farms to grimy cities in search of manufacturing jobs, a reaction set in: yearning for a return to nature. This became the hallmark of the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm">Romantic movement</a> that flourished across Europe through the mid-1800s. </p>
<h2>‘A sort of national property’</h2>
<p>Many writers, thinkers and artists contributed to this outpouring of nature-positivity. Beethoven’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2006/06/12/5478661/beethovens-symphony-no-6-in-f-major-op-68">Pastoral Symphony</a> and the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558">paintings of J. M. W. Turner</a> are examples. But in the English-speaking world, none were more influential than <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2020/04/radical-lessons-william-wordsworth-250-years-jonathan-bate-biography-review">Wordsworth</a> (1770-1850).</p>
<p>Born and raised in England’s Lake District, Wordsworth felt alienated from fellow students at Cambridge. As an aspiring journalist in London, he was stunned to discover that many people did not know their next door neighbor’s name. Only when Wordsworth returned to nature – first in the English west country and then when he went home to the Lakes – did he become his true self and write his greatest poetry. </p>
<p>In verse and prose, Wordsworth made a series of revolutionary claims. In the preface to his 1800 collection of poems, “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads_(1800)/Volume_2">Lyrical Ballads</a>,” he argued that men and women who live indigenously within a natural environment are uniquely in tune with “the essential passions of the heart” because their very humanity is “incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of a man with arms folded, standing on a rocky point" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Wordsworth on Helvellyn,’ a mountain in the Lake District (1842), by Benjamin Robert Haydon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth#/media/File:Wordsworth_on_Helvellyn_by_Benjamin_Robert_Haydon.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/guide-to-the-lakes-9780198848097">Guide to the Lakes</a>,” Wordsworth warned against such innovations as planting non-native conifers that spoiled the beauty and eroded the soil of his native region. Instead, he proposed preserving places of outstanding natural beauty like the Lake District as “a sort of national property.” </p>
<p>This idea later would help to <a href="https://exhibits.lib.byu.edu/wordsworth/">inspire the U.S. national park system</a> and England’s <a href="https://www.hdrawnsley.com/index.php/2-uncategorised/111-no-man-is-an-island">National Trust</a>. Today the concepts of <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-30-of-earths-surface-for-nature-means-thinking-about-connections-near-and-far-180296">conservation zones and protected areas</a> are central to the goal of a nature-positive world.</p>
<p>Inspired by Wordsworth’s idea that the health of human society depends on a healthy relationship with the environment, the great Victorian social thinker <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/john-ruskin-environmental-campaigner">John Ruskin</a> turned economic theory on its head. In polemical pamphlets and public lectures, Ruskin argued that the basis of what was then known as “political economy” should be not labor and capital, production and consumption, but “<a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/white-thorn-blossom">Pure Air, Water, and Earth</a>.” </p>
<p>Almost exactly 150 years later, on July 28, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3982508?ln=en">resolution</a> recognizing a universal human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CmTUNuTu27X/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Colonial conservation?</h2>
<p>Wordsworth’s influence on the conservation movement wasn’t entirely benign. Late in life, he lamented that his very advocacy of the beauty of the Lake District had brought in a mass tourist industry that had the potential to <a href="https://www.johndobson.info/Tourists/NumberedPages/Page_39.php">destroy the very beauty he sought to preserve</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, protecting wild places risks displacing indigenous peoples who have lived in harmony with the land for centuries. Creating conservation zones and protected areas in the rain forests of Central America and the Amazon basin has sometimes <a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/12/08/conservation-zones-exclude-indigenous-people-drive-deforestation-report/">shut out local tribes</a>. </p>
<p>Organizations such as the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/sierra-club-apologizes-founder-john-muir-s-racist-views-n1234695">Sierra Club</a> and the <a href="https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/29/century-theft-indians-national-park-service">U.S. National Park Service</a> are now striving to transcend this long history of “<a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/conservation-policy-and-indigenous-peoples">colonial conservation</a>.” The importance of working together with indigenous peoples and learning from their time-honored values and conservation practices received new attention at major conferences on climate change and biodiversity in 2022, although some observers argued that the resulting commitments <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/words-that-didnt-make-the-cut-what-happened-to-indigenous-rights-at-cop27/">fell short</a> of <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/cop15-biodiversity-conference-fails-protect-indigenous-peoples-rights">what was needed</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1605112015835566081"}"></div></p>
<p>In my view, Wordsworth knew that the truly nature-positive are those whose livelihoods and senses of self and community are wholly bound to their native places. As he wrote in “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads_(1800)/Volume_2/Michael">Michael</a>,” the great pastoral poem at the climax of “Lyrical Ballads”:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the Shepherd’s thoughts.
... these fields, these hills
Which were his living Being even more
Than his own blood—what could they less? had laid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,
The pleasure which there is in life itself.
</code></pre><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Bate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The idea that human activity threatens nature, and that it is important to protect wild places, dates back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Jonathan Bate, Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/195512
2022-12-01T21:39:12Z
2022-12-01T21:39:12Z
There’s no official French version of the 1867 Constitution Act. So is taking the oath to the King in French valid?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497740/original/file-20221128-20-fhf4vv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C0%2C7308%2C5179&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon at a press conference on Oct. 17, 2022, at the Québec City National Assembly. He repeated that he did not want to swear an oath to King Charles.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Karoline Boucher</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the election of the first Parti Québécois legislators in 1970, controversy over Québec MNAs swearing an oath to the sovereign before taking their seats in the National Assembly has stirred emotion and sparked heated debate.</p>
<p>PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/embarrassing-and-humiliating-pq-leader-seeks-support-against-swearing-oath-to-king-1.6112759">recently fuelled the controversy</a> by stating loudly and clearly that he will not swear allegiance to King Charles. His PQ colleagues followed suit as did Québec solidaire MNAs, who have since <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-solidaire-mnas-swear-oath-to-king-charles-iii-pq-still-holding-out">changed their minds</a>.</p>
<p>On Nov. 2, the president of the National Assembly, François Paradis, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/oath-to-king-mandatory-national-assembly-ruling-1.6636947">issued a ruling</a> that unequivocally stated MNAs cannot take their seat in the National Assembly without first swearing an oath to the King. He further ordered the sergeant-at-arms to expel any member who refused to comply.</p>
<p>On Dec. 1, the PQ MNAs were consequently <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/pq-denied-entry-1.6670622">denied entry</a> to the National Assembly’s Blue Room, the chamber where the debates and the votes take place.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the CAQ government of François Legault has <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-eyes-new-bill-to-make-oath-to-king-optional-but-will-it-be-enough-to-change-the-rules-1.6136233">pledged to table a bill</a> in the National Assembly that would allow Québec MNAs to opt out of the obligation to swear an oath to the King. </p>
<p>However, it’s unclear whether Québec’s legislature has the ability to unilaterally amend the relevant provision of the Constitution.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
À lire aussi :
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-quebec-politicians-must-swear-an-oath-to-the-king-even-if-they-dont-want-to-192807">Why Québec politicians must swear an oath to the King — even if they don't want to</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As constitutional scholars and language rights experts, we have been motivated by heightened interest in this issue to explore another question that is often ignored: is the parliamentary practice of Québec MNAs and federal MPs swearing an oath to the King in French constitutional?</p>
<h2>Only the English version is official</h2>
<p>The question arises because the obligation to swear an oath to the sovereign originates in Sec. 128 of the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-1.html">1867 Constitution Act</a>, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in English only. The official English version states that every member of a legislative assembly must take the oath by repeating the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I (Member’s name) do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to (His) Majesty (King Charles).”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are unofficial French versions of the 1867 Constitution Act, published on the websites of the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-1.html">Department of Justice Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.sqrc.gouv.qc.ca/relations-canadiennes/institutions-constitution/codifications/loi-constitutionnelle-1867.asp">Québec’s Secretariat for Canadian Relations</a>, where the oath has been translated. But these translations lack the force of law.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497660/original/file-20221128-25-u3xehn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497660/original/file-20221128-25-u3xehn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497660/original/file-20221128-25-u3xehn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497660/original/file-20221128-25-u3xehn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497660/original/file-20221128-25-u3xehn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497660/original/file-20221128-25-u3xehn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497660/original/file-20221128-25-u3xehn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">King Charles and Princess Anne follow the coffin of Queen Elizabeth during her state funeral at Westminster Abbey on Sept. 19, 2022. Swearing an oath to the new king has become controversial in Québec and Canada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/AP-Andreea Alexandru</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fact that no official French version of the 1867 Constitution Act exists in 2022 is nothing short of an aberration. This situation is all the more troubling given that Sec. 55 of the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html">1982 Constitution Act</a> requires the federal justice minister to draft a French version of the parts of Canada’s Constitution that, like the 1867 act, were enacted in English only for strictly historical reasons.</p>
<p>Once the French version has been drafted, which was done by 1990, it must be put forward for immediate enactment. However, the French version must be passed according to the constitutional amendment procedure. In the case of the 1867 Constitution Act, enacting the full French version requires the consent of all members of the federation. </p>
<p>Forty years after the patriation of the Constitution, this level of consent has still not been achieved due to a lack of political will.</p>
<h2>The option of taking the oath in French</h2>
<p>Despite the problems described above, both the House of Commons and the National Assembly allow their members to take the oath in French. In Québec, this practice dates back to the <a href="https://www.uottawa.ca/clmc/constitutional-act-1791">1791 Constitutional Act</a>, which specified in its original English version that new members of the legislative assembly of Lower Canada were to take an oath to the sovereign “in the English or French Language” (Sec. 29). </p>
<p>The <em>Journal of the House of Assembly</em> of Dec. 17, 1792, confirms that French-speaking members were allowed to take the oath in French.</p>
<p>Although the option of taking the oath “in the… French Language” is not explicitly enshrined in the <a href="https://www.uottawa.ca/clmc/union-act-1840">1840 Union Act</a> or the 1867 Constitution Act, the practice of allowing members of legislative assemblies to take the oath in French has been maintained publicly on a peaceful and continuous basis without protest.</p>
<p>Is this practice constitutionally justifiable, or should one conclude that the oath taken in French by members of legislative assemblies since the advent of the Canadian federation is invalid because of a technical defect? </p>
<p>Such a conclusion would have dramatic consequences, to say the least, as it would call into question the validity of the votes in which these members participated, and the validity of the laws passed under their leadership.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man speaks at a microphone, with flags in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497659/original/file-20221128-22-up9tm8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497659/original/file-20221128-22-up9tm8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497659/original/file-20221128-22-up9tm8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497659/original/file-20221128-22-up9tm8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497659/original/file-20221128-22-up9tm8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497659/original/file-20221128-22-up9tm8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497659/original/file-20221128-22-up9tm8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet talks about taking advantage of an opposition day to ask whether public servants should be obliged to swear allegiance to the king at a news conference in October 2022 in Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Taking the oath in French is constitutional</h2>
<p>In our view, the practice of allowing Québec MNAs and federal MPs to take their oaths in French is constitutional. The 1867 Constitution Act must be interpreted in light of Canada’s linguistic duality. </p>
<p>One of the objectives of the union of the British colonies into a federation was to grant the French-speaking minority a legislature in which its members would be in the majority and could legislate, in French, on important matters such as education, culture and private law.</p>
<p>Several provisions of the Constitution aim to protect minority rights. For example, Sec. 133 of the 1867 Constitution Act gives Québec MNAs and federal MPs the right to use either French or English in parliamentary debate. It would make little sense for this same law to require Québec MNAs and federal MPs to swear an oath in English as a prerequisite to using the official language of their choice in legislative proceedings.</p>
<p>It should also be noted that Sec. 128 of the 1867 Constitution Act does not state that the oath must be taken in English. To the extent that any ambiguity exists regarding the language of the oath, it must be resolved in a manner consistent with the constitutional principle of respect for minorities (recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada in its <em><a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1643/index.do">Reference re Secession of Quebec</a></em> judgment) while taking into account the primary purpose of this provision. </p>
<p>What really matters under Sec. 128 is the member’s affirmation of loyalty to the sovereign — who <a href="https://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.565206/publication.html">personifies the Canadian state</a> — and not the official language in which the oath is taken.</p>
<p>Since 1982, Sec. 16(1) of the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html">Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms</a> has eliminated any ambiguity at the federal level by providing that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“English and French are the official languages of Canada and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and government of Canada.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given that English and French have equal legal status in the House of Commons, it follows that federal MPs are able to swear the oath to the King in either language.</p>
<p>For these reasons, we believe that Québec MNAs and federal MPs can validly take their oaths in French, even though only the English version of the 1867 Constitution Act has official status. </p>
<p>Yet the fact remains that the patriation of the Constitution will remain an <a href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constitutional_forum/index.php/constitutional_forum/article/view/29447/21439">unfinished task</a> as long as the members of the federation fail to fulfil their duty to pass French versions of English-only constitutional legislation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195512/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>
No official French version of the Constitution Act of 1867 exists in 2022. This aberration calls into question the validity of taking an oath to the King in French.
Yan Campagnolo, Professor of Constitutional Law, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
François Larocque, Professor, Research Chair in Language Rights, Faculty of Law | Professeur, Chaire de recherche Droits et enjeux linguistiques, Faculté de droit. 2021 Fellow, Fondation Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/195150
2022-11-25T07:42:36Z
2022-11-25T07:42:36Z
World Cup concussion rules may be putting players’ lives at risk
<p>In the eighth minute of their Fifa men’s World Cup match against England, Iranian goalkeeper Alireza Beiranvand <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/iran-goalkeeper-alireza-beiranvand-in-hospital-after-fifa-s-concussion-disgrace-b860mblvr">collided face-first with a teammate</a>. The clash left the keeper bloodied, unsteady on his feet, and apparently disoriented - in no state to play. </p>
<p>But after lengthy treatment he played on. Within minutes he had fallen to the floor and was carried off on a stretcher. He was later taken to hospital. </p>
<p>Former England player, Jermaine Jenas, who was commentating on the match, said the situation was “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/iran-goalkeeper-head-injury-concussion-england-b2229703.html">ridiculous</a>” and “out of order”. Given the serious nature of Beiranvand’s injury, medical knowledge suggests he should have been taken off the pitch immediately. </p>
<p>But he allegedly refused to do so, <a href="https://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/why-iran-goalkeeper-alireza-beiranvand-not-substituted-head-injury-england/bltfb7ad2dc2c2bd772">according to some reports</a>, most likely because he knew that if he did go off, he wouldn’t be able to take part in the rest of the game. This highlights a problem with Fifa’s concussion protocols that is arguably putting players’ lives at risk.</p>
<p>A blow to the head, as Beiranvand took, or a blow to the body that causes the head and brain to move back and forth rapidly can cause <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/headsup/basics/concussion_whatis.html">concussion</a>, which is a type of brain injury. It’s not something that can be run off or played through, and attempting to do so is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21674795211027292">not a sign of toughness</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1594682488173236230"}"></div></p>
<p>Playing with a concussion is extremely dangerous – especially so if a player hits their head again. Sustaining a second brain injury before recovering from an earlier one can result in what’s known as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448119/">second impact syndrome</a>. </p>
<p>This happens when the brain swells rapidly after a person suffers a second head injury while symptoms from an earlier head injury or concussion are still present. And it <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672291/">can often be fatal</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/football-and-dementia-heading-must-be-banned-until-the-age-of-18-150575">Football and dementia: heading must be banned until the age of 18</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Repeated head impacts – for instance heading a football many times – can also <a href="https://www.headway.org.uk/news-and-campaigns/news/2021/study-reinforces-link-between-dementia-in-professional-footballers-and-heading-the-ball/">lead to neurodegenerative diseases</a> such as dementia or <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35937061/">chronic traumatic encephalopathy</a>.</p>
<h2>Fifa’s flawed protocols</h2>
<p>This is the first Fifa men’s World Cup to allow <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/concussion-subs-rules-world-cup-england-b2229692.html">concussion substitutions</a>. Teams can make an extra substitution if a player suffers or is suspected to have suffered a concussion. </p>
<p>Every game also has a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/may/06/fifa-to-bring-in-concussion-spotters-for-qatar-world-cup">concussion spotter</a>”. This is a member of the medical team who sits in the stands with access to video replays and whose job it is to identify possible brain injuries. Concussion spotters have been used at rugby union fixtures and in the <a href="https://operations.nfl.com/gameday/behind-the-scenes/atc-spotters/">NFL for some time</a>.</p>
<p>Fifa’s <a href="https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/11dc529ca641c307/original/FIFA-Medical-Concussion-Protocol.pdf">medical concussion protocol</a> indicates that after an initial (on-pitch) examination an off-pitch or quiet-area examination should follow. This step is vital and the need for it to be conducted in quiet is important. It also takes considerable time, particularly as signs and symptoms of concussion can be delayed - sometimes not appearing <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/head-injury-and-concussion/">for up to three weeks</a>. </p>
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<p>Yet while <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a54j94TfDho&t=1s">Fifa emphasises</a> the need for off-field assessment, it does not allow players to be temporarily removed to allow a full assessment in a quiet environment. And because coaches want their best players on the pitch, athletes are often pressured to play through injuries and are <a href="https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/news/blog/what_sam_burgess_face_tells_us_about_australian_sport">heroised for doing so</a>. </p>
<p>Team doctors have even been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/06/chelsea-doctor-eva-carneiro-jose-mourinho-insult-filha-filho-da-puta-tribunal-told">abused by managers for treating injured</a> players and there are also stories of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/07/31/athletes-can-easily-trick-popular-concussion-test-study-finds/">players being coached</a> on how to “cheat” <a href="http://en.espn.co.uk/scrum/rugby/story/208943.html">concussion tests</a> so they can remain on the pitch. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, an <a href="https://concussionfoundation.org/node/3591">open letter</a> called on the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which determines the game’s rules, to allow temporary concussion substitutions. It was signed by former players, leading scientists, advocates and the family of former players. IFAB <a href="https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sports-world-cup-qatar-doha-17634c37923d6b999c9e548390fec68c">rejected this call</a>. </p>
<p>As a co-founder of the <a href="https://abiresearchnetwork.wordpress.com/">Acquired Brain Injury Research Network</a>, I believe this decision is wrong, and the rules need to be changed to allow players to be temporarily substituted from play for assessment. Knowing that the substitution is not permanent removes some of the pressure on players to stay on regardless of their condition. And away from the field of play, a more suitable and thorough assessment can then take place, meaning the player can return if they are fit to do so. </p>
<p>Fifa responded to these allegations saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If there is a suspicion of a concussive injury at any stage, Fifa encourages all team doctors to remove the player from the match or training session and assess and treat them appropriately. </p>
<p>While the ultimate responsibility in terms of concussion diagnosis and management lies with the relevant team doctor, Fifa expects all teams to act in the best interests of their players and their health.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How to spot concussion</h2>
<p>While football’s attitude towards <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350840290_The_shifting_media_discourse_surrounding_head_injuries_in_association_football">concussion has improved</a>, results are still put above the health of players. Ultimately, the decision to play on should not be in the hands of players or anyone associated with the team. </p>
<p>There has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/21/iran-goalkeeper-head-clash-headway-world-cup">widespread media criticism</a> of the handling of Beiranvand’s injury. This is a positive change as previously <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167479520948048">reporting was full of misconceptions</a>, incorrect information and worrying attitudes - particularly from former players. But there is still much confusion over concussion.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sport-induced-traumatic-brain-injury-families-reveal-the-hell-of-living-with-the-condition-172828">Sport-induced traumatic brain injury: families reveal the 'hell' of living with the condition</a>
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<p>Each concussion is <a href="https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/3615/4718">experienced differently</a> so they can be hard to identify, but there are things that everyone can look out for. The <a href="https://concussionfoundation.org/concussion-resources/what-is-concussion">symptoms of having a concussion</a> include a headache or dizziness, memory loss, sleep symptoms and emotional symptoms such as anxiety. </p>
<p>There are also visible signs that anyone watching may be able to spot. Following the phrase “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/feb/01/peter-robinson-schools-rugby-brain-injury-concussion-campaign">If in doubt, sit them out</a>” may save a person’s life. A player should be taken out of the game and medical attention sought if any of these are seen:</p>
<ul>
<li>problems with balance </li>
<li>glazed look in the eyes</li>
<li>delayed response to questions</li>
<li>amnesia</li>
<li>vomiting</li>
<li>inappropriate crying or laughter</li>
<li>forgetting instructions</li>
<li>confusion over position or the current game or score</li>
<li>loss of consciousness.</li>
</ul>
<p>Alireza Beiranvand’s injury adds to a growing list of players that have remained in <a href="https://www.headway.org.uk/news-and-campaigns/news/2022/premier-league-needs-to-define-what-doubt-means/">matches after a brain injury</a>. Here’s hoping this is a wake-up call for Fifa and the International Football Association Board, because the current rules do not appear to be protecting players.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Parry is affiliated with the Concussion Legacy Foundation (UK)</span></em></p>
World Cup 2022: the risk of playing on with concussion and why the rules in football need to change.
Keith Parry, Deputy Head Of Department in Department of Sport & Event Management, Bournemouth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.