Positive thinking

Javier Garcia-Bernardo, University of Amsterdam ; Eelke Heemskerk, University of Amsterdam ; Frank Takes, Leiden University , and Jan Fichtner, University of Amsterdam First came the Panama Papers , then the Bahamas-Leaks . Journalists continue to shed light on and raise a public outcry over the offshore financial centres that corporations use to reduce their tax bill – something that is still being challenged in court . A new study has now uncovered all the world’s corporate tax havens and, for the first time, revealed the intermediary countries that companies use to funnel their money into these places. Published on July 24 in the academic journal Scientific Reports , the paper Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network shows that offshore finance is not the exclusive business of exotic, far-flung places such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. The Netherlands and the United Kingdom also play a crucial – alt...

Haifaa Jawad, University of Birmingham In an unexpected move that surprised everyone, including his own people, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia has suddenly passed a royal decree permitting women to drive . His stunning decision comes after years of the ban, which was justified using Islam as a pretext. The Council of Senior Religious Scholars, which is close to the royal family and is crucial for shoring up its legitimacy, seems to have strongly supported the move, stressing that the decision was in the interest of Saudi society – this despite the fact these same religious leaders have opposed women’s right to drive for decades, accusing any women who dare to take the wheel of having lost their virginity and integrity. Similarly, the official Saudi media portrayed the decree as a historic step – but presented it as a favour or a royal benevolence boosted upon women, not a legitimate right long overdue. Despite the noise that accompanied the dec...

    Oonagh Robison, University of Glasgow There are around 700,000 young carers across the UK looking after a parent or a family member. In Glasgow, these young people make up around 12% of children aged 11-18, and now a new study has found that their duties and responsibilities are preventing around half of them from going on to university or college after school. According to a 2014 NHS survey of 11,000 pupils across the city, one in eight secondary school-age pupils in Glasgow is providing care for someone at home. Not only do these pupils care for someone with a disability, long-term illness, mental health or substance issue, they also have poorer outcomes for their own health and future expectations. Our new study for the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) found that when asked what they thought they would do once they had left school, young carers were almost 50% less likely to say that they thought they would go on to university or colle...

Jonathan Parry, University of Birmingham When you think of child soldiers, it might conjure up images of young children far away, taken from their homes and forced to take part in war and fighting, often held against their will. It may surprise you then to learn the UK employs child soldiers – about 23% of army personnel were recruited before their 18th birthday . By recruiting 16-year-olds, the UK is an international outlier, an honour it shares with Iran, North Korea, and Zimbabwe. No other member of the EU or NATO, or permanent member of UN Security Council, recruits so young. This policy has earned criticism from humanitarian organisations – including the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child . And the UK public seems to agree – nearly 80% think the age of enlistment should be at least 18 . And yet this is something the UK government arguably wants to see more of. A recently published government report on military recruitment, by the MP Mark Francois , wa...

Wendy Hall, University of British Columbia How much sleep, and what type of sleep, do our children need to thrive? In parenting, there aren’t often straightforward answers, and sleep tends to be contentious. There are questions about whether we are overstating children’s sleep problems . Yet we all know from experience how much better we feel, and how much more ready we are to take on the day, when we have had an adequate amount of good quality sleep. I was one of a panel of experts at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine to review over 800 academic papers examining relationships between children’s sleep duration and outcomes. Our findings suggested optimal sleep durations to promote children’s health . These are the optimal hours (including naps) that children should sleep in every 24-hour cy And yet these types of sleep recommendations are still controversial. Many of us have friends or acquaintances who say that they can function perfectly on four hours of sl...

Tara Coltman-Patel, Nottingham Trent University Obesity is a highly stigmatised condition. Those with obesity are frequently subject to prejudice and ridicule at home, school, work and even from health care professionals. Every day, they face social rejection and are deemed lazy, unattractive, unmotivated and unhappy . Alarmingly, many obese individuals feel unable to challenge such stigma, so they passively accept and sometimes believe it . We live in a world where we are constantly reminded that obesity is a “crisis”, an “epidemic”, that it is crippling the economy, and that it is a burden on society. These ideologies are disseminated throughout the news media, social media, by politicians and by health care professionals – and they are the birthplace of weight stigma. Weight stigma can manifest itself in several different ways. It can be overt, such as verbal and physical abuse, but it can also be indirect and subtle. My research focuses on the subtle and subcons...

Patricia Hogwood, University of Westminster Angela Merkel will continue as chancellor of Germany. But following an election that saw the rise of smaller parties – most notably the far right – her fourth term will probably be an eventful one in ways she would not wish for. Early exit polls show the Union parties (Merkel’s CDU and sister party CSU) in top place with just under 33%. They did nevertheless lose almost 9% over their previous election result of 2013. The Social Democratic Party (SPD), coalition partner to the Union parties, finished a distant second, with just over 20% of the vote. For the SPD, this is a historic low: almost 6% down on the last election. Party leader Martin Schulz failed to come up to scratch in a lacklustre campaign. Four smaller parties appear to have managed to meet the 5% threshold to qualify for seats in parliament. The right-wing populist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), achieved a dubious milestone in post-war German histo...

Matteo Fumagalli, University of St Andrews This is not the first clash between members of the stateless and discriminated Muslim community and Myanmar’s armed forces, nor the first Rohingya refugee crisis. Yet the latest military offensive is unprecedented in brutality and scale. An account of the timing of the current crisis should consider how Myanmar’s government found itself in such a favourable global environment, with its giant neighbours India and – crucially – China embracing the government’s official narrative . A politically distant and distracted US administration was also convenient. Disenfranchisement and discrimination are nothing new for the Rohingya population, a community of 1.3m people settled in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar’s Rakhine state . YouTube/AP. With domestic dynamics and popular attitudes towards the Rohingyas unchanged since violence erupted in 2012, and ample opportunities in recent ye...

Emily Helms, University of Essex The United Nations General Assembly voted this summer to cut $US600m from its peacekeeping budget. This is the money which pays for more than 100,000 troops, police and civilians in 16 missions across the world. The reduction in funds was pushed for by the Trump administration , and immediately labelled a success by the White House. But there are fears that the spending cuts hailed by US Ambassador Nikki Haley could come at a huge price. Haley was widely criticised after she boasted of over half a billion dollars being slashed from the peacekeeping budget. “We’re only getting started,” she added enthusiastically. Peacekeeping consists of more than a military presence. As well maintaining ceasefires and agreements, it is intimately involved in the political aspects of the peace process. Work by civilians can drive political engagement and create environments conducive to lasting peace. Even a cursory read o...

Simon Usherwood, University of Surrey In A Room With A View, an English woman’s life is changed profoundly by a trip to Florence. Whether Theresa May had EM Forster’s classic novel in mind when planning her speech on Brexit is moot, but it is clear that a Lucy Honeychurch-style escape from the cares of the world is not currently on the cards for her. This speech mattered, because it was May’s last opportunity to unblock the Article 50 negotiations before the European Council meets in October to decide whether there has been “sufficient progress” to move to the second phase of Brexit talks – when the two sides will negotiate a transition arrangement for the UK’s departure from the European Union. The first phase of talks has run into the sand somewhat. The initial topics of financial liabilities, citizens’ rights and the Irish border have proved more difficult to unpick than had been anticipated, not least because the UK has been unwilling (or unable) to settle on ...