Positive thinking

   Nick Bentley, Keele University Leading Conservative Brexiteers, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, wrote recently to the UK prime minister, Theresa May, and – surprise, surprise – the text of the letter duly found its way into the hands of the press. It contained a set of demands on how to run Britain’s withdrawal from the EU in language that was described by an unnamed minister as “Orwellian”. For which, read: sinister. But what do we understand by the word – and how has its meaning changed over the years since George Orwell’s death in 1950? Orwell’s career as a writer was long and productive – at one time or another he produced novels, journalism, memoirs, political philosophy, literary criticism and cultural commentary. But the term “Orwellian” most often relates to his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , completed a couple of years before his death. The novel presents a vision of a Britain taken over by a totalitarian regime in which the state exerts ...

   David A Oakley, UCL and Peter Halligan, Cardiff University Everyone knows what it feels like to have consciousness: it’s that self-evident sense of personal awareness, which gives us a feeling of ownership and control over the thoughts, emotions and experiences that we have every day. Most experts think that consciousness can be divided into two parts: the experience of consciousness (or personal awareness), and the contents of consciousness, which include things such as thoughts, beliefs, sensations, perceptions, intentions, memories and emotions. It’s easy to assume that these contents of consciousness are somehow chosen, caused or controlled by our personal awareness – after all, thoughts don’t exist until until we think them. But in a new research paper in Frontiers of Psychology, we argue that this is a mistake. We suggest that our personal awareness does not create, cause or choose our beliefs, feelings or perceptions. Instead, the contents of co...

Ben Murphy, University of Liverpool The UN has used its first opportunity since the Brexit referendum to send a powerful message. In a significant diplomatic setback, UK judge Christopher Greenwood has lost the seat he has held on the International Court of Justice since 2008. This is the first time the UK has not been represented on the court since its inception in 1946. As the postmortem begins, there are undoubtedly a number of contributing factors in this decision. But the potential significance of Brexit should not be ignored. The principal judicial organ of the UN holds elections every three years, with five vacancies each time around. This year, judges from France, Somalia and Brazil were reelected without incident. If bookmakers were offering a market on the election, the odds on the two remaining seats being filled by Greenwood and Dalveer Bhandari from India (who were both seeking reelection) would have been very short indeed. Instead, Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’...

   Rupert Read, University of East Anglia The world is witnessing an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes, droughts, floods and famines. A significant part of this is attributable to the temperature rises and disruption to the weather systems that human industrial activity has triggered . Yet at this very moment, when the world needs new protections to mitigate dangerous climate change more than ever, Britain faces a struggle to maintain its current levels of environmental protection. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union has set in place a process that, if it continues, jeopardises the future of many of the country’s most important environmental protections. In a recent briefing to MPs , my colleague Tim O'Riordan and I focused on the threat to what’s called the precautionary principle , and why it matters for the future of environmental law after Brexit. The precautionary principle is present in UK law mainly by way of its presence in ...

Setor Kunutsor, University of Bristol Things are hotting up in the world of sauna research. Previously, anecdotal claims of possible benefits were rarely backed up by medical evidence. But recent studies have shown that taking a regular sauna can be extremely good for your health – alleviating and preventing the risk of common acute and chronic conditions. Sauna “bathing” is a form of passive heat therapy which originates from Finland and is mostly associated with Nordic countries. It is used mainly for pleasure and relaxation, and involves spending short periods of time (usually five to 20 minutes) in temperatures of 80°C to 100°C, interspersed with moments of cooling-off in a pool or shower. Although there are other forms of heat therapy such as Turkish baths, infrared saunas, and Waon therapy, the traditional Finnish sauna is the most examined to date. In a 2015 study , scientists from the University of Eastern Finland recorded the sauna bathing habits of 2,300 men...

Nicholas Lord, University of Manchester Remember, remember, the 5th of November. Not, this time, for gunpowder, treason and plot. But for the news break by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of the so-called “Paradise Papers”, a leak of 13.4m files detailing the financial behaviour of individual and corporate elites, many of whom use offshore financial centres to avoid paying tax in their home countries. This is a major leak that not only questions the opportunities available to the wealthy in arranging their taxes, but also the extent to which governments facilitate such enduring arrangements for the benefit of an elite minority. Tax takes many forms: income tax, corporate tax, land tax, capital gains tax, death tax, inheritance tax, sales tax, customs and excise tax, and value-added tax are all available to governments. Plus many more. Paying our taxes to fund public policy initiatives and investments is a central necessity of most s...

Jo Wilding, University of Brighton Ever since changes were introduced in 2013 to the way legal aid works in England and Wales, campaigners , judges and politicians have been telling the government that many people are now unable to access legal advice and representation. In October, the government announced a long-awaited review of the changes made in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO). This is urgently needed and welcome. My ongoing research with asylum lawyers suggests that the changes have created serious difficulties for people to access legal aid, even for cases that should still be covered by it, such as asylum, trafficking, certain types of housing law and welfare benefits. It is also increasingly difficult for lawyers to provide legal aid for these kinds of cases. Rates of pay for all areas of civil legal aid work were cut by 10% in 2011, before LAPSO took almost all non-asylum immigration law out of the scope of legal...

Ian Hamilton, University of York ; Harry Sumnall, Liverpool John Moores University , and Mark Monaghan, Loughborough University There have long been scare stories about drugs so we need to be careful when interpreting new drug use data. But recent reports suggest that crack cocaine use is on the rise again. Crack emerged in the Americas in the late 1970s as a relatively cheap and transportable form of cocaine that could be more easily distributed than the powdered variety and soon led to what was widely described as an “epidemic” , especially in the US. Supporters of drug reform in the US have long highlighted the uneven application of the law concerning crack and powder cocaine. Referred to as the “100-1 Rule” , until the passing of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act , possession of one gram of crack in America was treated as the equivalent of 100g of powder cocaine. As crack use was associated with the black, urban poor and powder cocaine with the more affluent wh...

Eva M Krockow, University of Leicester ; Andrew M Colman, University of Leicester , and Briony Pulford, University of Leicester World Kindness Day is a global 24-hour celebration dedicated to paying-it-forward and focusing on the good. We are encouraged to perform acts of kindness such as giving blood, cleaning a communal microwave at work, or volunteering at a nursing home. Of course, even without the encouragement of an international awareness day, kindness and selflessness are widespread among both humans and animals. Many people donate to charity and feel significantly happier as a direct result of doing so. In the animal kingdom, many species show kindness by refraining from violence when settling conflicts. Instead they may use comparatively harmless fighting conventions. Typical examples include male fiddler crabs fighting over a burrow but never crushing each other’s bodies with their huge pincers, rattlesnakes wrestling without ever biting each other or Bon...

Diya Gupta, King's College London During the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, an Indian lieutenant wrote a letter to his beloved. Here I am penning this to you in the middle of one of the biggest nights in the history of this war. Love, I am sure by the time you receive this letter you will guess correctly as to where I am. I bet you, you wouldn’t like to stay here a single minute… Oh! it is terrible. Yet in the midst of this commotion, I sit here, on my own kit-bag and scribble these few lines to my love for I do not really know when I will get the next opportunity to write to you. The lieutenant formed part of the largest volunteer army in the world, 2.5m men from undivided India – what is today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – who served the British during World War II. They were fighting for Britain at a time when the struggle for India’s freedom from British rule was at its most incendiary. The two world wars will be remembered on Novemb...