Positive thinking

   Gillian Richards, Nottingham Trent University The UK has one of the widest attainment gaps in education within the developed world. This effectively means that if you are born in the UK to a family living in disadvantaged circumstances, you are much less likely to achieve your potential than your peers. And research shows it may take another 50 years to close this gap . Many young people who grow up in an area that is considered a “cold spot” of social mobility – like many of the UK’s seaside towns and former coal mining communities – are caught up in cycles of deprivation. This affects their aspirations, academic self-confidence and adult life choices. My recently published research looks at the realities of what it’s like to grow up in one of these areas. I spoke to 89 schoolgirls living in a former mining community – designated by the government to be within the UK’s worst 10% in terms of deprivation. In the community i looked at in my study, most me...

Erica Consterdine, University of Sussex Immigration policy under Theresa May’s tenure might be the most draconian in Britain’s history. Never has an administration focused so much time and effort on an anti-migration policy – and one that is failing by all counts at that. Countless restrictive measures have been placed on almost every migration stream since 2010, when the coalition government set itself a flawed net migration target. This was driven by a Conservative manifesto pledge to reduce annual immigration from hundreds of thousands of people to tens of thousands. Behind the changes to the immigration rules has been an overarching policy to create a “hostile environment”. The public is now seeing the harsh and inhumane implications of this policy, with the Windrush generation , who helped to rebuild post-war Britain, being denied their rights. But what is this hostile environment and where did this policy come from? The story starts back in 2004, when the Labour...

   Matthew White, Sheffield Hallam University In light of the Facebook data scandal more people are beginning to challenge the web’s pervasive surveillance culture. But few British citizens seem to be aware of the government’s own online surveillance regime – significant parts of which have been deemed unlawful. The UK government broke EU law under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act ( DRIPA ), the Court of Appeal ruled in January. The regime – colloquially known as the Snoopers’ Charter – had allowed public bodies to have access to the records of British citizens’ web activity and phone records, without any suspicion that a serious crime had been committed. This activity took place without any independent oversight. DRIPA was rushed through parliament in 2014 by the then Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government after the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruled that the EU-wide Data Retention Directive (DRD) was “invalid”, due...

   Rick Greenough, De Montfort University Sweden has built the first smart road that will allow electric vehicles to charge as they drive . The eRoadArlanda pilot scheme, which covers two kilometres of road outside Stockholm, is an attempt to solve one of the biggest challenges that the transport industry faces. Namely, how to move freight and people in a way that neither damages the climate through greenhouse gas emissions nor the quality of air through nitrogen oxide pollution . The eRoadArlanda scheme is supposed to extend the range of electric vehicles beyond what was previously possible. Yet as an engineer, I have concerns about the durability of this road. Even more significantly, the cost of the technology and the disruption that building it causes is likely to restrict any mass scale replication. If this solution cannot be widely replicated then it is really no solution at all. Instead, a serious attempt to reduce hazardous emissions should focus on m...

   Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham Theresa May , the UK prime minister, and Amber Rudd , home secretary, have both apologised for the distress caused by the treatment of the so-called “Windrush generation”, in the face of mounting pressure from MPs and the wider public. Having been accused by the Home Office of residing in the UK without authorisation, these Commonwealth-born, long-term British residents have been denied access to services and threatened with deportation. Now, the unfolding scandal is stoking concerns among EU nationals in the UK, who also exercised freedom of movement to come to the UK, and are being asked to produce retroactive proof of their right to remain in the emerging post-Brexit scenario. The Windrush generation arrived in the UK, not as migrants, but as British subjects exercising a form of “freedom of movement” within the borders of the British territories. The British Nationality Act 1948 imparted the status of citizensh...

   Erik P Millstone, University of Sussex and Tim Lang, City, University of London The UK’s food safety regime is not working properly. It is failing to ensure an acceptably safe food supply. Food poisoning rates are too high; confirmed cases of the Campylobacter bacteria, for example, increased by about 46% from 2008 to 2012 . The food supply is too dirty; since 2014 the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has said that poultry isn’t clean enough that it can safely be washed without the risk of spreading infection. Meanwhile, consumer trust is understandably low, and the food industry is focused on the uncertainties arising from Brexit . In these circumstances, for the UK’s food regulator, the FSA, to be planning a major reorganisation is, at the very least, poor timing. We argue it is worse. The programme of change the FSA plans – known as Regulating Our Future – will do little or nothing to improve food safety or nutritional public health. But it will do a lot ...