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Drag Race Down Under is back for a fourth season, only this time something is different. The Australasian franchise is no longer helmed by the eponymous RuPaul. Instead, this season the main judge and host is RuPaul’s long-term “best Judy” Michelle Visage, a woman from New Jersey who came to fame in the late 1980s as a member of dance-pop group Seduction.

Visage has worked as a panellist and judge on all US variations of Drag Race since 2011, and on the UK and “Down Under” (Australia-New Zealand) spinoffs.

On Down Under, Visage has now become the authority who determines who sashays and who stays in the fierce contest between ten queens.

This promotion has significance far beyond Visage’s own career. Importantly, it has prompted debate in drag communities that brings to light tensions across queer gender politics, and also reveals shifts in drag culture – for which Drag Race’s huge global popularity is largely responsible.

The mother of queens

On one hand, Visage’s elevation to host can be seen as a milestone for cisgender women in the world of drag, a culture long dominated by cisgender gay men such as RuPaul himself.

Along with the rising mainstream profile of drag over recent years, a growing number of cis women have identified and performed as drag queens (a category sometimes called “bioqueens”).

In 2021, UK Drag Race contestant Victoria Scone made headlines as the first cis woman to compete on a Drag Race franchise.

More recently, runaway pop sensation Chappell Roan – famous for elaborate costumes and makeup – has claimed the mantle of drag queen. Cis women have also performed as drag kings for decades, though “kinging” remains comparatively marginal and under-resourced.

Visage taking the reins is something categorically different: a position of power and authority within the drag world conferred by no less than RuPaul, the world’s preeminent drag artist.

It’s one thing for a cis woman to self-identify as a drag artist; it is quite another to be anointed as a drag gatekeeper by the individual who almost single-handedly brought this queer artform to the mainstream.

Although notoriously reluctant to allow trans women to compete in Drag Race, RuPaul has no qualms about extending queendom to Visage. In the foreword to Visage’s 2015 memoir The Diva Rules, RuPaul wrote Visage “knows the world of drag (she’s a drag queen herself)”.

RuPaul wrote Visage ‘knows the world of drag (she’s a drag queen herself)’.
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Not so long ago, cisgender heterosexual women in gay culture were often dismissed as “fag hags”, a sometimes misogynistic (and also homophobic) label that reduced them to mere hangers-on.

Now, Visage is in the spotlight. The season’s blocking, editing, wardrobe and dialogue all position Visage as direct successor and equal to RuPaul.

There can be no doubt: on Drag Race Down Under, this cis woman is now the mother of all queens.

More than an ally

Since Visage was announced as host, Drag Race fandom has been alight with debate, with many concluding Visage lacks necessary credentials.

Online disputes among Drag Race fans flared on Reddit, asking if “they couldn’t find an Aussie?” and questioning whether Visage could legitimately be considered a drag queen herself.

Most conspicuously, Willam – a US Drag Race celebrity alum – was indignant “a drag ally is the host of a drag show”.

On the podcast Race Chaser, Willam said:

Why would you have someone who is not a drag queen hosting a drag show? […] It’s like someone who is coeliac hosting a baking competition.

But Willam seems to have missed some new developments, as well as certain histories, in drag culture.

Visage and RuPaul first met in New York’s ballroom scene, a subculture established in the mid-20th century by Black and Latinx queers, especially trans women (or “femme queens”) in response to racism in white-dominated drag spaces.

In ballroom, individuals are adopted into Houses, who then compete in categories such as “Vogue” (a dance style inspired by fashion modelling) or “Face” (a beauty category that focuses on the contestant’s face) at regular balls. Ballroom and drag are not synonymous, but ballroom has been a strong influence on contemporary drag culture and Drag Race.

Visage entered the ballroom world in the late 1980s, adopted into the House of Magnifique, becoming a top vogue dancer. As she said in her memoir, she was a “wild drag child”.

As a white, cisgender heterosexual woman, Visage was an outlier in ballroom but, nonetheless, the community became her “surrogate family”. During these years Visage created her drag persona. Born and raised as Michelle Shupack, she changed her named to Visage (French for “face”) after winning the Face category at many balls.

Drag and ballroom were once necessarily peripheral. They were spaces marginalised queer people carved out for themselves where they could celebrate, empower and compete, setting their own rules.

Yet, in the past decade, the global Drag Race phenomenon and social expansions of gender categories have changed how people engage with these previously underground subcultures.

All drag is valid

In this new drag-world order, Visage can ascend to a rightful place as a bona fide drag queen – a status she claims with “drag queen” tattooed on her upper thigh.

For Visage, all genders have equal claim to the artform:

I think that trans women do drag just like biological women do drag, just like trans men do drag […] all drag is valid, and all drag is welcome.

As the drag artist Michelle Visage, her name has become synonymous with a distinctive aesthetic: leopard print, exaggerated make-up, big hair, long nails and (until recently) artificial DD breasts – a high-camp nod to her New Jersey roots.

Michelle Visage’s elevation to Drag Race Down Under host is a milestone for cis women in drag.
Stan

“This is my shield, my superhero costume,” Visage explains. “When I put on my makeup, my drag, I feel like I can take on the world.”

She may not yet have conquered the world, but this queen has certainly conquered Drag Race, forging a new frontier for cis women in drag culture. Läs mer…

The global shortage of trained nurses has been described as a health emergency by the International Council of Nurses.

In response, Australia and other countries have developed nursing workforce strategies to protect their health systems. But there has been no response to calls for a similar approach in New Zealand.

Registered nurses make up the largest proportion of the healthcare workforce, in New Zealand and elsewhere. A sustainable supply of culturally and clinically competent nurses is fundamental to a safe health system. But because of funding constraints, New Zealand is grappling with both a nursing shortage and an oversupply.

Earlier this year, hundreds of experienced international nurses registered to work in New Zealand struggled to find jobs. At the same time, nurses continue to report being short-staffed, with no back-filling for staff on leave or off sick.

It is difficult to respond to rapid changes in demand because the time it takes to train a nurse creates a significant supply lag. But not maximising nursing investment makes little strategic sense and I argue New Zealand urgently needs a workforce strategy.

Investing in growing our own

Preparing a registered nurse for practice requires significant investment. It takes three years of full-time undergraduate or two years of full-time postgraduate study.

The study pathway is intensive, with at least 1,000 hours spent in clinical learning across multiple health settings in primary and community care, mental health and hospital services. This includes undertaking rostered and rotating shift work as preparation for registered nursing practice.

The Tertiary Education Commission investment in undergraduate nursing represents around a third of all undergraduate health funding and 7% of all undergraduate funding in the tertiary sector.

In 2023, 1,784 new New Zealand-educated registered nurses were available for employment in the system. This represents a cumulative national investment of around $70 million.

“Cost-containment” cuts previously led Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand to freeze employment of graduate nurses into the hospital system. This risks not only losing these valuable new health professionals but also reducing new enrolments into nursing programmes.

Nursing programmes are financially challenging. Many nursing graduates incur considerable debt related to their tuition fees (around NZ$30,000 across the whole programme), plus the additional costs associated with the clinical learning requirements (immunisations, clinical equipment, uniforms and travel).

Recent announcements in Australia of financial support for health students to address placement poverty (financial hardship during unpaid clinical placements) have been welcomed. There are no plans for similar initiatives in New Zealand.

Potential triple impact on nursing

Addressing the financial barriers to nursing students completing their education and subsequent employment is critical to achieving equitable access to healthcare and universal health coverage.

Creating a sustainable nursing workforce has a triple impact in supporting better health outcomes, the economic growth of communities and gender equality.

The latest government policy statement on health sets an objective for a culturally competent and homegrown workforce that reflects the population of New Zealand.

According to the Nursing Council’s 2023 annual report, New Zealand’s current nursing workforce is making slow progress toward better reflecting the population it serves. But we have a solution within the current body of nursing students.

Of the 8,885 students enrolled in nursing bachelor programmes in 2023, 18% identified as Māori, 15% as one or more Pacific ethnicities, and 25% as Asian. This student body (if retained) will have a positive impact on the current profile of nursing in New Zealand.

There is also an international expectation that developed countries reduce their reliance on the recruitment of qualified nurses from less developed countries, which places their health systems in peril. New Zealand ranked second in the OECD in having the lowest proportion of domestically educated nurses in 2021, at just 70.1%.

Most other OECD countries in that year reported that 90-95% of their nurses were domestically educated. Australia is an outlier at 82%.

But now New Zealand’s proportion of domestically-trained nurses has declined even further to only 53.7%. Our current reliance on internationally qualified nurses is not a sustainable strategy and risks not delivering on government workforce policy and equity targets for Māori.

Where to from here

Registered nurses are critical to the sustainability of health systems globally. New Zealand will not be able to continue to pull from overseas jurisdictions. We need to grow and keep our own domestic nursing graduates to meet government targets around the health workforce.

The are some potential solutions already in place. The current voluntary bonding scheme could start in the final year of the pre-registration programme to address some of the placement poverty issues.

Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand could explore models such as the New South Wales state government’s GradStart approach which provides a job with the option of metro-to-rural or rural-to-rural employment exchanges offered through a supported central system.

There is a critical need for the development and resourcing of a New Zealand nursing workforce strategy that considers recruitment (growing our own) and retention (keeping them). Both are critical elements of a sustainable workforce plan informed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

This would support the system to proactively plan for and resource a more sustainable approach to protect the investment we have already made in nursing education. Läs mer…

Why do people attend college or university? While there are many reasons to do so, a widely accepted outcome of completing post-secondary education is increased opportunity. Gaining and keeping stable employment at a higher income than a high school graduate is significant.

In Canada, median incomes for bachelor’s degree graduates are 47 per cent higher then those with a high school diploma. Nearly 75 per cent of employment growth in Canada is connected to occupations requiring a post-secondary credential. Currently, the majority of those with lived experience in Canada’s child welfare system are not completing high school. This contributes to youth unemployment.

More targeted efforts by provincial and federal governments are required to monitor and evaluate health, social, economic and educational impacts on the lives of those who have experience with child welfare systems.

Recent study on youth homelessness

A recent national study on youth homelessness by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness included 1,103 youth respondents who experienced homelessness. Among these youth from 47 different communities across Canada, more than 60 per cent had a history of involvement with the child welfare system.

A man walks through an encampment on Notre-Dame Street in the east end of Montréal in October 2024.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes.

Those with experience in the child welfare system face emotional challenges related to trauma, abuse and neglect. In addition, they contend with multiple changes in their living situations and schools. As a result, they generally have less education: for example, former youth in care are less likely to have graduated from high school or to complete post-secondary education than those without care experience. Consequently, they earn less income as adults.

Post-secondary graduation has the potential to transform lives and reduce unemployment. It is also a pathway for historically marginalized populations to improve their life chances and overall quality of life.

Black, Indigenous, 2SLGBTQ+ youth

Existing data indicate that post-secondary education not only contributes to employment and income over a person’s lifetime. It also positively impacts health and social outcomes, making education a key social determinant of health.

Education is a key social determinant of health.
(Pexels/Newman Photographs)

Despite this, Black, Indigenous and 2SLGBTQ+ youth who are over-represented in the Canadian child welfare system are vastly under-represented in post-secondary programs.

Providing better access to post-secondary education for former youth in care can help improve their individual circumstances. It can also address intersecting social, employment and income disparities more broadly.

Addressing barriers

Data from a recent Ipsos poll conducted in April 2024 indicates that 91 per cent of Canadians agreed that post-secondary education is beneficial for the future prospects of youth in Canada. The poll was conducted for the Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada.

Ninety-three per cent of those surveyed felt that youth in care should receive equal access to education. The same percentage of respondents agreed this would be beneficial for all Canadians and for our collective economic prosperity.

Considering the low income levels among those with experience in the child welfare system, and their disparities in finishing high school and post-secondary education, it’s clear greater action is needed to address barriers to education and employment.

Better data needed

Increased government efforts to bolster equitable educational opportunities and supports for people with experience with child welfare systems are needed. Actions should include collecting comprehensive, longitudinal data on indicators of success, such as:

completing high school;
successfully transitioning to college or university;
getting and maintaining employment;
securing stable housing;
improved physical and mental health.

A lack of comprehensive longitudinal data is part of the overall problem in understanding the complex issues facing former youth in care. Scholars from the University of Kansas have offered plausible strategies for research with youth in foster care. Such data would better clarify whether and how current child welfare initiatives contribute to better outcomes across people’s lives.

We need to better understand how former youth in care secure stable housing over time.
(Shutterstock)

Wrap-around supports critical

To further reduce disparities in the employment and income of those with experience in the child welfare system, we must ensure that appropriate wrap-around care supports are provided.

Child care, mental health services and housing need to be available and accessible to ensure equitable access to education. This is supported by recent research in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

Research from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs indicates that Canada is among governments falling behind in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting life-long learning opportunities — Sustainable Development Goal 4.

A provision in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that “every child has the constitutional right to access the benefits of education.” However, this isn’t the case for far too many youth with child welfare system experience.

More inclusive pathways needed

It doesn’t have to be this way. In 2020, the not-for-profit organization People for Education released The Right to Education Framework.

Schools, boards, policymakers and education systems can use this framework to monitor, measure and be publicly accountable for ensuring every person can access a quality education that prepares them for a brighter future.

By monitoring and evaluating core educational equity issues impacting youth with care experience, Canada can establish more inclusive and supportive pathways to education and employment. Through needed efforts, the overall quality of life of people with care experience can be vastly improved. Läs mer…

Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his creation of the eccentric detective, Sherlock Holmes. But he was also interested in architecture and worked on several projects throughout his life, from his home in Surrey to a golf course in Canada. Now, a building designed by Conan Doyle, the Lyndhurst Park Hotel in Hampshire, is under threat of demolition. The hotel’s east wing was designed from sketches provided by the author during a stay there in 1912.

In The Greek Interpreter (1893), Holmes tells Watson that he has “art” in his “blood” from a French relative. Conan Doyle too had art in his blood. After settling in London in the 1820s his Dublin-born and art-trained grandfather, John Doyle (1797-1868), became a famous political cartoonist. He even sketched Queen Victoria when she was a child.

Conan Doyle’s uncle, Richard “Dick” Doyle, was a fairy painter and provided the illustrations for the cover of Punch magazine. Another uncle, Henry, became the National Gallery of Ireland’s first director in 1869. Even Conan Doyle’s godfather, Michael Conan, from whom he acquired part of his surname, had trained in art.

His father, Charles, also had artistic talent and took up an architectural post in the Office of Works in Edinburgh as a designer and draughtsman. However, in contrast to his elder brothers’ success, Charles’s career was marred by alcoholism, leading to his committal to asylums.

Charles’s only lasting achievement was to design the statues of the fountain, commissioned by Queen Victoria, in the forecourt of the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The deterioration in his health and his frequent inability to work created an unstable home for his wife, Conan Doyle and his siblings. Much of the rest of Conan Doyle’s life was dictated by a need for financial and domestic (and so architectural) security.

Building Undershaw

This need was underlined by the design and building of Undershaw in Hindhead in Surrey for his wife Louisa. Undershaw was a medical necessity as well as a home. In October 1893, Louisa was diagnosed with tuberculosis, then an incurable disease. Two months later, Conan Doyle had Holmes grapple with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland in The Final Problem (1893). It marked the end of the detective – or so readers believed.

The Conan Doyle family spent the succeeding years travelling between Switzerland and Egypt to alleviate Lousia’s symptoms, until the novelist Grant Allen advised them to try the Surrey air.

Conan Doyle duly purchased a plot and drafted designs before hiring his friend, the architect Joseph Henry Ball. The pair had bonded over their shared interest in paranormal investigations.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s children playing on the driveway that leads to Undershaw.
Victorian Society, CC BY-SA

The name of the house came from its setting under the trees (“shaw” is from the Anglo-Saxon meaning wood or copse). The 11-bedroomed house provided a comfortable interior for Louisa with special door handles fitted to aid her rheumatism, and featured stained-glass windows with the coats of arms of his family. The family moved into their new home in October 1897. Built by profits from the Holmes stories, Undershaw was a testament to Conan Doyle’s literary status and, poignantly, a refuge for a wife who could not be cured.

It was while living at Undershaw that Conan Doyle returned to Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901.

Described as a “block of a building” covered with ivy from which “a window or a coat of arms broke through” and with “twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes,” Baskerville Hall is a home under threat. The Baskervilles live under the shadow of a curse, seemingly haunted by a spectral hound. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead at the edge of the moor near the giant footprint of a hound, it seems that the curse has struck again.

Architecture in Sherlock Holmes

In many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the detective fixes the problems in the home by investigating its architecture.

In The Speckled Band (1892) the crumbling country pile of Stoke Moran reflects the decay of its owner, Doctor Grimesby Roylott. Roylott tricks his stepdaughter, Helen Stoner (her surname suggestive of both abuse and incarceration), into occupying the room where her sister died on the pretext that building work on the house requires the move. When Holmes investigates the bedroom, he discovers a vent which adjoins Roylott’s room, through which Roylott sends a deadly snake, Julia’s killer. Roylott wants the sisters’ inheritances to shore up his home.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street.
Wiki Commons

The story marking Holmes’s return from the Reichenbach Falls in 1903 is called The Empty House. Here Holmes and Watson hide in an unoccupied house directly opposite 221B Baker Street to catch a murderer intent on shooting Holmes.

The building of 221B Baker Street is perhaps Conan Doyle’s finest piece of literary architecture. The house, which did not exist in Conan Doyle’s time, functions as both Holmes and Watson’s lodgings and their detective agency. A Baker Street property modelled to recreate the stories’ conception of 221B was established in 1990 as a museum. There, visitors can believe that Holmes and Watson really existed because Conan Doyle “built” them so well.

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In villages across the country, irate farmers have accused the government of trying to end the tradition of the family farm by scrapping agricultural property relief, a measure which previously sheltered farms from having to pay inheritance tax on farmland.

Since Brexit a consensus has emerged that farmers should have to produce public goods in order to receive public payments. These “goods” include enhanced biodiversity, which could oblige farmers to plant trees or wildflower meadows.

How will scrapping agricultural property relief affect these plans for a green transformation of farming? First, let’s consider the changes.

The government has introduced a new minimum threshold for inheritance tax which means that farm assets worth over £1 million (US$1.3 million) will be charged, albeit at the discounted rate of 20% (instead of the standard 40%). Some farms may be able to claim a threshold of £2 million or even £3 million.

Labour claims this tax will only target rich landowners by asking them to pay a fair share of tax. One argument in favour of the tax is that it might deflate land prices and make it easier for new people to enter farming. The outcome is hard to predict, but this seems unlikely.

Despite the tax there will still be increasing demand for land to accommodate bigger farms, conservation areas, timber plantations, solar panels, wind farms, housing developments, and the like. This is, after all, an explicit aim of this Labour government: to stimulate investment in new green infrastructure.

In interviews, the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has repeated the line that 73% of UK farms are not liable for the tax. But the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has challenged this, claiming that around half of all working farms will be hit. These are farms that produce a lot of food, with high turnover and a lot of capital tied up in land, but low profit margins. Which farms get taxed and which dodge it will depend on who has the best plan put in place by their accountant.

The NFU says that more farms will be liable for the tax than the government claims.
Mminson/Shutterstock

The NFU’s figures illustrate the possibility that, even spread over ten years, the inheritance tax bill alone could erase all of a farm’s would-be profits.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to know how much money the new inheritance tax arrangement will raise for the treasury as there are many ways to dodge it, such as gifting the farm to children seven years before the death of the landowner or putting the farm in a trust. The sudden death of the legal landowner before an effective plan is put in place could see a hefty tax bill fall upon the next generation.

How it will affect tenant farmers, those who rent from a landowner, is harder to predict. Landlords might seek to evict tenants in order to sell the land and pay the tax bill. Or it might mean more land is available for tenants to buy themselves.

Eating away at farm profits

What has received less attention, despite also costing farmers, is a new carbon tax called the carbon border adjustment mechanism. This will be applied to imported fertiliser, as well as steel, cement and hydrogen. The EU is bringing in the same taxation policy but at a slower pace, giving European farmers a competitive advantage in the meantime and a chance to adapt.

Labour plans to accelerate the transition from the previous subsidy scheme, which paid farmers for the amount of land they managed, to the new one, which aims to pay farmers for public goods. Add in a tax rise on double-cab pickup trucks and a rise in national insurance contributions for employers and it will be businesses already struggling that will feel the biggest pinch.

In a global economic system characterised by competition and uneven regulation and taxation, if British farms cannot afford to produce food then production will shift to where it is cheaper (and probably more environmentally destructive) to do so, blunting any attempt to curtail carbon emissions. It would also see British food production decline.

It doesn’t help its case that the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been underspending its budget for the environmental land management schemes, the replacement subsidies for farmers aimed at paying for actions such as improved soil management. Frustratingly, Defra is going to return that money (£100 million) to the treasury rather than commit to spending it next year. Defra has also said the department was not properly consulted on the inheritance tax change.

The overall result is that farmers feel neglected during what is an increasingly difficult time. One researcher has documented a mental health crisis among farmers who are struggling to grow food in increasingly volatile weather, with little to no external support.

A genuinely green transition of agriculture will require both investment and radical reform of the entire food and farming system. Labour is showing no appetite for this.

The contradictions of the market

Farm businesses were already feeling the squeeze. The budget will tighten their economic constraints.

It might’ve helped Labour to sugarcoat its bitter changes by committing to other incentives or reforms. After all, it’s hard for farmers to repair ecosystems and reduce carbon emissions when invoices are coming thick and fast. There have to be carrots along with the stick.

Climate change has made food production more difficult to manage.
EPA-EFE/Tolga Akemn

Some notable farming figures have celebrated the rich paying a fairer share of tax. In reality, it is likely that it will only generate what the treasury calls a “rounding error” – in other words, relatively little. It may backfire and harm working farms and, in turn, the environment, if farms choose to intensify their operations by demanding more produce from the same land in order to remain profitable.

As author and shepherd James Rebanks has pointed out, repairing ecosystems requires a profitable business in order to fund the work required. Farmers have to shell out first and claim back later. Where a farm can’t afford work, like creating new wildlife ponds, the work simply won’t be done.

Whatever Labour’s long-term plans, stoking resentment among farmers in order to raise a relatively small amount of money will surely prove counterproductive for a green transition.

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Much is made of the alleged state of Bregret – the idea that even those who voted for Brexit now regret their decision. It is true that a majority (54%) now think Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU. According to a YouGov poll, 62% of people think Brexit has been more of a failure than a success. We even know that 18% of leave voters would now vote remain if they could have another go at the 2016 referendum.

But conjuring up the past is a logical impossibility. A “rejoin” option would not be the same as the “remain” option. The European Union would have understandable hesitations about readmitting the UK without greater commitments than in the past – and might, for example, expect the UK to join the euro.

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When studying attitudes towards rejoining the EU, it quickly becomes apparent that voters see this clearly. The feeling of having made one’s bed and now having to lie in it is quite widespread.

When polled about a potential referendum on rejoining the EU, only 48% of the UK public solidly supported it. When asked if they would rejoin were monetary union to be on the table, support for rejoin dwindles to 34%, showing just how conditional support for rejoining actually is.

The rejoin option is particularly polarising. It drives leave and remain voters further apart than any other option.

And no-one wants to re-hash Brexit divisions: the issue has fallen precipitously in terms of salience (from its heights of nearly 70% in the negotiations period, to a mere 12% today). The public doesn’t want to touch the subject of Brexit with a barge pole – and it should come as no surprise that the current UK government doesn’t want to either. The current public mood is more one of bresignation than bregret.

Both leavers and remainers are in an impossible bind. They recognise that the process of leaving the EU was very far from the pipe dream sold by the Leave campaign but neither can do anything about it.

A new government and a chance to reset.
Flickr/Number 10, CC BY-NC-ND

For leavers, the idea that Brexit was a mistake triggers discomfort. They are in what behavioural scientists call a state of cognitive dissonance. When we cannot change a past action, we often decide to change how we see and interpret new evidence about that action in order to avoid the cognitive inconsistency and the psychological discomfort of being wrong about it.

This is natural and human, it happens to all of us. Together with my colleague Sara Hobolt, I have shown how since the 2016 vote, both remainers and leavers have chosen to retain and believe different aspects of official information on the state of the UK economy to suit their own view on Brexit.

For leavers, this means joining the 47% who think that Brexit is not done, or the nearly 30% who think it could have been a success if the UK had better politicians and negotiators.

These numbers are not negligible: any call for rejoining the EU is, at this point in time, unwise and likely to be seen as extremely radical.

The big reset

To overcome this state of “bresignation” and truly trigger a reset in UK-EU relations, the UK government first needs to gather information on how the current arrangement – the Trade and Cooperation Agreement – is going, and to communicate this evidence in a unifying way.

Some evidence shows that factual information about Brexit effects (e.g. economic repercussions, repercussion on young UK citizens of the end of freedom of movement), or lack thereof (for example, illegal immigration issue not being “solved” by Brexit), are getting across to the UK public.

Commissioning more research on how minimal access to the EU market is affecting the UK economy – and disseminating this evidence in a way that does not point the finger at leave voters – is an essential step. They need to be protected from feeling primarily responsible to be shielded from the state of cognitive dissonance.

Given that it was the responsibility of the Leave and Remain campaigns to clearly spell out the meaning of Brexit, freeing leave voters from blame is also simply the right thing to do.

Public opinion is still very much in favour of retaining control over UK regulations and trade deals, making joining the customs union and single market particularly unpalatable. But there is significant support for a closer relationship with the EU and for the removal of most – if not all – trade barriers on goods and services.

There is, therefore, scope to sell regulatory alignment by focusing on its flexible, conditional nature and on the perks of easing trade with the world’s largest trading block.

People are also less fussed about conditional freedom of movement than the government thinks. They favour flexible immigration quotas to dynamically deal with sectoral shortages, such as in the NHS, or for high-skilled talent.

A reset is in the realms of possibility, therefore. But the UK government first needs to break us free from the state of bresignation. Läs mer…

Just months after Labour won the UK general election and ended a prolonged period of Conservative rule, rural protesters are once again taking to the streets of London. The threat to fox-hunting triggered the countryside marches of the late 1990s. This year, it is the agricultural inheritance tax reforms set out in the new government’s first budget that are troubling those farmers planning to pass on assets to their children.

Agricultural property relief (APR) reduces the amount of tax that farmers and landowners incur when agricultural assets are passed on, for example, after a death. Introduced in the 1980s, it had been set at 100% relief, but from April 2026 full relief will apply only to the first £1 million per person.

A tax rate of 20%, rather than the full 40% that most people would expect to pay in inheritance tax on assets over £325,000, will apply to agricultural claims.

Farmers are asset-rich and often cash-poor, so there is much talk of some of them having to sell off land. However, for a married couple, making use of various nil-rate exemptions, an estate of up to £3 million could still be passed on free of tax.

Much of this benefit currently is being captured by a small number of very large estates. Government figures suggest the top 7% of agricultural estates (the largest 117 claims in the most recent year’s data) account for 40% of the total value of APR – a cost to the taxpayer of £219 million. The largest 2% of estates (37 claims) account for more than one-fifth of the total value (costing £119 million).

Agriculture enjoys all sorts of special treatment and exemptions from rules that other sectors face – these are not widely understood, but have included cheaper diesel, planning exemptions and assorted tax breaks. The APR reforms do not remove the special treatment completely – but they reduce its scope.

Read more:
What Labour’s first budget means for wages, taxes, business, the NHS and plans to grow the economy – experts explain

Debate has raged in parliament and across the media about the number of farms likely to be affected. Critics of the government put it in the tens of thousands. The Treasury says the figure is fewer than 500.

The tone is shrill, and claims of catastrophe abound. Labour are bringing about the “death of the family farm” or undermining the UK’s food security, critics argue.

A more sober analysis by land agency professionals suggests that exposure to the tax can be managed. It can be paid over ten years, interest free. And given that inter-generational transfers usually happen only every few decades, the financial burden on larger estates would still be much less than the rent an average tenant farmer would usually expect to pay per hectare.

And UK family farming was able to survive prior to the introduction of the agricultural relief arrangements through careful business management.

Pastures new

The earlier that succession is thought through and planned for, the better – not only from a tax perspective but also to bring new people and ideas into the running of the business.

New blood is needed as UK agriculture faces pressing challenges – climate change is increasingly impinging upon farming practices and yields. The food system contributes around one-quarter of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and by the mid-2030s, decarbonisation of the energy system will leave agriculture as the UK’s largest emitter.

A farmer protests back in 2004 – anger at Labour’s plans isn’t the first time tractors have rolled up to Westminster.
Lois GoBe/Shutterstock

We will need land to sequester carbon through woodland planting and grow energy crops if a net zero UK is to be reached by 2050. Modernising food production practices to reduce emissions, while avoiding becoming more dependent on food imports, will require innovation and ingenuity.

The last agricultural revolution of the 1940s and 1950s involved a close working partnership between the state and the farming sector. Huge advances in productivity were achieved over a couple of decades. Farms became larger, more specialised and more technologically advanced. Now the green revolution in farming is as much about mindsets as technologies.

The UK needs the same spirit of partnership and unity of purpose now if the climate challenge is to be addressed and agricultural livelihoods are to thrive. Oppositional protest politics feels like a step in the wrong direction and detracts attention from the need for a joint plan for the next 25 years to strengthen food security and reduce emissions. Paring back tax breaks pales besides the challenges and opportunities the net zero revolution will bring for farming and land management. Läs mer…

The UK chancellor Rachel Reeves talks a lot about achieving better growth. And the latest figure – economic expansion in the last quarter of just 0.1% – suggests plenty of room for improvement.

The evening before that gloomy figure was announced, Reeves revealed her latest plan to get things moving – pension reform. And while there was some mention of potential benefits for actual pensioners, it’s clear that the main incentive for change is to channel more of their pension fund money into UK investment.

This will be done through two main sets of reforms. The first concerns the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) for England and Wales, which has 6.7 million members and assets worth around £392 billion. Its members are mostly current and retired council employees – and mostly women.

The LGPS is essentially a cluster of 86 different schemes, which have already been combining to form eight “asset pools” for the purpose of investing their pension funds and creating cost savings. The chancellor wants to ramp up consolidation through those eight asset pools, and also see a greater proportion of the funds’ assets (currently 5%) being invested in local and regional projects.

The hope is that this will boost the growth of local economies. The LGPS is a “defined benefit” scheme, meaning that it promises members a pension in retirement worked out according to a formula based on their pay while they were working and length of time in the scheme. The way its assets are invested does not affect the amount of pension people get.

The second set of reforms apply to workplace “defined contribution” schemes. These are the sort arranged by (and contributed to) by an employer whereby employees build up a pot of savings to provide an income during retirement.

Usually, employees can choose how they want to invest their pension pot, though schemes must offer at least one default strategy. The vast majority of members go with the default. Four out of five employees choose not to review their investments at all.

Workplace defined contribution schemes are either run by a board of trustees, or by a pension company with whom the employee has a contract. The sector is highly fragmented, with thousands of different schemes, many of them very small. However, over the past 12 years, there has been a move towards consolidation.

Again, the government wants to accelerate this consolidation to encourage the emergence of much larger pension investment funds, similar to those seen in Australia and Canada. Controversially, it is also proposing to make it easier for the assets of contract-based schemes to be transferred to other schemes without the consent of members.

One claimed advantage of larger funds is lower costs. However, the Pensions Policy Institute has found that cost savings tail off once a fund reaches around £500 million. But again, the key driver for the government is to create funds that are large enough to take on additional investment risks – without jeopardising their ability to provide people with financial security in retirement.

Larger funds would free up some pension money to invest in areas such as infrastructure and private equity, with potentially high growth prospects. Such investments tend to be “illiquid” (difficult or impossible to convert into cash at short notice) so are suitable only for long-term investment.

More money, more investment?

The government claims that including such higher-risk investments in the mix can “deliver better returns for savers”. This is likely to be broadly correct, since it is a fundamental investment principle that higher-risk investments need to offer higher returns in order to attract investors. However, evidence suggests that the extra return from investing in illiquid assets could be as low as 1% a year over the long term.

Reeves wants to encourage investment opportunities.
Miha Creative/Shutterstock

Nevertheless, Reeves is hoping that an additional flow of funding from larger pension schemes (“megafunds”) will boost investment in the UK economy.

But it’s not as simple as that. The idea that simply increasing the amount of savings in an economy will inevitably cause investment to rise was debunked nearly a century ago.

Back in 1936, the influential economist, John Maynard Keynes showed that the most important factor when it comes to investment is what he referred to as businesses’ “animal spirits”. In other words, it all boils down to a feeling of confidence about whether or not investments will lead to a good return. And that will depend on how the other elements of Labour’s growth strategy play out.

Similarly, pension fund managers and savers need to be confident that the UK – and in particular sectors such as private equity and infrastructure – are the best home for some of their pension pot. The general advice for any investor is to diversify savings not just across different assets (equities, bonds, cash, property) and sectors (manufacturing, services, large companies, smaller ones), but also different geographical regions.

So as these new policies for pension schemes unfold, anyone with a pension may want to have a careful look at where the default fund is investing the money they will rely on in the future. They may even consider choosing their own investment strategy instead. Läs mer…

If you were to think about the key to getting fit, you’d probably imagine you need to spend plenty of time in the gym. But many fitness influencers claim that taking time away from the gym every six to eight weeks – known as a “deload week” – is actually the key to improving fitness gains.

Deload weeks mostly involve toning down the intensity of your workouts. These are typically done during periods of heavy training. The express aim of a deload week is to give the body time to recover from the fatigue and damage that can be caused by periods of intense training.

Intense training or high volumes of training cause us to accumulate damage in our muscle tissues. While this damage is an essential part of the process in improving fitness gains, these improvements can only happen if the body has time to recover.

During exercise, muscles can develop tiny tears and their fibres can become disorganised after intense training. This causes an inflammatory response in muscle tissues which requires time in an “unloaded state” (resting or doing low-intensity exercise) to resolve. This inflammation is actually important for promoting positive changes in our muscles – leading to improvements in fitness.

But if we train without adequate rest we can cause the muscle to be in a semi-permanent state of being slightly damaged. The inflammation doesn’t go away – leading to negative changes – such as our muscles being less able to use oxygen efficiently and poor performance.

By allowing our muscles the opportunity to recover we set them up for success.

Risk of overtraining

Many avid gymgoers may be afraid to take time off from the gym for fear it will cause them to lose their gains. But research actually shows that the genes in our muscles contain a memory imprint – effectively holding genes responsible for muscle growth in a semi-prepared state. This means that our muscles are ready to respond quicker and better to training in the future and promote growth after a period of rest.

Even after long periods of time in a deloaded state (up to seven weeks), your muscular fitness can be restored to prime condition – and even beyond, in some cases. This is true even if you’ve lost some muscular strength during this period. Not only that, but your condition can be restored to its prime twice as fast as it took to get to that level in the first place.

Another reason it’s so important to take time off from intense training is because without rest we may develop muscle soreness – and potentially even overtraining syndrome. Overtraining syndrome is a prolonged period of malaise and deconditioning caused by training too much or too intensely without adequate rest. It can take several weeks to months (and in some cases years) to overcome.

The symptoms of overtraining syndrome are fatigue, poorer performance and mood disturbances. These symptoms occur gradually – meaning overtraining syndrome only becomes apparent when you are in its throes. This is why taking care to rest adequately is a vital part of training.

Training too intensely without enough rest periods can lead to overtraining syndrome.
wavebreakmedia/ Shutterstock

It’s hard to say how common overtraining syndrome is because the symptoms are so vague. Some studies indicate the rate of overtraining syndrome could affect as few as 10% of elite athletes – but the incidence could also be as as high as 60% in the most competitive athletes.

Rest days or deload weeks?

It’s clear that recovery time is important for both fitness and overall health. Any time you are doing a lot of work in the gym, you should make sure you’re scheduling plenty of time to recover in your workout plan.

Deload weeks differ from rest days in that rest days generally incorporate no exercise (or only extremely light exercise) once or twice a week. Deload weeks tend to involve some training, but at a substantially lower intensity than you’re used to – usually doing around 50% fewer workouts than you normally would, or reducing the intensity of your workout by about 20%.

Both rest days and deload weeks help the body to recover from training, which is important for improving your fitness. It is not a case of either/or. For example, if you are undertaking an intense training regime for a marathon, ironman or crossfit competition, you should be scheduling weekly rest days. On top of that, you should also be implementing deload weeks. If you are a recreational gym goer who works out less strenuously around one to three times per week, then the rest you get from this kind of workout schedule will probably be adequate.

Read more:
Rest days are important for fitness – here’s why, according to science

Fitness influencers suggest that deload weeks should be included in training schedules every four to eight weeks. This broadly aligns with the expert view of four to six weeks. But, you should schedule in your deload weeks as you need them. If you begin to notice your performance is no longer improving – and maybe even getting worse – it might be time for a deload week.

No training plan should be so strict that you cannot take a step back when you need to. Deload weeks will not only benefit your performance, but also your health. Läs mer…

Prisons and the justice system often make headlines for issues like overcrowding or sentencing, but there’s a quieter, more transformative side to life behind bars that rarely gets attention.

While offending behaviour programmes are well established in prisons, research from my colleagues and I has focused on the rehabilitative potential of a very different aspect of prison life – prison dairy farm work.

At HMP Prescoed, an open prison near Usk in south-east Wales, prisoners are getting their hands dirty at Cilgwri Farm, a fully functioning dairy operation. Here, prisoners help manage a large herd of dairy cows and their calves, learning not only essential farming skills but, perhaps more importantly, how to care and connect in ways many may have never experienced before.

Our interviews with prison staff suggested that working with a dairy herd could help the men move away from crime.

Working with cows isn’t just about milking and feeding. It’s also about teamwork, trust and care. We found that the relationships between the farm staff and the prisoners was an important part of the positive experience of those working on the farm.

Members of staff showed the prisoners how to care for the cows. For some of the men, this was the first time they had been shown how to care for something and how to deal with their feelings when cows got sick or died.

Staff noticed that off the farm and away from work, prisoners started to support each other with other activities like reading and writing. Like any other “family”, this group of people had to learn how to communicate effectively with each other. This seemed to be made easier because of their shared interest and care for the cows. It was a sense of community that many hadn’t experienced before.

Cow companions

There has been a lot of research about companion animals, such as dogs, with people in prison. Much of this work has been based on understanding the effects and benefits of a human-companion animal bond.

But prison farm animal work had not been looked into in depth. This raised questions about whether prisoners working with farm animals could develop care and empathy for them in a similar way to that seen with prison companion animals.

Despite their size and potential danger, the prisoners formed strong bonds with the dairy cows. Cows were treated like pets in being named, fussed and cared for. Some prisoners even asked for photos of their favourite cow to take with them upon being released.

Read more:
Football can improve wellbeing of people in prison – and could help stop reoffending

Work started at 5.30am and continued late into the evening. Prisoners were also happy to help staff deliver a calf in the middle of the night, for example, or to do extra work looking after sick animals.

All of the participants in our study described their observations of the therapeutic impact of the prison dairy work. Stressed cows produce less milk, so the men had to learn, with staff support, how to behave calmly around them.

But it wasn’t just the cows who benefited. Being in daily contact with the cows seemed to relax and calm the men. It helped them deal with angry and sad feelings – lessons crucial for rehabilitation.

How may this help reduce crime?

Regardless of the different views on crime, punishment and sentencing, the prison dairy workers will be released back into the community at some stage. The farm could therefore be more than just a good employment opportunity. It could be a space for the prisoners to learn how to receive and give compassion.

Caring for the cows may help reactivate a part of them that had long been suppressed. The sense of being valued, not just as prisoners but as farm workers, also may help to shift their identity away from crime. Learning to control behaviour and emotions and to communicate better is also crucial to successful rehabilitation.

Our research in this sphere continues, though our initial findings are promising. Perhaps the key to reducing re-offending lies not just in programmes behind bars, but also in connecting with something beyond oneself – whether it’s another person or a herd of cows. Läs mer…