NewzIntel.com

Category: Great Britain

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: NHS ten-year plan for England: what’s in it and what’s needed to make it work

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Judith Smith, Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of Birmingham

    The UK government has published its eagerly awaited ten-year health plan for England, setting out how billions of pounds in NHS funding will be used to transform healthcare delivery across the country.

    As anticipated, the plan is framed around the government’s three missions for the NHS: shifting care from hospital into the community, moving from analogue to digital communication, and focusing on preventing ill health rather than treating illness.

    The 168-page document responds to a stark warning that the NHS is “in serious trouble”. It is remarkable for the sheer number of ideas and proposals. As well as describing major new developments to improve people’s access to local in-person and virtual NHS care and disease prevention, it sets out a blizzard of other proposals.

    These include abolishing Healthwatch (a national watchdog that listens to people’s views on health and social care services to improve them), and bringing back some of the reforms of the Tony Blair era such as “new foundation trusts” and using private funding for new buildings.

    From hospital to community

    The big idea in the ten-year plan is a neighbourhood health service: large local health centres where people can access GP, nursing, dental, pharmacy, diagnostic and other services six days a week, 12 hours a day. These are intended to relieve pressure on hospitals and emergency departments, eventually replacing many outpatient clinics.

    The idea of shifting care into the community is not new. It has been advocated for over 30 years, including in the NHS white paper of 1997, the 2006 policy paper Our health, our care, our say, the NHS five-year forward view of 2014, and the NHS long-term plan of 2019.

    Some progress has been made in this direction. For example, much of the care for people living with asthma and diabetes is now provided in local general practices. Many general practices already have large teams of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and other staff who offer aspects of the wider “neighbourhood care” described in the new plan.

    But what has not been achieved is having larger-scale primary care teams consistently available across the NHS. The new plan proposes new contracts and shifts of funding to enable wider change, and while welcome, these will be challenging to put into practice against a backdrop of major service pressures.

    From analogue to digital

    The plan emphasises strongly the need to extend the role of the NHS app, with it becoming the “doctor in your pocket” and the main route into NHS services. It proposes that the app holds your full patient record, enables you to book GP and hospital appointments and becomes a key source of healthcare advice.

    This sounds very attractive. However, the devil will be in the detail. There are so many NHS IT systems to harmonise, and major data security and privacy issues to overcome.

    Most critically, much attention must be given to sorting out basic NHS admin systems that are too often confusing and paper-based. This will entail lots of work with NHS clinical and administrative staff, changing long-standing ways of working, introducing new technology and adapting “the way we do things round here”.

    Using AI to record doctor visits, understand test results and give health advice could really change how healthcare works. But this will take lots of time and money to train staff, try out new systems and put them in place. Also, people will need clear information about what to expect from their local health services in the future.

    From sickness to prevention

    England is getting sicker, and there are stark inequalities between the richest and the poorest.

    To achieve the plan’s goal of empowering people to make healthier choices, robust cross-government action is essential across sectors, including housing, education and welfare. While some important measures such as the tobacco and vapes bill, plans to measure supermarkets’ sales of healthy foods, and the expansion of free school meals are included in the plan, others such as minimum alcohol pricing have been notably excluded.

    Integrated care boards (ICBs), the regional bodies who plan and fund NHS services in England, and local councils will be vital in enabling these public health measures to be implemented. However, this will be difficult in the short to medium term as ICBs are being forced to merge, cut headcount and reorganise their work.

    Making it work

    For the ten-year plan to succeed, three key elements are essential.

    First, there is an urgent need to set priorities. The public expects much swifter access to on-the-day GP appointments, an end to excessive waits in accident and emergency departments, and reductions in waiting lists for operations.

    The Department of Health and Social Care must guide the NHS in which aspects of the plan are to be addressed first. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

    Second, implementation really matters. There is only so much management capacity, staff time, funding and goodwill to introduce new technologies and services. This government has already embarked on another “redisorganisation” of the oversight agency NHS England, and now plans to axe or merge a number of other national and local NHS bodies. NHS managers are vital to implementing the plan, but need to feel valued and supported, not denigrated as superfluous.

    Finally, the plan is almost silent on the two most pressing needs for government health reform. Without a properly funded system of adult social care to support older people and those living with enduring mental health needs, it is hard to see how hospital care can be transformed.

    And without an urgent and significant shift of resources to general practice and community services, neighbourhood health services will remain more of a dream than reality.



    Read more:
    NHS unveils ten-year plan to shift from treatment to prevention – here’s what needs to change to make that happen

    Judith Smith receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research for research and evaluation. Judith is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Health Foundation.

    – ref. NHS ten-year plan for England: what’s in it and what’s needed to make it work – https://theconversation.com/nhs-ten-year-plan-for-england-whats-in-it-and-whats-needed-to-make-it-work-260077

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: NHS ten-year plan for England: what’s in it and what’s needed to make it work

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Judith Smith, Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of Birmingham

    The UK government has published its eagerly awaited ten-year health plan for England, setting out how billions of pounds in NHS funding will be used to transform healthcare delivery across the country.

    As anticipated, the plan is framed around the government’s three missions for the NHS: shifting care from hospital into the community, moving from analogue to digital communication, and focusing on preventing ill health rather than treating illness.

    The 168-page document responds to a stark warning that the NHS is “in serious trouble”. It is remarkable for the sheer number of ideas and proposals. As well as describing major new developments to improve people’s access to local in-person and virtual NHS care and disease prevention, it sets out a blizzard of other proposals.

    These include abolishing Healthwatch (a national watchdog that listens to people’s views on health and social care services to improve them), and bringing back some of the reforms of the Tony Blair era such as “new foundation trusts” and using private funding for new buildings.

    From hospital to community

    The big idea in the ten-year plan is a neighbourhood health service: large local health centres where people can access GP, nursing, dental, pharmacy, diagnostic and other services six days a week, 12 hours a day. These are intended to relieve pressure on hospitals and emergency departments, eventually replacing many outpatient clinics.

    The idea of shifting care into the community is not new. It has been advocated for over 30 years, including in the NHS white paper of 1997, the 2006 policy paper Our health, our care, our say, the NHS five-year forward view of 2014, and the NHS long-term plan of 2019.

    Some progress has been made in this direction. For example, much of the care for people living with asthma and diabetes is now provided in local general practices. Many general practices already have large teams of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and other staff who offer aspects of the wider “neighbourhood care” described in the new plan.

    But what has not been achieved is having larger-scale primary care teams consistently available across the NHS. The new plan proposes new contracts and shifts of funding to enable wider change, and while welcome, these will be challenging to put into practice against a backdrop of major service pressures.

    From analogue to digital

    The plan emphasises strongly the need to extend the role of the NHS app, with it becoming the “doctor in your pocket” and the main route into NHS services. It proposes that the app holds your full patient record, enables you to book GP and hospital appointments and becomes a key source of healthcare advice.

    This sounds very attractive. However, the devil will be in the detail. There are so many NHS IT systems to harmonise, and major data security and privacy issues to overcome.

    Most critically, much attention must be given to sorting out basic NHS admin systems that are too often confusing and paper-based. This will entail lots of work with NHS clinical and administrative staff, changing long-standing ways of working, introducing new technology and adapting “the way we do things round here”.

    Using AI to record doctor visits, understand test results and give health advice could really change how healthcare works. But this will take lots of time and money to train staff, try out new systems and put them in place. Also, people will need clear information about what to expect from their local health services in the future.

    From sickness to prevention

    England is getting sicker, and there are stark inequalities between the richest and the poorest.

    To achieve the plan’s goal of empowering people to make healthier choices, robust cross-government action is essential across sectors, including housing, education and welfare. While some important measures such as the tobacco and vapes bill, plans to measure supermarkets’ sales of healthy foods, and the expansion of free school meals are included in the plan, others such as minimum alcohol pricing have been notably excluded.

    Integrated care boards (ICBs), the regional bodies who plan and fund NHS services in England, and local councils will be vital in enabling these public health measures to be implemented. However, this will be difficult in the short to medium term as ICBs are being forced to merge, cut headcount and reorganise their work.

    Making it work

    For the ten-year plan to succeed, three key elements are essential.

    First, there is an urgent need to set priorities. The public expects much swifter access to on-the-day GP appointments, an end to excessive waits in accident and emergency departments, and reductions in waiting lists for operations.

    The Department of Health and Social Care must guide the NHS in which aspects of the plan are to be addressed first. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

    Second, implementation really matters. There is only so much management capacity, staff time, funding and goodwill to introduce new technologies and services. This government has already embarked on another “redisorganisation” of the oversight agency NHS England, and now plans to axe or merge a number of other national and local NHS bodies. NHS managers are vital to implementing the plan, but need to feel valued and supported, not denigrated as superfluous.

    Finally, the plan is almost silent on the two most pressing needs for government health reform. Without a properly funded system of adult social care to support older people and those living with enduring mental health needs, it is hard to see how hospital care can be transformed.

    And without an urgent and significant shift of resources to general practice and community services, neighbourhood health services will remain more of a dream than reality.



    Read more:
    NHS unveils ten-year plan to shift from treatment to prevention – here’s what needs to change to make that happen

    Judith Smith receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research for research and evaluation. Judith is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Health Foundation.

    – ref. NHS ten-year plan for England: what’s in it and what’s needed to make it work – https://theconversation.com/nhs-ten-year-plan-for-england-whats-in-it-and-whats-needed-to-make-it-work-260077

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: NHS ten-year plan for England: what’s in it and what’s needed to make it work

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Judith Smith, Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of Birmingham

    The UK government has published its eagerly awaited ten-year health plan for England, setting out how billions of pounds in NHS funding will be used to transform healthcare delivery across the country.

    As anticipated, the plan is framed around the government’s three missions for the NHS: shifting care from hospital into the community, moving from analogue to digital communication, and focusing on preventing ill health rather than treating illness.

    The 168-page document responds to a stark warning that the NHS is “in serious trouble”. It is remarkable for the sheer number of ideas and proposals. As well as describing major new developments to improve people’s access to local in-person and virtual NHS care and disease prevention, it sets out a blizzard of other proposals.

    These include abolishing Healthwatch (a national watchdog that listens to people’s views on health and social care services to improve them), and bringing back some of the reforms of the Tony Blair era such as “new foundation trusts” and using private funding for new buildings.

    From hospital to community

    The big idea in the ten-year plan is a neighbourhood health service: large local health centres where people can access GP, nursing, dental, pharmacy, diagnostic and other services six days a week, 12 hours a day. These are intended to relieve pressure on hospitals and emergency departments, eventually replacing many outpatient clinics.

    The idea of shifting care into the community is not new. It has been advocated for over 30 years, including in the NHS white paper of 1997, the 2006 policy paper Our health, our care, our say, the NHS five-year forward view of 2014, and the NHS long-term plan of 2019.

    Some progress has been made in this direction. For example, much of the care for people living with asthma and diabetes is now provided in local general practices. Many general practices already have large teams of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and other staff who offer aspects of the wider “neighbourhood care” described in the new plan.

    But what has not been achieved is having larger-scale primary care teams consistently available across the NHS. The new plan proposes new contracts and shifts of funding to enable wider change, and while welcome, these will be challenging to put into practice against a backdrop of major service pressures.

    From analogue to digital

    The plan emphasises strongly the need to extend the role of the NHS app, with it becoming the “doctor in your pocket” and the main route into NHS services. It proposes that the app holds your full patient record, enables you to book GP and hospital appointments and becomes a key source of healthcare advice.

    This sounds very attractive. However, the devil will be in the detail. There are so many NHS IT systems to harmonise, and major data security and privacy issues to overcome.

    Most critically, much attention must be given to sorting out basic NHS admin systems that are too often confusing and paper-based. This will entail lots of work with NHS clinical and administrative staff, changing long-standing ways of working, introducing new technology and adapting “the way we do things round here”.

    Using AI to record doctor visits, understand test results and give health advice could really change how healthcare works. But this will take lots of time and money to train staff, try out new systems and put them in place. Also, people will need clear information about what to expect from their local health services in the future.

    From sickness to prevention

    England is getting sicker, and there are stark inequalities between the richest and the poorest.

    To achieve the plan’s goal of empowering people to make healthier choices, robust cross-government action is essential across sectors, including housing, education and welfare. While some important measures such as the tobacco and vapes bill, plans to measure supermarkets’ sales of healthy foods, and the expansion of free school meals are included in the plan, others such as minimum alcohol pricing have been notably excluded.

    Integrated care boards (ICBs), the regional bodies who plan and fund NHS services in England, and local councils will be vital in enabling these public health measures to be implemented. However, this will be difficult in the short to medium term as ICBs are being forced to merge, cut headcount and reorganise their work.

    Making it work

    For the ten-year plan to succeed, three key elements are essential.

    First, there is an urgent need to set priorities. The public expects much swifter access to on-the-day GP appointments, an end to excessive waits in accident and emergency departments, and reductions in waiting lists for operations.

    The Department of Health and Social Care must guide the NHS in which aspects of the plan are to be addressed first. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

    Second, implementation really matters. There is only so much management capacity, staff time, funding and goodwill to introduce new technologies and services. This government has already embarked on another “redisorganisation” of the oversight agency NHS England, and now plans to axe or merge a number of other national and local NHS bodies. NHS managers are vital to implementing the plan, but need to feel valued and supported, not denigrated as superfluous.

    Finally, the plan is almost silent on the two most pressing needs for government health reform. Without a properly funded system of adult social care to support older people and those living with enduring mental health needs, it is hard to see how hospital care can be transformed.

    And without an urgent and significant shift of resources to general practice and community services, neighbourhood health services will remain more of a dream than reality.



    Read more:
    NHS unveils ten-year plan to shift from treatment to prevention – here’s what needs to change to make that happen

    Judith Smith receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research for research and evaluation. Judith is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Health Foundation.

    – ref. NHS ten-year plan for England: what’s in it and what’s needed to make it work – https://theconversation.com/nhs-ten-year-plan-for-england-whats-in-it-and-whats-needed-to-make-it-work-260077

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Will the Oasis reunion usher in a Britpop summer – or is it just a marketing ploy?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester

    Ink Drop/Shutterstock

    The trend for naming summers has become something of a cultural phenomenon. Think for example of 2019, which was branded a “hot girl summer”, inspired by rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s song.

    In 2021 there was the much-ridiculed “white boy summer” (named after a song of the same name by Tom Hanks’s son, Chet). Then 2022 was “feral girl summer” and 2024, of course, was a “brat summer”, after Charli XCX’s cultural phenomenon album Brat.

    And this summer? Well, with the likes of Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass, Suede, Shed Seven and Cast all playing UK dates between June and August, it’s “Britpop summer”, of course. The question is, though, whether these names are actually (and accurately) representing the zeitgeist, or if they are just the result of savvy marketing strategies.



    Read more:
    Brat by Charli XCX is a work of contemporary imagist poetry – and a reclamation of ‘bratty’ women’s art

    Such things may now be occurring more frequently, but they’re nothing new. The year 1967 was famously coined “the summer of love”, a moniker supposedly invented by the Californian local government to put a positive spin on the druggy, hairy, hippy gatherings taking place across the state.

    Then, just over two decades later, there came the imaginatively titled “second summer of love” in 1988 which, like its predecessor was drug-inspired, but this time involved British ravers taking ecstasy in London warehouses instead of hippies “dropping acid” in San Franciscan parks.

    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. Sign up here.

    The “summer of love” has largely been presented to us as a psychedelic utopia, wherein London was the “swinging, cool and hip” epicentre of a new cultural movement. Everyone was blissfully stoned, with messages of peace and love on their lips, kaftans and floral blouses on their bodies and flowers in their hair.

    In reality, though, in the UK at least only 8% of adults had actually tried cannabis and fewer than 1% had taken LSD or acid, and the fashion of the day (for men, anyway) involved sensible slacks and short-back-and-sides.

    Such un-psychedelic appetites also spilled over into mainstream music. Although it’s now the UK’s bestselling album ever, in 1967, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was only the sixth-biggest album of the year in terms of sales. It was bested by the very suitably non-flower-power Herb Alpert, The Monkees and The Sound of Music soundtrack.

    Pink Floyd’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – “the founding masterpiece in psychedelic music” – sold 275,000 copies in 1967 in the UK (compared to The Sound of Music’s 2.4 million) and was number 34 on the list of big-selling albums in the UK that year.

    The same year, 1967, also saw the “best double-A side ever released”, The Beatles’ Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever. It was kept off the number one spot by Engelbert Humperdinck’s Please Release Me.

    Inside the so-called ‘second summer of love’.

    It seems, then, that for most of the British public, it was less a “summer of love” and more a “summer of Humperdinck”. Fast-forward five decades, and we see the same kinds of things happening. The year 2019 was a “hot girl summer”, Megan Thee Stallion’s song only peaked at 40 in the UK singles charts and her gigs sold poorly.

    Like our “summer of Humperdinck”, were such things based on popularity, we may have expected a “Sheeran summer”, with Ed Sheeran’s duet with Justin Bieber, I Don’t Care, dominating the charts and airwaves.

    Similarly, although 2024 was a “brat summer”, Charli XCX’s album was actually only the UK’s eighth-biggest selling album of the year, with Taylor Swift’s very un-Brat-like The Tortured Poets Department achieving 783,820 sales – almost double Brat’s.



    Read more:
    Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and the art of melodrama

    Britpop summer

    Britpop itself may have peaked in 1995, but in the summer of 1996, with Oasis and Blur still omnipresent, Tony Blair talking about the prospect of freedom, aspiration and ambition, England progressing through the Euros on home soil, and sunny day after sunny day, it was (according to The Guardian, at least) the most optimistic period in recent British history where anything seemed possible.

    Pulp performed a secret set at Glastonbury 2025 to huge crowds.

    We may all have become more cynical in the intervening years, but in the midst of another heatwave, with Pulp at Glastonbury, and the Gallaghers reunited, it does feel like there’s something in the air again.

    Indeed, standing among tens of thousands of fellow music fans in the sweltering heat watching Jarvis Cocker strutting his gangly stuff, if I ignored the grey in his beard, the iPhones in the crowd, and the aching in my legs, it could have been the nineties all over again.

    Britpop summer? I’m all for it. And maybe this will be one time that the name really does represent the nation’s mood.

    Glenn Fosbraey 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.

    – ref. Will the Oasis reunion usher in a Britpop summer – or is it just a marketing ploy? – https://theconversation.com/will-the-oasis-reunion-usher-in-a-britpop-summer-or-is-it-just-a-marketing-ploy-260256

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Salmonella cases are at ten-year high in England – here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rob Kingsley, Professor, Microbiology, Quadram Institute

    _Salmonella_ causes salmonellosis — an infection that typically results in vomiting and diarrhoea. Lightspring/ Shutterstock

    Salmonella cases in England are the highest they’ve been in a decade, according to recent UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data. There was a 17% increase in cases observed from 2023 to 2024 – culminating in 10,388 detected infections last year. Children and older adults accounted for around a fifth of cases.

    Although the number of infections caused by foodborne diseases such as Salmonella had broadly decreased over the last 25 years, this recent spike suggests a broader issue is at play. A concurrent increase in Campylobacter cases points to a possible common cause that would affect risk of both foodborne pathogens – such as changes in consumer behaviour or food supply chains.

    While the UK maintains a high standard of food safety, any increase in the incidence of pathogens such as Salmonella warrants serious attention.

    Salmonella is a species of bacteria that is one of the most common causes of foodborne illnesses globally. The bacteria causes salmonellosis – an infection that typically causes vomiting and diarrhoea.

    Most cases of salmonellosis don’t require medical intervention. But approximately one in 50 cases results in more serious blood infections. Fortunately, fatalities from Salmonella infections in the UK are extremely rare – occurring in approximately 0.2% of all reported infections.

    Salmonella infections are typically contracted from contaminated foods. But a key challenge in controlling Salmonella in the food supply chain lies in the diverse range of foods it can contaminate.

    Salmonella is zoonotic, meaning it’s present in animals, including livestock. This allows it to enter the food chain and subsequently cause human disease. This occurs despite substantial efforts within the livestock industry to prevent it from happening – including through regular testing and high welfare practices.

    Salmonella can be present on many retail food products – including raw meat, eggs, unpasteurised milk, vegetables and dried foods (such as nuts and spices). When present, it’s typically at very low contamination levels. This means it doesn’t pose a threat to you if the product is stored and cooked properly.

    Vegetables and leafy greens can also become contaminated with Salmonella through cross-contamination, which may occur from contaminated irrigation water on farms, during processing or during storage at home. As vegetables are often consumed raw, preventing cross-contamination is particularly critical.

    Spike in cases

    It’s premature to draw definitive conclusions regarding the causes of this recent increase in Salmonella cases. But the recent UKHSA report suggests the increase is probably due to many factors.

    Never prepare raw meat next to vegetables you intend to eat without cooking, as cross-contamination can lead to Salmonella.
    kathrinerajalingam/ Shutterstock

    One contributing factor is that diagnostic testing has increased. This means we’re better at detecting cases. This can be viewed as a positive, as robust surveillance is integral to maintaining a safe food supply.

    The UKHSA also suggests that changes in the food supply chain and the way people are cooking and storing their food due to the cost of living crisis could also be influential factors.

    To better understand why Salmonella cases have spiked, it will be important for researchers to conduct more detailed examinations of the specific Salmonella strains responsible for the infections. While Salmonella is commonly perceived as a singular bacterial pathogen, there are actually numerous strains (serotypes).

    DNA sequencing can tell us which of the hundreds of Salmonella serotypes are responsible for human infections. Two serotypes, Salmonella enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium, account for most infections in England.

    Although the UKHSA reported an increase in both serotypes in 2024, the data suggests that Salmonella enteritidis has played a more significant role in the observed increase. This particular serotype is predominantly associated with egg contamination.

    Salmonella enteritidis is now relatively rare in UK poultry flocks thanks to vaccination and surveillance programmes that were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s. So the important question here is where these additional S enteritidis infections are originating.

    Although the numbers may seem alarming, what the UKHSA has reported is actually a relatively moderate increase in Salmonella cases. There’s no reason for UK consumers to be alarmed. Still, this data underscores the importance of thoroughly investigating the underlying causes to prevent this short-term increase from evolving into a longer-term trend.

    Staying safe

    The most effective way of lowering your risk of Salmonella involves adherence to the “4 Cs” of food hygiene:

    1. Cleaning

    Thoroughly wash hands before and after handling any foods – especially raw meat. It’s also essential to keep workspaces, knives and utensils clean before, during and after preparing your meal.

    2. Cooking

    The bacteria that causes Salmonella infections can be inactivated when cooked at the right temperature. In general, foods should be cooked to an internal temperature above 65°C – which should be maintained for at least ten minutes. When re-heating food, it should reach 70°C or above for two minutes to kill any bacteria that have grown since it was first cooked.

    3. Chilling

    Raw foods – especially meat and dairy – should always be stored below 5°C as this inhibits Salmonella growth. Leftovers should be cooled quickly and also stored at 5°C or lower.

    4. Cross-contamination

    To prevent Salmonella passing from raw foods to those that are already prepared or can be eaten raw (such as vegetables and fruit), it’s important to wash hands and clean surfaces after handling raw meat, and to use different chopping boards for ready-to-eat foods and raw meat.

    Most Salmonella infections are mild and will go away in a few days on their own. But taking the right steps when storing and preparing your meals can significantly lower your risk of contracting it.

    Rob Kingsley receives funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

    – ref. Salmonella cases are at ten-year high in England – here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe – https://theconversation.com/salmonella-cases-are-at-ten-year-high-in-england-heres-what-you-can-do-to-keep-yourself-safe-260032

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Salmonella cases are at ten-year high in England – here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rob Kingsley, Professor, Microbiology, Quadram Institute

    _Salmonella_ causes salmonellosis — an infection that typically results in vomiting and diarrhoea. Lightspring/ Shutterstock

    Salmonella cases in England are the highest they’ve been in a decade, according to recent UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data. There was a 17% increase in cases observed from 2023 to 2024 – culminating in 10,388 detected infections last year. Children and older adults accounted for around a fifth of cases.

    Although the number of infections caused by foodborne diseases such as Salmonella had broadly decreased over the last 25 years, this recent spike suggests a broader issue is at play. A concurrent increase in Campylobacter cases points to a possible common cause that would affect risk of both foodborne pathogens – such as changes in consumer behaviour or food supply chains.

    While the UK maintains a high standard of food safety, any increase in the incidence of pathogens such as Salmonella warrants serious attention.

    Salmonella is a species of bacteria that is one of the most common causes of foodborne illnesses globally. The bacteria causes salmonellosis – an infection that typically causes vomiting and diarrhoea.

    Most cases of salmonellosis don’t require medical intervention. But approximately one in 50 cases results in more serious blood infections. Fortunately, fatalities from Salmonella infections in the UK are extremely rare – occurring in approximately 0.2% of all reported infections.

    Salmonella infections are typically contracted from contaminated foods. But a key challenge in controlling Salmonella in the food supply chain lies in the diverse range of foods it can contaminate.

    Salmonella is zoonotic, meaning it’s present in animals, including livestock. This allows it to enter the food chain and subsequently cause human disease. This occurs despite substantial efforts within the livestock industry to prevent it from happening – including through regular testing and high welfare practices.

    Salmonella can be present on many retail food products – including raw meat, eggs, unpasteurised milk, vegetables and dried foods (such as nuts and spices). When present, it’s typically at very low contamination levels. This means it doesn’t pose a threat to you if the product is stored and cooked properly.

    Vegetables and leafy greens can also become contaminated with Salmonella through cross-contamination, which may occur from contaminated irrigation water on farms, during processing or during storage at home. As vegetables are often consumed raw, preventing cross-contamination is particularly critical.

    Spike in cases

    It’s premature to draw definitive conclusions regarding the causes of this recent increase in Salmonella cases. But the recent UKHSA report suggests the increase is probably due to many factors.

    Never prepare raw meat next to vegetables you intend to eat without cooking, as cross-contamination can lead to Salmonella.
    kathrinerajalingam/ Shutterstock

    One contributing factor is that diagnostic testing has increased. This means we’re better at detecting cases. This can be viewed as a positive, as robust surveillance is integral to maintaining a safe food supply.

    The UKHSA also suggests that changes in the food supply chain and the way people are cooking and storing their food due to the cost of living crisis could also be influential factors.

    To better understand why Salmonella cases have spiked, it will be important for researchers to conduct more detailed examinations of the specific Salmonella strains responsible for the infections. While Salmonella is commonly perceived as a singular bacterial pathogen, there are actually numerous strains (serotypes).

    DNA sequencing can tell us which of the hundreds of Salmonella serotypes are responsible for human infections. Two serotypes, Salmonella enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium, account for most infections in England.

    Although the UKHSA reported an increase in both serotypes in 2024, the data suggests that Salmonella enteritidis has played a more significant role in the observed increase. This particular serotype is predominantly associated with egg contamination.

    Salmonella enteritidis is now relatively rare in UK poultry flocks thanks to vaccination and surveillance programmes that were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s. So the important question here is where these additional S enteritidis infections are originating.

    Although the numbers may seem alarming, what the UKHSA has reported is actually a relatively moderate increase in Salmonella cases. There’s no reason for UK consumers to be alarmed. Still, this data underscores the importance of thoroughly investigating the underlying causes to prevent this short-term increase from evolving into a longer-term trend.

    Staying safe

    The most effective way of lowering your risk of Salmonella involves adherence to the “4 Cs” of food hygiene:

    1. Cleaning

    Thoroughly wash hands before and after handling any foods – especially raw meat. It’s also essential to keep workspaces, knives and utensils clean before, during and after preparing your meal.

    2. Cooking

    The bacteria that causes Salmonella infections can be inactivated when cooked at the right temperature. In general, foods should be cooked to an internal temperature above 65°C – which should be maintained for at least ten minutes. When re-heating food, it should reach 70°C or above for two minutes to kill any bacteria that have grown since it was first cooked.

    3. Chilling

    Raw foods – especially meat and dairy – should always be stored below 5°C as this inhibits Salmonella growth. Leftovers should be cooled quickly and also stored at 5°C or lower.

    4. Cross-contamination

    To prevent Salmonella passing from raw foods to those that are already prepared or can be eaten raw (such as vegetables and fruit), it’s important to wash hands and clean surfaces after handling raw meat, and to use different chopping boards for ready-to-eat foods and raw meat.

    Most Salmonella infections are mild and will go away in a few days on their own. But taking the right steps when storing and preparing your meals can significantly lower your risk of contracting it.

    Rob Kingsley receives funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

    – ref. Salmonella cases are at ten-year high in England – here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe – https://theconversation.com/salmonella-cases-are-at-ten-year-high-in-england-heres-what-you-can-do-to-keep-yourself-safe-260032

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: From glass and steel to rare earth metals, new materials have changed society throughout history

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Peter Mullner, Distinguished Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, Boise State University

    Steel played a large role in the Industrial Revolution. Monty Rakusen/DigitalVision via Getty Images

    Many modern devices – from cellphones and computers to electric vehicles and wind turbines – rely on strong magnets made from a type of minerals called rare earths. As the systems and infrastructure used in daily life have turned digital and the United States has moved toward renewable energy, accessing these minerals has become critical – and the markets for these elements have grown rapidly.

    Modern society now uses rare earth magnets in everything from national defense, where magnet-based systems are integral to missile guidance and aircraft, to the clean energy transition, which depends on wind turbines and electric vehicles.

    The rapid growth of the rare earth metal trade and its effects on society isn’t the only case study of its kind. Throughout history, materials have quietly shaped the trajectory of human civilization. They form the tools people use, the buildings they inhabit, the devices that mediate their relationships and the systems that structure economies. Newly discovered materials can set off ripple effects that shape industries, shift geopolitical balances and transform people’s daily habits.

    Materials science is the study of the atomic structure, properties, processing and performance of materials. In many ways, materials science is a discipline of immense social consequence.

    As a materials scientist, I’m interested in what can happen when new materials become available. Glass, steel and rare earth magnets are all examples of how innovation in materials science has driven technological change and, as a result, shaped global economies, politics and the environment.

    How innovation shapes society: Pressures from societal and political interests (orange arrows) drive the creation of new materials and the technologies that such materials enable (center). The ripple effects resulting from people using these technologies change the entire fabric of society (blue arrows).
    Peter Mullner

    Glass lenses and the scientific revolution

    In the early 13th century, after the sacking of Constantinople, some excellent Byzantine glassmakers left their homes to settle in Venice – at the time a powerful economic and political center. The local nobility welcomed the glassmakers’ beautiful wares. However, to prevent the glass furnaces from causing fires, the nobles exiled the glassmakers – under penalty of death – to the island of Murano.

    Murano became a center for glass craftsmanship. In the 15th century, the glassmaker Angelo Barovier experimented with adding the ash from burned plants, which contained a chemical substance called potash, to the glass.

    The potash reduced the melting temperature and made liquid glass more fluid. It also eliminated bubbles in the glass and improved optical clarity. This transparent glass was later used in magnifying lenses and spectacles.

    Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, completed in 1455, made reading more accessible to people across Europe. With it came a need for reading glasses, which grew popular among scholars, merchants and clergy – enough that spectacle-making became an established profession.

    By the early 17th century, glass lenses evolved into compound optical devices. Galileo Galilei pointed a telescope toward celestial bodies, while Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered microbial life with a microscope.

    The glass lens of the Vera Rubin Observatory, which surveys the night sky.
    Large Synoptic Survey Telescope/Vera Rubin Observatory, CC BY

    Lens-based instruments have been transformative. Telescopes have redefined long-standing cosmological views. Microscopes have opened entirely new fields in biology and medicine.

    These changes marked the dawn of empirical science, where observation and measurement drove the creation of knowledge. Today, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory continue those early telescopes’ legacies of knowledge creation.

    Steel and empires

    In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution created demand for stronger, more reliable materials for machines, railroads, ships and infrastructure. The material that emerged was steel, which is strong, durable and cheap. Steel is a mixture of mostly iron, with small amounts of carbon and other elements added.

    Countries with large-scale steel manufacturing once had outsized economic and political power and influence over geopolitical decisions. For example, the British Parliament intended to prevent the colonies from exporting finished steel with the iron act of 1750. They wanted the colonies’ raw iron as supply for their steel industry in England.

    Benjamin Huntsman invented a smelting process using 3-foot tall ceramic vessels, called crucibles, in 18th-century Sheffield. Huntsman’s crucible process produced higher-quality steel for tools and weapons.

    One hundred years later, Henry Bessemer developed the oxygen-blowing steelmaking process, which drastically increased production speed and lowered costs. In the United States, figures such as Andrew Carnegie created a vast industry based on Bessemer’s process.

    The widespread availability of steel transformed how societies built, traveled and defended themselves. Skyscrapers and transit systems made of steel allowed cities to grow, steel-built battleships and tanks empowered militaries, and cars containing steel became staples in consumer life.

    White-hot steel pouring out of an electric arc furnace in Brackenridge, Penn.
    Alfred T. Palmer/U.S. Library of Congress

    Control over steel resources and infrastructure made steel a foundation of national power. China’s 21st-century rise to steel dominance is a continuation of this pattern. From 1995 to 2015, China’s contribution to the world steel production increased from about 10% to more than 50%. The White House responded in 2018 with massive tariffs on Chinese steel.

    Rare earth metals and global trade

    Early in the 21st century, the advance of digital technologies and the transition to an economy based on renewable energies created a demand for rare earth elements.

    Offshore turbines use several tons of rare earth magnets to transform wind into electricity.
    Hans Hillewaert/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    Rare earth elements are 17 chemically very similar elements, including neodymium, dysprosium, samarium and others. They occur in nature in bundles and are the ingredients that make magnets super strong and useful. They are necessary for highly efficient electric motors, wind turbines and electronic devices.

    Because of their chemical similarity, separating and purifying rare earth elements involves complex and expensive processes.

    China controls the majority of global rare earth processing capacity. Political tensions between countries, especially around trade tariffs and strategic competition, can risk shortages or disruptions in the supply chain.

    The rare earth metals case illustrates how a single category of materials can shape trade policy, industrial planning and even diplomatic alliances.

    Mining rare earth elements has allowed for the widespread adoption of many modern technologies.
    Peggy Greb, USDA

    Technological transformation begins with societal pressure. New materials create opportunities for scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Once a material proves useful, it quickly becomes woven into the fabric of daily life and broader systems. With each innovation, the material world subtly reorganizes the social world — redefining what is possible, desirable and normal.

    Understanding how societies respond to new innovations in materials science can help today’s engineers and scientists solve crises in sustainability and security. Every technical decision is, in some ways, a cultural one, and every material has a story that extends far beyond its molecular structure.

    The National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, NASA, and other national and regional agencies have funded former research of Peter Mullner.

    – ref. From glass and steel to rare earth metals, new materials have changed society throughout history – https://theconversation.com/from-glass-and-steel-to-rare-earth-metals-new-materials-have-changed-society-throughout-history-258244

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Minister Smith Keynote Speech at SKOPE Skills Summit, Oxford

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Speech

    Minister Smith Keynote Speech at SKOPE Skills Summit, Oxford

    Speech delivered by Skills Minister Jacqui Smith at the University of Oxford on higher education reform, access and participation and working with the FE sector

    Introduction

    Good morning.

    Thank you for inviting me today.

    I am delighted to see the exciting work on skills education being led by SKOPE’s research on joined-up tertiary education systems.  It is being discussed across the sector.

    And I include government in that, as part of our commitment to evidence-based policymaking.

    It’s a pleasure to be back in Oxford, where I studied all those years ago.

    I was at Hertford, 5 minutes down the road, a college with a proud tradition of inclusion. I was a beneficiary of the Hertford Scheme to encourage state school pupils to apply.

    I hardly dared hope on a snowy December day in 1980 that I could be the first person from my Worcestershire comprehensive to study here.

    It was Hertford, with its pioneering approach to outreach, that gave me the confidence to apply.

    Starting in 1965, it dramatically raised the college’s academic standards and performance.

    In fact, at one point, the university threatened to disassociate Hertford for unfairly ‘poaching’ the best students!

    But many colleges set up similar schemes to emulate its success, before admissions were finally standardised in 1984.

    Why am I telling you this?

    Because it shows that breaking down barriers to opportunity is the key to success.

    For Oxford to succeed, it must welcome-in the best talent, from across the whole population.

    Challenging Oxford

    Oxford recently released their state school admissions data for 2024.

    And the results were poor.

    66.2% – the lowest entry rate since 2019.

    I want to be clear, speaking at an Oxford college today, that this is unacceptable.

    The university must do better.

    The independent sector educates around 6% of school children in the UK.

    But they make-up 33.8% of Oxford entrants.

    Do you really think you’re finding the cream of the crop, if a third of your students come from 6% of the population?

    It’s absurd.

    Arcane, even.

    And it can’t continue.

    It’s because I care about Oxford and I understand the difference that it can make to people’s lives that I’m challenging you to do better.  But it certainly isn’t only Oxford that has much further to go in ensuring access. 

    For example, it is shocking how few care leavers attend university, let alone this one!

    Just 14% enter higher education, and they are more than twice as likely to drop-out.

    University entry is supposed to be a meritocracy.

    But there’s still an awful lot of untapped talent out there.

    People with the potential to soar in higher education.

    Universities have got to go further.

    Play a stronger role in expanding access, and improve outcomes for disadvantaged students.

    And this must include more support for care leavers, some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

    I welcome Oxford’s recent commitment, along with other Russell Group universities, to do more for students who grew-up in care.

    And to increase your admissions transparency, and use of contextual admissions.

    I look forward to seeing some tangible outcomes from this pledge.

    I’m not looking for tinkering at the edges. A leg-up here, a bursary there.

    As a Labour government, we want Big Picture change.

    This is about individual opportunity, but it matters across government,

    from education, to health, to the economy. Just yesterday, Wes and Bridget have set out how we’re asking universities to do more to support our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity.  We’re looking at better transparency over university admissions, starting with publishing data on medical schools’ admission of those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

    We must strive to ensure, from early years all the way through to higher education, that background never equals destiny.

    And that’s where our Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy comes in.

    The Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy

    We will publish the strategy soon.  

    It will include our vision for a world-leading skills system.

    One that takes a whole-system, mission-driven approach to breaking down barriers to opportunity to unleash growth.

    This means:

    • A more focused skills system, underpinned by Skills England’s national view of skills needs.

    • Clear, high-quality qualifications that ensure every learner has a clear route to further study or work.

    • Firm foundations, putting the system on a financially stable footing that supports strategic specialisation.

    And finally,

    • A new culture of ‘skills first’ where it is everyone’s responsibility – individuals, employers, and the state – to ensure workers reskill and upskill throughout their lives.

    This will boost personal and national prosperity, and reduce reliance on migration to fill skills gaps.

    What do we need to do to achieve this?

    First, there needs to be a renewed partnership between government and business.

    This means both local and central government working with business to identify skills gaps and develop solutions.

    We’ve heard the calls for more flexibility in the skills offer by introducing foundation and short apprenticeships.

    Now we’re going further with new short courses from April 2026, funded through the Growth and Skills Levy, in areas such as digital, artificial intelligence and engineering.

    These support priority sectors named in our Industrial Strategy, like the Creative Industries and Advanced Manufacturing.

    Because we recognise the importance of key sectors to delivering our Industrial Strategy and our Plan for Change.

    That’s why we’ve adopted a sector-based approach to address key skills needs.

    We started with our construction skills package, worth £625 million.

    To train up to 60,000 extra construction workers – crucial for delivering on our pledge to build 1.5 million new homes.

    We announced a further three further packages in the Industrial Strategy:

    • An Engineering package worth over £100 million, to support the pipeline of engineers into priority sectors like Advanced Manufacturing,

    • Clean Energy Industries, and Digital Technology.

    • A Defence package that is foundational for national security and economic growth,
      including establishing Defence Technical Excellence Colleges.

    • And a Digital package, including £187 million investment for digital and AI skills,
      and a commitment to train 7.5 million UK workers in essential AI skills
      by 2030, through a new industry partnership with major tech players.

    Raising the prestige of Further Education

    We understand that the economy needs both technical skills and academic disciplines in order to grow.

    It’s not a zero sum game – because both have so much to offer our people and our economy.

    And, dare I say it, much to learn from each other!

    Further education needs to emerge from the shadow of Higher Education as an equal partner.

    That means positive prominence in careers advice.

    And public recognition that’s long overdue.

    Technical education needs to be a respected alternative to academic pathways.

    And Technical Excellence Colleges will be at the heart of this.

    Only when there is parity, will we secure high-quality post-16 routes for all learners, rather than the lucky few.

    For learners from 16-19, we will be guided by the independent  Curriculum and Assessment Review, set to publish this autumn.

    High esteem follows high-quality teaching and student outcomes.

    We will provide funding to recruit and retain high-quality Further Education teachers, especially for courses delivering scarce skills to priority sectors.

    And this is backed by funding secured at the recent Spending Review.

    We are investing £1.2 billion a year more in skills by 2028-29, alongside over £2 billion of capital investment in skills to support the condition and capacity of the estate.

    Strengthening Higher Education’s role within the skills system I said earlier that Further Education needs to be an equal partner of Higher Education. Since we came into Government in July, we’ve ended the culture of talking down universities, and dismissing the opportunities higher education provides.

    We’re doing quite the opposite, working with you to:

    • drive up standards;
    • maintain our position as a world-class beacon of excellence;
    • build on a proud history of innovation and brilliance in higher education.

    But as the world changes, so must our higher education system.

    We cannot allow the town and gown divide to widen, and for universities and their communities to drift.

    We need collaboration, partnership, and mutual respect.

    Higher Education needs to reach out and play a bigger role in the skills system.

    Because ‘high-quality post-16 routes for all learners’ doesn’t necessarily mean they must choose between HE and FE.

    Our analysis shows the majority of the future skills we’ll need will be at higher levels.

    This means technical students will need access to cutting-edge facilities and courses, as they build their qualifications.

    So the artificial barriers between Further and Higher Education must come down – in a coordinated, effective way.

    And this will be facilitated by the Lifelong Learning Entitlement.

    The Lifelong Learning Entitlement

    The ability to learn across our working lives is no longer just admirable, or valuable. It’s essential.

    People aren’t just working for longer.

    They are changing roles and careers more frequently.

    And the skills needed for those roles are also evolving rapidly.

    Yet despite all this change, the student finance system still largely operates on the assumption that learning only happens early in life.

    To break down the barriers to opportunity, we must support learning at every stage of life.

    This is exactly what the Lifelong Learning Entitlement – or LLE – will do, offering choice, flexibility and opportunity to adults across their working lives.

    From January 2027, the LLE will replace the student finance system.

    It will continue to fund students entering higher education to take traditional degrees.

    But it will also fund new, flexible modular pathways, widening student finance to a broader range of courses and learners.

    That includes those returning to education later in life, who may be working whilst studying. Providing flexibility around personal commitments like caring responsibilities.

    What does means in practice?

    I want you to imagine Sarah, a full-time receptionist and mother who decides she wants a career change. However, Sarah is concerned about committing to studying full-time, as her family is still growing, and she is struggling to take out time to pursue retraining in computer science.

    Through the LLE and the funding of individual modules, Sarah will be able to study one module at a time, to build up her credits over time, alongside her work and family commitments.

    The LLE will not just change the type of provision on offer.

    It also has the potential to transform how employers work with providers to train and recruit staff, allowing modular top-up to build or update their skills.

    We’re already seeing this play out through our modular acceleration programme.

    We want education providers to innovate in how they respond to the new model, so that lifelong upskilling becomes accessible and unremarkable.

    At the same time, employers must be active partners in LLE provision, co-designing flexible courses that create accessible pathways into the workforce.

    We will shortly set-out the final policy design of the LLE, so FE and HE providers can plan for this transformational change.

    Improving local join-up

    The final thing we must do to widen opportunity and build growth is better local join-up. This means strategic collaboration between local education providers, employers, research hubs and health services.

    We set the scene at the end of last year with our ‘Get Britain Working’ and ‘English Devolution’ White Papers.

    These described how mayors and Local Growth Plans will play a key role in shaping their regional skills systems. Local Get Britain Working plans will drive joined-up action to reduce economic inactivity, and take forward our Youth Guarantee.

    This is key for ensuring young people in difficult circumstances are supported to achieve good qualifications and good employment.

    The skills system is at its most effective when detailed local understanding is matched with insight from local employers and training providers.

    Many young adults face complex barriers to engaging with skills courses; an estimated 1 in 8 young people are NEET – not in education, employment or training.

    Improving the accessibility of training will be crucial to reducing the number of NEETs,.

    But to bring them into the fold, you have to understand local barriers as well as national, systemic issues.

    Further Education colleges often do this well by working with many local partners. They are big participants in Local Skills Improvement Plans (or LSIPs).

    These collaborations identify and respond to gaps in skills provision, giving employers a more strategic role in the system.

    I believe in LSIPs because they facilitate partnership  

    Early evidence shows Plans are already having an impact, raising the number of learners training in priority sectors – with more employers telling us that local skills provision meets their needs.

    But we must go further to join-up local systems to drive opportunity and growth.

    Which bring me back to universities.

    Discussions on LSIPs should involve all local providers, and all levels of education – including up to Doctorate level! 

    If your university offers a course that relates to your local skills offer, or local employers, you have something to contribute to these discussions.

    And to the outcomes of local students studying beyond your campus, in neighbouring colleges.

    And let’s not forget the role of research and innovation.

    Universities are renowned for delivering solutions to global challenges.

    But this also happens at a local level, as seen with the Oxford Local Policy Lab.

    HE also brings new ideas to market, through start-ups and partnerships with industry.

    Whichever way you look at it, Higher Education has a huge role in driving local growth and opportunity.

    You need to be part of this conversation.

    Universities involved in local growth

    And this is not just some government aspiration!

    There are plenty of examples of institutions stepping-up to play their part.

    The London South Bank University group acts as an anchor institution within the local education community. It brings together FE colleges, sixth form colleges and employers – particularly the NHS – to ensure a truly collaborative approach to education, training and skills provision.

    You’ll hear later from Professor Kathryn Mitchell, Vice Chancellor of Derby University.

    They work closely with FE colleges and local employers, particularly Rolls Royce to ensure clear links between education and the labour market.

    And in the North East, organisations like Sunderland Software City are leading the tech industry to match local education and training provision with regional requirements.

    It’s great to see – and shows just what university participation in inclusive growth can do for the local economy and community.

    Conclusion

    I know I’m not alone here in admiring this, and wanting change.

    Many people in this room who are working to make Further and Higher Education better – to better serve our people and our nation.

    I’d like to thank you for your innovation and dedication to this – which can sometimes be uphill work!

    I’m grateful to SKOPE, who’ve worked with my officials to share their expertise in developing our Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy.

    And to the Nuffield Foundation for helping to fund SKOPE’s research.

    The strategy is just the beginning, by the way!

    The different parts of the system will need to work together to meet its vision.

    To bring about a fairer society, where everyone has the chance to gain good qualifications, get a good job, support their family, and contribute to their community and our economy.

    Let’s make it happen!

    Thank you.

    Updates to this page

    Published 5 July 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Nationwide clampdown on delivery riders working illegally

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    News story

    Nationwide clampdown on delivery riders working illegally

    Ramp-up of arrests and visits set to take place across the UK targeting migrants working illegally in the gig economy

    Immigration enforcement van

    Enforcement teams are gearing up to launch a nationwide blitz targeting illegal working hotspots, with a focus on the gig economy and migrants working as delivery riders.

    Under the Government’s Plan for Change to restore order to the immigration system and tougher enforcement of the rules, Home Office Immigration Enforcement teams will launch a major operation to disrupt this type of criminality.  

    Strategic, intel-driven activity will bring together officers across the UK and place an increased focus on migrants suspected of working illegally whilst in taxpayer funded accommodation or receiving financial support. 

    The law is clear that asylum seekers are only entitled to this support if they would otherwise be destitute. That is why anyone caught flagrantly abusing the system in this way, as a result of the operation, will face having support discontinued, whether that’s entitlement to accommodation or payments. 

    Operational teams will target certain hotspots across the country over a period of intensification, as well as going after organisations who wilfully employ those working illegally, through civil penalty referrals. Any business found to be illegally employing someone could face a fine of up to £60,000 per worker, director disqualifications and potential prison sentences of up to five years.     

    The Government has been surging action against illegal working since coming into power one year ago, with 10,031 illegal working visits leading to 7,130 arrests, marking a 48% and 51% rise respectively, compared to the year before (5 July 2023 to 28 June 2024). This marks the first time in a 12-month period where more than 10,000 visits have taken place. 

    748 illegal working civil penalty notices were also handed to businesses caught violating immigration rules in the first quarter (January to March) of the year, marking the highest level since 2016 – an 81% increase compared to the same time last year.  

    And the Government is tightening the law by making it a legal requirement for all companies, including the gig economy, to check anyone working for them has the legal right to do so. This will end the abuse of flexible working arrangements. The new measures will be introduced through the landmark Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.

    Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, said:

    Illegal working undermines honest business and undercuts local wages – the British public will not stand for it and neither will this government.

    Often those travelling to the UK illegally are sold a lie by the people smuggling gangs that they will be able to live and work freely in this country, when in reality they end up facing squalid living conditions, minimal pay and inhumane working hours.

    We are surging enforcement action against this pull factor, on top of returning 30,000 people with no right to be here and tightening the law through our Plan for Change.

    But there is no single solution to the problem of illegal migration. That’s why we’ve signed landmark agreements with international partners to dismantle gangs and made significant arrests of notorious people smugglers.

    Director of Enforcement, Compliance and Crime, Eddy Montgomery, said:

    Our dedicated Immigration Enforcement officers have been ramping up action to disable illegal working across the board.

    This next step of co-ordinated activity will target those who seek to work illegally in the gig economy and exploit their status in the UK.

    That means if you are found to be working with no legal right to do so, we will bring the full force of powers available to us to disrupt and stop this abuse. There will no place to hide.

    This targeted action is on top of ongoing work across the country to disrupt people flouting the rules across different sectors. 

    Earlier this week, during a joint operation with the Metropolitan Police to go after people suspected of working illegally as cash in hand builders, officers targeted anti-social behaviour and illegally modified scooters and e-bikes. 20 Indian nationals were arrested as part of the operation. This included 16 overstayers, one illegal entrant, one port absconder and two small boat arrivals. 

    On 18 June, West Midlands teams conducted an operation on Smethwick High Street after receiving intelligence on a major collection point for people suspected of going to work illegally, primarily on construction sites. The team encountered 73 individuals, arresting 26 suspected immigration offenders (24 Indian nationals, one Nepalese national and one Italian national). This led to the detention of 11 Indian nationals.  

    And on 12 June, East of England teams conducted a multi-agency operation with police in Lynn Road, Wisbech, focusing on cash in hand builders using illegally modified e-bikes. They carried out 21 immigration checks which resulted the arrest of three men, including one Syrian, one Chinese and one Brazilian national. The police went on to seize six mopeds and one car for offences including driving with no insurance, no driving licence and disqualification. 

    The crackdown also sits alongside key join up with the delivery industry on tackling illicit account sharing. On Monday, 30 June , the Home Office and Department for Business and Trade met with major delivery firms and pledged to strengthen security checks to tackle illegal working. Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat have committed to increasing the number of daily facial recognition checks riders are required to take to verify their identity.  

    Illegal working is linked to exploitation, with teams often encountering squalid living conditions, people receiving little to no pay and inhumane working hours. In the worst instances, these individuals may be victims of modern slavery. 

    Immigration Enforcement take a number of steps to spot the signs of individuals who are potentially being exploited and, where appropriate, will refer people to the National Referral Mechanism so they can access support. They also work closely with crucial partners like the Gangmasters Labour Abuse Authority, to share insights and strengthen the approach to tackling labour exploitation.

    And this new operation is just one part of the government’s action to strengthen UK border security and disable the people smuggling gangs fuelling illegal migration. 

    Over the past year, the Prime Minister has been resetting relationships and forging partnerships across Europe and beyond, to ensure a targeted international response in breaking the model behind this vile trade. 

    Furthermore, nearly 30,000 people with no right to be in UK have been returned, landmark agreements have been signed with Iraq to dismantle gangs and Italy to take down illicit finance networks and a world-first people smuggling sanctions regime has been launched to ban travel and freeze assets.

    Updates to this page

    Published 5 July 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: One year in, Labour has a surprising amount to celebrate. But you wouldn’t know it

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Rohan McWilliam, Professor of Modern British History, Anglia Ruskin University

    A year in, Starmer still has a mountain to climb. Flickr/Number 10 , CC BY-NC-ND

    In the build-up to the 2024 election, Keir Starmer worked hard to show that his party could run Britain better than the Tories. He promised his government would offer stability after years of chaos – but also change. He stood for honesty but also a technocratic approach that resisted the easy answers of the populist right. The grown ups would be back in charge.

    A year on, as he marks his first year in office, we might ask: how much difference did Labour’s 2024 election win make in the longer trajectory of British life? Are historians in future likely to say (as they often do about the 1945 and 1979 elections) that it led to political and social transformation?

    Of course, it’s too early to say for certain, but not too early to look for signs.

    In electoral terms, Labour gained a stonking 174-seat majority in 2024. But this victory came off the back of a remarkably slim vote share of 33.7% in an election with a near-historically low turnout. That suggests an emotional connection had not been made with the electorate (although it also reflected the way that the traditional two-party system is falling apart).

    This result has defined Labour since then. It is a government that is undoubtedly in power but with a leader who few really understand. At a conference on the Starmer government held at Anglia Ruskin University in June 2025, I asked the audience how many could produce a one-sentence summary of what the government’s ideology was. Only a few felt they could do so.

    In July 2024, Labour promised change. But what did “change” mean? Starmer’s Labour has failed to really spell out its sense of purpose. Starmer admits that he finds ideas difficult. In this sense (and this sense alone) he resembles President George H.W. Bush, who admitted he had trouble with the “vision thing”.

    Starmer looks for solutions to particular problems rather than offering a view of the kind of Britain he wants to create. Without some kind of clear ideological purpose, however, the government ends up merely reacting to events whereas it should be shaping the narrative.

    The good, the bad, and the not-very-Labour

    When Labour returned to power in 1945, 1964 and 1997, there had been extensive discussions about the direction of Labour policy and how it could change society. In 1945, Clement Attlee’s focus was on welfare. Harold Wilson in 1964 drew on Tony Crosland’s revisionist approach to socialism, while in 1997 Tony Blair promised a “third way” in politics, reflecting the ideas of intellectuals such as Anthony Giddens.

    This openness to new ideas barely happened between 2020 and 2024 beyond a sense that Labour needed to re-connect with the “red wall” voters it had lost.

    On top of this, the government has become known for doing some remarkably un-Labour things. In September 2024, it changed the rules on winter fuel benefits to limit them to only some pensioners (although it has since partially backtracked under immense pressure from Labour MPs).

    It continues to resist calls to abolish the two child-benefit cap that restricts some forms of support to families with a maximum of two children, despite clear evidence that doing so is an easy way to reduce child poverty. Most catastrophically, it has been humiliated by a backbench rebellion which forced it to gut its welfare bill.



    Read more:
    The mistakes Keir Starmer made over disability cuts – and how he can avoid future embarrassment

    The government claims it is having to correct the dismal economic inheritance left by the Tories, preventing it from splashing the cash in the way Labour supporters want. Chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves talks about “hard choices” in order to show how disciplined Labour is, thus hopefully reassuring investors and the bond market.

    The result was the winter fuel payment crisis, which (despite a u-turn) threatens to become Labour’s poll tax – an iconic policy the electorate refuses to forgive.

    Starmer and Reeves demonstrated very limited understanding of the politics of this decision: they seemed prepared to hurt poorer people while apparently leaving the wealthy largely untouched.

    Starmer would argue that his government’s ideology has been expressed through its five missions, the most important of which is to stimulate economic growth. The June 2025 spending review was aimed at directing investment particularly towards the north of England and building infrastructure, including investment in transport. The government has also retained its focus on getting to net zero (which suggests a degree of radicalism).

    Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

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    Another mission that is also more obviously Labour in character is rebuilding the NHS, particularly by reducing waiting lists. Breaking down barriers to opportunity (another mission) has led to investment in education and the creation of breakfast clubs so that all children start the day properly fed.

    Labour still talks the language of class, recognising how poorer people face obstacles. Similarly, the focus on stopping crime and making Britain’s streets safe has echoes of both Jim Callaghan and Tony Blair. The government’s preparedness (so far) to negotiate increased pay awards in the public sector also suggests a distinctive Labour approach – evidence that it is not simply offering austerity-lite. Starmer has even started the process of renationalising the railways.

    Despite claims that it is maintaining austerity, the government has increased public expenditure by the highest level in decades. In that sense, the 2024 election has led to a new direction for the country.

    Labour can make the claim that it is building a state that can respond to the demands of an ageing population, in a challenging global environment, who will be affected by the results of climate change. This (in one sentence) should be its message.

    A familiar refrain

    If we look at the new government in historical perspective, we should note that it is not unusual for people to complain that Labour lacks ideology or a moral purpose: such things were said about every prime minister the party has produced, from Ramsay MacDonald onwards. Starmer may well seem better in retrospect.

    The overall impression of the prime minister, however, is that he is consumed by caution. Much of the time his government seems to chase the talking points put out by Reform UK, the best example being the “island of strangers” speech.

    It may be that future historians will argue that the real significance of the 2024 election was not Labour’s capture of seats but the way it exposed the latent support for Nigel Farage’s new party that had been building across the country. However, there are still several years to recover this legacy, should Starmer commit to learning from the mistakes made in the first year of his tenure.

    Rohan McWilliam is affiliated with The Labour Party (ordinary member).

    – ref. One year in, Labour has a surprising amount to celebrate. But you wouldn’t know it – https://theconversation.com/one-year-in-labour-has-a-surprising-amount-to-celebrate-but-you-wouldnt-know-it-259837

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Saleem Badat, Research Professor, UFS History Department, University of the Free State

    Ruth First, born 100 years ago, was a South African freedom fighter, journalist and scholar who worked against the racist system of apartheid during white minority rule. She was assassinated by apartheid forces in her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique in 1982.

    Her ideas, work and legacy live on. Sociologists Saleem Badat and Vasu Reddy have edited a new book called Research and Activism: Ruth First & Activist Research. We asked them about her and their project.

    Who was Ruth First?

    Heloise Ruth First was born on 4 May 1925 in Johannesburg to Jewish parents who had migrated from eastern Europe to South Africa in the early 1900s. Her parents were founder members of the South African Communist Party.

    She joined the Young Communist League and the Federation of Progressive Students and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

    At 21, First joined the left-wing South African newspaper The Guardian. When it was banned, the New Age took its place until it too was banned in 1962. She served as the newspaper’s Johannesburg editor for 17 years.

    In 1963, First was arrested at the University of the Witwatersrand library and held in solitary confinement for 117 days, during which time she was ruthlessly interrogated. The following year she and her three children left South Africa for England on an exit permit, where they joined her partner, the activist and politician Joe Slovo. She would not set foot again in South Africa. Continuing with her activist research in England, she taught at Durham University and then joined Eduardo Mondlane University until hear death.

    The mid-1940s to early 1960s were tumultuous years in South Africa. With the rise of formal apartheid in 1948, racial segregation was intensified.

    First’s intrepid and penetrating journalistic research exposed her to the brutality of labour exploitation and control on the mines and the farms. It reinforced her understanding of South Africa in Marxist terms.

    She wrote:

    Silence in the face of injustice is complicity.

    For her:

    The will to fight is born out of the desire for freedom.

    She was confident that:

    The power of the people is greater than the power of any government.

    First believed that ignorance is “the enemy of progress and justice” and that knowledge and education are “key to empowering individuals and challenging oppressive systems”. These words ring true in today’s global events driven by right-wing authoritarianism, US imperialism and acts of genocide.

    On learning of her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela recalled:

    I was in prison when Ruth First was assassinated, felt almost alone. Lost a sister in arms  … It is no consolation to know that she lives beyond her grave.

    What is activist research and how is it applied in the book?

    As authors, we revisit Ruth First’s life, work and ideas and its relevance for the current context. We focus especially on the nature of her scholarship and how she navigated the tensions between her activism and her research – whether journalistic or for her books on South West Africa (today’s Namibia), Libya or western investment in apartheid. Other of her acclaimed books included The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’etat and, during her Mozambican sojourn, Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant.

    In the process we invite renewed critical reflection about her life and work. Inspired by First’s contributions, the book considers how universities and scholars engage with institutions and social movements beyond the university.

    For example, in the book a research group from Durham University in the UK considers how to balance objectivity (showing no bias) with more politically participatory research methods and how objectivity can be enhanced despite the difficulties faced by activist research.

    Other scholars reflect on the work of the assassinated South African anti-apartheid activist scholar and lecturer Rick Turner; on climate change; and on the complexities of undertaking activist research in Marikana with a women’s organisation, Sikhala Sonke. Marikana was the site where South African police opened fire on and killed 34 striking mineworkers in 2012.

    There is examination of a research partnership between University of Cape Town activist scholars and some Khoi-San communities, reflection on the challenges of legal practice and education, and critical analysis of the decolonisation challenges of the KwaZulu-Natal Society of the Arts.

    How do you frame activist research in your book?

    The book shows that there is a difference between engaged research, critical research and activist research.

    Engaged research tries to connect knowledge produced by academics with institutions, movements and experts outside the university to collaboratively address issues and promote cooperation.

    Critical research uses radical critical theory to critique oppression and injustice, to show the gap between what exists today and more just ways of living. However, it does not necessarily connect with political and social movements.

    First’s research was not only engaged, but also critical in orientation and activist in nature. As activist research it challenged oppression and inequality.

    It both critiqued the status quo in South Africa and elsewhere and tried to change it. It was linked with movements and connected to political activism that was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and committed to socialism.



    Read more:
    Lessons learnt from taking sides as a sociologist in unjust times

    First’s activist research did not confine itself to the academic arena but engaged with larger, wider and more diverse publics. It used this experience to critique dominant and often limited thinking at universities and promoted other ways of producing knowledge. The expertise developed was used to improve scholarship in various ways.

    What do you want readers to take away?

    There is much talk about the “engaged university” and engaged research. However, only certain connections and engagements seem to be valued.

    Prior to democracy in 1994, South African researchers connected with social movements for change. Now this is seldom the case. Universities and scholars largely engage with those with money – the state, business, elites and donors.



    Read more:
    Regina Twala was a towering intellectual and activist in Eswatini – but she was erased from history

    This raises questions about the roles of researchers in South Africa, whose interests are prioritised and the place of critical and activist research in the engaged university.

    How should Ruth First be remembered?

    We must honour her for her intellectual and practical activism. What matters is not just her knowledge archive, but also her example as both an outstanding interpreter of the world and an activist scholar committed to changing society in the interests of the downtrodden, marginalised and voiceless.

    First was a critical and independent thinker who refused to accept anything as settled and beyond questioning. But that intellect was committed to loyalty to the national liberation movement of which she was an invaluable cadre.

    The views expressed in this piece do not reflect or represent the position of the university to which Badat and Reddy are affiliated.

    Saleem Badat receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. He is a board member of the International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs and Alameda.

    Vasu Reddy currently receives no external funding. He serves on the board of the Human Sciences Research Council Press

    Andrew W Mellon Foundation Grant

    Board member of the HSRC Press Board

    – ref. Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter – https://theconversation.com/ruth-first-and-activist-research-the-legacy-of-a-south-african-freedom-fighter-257687

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Family doctor crisis: 7 options to find the physicians Canada needs

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Anthony Sanfilippo, Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), Queen’s University, Ontario

    Canada faces a massive shortage of physicians. According to recent reports, Canadians require about 23,000 family doctors to meet current and emerging needs.

    In the absence of effective solutions, mayors and municipal councils across the country are competing with each other to entice doctors to their communities.

    It seems insurmountable, but options do exist and, no doubt, multiple approaches will be needed. What’s possible?

    My clinical, administrative and educational roles over the years have provided an opportunity to work within and examine the doctor “pipeline” from multiple perspectives. There’s a disconnect between that pipeline and the urgent and growing need for doctors, which was a major motivation for my book The Doctors We Need: Imagining a New Path for Physician Recruitment, Training, and Support. Based on all this, at least seven approaches seem possible. All have their pros and cons.

    Option 1: Recruit foreign-born, foreign-trained physicians

    Medical education and training is available in most countries. The number of doctors available varies widely. In fact, some countries appear to have a surplus of medical school graduates who are unable to find employment.

    In Canada, doctors are in demand and enjoy an excellent standard of living. Immigration to Canada, if offered, would likely be seen as a very attractive option.

    However, medical training globally is highly variable and assessing qualifications relative to Canadian standards is challenging. There would also be no assurance that such doctors would be interested in taking on needed roles or remaining in those practices once settled. Finally, there is an ethical concern — we may be robbing other countries of their needed physicians.

    Option 2: Short-track qualification of foreign-trained physicians already in Canada

    Many foreign-trained doctors have already immigrated to Canada and are working at non-medical jobs, hoping to gain residency status that would allow them to undertake examinations or complete their training.

    This approach would have many of the same disadvantages as above, but at least ensures these individuals already have some familiarity with Canadian work environment and a better awareness of the expectations facing physicians.

    Option 3: Repatriate Canadians who have trained (or are training) abroad

    It’s generally acknowledged that there are at least as many Canadians studying medicine outside Canada as within. These are people who were unsuccessful or chose not to engage in our highly competitive admission processes that annually turn away thousands of highly qualified students. They tend to enrol in well-established medical schools in countries such as Australia, Ireland and England.

    Although no rigorous analysis or statistics are available, it’s increasingly recognized that the majority remain and practise in the countries where they trained, having established relationships and support structures. In fact, many are actively recruited to take up much needed primary care positions in those countries.

    Attracting them back to Canada will require a targeted recruitment strategy and expansion of available post-graduate training positions. All that being said, this is potentially a workforce already prepared and willing to address Canadian health-care needs.

    Option 4: Increase the efficiency and capacity of our current physicians

    All doctors, particularly family physicians, face a burden of paperwork and administrative tasks that drastically reduces their capacity to assess and treat patients. Developing innovative processes and collaborations that allow them to focus their time on direct patient care will expand their impact and reduce the number of physicians required.



    Read more:
    The doctor won’t see you now: Why access to care is in critical condition

    Option 5: Supplement doctor roles with non-physicians

    We’re already seeing this strategy play out with nurses and pharmacists providing some primary care that was previously provided only by physicians.

    This approach has many merits and can allow physicians to concentrate on key essential roles, as for Option 4, above. The keys will be to ensure that the health-care teams co-ordinate and integrate their work effectively, and that all essential services are provided.



    Read more:
    Access to care: 5 principles for action on primary health-care teams

    Option 6: Collaborate with high-quality medical schools outside Canada to facilitate entry and training of willing and qualified Canadian students

    If we’re not able to train sufficient physicians through our own medical school structure, we could partner with foreign, well-functioning medical schools to promote access for Canadians who wish to return to Canada and engage the types of practices that are in such demand.

    This would require identifying appropriate schools and developing partnerships ensuring that the admission standards, curriculum and clinical training meet Canadian standards.

    Option 7: Increase medical school admissions and training in Canada

    The most obvious and intuitively appealing approach would be to simply ramp up the training pipeline within Canada’s medical schools. After all, we have excellent schools and certainly no shortage of very willing and capable applicants.

    There are currently 18 medical schools in Canada. Plans are in place to expand to 20 schools over the next few years, but this will not be effective unless we change the current processes of training.

    The supply of family doctors provided by our current admission and training processes falls far short of our needs. Recent studies also demonstrate that graduates from our current training programs are increasingly turning away from the comprehensive and community-based practices so much in need.

    Consequently, even a dramatic expansion within the current training paradigm will fall far short of addressing our needs. To be effective, expansion must occur in conjunction with new approaches to admissions and training.

    The new program developed by Queen’s at Lakeridge in Oshawa, which is dedicated to admitting and training family doctors, is an example of such innovative programming.

    The major drawback of this approach, of course, is that it will take time to even begin to address the shortfall. However, it addresses the fundamental problem most directly and establishes a framework for ongoing sustainability.

    While there is no single perfect solution, there are a number of approaches, all of which have potential to relieve Canada’s medical workforce crisis. It’s time to explore and pursue them all. It’s time to develop and empower a multi-disciplinary, pan-Canadian panel to decide which mix of the options will build the reliable, sustainable physician workforce that Canada needs and deserves.

    Anthony Sanfilippo 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.

    – ref. Family doctor crisis: 7 options to find the physicians Canada needs – https://theconversation.com/family-doctor-crisis-7-options-to-find-the-physicians-canada-needs-259601

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Family doctor crisis: 7 options to find the physicians Canada needs

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Anthony Sanfilippo, Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), Queen’s University, Ontario

    Canada faces a massive shortage of physicians. According to recent reports, Canadians require about 23,000 family doctors to meet current and emerging needs.

    In the absence of effective solutions, mayors and municipal councils across the country are competing with each other to entice doctors to their communities.

    It seems insurmountable, but options do exist and, no doubt, multiple approaches will be needed. What’s possible?

    My clinical, administrative and educational roles over the years have provided an opportunity to work within and examine the doctor “pipeline” from multiple perspectives. There’s a disconnect between that pipeline and the urgent and growing need for doctors, which was a major motivation for my book The Doctors We Need: Imagining a New Path for Physician Recruitment, Training, and Support. Based on all this, at least seven approaches seem possible. All have their pros and cons.

    Option 1: Recruit foreign-born, foreign-trained physicians

    Medical education and training is available in most countries. The number of doctors available varies widely. In fact, some countries appear to have a surplus of medical school graduates who are unable to find employment.

    In Canada, doctors are in demand and enjoy an excellent standard of living. Immigration to Canada, if offered, would likely be seen as a very attractive option.

    However, medical training globally is highly variable and assessing qualifications relative to Canadian standards is challenging. There would also be no assurance that such doctors would be interested in taking on needed roles or remaining in those practices once settled. Finally, there is an ethical concern — we may be robbing other countries of their needed physicians.

    Option 2: Short-track qualification of foreign-trained physicians already in Canada

    Many foreign-trained doctors have already immigrated to Canada and are working at non-medical jobs, hoping to gain residency status that would allow them to undertake examinations or complete their training.

    This approach would have many of the same disadvantages as above, but at least ensures these individuals already have some familiarity with Canadian work environment and a better awareness of the expectations facing physicians.

    Option 3: Repatriate Canadians who have trained (or are training) abroad

    It’s generally acknowledged that there are at least as many Canadians studying medicine outside Canada as within. These are people who were unsuccessful or chose not to engage in our highly competitive admission processes that annually turn away thousands of highly qualified students. They tend to enrol in well-established medical schools in countries such as Australia, Ireland and England.

    Although no rigorous analysis or statistics are available, it’s increasingly recognized that the majority remain and practise in the countries where they trained, having established relationships and support structures. In fact, many are actively recruited to take up much needed primary care positions in those countries.

    Attracting them back to Canada will require a targeted recruitment strategy and expansion of available post-graduate training positions. All that being said, this is potentially a workforce already prepared and willing to address Canadian health-care needs.

    Option 4: Increase the efficiency and capacity of our current physicians

    All doctors, particularly family physicians, face a burden of paperwork and administrative tasks that drastically reduces their capacity to assess and treat patients. Developing innovative processes and collaborations that allow them to focus their time on direct patient care will expand their impact and reduce the number of physicians required.



    Read more:
    The doctor won’t see you now: Why access to care is in critical condition

    Option 5: Supplement doctor roles with non-physicians

    We’re already seeing this strategy play out with nurses and pharmacists providing some primary care that was previously provided only by physicians.

    This approach has many merits and can allow physicians to concentrate on key essential roles, as for Option 4, above. The keys will be to ensure that the health-care teams co-ordinate and integrate their work effectively, and that all essential services are provided.



    Read more:
    Access to care: 5 principles for action on primary health-care teams

    Option 6: Collaborate with high-quality medical schools outside Canada to facilitate entry and training of willing and qualified Canadian students

    If we’re not able to train sufficient physicians through our own medical school structure, we could partner with foreign, well-functioning medical schools to promote access for Canadians who wish to return to Canada and engage the types of practices that are in such demand.

    This would require identifying appropriate schools and developing partnerships ensuring that the admission standards, curriculum and clinical training meet Canadian standards.

    Option 7: Increase medical school admissions and training in Canada

    The most obvious and intuitively appealing approach would be to simply ramp up the training pipeline within Canada’s medical schools. After all, we have excellent schools and certainly no shortage of very willing and capable applicants.

    There are currently 18 medical schools in Canada. Plans are in place to expand to 20 schools over the next few years, but this will not be effective unless we change the current processes of training.

    The supply of family doctors provided by our current admission and training processes falls far short of our needs. Recent studies also demonstrate that graduates from our current training programs are increasingly turning away from the comprehensive and community-based practices so much in need.

    Consequently, even a dramatic expansion within the current training paradigm will fall far short of addressing our needs. To be effective, expansion must occur in conjunction with new approaches to admissions and training.

    The new program developed by Queen’s at Lakeridge in Oshawa, which is dedicated to admitting and training family doctors, is an example of such innovative programming.

    The major drawback of this approach, of course, is that it will take time to even begin to address the shortfall. However, it addresses the fundamental problem most directly and establishes a framework for ongoing sustainability.

    While there is no single perfect solution, there are a number of approaches, all of which have potential to relieve Canada’s medical workforce crisis. It’s time to explore and pursue them all. It’s time to develop and empower a multi-disciplinary, pan-Canadian panel to decide which mix of the options will build the reliable, sustainable physician workforce that Canada needs and deserves.

    Anthony Sanfilippo 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.

    – ref. Family doctor crisis: 7 options to find the physicians Canada needs – https://theconversation.com/family-doctor-crisis-7-options-to-find-the-physicians-canada-needs-259601

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Saleem Badat, Research Professor, UFS History Department, University of the Free State

    Ruth First, born 100 years ago, was a South African freedom fighter, journalist and scholar who worked against the racist system of apartheid during white minority rule. She was assassinated by apartheid forces in her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique in 1982.

    Her ideas, work and legacy live on. Sociologists Saleem Badat and Vasu Reddy have edited a new book called Research and Activism: Ruth First & Activist Research. We asked them about her and their project.

    Who was Ruth First?

    Heloise Ruth First was born on 4 May 1925 in Johannesburg to Jewish parents who had migrated from eastern Europe to South Africa in the early 1900s. Her parents were founder members of the South African Communist Party.

    She joined the Young Communist League and the Federation of Progressive Students and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

    At 21, First joined the left-wing South African newspaper The Guardian. When it was banned, the New Age took its place until it too was banned in 1962. She served as the newspaper’s Johannesburg editor for 17 years.

    In 1963, First was arrested at the University of the Witwatersrand library and held in solitary confinement for 117 days, during which time she was ruthlessly interrogated. The following year she and her three children left South Africa for England on an exit permit, where they joined her partner, the activist and politician Joe Slovo. She would not set foot again in South Africa. Continuing with her activist research in England, she taught at Durham University and then joined Eduardo Mondlane University until hear death.

    The mid-1940s to early 1960s were tumultuous years in South Africa. With the rise of formal apartheid in 1948, racial segregation was intensified.

    First’s intrepid and penetrating journalistic research exposed her to the brutality of labour exploitation and control on the mines and the farms. It reinforced her understanding of South Africa in Marxist terms.

    She wrote:

    Silence in the face of injustice is complicity.

    For her:

    The will to fight is born out of the desire for freedom.

    She was confident that:

    The power of the people is greater than the power of any government.

    First believed that ignorance is “the enemy of progress and justice” and that knowledge and education are “key to empowering individuals and challenging oppressive systems”. These words ring true in today’s global events driven by right-wing authoritarianism, US imperialism and acts of genocide.

    On learning of her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela recalled:

    I was in prison when Ruth First was assassinated, felt almost alone. Lost a sister in arms  … It is no consolation to know that she lives beyond her grave.

    What is activist research and how is it applied in the book?

    As authors, we revisit Ruth First’s life, work and ideas and its relevance for the current context. We focus especially on the nature of her scholarship and how she navigated the tensions between her activism and her research – whether journalistic or for her books on South West Africa (today’s Namibia), Libya or western investment in apartheid. Other of her acclaimed books included The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’etat and, during her Mozambican sojourn, Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant.

    In the process we invite renewed critical reflection about her life and work. Inspired by First’s contributions, the book considers how universities and scholars engage with institutions and social movements beyond the university.

    For example, in the book a research group from Durham University in the UK considers how to balance objectivity (showing no bias) with more politically participatory research methods and how objectivity can be enhanced despite the difficulties faced by activist research.

    Other scholars reflect on the work of the assassinated South African anti-apartheid activist scholar and lecturer Rick Turner; on climate change; and on the complexities of undertaking activist research in Marikana with a women’s organisation, Sikhala Sonke. Marikana was the site where South African police opened fire on and killed 34 striking mineworkers in 2012.

    There is examination of a research partnership between University of Cape Town activist scholars and some Khoi-San communities, reflection on the challenges of legal practice and education, and critical analysis of the decolonisation challenges of the KwaZulu-Natal Society of the Arts.

    How do you frame activist research in your book?

    The book shows that there is a difference between engaged research, critical research and activist research.

    Engaged research tries to connect knowledge produced by academics with institutions, movements and experts outside the university to collaboratively address issues and promote cooperation.

    Critical research uses radical critical theory to critique oppression and injustice, to show the gap between what exists today and more just ways of living. However, it does not necessarily connect with political and social movements.

    First’s research was not only engaged, but also critical in orientation and activist in nature. As activist research it challenged oppression and inequality.

    It both critiqued the status quo in South Africa and elsewhere and tried to change it. It was linked with movements and connected to political activism that was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and committed to socialism.



    Read more:
    Lessons learnt from taking sides as a sociologist in unjust times

    First’s activist research did not confine itself to the academic arena but engaged with larger, wider and more diverse publics. It used this experience to critique dominant and often limited thinking at universities and promoted other ways of producing knowledge. The expertise developed was used to improve scholarship in various ways.

    What do you want readers to take away?

    There is much talk about the “engaged university” and engaged research. However, only certain connections and engagements seem to be valued.

    Prior to democracy in 1994, South African researchers connected with social movements for change. Now this is seldom the case. Universities and scholars largely engage with those with money – the state, business, elites and donors.



    Read more:
    Regina Twala was a towering intellectual and activist in Eswatini – but she was erased from history

    This raises questions about the roles of researchers in South Africa, whose interests are prioritised and the place of critical and activist research in the engaged university.

    How should Ruth First be remembered?

    We must honour her for her intellectual and practical activism. What matters is not just her knowledge archive, but also her example as both an outstanding interpreter of the world and an activist scholar committed to changing society in the interests of the downtrodden, marginalised and voiceless.

    First was a critical and independent thinker who refused to accept anything as settled and beyond questioning. But that intellect was committed to loyalty to the national liberation movement of which she was an invaluable cadre.

    The views expressed in this piece do not reflect or represent the position of the university to which Badat and Reddy are affiliated.

    Saleem Badat receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. He is a board member of the International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs and Alameda.

    Vasu Reddy currently receives no external funding. He serves on the board of the Human Sciences Research Council Press

    Andrew W Mellon Foundation Grant

    Board member of the HSRC Press Board

    – ref. Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter – https://theconversation.com/ruth-first-and-activist-research-the-legacy-of-a-south-african-freedom-fighter-257687

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Saleem Badat, Research Professor, UFS History Department, University of the Free State

    Ruth First, born 100 years ago, was a South African freedom fighter, journalist and scholar who worked against the racist system of apartheid during white minority rule. She was assassinated by apartheid forces in her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique in 1982.

    Her ideas, work and legacy live on. Sociologists Saleem Badat and Vasu Reddy have edited a new book called Research and Activism: Ruth First & Activist Research. We asked them about her and their project.

    Who was Ruth First?

    Heloise Ruth First was born on 4 May 1925 in Johannesburg to Jewish parents who had migrated from eastern Europe to South Africa in the early 1900s. Her parents were founder members of the South African Communist Party.

    She joined the Young Communist League and the Federation of Progressive Students and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

    At 21, First joined the left-wing South African newspaper The Guardian. When it was banned, the New Age took its place until it too was banned in 1962. She served as the newspaper’s Johannesburg editor for 17 years.

    In 1963, First was arrested at the University of the Witwatersrand library and held in solitary confinement for 117 days, during which time she was ruthlessly interrogated. The following year she and her three children left South Africa for England on an exit permit, where they joined her partner, the activist and politician Joe Slovo. She would not set foot again in South Africa. Continuing with her activist research in England, she taught at Durham University and then joined Eduardo Mondlane University until hear death.

    The mid-1940s to early 1960s were tumultuous years in South Africa. With the rise of formal apartheid in 1948, racial segregation was intensified.

    First’s intrepid and penetrating journalistic research exposed her to the brutality of labour exploitation and control on the mines and the farms. It reinforced her understanding of South Africa in Marxist terms.

    She wrote:

    Silence in the face of injustice is complicity.

    For her:

    The will to fight is born out of the desire for freedom.

    She was confident that:

    The power of the people is greater than the power of any government.

    First believed that ignorance is “the enemy of progress and justice” and that knowledge and education are “key to empowering individuals and challenging oppressive systems”. These words ring true in today’s global events driven by right-wing authoritarianism, US imperialism and acts of genocide.

    On learning of her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela recalled:

    I was in prison when Ruth First was assassinated, felt almost alone. Lost a sister in arms  … It is no consolation to know that she lives beyond her grave.

    What is activist research and how is it applied in the book?

    As authors, we revisit Ruth First’s life, work and ideas and its relevance for the current context. We focus especially on the nature of her scholarship and how she navigated the tensions between her activism and her research – whether journalistic or for her books on South West Africa (today’s Namibia), Libya or western investment in apartheid. Other of her acclaimed books included The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’etat and, during her Mozambican sojourn, Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant.

    In the process we invite renewed critical reflection about her life and work. Inspired by First’s contributions, the book considers how universities and scholars engage with institutions and social movements beyond the university.

    For example, in the book a research group from Durham University in the UK considers how to balance objectivity (showing no bias) with more politically participatory research methods and how objectivity can be enhanced despite the difficulties faced by activist research.

    Other scholars reflect on the work of the assassinated South African anti-apartheid activist scholar and lecturer Rick Turner; on climate change; and on the complexities of undertaking activist research in Marikana with a women’s organisation, Sikhala Sonke. Marikana was the site where South African police opened fire on and killed 34 striking mineworkers in 2012.

    There is examination of a research partnership between University of Cape Town activist scholars and some Khoi-San communities, reflection on the challenges of legal practice and education, and critical analysis of the decolonisation challenges of the KwaZulu-Natal Society of the Arts.

    How do you frame activist research in your book?

    The book shows that there is a difference between engaged research, critical research and activist research.

    Engaged research tries to connect knowledge produced by academics with institutions, movements and experts outside the university to collaboratively address issues and promote cooperation.

    Critical research uses radical critical theory to critique oppression and injustice, to show the gap between what exists today and more just ways of living. However, it does not necessarily connect with political and social movements.

    First’s research was not only engaged, but also critical in orientation and activist in nature. As activist research it challenged oppression and inequality.

    It both critiqued the status quo in South Africa and elsewhere and tried to change it. It was linked with movements and connected to political activism that was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and committed to socialism.



    Read more:
    Lessons learnt from taking sides as a sociologist in unjust times

    First’s activist research did not confine itself to the academic arena but engaged with larger, wider and more diverse publics. It used this experience to critique dominant and often limited thinking at universities and promoted other ways of producing knowledge. The expertise developed was used to improve scholarship in various ways.

    What do you want readers to take away?

    There is much talk about the “engaged university” and engaged research. However, only certain connections and engagements seem to be valued.

    Prior to democracy in 1994, South African researchers connected with social movements for change. Now this is seldom the case. Universities and scholars largely engage with those with money – the state, business, elites and donors.



    Read more:
    Regina Twala was a towering intellectual and activist in Eswatini – but she was erased from history

    This raises questions about the roles of researchers in South Africa, whose interests are prioritised and the place of critical and activist research in the engaged university.

    How should Ruth First be remembered?

    We must honour her for her intellectual and practical activism. What matters is not just her knowledge archive, but also her example as both an outstanding interpreter of the world and an activist scholar committed to changing society in the interests of the downtrodden, marginalised and voiceless.

    First was a critical and independent thinker who refused to accept anything as settled and beyond questioning. But that intellect was committed to loyalty to the national liberation movement of which she was an invaluable cadre.

    The views expressed in this piece do not reflect or represent the position of the university to which Badat and Reddy are affiliated.

    Saleem Badat receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. He is a board member of the International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs and Alameda.

    Vasu Reddy currently receives no external funding. He serves on the board of the Human Sciences Research Council Press

    Andrew W Mellon Foundation Grant

    Board member of the HSRC Press Board

    – ref. Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter – https://theconversation.com/ruth-first-and-activist-research-the-legacy-of-a-south-african-freedom-fighter-257687

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Saleem Badat, Research Professor, UFS History Department, University of the Free State

    Ruth First, born 100 years ago, was a South African freedom fighter, journalist and scholar who worked against the racist system of apartheid during white minority rule. She was assassinated by apartheid forces in her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique in 1982.

    Her ideas, work and legacy live on. Sociologists Saleem Badat and Vasu Reddy have edited a new book called Research and Activism: Ruth First & Activist Research. We asked them about her and their project.

    Who was Ruth First?

    Heloise Ruth First was born on 4 May 1925 in Johannesburg to Jewish parents who had migrated from eastern Europe to South Africa in the early 1900s. Her parents were founder members of the South African Communist Party.

    She joined the Young Communist League and the Federation of Progressive Students and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

    At 21, First joined the left-wing South African newspaper The Guardian. When it was banned, the New Age took its place until it too was banned in 1962. She served as the newspaper’s Johannesburg editor for 17 years.

    In 1963, First was arrested at the University of the Witwatersrand library and held in solitary confinement for 117 days, during which time she was ruthlessly interrogated. The following year she and her three children left South Africa for England on an exit permit, where they joined her partner, the activist and politician Joe Slovo. She would not set foot again in South Africa. Continuing with her activist research in England, she taught at Durham University and then joined Eduardo Mondlane University until hear death.

    The mid-1940s to early 1960s were tumultuous years in South Africa. With the rise of formal apartheid in 1948, racial segregation was intensified.

    First’s intrepid and penetrating journalistic research exposed her to the brutality of labour exploitation and control on the mines and the farms. It reinforced her understanding of South Africa in Marxist terms.

    She wrote:

    Silence in the face of injustice is complicity.

    For her:

    The will to fight is born out of the desire for freedom.

    She was confident that:

    The power of the people is greater than the power of any government.

    First believed that ignorance is “the enemy of progress and justice” and that knowledge and education are “key to empowering individuals and challenging oppressive systems”. These words ring true in today’s global events driven by right-wing authoritarianism, US imperialism and acts of genocide.

    On learning of her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela recalled:

    I was in prison when Ruth First was assassinated, felt almost alone. Lost a sister in arms  … It is no consolation to know that she lives beyond her grave.

    What is activist research and how is it applied in the book?

    As authors, we revisit Ruth First’s life, work and ideas and its relevance for the current context. We focus especially on the nature of her scholarship and how she navigated the tensions between her activism and her research – whether journalistic or for her books on South West Africa (today’s Namibia), Libya or western investment in apartheid. Other of her acclaimed books included The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’etat and, during her Mozambican sojourn, Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant.

    In the process we invite renewed critical reflection about her life and work. Inspired by First’s contributions, the book considers how universities and scholars engage with institutions and social movements beyond the university.

    For example, in the book a research group from Durham University in the UK considers how to balance objectivity (showing no bias) with more politically participatory research methods and how objectivity can be enhanced despite the difficulties faced by activist research.

    Other scholars reflect on the work of the assassinated South African anti-apartheid activist scholar and lecturer Rick Turner; on climate change; and on the complexities of undertaking activist research in Marikana with a women’s organisation, Sikhala Sonke. Marikana was the site where South African police opened fire on and killed 34 striking mineworkers in 2012.

    There is examination of a research partnership between University of Cape Town activist scholars and some Khoi-San communities, reflection on the challenges of legal practice and education, and critical analysis of the decolonisation challenges of the KwaZulu-Natal Society of the Arts.

    How do you frame activist research in your book?

    The book shows that there is a difference between engaged research, critical research and activist research.

    Engaged research tries to connect knowledge produced by academics with institutions, movements and experts outside the university to collaboratively address issues and promote cooperation.

    Critical research uses radical critical theory to critique oppression and injustice, to show the gap between what exists today and more just ways of living. However, it does not necessarily connect with political and social movements.

    First’s research was not only engaged, but also critical in orientation and activist in nature. As activist research it challenged oppression and inequality.

    It both critiqued the status quo in South Africa and elsewhere and tried to change it. It was linked with movements and connected to political activism that was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and committed to socialism.



    Read more:
    Lessons learnt from taking sides as a sociologist in unjust times

    First’s activist research did not confine itself to the academic arena but engaged with larger, wider and more diverse publics. It used this experience to critique dominant and often limited thinking at universities and promoted other ways of producing knowledge. The expertise developed was used to improve scholarship in various ways.

    What do you want readers to take away?

    There is much talk about the “engaged university” and engaged research. However, only certain connections and engagements seem to be valued.

    Prior to democracy in 1994, South African researchers connected with social movements for change. Now this is seldom the case. Universities and scholars largely engage with those with money – the state, business, elites and donors.



    Read more:
    Regina Twala was a towering intellectual and activist in Eswatini – but she was erased from history

    This raises questions about the roles of researchers in South Africa, whose interests are prioritised and the place of critical and activist research in the engaged university.

    How should Ruth First be remembered?

    We must honour her for her intellectual and practical activism. What matters is not just her knowledge archive, but also her example as both an outstanding interpreter of the world and an activist scholar committed to changing society in the interests of the downtrodden, marginalised and voiceless.

    First was a critical and independent thinker who refused to accept anything as settled and beyond questioning. But that intellect was committed to loyalty to the national liberation movement of which she was an invaluable cadre.

    The views expressed in this piece do not reflect or represent the position of the university to which Badat and Reddy are affiliated.

    Saleem Badat receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. He is a board member of the International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs and Alameda.

    Vasu Reddy currently receives no external funding. He serves on the board of the Human Sciences Research Council Press

    Andrew W Mellon Foundation Grant

    Board member of the HSRC Press Board

    – ref. Ruth First and activist research: the legacy of a South African freedom fighter – https://theconversation.com/ruth-first-and-activist-research-the-legacy-of-a-south-african-freedom-fighter-257687

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: One year in, Labour has a surprising amount to celebrate. But you wouldn’t know it

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rohan McWilliam, Professor of Modern British History, Anglia Ruskin University

    A year in, Starmer still has a mountain to climb. Flickr/Number 10 , CC BY-NC-ND

    In the build-up to the 2024 election, Keir Starmer worked hard to show that his party could run Britain better than the Tories. He promised his government would offer stability after years of chaos – but also change. He stood for honesty but also a technocratic approach that resisted the easy answers of the populist right. The grown ups would be back in charge.

    A year on, as he marks his first year in office, we might ask: how much difference did Labour’s 2024 election win make in the longer trajectory of British life? Are historians in future likely to say (as they often do about the 1945 and 1979 elections) that it led to political and social transformation?

    Of course, it’s too early to say for certain, but not too early to look for signs.

    In electoral terms, Labour gained a stonking 174-seat majority in 2024. But this victory came off the back of a remarkably slim vote share of 33.7% in an election with a near-historically low turnout. That suggests an emotional connection had not been made with the electorate (although it also reflected the way that the traditional two-party system is falling apart).

    This result has defined Labour since then. It is a government that is undoubtedly in power but with a leader who few really understand. At a conference on the Starmer government held at Anglia Ruskin University in June 2025, I asked the audience how many could produce a one-sentence summary of what the government’s ideology was. Only a few felt they could do so.

    In July 2024, Labour promised change. But what did “change” mean? Starmer’s Labour has failed to really spell out its sense of purpose. Starmer admits that he finds ideas difficult. In this sense (and this sense alone) he resembles President George H.W. Bush, who admitted he had trouble with the “vision thing”.

    Starmer looks for solutions to particular problems rather than offering a view of the kind of Britain he wants to create. Without some kind of clear ideological purpose, however, the government ends up merely reacting to events whereas it should be shaping the narrative.

    The good, the bad, and the not-very-Labour

    When Labour returned to power in 1945, 1964 and 1997, there had been extensive discussions about the direction of Labour policy and how it could change society. In 1945, Clement Attlee’s focus was on welfare. Harold Wilson in 1964 drew on Tony Crosland’s revisionist approach to socialism, while in 1997 Tony Blair promised a “third way” in politics, reflecting the ideas of intellectuals such as Anthony Giddens.

    This openness to new ideas barely happened between 2020 and 2024 beyond a sense that Labour needed to re-connect with the “red wall” voters it had lost.

    On top of this, the government has become known for doing some remarkably un-Labour things. In September 2024, it changed the rules on winter fuel benefits to limit them to only some pensioners (although it has since partially backtracked under immense pressure from Labour MPs).

    It continues to resist calls to abolish the two child-benefit cap that restricts some forms of support to families with a maximum of two children, despite clear evidence that doing so is an easy way to reduce child poverty. Most catastrophically, it has been humiliated by a backbench rebellion which forced it to gut its welfare bill.



    Read more:
    The mistakes Keir Starmer made over disability cuts – and how he can avoid future embarrassment

    The government claims it is having to correct the dismal economic inheritance left by the Tories, preventing it from splashing the cash in the way Labour supporters want. Chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves talks about “hard choices” in order to show how disciplined Labour is, thus hopefully reassuring investors and the bond market.

    The result was the winter fuel payment crisis, which (despite a u-turn) threatens to become Labour’s poll tax – an iconic policy the electorate refuses to forgive.

    Starmer and Reeves demonstrated very limited understanding of the politics of this decision: they seemed prepared to hurt poorer people while apparently leaving the wealthy largely untouched.

    Starmer would argue that his government’s ideology has been expressed through its five missions, the most important of which is to stimulate economic growth. The June 2025 spending review was aimed at directing investment particularly towards the north of England and building infrastructure, including investment in transport. The government has also retained its focus on getting to net zero (which suggests a degree of radicalism).

    Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

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    Another mission that is also more obviously Labour in character is rebuilding the NHS, particularly by reducing waiting lists. Breaking down barriers to opportunity (another mission) has led to investment in education and the creation of breakfast clubs so that all children start the day properly fed.

    Labour still talks the language of class, recognising how poorer people face obstacles. Similarly, the focus on stopping crime and making Britain’s streets safe has echoes of both Jim Callaghan and Tony Blair. The government’s preparedness (so far) to negotiate increased pay awards in the public sector also suggests a distinctive Labour approach – evidence that it is not simply offering austerity-lite. Starmer has even started the process of renationalising the railways.

    Despite claims that it is maintaining austerity, the government has increased public expenditure by the highest level in decades. In that sense, the 2024 election has led to a new direction for the country.

    Labour can make the claim that it is building a state that can respond to the demands of an ageing population, in a challenging global environment, who will be affected by the results of climate change. This (in one sentence) should be its message.

    A familiar refrain

    If we look at the new government in historical perspective, we should note that it is not unusual for people to complain that Labour lacks ideology or a moral purpose: such things were said about every prime minister the party has produced, from Ramsay MacDonald onwards. Starmer may well seem better in retrospect.

    The overall impression of the prime minister, however, is that he is consumed by caution. Much of the time his government seems to chase the talking points put out by Reform UK, the best example being the “island of strangers” speech.

    It may be that future historians will argue that the real significance of the 2024 election was not Labour’s capture of seats but the way it exposed the latent support for Nigel Farage’s new party that had been building across the country. However, there are still several years to recover this legacy, should Starmer commit to learning from the mistakes made in the first year of his tenure.

    Rohan McWilliam is affiliated with The Labour Party (ordinary member).

    – ref. One year in, Labour has a surprising amount to celebrate. But you wouldn’t know it – https://theconversation.com/one-year-in-labour-has-a-surprising-amount-to-celebrate-but-you-wouldnt-know-it-259837

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Will the Oasis reunion usher in a Britpop summer – or is it just a marketing ploy?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester

    Ink Drop/Shutterstock

    The trend for naming summers has become something of a cultural phenomenon. Think for example of 2019, which was branded a “hot girl summer”, inspired by rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s song.

    In 2021 there was the much-ridiculed “white boy summer” (named after a song of the same name by Tom Hanks’s son, Chet). Then 2022 was “feral girl summer” and 2024, of course, was a “brat summer”, after Charli XCX’s cultural phenomenon album Brat.

    And this summer? Well, with the likes of Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass, Suede, Shed Seven and Cast all playing UK dates between June and August, it’s “Britpop summer”, of course. The question is, though, whether these names are actually (and accurately) representing the zeitgeist, or if they are just the result of savvy marketing strategies.



    Read more:
    Brat by Charli XCX is a work of contemporary imagist poetry – and a reclamation of ‘bratty’ women’s art

    Such things may now be occurring more frequently, but they’re nothing new. The year 1967 was famously coined “the summer of love”, a moniker supposedly invented by the Californian local government to put a positive spin on the druggy, hairy, hippy gatherings taking place across the state.

    Then, just over two decades later, there came the imaginatively titled “second summer of love” in 1988 which, like its predecessor was drug-inspired, but this time involved British ravers taking ecstasy in London warehouses instead of hippies “dropping acid” in San Franciscan parks.

    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. Sign up here.

    The “summer of love” has largely been presented to us as a psychedelic utopia, wherein London was the “swinging, cool and hip” epicentre of a new cultural movement. Everyone was blissfully stoned, with messages of peace and love on their lips, kaftans and floral blouses on their bodies and flowers in their hair.

    In reality, though, in the UK at least only 8% of adults had actually tried cannabis and fewer than 1% had taken LSD or acid, and the fashion of the day (for men, anyway) involved sensible slacks and short-back-and-sides.

    Such un-psychedelic appetites also spilled over into mainstream music. Although it’s now the UK’s bestselling album ever, in 1967, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was only the sixth-biggest album of the year in terms of sales. It was bested by the very suitably non-flower-power Herb Alpert, The Monkees and The Sound of Music soundtrack.

    Pink Floyd’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – “the founding masterpiece in psychedelic music” – sold 275,000 copies in 1967 in the UK (compared to The Sound of Music’s 2.4 million) and was number 34 on the list of big-selling albums in the UK that year.

    The same year, 1967, also saw the “best double-A side ever released”, The Beatles’ Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever. It was kept off the number one spot by Engelbert Humperdinck’s Please Release Me.

    Inside the so-called ‘second summer of love’.

    It seems, then, that for most of the British public, it was less a “summer of love” and more a “summer of Humperdinck”. Fast-forward five decades, and we see the same kinds of things happening. The year 2019 was a “hot girl summer”, Megan Thee Stallion’s song only peaked at 40 in the UK singles charts and her gigs sold poorly.

    Like our “summer of Humperdinck”, were such things based on popularity, we may have expected a “Sheeran summer”, with Ed Sheeran’s duet with Justin Bieber, I Don’t Care, dominating the charts and airwaves.

    Similarly, although 2024 was a “brat summer”, Charli XCX’s album was actually only the UK’s eighth-biggest selling album of the year, with Taylor Swift’s very un-Brat-like The Tortured Poets Department achieving 783,820 sales – almost double Brat’s.



    Read more:
    Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and the art of melodrama

    Britpop summer

    Britpop itself may have peaked in 1995, but in the summer of 1996, with Oasis and Blur still omnipresent, Tony Blair talking about the prospect of freedom, aspiration and ambition, England progressing through the Euros on home soil, and sunny day after sunny day, it was (according to The Guardian, at least) the most optimistic period in recent British history where anything seemed possible.

    Pulp performed a secret set at Glastonbury 2025 to huge crowds.

    We may all have become more cynical in the intervening years, but in the midst of another heatwave, with Pulp at Glastonbury, and the Gallaghers reunited, it does feel like there’s something in the air again.

    Indeed, standing among tens of thousands of fellow music fans in the sweltering heat watching Jarvis Cocker strutting his gangly stuff, if I ignored the grey in his beard, the iPhones in the crowd, and the aching in my legs, it could have been the nineties all over again.

    Britpop summer? I’m all for it. And maybe this will be one time that the name really does represent the nation’s mood.

    Glenn Fosbraey 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.

    – ref. Will the Oasis reunion usher in a Britpop summer – or is it just a marketing ploy? – https://theconversation.com/will-the-oasis-reunion-usher-in-a-britpop-summer-or-is-it-just-a-marketing-ploy-260256

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Salmonella cases are at ten-year high in England – here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rob Kingsley, Professor, Microbiology, Quadram Institute

    _Salmonella_ causes salmonellosis — an infection that typically results in vomiting and diarrhoea. Lightspring/ Shutterstock

    Salmonella cases in England are the highest they’ve been in a decade, according to recent UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data. There was a 17% increase in cases observed from 2023 to 2024 – culminating in 10,388 detected infections last year. Children and older adults accounted for around a fifth of cases.

    Although the number of infections caused by foodborne diseases such as Salmonella had broadly decreased over the last 25 years, this recent spike suggests a broader issue is at play. A concurrent increase in Campylobacter cases points to a possible common cause that would affect risk of both foodborne pathogens – such as changes in consumer behaviour or food supply chains.

    While the UK maintains a high standard of food safety, any increase in the incidence of pathogens such as Salmonella warrants serious attention.

    Salmonella is a species of bacteria that is one of the most common causes of foodborne illnesses globally. The bacteria causes salmonellosis – an infection that typically causes vomiting and diarrhoea.

    Most cases of salmonellosis don’t require medical intervention. But approximately one in 50 cases results in more serious blood infections. Fortunately, fatalities from Salmonella infections in the UK are extremely rare – occurring in approximately 0.2% of all reported infections.

    Salmonella infections are typically contracted from contaminated foods. But a key challenge in controlling Salmonella in the food supply chain lies in the diverse range of foods it can contaminate.

    Salmonella is zoonotic, meaning it’s present in animals, including livestock. This allows it to enter the food chain and subsequently cause human disease. This occurs despite substantial efforts within the livestock industry to prevent it from happening – including through regular testing and high welfare practices.

    Salmonella can be present on many retail food products – including raw meat, eggs, unpasteurised milk, vegetables and dried foods (such as nuts and spices). When present, it’s typically at very low contamination levels. This means it doesn’t pose a threat to you if the product is stored and cooked properly.

    Vegetables and leafy greens can also become contaminated with Salmonella through cross-contamination, which may occur from contaminated irrigation water on farms, during processing or during storage at home. As vegetables are often consumed raw, preventing cross-contamination is particularly critical.

    Spike in cases

    It’s premature to draw definitive conclusions regarding the causes of this recent increase in Salmonella cases. But the recent UKHSA report suggests the increase is probably due to many factors.

    Never prepare raw meat next to vegetables you intend to eat without cooking, as cross-contamination can lead to Salmonella.
    kathrinerajalingam/ Shutterstock

    One contributing factor is that diagnostic testing has increased. This means we’re better at detecting cases. This can be viewed as a positive, as robust surveillance is integral to maintaining a safe food supply.

    The UKHSA also suggests that changes in the food supply chain and the way people are cooking and storing their food due to the cost of living crisis could also be influential factors.

    To better understand why Salmonella cases have spiked, it will be important for researchers to conduct more detailed examinations of the specific Salmonella strains responsible for the infections. While Salmonella is commonly perceived as a singular bacterial pathogen, there are actually numerous strains (serotypes).

    DNA sequencing can tell us which of the hundreds of Salmonella serotypes are responsible for human infections. Two serotypes, Salmonella enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium, account for most infections in England.

    Although the UKHSA reported an increase in both serotypes in 2024, the data suggests that Salmonella enteritidis has played a more significant role in the observed increase. This particular serotype is predominantly associated with egg contamination.

    Salmonella enteritidis is now relatively rare in UK poultry flocks thanks to vaccination and surveillance programmes that were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s. So the important question here is where these additional S enteritidis infections are originating.

    Although the numbers may seem alarming, what the UKHSA has reported is actually a relatively moderate increase in Salmonella cases. There’s no reason for UK consumers to be alarmed. Still, this data underscores the importance of thoroughly investigating the underlying causes to prevent this short-term increase from evolving into a longer-term trend.

    Staying safe

    The most effective way of lowering your risk of Salmonella involves adherence to the “4 Cs” of food hygiene:

    1. Cleaning

    Thoroughly wash hands before and after handling any foods – especially raw meat. It’s also essential to keep workspaces, knives and utensils clean before, during and after preparing your meal.

    2. Cooking

    The bacteria that causes Salmonella infections can be inactivated when cooked at the right temperature. In general, foods should be cooked to an internal temperature above 65°C – which should be maintained for at least ten minutes. When re-heating food, it should reach 70°C or above for two minutes to kill any bacteria that have grown since it was first cooked.

    3. Chilling

    Raw foods – especially meat and dairy – should always be stored below 5°C as this inhibits Salmonella growth. Leftovers should be cooled quickly and also stored at 5°C or lower.

    4. Cross-contamination

    To prevent Salmonella passing from raw foods to those that are already prepared or can be eaten raw (such as vegetables and fruit), it’s important to wash hands and clean surfaces after handling raw meat, and to use different chopping boards for ready-to-eat foods and raw meat.

    Most Salmonella infections are mild and will go away in a few days on their own. But taking the right steps when storing and preparing your meals can significantly lower your risk of contracting it.

    Rob Kingsley receives funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

    – ref. Salmonella cases are at ten-year high in England – here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe – https://theconversation.com/salmonella-cases-are-at-ten-year-high-in-england-heres-what-you-can-do-to-keep-yourself-safe-260032

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: How the myth of ‘Blitz spirit’ defined and divided London after 7/7

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Darren Kelsey, Reader in Media and Collective Psychology, Newcastle University

    The “Blitz spirit” is one of Britain’s most enduring national myths – the stories we tell ourselves about who we were, and who we still believe we are today. Growing up among football fans, I heard constant nostalgic refrains about England and Germany, wartime bravery and national pride.

    Chants about “two world wars and one World Cup” or “ten German bombers in the air” were cultural rituals, flexes of a shared memory that many had never experienced themselves.

    Blitz spirit refers to the resilience, unity and stoic determination of civilians during the German bombing raids (the Blitz) of the second world war. It has reemerged time and again, symbolising a collective pride in facing adversity with courage, humour and a “keep calm and carry on” attitude.

    After the July 7 bombings in 2005, which killed 52 people and injured more than 700, I noticed how quickly the Blitz spirit reappeared. British newspapers reached into the past and pulled the myth forward.

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    The Independent on July 8 said, “London can take it, and it can do so because its stoicism is laced as it always has been with humour.” The Daily Mail evoked images of “London during the Blitz… with everyone dancing through the bombs”.

    Tony Parsons opened his Daily Mirror column with “07/07 war on Britain: We can take it; if these murderous bastards go on for a thousand years, the people of our islands will never be cowed”, alongside an image of St Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz.

    The spirit of working-class wartime London was, ironically, even applied to bankers and City traders who “kept the economy alive” after the attacks. A July 8 Times article claimed: “A Dunkirk spirit spread through London’s financial districts as Canary Wharf and City workers vowed they would not be deterred.”

    The use of river transport to evacuate workers reinforced the analogy. The Times described how “bankers and lawyers in London’s riverside Canary Wharf complex experienced their own version of the Dunkirk-style evacuations”, assisted by a “flotilla of leisure vessels and little ships”.

    I was fascinated: why this story, and why now? That question became the heart of a book I published in 2015 – one that explored how a myth born in 1940 was reborn in 2005, repurposed for a very different London.

    What I found was that the “Blitz spirit” wasn’t a lie, but it was a myth in the academic sense: a simplified, selective story built from the most comforting parts of the past.

    Wartime Britain was not uniformly united, stoic and proud. There were deep class divides. Looting occurred. Morale was rock-bottom in many cities and communities. Evacuees weren’t always welcomed with open arms. Government censorship and transnational propaganda masked social unrest.

    Understandably, these messy realities were left out of the postwar narrative. But what happens when we bring that myth into the present?

    The myth of the ‘Blitz spirit’

    Londoners did come together after the 7/7 bombings – there were undoubtedly examples of communities and strangers supporting each other and maintaining a sense of resilience that enabled them to continue their lives undeterred.

    But it was not one single unified message. Hate crimes against British Muslim communities in the weeks after the 2005 attacks exposed cracks in the narrative of national unity.

    Some used the Blitz spirit to support Tony Blair and George W. Bush, casting them as Churchillian leaders standing firm against a new fascism in the form of global terrorism. For others, the same figures represented a betrayal of British values.

    They were evoked instead to shame Blair and Bush. The Express made its feelings clear when it said: “It was throw up time when Blair was compared to Churchill by some commentators. What an insult!”

    The Blitz spirit also became a weapon in anti-immigration discourse. Some argued that Britain, unlike in 1940, had become a “soft touch” – compromised by EU human rights laws, welfare handouts and multiculturalism. The underlying message: today’s London could never be as brave or unified as wartime London.

    Writing in The Sun, Richard Littlejohn said: “War office memo. Anyone caught fighting on the beaches will be prosecuted for hate crimes.”

    An article in the Express condemning human rights laws said: “What a good thing these people weren’t running things when Hitler was doing his worst. Would the second world war have been more easily won if we had spent more time talking about freedom of speech than bombing Nazi Germany?”

    Multicultural resilience

    And yet, another narrative emerged – one that saw London’s multicultural identity as a strength, not a weakness. Here, the Blitz spirit wasn’t just a historical relic, but a kind of transcendental force. The city’s soul, it was said, remained resilient – passed down across generations, regardless of race, class or religion. For some, this was proof that Britain had evolved and still held fast to its best values.

    A letter to the Daily Mirror (July 17) invoked the Blitz spirit through a cross-cultural lens: “Colour, creed and cultures forgotten, black helping white and vice versa… We stood firm in the Blitz and we’ll do so again, going about our business as usual.”

    The Sunday Times quoted Michael Portillo, who framed London’s resilience as multicultural continuity: “Fewer than half the names of those killed on the 7th look Anglo-Saxon… Today’s Londoners come in all colours and from every cultural background. Yet they have inherited the city’s historic attitudes of nonchalance, bloody-mindedness and defiance.”

    The Blitz spirit, as my research revealed, is not a single story. It is a narrative tool used for many different – often opposing – purposes. It can bring people together, or be used to divide. It can inspire pride, or be weaponised in fear.

    National myths don’t just reflect who we were – they shape who we think we are. They’re never neutral. They’re always curated, always contested. If we want to be genuinely proud of our country – and we should – then we also have to be honest about the stories we cling to. We must ask: what’s left out, and who decides?

    Darren Kelsey 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.

    – ref. How the myth of ‘Blitz spirit’ defined and divided London after 7/7 – https://theconversation.com/how-the-myth-of-blitz-spirit-defined-and-divided-london-after-7-7-259948

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: A surprisingly effective way to save the capercaillie: keep its predators well-fed – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chris Sutherland, Reader in Statistical Ecology, University of St Andrews

    A male capercaillie showing off its colours. Rolands Linejs/Shutterstock

    Conserving species can be a complicated affair. Take this dilemma.

    After being hunted to near extinction, numbers of a native predator are recovering and eating more of an endangered prey species, whose own numbers are declining as a result. Should conservationists accept that some successes mean losing other species, or reinstate lethal control of this predator in perpetuity?

    Or perhaps there is a third option that involves new means of managing species in the face of new conditions. This issue is playing out globally, as land managers grapple with predators such as wolves and lynx reclaiming their historic ranges.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    In the ancient Caledonian pine forests of Scotland there are fewer than 500 capercaillie remaining. This grouse is beset by multiple threats, not least shifts in spring weather caused by climate change that are driving its Europe-wide decline, relating to changes in when chicks are reared and available nutrition.

    Additionally, and in common with other ground-nesting birds, capercaillie lose eggs and chicks to carnivores. As such, the recovery of the pine marten (a relative of weasels and otters) from its own near extinction in Scotland is contributing to the decline of capercaillie.

    A capercaillie cock displaying for a hen.
    Jack Bamber

    Internationally, little has been achieved to slow the heating of Earth’s climate, and decades of dedicated conservation efforts have not arrested the decline of capercaillie. Extinction will follow unless new solutions are found.

    Killing pine martens, the capercaillie’s predators, might offer short-term relief, but it is socially and politically contested and scientific evidence on its effectiveness is meagre. Most importantly, it risks undermining the recovery of species conservationists have worked hard to restore. Instead, the challenge is to reduce the effects of predators, not their numbers, and encourage coexistence between species.

    We have tried one such method in Scotland – with incredibly positive results.

    A non-lethal alternative for controlling predators

    Our idea is simple: predators have to be efficient, so when given access to a free meal, they are less likely to hunt for harder-to-find prey like capercaillie nests.

    Taking the bait: a pine marten eating carrion.
    Jack Bamber

    Satiated predators are less likely to kill and eat prey that is of concern to conservationists. This is called diversionary feeding: giving predators something easy to eat at critical times, such as during the time when capercaillie build their ground nests and rear chicks between April and July.

    To test this idea we systematically dumped deer carrion across 600 square kilometres of the Cairngorms national park in north-eastern Scotland, during eight weeks in which capercaillie are laying and incubating eggs. This area is home to the last Scottish stronghold of capercaillie. We also made artificial nests across the same area that contained chicken eggs, to represent capercaillie eggs.

    Through this landscape-scale experiment, we showed that the predation rate of pine marten on artificial nests fell from 53% to 22% with diversionary feeding. This decrease from a 50% chance of a nest being eaten by a pine marten, to 20%, is a massive increase in nest survival.

    A capercaillie brood, with chicks and hen highlighted.
    Jack Bamber

    This was a strong indication that the method worked. But we were unsure whether the effect seen in artificial nests translated to real capercaillies, and the number of chicks surviving to independence.

    Counting chicks in forests with dense vegetation is difficult, and land managers are increasingly reluctant to use trained dogs. Our innovation was to count capercaillie chicks using camera traps (motion-activated cameras which can take videos and photos) at dust baths, which are clear patches of ground where chicks and hens gather to preen.

    We deployed camera traps across the landscape in areas with and without diversionary feeding and measured whether a female capercaillie had chicks or not, and how many she had. Chicks are fragile and many die early in life. The number of chicks in a brood declined at the same rate in the fed and unfed areas.

    However, in areas where predators received diversionary feeding, 85% of the hens we detected had chicks compared to just 37% where predators were unfed. That sizeable difference mirrored the improvement seen in artificial nest survival.

    Fewer nests being predated led to more hens with broods, such that by the end of the summer, we observed a staggering 130% increase in the number of chicks per hen in fed areas – 1.9 chicks per hen were seen compared to half that in unfed areas.

    So, does diversionary feeding provide a non-lethal alternative to managing conservation conflict and promoting coexistence? Our work suggests it does.

    A mature capercaillie brood.
    Jack Bamber

    Diversionary feeding is now a key element of the capercaillie emergency plan, which is the Scottish government’s main programme for recovering the species. Diversionary feeding will probably be adopted across all estates with capercaillie breeding records in the Cairngorms national park by 2026.

    This rapid implementation of scientific evidence is a direct result of working closely, from conception, with wildlife managers and policy makers. For capercaillie, diversionary feeding has real potential to make a difference, a glimmer of hope in their plight (some nicer weather in spring might help too).

    More broadly, for conservationists, land managers, gamekeepers, farmers, researchers and anyone else involved in managing wildlife, this work is testament to the fact that, with the right evidence and a willingness to adapt, we can move beyond the binaries of killing or not killing. Instead, finding smarter ways to promote the coexistence of native predators and native prey.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Jack Anthony Bamber received funding from the SUPER DTP.

    Xavier Lambin would like to credit the academic contribution of Kenny Kortland, environment policy advisor for Scottish Forestry.

    Chris Sutherland 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.

    – ref. A surprisingly effective way to save the capercaillie: keep its predators well-fed – new research – https://theconversation.com/a-surprisingly-effective-way-to-save-the-capercaillie-keep-its-predators-well-fed-new-research-259925

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: The NHS ten-year health plan is missing a crucial ingredient: nature

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrea Mechelli, Professor of Early Intervention in Mental Health, King’s College London

    mimagephotography/Shutterstock

    The UK government has finally unveiled its much anticipated ten-year Plan for improving England’s health. It contains a long overdue focus on prevention, after years of sidestepping by previous administrations.

    The plan rightly recognises that preventing illness before it begins is the most effective way to improve people’s wellbeing. It should have the added benefit of reducing strain on the NHS and easing the nation’s financial burden.

    Mental health, too, is given the attention it deserves. Recognised as integral to our overall health, its inclusion couldn’t be more timely. A 2023 international study found that one in two people will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime — a much higher figure than previously estimated.

    But one striking omission threatens to undermine the plan’s success: nature. Evidence tells us that it’s one of the most powerful means of supporting physical and mental health. And yet is not mentioned once in the plan’s 168 pages.

    If this plan is about prevention, then nature should be central to it. The science is unequivocal: contact with the natural world supports human health in wide ranging and profound ways. It lowers stress, improves mood, and alleviates symptoms of anxiety.

    For children, time in nature can even aid brain development. Nature helps reduce exposure to air pollution, moderates urban heat, and fosters physical activity and social connection.

    It can also reduce feelings of loneliness, improve the diversity of our gut microbiota – by exposing us to a wider range of environmental microbes that help train and balance the immune system – and support the immune system by reducing inflammation. All of these play a vital role in protecting against chronic disease.



    Read more:
    People feel lonelier in crowded cities – but green spaces can help

    Then there are the intangible yet no less important benefits. Nature provides a sense of awe and wonder – feelings that help us gain perspective, boost emotional resilience and find deeper meaning in everyday life.

    Our own research shows that even small, everyday moments in nature, watching birds from your window, for example, or pausing under a blooming tree on your way to the shop, can significantly boost mental wellbeing.

    Consider this: a Danish study found that growing up near green spaces during the first ten years of life reduces the risk of developing mental health problems in adulthood by a staggering 55%. A UK study similarly showed that people living in greener neighbourhoods were 16% less likely to experience depression and 14% less likely to develop anxiety.

    And as heatwaves become more frequent and intense – with soaring illness and mortality rates – the cooling effects of trees and parks will become more vital than ever for protecting our health.

    Not all green space is equal

    But it’s not just access to green space that matters – it’s also the quality of that space.

    Green areas rich in biodiversity, with a wide variety of plant life, birds, insects and fungi, provide much greater health benefits than sparse or manicured lawns. Biodiversity builds resilience not just in ecosystems, but in our bodies and minds.

    A recent study in The Lancet Planetary Health found that people living in areas with greater bird diversity were significantly less likely to experience depression and anxiety, even after accounting for socioeconomic and demographic factors.

    This research underlines a simple but urgent truth: we cannot talk about human health without talking about biodiversity.



    Read more:
    Why diversity in nature could be the key to mental wellbeing

    To deliver true prevention and resilience, we need a joined-up approach across government: one that aligns health policy with environmental protection, housing, urban design, education and transport. This means rethinking how we plan and build our communities: what kind of housing we develop, how we move around, what we grow and eat and how we live in relationship with the ecosystems that support us.

    There are many ways this vision can be put into action. The Neighbourhood Health Service outlined in the ten-year plan could be tied directly to local, community-led efforts such as Southwark’s Right to Grow campaign, which gives residents the right to cultivate unused land. This kind of initiative improves access to fresh food, promotes physical activity, strengthens community bonds and increases green cover – all of which support long-term health.

    School curricula could be revised to give children the opportunity to learn not just about nature, but also in nature – developing ecological literacy, emotional resilience and healthier habits for life. Health professionals could be trained to understand and promote the value of time outdoors for managing chronic conditions and supporting recovery. Green social prescribing – already gaining ground across the UK – should be fully integrated into standard care, with robust resourcing and cross-sector support.

    Learning from success

    Scotland’s Green Health Partnerships show what’s possible. These initiatives bring together sectors including health, environment, education, sport and transport to promote nature-based health solutions – from outdoor learning and physical activity in parks, to conservation volunteering and nature therapy.

    They don’t just improve health; they strengthen communities, build climate resilience and create cost-effective, scaleable solutions for prevention.

    The ten-year plan is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. It could help remove departmental silos and unify national goals across health, climate, inequality and economic recovery, while saving billions in the process. But in its current form, it misses a crucial ingredient.

    By failing to recognise the centrality of nature in our health, the government overlooks one of the simplest and most effective ways to build resilience – both human and ecological. Surely it is not beyond a nation of nature lovers to put nature at the heart of our future health?

    Andrea Mechelli receives funding from Wellcome Trust.

    Giulia Vivaldi, Michael Smythe, and Nick Bridge do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The NHS ten-year health plan is missing a crucial ingredient: nature – https://theconversation.com/the-nhs-ten-year-health-plan-is-missing-a-crucial-ingredient-nature-260508

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: The ‘Mind’ diet is good for cognitive health – here’s what foods you should put on your plate

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aisling Pigott, Lecturer, Dietetics, Cardiff Metropolitan University

    The ‘Mind’ diet is very similar to the Mediterranean diet, but emphasises consuming nutrients that benefit the brain. Svetlana Khutornaia/ Shutterstock

    There’s long been evidence that what we eat can affect our risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline as we age. But can any one diet actually keep the brain strong and lower dementia risk? Evidence suggests the so-called “Mind diet” might.

    The Mind diet (which stands for the Mediterranean-Dash intervention for neurocognitive delay) combines the well-established Mediterranean diet with the “Dash” diet (dietary approaches to stop hypertension). However, it also includes some specific dietary modifications based on their benefits to cognitive health.

    Both the Mediterranean diet and Dash diet are based on traditional eating patterns from countries which border the Mediterranean sea.

    Both emphasise eating plenty of plant-based foods (such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds), low-fat dairy products (such as milk and yoghurts) and lean proteins including fish and chicken. Both diets include very little red and processed meats. The Dash diet, however, places greater emphasis on consuming low-sodium foods, less added sugar and fewer saturated and trans-fats to reduce blood pressure.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    Both diets are well-researched and shown to be effective in preventing lifestyle-related diseases – including cardiovascular disease and hypertension. They’re also shown to help protect the brain’s neurons from damage and benefit cognitive health.

    The Mind diet follows many of the core tenets of both diets but places greater emphasis on consuming more foods that contain nutrients which promote brain health and prevent cognitive decline, including:

    Numerous studies have been conducted on the Mind diet, and the evidence for this dietary approach’s brain health benefit is pretty convincing.

    For instance, one study asked 906 older adults about their usual diet — giving them a “Mind score” based on the number of foods and nutrients they regularly consumed that are linked with lower dementia risk. The researchers found a link between people who had a higher Mind diet score and slower cognitive decline when followed up almost five years later.

    Another study of 581 participants found that people who had closely followed either the Mind diet or the Mediterranean diet for at least a decade had fewer signs of amyloid plaques in their brain when examined post-mortem. Amyloid plaques are a key hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Higher intake of leafy greens appeared to the most important dietary component.

    A systematic review of 13 studies on the Mind diet has also found a positive association between adherence to the Mind diet and cognitive performance and function in older people. One paper included in the review even demonstrated a 53% reduction in Alzheimer’s disease risk in those that adhered to the diet.

    The Mind diet encourages eating berries, which contain a plant compound thought to be beneficial for the brain.
    etorres/ Shutterstock

    It’s important to note that most of this research is based on observational studies and food frequency questionnaires, which have their limitations in research due to reliabiltiy and participant bias. Only one randomised control trial was included in the review. It found that women who were randomly assigned to follow the Mind diet over a control diet for a short period of time showed a slight improvement in memory and attention.

    Research in this field is ongoing, so hopefully we’ll soon have a better understanding of the diet’s benefits – and know exactly why it’s so beneficial.

    Mind your diet

    UK public health guidance recommends people follow a balanced diet to maintain good overall health. But the Mind diet offers a more targeted approach for those hoping to look after their cognitive health.

    While public health guidance encourages people to eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables daily, the Mind diet would recommend choosing leafy green vegetables (such as spinach and kale) and berries for their cognitive benefits.

    Similarly, while UK guidance says to choose unsaturated fats over saturated ones, the Mind diet explicitly recommends that these fats come from olive oil. This is due to the potential neuroprotective effects of the fats found in olive oil.

    If you want to protect your cognitive function as you age, here are some other small, simple swaps you can make each day to more closely follow the Mind diet:

    • upgrade your meals by sprinkling nuts and seeds on cereals, salads or yoghurts to increase fibre and healthy fats
    • eat the rainbow of fruit and vegetables, aiming to fill half your plate with these foods
    • canned and frozen foods are just as nutrient-rich as fresh fruits and vegetables
    • bake or airfry vegetables and meats instead of frying to reduce fat intake
    • opt for poly-unsaturated fats and oils in salads and dressings – such as olive oil
    • bulk out meat or meat alternatives with pulses, legumes chickpeas or beans. These can easily be added into dishes such as spaghetti bolognese, chilli, shepherd’s pie or curry
    • use tinned salmon, mackerel or sardines in salads or as protein sources for meal planning.

    These small changes can have a meaningful impact on your overall health – including your brain’s health. With growing evidence linking diet to cognitive function, even little changes to your eating habits may help protect your mind as you age.

    Aisling Pigott receives funding from Health and Care Research Wales

    Sophie Davies 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.

    – ref. The ‘Mind’ diet is good for cognitive health – here’s what foods you should put on your plate – https://theconversation.com/the-mind-diet-is-good-for-cognitive-health-heres-what-foods-you-should-put-on-your-plate-259106

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  • MIL-OSI Submissions: From glass and steel to rare earth metals, new materials have changed society throughout history

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Peter Mullner, Distinguished Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, Boise State University

    Steel played a large role in the Industrial Revolution. Monty Rakusen/DigitalVision via Getty Images

    Many modern devices – from cellphones and computers to electric vehicles and wind turbines – rely on strong magnets made from a type of minerals called rare earths. As the systems and infrastructure used in daily life have turned digital and the United States has moved toward renewable energy, accessing these minerals has become critical – and the markets for these elements have grown rapidly.

    Modern society now uses rare earth magnets in everything from national defense, where magnet-based systems are integral to missile guidance and aircraft, to the clean energy transition, which depends on wind turbines and electric vehicles.

    The rapid growth of the rare earth metal trade and its effects on society isn’t the only case study of its kind. Throughout history, materials have quietly shaped the trajectory of human civilization. They form the tools people use, the buildings they inhabit, the devices that mediate their relationships and the systems that structure economies. Newly discovered materials can set off ripple effects that shape industries, shift geopolitical balances and transform people’s daily habits.

    Materials science is the study of the atomic structure, properties, processing and performance of materials. In many ways, materials science is a discipline of immense social consequence.

    As a materials scientist, I’m interested in what can happen when new materials become available. Glass, steel and rare earth magnets are all examples of how innovation in materials science has driven technological change and, as a result, shaped global economies, politics and the environment.

    How innovation shapes society: Pressures from societal and political interests (orange arrows) drive the creation of new materials and the technologies that such materials enable (center). The ripple effects resulting from people using these technologies change the entire fabric of society (blue arrows).
    Peter Mullner

    Glass lenses and the scientific revolution

    In the early 13th century, after the sacking of Constantinople, some excellent Byzantine glassmakers left their homes to settle in Venice – at the time a powerful economic and political center. The local nobility welcomed the glassmakers’ beautiful wares. However, to prevent the glass furnaces from causing fires, the nobles exiled the glassmakers – under penalty of death – to the island of Murano.

    Murano became a center for glass craftsmanship. In the 15th century, the glassmaker Angelo Barovier experimented with adding the ash from burned plants, which contained a chemical substance called potash, to the glass.

    The potash reduced the melting temperature and made liquid glass more fluid. It also eliminated bubbles in the glass and improved optical clarity. This transparent glass was later used in magnifying lenses and spectacles.

    Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, completed in 1455, made reading more accessible to people across Europe. With it came a need for reading glasses, which grew popular among scholars, merchants and clergy – enough that spectacle-making became an established profession.

    By the early 17th century, glass lenses evolved into compound optical devices. Galileo Galilei pointed a telescope toward celestial bodies, while Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered microbial life with a microscope.

    The glass lens of the Vera Rubin Observatory, which surveys the night sky.
    Large Synoptic Survey Telescope/Vera Rubin Observatory, CC BY

    Lens-based instruments have been transformative. Telescopes have redefined long-standing cosmological views. Microscopes have opened entirely new fields in biology and medicine.

    These changes marked the dawn of empirical science, where observation and measurement drove the creation of knowledge. Today, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory continue those early telescopes’ legacies of knowledge creation.

    Steel and empires

    In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution created demand for stronger, more reliable materials for machines, railroads, ships and infrastructure. The material that emerged was steel, which is strong, durable and cheap. Steel is a mixture of mostly iron, with small amounts of carbon and other elements added.

    Countries with large-scale steel manufacturing once had outsized economic and political power and influence over geopolitical decisions. For example, the British Parliament intended to prevent the colonies from exporting finished steel with the iron act of 1750. They wanted the colonies’ raw iron as supply for their steel industry in England.

    Benjamin Huntsman invented a smelting process using 3-foot tall ceramic vessels, called crucibles, in 18th-century Sheffield. Huntsman’s crucible process produced higher-quality steel for tools and weapons.

    One hundred years later, Henry Bessemer developed the oxygen-blowing steelmaking process, which drastically increased production speed and lowered costs. In the United States, figures such as Andrew Carnegie created a vast industry based on Bessemer’s process.

    The widespread availability of steel transformed how societies built, traveled and defended themselves. Skyscrapers and transit systems made of steel allowed cities to grow, steel-built battleships and tanks empowered militaries, and cars containing steel became staples in consumer life.

    White-hot steel pouring out of an electric arc furnace in Brackenridge, Penn.
    Alfred T. Palmer/U.S. Library of Congress

    Control over steel resources and infrastructure made steel a foundation of national power. China’s 21st-century rise to steel dominance is a continuation of this pattern. From 1995 to 2015, China’s contribution to the world steel production increased from about 10% to more than 50%. The White House responded in 2018 with massive tariffs on Chinese steel.

    Rare earth metals and global trade

    Early in the 21st century, the advance of digital technologies and the transition to an economy based on renewable energies created a demand for rare earth elements.

    Offshore turbines use several tons of rare earth magnets to transform wind into electricity.
    Hans Hillewaert/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    Rare earth elements are 17 chemically very similar elements, including neodymium, dysprosium, samarium and others. They occur in nature in bundles and are the ingredients that make magnets super strong and useful. They are necessary for highly efficient electric motors, wind turbines and electronic devices.

    Because of their chemical similarity, separating and purifying rare earth elements involves complex and expensive processes.

    China controls the majority of global rare earth processing capacity. Political tensions between countries, especially around trade tariffs and strategic competition, can risk shortages or disruptions in the supply chain.

    The rare earth metals case illustrates how a single category of materials can shape trade policy, industrial planning and even diplomatic alliances.

    Mining rare earth elements has allowed for the widespread adoption of many modern technologies.
    Peggy Greb, USDA

    Technological transformation begins with societal pressure. New materials create opportunities for scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Once a material proves useful, it quickly becomes woven into the fabric of daily life and broader systems. With each innovation, the material world subtly reorganizes the social world — redefining what is possible, desirable and normal.

    Understanding how societies respond to new innovations in materials science can help today’s engineers and scientists solve crises in sustainability and security. Every technical decision is, in some ways, a cultural one, and every material has a story that extends far beyond its molecular structure.

    The National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, NASA, and other national and regional agencies have funded former research of Peter Mullner.

    – ref. From glass and steel to rare earth metals, new materials have changed society throughout history – https://theconversation.com/from-glass-and-steel-to-rare-earth-metals-new-materials-have-changed-society-throughout-history-258244

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  • MIL-OSI: PFMCrypto Launches $1M+ Rewards Campaign with AI-Powered 1-Day XRP Mining Contracts

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    London, England, July 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PFMCrypto, the world’s leading crypto asset management platform, has officially launched its innovative “1-Day Contract,” offering new users a flexible, low-risk entry point to experience the platform’s capabilities. The product debut is backed by a major promotional campaign featuring over $1 million in giveaways, including a $10 bonus for every new registrant.

    PFM Crypto Launches $1M+ Giveaway with New 1-Day XRP Mining Contract.
    Click here to explore more about PFMCrypto.

    What Is PFM Crypto XRP Mining Contract—and Why Now?
    Unlike traditional mining that relies on proof-of-work (PoW), XRP uses a consensus protocol, making conventional mining methods infeasible. PFMCrypto addresses this challenge by introducing a simulated cloud mining model that allows users to earn XRP rewards through mining contracts.

    PFMCrypto is a remote digital asset mining platform where users rent computing power from PFMCrypto’s high-performance, environmentally friendly mining facilities. Supporting a range of cryptocurrencies—including XRP, DOGE, BTC, LTC, and SOL—the platform eliminates technical and financial barriers, making passive income more accessible than ever.

    With the launch of the “1-Day Contract,” PFM Crypto expands from a high-performance VIP platform to a global solution welcoming retail traders and everyday investors.

    The platform currently supports over 9.2 million users in 192 countries, offers over 10 different contract options, giving users the freedom to select the plan that best suits their needs.
    Examples include:
    $10 Mining Contract – 1-day term – Earn $0.60 daily
    $100 Mining Contract – 2-day term – Earn $3.00 daily + $2 bonus
    $1,000 Mining Contract – 9-day term – Earn $13.10 daily
    $5,000 Mining Contract – 30-day term – Earn $78.50 daily
    These innovative plans enable long-term Cryptocurrency holders to remain invested during sideways or corrective markets while enjoying consistent returns.

    Click here to explore more mining contracts.

    “1-Day Contract” Launch Details
    The new product is now available across PFM Crypto’s web and mobile platforms. Priced at just $10 with $0.66 daily returns, it offers an easy and affordable way for users to tap into the PFM Crypto ecosystem.

    $1M+ Community Rewards Campaign
    To celebrate the launch, PFM Crypto has introduced a board-approved rewards initiative exceeding $1 million. The program provides true barrier-free access—all new users receive a $10 bonus credited instantly to their account.

    Click here to become a new user of PFMCrypto.

    Highlights of the Limited-Time Campaign
    –  Intensive 24-Hour Mining Window: A short-term format designed for rapid gains, allowing users to mine XRP, DOGE, BTC, LTC, and SOL in an optimized time frame, and get mining income every day
    –  $1M in Mining Rewards: Structured reward tiers of $10 / $35 / $1,800 / $4,800, incentivizing participation from both new and returning users.
    –  Enhanced Daily Yields: Users will enjoy elevated mining returns for the duration of the campaign.
    This bold campaign is designed to boost platform adoption, drive community engagement, and showcase PFMCrypto’s core value proposition.

    Click here to view the limited-time mining campaign.

    Why This Matters for Crypto Investors
    PFMCrypto blends AI innovation, financial technology, and real-world utility—a rare combination that resonates strongly with modern crypto investors. The platform delivers daily returns without requiring technical knowledge or active trading.

    Why PFMCrypto Is Ideal for XRP Mining—Both Beginners and Pros:
    –  No Equipment Needed: Instant access to institutional-grade mining infrastructure
    –  Zero Maintenance Fees: PFM Crypto covers electricity, cooling, and upkeep
    –  $10 Welcome Bonus: All new users receive a sign-up reward and login incentives
    –  Daily Payouts + Capital Protection: Earn income daily with your principal returned at maturity
    By focusing on measurable performance over hype, PFM Crypto has positioned itself as a serious, value-driven solution in the evolving crypto landscape.

    About PFM Crypto
    Operated by FCA-regulated Precision Financial Management Ltd (Company No. 11719896), PFM Crypto represents a new class of digital asset platforms—data-driven, results-oriented, and globally trusted. Since its founding in 2018, the Leyland-based company has emerged as one of the most promising crypto investment platforms for investors seeking consistent, real-world returns.

    For full campaign details and to participate: https://pfmcrypto.net 

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: PFMCrypto Launches $1M+ Rewards Campaign with AI-Powered 1-Day XRP Mining Contracts

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    London, England, July 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PFMCrypto, the world’s leading crypto asset management platform, has officially launched its innovative “1-Day Contract,” offering new users a flexible, low-risk entry point to experience the platform’s capabilities. The product debut is backed by a major promotional campaign featuring over $1 million in giveaways, including a $10 bonus for every new registrant.

    PFM Crypto Launches $1M+ Giveaway with New 1-Day XRP Mining Contract.
    Click here to explore more about PFMCrypto.

    What Is PFM Crypto XRP Mining Contract—and Why Now?
    Unlike traditional mining that relies on proof-of-work (PoW), XRP uses a consensus protocol, making conventional mining methods infeasible. PFMCrypto addresses this challenge by introducing a simulated cloud mining model that allows users to earn XRP rewards through mining contracts.

    PFMCrypto is a remote digital asset mining platform where users rent computing power from PFMCrypto’s high-performance, environmentally friendly mining facilities. Supporting a range of cryptocurrencies—including XRP, DOGE, BTC, LTC, and SOL—the platform eliminates technical and financial barriers, making passive income more accessible than ever.

    With the launch of the “1-Day Contract,” PFM Crypto expands from a high-performance VIP platform to a global solution welcoming retail traders and everyday investors.

    The platform currently supports over 9.2 million users in 192 countries, offers over 10 different contract options, giving users the freedom to select the plan that best suits their needs.
    Examples include:
    $10 Mining Contract – 1-day term – Earn $0.60 daily
    $100 Mining Contract – 2-day term – Earn $3.00 daily + $2 bonus
    $1,000 Mining Contract – 9-day term – Earn $13.10 daily
    $5,000 Mining Contract – 30-day term – Earn $78.50 daily
    These innovative plans enable long-term Cryptocurrency holders to remain invested during sideways or corrective markets while enjoying consistent returns.

    Click here to explore more mining contracts.

    “1-Day Contract” Launch Details
    The new product is now available across PFM Crypto’s web and mobile platforms. Priced at just $10 with $0.66 daily returns, it offers an easy and affordable way for users to tap into the PFM Crypto ecosystem.

    $1M+ Community Rewards Campaign
    To celebrate the launch, PFM Crypto has introduced a board-approved rewards initiative exceeding $1 million. The program provides true barrier-free access—all new users receive a $10 bonus credited instantly to their account.

    Click here to become a new user of PFMCrypto.

    Highlights of the Limited-Time Campaign
    –  Intensive 24-Hour Mining Window: A short-term format designed for rapid gains, allowing users to mine XRP, DOGE, BTC, LTC, and SOL in an optimized time frame, and get mining income every day
    –  $1M in Mining Rewards: Structured reward tiers of $10 / $35 / $1,800 / $4,800, incentivizing participation from both new and returning users.
    –  Enhanced Daily Yields: Users will enjoy elevated mining returns for the duration of the campaign.
    This bold campaign is designed to boost platform adoption, drive community engagement, and showcase PFMCrypto’s core value proposition.

    Click here to view the limited-time mining campaign.

    Why This Matters for Crypto Investors
    PFMCrypto blends AI innovation, financial technology, and real-world utility—a rare combination that resonates strongly with modern crypto investors. The platform delivers daily returns without requiring technical knowledge or active trading.

    Why PFMCrypto Is Ideal for XRP Mining—Both Beginners and Pros:
    –  No Equipment Needed: Instant access to institutional-grade mining infrastructure
    –  Zero Maintenance Fees: PFM Crypto covers electricity, cooling, and upkeep
    –  $10 Welcome Bonus: All new users receive a sign-up reward and login incentives
    –  Daily Payouts + Capital Protection: Earn income daily with your principal returned at maturity
    By focusing on measurable performance over hype, PFM Crypto has positioned itself as a serious, value-driven solution in the evolving crypto landscape.

    About PFM Crypto
    Operated by FCA-regulated Precision Financial Management Ltd (Company No. 11719896), PFM Crypto represents a new class of digital asset platforms—data-driven, results-oriented, and globally trusted. Since its founding in 2018, the Leyland-based company has emerged as one of the most promising crypto investment platforms for investors seeking consistent, real-world returns.

    For full campaign details and to participate: https://pfmcrypto.net 

    The MIL Network –

  • 2nd Test: Brook-Smith stand rescues England, but Siraj’s 6/70 keeps India on driver’s seat

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Mohammed Siraj grabbed six wickets as India bowled out England for 407 runs, taking a first-innings lead of 180 runs in the second Test at Edgbaston, Birmingham. Akash Deep also contributed with four wickets.

    Before stumps, India lost Yashasvi Jaiswal for 28. KL Rahul (28*) and Karun Nair (7*) stood tall at the crease as India finished Day 3 on 64/1, leading by 244 runs.

    England began the third session at 355/5, trailing by 232 runs, with Harry Brook and Jamie Smith unbeaten on 140 (209) and 157 (169), respectively. Brook reached his 150 in the 79th over, pushing the ball towards point for a single.

    In the 82nd over, the duo brought up a 300-run partnership for the sixth wicket. Akash Deep finally broke the stand, cleaning up Brook for a brilliant 158, which included 17 fours and a six.

    Chris Woakes joined Smith at the crease but fell to Deep in the 87th over for just five. After Woakes’ dismissal, Siraj ran through the lower order, claiming three wickets in two overs to bowl out England for 407.

    Jamie Smith remained unbeaten on 184, while Brook scored 158. Smith made history by registering the highest score by a wicketkeeper for England in a Test match.

    Smith now also holds the record for the highest Test score by an England batter at No. 7 or lower, surpassing KS Ranjitsinhji’s 175 against Australia at the SCG in 1897.

    In India’s second innings, Jaiswal and Rahul opened aggressively, reaching 50 runs in just the eighth over. In the same over, Jaiswal was dismissed by Josh Tongue for 28 off 22 balls, which included six fours.

    Karun Nair then joined Rahul at the crease.

    Earlier in the day, Smith and Brook tormented the Indian bowlers in the second session, thriving under the aggressive ‘Bazball’ approach and keeping England in the contest on Day 3 of the Test.

    At Tea, England had reached 355/5, still trailing by 232 runs, with Brook and Smith unbeaten.

    Brook brought up his ninth Test century early in the session, guiding the ball past a diving Nitish Kumar Reddy at gully. Indian spinners Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja were ineffective against the attacking English duo.

    Smith continued with aggressive intent, while Brook showcased a mix of aggression and solid defence. Luck favoured England, as Brook survived a couple of close calls and Smith was dropped by Pant off a tough chance.

    Smith hit back-to-back boundaries off Nitish in the 62nd over and followed it with a pull shot for four off Deep in the next. He brought up his 150 in the 64th over, steering the ball to deep backward point for a single.

    With reverse swing and spin missing, Jadeja bowled a rare maiden over but couldn’t break through. Brook used reverse sweeps effectively, helping England reach 350 in the 74th over.

    England had started Day 3 at 77/3 with Joe Root (18*) and Brook (30*) at the crease. Siraj struck early, removing Root for 22 and captain Ben Stokes for a golden duck in the 22nd over.

    Smith then joined Brook, and the duo counter-attacked. England crossed 100 in the 25th over. Brook reached his fifty in 73 balls, and Smith smashed 23 runs in a single over from Prasidh Krishna — equalling the most runs conceded by an Indian bowler in an over against England.

    Smith reached his fifty soon after and brought up his century before Lunch with back-to-back boundaries off Jadeja.

    Brief Scores:

    India:587 (Shubman Gill 269, Ravindra Jadeja 89; Shoaib Bashir 3/167) England: 407 (Jamie Smith 184, Harry Brook 158; Mohammed Siraj 6/70)

    India 2nd innings: 64/1 (KL Rahul 28*, Yashasvi Jaiswal 28; Josh Tongue 1/12)

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Dundee Gift Card to Power Local Spending Across the City

    Source: Scotland – City of Dundee

    A new local gift card has been backed to lead a renewed push to keep more spending local, secure jobs and support businesses across the city.

    The Dundee Gift Card has relaunched today (Friday 4 July) with a new identity that celebrates the city’s iconic landmarks, including V&A Dundee, RRS Discovery, the Nethergate penguin statues and more.

    This yearly campaign highlights and supports independent retail businesses across the UK, with an annual two-day event held in July to encourage independent shopping.

    The aim of the gift card is to help encourage even more people to shop, dine, and experience more of what Dundee has to offer.  Available to purchase in both physical and digital formats, the newest iteration is already accepted by more than 200+ businesses across the city.

    Many of Dundee’s independent shops, cafes, restaurants, attractions and service providers are signed up to the accept the card alongside local branches of national names such as Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Boots and Marks & Spencer.

    Fair work, economic growth and infrastructure convener, Cllr Steven Rome said: “The new Dundee Gift Card is a brilliant way to encourage people who want to buy local and support the business community in the city.

    “I was delighted to meet and chat with a few of the over 200 businesses who are on board. It’s important that we have a vibrant and thriving city with lots to offer for locals and visitors. This card supports that. It will help to stimulate our local economy and support Dundee jobs.”

    To celebrate the launch organisers are highlighting participating local businesses, including established independents The Cheesery and Keiller’s Gift Shop.

    David Farry, Keiller’s Gift Shop, said: “As a family-owned business serving Dundee for over 40 years, we know how important it is to support local. The Dundee Gift Card gives people a real reason to do just that, helping to keep our high street lively and full of character.”

    Hilary Barney, Owner of The Cheesery, added: “We signed up to the Dundee Gift Card as I think it’s so important to support local businesses and programs like this are a great way to do it.” 

    The Dundee Gift Card remains part of the national Scotland Loves Local gift card program, delivered by Scotland’s Towns Partnership in partnership with fintech company Miconex, and was created to support local recovery and growth by keeping spending within communities.

    Current Dundee Loves Local cardholders can continue to use their cards, which remain valid for 12 months from the date of purchase.

    The Dundee Gift Card is available online and from local distribution points across the city. For more information or to purchase a card, visit dundeegiftcard.com.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Have your say on the future of affordable housing in Edinburgh

    Source: Scotland – City of Edinburgh

    The City of Edinburgh Council is inviting residents and stakeholders to take part in a consultation on the city’s Affordable Housing Policy (AHP).

    Edinburgh led the way by becoming the first local authority in Scotland to introduce an AHP in 2000. Under the current policy, housing developments with 12 or more homes must include 35% affordable housing.

    Today, the city faces growing housing pressures – higher than average rents and house prices, a low proportion of social housing, and over 5,000 households in temporary accommodation. The city also has a lower proportion of social rented homes – just 16% compared to the Scottish average of 22%.

    The consultation, which closes on 23 July 2025, follows the publication of the Affordable Housing Policy Guidance 2025 report discussed at the April meeting of the Planning Committee.

    The Council is reviewing the policy’s non-statutory elements and is seeking public feedback on the next version of the Affordable Housing Guidance, due to be considered by the Planning Committee in November 2025.

     Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Convener Lezley Marion Cameron said:

    Too many people and families in Edinburgh are struggling to find a stable and affordable place to live, and too many are still in temporary accommodation. We are making progress, however, there is much more to do to meet the increasing demand for housing in Edinburgh.   

    That is why I am encouraging people to participate in the consultation and share their views to influence how we shape our communities and deliver the much needed affordable homes our city and citizens need.

    Find out more and share your views here.

    Published: July 4th 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: County lines taskforce set up in West Yorkshire

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    News story

    County lines taskforce set up in West Yorkshire

    A specialist police team focused on tackling county lines drug running will be set up in West Yorkshire police force through £1 million of government funding.

    A specialist policing unit will be set up within West Yorkshire police force to target drug running in and out of the region and protect those exploited by the dangerous illegal drugs trade.  

    The dedicated county lines taskforce in West Yorkshire is an expansion of the government’s County Lines Programme and is backed by £1.3 million of funding – and includes additional specialist support for victims, expanding across Leeds and Bradford. 

    County lines is a term used to describe gangs who are involved in transporting illegal drugs into different counties within the UK, using dedicated ‘deal lines’ often run out of the biggest cities with routes into different towns. It is one of the most violent models of drug supply and often sees children used to move and store drugs and money. 

    As part of the Plan for Change to deliver safer streets, the government is working closely with the police to put a stop to this trade and through its County Lines Programme, it already funds dedicated taskforces in major cities such as London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham.  

    Since July 2024, work by the taskforces funded through the national programme has led to more than 1,200 line closures and more than 2,000 arrests, leading to the charging of over 800 criminals controlling lines.  

    As part of the new funding, specialist support services provided by Catch22 will be extended to the region to help the vulnerable people and children who are exploited by this trade.  

    Protecting vulnerable people should always be at the heart of the police’s response and, as part of the Safer Streets mission, the government has introduced new laws which will punish the heartless gangs who lure people into their illegal trade further, including specific offences of child criminal exploitation, cuckooing and coerced internal concealment.

    Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper said: 

    The appalling reality of county lines drug running is that criminal gangs exploit children and teenagers to run drugs, further drawing them into violence and serious crime.

    We’ve also seen competing drugs gangs running operations into small towns and communities also tackling violence and knife crime into those too. Officers at West Yorkshire Police have already made important progress in combatting drugs running in the area, and this funding will help the force go further to put a stop to this evil practice. 

    As part of the Plan for Change, we are going further to protect children from being criminally exploited by investing millions into policing and introducing specific offences that properly recognise the harm it causes and punish those who choose to inflict this pain.

    Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Jones, said:

    The formation of a dedicated taskforce for West Yorkshire gives us an opportunity to build on the work we already do in tackling county lines crime head on, making an even greater positive impact. 

    County lines crime has a direct effect on communities across the whole of West Yorkshire – from the exploitation of young and vulnerable people who are often coerced into doing the dirty work of hardened organised criminals, to the serious violence and drug-related misery that comes with it.

    Our aim is clear – we will be relentless in our pursuit of those behind county lines by disrupting their illicit enterprises. We will safeguard victims, raise awareness of the dangers of county lines and continue to work with our partners to make our towns and villages stronger and safer.

    West Yorkshire has consistently been one of the largest exporters of county lines drug running in recent years, which is why the government has chosen to provide further funding for the force and Catch22 to provide specialist support to victims in the region.  

    Twenty-eight arrests were made and 2 lines were closed by West Yorkshire police last week as part of a national County Lines Intensification Week. This also saw 26 people safeguarded and £9,000 of Class A drugs and over £100,000 in cash seized by officers.

    Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin said:

    We must protect our local communities, including vulnerable children, from the scourge of drugs and gang violence.

    This significant investment into a dedicated taskforce and support for victims will bolster our ongoing efforts to tackle this issue.

    We are determined that there will be nowhere to hide for criminals who exploit children and damage our communities both in West Yorkshire and across our borders.

    Kate Wareham, Catch22 Strategic Director – Young People Families and Communities, said: 

    Having seen first hand the devastating impact of county lines on young people, this expansion into Yorkshire is crucial.

    We know the need for our service is growing, and we’re committed to working with partners like the Home Office and British Transport Police to keep safeguarding these vulnerable children at the forefront. In our efforts to draw a line on exploitation, we welcome this investment in our service.

    As part of the Safer Streets mission, the government has pledged to halve knife crime in the next decade.  County lines is closely linked to knife crime and tackling violent and exploitative drug gangs through the County Lines Programme is crucial to delivering this commitment. 

    The expansion of the County Lines Programme comes as the Home Secretary launches the government’s Safer Streets summer initiative. This nationwide crackdown will seek to target town centre crime, such as shop theft and antisocial behaviour, much of which is driven by the supply of drugs into these communities. 

    Over 500 town centres have signed up to the Home Secretary’s Safer Streets summer blitz that will see shops benefit from increased police patrols and local action to tackle town centre crime and antisocial behaviour.  

    This marks a key step in delivering the government’s Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, which from July will see named, contactable officers in every community, increased peak time patrols in town centres and antisocial behaviour leads in every force.  

    Commissioned by the Home Secretary, police and crime commissioners across England and Wales have developed bespoke local action plans with police, businesses and local councils to crack down on crime this summer.  

    The aim is to support town centres to be vibrant places where people want to live, work and spend time, and restore faith in community policing after years of declining police officer presence on Britain’s streets.

    Updates to this page

    Published 4 July 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –