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Have you heard of “eldest daughter syndrome”? It’s the emotional burden eldest daughters tend to take on (and are encouraged to take on) in many families from a young age.
From caring for younger siblings, helping out with everyday chores, looking after sick parents to sorting shopping orders or online deliveries, eldest daughters often shoulder a heavy but invisible burden of domestic responsibility from a young age.
What’s wrong with that? You might ask, shouldn’t the eldest children, who are supposed to be more grown-up, help out and look after their younger siblings? Aren’t girls “naturally” better at caring? These popular assumptions are so entrenched that they can make it difficult for us to see the problem.
But #EldestDaughterSyndrome is now trending on TikTok, with adolescent girls speaking out about the unfair amount of unpaid (and unappreciated) labour they do in their families, as well as discussing its adverse effects on their lives, health and wellbeing.
Of course, the “syndrome” has existed for centuries across many parts of the world. So why is it now being spoken about as such an issue?
This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.
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Despite women’s rise in education and employment, they still shoulder the lion’s share of housework. Indeed, progress towards gender equality in the workplace has not translated into gender equality at home. And eldest daughter syndrome can go some way to explain why this is the case.
Research shows that children make a notable but often overlooked contribution to domestic labour. Mirroring the gender divide among adults, girls between five and 14 years old spend 40% more time on domestic work than boys.
Following a patriarchal pecking order, the eldest daughter often bears the brunt of the burden among her siblings.
As voiced by many on TikTok, the syndrome can impair eldest daughters’ wellbeing and “steal” their childhood as they are rushed into assuming a disproportionate amount of adult responsibilities – also known as parentification. In doing so, it reproduces gender inequality in domestic labour from one generation to another.
At least three behavioural theories underlie eldest daughter syndrome and they are often simultaneously at play, reinforcing one another.
First, the role modelling theory, which suggests that eldest daughters often follow their mother as a role model in learning to “do” gender. Second, the sex-typing theory proposes that parents often assign different, gendered tasks to girls and boys.
Sex-typing often builds on parents’ gendered understanding of domestic work as something associated with femininity. For parents who consciously strive to instil gender equality in their children, sex-typing can still occur as eldest daughters unconsciously join their mothers in gendered activities such as cooking, house cleaning and shopping.
And third, the labour substitution theory suggests that when working mothers have limited time available for domestic work, eldest daughters often act as “substitutes”. As a result, they end up spending more time on care provision and housework.
Consequently, mothers’ progress towards gender equality at work can come at the cost of their eldest daughters picking up the domestic slack at a young age.
As we look further afield, the issue of eldest daughter syndrome has far-reaching implications for global gender inequality and an ongoing global care crisis.
In the Philippines, for example, many mothers migrate to the US, the Middle East and Europe to work as domestic workers.
Their work helps free their clients from domestic gender inequality to some extent through domestic outsourcing. But back in the Philippines, the women’s eldest daughters often have to step up as “surrogate” mothers and run the household.
In this process, eldest daughter syndrome reproduces domestic gender inequality across generations and offloads such inequality from one part of the world to another.
The “cure” might seem simple – we need families to recognise the unfair burden that may have been placed on the eldest daughter and to redistribute household responsibilities more equally.
Yet, doing so is far from straightforward. It requires male family members in particular to step up their contribution to domestic work. In turn, it requires us to “undo” centuries of thinking about housework and care as something gendered and “feminine”.
To achieve that, we need to first recognise the problem that domestic labour, particularly labour performed by children and eldest daughters, which goes largely unseen, unpaid and under-valued.
In the 2023 UK Budget, the £4 billion investment in extending childcare coverage sheds some light on the sheer economic value of childcare, which, although massive, represents only a tiny fraction of the extensive range of domestic responsibilities disproportionately shouldered by women and often eldest daughters.
But we can’t change something we can’t see. This is why being more aware of eldest daughter syndrome, not only as an individual struggle but also as an issue of gender inequality, is a good start.
Yang Hu receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, UK, and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada, for his ongoing collaborative projects on artificial intelligence and labour market inequalities.
When the world’s richest and most powerful families deal with the tricky task of succession planning, it can attract a lot of interest. Think of news reports from the Murdoch’s media empire or, more recently, luxury goods company LVMH. Even fictional clans such as the Roys of TV show Succession attract massive global audiences with tales of dysfunction as members battle for control of the family firm.
As well as the real-life examples tracked by the world’s media, the many books, movies and TV shows based on stories of attempts to pass family wealth and power down through generations show just how fascinating this transfer can be.
But while some family businesses must overcome in-fighting and entitled behaviour as younger family members take control, others manage to pass down the baton without issue. Indeed, although it can be an opportunity to see families at war with each other, succession planning decisions also determine the long-term survival of a business.
Family businesses have different practices and balance various goals. But there are some patterns that seem to contribute to keeping certain families in business for generations. Our research shows there are three key stages family members must work through to gain the knowledge needed for a successful succession: setting the rules, grooming the successors and passing the baton.
In a family business, success at work often goes beyond a simple formula of talent and skill. Gathering a different type of knowledge based on “doing things together” can be just as important – especially if these activities relate to the family business. Sweet Mandarin – at one time the UK’s best local Chinese restaurant, according to TV chef Golden Ramsay – resulted from three generations of family cooking together, for example.
These family rituals set rules of behaviour based on a shared, often rich and diverse, history as different generations interact inside and outside of the business. Skills and stories (or knowledge) are passed between generations. But so are personality traits such as resilience that can help prepare younger family members to work in the business.
So, once younger generations are ready for their first day at the family firm, where should they start? The recent succession planning efforts of luxury goods company LVMH – owned by the richest man in the world Bernard Arnault – has shone a light on the fascinating world of families that own and control several businesses.
This is a way to help younger generations take control, often more gradually. These families setup, acquire and manage family businesses in parallel over a long period of time. This provides a training ground for younger generations.
Such complex family portfolios come in different shapes and sizes. As well as France’s LVMH, other examples include Grupo Carso, a Mexican conglomerate involved in retail, energy and construction, among other industries, and controlled by the Slim family. Or India’s Tata Group, which includes companies in the auto, steel and aviation industries. It is run by the Tata family via parent company Tata Sons.
And it’s not just international corporate giants that do this. There are many inspiring, and often dramatic, stories of how diverse members of one or more families influence the creation, development, acquisition and even divestment of various parts of smaller firms to shape a family business portfolio.
Our research suggests that building these firms is not just about creating financial advantages, competing and the desire to expand or innovate. It can also relate to family dreams, dynamics, conflicts and crises.
As a portfolio of businesses develops, growing managerial complexity might push the leaders to look for the ideal family member to lead a particular business unit, division or the entire conglomerate. Our research shows the decisions behind who should be entrusted to lead are influenced not only by business objectives, but also by finding ways to more efficiently balance family ambitions, skills and responsibilities.
A family business portfolio could also offer younger generations a “sandbox”. This is an environment in which they can explore and experiment with new ideas or best practices, fail and try again. They can use this time to prove they are apt stewards of existing family assets, as well as entrepreneurially savvy enough to continue building them.
The process of pursuing new opportunities, often creating or acquiring new ventures, may then continue across generations. And such an approach can help to prepare several potential successors, or even facilitate the passing of the baton to a larger pool of eager candidates.
Our research suggests that such “training” can start very early for family members who want to be involved in the firm. This is particularly true for those with diverse skills and ambitions, and where incumbent generations are still not considering retirement.
In the case of LVMH, for example, we may only now be seeing the end result of a long and deliberate approach to grooming family members to lead diverse business units while the previous generation remains involved.
Families that create such sandboxes could be devising solutions to unforeseen, future succession dilemmas. And this way they can protect and grow the family business for many more generations to come.
Bingbing Ge received funding from Research and Development Management Association during her PhD.
Allan Discua-Cruz 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.
US bank regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 2023, after it suffered US$42 billion (£35 billion) of deposit withdrawals in a 24-hour period. This was the largest bank failure since the 2008 global financial crisis and was not supposed to happen again.
Since the 2008 crisis, international bank regulations have been greatly tightened and, among other measures, banks now have more capital to absorb losses and protect themselves from insolvency. Yet, even though SVB’s capital was above the minimum level required by regulators, this was not enough to keep it alive.
The SVB debacle has caused new concern about the safety of banks across the developed world, raising the likelihood of a run on deposits in any bank that has been showing signs of weakness. This sense of alarm was heightened by the collapse of Credit Suisse and its subsequent takeover by UBS just ten days after SVB’s failure. The Dow Jones index of US bank shares fell by 22% in the two weeks from March 6.
Even though central banks have been providing “lender of last resort” facilities to assist banks with their cash flows, the major worry is that vulnerable banks may need capital injections from government to avoid failure.
This is what happened in 2008, but post-crisis banking regulation was supposed to prevent the need for such assistance. And so SVB’s troubles are a reminder that the current rules on capital have been designed to cushion banks against losses on defaulting loans. While this was the predominant cause of bank failures after the 2008 financial crisis, default risk was not a major issue for SVB. Its troubles stemmed from falling asset values as interest rates rose. This is known as interest rate risk.
As a specialist bank to the technology industry, deposits at SVB grew from US$62 billion to US$189 billion during 2020 and 2021, but demand for loans from tech companies grew at a slower pace. In order to achieve a return on these funds, SVB invested in long-term bonds, mainly “agency” mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which are effectively government-guaranteed.
At the end of 2022, 47% of SVB’s US$212 billion asset portfolio comprised this kind of long-term debt. But the value of all fixed interest debt such as MBS falls as interest rates rise. As the US Federal Reserve raised its official interest rate during 2022 to combat inflation, long-term rates also rose and the market value of SVB’s holdings fell by US$15 billion.
But this drop was not recorded as a loss by SVB because it had classified nearly all of this MBS debt as “held to maturity” (HTM). Under standard accounting rules, this means they are valued according to their purchase price not the price SVB would have received for selling at that time (the market value). If these assets had been placed in the alternative accounting category – “available for sale” (AFS) – they would have been recorded at their market value and the resulting US$15 billion loss would have wiped out most of SVB’s capital. Instead of being well-capitalised, it would have been nearly bankrupt.
Read more: How bonds work and why everyone is talking about them right now: a finance expert explains
Meanwhile, as the tech boom came to an end, the inflow of deposits turned into an outflow during 2022 as investment dried up and depositors needed their cash. By early 2023, SVB was running short of liquid assets to pay out to depositors that were making withdrawals. It attempted to borrow extra cash for this purpose on March 9 but failed. This shone a light on the bank’s weakness and the outflow of deposits became a flood. The fact that most of SVB’s deposits were greater than US$250,000, and therefore not insured by the US government, no doubt made this flood worse.
SVB could have raised cash by selling some of its HTM assets at a loss but that would only have confirmed its poor condition. Instead, the Federal Reserve stepped in with a guarantee for all of SVB’s accounts.
SVB is not alone in this situation. Although other banks are generally not as exposed as SVB, holders of long-term US dollar debt were collectively sitting on some US$600 billion of unrealised losses at the end of 2022.
Why have US banks not been required to carry enough capital to take account of interest rate risk? For a start, it would be hard to design suitable rigid rules or to amend the accounting conventions. Another likely reason is that this would raise costs for all issuers of long-term debt, and the largest such issuer in all countries is the government.
Another likely reason is complacency. Interest rate risk was never such a serious problem during the four-decade general decline in rates before the rapid rise that began in mid-2020.
Falling long-term US interest rates
In the absence of a regulatory remedy for interest rate risk, the concern is that central banks will face greater pressure to reduce the chance of that risk materialising. This could cause them to soft-pedal on the interest rate rises needed to curb inflation.
This is dangerous. If central banks are perceived to be hesitating in their resolve to tackle inflation for fear of exacerbating financial instability, they risk their credibility. This could mean that even higher interest rates are necessary in the future to bring inflation under control.
John Whittaker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Are you sitting comfortably? Just pause for a moment and without adjusting, notice your posture. What are your legs doing? Are they crossed? And are you a right or left crosser? Some 62% of people cross right over left, 26% go the other way and 12% have no preference.
There are typically two ways to sit in a chair and cross your legs, one is at the knee and the other is at the ankle. But as comfy as it may be to sit with your legs crossed, is it bad for your health and posture? Let’s take a look at the evidence.
For a start, research shows that sitting cross-legged can increase the misalignment of the hips, with one being higher than the other.
And it changes the speed at which blood moves through the blood vessels in the lower limbs, which can increase the risk of blood clots.
Most of the research suggests crossing at the knees is worse than the ankles. Indeed, sitting this way can cause an increase in your blood pressure due to the pooling of blood in the veins and your heart having to work against this. And this can increase the risk of damage to your blood vessels, which is why when you get your blood pressure taken you should have your feet flat on the floor.
The longer and more often you sit cross-legged, the more likely it is that you’ll have long-term changes in the muscle lengths and bone arrangements in your pelvis. And due to the way your skeleton is linked together, leg crossing can also cause misalignment of the spine and shoulders.
Your head position can potentially become out of alignment due to changes in the bones of the neck, as the spine compensates to keep your centre of gravity above the pelvis.
Your neck can also be affected due to one side of the body being weaker than the other. The same imbalance can be seen in the muscles of the pelvis and lower back as a result of poor posture and stresses and strains caused by sitting cross-legged.
Read more: We have weaker bones than our hunter-gatherer ancestors – this is what you can do about it
The pelvis may also become misaligned due to the prolonged stretching of the gluteal (bum) muscles on one side, meaning that they become weaker.
Sitting with the legs crossed for a long time increases the likelihood of scoliosis (abnormal alignment of the spine) and other deformities. It can also cause greater trochanteric pain syndrome, a common and painful condition that affects the outer side of the hip and thigh.
Research also shows that sitting with legs crossed can put the peroneal nerve, also known as the fibular nerve, in your lower leg at risk of compression and injury. This typically manifests as a weakness when trying to lift the little-toe side of the foot as well as the more concerning foot drop – where the whole of the foot hangs down. Though in most cases, this is short-lived and returns to normal within a few minutes.
There’s also evidence that crossing the legs could affect sperm production. This is because the temperature of the testicles needs to be between 2°C and 6°C below standard body temperature. Being seated increases the temperature of the testicles by 2°C and crossing your legs can increase the temperature of the testes by as much as 3.5°C. And studies suggest that an increase in scrotum or testicle temperature can reduce both sperm count and quality.
It’s also worth noting that due to differences in the anatomy of men and women it’s probably much easier for women to sit cross-legged – particularly because men have a reduced range of motion at the hip.
But research does indicate that sitting with legs crossed can be beneficial for some people. One small study from 2016, for example, found that for people who have one leg longer than the other, sitting crossed-legged can help to adjust the height of the two sides of the pelvis, improving alignment.
Sitting with legs crossed also appears to reduce the activity of some muscles, particularly the oblique muscles (those beneath the skin where you put your hands on your hips) compared to sitting with legs forward. This may help relax your core muscles and prevent over-exertion.
Read more: Sitting on the floor vs sitting on a chair – which is better for you?
Similarly, there is evidence that sitting cross-legged improves the stability of the sacroiliac joints (responsible for transferring weight between the spine and legs).
And of course, the famous yoga or meditation pose (lotus position) sees people sitting on the floor with legs crossed. Though there is limited data as to whether long periods of time spent in this position may lead to some of the issues that sitting cross-legged in a chair causes. Indeed, for many people yoga offers huge benefits – even those who already have knee issues.
So the verdict? It’s probably better to avoid crossing your legs if you can. Though that said, many of the risk factors associated with crossing your legs are likely exacerbated by other underlying issues such as sedentary lifestyles and obesity. So with this in mind, the main advice is to not sit still in the same position for too long and to keep regularly active.
Adam Taylor 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.
On March 26 1973, the London Stock Exchange admitted its first female members. This followed years of resistance, with London trailing behind other smaller exchanges around the UK.
That women had been excluded for so long was not only due to institutional misogyny. Research has shown how finance was imagined in sexist terms for centuries. And despite the extraordinary accomplishments of prominent female figures over the past 50 years, these biased beliefs persist to this day.
Long before stock exchanges existed, women were active investors and speculators. They navigated the bustling coffee shops of London’s Exchange Alley, where people met to trade stocks. They sometimes acted as intermediaries, managing the investments of others in return for commission. In other words, women were stockbrokers.
But their presence in the market often attracted attention. This was especially the case in times of crisis, such as the South Sea Bubble in 1720 – one of the UK’s first speculative manias. Male commentators claimed women were too emotional to be effective investors, let alone brokers. Only men, to their minds, could exercise the self-restraint necessary to master the market.
So women got squeezed out. The title of the bestselling 18th-century investment guide –– Every Man His Own Broker –– was telling. The author, Thomas Mortimer, thought that women should only invest via a male relative. And he certainly didn’t think they were capable of being brokers.
When stockbrokers moved to a purpose-built stock exchange in the heart of the City of London, at the start of the 19th century, they signed up to a new set of rules. Though these did not specifically bar women, the wording made it clear that the exchange was for men only:
No new applicant for admission is admissible if he, or his wife, be engaged in business.
Later in the century, stock exchanges were established in towns and cities across the UK, and these followed London in excluding women.
Yet they never had a monopoly. From the 1880s, a few enterprising women started establishing their own brokerages. Trading a stone’s throw from the Bank of England, Amy Bell specialised in dealing for women. She sought to educate them in a subject about which they had often been kept ignorant:
I want to make women understand their money matters and take a pleasure in dealing with them. After all, is money such a sordid consideration?
Some were the daughters of stockbrokers who worked in family firms, occasionally taking them over on the death of the father. Others had no family connections and started in secretarial roles. They determinedly worked their way up to senior positions, like Edith Midgley in Bradford.
In the US, meanwhile, pioneering figures including the radical feminist Victoria Woodhull paved the way for a feminine presence on Wall Street.
By the interwar years, women had proven they could be successful stockbrokers. Clients, both male and female, reportedly had no objections. Indeed, many preferred dealing with a woman. But persuading institutions was altogether harder.
Publicly, the London Stock Exchange’s stance was that there was no rule against women joining. Privately, when women did try to apply –- the first as early as 1936 –- they were firmly told to drop the matter.
What changed? 1973 was not the result of an institution quietly moving in line with public opinion. A series of dramatic votes on the issue between 1967 and 1971 all went against admitting women. Brokers claimed that women were too delicate for the trading floor – they would be jostled, they would be offended by the language. One broker was clear this was no place for a woman:
When I’m there, I’m there to do business and when I’m doing business I’m not inclined to be as gentlemanly as when I’m pouring sherry at home.
Another explained that stockbroking, “like coal-mining”, was best done by men.
Outside London, attitudes were changing. Without much fanfare, smaller stock exchanges began accepting female applicants. Aberdeen was first in 1964, soon followed by Sheffield and Huddersfield. Larger exchanges followed. By the early 1970s, Glasgow, Nottingham and Manchester had all gained female members.
This mattered to London because for some years there had been plans to amalgamate the country’s stock exchanges to promote efficiency. In contrast to the polls on admitting women, London members enthusiastically voted for the creation of a United Stock Exchange in 1972.
Muriel Bailey, a broker, had long campaigned for equality in the City. In a filmed BBC interview in 1967, she had spoken candidly of the “deep-rooted prejudice in the Stock Exchange about women members, which is utterly ridiculous”. She explained that she did the same work as the partners and wanted the same status as them.
In 1972, she seized her chance. Writing to the London Stock Exchange, she pointed out that under the new rules, provincial brokers –- some of whom were women –- would be able to access the London trading floor, whereas those who happened to work in the capital would not. This was untenable, she said. The authorities were forced to concede.
The day women were admitted, members were on their best behaviour for the cameras. Those who ventured onto the floor reported a friendly reception. But it was not quite the victory it seemed.
Members had not voted for equality. Rather, it had been forced on them. And they were quick to make it clear that this was still a male domain.
Women were cast as intruders, and some were subjected to harassment. One new member who dared to wear a miniskirt faced catcalls, wolf whistles and yells of “Get ’em off!”. All were given derogatory nicknames.
Nevertheless, over the past 50 years, women have been able to forge successful careers in the City. Some, including the London Stock Exchange’s current CEO, Julia Hoggett, have demonstrated they can rise to the top. Challenging the macho culture, however, has been much harder.
History shows that finance is not inherently masculine. Rather, it was constructed as such by the institutions that sought to exclude women. Despite the barriers they have faced, women have, in fact, been trading successfully as stockbrokers, on and off, for over 300 years.
The gendered beliefs that are still widely held today –- that men are more financially literate and that women are excessively risk-averse -– are determined more by culture than biology. Recognising this is the next step towards fulfilling the promise of 1973.
James Taylor has received funding from the Economic History Society for research into the history of stockbroking.
There are certain changes people expect to experience when they get pregnant. Whether that’s unconventional food cravings, a “glowing” complexion or morning sickness.
But some of the changes the body goes through during pregnancy can be a tad more unconventional.
Recently, many women have taken to social media to share photos and videos of their noses before and during pregnancy. The trend, being termed “pregnancy nose”, has highlighted how some women’s noses swell and change shape during pregnancy. It’s not known how common this is as everyone’s hormone levels are different and everyone responds differently to changes in them. The change may also be more noticeable for some women.
This change is nothing to worry about and is only temporary, typically resolving six weeks after birth.
The reason it happens is due to the significant increases in hormone levels that happens during pregnancy – particularly because of the increase in oestrogen, which relaxes the blood vessels in all the body’s tissues. This allows more blood into the nose’s tissues, causing it to expand and change shape – looking larger and puffier. These hormonal changes can also cause a runny and stuffy nose (pregnancy rhinitis) and nosebleeds, which affects one in five pregnant women.
But pregnancy nose isn’t the only peculiar change your body may go through when you’re expecting. Here are a few others:
The heart undergoes a number of changes during pregnancy in order to accommodate the baby’s growth.
Just as the abdominal organs are squished and moved to make room for the growing foetus, the heart is pushed higher up in the chest as a result.
Not only that, the heart also develops thicker muscles and changes size during pregnancy. This is because the heart has to work a lot harder at this time – beating up to eight times more per minute compared to pre-pregnancy – in order to pump the additional volume of blood around the body and to the baby. In some cases, the amount of blood a woman circulates throughout her body doubles during pregnancy. This helps ensure there’s enough oxygen getting to the baby to support its development.
Most of us have heard of the pregnancy “glow”, which causes some women’s skin complexion to appear brighter. But some women experience a condition known as melasma, which causes the skin around the eyes, nose, chin and upper lip to darken.
It’s actually an extremely common condition, affecting around 75% of pregnant women – but is more typical in women with darker complexions. These changes will vary between women, and will typically disappear shortly after birth or when they stop breastfeeding.
The exact cause of melasma in pregnancy is unknown, but increases in oestrogen and progesterone are thought to be involved.
The skin surrounding the nipple (called the areola) can also become darker during pregnancy. Again, it’s not entirely certain why this happens, but it could be to help new born babies identify the nipple for feeding.
Newborns aren’t able to fully distinguish colour – only things that are very saturated and red – and they can’t see much more than a foot from their face. They actually distinguish light and dark much better, so the contrast of the dark areola compared the light surrounding skin may help them. For most women, their areola may remain slightly darker permanently after pregnancy.
For many women, their hair grows and looks healthier during pregnancy thanks to the increase in oestrogen in the body, which causes the hair follicles to remain in growth mode.
Unfortunately, these hormone changes affect all hair follicles – not just those on the head. This means that hair growth can also happen in less desirable place during pregnancy – including the upper lip, upper thighs, abdomen and back, this disappears after pregnancy.
Some women also find that they lose their hair instead during pregnancy. This process is typically caused by the shock of pregnancy on the body, causing the hairs to go into “resting” phase then shed. This usually subsides as the pregnancy progresses.
Hair loss can also happen after giving birth, due to the drop in oestrogen levels as hormones return to normal. Hair loss usually peaks around four months after birth. In most cases, hair grows back and returns to normal.
Pregnancy can cause many changes in oral health.
Increases in oestrogen and progesterone can make the gums more susceptible to bleeding, infection and damage. In fact, approximately 70% of pregnant women experience gingivitis. Teeth are also at an increased risk of damage and cavities during pregnancy, especially if a woman has experienced morning sickness. This is because stomach acid can dissolve the protective lining on teeth.
Teeth may also feel wobbly during pregnancy. This is due to both oestrogen levels, alongside increases in a hormone called relaxin. It causes all ligaments in the body to become more flexible during pregnancy in order to aid in childbirth. But while this is useful in some parts of the body (such as the pelvis), relaxin also affects the ligament anchoring each individual tooth in place, causing teeth to feel loose.
In some rare cases, tooth loss can happen. It isn’t clear exactly how many pregnant women experience tooth loss. What is clear is that it’s more likely to happen to women who have been pregnant multiple times, and women who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Typically, if a woman loses any teeth during pregnancy it’s due to years of poor oral health – not just the changes that happen to oral health during pregnancy.
While some of the changes you’ll experience during pregnancy are less than ideal, they’re all designed to ensure the baby develops properly in the womb. And luckily, most of these changes are only temporary – disappearing shortly after birth.
Adam Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Around 30 years ago, many developed countries started a process of absolute decoupling of their emissions of CO₂ and energy use from economic growth. This means keeping emissions stable, or better yet, shrinking them, while still growing the economy.
As a result, GDP is now much higher than it was in 1990 in the UK, France, Germany and the US, but CO2 emissions are lower. This is not just because of the deindustrialisation of the west: emissions decrease even if we include our imports from countries like China.
This trend may be too little too late to avoid the worst consequences of climate change and the destruction of wildlife. But it is a testimony of perhaps the biggest misunderstanding about economics: that growth is a measure of how much an economy produces, rather than an imperfect account of the value of this production.
Emissions versus GDP
Fighting climate change requires a radical transformation of the economy to use less energy and resources. This means it could cause economic growth by making us consume “better”, not more. Putting a monetary value on protecting the Earth means people will pay the true cost of their consumption.
The things we buy typically become more valuable if the perceived quality of a product increases. And research shows that consumers are willing to pay more if they believe a brand is more valuable, for example, because it is more ethical or environmentally friendly. This is the case for low-carbon energy sources, fairtrade chocolate, organic and local products – and it’s even more the case for people that care about how others see them. So if this means replacing a £1.89 pack of beef burgers with £12 bean and mushroom patties, economic growth will certainly be good for the planet.
The same can be said for the services people spend money on. In fact, as the economy becomes more dependent on services than products, this part of our consumption is even more important to “green”.
This is because much of today’s economic growth is not about measuring the value of the objects we buy. Two-thirds of the world’s GDP is constituted of services, and those are increasingly provided from our own homes as we work remotely. The environmental cost is then almost entirely composed of the energy needed to make the internet work – and there is a way to make that greener.
Sci-fi authors and futurists of the 1960s correctly predicted that we would live in a world of wireless communications, flat-screen TVs and sophisticated kitchen appliances, while fewer foresaw that younger generations would celebrate the return of sleeper trains in Europe. They would probably also be surprised at how many people find love via their phone, using online dating services. The fact that Match.com is worth more than car companies Mitsubishi and Mazda combined shows how our economy is changing towards consumption of services rather than traditional goods.
This does not mean that free markets and technology alone can save the world from climate change. Government intervention is also needed. In fact, one of the oldest and most accepted ideas in economics is the principle that consumers should not only pay for the cost of producing what they buy, but also for its cost to society. This means taxing pollution, the destruction of wildlife, unhealthy food, traffic congestion and the depletion of natural resources, rather than raising the same amount by taxing income.
This could also be a source of economic growth. Research shows taxing pollution generates a “double dividend”: it restores fair competition between polluting and non-polluting products, and it generates tax revenue to invest for everyone’s benefit. If the prohibitive cost of pollution and limited natural resources forces us to innovate, we can actually create value instead of destroying it.
In this kind of world, sustained growth for the next century would mean the phasing out of fossil fuels and increased energy efficiency, and largely replacing meat production with plant and lab-based alternatives. But also more value created by services, addressing wellbeing, and creating cleaner air and water, healthier food and safer cities.
Indeed, 15-minute cities are more of an economist’s dream than a socialist utopia. Charging for the true cost of car use by heavily taxing noise and air pollution is textbook introductory economics. Reallocating public land towards humans and public transport saves time for everyone. On the other hand, adding roads simply creates more congestion, while public transport gets more efficient as more people use it. Less time spent in a car means more time for work and leisure.
And when it comes to artificial intelligence, just like machines and robots in the past, it will not kill jobs but give us more time and money to spend on leisure. This is economic growth.
The real challenge for growth is not defying the laws of physics with technology that magically allows us to produce more with the same or fewer resources. It is the ability of our societies to tax polluting activities and regulate the use of land and natural resources, while still being able to redistribute wealth. This is the ability to do better with less.
We also need to work out how to correctly account for everything we value. What is counted under GDP figures has already started to change over time to include things not directly measured by traditional markets.
Making the case for the preservation of nature means being able to put a number on it: taxing social costs but also recording the value of the use of our parks, forests and mountains. If those who care about protecting the environment do not fight to put the highest possible number on nature because they find the idea of valuing it in monetary terms repugnant, someone who does not care will do it.
Renaud Foucart 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.
People across the UK, from the Shetland Islands to Somerset and from Norfolk to Northern Ireland, have been treated to a stunning display of the aurora borealis or northern lights recently. But what causes this beautiful phenomena and why has it appeared so far south?
For thousands of years, people associated the ghostly northern lights with the world of restless spirits. But over the last century, science has revealed that aurorae originate in the area surrounding our planet. The near-Earth region of space is known as the magnetosphere. It is a cocktail of atoms and molecules from the Earth’s upper atmosphere, shattered and heated by solar radiation (electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun).
The aurora borealis is created when these electrically charged particles rain down into the upper atmosphere. Most of the incoming particles that stimulate the light are electrons. As the patterns of precipitation shift, the aurora shimmer and dance across the sky. Electrons are accelerated down along the Earth’s magnetic field towards the polar regions.
The Sun emits a couple of million tonnes of particles every second, forming the solar wind that constantly flows through our solar system. The solar wind drags remnants of the Sun’s powerful magnetic field with it, bathing the planets in a magnetised steam of particles smaller than atoms. Interactions between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere power the northern lights.
So what happened this week to drive aurorae to much lower latitudes than normal?
Towards the end of last week, scientists noticed a pair of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on the Sun. A CME is an eruption of material from the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona). These explosive bursts can launch billions of tonnes of material in almost any direction, and Earth is typically hit a couple of times per month. As it happens, this pair of CMEs both fired Earthward, with the first leaving the Sun late on February 24 and the second late on February 25.
Travelling at about 3 million kilometres per hour, the first CME took about 48 hours to travel the 150 million kilometres to Earth and slammed into the magnetosphere around 7pm (UK time) on Sunday, February 26. The impact of a billion tonnes of highly magnetised, electrically charged material triggered a geomagnetic storm (a major disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere). Electrons in the magnetosphere accelerated into Earth’s atmosphere, sparking intense auroral displays that rapidly expanded much further towards the equator than usual.
Timing was key. The geomagnetic storm happened in the early evening in the UK. Although dark, most people were awake and the weather was fine with clear skies over most of the country. As the geomagnetic storm intensified over the next few hours, pictures of the aurora from as far south as Kent filled social media timelines, no doubt prompting more people to scan the skies.
Had the CME arrived a few hours later, most people in the UK would have been in bed and probably missed the event. Cloudy weather would have obscured the show. But the timing was right and the famously unpredictable UK weather was cooperating (for once).
By late Sunday evening, my phone was ringing. As a space scientist who researches the connections between the Sun and Earth, I’m often contacted by the media when there is an auroral display over the UK.
As Monday morning broke, most of the media were running with stories of the previous night’s display. Sure enough, most channels had found expert talking heads to talk about the science. But for me, this event was different. Normally, “morning after” media work involves answering an inevitable question.
“Will we see the northern lights again tonight?”
Usually, the answer is “probably not”. In most cases, after 24 hours the intensity of a geomagnetic storm has waned and the northern lights retreat away from the UK towards their usual location at the edge of the arctic circle.
But this time, things were different. The second CME launched towards the Earth was still in transit, so it was a rare opportunity for me to give an optimistic prediction. The second CME arrived in the wake of the first and caught Earth with a glancing blow around lunchtime on Monday, February 27. The weather conditions in the UK had deteriorated and many hopeful aurora chasers were thwarted by cloud. But geomagnetic activity remained high for a second night running and folks with cloud-free skies were treated to another display of the northern lights.
When will we next see them over the UK? It’s hard to say, but the prospects are improving. The Sun’s activity varies over an 11-year solar cycle, with CMEs (and aurora over the UK) more likely during the active parts of the cycle. At present, solar activity is increasing as we move towards the next solar maximum, expected in 2025. Keep watching the skies – and social media.
Jim Wild receives funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) that supports his research at Lancaster University.
The death toll from the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 has climbed above 21,000 in four days, exceeding the World Health Organization’s estimate of 20,000. But it continues to rise by the hour as more grim discoveries are made under the rubble.
Search-and-rescue efforts are well under way in Turkey after an initially slow response, but have yet to really take off in northern Syria. Syrians in rebel-controlled areas were kept waiting for help due political tensions and shattered infrastructure following the earthquake and more than ten years of conflict.
So far, nobody knows how many people are still stuck under the rubble. Ovgun Ahmet Ercan, a Turkish earthquake expert, told The Economist he had estimated that 180,000 people or more may be trapped under the rubble, nearly all of them dead.
A UN convoy finally gained access to northern Syria on Thursday morning – a day after what is considered to be the critical 72-hour window for finding survivors. But hopes of a really effective rescue mission were dashed as there was no heavy search-and-rescue equipment provided. Now the survival rate of people trapped under the rubble stands at less than 6%.
To avoid losing more lives and reduce suffering, the international aid response will now be more critical than ever. Based on my doctoral research which focused on humanitarian aid in conflict and political crisis situations, here are the key priorities.
This will be an extremely challenging aid operation. For a start, the weather is not on the responders’ side – both countries are experiencing a harsh wet winter. There are also regional political tensions and millions of refugees in both countries due to the conflict in Syria.
Syria faces a convergence of disasters. Conflict, a cholera outbreak and already dangerously overstretched medical facilities are just some of the issues to deal with.
A crucial UN aid hub for northern Syria, close to the epicentre of the initial earthquake in Turkey, was affected. This could have worsened the shortages of key supplies needed immediately after the earthquake struck.
One of the most important decisions a government makes in disasters is whether to declare a state of emergency. For humanitarian organisations, this means that they can freely work in the affected areas. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has already declared a three-month state of emergency. As a result, the response in Turkey has received significantly more resources and media attention.
The Syrian government has not declared a state of emergency. This means that it does not officially recognise or support any organisations that work in rebel-controlled areas. This is risky for aid workers. There are no official safety guarantees yet and the proliferation of armed groups increases security risks for rescue-and-relief missions.
The support available to Syria will only be effective if the Assad regime is willing to grant access to rebel-controlled areas. International aid organisations can only do so much when facing an uncompromising government. Other governments should make earnest attempts to engage with Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. The priority for Syria is to negotiate with the government and other armed groups for safe and unhindered access to ensure that more aid is delivered for as long as needed.
Cash donations from the public and from governments are important. Ideally, they should not be earmarked – meaning that donors should not dictate how the money should be spent. This allows aid organisations to quickly adapt their responses when needed.
Obviously, at present, the top priorities are food and water, access to medical assistance and clothing and shelter suitable for the current weather conditions.
It’s understandable that the public wants to see supplies sent as quickly as possible – but the state of infrastructure in the earthquake region will not support this and storing supplies in the area increases the risk of theft. Also the type of support needed is changing fast as focus shifts from search and rescue to keeping people alive.
The goal should be to ensure slow but steady supply of essential items. This means finding safe alternative access routes, for example using sea freight to build a continuous pipeline of international supplies and constantly delivering supplies to badly hit areas using small vehicles. Pack animals such as donkeys can also play an important role in delivering basic supplies and providing an ambulance service for people in difficult to reach places.
Aid corridors to the northern Syria must be opened. In the recent past Russia and China have blocked UN efforts to reopen several routes from Turkey to Syria closed by the Assad regime. Meanwhile, Damascus refuses to allocate resources to rebel-controlled territory and is accusing responding international organisations of “funding terrorists”. This is going to require a major diplomatic effort so that aid flows from both sides.
Aid organisations must coordinate and collaborate efforts with local communities and political actors, especially important in northern Syria where international aid workers were forced out several years ago because high security risks.
As already mentioned, there is also a cholera outbreak in the afflicted region. The World Health Organization identifies cholera as one of the few diseases that can be transmitted from dead bodies, so this can pose a huge public health risk following a natural disaster.
To avoid repeating the same mistakes that were made in Haiti where huge numbers of people ended up infected, disease control should be a priority. This will require specialist help to ensure proper sanitary conditions and burials.
The slow response does not need to be defining feature of this crisis. There is still time for coordination, collaboration and diplomacy to get things moving and save as many lives as possible.
Nonhlanhla Dube 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.
“Love” is the first word in Ariel, the collection of poems published by Faber and Faber in 1965 that made Sylvia Plath one of the most famous poets of the post-war generation.
In many ways, Ariel, as Plath conceived it, is all about love. In the “restored” Ariel – the original manuscript that Sylvia Plath left on the desk of her London flat before her death – the word “love” recurs over 25 times.
After the “lies, lies, and a grief” in The Couriers, there also is “love, love, my season”.
Plath never saw Ariel’s success. In the early hours of February 11 1963, during one of the coldest winters for decades, she took her own life. She had been suffering from a severe depression, compounded by mismanagement of her medication and the breakdown of her marriage to the poet Ted Hughes.
She left a manuscript of poems titled Ariel and 19 other poems, 13 of which she had written in the last weeks of her life.
In editing and publishing the 1965 collection, Hughes rearranged Plath’s original manuscript, taking out what he felt to be weaker poems and including the best of the last 19. The Ariel most readers came to know is a far darker collection than Plath intended, troubled by her breakdown and impending suicide.
This had a significant impact on how Plath’s work was read in the years after her death and how the myth of Plath as “high priestess of poetry, obsessed with death” was created.
A new generation of scholars have begun unpacking the immense complexity of Plath’s writings, emphasising her political, historical and environmental interests and her importance for women writers.
Ariel’s opening poem, Morning Song, addresses a child at the moment of its birth. The child takes centre stage in this secular nativity until it finds its voice, and “The clear vowels rise like balloons”. In Ariel, Plath marked herself out as one of the first great poets of motherhood, setting out on a path others would follow.
In her manuscript, Plath had scored out several possible titles before she settled on Ariel. Ariel is the spirit imprisoned and freed by Prospero in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, a major inspiration for Plath.
Ariel is also the name of a horse Sylvia rides in an early draft of the titular poem, which she describes as “of my colour”. Plath’s natural hair colour was light reddish brown, the colour of “God’s lioness”.
The titular Ariel – too often read as a kind of suicide note – is a poem of transcendence that moves towards the freedom of a new life. The “dead hands, dead stringencies” have been shucked off in the rider’s flight, and bursts out of the darkness, becoming one with the animal (the horse is often associated with poetry).
Reading the “restored” as opposed to the 1965 Ariel, is a very different experience – one of hope after the struggle of winter, to the new life of spring.
Plath’s “bee poems”, the final sequence in the restored Ariel, end with the word “spring” and images of transformation and rebirth are used throughout the collection. Lady Lazarus will rise from the ashes “one year in every ten”. In The Night Dances, the baby in the cot inspires the mother to a planetary transcendence. Poppies in October are “a gift, a love gift”. In Letter in November, there is “Green in the air”.
Plath remains one of the great poets of depression, fearlessly encountering her mental suffering in poems such as Elm – “I know the bottom […] I do not fear it; I have been there” and The Moon and the Yew Tree, where the moon is “quiet / With the O-gape of complete despair.”
Sylvia Plath is also a poet of protest and her fury against a world dominated by men finds expression in a group of poems in the restored Ariel. There’s The Rabbit Catcher, The Detective and my personal favourite, The Courage of Shutting Up, which was omitted from Hughes’ 1965 edition.
While some of Hughes’ editorial omissions were wise – weaker poems, poems that might offend – one of his greatest mistakes was obscuring the political and burgeoning feminist aspects of Plath’s writing.
Plath died on the eve of second wave feminism (Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published just five days after her death). Her poetry, however, was quickly taken up as an important expression of the feminist movement and her novel, The Bell Jar, found context as an essential critique of women’s place in post-war society.
It’s important to stress that one version of Ariel does not cancel out the other. Read alongside each other they create a different picture of Plath’s poetry – bigger, more complex and with a greater power to transform.
Sylvia Plath remains one of the few poets whose work reveals itself in new ways every time you encounter it and her power to speak to each new generation only becomes greater.
Sarah Corbett received funding from Arts Council England for the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in 2022.
A mother in Brazil recently gave birth to a two-foot-tall baby weighing 16lb (7.3kg). Angerson Santos was born via caesarean section at Hospital Padre Colombo in Parintins, Amazonas State.
Angerson eclipsed the heaviest baby girl on record, who was 15lb (6.8kg) when she was born in 2016, but neither come close to the heaviest baby on record, who tipped the scales at a whopping 22lb 8oz (10.2kg), in Italy in 1955.
To put this in perspective, newborn boys typically weigh 7lb 6oz (3.3kg) and girls 7lb 2oz (3.2kg).
The term used to describe these giant babies is macrosomia (Greek for large body). Any baby that weighs more than 4kg, regardless of its gestational age, is said to have macrosomia.
Babies with macrosomia account for about 12% of births. In mothers with gestational diabetes (high blood sugar that arises during pregnancy), this increases to between 15% and 45% of births.
Certain factors increase the risk of a mother giving birth to a giant baby – one of them being body weight. Obese mothers are twice as likely to have a newborn with macrosomia. And excessive weight gain during pregnancy likewise increases the risk of macrosomia.
Gestational diabetes is a risk factor, too. (The doctors at Hospital Padre Colombo put Angerson’s large size down to his mother’s “diabetes condition”.) Some of it is linked to an increase in insulin resistance in the mother during pregnancy (even in those without gestational diabetes), which increases the amount of glucose that travels across the placenta to the foetus, helping the foetus to grow excessively. The condition also helps lipids (fats) to enter the placenta, providing the baby with more fuel for growth.
Being older when pregnant also increases the odds of having a baby with macrosomia. A maternal age greater than 35 makes it 20% more likely that the baby will have macrosomia. The father’s age counts, too. A paternal age greater than 35 increases the risk of macrosomia by 10%.
Previous pregnancies increase the risk of macrosomia because with each successive pregnancy, birth weight increases. Overdue pregnancies – those that run past the typical 40 weeks – also increase the risk of a baby being macrosomic, particularly at 42 weeks or more.
Having a boy increases the likelihood of macrosomia. Boys are three times more likely than girls to be born macrosomic.
Babies with macrosomia are more likely to encounter difficulties moving through the birth canal because of their large size. For example, it is quite common for the baby’s shoulder to get caught behind the mother’s pubic bone. The medical term for this is “shoulder dystocia”.
While the baby is stuck, it cannot breathe and the umbilical cord may be squeezed. It can also cause the baby’s collarbones to break or damage the brachial plexus nerves that supply the arms – in the most severe cases, this damage can be permanent. Shoulder dystocia occurs in about 0.7% of all births, but in macrosomic babies, the incidence is about 25%.
Mothers are also at increased risk of vaginal tear during delivery, which then increases the risk of postpartum haemorrhage (bleeding). Postpartum haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide, and hence the larger the baby, the greater the risk of damage during normal vaginal delivery.
Macrosomia of newborns also leads to an increased risk of a prolonged second phase of labour, which is when the cervix is fully dilated and the baby’s head moves into the vagina. Due to the size of macrosomic babies, this movement can be slower than usual which can increase the risk of the mother suffering from infection, urinary retention and haematoma (internal bleeding).
One thing we don’t know about macrosomic babies is whether they stay bigger throughout life. The limited data there is does exist suggest that they are more likely to be overweight or obese by the age of seven and are also more likely to develop type 2 diabetes in later life.
We may see more “giant” babies being born as those born after 1970 appear to be about 450g heavier than their pre-1970s counterparts. Similarly, with increasing rates of obesity, which is a major factor in the development of macrosomia, we will probably see more “giant” babies.
Adam Taylor is affiliated with The Anatomical Society.
The UK government recently announced the results of the second round of successful bids for for its £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund. This money is provided to local governments with the ambitious (but pretty unspecific) aim of “creating opportunities for everyone” by addressing economic and social imbalances across the UK.
Winning projects have received as much as £50 million. In this round, the money will be used for ventures including building Eden Project North on Morecambe’s seafront and improving railway infrastructure across the UK. Smaller grants will go to projects involving electric buses, theatre and castle renovations, and new leisure centres and affordable housing.
All of the applicants – whether they won funding or not – have one thing in common: they all participated in a competitive bidding process. And while most bids for funding were not selected (out of 529 applications, only 111 will receive levelling up money in this round), they all represent hundreds of hours of work by in-house specialists in local government, and sometimes paid external consultants as well.
Which is why it’s all the more disappointing for the losing bids. The almost 80% of local councils who were rejected not only lost a project in which they believed, but also the time, money and energy spent preparing the bid.
Now there will be no multifunctional square in Wigan, and Bradford can forget about its advanced robotics centre. Well, for now anyway. Local councils will get another chance to invest their time and money all over again, when they prepare bids for the next round of levelling up funding (at an as-yet unspecified date).
But research shows that there are ways to make the process more efficient and effective the next time around.
So-called “beauty contests” – as the process for winning such funding is often described – are ubiquitous in UK local government funding. Around a third of the more than 450 grant schemes identified by the Local Government Association involve competitive bidding.
The cost of preparing a typical application is estimated to be between £20,000 and £30,000. This is a lot of money at any time, but particularly as many local councils are experiencing unprecedented budget cuts.
According to the 52 pages of official guidance for the Levelling Up Fund, bidders had to explain how they would divide the requested amount into the three investment themes of the fund and their sub-categories. They had to provide explanations of why their project aligns with existing central government strategies and the various missions of the Levelling Up white paper. They also had to answer dozens of specific questions about the project, and complete a cost-benefit analysis over the lifetime of the investment.
But that’s not all. The bids then have to be read and evaluated by civil servants before going through several more rounds of ranking and tweaking by senior politicians, (who may well have their own objectives).
Asking for detailed business cases helps rationalise decision-making during these kinds of processes. Beyond the basic financial evaluation, a cost-benefit analysis aims to measure the broader economic value of each project.
Winning project Eden North in Morecambe claims, for instance, that it will indirectly lead to more than 1,000 new jobs in a deprived region by attracting 740,000 visitors a year.
Indirect benefits are often non-monetary. Public transport projects typically have to put a value on estimated decreases in transportation times, air pollution, and road injuries, for example.
But comparing different cost-benefit analyses can mean ranking the value of a human life versus that of a rare bird, for example, or even present costs versus future benefits.
So while useful, such assessments are often not very precise when comparing things as different as a railway upgrade in Cornwall with a city centre regeneration project in Yorkshire. Research also shows these tools often select the kinds of projects most likely to see cost overruns. And drawing conclusions about small differences between generally “good” projects in this way can be pretty meaningless.
Unfortunately, creating precise but meaningless rankings often happens when resources are scarce. Prospective students craft their best personal statements to get into their dream schools, and researchers submit lengthy proposals to access increasingly competitive grant money. But research shows these review processes are often no better than random, and unable to consistently rank good projects.
So why do we keep on ranking the unrankable? Streamlining bidding processes could save time and money by eliminating the bad projects, financing the outstanding ideas, and allocating the rest of the money randomly among the good ones.
However, experimental evidence shows this would be difficult in practice: bureaucrats and politicians like to be in control, even if the outcome is as good as random. Humans also like to interpret success as the result of hard work and not some sort of lottery.
In a recent large-scale experiment, I worked with Elias Bouacida, an assistant professor at Paris 8 University, on research which found that when given the choice, most individuals prefer to see their fate decided by a procedure that looks reasonable than by a lottery – even if they are aware that both are equally unpredictable.
A simple alternative – one that would be much more beneficial in terms of money and time saved on the bidding process – would be to replace competitive bidding with an allocation formula that assigns pots of money to local governments, letting them choose their own projects.
We could also offer fewer types of grant and allow applications to be re-used. Reducing application forms to a short cost-benefit analysis would help with this. And then applicants would simply need to trust in the imperfect outcome of a short but independent assessment by civil servants.
This would embrace the randomness of the outcomes, the current governmental preference for centralisation, and the human preference for the appearance of a reasonable process.
Renaud Foucart works for Lancaster University, a partner of Eden Project North in Morecambe.
When the owners of the 4,000-acre Blachford estate in Dartmoor, a vast moorland in south-west England, recently won the right to exclude campers from their land, it demonstrated how fragile the right to enjoy Britain’s countryside is.
For the time being, an agreement between landowners and the national park means that wild camping will still be allowed, but with the permission of landowners only. Until access rights are properly protected by law, and recognised as important by everyone, wild campers would be advised not to make themselves too comfortable.
The public enjoy very limited rights over the British countryside. Following this decision, wild camping outside of a designated campsite without the landowner’s permission is no longer legal anywhere in England and Wales. Access campaigners and conservationists are outraged, not least because Dartmoor was the last holdout of the right to camp without permission.
The decision centred on the interpretation of the Dartmoor Commons Act of 1985. This states that the public have “a right of access to the commons on foot and on horseback for the purpose of open-air recreation”. Despite its misleading name, all English and Welsh common land is privately owned.
In a legal challenge brought by the estate owner, the high court was required to decide what was meant by recreation. The National Park Authority (the local government body responsible for managing the park) had previously advised visitors that this included the right to camp. Sir Julian Flaux, chancellor of the high court, ruled that the act contained no provision to pitch tents or make camp overnight, and that “any such camping requires the consent of the landowner”.
The decision in the Dartmoor case does not make wild camping a criminal offence. It does give a landowner the right to use reasonable force to remove a lawful visitor from their land once they begin to camp, or act in any other way that is not permitted by law.
The same principle was followed in the 1893 case of Harrison v The Duke of Rutland, which concerned an early hunt saboteur who entered a footpath on the duke’s estate to disrupt a grouse shoot. Harrison waved his handkerchief in the air and opened and closed his umbrella to scare the grouse. The duke’s gamekeepers seized him and held him to the ground.
Although Harrison was using a public right of way, the duke won the case. It was ruled that one becomes a trespasser when using a footpath for anything other than its very limited purpose, and that it is reasonable to use some degree of force or violence to remove them.
Little has changed since the 19th century, despite the introduction of the Access to the Countryside and National Parks Act 1949. This act established the first national parks, but contrary to their name, these are not owned by the state, nor are they public parks open and set aside for recreation.
All British land is owned by someone and it is estimated that the public has access to only 8% of it. Of the land where open access is allowed, this is usually for only the most narrow recreational purposes such as walking, bird watching or perhaps a picnic. Other activities such as swimming, camping or a game of football would be an act of trespass.
The statutory rights in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 opened up access rights beyond existing footpaths and bridleways to include mountain, moor, heath and down. This land was opened to public access on foot, but there was no right to camp, swim, canoe or ride a horse.
Even these limited rights were fiercely contested by a landowner in Dartmoor National Park. Vixen Tor is a rock outcrop, long open to the public and steeped in the myths and legends of Dartmoor. The owner successfully prevented this popular landmark from being opened to the public.
The new agreement between Dartmoor National Park Authority and landowners allows camping to continue for now, but restricts wild camping to specified areas. The authority also agreed to pay these landowners an unspecified sum of money, when previously the right was enjoyed for free.
Access campaigners are now calling for an expansion of the existing statutory right to roam provided by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act. Under Green MP Caroline Lucas’ Countryside and Rights of Way Act (Amendment) bill, which is due to be debated this spring, rights of access would be extended to grazing land, woodlands, green belt and river banks.
The right to camp on Dartmoor was based on a broad interpretation of a statute which extended only to commons on Dartmoor. This new act would restore the rights on Dartmoor and provide a statutory right to camp on all access land.
Supporters of a change in the law can expect fierce opposition from landowners. It has been estimated that half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population. Defending this arrangement is the argument that landowners have served as custodians of the countryside for generations, and that wider access and recreation could bring litter and environmental damage.
It is worth noting, however, that landowners have been accused of failing to stem pollution from farming on their land, for instance, including pollution to the River Taw in Dartmoor. Elsewhere, mass trespassers discovered a pit of fly-tipped rubbish and dead pheasants on the Duke of Somerset’s estate. Much of this would go unnoticed if not for the vigilance of the public.
As the wild campers of Dartmoor discovered, even statutory rights can be lost. If the British public are to enjoy a broader right to roam, as people visiting countries like Norway do, the UK must expand existing statutory rights. This will require a culture change too – away from deference to landowners and towards a mutual recognition of the benefits of access to the countryside offers to all.
Ben Mayfield 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.
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