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Thames Water is reportedly on the brink of collapse. The UK’s largest water company, well known for its high levels of water leakage, sewage spills, executive pay and dividend payments, now appears to be flooded with debts that it cannot afford to pay.
Those debts have reached more than £14 billion, leading to fears the government – or UK taxpayers to be precise – may have to bail the company out.
The news of Thames Water’s difficulties may have shocked some of its 15 million customers. But as someone who has researched the finances of water companies, I was not entirely surprised. These issues have been a long time in the making, and I raised concerns publicly over five years ago.
When the water and sewage companies of England and Wales were privatised in 1989, the intention was to bring fresh finance and innovation to create efficiency. But in the 2000s, a new kind of financial investor began to dominate the sector.
Our recent research found that by 2021, of 15 English water and sewage companies, nine were owned by “special purpose companies”. These are organisations set up for the purpose of buying water utilities, with owners consisting of a range of private equity funds, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.
These kinds of investors were then able to use water company revenue to generate significant returns to shareholders. And one way this happens is by hiking up company debts.
Newly privatised water companies had started out with zero debt in 1989. Yet by the end of March 2022, total debt in the sector was at £60.6 billion. In part, the increased debt was used to refinance the companies so that investors could repay themselves part of the original cost of buying the water utility.
Our research shows that Thames Water was the archetype of this model. When it was taken over in 2007 by a consortium led by Macquarie, an Australian investment bank, debts increased over the next ten years from £3.2 billion to £10.7 billion. The proportion of assets funded by borrowing increased to over 80%, while the company paid out dividends of £2.5 billion. The company has previously said that it has a “strict, performance-linked dividend policy monitored by Ofwat”.
But such high debts are problematic for a water company. First there is the issue of inequality, where customers’ water bills are used to pay down debts that have increased to pay dividends to its owners. And second, as we see with Thames Water, these highly indebted companies are potentially unstable in the event of cost pressures.
What we have now is a perfect storm in which Thames Water’s finances may collapse. A key pressure is inflation, which is pushing up the value of some of the company’s debt at the same time as it pushes up costs. More than half of Thames Water’s debt is linked to inflation, contributing to the uplift in debt value.
Then there is the cost of improving performance. This has become more urgent after Ofwat, the water company regulator, was given new powers (effective from April 2025) to prevent companies paying dividends if these weaken financial resilience or are not linked to performance.
In 2022, the government set out a plan to tackle the rapidly growing issue of sewage discharge in a £56 billion investment plan. All of this adds up to intense pressure on the company’s finances.
If those finances do unravel, it is likely that the company will be underwritten by the government to keep the taps flowing while a rescue package is put together (as happened with the energy company Bulb).
However, this situation also creates the opportunity for a new public model of water supply, one that treats water not as a private commodity but as part of the wider ecosystem, providing social equity as well as environmental sustainability.
Public ownership need not be a step back to the 1970s. In fact, it would bring the UK into step with most of the modern world, including most of Europe. In Paris, where water provision was made public in 2009 after years of outsourcing, the change is widely considered a success story.
The last 34 years have revealed the fundamental problems with the current system. This crisis is a chance to direct England’s water in a new direction.
Kate Bayliss 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.
The world is facing a significant food waste problem, with up to half of all fruit and vegetables lost somewhere along the agricultural food chain. Globally, around 14% of food produced is lost after harvesting but before it reaches shops and supermarkets.
Alongside food prices (66%), food waste is a concern for 60% of people that participated in a recent survey published by the UK Food Standards Agency. Other research suggests that as much as 25% of apples, 20% of onions and 13% of potatoes grown in the UK are destroyed because they don’t look right. This means that producers’ efforts to meet stringent specifications from buyers can lead to perfectly edible produce being discarded before it even leaves the farm – simply because of how it looks.
Read more: Ugly veg: supermarkets aren't the biggest food wasters – you are
Aside from the ongoing environmental implications of this food waste, UK shoppers currently face produce rationing in some supermarkets due to shortages of items like tomatoes, cucumbers and raspberries. Any solutions that increase locally grown produce on shop shelves could improve the availability of fresh food, particularly in urban areas.
When imperfect fruit and vegetables don’t make it to supermarket shelves, it can be due to cosmetic standards. Supermarkets and consumers often prefer produce of a fairly standard size that’s free of blemishes, scars and other imperfections. This means fruit and vegetables that are misshapen, discoloured, or even too small or too large, are rejected before they make it to supermarket shelves.
In recent years there has been a growing trend of selling such “ugly” fruit and vegetables, both by major supermarket chains, as well as speciality retailers that sell boxes of wonky produce. And research has shown that 87% of people say they would eat wonky fruit and vegetables if they were available. But other research indicates consumers can still be picky and difficult to predict. One study showed consumers are likely to throw away an apple with a spot, but would eat a bent cucumber.
So how can producers and retailers boost the amount of non-standard fruit and veg that not only reaches our shelves, but also our plates? Our recent research suggests a separate channel for selling ugly produce would increase profits for growers, lower prices for consumers and boost overall demand for produce.
For growers, a dedicated channel – either independent or set up by a supermarket – to supply wonky fruit and veg creates a new line of business. For retailers, this provides an opportunity for further revenue over and above current sales of standard produce to shops. When selling both types of product to a single retailer, the ugly items might be undervalued compared with the standard-looking products. Our research also shows that selling the ugly produce through a dedicated channel is likely to increase total demand for fruit and vegetables, while also decreasing on-farm loss.
Having two parallel channels for selling produce (the main one and the dedicated “ugly” channel) would increase competition. This benefits shoppers by lowering prices for regular and ugly produce, versus selling both types of products alongside each other in one shop.
On the other hand, the growing market for ugly fruit and vegetables could be an economic threat to traditional retailers. It encourages new entrants into the market and could also limit the availability of “regular” produce because growers could become less stringent about ensuring produce meets traditional cosmetic standards.
But there is a way for traditional retailers to add ugly produce into their product offerings alongside other produce without affecting their profits. By building on existing consumer awareness of the environmental benefits of ugly food, they could also compete in this growing segment. This would benefit their bottom lines and help consumer acceptance of misshapen fruit and vegetables, possibly leading to less food waste and shortages like those UK shoppers are experiencing right now.
Boosting demand for imperfect fruit and vegetables across the supply chain will require all participants to get involved – from grower to seller. Here are some steps the various parties could take:
Education about the environmental and economic impact of food waste could happen through marketing campaigns, in-store displays and even social media.
Supermarkets and other major food retailers could revise their cosmetic standards to accept a wider range of produce, including imperfect fruit and vegetables. This would help reduce food waste by making sure more produce is able to be sold.
Farmers and growers could sell non-standard produce directly to consumers through farmers’ markets or subscription services. This allows consumers to purchase fresh, locally grown produce that might not meet cosmetic standards for supermarkets but that is just as nutritionally beneficial.
Supermarkets and growers could donate produce rejected for how it looks to food banks, shelters and other organisations that serve those in need. This would help reduce food waste while also providing healthy food to those who might not otherwise have access to it.
Produce that doesn’t meet cosmetic standards could also be used to create other products such as soups, sauces and juices. In addition to reducing food waste, this would create new revenue streams for growers and retailers.
Anything that cannot be sold or otherwise used should be composted. This would help reduce food waste while also creating nutrient-rich soil for future crops.
By implementing these solutions, the supply chain can reduce the amount of ugly or imperfect fruit and vegetables that are wasted, while also providing consumers with healthy, affordable produce, even in times of supply chain shortages.
Manoj Dora receives funding from UKRI, British Academy, British Council.
Behzad Hezarkhani, Güven Demirel, and Yann Bouchery do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Getting a promotion that involves managing people for the first time is a milestone in anyone’s career. It is a sign that your employer values your performance and skills and trusts you to lead projects and colleagues. This transition can also be a challenging and stressful experience – you may need to relearn what it means to do a “good” job.
It is somewhat paradoxical that employees generally get promoted into managerial roles based on strong performance in non-managerial tasks. While you may have succeeded so far on your expertise and technical abilities, managerial roles call for a different set of skills. You will have to learn to prioritise and allocate work to make sure projects are completed on time, monitor your team’s performance, motivate the people you supervise and manage conflict.
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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These interpersonal skills are misleadingly labelled “soft” skills – they are rather hard to develop. Here are some things to keep in mind:
It may feel particularly challenging to manage team members who are your friends, or who are much older than you. Having cordial working relationships is possible, even when managing others – but you still have to set priorities, tackle conflict and have difficult conversations.
A typical mistake among early career managers is trying to influence others by relying on formal authority. But having a new hierarchical position or job title will not automatically make it easier to get others on board. Effective managers are good at navigating the informal aspects of power that make up “office politics” – the conflicting interests and agendas in the workplace, and how people defend those interests.
Office politics might get a bad rap, but in my research I found that the ability to network, build relationships and influence others is critical when it comes to managing people. For instance, most managers understand that before formally announcing a big decision, it is important to have informal conversations with those who are affected or can influence the decision. This is not unprincipled scheming, but a way of doing your homework.
As a first-time manager, you will probably need to manage both downwards (with your team) and upwards (with more senior managers). Political tensions can arise, for example, when you need to pass down or filter difficult messages coming from the top, while keeping your team motivated. While you may find politics occasionally frustrating, the good news is that managers develop political skill with time and experience.
Being a manager is not about your ego, it is about serving and empowering others to deliver results and to improve professionally. Your performance depends on the quality of work produced by your team, so it becomes essential to be able to delegate, provide work that stretches your team slightly beyond their current level of knowledge, and trust people to do it.
Trust is built by communicating openly and working specific, actionable, two-way feedback in regular conversations (not just formal appraisals).
If you are managing a team, remember that teams are more than the sum of their parts – they have shared goals, values, attitudes and practices. Similarly, organisations have established ways of working, that we sometimes accept unquestioningly and may need to challenge.
It is easy to think of under-performance as the fault of one person who “just doesn’t work hard enough” or “doesn’t have what it takes”. It is harder – but arguably more useful – to ask questions about the broader context, and your own role in team processes and organisational culture:
Managing people from different backgrounds in terms of gender, culture, race, sexuality, social class or age requires more than subscribing to generic corporate statements like “we value everyone”. Your heart might be in the right place, but when it comes to inclusion, our behaviour doesn’t always align with our values – unconscious bias creeps into decisions, and systemic biases are weaved into the fabric of our workplaces.
Research shows that women and ethnic minorities need to demonstrate a higher standard of performance to achieve comparable performance ratings and credibility. My research found that women leaders receive less useful developmental feedback compared with their male peers. It is difficult to get the best out of your team if members are not equally trusted, developed and empowered.
As a manager, you form impressions and assess others continuously, and you will need to actively work to leave your biases at the (virtual) office door. If you are a woman or an ethnic minority, you also need to consider how your identity shapes your experience as a manager. Our societal ideals of leadership are still constrained by the “think manager-think male” phenomenon – the qualities we associate with managers are more commonly ascribed to men. Others might question your managerial credibility because of your gender, race, class or age.
It should not be only your responsibility to fend off entrenched biases. If your employer is genuinely committed to diversity and inclusion, ask how they support underrepresented employees taking on managerial roles.
Taking on extra responsibilities and managing people can be stressful – there is always a degree of discomfort in professional growth. Formal management training can be useful, and on-the-job experience even more so. But your growth as a manager will also be helped if you can learn from others who have been in your shoes.
Managers with thriving careers cultivate a wide range of developmental relationships. Trusted mentors, coaches, line managers, peers or career sponsors can act as a sounding board, provide advice and different perspectives, validate and challenge you at the same time, and open doors for additional opportunities. Nobody travels this road alone, and neither should you.
Elena Doldor 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.
One year of war and Russia is still mired in its second invasion of its neighbour’s internationally recognised territory – which turned out to be much bloodier and more devastating than the first due to Ukraine’s incomparably stronger resistance.
The war’s international dimension has been dramatically emphasised by the recent visit by US president Joe Biden to a country where there is no concentration of US troops. Nato countries are increasing their support to Ukraine despite all speculation about fatigue settling in among them.
And Beijing is about to submit a peace plan, duly consulting Moscow beforehand – since they are supposedly bound by “limitless friendship”.
Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our weekly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s recent speech offered no perspective of peace, instead blaming the west for the conflict: “They [the west] started the war. And we used force and are using force to stop it.”
To help understand how the world reached this dangerous juncture – and to reach as fair as possible a judgment about it – we need to first consider the historical perspective. There are basically two conflicting descriptions of the chain of events leading to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 2022.
One description – we shall call it the pro-Russian version – presents that invasion as Moscow’s reaction to three decades of US-led western encroachment into its former sphere of domination, as part of a US drive to global hegemony.
The two major rounds of Nato’s eastward enlargement were perceived by Russia as hostile and provocative gestures. All the more so since Russia itself was never invited to join the alliance whose raison d’être has precisely been to counter it after the second world war. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were admitted as Nato member states in 1999 against the backdrop of the first US-led war since the end of the cold war that circumvented the UN security council, thus violating international law: the war in Kosovo.
Six more states formerly dominated by Russia were integrated into Nato in 2004 (along with a seventh that belonged to former Yugoslavia). They included three former Soviet republics – the three Baltic states: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The backdrop this time was the US-led invasion of Iraq that had started the year before, circumventing the UN security council one more time and constituting yet another Washington-led violation of international law.
The previous year, George W. Bush unilaterally scrapped the anti-ballistic missile treaty to Moscow’s great discontent. So, when he insisted at Nato’s Bucharest summit in 2008 on promising membership to Georgia and Ukraine, Vladimir Putin felt prompted to act before Russia found itself sharing a long border with a hostile North Atlantic alliance.
Events in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 were the consequence of this. Putin eventually ordered the invasion of Ukraine in a (failed) attempt to achieve “regime change” in that country like the US had tried and botched in Iraq.
The opposite description – we shall call it Nato’s version – portrays Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the child of Putin’s delusions of grandeur and his ambition to reconstitute the imperial domain of tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.
Since becoming Russia’s president at the turn of the century, Putin has gradually increased the concentration of power into his hands and become more and more authoritarian. This process accelerated after his comeback to the presidency in 2012, after the interim period during which he was formally replaced in that role by his stand-in Dmitry Medvedev, while continuing to pull the strings from the prime minister’s seat.
Confronted with massive opposition to his return, Putin felt threatened by the prospect of a western-sponsored “colour revolution” against his rule. He invaded and annexed Crimea in order to boost his legitimacy, knowing how popular that annexation would be in Russia.
His success in this endeavour and the relative moderation of western reaction – along with the effect of his protracted self-isolation for fear of catching COVID – led him to envisage a further step in pandering to Russian nationalism by subduing Ukraine. He tried to achieve this by invading it and has so far failed miserably due to the country’s resistance exceeding all expectations.
Which of these two narratives is right? The objective answer to this question is: both. They are both true and there is no contradiction between them – in fact, they fully complement each other. That is because Washington’s post-cold war behaviour provided the perfect conditions for the growth of Russian revanchism that Vladimir Putin came to embody.
Where does the recognition of the above two sets of facts leave us regarding the continuing war? There is no doubt that the main responsibility in the present tragedy falls on Russia. Its invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked and openly premeditated.
Presuming that Putin had believed that most Ukrainians would welcome his “special operation”, he should have cancelled it and withdrawn his troops as soon as it became clear that he was mistaken. Instead, he got his country’s military bogged down in a long murderous and destructive war in eastern Ukraine.
Russia must withdraw its troops to where they stood before February 24 2022. As for Crimea and those parts of Donbas that were controlled by Russian-backed anti-Kyiv forces since 2014, their status should be settled by peaceful and democratic means compatible with the UN Charter, along with the deployment of UN troops in the disputed territories.
The world cannot afford a new world war in order to reinstate these rules. The new cold war, launched by Washington less than a decade after the end of the first one and now embodied by Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine and by perilous sabre rattling around Taiwan, must end before it leads to Armageddon.
Gilbert Achcar's latest book: The New Cold War: The US, Russia and China from Kosovo to Ukraine is published by The Westbourne Press.
Vladimir Putin’s decision to pull out of the New Start nuclear weapons treaty with the United States will have predictable responses.
Stocks in defence corporations will rise at the prospect of new markets for nuclear missiles. Disciples of deterrence will reassure the public that arms control was never really needed. Those who fear the end of the world as we know it will sound the alarm – playing into Putin’s hands, some will say, by causing alarm and weakness in the west.
Others may point out that the US and Nato have such technical and financial dominance that Putin is damaging his own interest by giving up controls. On the contrary, leaving Russia unconstrained to attach comparatively cheap and terrifying nuclear weapons to any aircraft, vessel or missile will be a nightmare for deterrence planners.
The new strategic arms reduction treaty was the latest in a series of agreements stretching back half a century between the US and Russia (and before, the USSR) on their nuclear weapons. The treaty limits each state to no more than 1,550 nuclear weapons fitted to up to a total of 700 missiles and aircraft.
There have been no limits on anti-missile missile systems since 2002 when the US ended an agreement on these. This is one factor motivating Putin to abandon controls on missiles as US defences improve along with conventional strike missiles.
New Start includes provisions for each side to inspect the other’s weapons to verify the agreement is working. And, at present, neither the US or Russia are accusing the other of violations.
Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our weekly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.
The types of missiles and planes governed by New Start can carry thousands more weapons than they do at present. Back in the 1970s, nuclear bombs were routinely as small as 10cm in diameter so that large numbers of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles could be fitted to a single missile.
It was the prospect of unlimited production of such weapons that concentrated the minds of US and Soviet decision makers to realise that they had a collective interest in limits.
From the Russian perspective, ending New Start is a natural result of failing to get US agreement on missile defences and conventional strike weapons.
One treaty in particular has shown the value of disarmament during the Ukraine war. It might be surprising given the bombardments of Ukraine, but the 1987 intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty has denied Russia thousands more missiles that it could have used.
Read more: Ukraine war: how Gorbachev's 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin
Thanks to the agreement struck by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, leaders of the US and USSR respectively at the time, Russian forces attacking Ukraine have not been able to use ground-to-ground ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km.
The treaty was actually cancelled by Donald Trump in 2019. But only one Russian missile type that apparently violated the treaty – the 9M729 – exists. And as it has a nuclear-only role, it has not, so far, been used in Ukraine.
When the INF treaty was implemented, thousands of the Soviet Union’s most modern missiles were decommissioned, along with their US equivalents. Today a huge proportion of Russian munitions used in Ukraine are vintage Soviet systems.
With conventionally armed INF missiles of similar vintage with ranges over 500km, Lviv and other centres in western Ukraine could have been devastated. Russia has instead had to use limited numbers of missiles built for air and sea launch as well as manned bombers to attack targets deeper than 500km from Russian (and Belarusian) territory.
The process that produced the extraordinarily effective INF treaty provides important guidance for a renaissance in disarmament in the 21st century. Back then – despite an intense confrontation between the two antagonists – successful agreements were reached to avert a catastrophic nuclear exchange.
How could new arms reduction treaties be put in place? “Negotiate from strength” is a powerful argument in diplomacy. Fortunately, the US and its allies already enjoy a more than ten-to-one superiority in military spending over Russia.
Unless western taxpayers have been badly served, this spending has translated into effective technologies, despite the Kremlin’s rhetoric over hypersonics and Putin’s doomsday nuclear torpedoes.
Nuclear powers often argue that nuclear disarmament is necessarily connected to concerns they have about non-nuclear forces and security in their regions. This is evident in the outbreaks of violence between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, as well as the devastation caused by conventional forces which has been so evident in Ukraine.
A new global initiative might pick up the call from the G20 that “ours must not be an era of war” the subject of an upcoming event at SOAS University of London. Following the INF treaty mantra of a zero option, such an initiative could seek a global zero on missiles of all kinds down to a range of, say, 150km.
Negotiation is rarely easy, but Putin’s Russia is far weaker than was the Soviet Union with whom solid agreements were made. Meanwhile, Ukraine should have all the support it needs to restore its territorial integrity and the return of its citizens – not least the thousands of kidnapped children. But in the end weapons control is essential to survival in the long term.
Dan Plesch receives funding from the the Rowntree |Trust.
Record numbers of Cubans are fleeing their country as the island suffers its worst socio-economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The number of Cubans seeking entry to the US, mostly at the Mexican border, leapt from 39,000 in 2021 to more than 224,000 in 2022. Many have sold their homes at knockdown prices to afford one-way flights to Nicaragua and travel through Mexico to the US.
Cuba’s 11 million inhabitants find themselves in increasingly desperate straits. Internal migration from the poorer provinces has led to overpopulation in the capital Havana. Those for whom the government can’t provide homes live in albergues (precarious abandoned buildings refashioned as temporary homes). Others live in solares (tenement buildings), some at serious risk of collapse.
Acute shortages of food and medicine are a daily reality in a country that’s been ravaged by a US trade embargo since 1962, and strict government control of the economy since 1959. Regular power outages have reminded Cubans of the early 1990s when Soviet subsidies ended as the USSR collapsed, leaving the island struggling.
To survive that “special period”, Cuba became reliant on hard currency earnings from international tourism and nationals working abroad. Both are now much reduced. COVID measures closed the island to foreign tourists and reduced visitor numbers by 75% during 2020.
Ill-timed currency reforms, which unified Cuba’s two currencies, in early 2021 created an inflationary shock. Food shortages have sparked a black market boom.
On a recent trip to Cuba, co-author of this piece James Clifford Kent talked to local people and took photographs. Luis Lázaro, a construction worker from Havana, told him: “It’s got really bad. A complete crisis: food, medicine, clothes. If it’s not one thing it’s another. You work non-stop just to make ends meet and sometimes it’s not enough.”
As recently as 2016, after more than half a century of hostilities, US-Cuban relations were coming in from the cold. Barack Obama became the first serving US president to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. The Rolling Stones rocked Havana with a free concert.
Packed cruise ships unloaded their passengers at Havana’s harbour, to be whisked off on open-top classic car tours of the capital. Planeloads of foreigners hopped down to Havana to soak up the heady atmosphere, with Rihanna, Beyoncé and Jay-Z among the vanguard of high-profile western visitors. Private enterprise flourished and the spirit of optimism was everywhere.
Read more: U.S.-Cuba relations: Will Joe Biden pick up where Barack Obama left off?
But Cuba’s economy and relationship with the United States faltered again after Donald Trump was elected in November 2016, just as the island’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro died. President Trump reinstated longstanding travel and business restrictions.
Meanwhile, US diplomats and intelligence officers stationed on the island reported hearing loss, headaches and vertigo in a mysterious outbreak of “Havana syndrome” in late 2016. Washington blamed Cuba and withdrew most of its embassy staff, just two years after both governments had reopened embassies in their respective capitals for the first time since 1961.
One of Trump’s last acts before leaving office in January 2021 was to return Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, obstructing its access to international finance. Trump had already restricted the remittances that Cuban-Americans could send to the island.
President Joe Biden has now shifted policy again as pressure mounts over increased illegal migration to the United States. He re-opened the US embassy in Havana for visa applications in January 2023, offering some Cubans an official route to emigration.
Increased mobile internet access since 2018 and widespread use of social media play significant roles in a new mood among Cubans. The Economist Intelligence Unit describes their double impact: the demand for political and economic liberalisation and accountability has increased, while US sanctions and dissident support have emboldened those hardliners resistant to reform.
Despite government restrictions and poor infrastructure, 68% of Cubans now have access to the internet. Whatsapp, Instagram and other social networks are much used by Cubans, particularly young people.
Internet access was key to the 2021 Cuban protests when local discontent fuelled by COVID restrictions and widespread shortages resulted in street protests that police quickly suppressed. Many high-profile artists and Cuban bloggers accused by the government of being funded by the United States were detained.
Ana María, a 52-year-old Cuban mother-of-two, described how delinquency and corruption are on the rise. People prefer to sell products on the black market than work for a salary that doesn’t cover basic needs, she said.
One 29-year-old Cuban artist, who didn’t want to be named, said: “Many of my close friends have joined el rumbo al norte (the route north) in search of socio-economic stability for themselves and their families.”
Cubans’ famed ability to resolver (be resourceful) in the face of immense difficulties is reaching its limit. Hope is fading fast.
After six decades of trade blockades and a rigid socialist model, plummeting living standards have led 2% of Cuba’s population to abandon the island in just one year.
Many more are desperate to follow them.
Some names have been changed and some sources requested anonymity.
The authors 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.
The media war that has accompanied Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown how important a part of 21st-century conflict journalism is, and also demonstrated the power authoritarian regimes possess to restrict reporting – even in the age of smartphones and social media.
In a move that echoed the draconian censorship laws of earlier ages, the Russian government declared its media war just days after it invaded its neighbour. New legislation meant journalists risked jail if they refused to follow dutifully the official line that the war was “a special military operation”, and not a war at all.
As the BBC director general, Tim Davie, said at the time, the legislation “appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism”. The BBC temporarily suspended its reporting from Russia, presumably while it sought to establish the real extent of the risk to its reporters.
Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our weekly recap of expert analysis of the Ukraine conflict.
Eventually, they resumed their work, with Steve Rosenberg and his colleagues bringing to international audiences stories such as that of Denis Skopin, a university lecturer in St Petersburg, sacked for his protest against the war. For The Guardian, Andrew Roth has also reported on anti-war activism, including the quiet defiance of those who mourn Ukrainian victims of the Kremlin’s war machine.
Many others, though, left – often when their editors felt it no longer safe for them to stay – and are yet to return.
What is in effect a ban on independent journalism may be seen as a kind of compliment: a testament to the power that reporters have to challenge the Kremlin’s justification for making war.
Combined with the inaccessibility of many international news websites and social media platforms since the start of the war, the effect is that reliable reporting from Russia is more restricted than at any time since before the era of reform and openness that characterised the late Soviet period.
In fact, the situation today bears comparison with that of a century ago, when the fledgling Bolshevik government had banned international correspondents from Russia on the basis that their governments and newspapers had supported the wrong – the counterrevolutionary, “White” – side in the civil war. Then, as now by some correspondents, events in Russia were reported from Riga in neighbouring Latvia.
With the threats of punishment and prison, Russia’s approach to the media war has been crude – and also, in some respects, as explained below, effective.
In others, much less so. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has shown great skill – and presumably drawn on his previous acting career –in using modern media and formats (his second world war “Victory Day” video, in which he drew parallels aimed at a Russian audience, between the second world war inflicted by Nazism and the invasion of his country, being a great example).
Zelensky’s surefooted and engaging media appearances have contrasted with videos of Putin that have prompted British tabloid speculation both about his health, and whether he is using actors in some of his TV appearances.
But if Ukraine is winning the war for western public opinion, Russia seems to be successfully shoring up public support at home.
This has been a long process. I visited Russia in 2019, for the fifth anniversary of the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and was struck by the prevalence of militaristic imagery and sentiment – not only in the news media, but in murals overlooking the streets of Moscow and other cities I visited.
This combination of media and militarism has been an indispensable, integral, part of Russia’s use of war in international relations in the Putin era, as my co-author, Dr Alexander Lanoszka, and I argued in our 2021 paper: Russia’s rising military and communication power: From Chechnya to Crimea.
The Kremlin’s biggest success has been placing 20th-century controls on 21st-century media. Yes, these can be circumvented. Russia is a highly technologically literate society (think how many incidents of hacking are blamed on Russians) and those who want to read news from the west can do so if they put in a little effort.
But many do not seem bothered to try. As Rosenberg discovered in a report for the BBC from Belgorod, not far from the Russian border with Ukraine, on February 10, official messaging seems largely to be taken at face value. “The west has always wanted to destroy Russia,” one resident of the city told him.
This is the stage which, 12 months since Russia’s large-scale invasion (Ukrainians will rightly point out that the war itself really began in 2014), the media war has reached. The rapid victory the Kremlin seems originally to have envisaged not having happened, the war has now been reframed – on the basis not only of Putin-approved versions of history, but also deliveries of western weapons to Ukraine – as a conflict between Russia and the west.
Ukraine will need to keep international news organisations engaged. Zelensky’s speech in London on February 8 – that appeared so greatly to inspire the British parliamentarians who heard it – had to be on television and social media to have the desired impact, and for the visual gesture of handing over an airman’s helmet to make the desired impression.
There is one western policy that should change in the next stage of the media war, though I have little hope it will. The EU and the UK were wrong to ban Sputnik and RT. It gave them credit for greater reach and influence than they ever enjoyed. It allowed them the chance to masquerade – however absurdly – as martyrs for free speech. Western audiences need to see what Russian audiences are being told. In a media war, as in any war, the more you know of your enemy, the better.
As Vladislav Zubok, a professor of international history at the LSE, told me recently:
We still find even at the worst moments of the Cold War journalists talking to each other and acting as intermediaries. These people met. These people had a dialogue. Not any more.
That should change. One day this war will end, and the US, UK, EU and others will have to forge a new relationship with Russia. It is unlikely to be one of friendship – but even one accepting distance, division and discord can better be managed by the kind of dialogue of which journalism can be the starting point.
This level of mutual understanding must not be yet another casualty of this media war. Let journalists do their jobs.
James Rodgers 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.
American composer Burt Bacharach, who has died at the age of 94, is arguably one the greatest songwriters of all time. With hits going back to the 1950s, Bacharach continued working until the age of 92.
Together with lyricist Hal David, Bacharach created some of the most affecting, subtle and poignant songs of the second half of the 20th century. Within the best of them, you can hear an array of intricate characterisations, moving between the intimate and provocative, between easy listening and the more unsettling.
Bacharach was a college-educated composer and classically trained pianist. His highly refined musical technique combined with Hal David’s skills for memorable lyrics with ear-catching rhymes and slippery rhythms to create hit after hit.
Walk on By (1963) was a massive international hit for Dionne Warwick. Anyone Who Had a Heart (1964) and Alfie (1966) were Cilla Black’s most compelling work.
Dusty Springfield’s erotically charged The Look of Love for the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) became better known than the film. Aretha Franklin’s I Say a Little Prayer (1968) won her a Grammy. Then there was the aching, velvet voice of Karen Carpenter in her brother Richard’s arrangement of (They Long to be) Close to You (1970). To name only a few.
These are multifaceted gems, perfectly cut to present complex musical portraits, which can be vulnerable but also powerful. Bacharach’s talent was not limited to songs for female powerhouses, however. He was a master at conveying musical expressions of the sensitive soul of a man crushed or moved by love.
There may be little subtlety in Tom Jones hollering What’s New Pussycat?, but other examples of Bacharach’s work show his expressive range with far more nuance.
One of Bacharach’s finest songs is A House is not a Home. It was released in 1964 as the theme song for a film of the same name starring Shelley Winters in which she plays a New York brothel keeper. The show did not survive but the song has, now probably best known as sung by Luther Vandross on his 1981 debut album Never Too Much.
In A House is not a Home, David’s lyrics eschew the seedy locale of the film to evoke an empty home after a breakup. Bacharach’s music offers tones of domesticity and amorous loss.
The song was performed for the movie by Brook Benton. Warwick also recorded and released it at the same time, but when performed by Benton it is a rare example of a sentimental song about male longing set in a domestic space.
Bacharach sang A House is not a Home as his own first lead vocal recording on the album Reach Out (1967). It remained one of his favourite songs, as its expressive vulnerability suited his small, sometimes fragile voice.
Vandross’s 1981 interpretation, which both Warwick and Bacharach considered to be definitive, projects a sophisticated, luxuriantly exposed version of sentimental masculinity. It exemplifies how Bacharach and David wrote songs that can communicate experience across boundaries of race and class.
This ability to write about and reach people across divides is immediately apparent when two versions of Walk on By are compared.
In the opening track of his ground-breaking album Hot Buttered Soul (1969), Isaac Hayes expanded the song into a 12-minute extravaganza. Hayes’s generous unfolding of time and sensuously opulent production succeed because the materials of the original are so rich and suggestive. By contrast, in 1978 The Stranglers produced a version that stripped the song down to its raw expressive essence.
His portrait on the cover of Brit Pop band Oasis’s Definitely Maybe (1994) is a homage to an important musical figure. Bacharach’s influence is most overtly heard in the song Half the World Away (released the same year, but not on the album), which borrows from the opening of This Guy’s in Love with You (1968).
The opening is used to set up a song that gently evokes tensions between fondness for and frustrations with home. Half the World Away was perfectly suited for later use as the theme to Caroline Aherne’s sentimental British sofa sitcom, The Royle Family (1998).
Read more: Burt Bacharach mastered the art of the perfect pop song – and that ain't easy
Among Bacharach’s many collaborations in the later stages of his career, the highest critical acclaim was accorded to the album he co-wrote with Elvis Costello, Painted from Memory (1998). The expressive strain which can often be heard in Costello’s voice complements the yearning qualities of the harmonies and orchestrations, creating perhaps the finest late contribution to Bacharach’s remarkable musical catalogue.
Across these songs, you can hear and picture different types of men and different types of love. Bacharach was able to find a musical language that conveyed each powerfully and for this he will be remembered.
Stephen Downes 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.
Until the mid-19th century in Britain, watching someone die was considered a form of entertainment. Indeed, this shared experience shaped the landscape of London and bound the city together.
Entitled Executions, the current exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands tells the stories of tens of thousands of Londoners executed in public spaces across the city over almost 700 years, from 1196 to 1868 – the official recorded dates of its first and last public execution.
From gibbet cages erected on the main streets along the Thames, to pillories displayed for all to see at Charing Cross, and gallows at Tyburn (what is now Marble Arch) and Tower Bridge, public executions were a ritual which served several purposes. Learning about this history can offer insight into our contemporary appetite for – and apathy towards – the suffering of others.
Executing someone in public and leaving corpses and other decaying body parts on display for several days (or years, in the case of gibbet cages) worked as a deterrent to crime and rebellion. The gruesome sight and the smell shaped collective memory and were a reminder that nobody could escape the dire consequences of crime. The exhibition shows that no one was spared – from the common man to public figures of the time and, indeed, the King.
In his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, French philosopher Michel Foucault explains that public execution was not just about the “theatre of punishment”. It was also about the material expression of state power – a ceremony through which the hold that the state, the crown and the church exercised over the life and death of citizens was made clear.
Different typologies of crime called for different methods of execution. By the end of the 18th century, in England there were 220 offences – from treason to pick-pocketing – that were punishable by death. This ruthless penal system became known as the “bloody code”.
These executions could be attended by up to 50,000 spectators, bringing significant economic gain. Hawkers sold fruit, pies and beverages to the public queuing for hours at the gallows. Window views over the site of the execution were rented to those spectators who could afford them. Print shops distributed “execution broadsides” throughout the country, reporting the last dying speeches of the condemned and reflecting, often in satirical terms, on the nature of their crimes.
In 1722, printer Thomas Gent wrote that, as he was printing the dying speech of Christopher Layer, who had been hanged for treason, he was besieged by hawkers anxious for the publication and was unable to step outside his office until he had finished.
Public executions were not just about the sentencing of criminals. They were viewed as events that lasted several days where the hangman, the condemned, the priest and the governor were actors playing roles in a bigger collective spectacle – and where audience gratification was as important an element as the punishment itself.
In 1783, English writer Samuel Johnson was asked where he stood on the subject of public hanging, and whether he would favour the alternative of executing criminals right after the sentence and without public announcement. He did not, replying: “The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by the procession, the criminal supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?”
Less than a century later in 1849, however, Charles Dickens witnessed the hanging of Marie and Frederick Manning, a Swiss maid and her publican husband who were condemned for the murder of Irish customs officer Patrick O'Connor. The letter Dickens subsequently wrote to The Times was lamentful:
I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators.
We know from literature, poetry and also science that the line between repulsion and attraction, horror and thrill, sublime and grotesque is fine. What sets the spectacle of public executions apart from these configurations is the staged, yet real, sensationalisation of an authentic tragedy.
Nowadays, images of death and suffering are routine in popular culture. In the age of tele-trauma, pain has been commodified. The suffering individual is lost and repackaged into a fictional other for our consumption.
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s work shows that consumption has nothing to do with gratifying our needs. Rather, it is the contemporary way in which we relate to one another and to society at large. In processing information from the media, we transform objects (reality) into signs (virtuality) to create alternative value-systems. These form a falsified reproduction of reality which alters public consciousness.
In other words, the media articulation of violent images and language produces specific meaning about the suffering of others. It shapes up specific ways in which we – the audience – engage with those distant and mediated vulnerabilities. This produces a shift in our response to pain and suffering. We move from empathy to apathy.
In the mid-19th century, Dickens was already noting how the spectacle of public execution triggered a collective disconnect from the suffering of others. In his letter to the Times he wrote:
When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. There was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement.
Today we continue to both demonise and crave the vulnerability of others. The difference is that we no longer do it collectively in the public square, but intimately in our homes. It is an exercise which Baudrillard describes, in his 2000 book Screened Out, as a “great laundering”. By falsely identifying with distant victims of pain from our position of safety, we are able to condone our indifference and overwrite a more edifying, self-absolving story.
Caterina Nirta ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi remains, even 75 years after his assassination, a useful symbol for many in India. For secularists, the leader of the country’s independence movement represents an imagined India of the past. For the current government, he is a means by which it can soften its international image.
In his 2002 essay, academic Ashis Nandy, mentioned four versions of Gandhi, who led India’s move from British colony to independent nation.
The first is the Gandhi of the Indian state and of official Indian nationalism. The second is a puritanical and sombre figure, apolitical and dependent on state funding, the subject of university seminars debating: “What would Gandhi do?”
The third is the “Gandhi of the ragamuffins”, opposing mechanisation, large-scale development and a high-consumption economy. The fourth is Gandhi the non-violent revolutionary, a worldwide phenomenon, influential in movements but no longer feared by tyrants, nor taken seriously by the left.
Over the past two decades, however, Gandhi and his legacy have taken a thorough beating.
Reappraisals of Gandhi are, admittedly, long overdue. Titles such as “Mahatma” (“high souled” or “venerable” in Sanskrit) and “Father of the Nation” have worn thin since his death, as new events in India and worldwide that brought new scrutiny to his life, work and politics.
Some of these seem far-fetched, for example equating Gandhi with Osama bin Laden and global jihadists on the grounds that they were similarly based on a “sacrificial humanitarianism”. Speculations about his sexuality provoked a debate about his supposed “celibacy”. In the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, his strange practice of sleeping next to naked young women was openly discussed.
The rise of much-persecuted Dalit people (previously known as untouchables) in political and intellectual spaces over the past two decades has given rise to trenchant criticisms of Gandhi’s complicity in the preservation of caste dominance, and the hypocrisy in his stands repeatedly that favoured the preservation of caste over justice and emancipation. Economist and politician Bhimrao Ramji “Babasaheb” Ambedkar’s evisceration of Gandhi’s politics is now more widely known and accepted than ever before.
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Of those images of Gandhi named in the essay, some are now seen as enemies of the vision of progress of India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi. Others have been refined to sit comfortably within the cultural nationalism of Hindutva, the project of creating a constitutional Hindu state and institutionalising its version of Hindu culture and social order in contradiction to Gandhi’s vision of a multi-faith nation.
Those using Gandhi’s methods of protest are now likely to be labelled “urban Naxal”, a Hindutva shorthand for intellectuals and activists involved in struggles of the rural poor, and have draconian legal charges slapped on them.
Gandhi’s international influence and reputation is now much diminished. Gandhi’s use of racist words for black Africans has fuelled righteous outrage against him. Malawi’s government stopped construction of a Gandhi statue after these accusations, though pressure from Modi’s government resulted in the completion of the statue later.
In Ghana, Gandhi’s statue was pulled down. Black Lives Matter movements in the US and in the UK also branded him a racist, and called for removal of his statues.
The most far-reaching bid to move India away from the nation that Gandhi imagined has come from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) and its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS was briefly banned after Gandhi’s killing for its involvement in the crime. It espouses a violent communal polarisation with an anti-minority politics, and several episodes of mob lynching with impunity, have been the fertile ground for its rise.
While Gandhi emphasised truth, fake news has been has been used to mobilise mass support for Hindutva. The RSS also tries to quote Gandhi in support of their political approach.
However, Hindutva organisations organise tableaux annually to re-enact the assassination on January 30 1948. Those elements of the RSS who supported “Gandhian socialism” are in political hibernation.
Modi, the Hindutva state and the new official nationalism, though, still need Gandhi. Under Modi’s modernisation fetish, major Gandhian ashrams, like Sabarmati, have been given such a tourist-friendly facelift, seemingly stripped of all historical gravitas.
Modi launched his Swachh Bharat (or Clean India] campaign using Gandhi as the logo. Home minister Amit Shah claims that Modi is Gandhi’s true modern manifestation.
Modi supports the construction of Gandhi statues worldwide. At the UN, Modi said he represented the land of Gandhi, claiming that erecting a bust at the UN headquarters was a matter or pride for all Indians. Modi’s Gandhian paradox is that the only Gandhi he wants to assimilate into his project is a Gandhi shorn of his core beliefs, principles and modes of political action.
Is the influence of Gandhi’s ideals finished then? Not quite. Activists from the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act movement (an attempt by Modi to end Muslims’ constitutional equality with Hindus) claimed to be follow Gandhian principles of popular protest. The farmers’ movement against Modi’s plans to give corporations power over Indian agriculture also tried to mobilise Gandhi’s legacy to their cause.
Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, there is a clearer picture now of the man, stripped of much of the myth and mystique. A resource for many social movements forging alternative ways to meet contemporary challenges.
Subir Sinha 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.
In ancient Rome, the saeculum, or “the age”, was the span of living memory, the telling of an event passed down from the oldest to the youngest. Recognising this profound idea, some have worried that the memory of the Holocaust will fade as the generation of those who survived it near the end of their lives.
Survivors are the core witnesses, the human link to the past. Many work tirelessly in Holocaust education and all rightly deserve our praise and support. Members of their families have sometimes followed suit, sharing publicly the stories of their parents or grandparents. This provides a sense of the emotional force of the Holocaust.
But we are not ancient Romans. While stories passed down through generations are significant, they are not our only connection to the past. Instead, today, the Holocaust is made present in many ways.
In his 1993 work, The Holocaust as Culture, the survivor and Nobel laureate Imre Kertész argued that the Holocaust will “remain through culture, which is really the vessel of memory”. The discipline of history, invented in its modern form in the 19th century, gives witnesses a crucial role. It supplements their testimony with scholarly research, archival investigations, rules of evidence and forms of argument.
Across the world, in museums, schools and public spaces, the work of memorialisation goes on, too. London’s new Holocaust memorial and education centre is to be completed by 2025. Elsewhere, artists, archeologists, writers, filmmakers, musicians and philosophers produce works that reflect on what happened. The memory of the Shoah is not going to fade.
As time passes and the role of culture broadly understood becomes more important, though, we risk something more dangerous: not forgetfulness but mythmaking.
We are familiar with the myths pedalled by antisemites and racists, who use Holocaust denial as a vector for their hate. Of perhaps greater concern, however, is the mythmaking that seems well-intentioned.
The Irish author John Boyne has said that his novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, teaches “empathy and kindness”. In his prefatory author’s note, he effectively excuses the extraordinary historical inaccuracies in his book by suggesting that it tells an “emotional truth”.
The emotional truth about the Holocaust, however, is that nine-year-old Jewish boys, like his protagonist Shmuel, were gassed on arrival at Auschwitz. The emotional truth is that nine-year-old sons of SS colonels, like his protagonist Bruno, were turned into antisemites and longed to be old enough to claim their Hitler Youth daggers, inscribed with the phrase “blood and honour”.
What the emotional truth of the Holocaust is not is that victims and perpetrators became friends and were somehow equivalent, as Boyne’s novel implies. The problem with implying this is that the idea takes hold. In October 2022, following fierce criticism online, the London-based Icarus Theatre Collective cancelled a planned Romeo and Juliet set in Nazi Germany. In Shakespeare’s Verona, the “two households” were alike in dignity. In the Third Reich, one attempted to strip all human dignity from the other. Boyne was right to subtitle his novel “A fable”. Works like his risk making the Holocaust itself a fable.
The opposite idea – a ban on art which addresses the Holocaust – presents risks of its own. Culture is how we reflect, how we come to understand and pass on our shared past to help us prepare for the future. In his 1983 work, Reflections on Nazism, the great Holocaust historian Saul Friedländer argued that works of art can present the “reality of the past in a way that sometimes reveals previously unsuspected aspects”. They can tell us something new about the Holocaust, and so, about ourselves.
We navigate between making the Holocaust a fable and banning any representation by talking about, arguing over and even calling out fables of the Holocaust. Myths are received in hushed awe. The past, by contrast, demands to be discussed. Sometimes these discussions can be, perhaps should be, uncomfortable, but even in this discomfort, the memory of the Holocaust is kept alive.
Robert Eaglestone is a member of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation Academic Advisory Board
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