'Is Ofcom Ineffective in Keeping GB News Honest?' by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

The question of whether Ofcom is effective in regulating GB News has become increasingly hard to avoid. Since the channel’s launch, GB News has attracted repeated complaints, investigations and rulings for breaches of the Broadcasting Code, particularly around due impartiality. Yet despite this steady drumbeat of controversy, the channel continues to operate much as it always has. This raises a legitimate concern that Ofcom does not meaningfully restrain GB News and that its regulatory approach amounts to little more than symbolic disapproval?

On paper, Ofcom has significant powers. It can investigate, make formal findings, require broadcasters to air corrections or statements of breach, impose financial penalties and in extreme cases revoke licences. In practice, however, the regulator has been cautious to the point of timidity. GB News has accumulated multiple upheld breaches over time, but for years these resulted mainly in published rulings rather than serious sanctions. Critics argue that such outcomes are easily absorbed by a well-funded broadcaster whose audience may actively distrust Ofcom and treat its rulings as proof of establishment bias.

The £100,000 fine imposed on GB News in 2024 was widely presented as a turning point. It was the first substantial financial penalty levied against the channel and appeared to signal a tougher stance on impartiality, especially during sensitive political periods. Yet even this action exposed the limits of Ofcom’s authority. The fine was immediately challenged by GB News through judicial review, delaying enforcement and turning the issue into a protracted legal battle. The result is that the supposed deterrent effect of the sanction has been blunted, at least in the short to medium term.

There is also a structural problem in how Ofcom regulates broadcast impartiality. The rules were designed for an era in which television news aimed for broad consensus and neutrality, not for channels that deliberately blur the line between news, commentary and political advocacy. GB News has exploited this ambiguity by framing politically charged content as opinion-led or presenter-driven, while still packaging it within a “news” channel. Ofcom’s attempts to draw distinctions between acceptable opinion and impermissible partiality often appear reactive and technical, rather than robust and preventive.

Supporters of Ofcom counter that the regulator is constrained by law. It must balance impartiality rules against freedom of expression and cannot simply punish a broadcaster for having a clear ideological tone. They also note that repeated rulings do matter, both reputationally and in establishing precedents that can justify stronger sanctions later. From this perspective, Ofcom’s incremental approach reflects legal reality rather than regulatory weakness.

Nevertheless, perception matters. To many observers, the pattern looks like this: GB News pushes boundaries, Ofcom investigates after the fact, a breach is upheld months later and the channel continues largely unchanged. When sanctions do occur, they are delayed, contested or relatively modest compared to the political and cultural impact of the broadcasts themselves. This fuels the impression that Ofcom is permanently one step behind a broadcaster that thrives on confrontation with the regulator.

Ultimately, the question is not whether Ofcom ever acts against GB News, but whether its actions are sufficient to ensure honesty and impartiality in practice. So far, the evidence is mixed at best. Ofcom has shown that it is willing to criticise and, on occasion, fine the channel. What it has not yet demonstrated is an ability to change behaviour in a durable way. Until that happens, doubts about the regulator’s effectiveness are likely to persist.

Why David Sinclair’s Supplement Stack Keeps Changing

When the antiaging and longevity scientist David Sinclair first published his personal anti-ageing supplement stack, I thought it was unusually credible. He was a Harvard scientist telling us about a regimen that appeared to follow directly from his own scientific research: boosting NAD+, activating sirtuins, engaging AMPK pathways and combining these with lifestyle choices like fasting and exercise. At the time, I thought it was coherent, mechanistic and based on a specific theory of ageing.

Years later, however, my confidence has largely evaporated: not because the individual supplements lack antiaging benefits, but because the stack itself has become unstable.

His supplement regimen has changed repeatedly, often on a yearly basis. Supplements are added, removed, reintroduced and removed again. Each change is presented as refinement, but taken together they raise an uncomfortable question: if the science was really driving these decisions, why is there so little convergence?

Ageing science in humans moves slowly, and evidence accumulates over long timeframes. Annual reversals in personal supplement protocols are, therefore, unlikely to be based on decisive new human data. Instead, they show something else: a continual hypothesis-cycling based on animal studies, in-vitro work and emerging trends in the longevity community. While this kind of evidence is useful for research exploration, it is not strong enough to justify confident, frequently changing supplement prescriptions.

This emphasises an important distinction that often gets forgotten in longevity discussions: mechanistic plausibility is not the same as validated intervention. Many of the supplements Sinclair currently takes (NMN, resveratrol, spermidine, fisetin and berberine) have very plausible anti-ageing mechanisms. Some even have sound and encouraging early data. But plausibility alone does not explain why a protocol should keep mutating if it is truly evidence-led. In longevity supplement science, recommendations gradually narrow as weak candidates are discarded and strong ones remain. What we see here is not narrowing, but frequent rotation.

Also, most anti-ageing interventions act slowly, if they act at all, over years, not weeks or months. By frequently changing his supplement protocol, Sinclair undermines the very possibility of knowing whether any individual intervention is doing anything meaningful.

Another factor is Sinclair’s evolving public role. Early on, he spoke primarily as a scientist. Over time, he has also become a central figure in the longevity influencer community. That brings different incentives: visibility, novelty, relevance and personal branding around “what I take”. In that environment, his frequent supplement updates signal progress and authority, even when the underlying evidence has not meaningfully changed.

None of this means Sinclair is acting in bad faith. It just mean that his supplement stack should be understood for what it is: a personal supplement regime experiment that he is conducting on himself, which is continually revised, and is exploratory rather than definitive. It is not a scientifically validated anti-ageing protocol, and it should not be seen as one.

The irony is that his original stack inspired confidence precisely because it appeared stable and theory-driven. Its constant evolution has had the opposite effect.

'Why COVID Conspiracy Movements Refused to Retreat When Reality Moved On' by Robert Miller—guest blogger and former COVID sceptic

When COVID-19 restrictions faded and societies reopened, one might have expected the most dramatic pandemic-era conspiracy narratives to fade with them. Instead, many of the loudest sceptics held fast to their original convictions or pushed them into even more expansive territory. The moment that should have disproved the theories became, paradoxically, further evidence of them. This phenomenon wasn’t an accident. It reflects how broad, emotionally charged conspiratorial systems behave when the world fails to conform to their predictions.

At the height of the pandemic, the most sweeping sceptical claims rested on a single core idea: that COVID-19 was being used as a pretext to impose lasting global control through lockdowns, mandates, digital IDs, surveillance and possibly forced vaccination. If that were true, the end of restrictions should have shattered the entire framework.

But human belief isn’t governed by simple logic. When someone invests deeply in a narrative that casts them as a rare truth-seer resisting mass deception, the belief becomes part of their identity. A retreat from it would feel like self-betrayal. So when the world fails to match the prophecy, the mind adapts the prophecy rather than discarding it.

This pattern is familiar. Failed doomsday predictions have been “reinterpreted” for decades, from religious movements to political cults. In each case, the believers experience not collapse but reinforcement.

For many sceptics, the key prediction was that lockdowns and restrictions were the opening act of a new global regime. When restrictions ended, this should have invalidated the idea. Instead, the frame shifted:

1. If governments had kept lockdowns indefinitely, it would have proven the theory.

2. When governments lifted lockdowns, this also “proved” the theory—because the alleged plan had supposedly been exposed and thwarted.

This is the hallmark of an unfalsifiable worldview. Every possible outcome fits the narrative. No new evidence is allowed to contradict its basic structure.

The narrative raises an unavoidable contradiction. If a clandestine, globally coordinated power could orchestrate unified policies across dozens of nations, manipulate data, silence dissent and enforce unprecedented compliance, why would it suddenly abandon its scheme because the public complained? The stated power of the plot and its alleged fragility cannot both be true. The incoherence doesn’t weaken belief; it simply goes unnoticed. Conspiracy systems aren’t designed to be consistent. They are designed to be explanatory, reassuring and self-protecting.

Acknowledging that the supposed plan never existed would require several difficult admissions:

1. That governments acted chaotically, not malevolently.

2. That experts may have been flawed but not conspiratorial.

3. That the believer’s own certainty was misplaced.

These steps invite cognitive dissonance. They threaten status within the sceptic community. They collapse a sense of special insight that can feel profoundly meaningful. So a third option is chosen: the plan was real, but ordinary people exposed and defeated it. This offers a gratifying narrative of resistance and triumph, without requiring any revision of the core belief.

Once established, these systems become self-sealing. Evidence against the theory is folded into the theory. Failed predictions trigger reinterpretation, not reevaluation. Every contradiction becomes either an oversight by the conspirators or a victory by the enlightened few.

This mechanism explains why COVID-era conspiracy thinking hasn’t diminished with reopening, vaccination programmes winding down or emergency measures disappearing. The movement no longer depends on the external events it originally latched onto. It depends on the psychological architecture built around them.

The endurance of these narratives shows that they were never really about epidemiology, public health or even governmental power. They were about certainty during crisis, identity during confusion and belonging during isolation. Once formed, the worldview outlived the moment that gave birth to it.

The pandemic ended; the conspiracies didn’t. They simply adapted to survive.

Reflections on a Lost Cinema

Before I studied poetry, I spent two years studying film; not at a prestigious film school, but at a small college in Liverpool, called South Mersey College. Those were the best two years of my life.

At the college, we watched classic Hollywood films by directors like Howard Hawks, John Ford, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and William Wyler, alongside European avant-garde films by Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky. We studied American Direct Cinema through the films of Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles. And also the experimental filmmaking pioneered by Len Lye and Stan Brakhage, as well as the underground cinema of Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. After each screening, we analysed the films’ themes, visual style, editing and historical context.

We also studied movements such as German Expressionism, Film Noir, Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, Soviet Montage, Constructivist cinema, Surrealism, British Social Realism and New Hollywood. Our reading list included Rudolf Arnheim’s Film as Art, Sergei Eisenstein’s Film Form and The Film Sense and André Bazin’s What Is Cinema?

I was fascinated by the vibrant use of colour in 1940s and ’50s films. Bright, saturated hues made every frame look like a living painting. Music was equally as important to me, producing maybe eighty percent of a film’s emotional impact. At that time, one of my musical muses was Aaron Copland. I had only recently discovered his works, such as Fanfare for the Common Man and the score he composed for the film The Red Pony. Both pieces were life-affirming, and they became a personal soundtrack to my daydreams of the sorts of films I wanted to make. In my mind, I created film sequences, rising and falling with the flow of the music.

Had I known then how cinema would evolve, I might have been less optimistic. The digital revolution has changed everything. Traditional film stock (16 mm, 35 mm, 70 mm) has largely disappeared. Cameras have become lighter, and handheld naturalism dominates the look of films, with available light replacing carefully designed chiaroscuro lighting schemes. And long takes have largely replaced montage. Digital detail is sharper, but it lacks the depth and texture of film. The deliberate use of light, shadow and colour (the visual poetry that once defined films) has given way to bland, uniform imagery. Music, too, has shifted towards ambient textures rather than emotional scores.

Maybe this will change, and film will return as a tactile, expressive medium once digital technology matures. But for now, many contemporary films have no magic. Yet when I hear a Copland score, I can still glimpse the wonder that first drew me to film.

Old 'Carrier of the Seed' ebook review

I Just found this very old review of my 'Carrier of the Seed' ebook. I never knew it existed.

Quote from it:

"Those skeptical about the e-book format would do well to peruse it; it is proof positive that e-books are, in fact, both real and legitimate. This is a single long poem; 63 pages long, and its formal characteristics are unique: it features a single column composed of spare, terse lines, going straight down the page. This gives the poem a sleek, lean look, as is customary with Side. Reading the poem is like riding on a high-velocity train; it doesn't get sluggish, and there are no breaks in the continuity of the sustained, brisk rhythm. There is an obvious connection with some aspects of Language Poetry; the primary difference between, say, Barrett Watten's Progress and Carrier is that Carrier does actually tell a story, albeit elliptically. This is a story of love lost: memory associations, forms of consciousness which accrue to it."

https://adamfieled.blogspot.com/2007/12/jeffrey-side-carrier-of-seed.html

‘Death, Taxes and Poetry, or, Poetry is My Disability’ by Joritz-Nakagawa—guest blogger

Unable to bear it any longer, I start splintering . . .

I write this in big letters, my eyesight is fading . . .

When my father in law died I wrote a poem the second line of which was "No one will notice Milton's light has dimmed" and which ended ". . . and none of this is actually visible from the lighthouse."

This poem was published under the title The Lighthouse, in New American Writing, a print journal I am very fond of, although I read mostly online now, and also appears with no title in my 2013 poetry collection titled FLUX.

Of course I was referring to John Milton's famous sonnet ‘When I Consider How My Light is Spent’ also known as ‘On His Blindness’ and ‘Sonnet XIX,’ a poem I taught several times in an undergrad course in comparative poetry here in Japan.

After that, my mother in law died, my sister in law died (in October 2025), and my husband has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. My own parents have died, two siblings died of cancer when they are the age I am now, friends died, friends of friends and relatives of friends died, etc. et al.

I survived advanced cancer but it was a kind of devil's bargain: you can live, or you can choose palliative chemo, but your body and new life will be (almost?) unrecognizable in many important ways. But not in this way: poetry is still my disability.

I have written somewhat extensively about death as well as my multiple chronic illnesses and other disabilities and those of others.

When at one of my lowest points, before my third surgery for cancer, I was so frightened of death and further disability that I read Emily Dickinson's poems aloud to myself every night from my bed. Any poem of hers that mentioned psychic pain would do. And there is a great many of such poems by Dickinson, so there was much to choose from! I didn't even have to repeat myself, as I often do!

I am not saying however that disability is bad or necessarily frightening. I don't think that at all, and I was already disabled anyhow before I got cancer. I just became much more so—more disabled I mean. I was afraid of suffering, which is not the same thing as disability, or death, and the unknown, and perhaps a feeling of my own powerlessness in this situation. Please let's not confuse these!

I was net surfing recently and found somebody much younger than myself referring to a group of young persons who are "dark" (their word, not mine!) and inevitably drawn to Plath! I was very surprised to hear this remark! First, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that young people know who Plath is! Although always interested in Plath due to her thematic range, theatricality, power, mastery of verse and stylistic achievements, I didn't really feel the depth of that kind of darkness that appears in some of her late poems until later in life when due to extensive bereavement I felt I was living in it. Or as a Christian friend said to me recently, maybe this life on earth is hell, and heaven is what we get when we die?

But we (= I) also know, if only from opera, that love makes a heaven out of life if only temporarily; love is fragile and can turn to hate or disinterest or disappointment, etc. with relative ease. Can it bounce back with relative ease?

The happiest elegy (actually a so-called "self-elegy" which is why it is more cheerful!) I know is Christina Rossetti's ‘Remember,’ another poem I have taught to undergrads; the saddest is ‘Ending with a Line From Lear’ by Marvin Bell, which I have not. At times of intense suffering (e.g. physical pain, or, bereavement or depression) I have often repeated to myself his line: "I will never be better again" oftentimes followed by the final line, the repetition of the word "never." I was wrong about that, but it helped me to say it, anyway. There's also song lyrics by the band Everclear which begin "I hate waking up, it means I have to die again tonight…" another set of words I have repeated in my head upon waking up during my worst moments in life. As well as the beginning and ending of William Carlos Williams' poem ‘The Widow's Lament in Springtime;’ interestingly, the lyrics to Everclear's ‘Fire Maple Song’ contains a line similar to one in Williams' poem. These poems and songs soothe me somehow during difficult times, although they do much more than that.

Yet life changes, we change, things change.

But poetry is still my disability.

As a person with fibromyalgia, one of the Plath lines I most identify with, from her incredible poem ‘Tulips’ published when I was two years old, is: "The tulips are too red in the first place they hurt me."

I was raised by Plath. No, I don't mean I was raised on Plath or knew her personally. I mean Plath's generation was my mother's generation and they both raised me, if not revived me. A fiction writer friend who also likes poetry once said: "All women can relate to Plath." She meant all women of our generation. Because we were raised by Plath.

When I say "blue bladder" I don't mean the color blue. I mean my bladder is sad. Because it was removed from my body seven years ago.

When I say "There are baroque places inside me" I am quoting someone else.

Poetry is my disability.

NOTES:

“There are baroque places inside me” comes from the poem ‘The Believable Weather of His Baroque Face on a Wall’ by Raymond Farr in the journal Upstairs at Duroc, ed. Barbara Beck, issue 17, 2020, Paris.

A monograph by the author about Plath and other female poets under the title Dying Swans is available online via Argotist Ebooks.

Bob Dylan’s “Jimmie Rodgers” Voice on ‘Nashville Skyline’

Last year I noticed for the first time that Bob Dylan’s singing voice on Nashville Skyline was a direct homage to Jimmie Rodgers. I’d been a Dylan fan for years without realising this; and wouldn’t have, had I not happened to hear a clip of Rodgers singing. I was astounded by the similarity.

When Nashville Skyline came out in 1969, Dylan’s voice was widely remarked upon as being very different from his usual one. The nasal, reedy tone had been replaced by a warmer and smoother sound. This was seen as being more “country music–oriented”, though in what specific sense was never really explained. It was simply taken as a given.

As far as I know, no one has ever identified this “specific sense”, which I now believe to be Dylan’s adoption of Jimmie Rodgers’ vocal style.

Jimmie Rodgers is often called “the father of country music” for his relaxed, storytelling delivery, which helped define the genre’s emotional vocabulary. He was also distinct in his use of yodelling, which, as far as I know, was never used in country music before him.

Dylan, with his near-encyclopaedic knowledge of folk and country songs, would have known Rodgers’ songs inside out. He grew up with Rodgers’ music, and in interviews mentioned owning the album Hank Snow Sings Jimmie Rodgers as a teenager. And in The Bootleg Series Vol. 15: Travelin' Thru, 1967–1969 sessions, he sang Jimmie Rodgers medleys with Johnny Cash.

It seems very likely, then, that for Nashville Skyline he chose to base its vocal “sonic architecture” on Rodgers’ voice. Every song on the album can be heard as an homage to Rodgers’ singing.

Though critics immediately noticed Dylan’s changed voice, none remarked on how much it sounded like Rodgers’. That oversight is glaring, given the unmistakable resemblance.

And while Dylan never said outright, 'I sang like Jimmie Rodgers on Nashville Skyline' the parallels are obvious.

This is not to suggest that he was "channelling" Rodgers or mimicking him. It was more a continuation of a lineage. Rodgers’ voice represented the ordinary person singing about their troubles and pleasures in a simple, unembellished way. However, where Rodgers had turned American “work songs” and blues into country, Dylan turned country into something like an “art song”—but without pretension.

Rachel Lisi—Still Remembered

A dear friend of mine died in 2010, aged only 40. Her name was Rachel Lisi. She was an unknown poet who deserved to be known. She was also a photographer and graphic artist, and did a few cover images for Argotist Ebooks.

I just wanted to mention her now, after all these years, to keep her memory alive.

Here is a YouTube video her family put together after she died.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xbL4R0CS34

Kent Johnson: In Praise of Mischief and Literary Disruption

It’s been several years now since Kent Johnson passed. I had corresponded with him for roughly a decade, from around 2008 until a few months before his death, and I once interviewed him for The Argotist Online. At one point, he approached me about publishing an ebook of his collected writings. I was eager to do so but the project ultimately fell through: the sheer volume of material he offered, and the extensive editing it required, felt beyond my capacity. Still, I was genuinely flattered that he had asked me—and that he had such faith in ebooks as a medium.

Kent was something of a mythical figure in the circles of contemporary poetry. He was someone no one could quite categorise: was he a critic, a satirist, an archivist or a literary provocateur? When he was a child in Montevideo, he played ping-pong with the sons of ambassadors and even had Duke Ellington pat him on the head, and saying, ‘And what is your name, handsome young man?’—which he mentioned decades later with fondness. And in his early twenties, he was a literacy teacher in Nicaragua, living with revolutionaries and translating his first poetry collection in collaboration with Ernesto Cardenal, a priest and poet.

In the correspondence I had with him, I saw the breadth of his vision. He engaged deeply with avant-garde practice, the politics of poetry and the sociology of literary communities. He was always curious about the literary world; and no claim, scandal and poetic controversy was too insignificant for his attention. He questioned cliques, examined complicity and exposed absurdities with a sharp wit, but never with cruelty.

Looking back, I think what fascinated him most about poetry was its potential as a kind of “performance art”. Not in the sense of being performed as in “performance poetry”, but as an “idea” that could be used for performative interventions: mischief, satire or creative disruption. He cared less for poetry as a personal or aesthetic expression than for its capacity to function as a “disruptive element”—a kind of conceptual defamiliarisation that could unsettle, provoke or even create chaos.

Even in his youth, chaos was never too far away. A bowling alley in Carrasco, Uruguay, was bombed by Tupamaros (a Marxist–Leninist urban guerrilla group that operated in Uruguay during the 1960s and 1970s) just a few hours after he'd been there with the two sons of two CIA counterinsurgency specialists.

In the end, his work demonstrates that poetry is not only about the page, but is a performative act, a playground for imaginative intervention. He treated the literary world as a stage, and poetry as the stage directions.

When my friend the poet and photographer, Rachel Lisi, died unexpectedly at the age of only 40 in 2010, Kent commiserated with me, saying that though as a poet she was little-recognised, she would always be remembered. May the same be true of him.

'Debunking the Great Replacement Theory' by Ryan Soames—guest blogger

The “Great Replacement” theory alleges that governments or shadowy elites are deliberately engineering the decline of white, European-descended populations through immigration and differential birth rates. Though it has found a foothold in political rhetoric, the claim is baseless—and its consequences are deeply corrosive. In recent years, some GB News commentators and Reform UK supporters have also entertained the theory obliquely, speaking of “demographic change” or “cultural erosion” in ways that echo the language of the so-called “Great Replacement”.

The concept itself can be traced to the French writer Renaud Camus, who popularised the phrase in 2011. Since then, it has circulated widely among far-right networks in Europe and North America, where it has been adopted as a rallying cry for nativist and exclusionary politics. More worryingly, it has inspired acts of terrorism, including the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019 and the Buffalo supermarket attack in 2022. In each case, perpetrators cited the theory explicitly, presenting ordinary demographic trends as proof of an existential plot.

Supporters of the theory often argue that demographic change has been made to appear “organic” but is, in fact, carefully orchestrated. This claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. Migration patterns follow clear economic, political and social drivers. People move to seek employment, safety, or opportunity; conflicts, natural disasters and climate change displace populations; and policy decisions on asylum or labour migration respond to labour shortages and humanitarian obligations. These dynamics are well-documented, transparent and observable—not evidence of a secretive, coordinated plan. Interpreting ordinary social processes as a deliberate plot is a misreading of cause and effect, driven by fear rather than fact.

Concrete data further dismantles the theory. The UK's population is projected to grow by 4.9 million (7.3%) over the decade from mid-2022 to mid-2032, with net migration accounting for the entire increase. In 2024, net migration was estimated at 431,000, a sharp decline from the unusually high levels in 2022 and 2023. However, it remained higher than levels seen during the 2010s, when the figure typically fluctuated between 200,000 and 300,000. Post-Brexit, net migration has been driven by non-EU immigration. In 2024, 69% of non-EU immigration was for work and study purposes. These figures reflect the UK's evolving immigration patterns, influenced by policy changes and global events, rather than a coordinated effort to alter the demographic makeup of the population.

Britain itself has long been shaped by migration, from medieval arrivals to the Huguenot refugees of the seventeenth century, the Caribbean and South Asian communities who helped rebuild after the Second World War and more recent flows from Eastern Europe. These are recurring historical patterns, not unprecedented interventions. Migrant communities also make substantial contributions to the UK’s economy, public services and social life, enriching culture rather than erasing it. National identity is not a static artefact but an evolving tapestry.

The danger of “replacement” rhetoric lies in its capacity to distort perception and redirect anger. By framing migration as an intentional plot, the theory fosters scapegoating, fuels xenophobia and distracts from real policy challenges such as housing, wages, or public service provision. In doing so, it provides a simplistic narrative for complex societal issues, offering fear but no solutions.

At its heart, the Great Replacement is a myth: a conspiracy theory that confuses demographic reality with paranoia. Migration and demographic change are not evidence of orchestrated decline but part of ongoing historical processes. Acknowledging this truth is essential to resisting divisive politics and maintaining a society grounded in fact rather than fear.

'The Irony of MAGA’s War on the New World Order' by Ryan Soames—guest blogger

The “New World Order” (NWO) conspiracy theory has long been a narrative framework for groups sceptical of globalisation, supranational governance and perceived elite manipulation of democratic societies. While the theory has spread across ideological lines, it has been most closely associated with the American far right, particularly militia movements and populist conservative networks.

What is noticeable, however, is the way in which this rhetoric has been absorbed into the political identity of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement. Trump and his supporters frequently invoke the language of “globalists”, “deep state actors” and “elitist cabals”, portraying the political struggle as one of national sovereignty and popular democracy against unaccountable transnational power. Yet the practical effect of Trump’s politics has often been to erode democratic institutions while simultaneously strengthening the position of corporate and technological elites.

The NWO narrative warns against centralised, authoritarian control that overrides democratic governance. Trump’s actions in office, however, consistently undermine institutional checks on executive power. From attempts to delegitimise electoral outcomes in 2020 to attacks on judicial independence and the normalisation of political violence, Trump’s political project has weakened precisely those safeguards designed to prevent authoritarian capture.

This reveals a fundamental irony: a movement ostensibly dedicated to resisting authoritarianism has embraced a leader whose methods exemplify it.

A second irony lies in the movement’s relationship to economic elites. Trump’s administration has given significant tax cuts to the wealthy, pursued deregulation favourable to large corporations and cultivated links with powerful technology figures such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Far from dismantling elite dominance, these policies entrenched it.

In this respect, MAGA’s anti-globalist populism functions less as a challenge to oligarchic power than as its legitimisation, reframed in nationalist rather than cosmopolitan terms.

MAGA’s nationalist framing (emphasising borders, cultural homogeneity and sovereignty) functions as a diversionary strategy. It directs popular discontent toward marginalised groups (immigrants, minorities and “woke” institutions) rather than toward structural concentrations of wealth and power. This redirection of grievance politics enables elite consolidation under the guise of defending “the people”.

The cult of personality surrounding Trump underscores another paradox. Conspiracy narratives often warn of demagogues who mobilise mass loyalty to centralise power. Yet within the MAGA movement, Trump himself occupies precisely this role, presented as the singular figure capable of defending America from “globalist” control.

The appropriation of New World Order rhetoric by the Trump’s supporters illustrates a paradox of modern populism. A narrative originally constructed to resist authoritarian centralisation and elite domination has been reconfigured into an instrument that enables both. The outcome is an inversion of its original intent: the supposed resistance to a global elite now serves to legitimate authoritarian governance and the consolidation of oligarchic power at home.

Poetry and Song Are the Same Artform

The debate over whether poems and songs are separate art forms or simply variations of the same aesthetic expression has a long history. At first sight, the difference seems obvious: poems are primarily meant to be read, while songs are experienced as sound, with music and vocals creating a listening experience. This distinction is often taken as self-evident, determining how audiences approach and categorise these forms. Yet this superficial difference overlooks deeper questions about how each affects us emotionally and cognitively, and about the complex ways in which language, sound and rhythm interact to determine artistic experience.

One significant difference is in how we experience rhythm. Poems rely on rhythm, rhyme and line breaks built into the written text, engaging the reader’s “inner ear” as they mentally hear the flow while reading. This internal auditory experience is an imaginative process, determined by linguistic background, prior knowledge and personal interpretation. Songs, on the other hand, deliver rhythm externally through melody, instrumentation and vocal performance, creating a direct auditory impact. The physical presence of sound waves and the nuances of timbre, pitch and volume give songs a sensorial immediacy that written poetry lacks. The performative element (the singer’s voice, the arrangement, even the listening setting) adds layers of meaning and emotion beyond the text itself.

Critics sometimes suggest that poems and songs invoke fundamentally different responses, yet much of this originates from cultural expectation and setting. In many traditions, songs belong to communal gatherings, rituals and celebrations, engaging listeners through shared sound and movement, while poetry is more often associated with solitary reflection or intellectual engagement. Reading a poem draws on the “inner ear”, determining rhythm and tone through imagination, whereas hearing a song delivers these qualities directly through melody, repetition and performance. In both cases, response is determined not only by the work itself but by the way it is encountered: in private or in company, in silence or in sound, in memory or in the moment. The boundary between them is fluid: many songs contain poetic language, and many poems have been set to music, underscoring the interplay between the two forms.

Despite this, the difference between a poem read on the page and a song heard aloud is less absolute than it seems. Poetry, when read, activates the imagination and inner hearing, drawing us in through patterns of sound and rhythm in the mind’s ear. These sonic qualities can evoke emotion and meaning much like music does, even in silence. The pauses between lines, the visual layout of stanzas and the typography of the text all shape its rhythm and pacing, producing effects that songs sometimes echo but cannot fully replicate. This internalisation of sound allows poetry to transcend the limitations of the printed page, creating a deeply personal and intimate experience that varies widely between individuals and contexts.

Whilst formal distinctions remain (poems are lines on a page, songs combine lyrics with melody and instrumentation), both share a common aesthetic foundation of sound, rhythm, voice and emotional resonance. The difference between them lies more in context and expectation than in essence.

Neuroscience corroborates this connection, demonstrating that reading poetry and listening to music engage overlapping brain networks, particularly in processing rhythm, sound patterns and emotion. Brain imaging shows that both activities stimulate regions linked to auditory perception, emotional regulation and pattern recognition; whether the rhythm is imagined through the reader’s “inner ear” or carried to us on waves of melody and instrumentation. At the same time, each form also draws on specialised circuitry: poetry on the page largely utilises language-processing areas, while song largely utilises pitch and melody-related regions. This blend of shared and distinct activation suggests that the mind responds to both with a common aesthetic framework, yet determines that response to match the sensory pathway (silent reading or audible performance) through which the art is experienced.

Ultimately, the difference between poems as read experiences and songs as heard experiences shows how context, perception and mental engagement determine our experience of artistic expression. Recognising their shared aesthetic roots and the fluidity between reading and listening gives us a broader appreciation of how rhythm, voice and sound create meaning: whether imagined in the mind or heard through the ears. The borders between literary and musical arts, therefore, are permeable, shifting with culture, history and individual perception.

'An Insider’s Damning Testimony of the Restart Scheme' by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

When the UK government launched the Restart Programme, it was sold as a bold initiative to help the long-term unemployed back into work. Providers would deliver tailored, compassionate support; the kind that understands barriers, builds confidence and matches people to sustainable jobs.

But according to one former employee of Seetec, a major Restart provider, the reality is far from the marketing brochure. In a candid Reddit post, they describe an environment that’s toxic for both staff and participants, and driven almost entirely by money. See:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DWPhelp/comments/16ct4ta/inside_of_the_restart_programme_during_my_time_5/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

The ex-employee paints a picture of a workplace ruled by intimidation. Advisors are overworked, underpaid and micromanaged to a degree that borders on absurd. From assigned seating to being told not to talk to colleagues outside your “team zone”, it’s a rigid, joyless environment.

Team leaders, they claim, don’t lead; they use their hardest-working staff to prop up the rest, with no extra pay or recognition. Those who raise concerns about workloads or stress are met with hostility, not support. HR, in practice, doesn’t exist. Complain, and you’re out.

Perhaps the most disturbing detail is how participants are treated. Far from tailoring support to people’s circumstances, management allegedly views each person as nothing more than a “job outcome” target, worth up to £3,000 in payment once they’ve earned £4,000 in wages.

According to the whistleblower, this leads to:

1. Pushing people into unsuitable, full-time work, regardless of health conditions or caring responsibilities.

2. Threatening sanctions to force compliance, even on claimants approaching state pension age and those clearly unfit for work.

3. Pressuring participants to travel long distances for irrelevant job starts, simply to get them “off the books”.

They claim management even encouraged threats against participants’ families to intimidate them into taking jobs. And that the Jobcentre forces people into the scheme, and the Restart process often leaves participants more stressed and demoralised than when they began.

Some, they note, start the programme full of hope and confidence, only to emerge months later with their mental health in tatters. Others turn to their GP for sick notes or apply for disability benefits just to escape the pressure.

One of the most alarming allegations is the open sharing of participants’ sensitive information in office meetings. Health conditions, criminal records and personal histories are apparently treated as casual gossip fodder, an outright breach of confidentiality rules.

The post describes a constant churn of staff, with one resignation notice per week being the norm. New hires are often people with no relevant experience, sometimes from completely unrelated careers, given minimal training before being unleashed on vulnerable participants.

At the heart of this testimony is the claim that the Restart Programme is driven by financial incentives, not genuine support. Once a participant hits that magic £4,000 earnings milestone, the provider gets paid and loses all interest in their wellbeing. Whether the participant stays in work or ends up back on benefits is irrelevant.

The post claims that DWP is already facing growing complaints and may remove Seetec’s contract in the future. Whether that happens or not, it’s clear from this insider’s account that the Restart Programme (at least in some places) is failing to deliver the respectful, tailored support it was supposed to provide.

If the allegations are accurate, then Restart isn’t just broken, it’s actively harming the people it claims to help. And that raises a bigger question: when welfare-to-work schemes are built on targets and payments, can they ever truly put people before profit?

'GB News Overrates its Ratings' by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

GB News is claiming a "seismic moment" in British broadcasting. Why? Because in July 2025, it barely managed to edge past the BBC News Channel in average daily viewership. But behind the chest-thumping, the reality is far less impressive, and far more revealing.

According to BARB, GB News averaged around 80,600 daily viewers last month, edging just ahead of the BBC News Channel’s 78,700. That’s a lead of fewer than 2,000 people. GB News has also announced strong performance in key time slots like breakfast and weekday evenings, framing it as a transformative moment in UK broadcasting. But dominating a few hours in the day on a low-reach channel like GB News doesn’t make it a media powerhouse—it simply confirms its status as a niche outlet with a loyal, if limited, audience.

GB News has always styled itself as the underdog ("the channel for people who feel unheard") but what it really offers is a steady diet of manufactured grievance and culture war talking points. If it’s drawing in viewers, it’s not because of journalistic rigour. It’s because it knows how to serve outrage with breakfast and paranoia with the evening headlines.

And yet even within its own narrow definition of success, the victory is hollow. When we look at the broader picture, the BBC remains overwhelmingly dominant.

GB News might have edged a daily average, but the BBC News Channel’s weekly reach still far exceeds it—often more than double. That means more people across the UK are watching the BBC, even if only briefly, while GB News relies on a smaller base of habitual viewers. That is not really growth, but more like saturation.

Then there’s the rest of the BBC's output, which dwarfs anything GB News could hope to match. BBC One’s Breakfast, Six O’Clock News and Ten O’Clock News still reach massive audiences. None of those numbers are included in the News Channel’s BARB figures. And that’s before we even include iPlayer and the BBC’s website and app, which together draw more than 40 million users. GB News online just draws over 10 million.

And radio? The BBC’s network of national and regional stations delivers news to millions more every day. GB News, by contrast, doesn’t even try.

So GB News, despite its claims of speaking for "the people", still trails badly in that department. You can game viewing figures for a time, especially when your programming verges on the sensational, but you can't manufacture credibility.

If anything, this supposed breakthrough shows the limits of GB News. It’s carved out a niche. That’s all. A vocal, partisan slice of the public is watching more intently, but that doesn't mean the channel is reshaping British media. It means it's doubling down on its core audience while alienating the rest.

So despite all the noise GB News makes, it’s still playing catch-up.

Scents Before Modernity

I was a young child in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the world I grew up in was saturated with everyday scents that were distinctive and ever-present. These smells, like the pop music of the time, formed the background texture of my life. Most have vanished. Some for good reason: safety, health and progress. Others were lost due to modern manufacturing processes and production methods.

The most noticeable absence is tobacco smoke, especially from pipes and cigars. Those two had a richness I associated with sophistication and gentility. I don’t advocate smoking, and I’m glad it’s gone. But I miss the smell, at least from pipes and cigars. Cigarettes didn’t smell as nice.

Other scents I miss are: petrol fumes, coal fires, the smell of woollen school blazers and caps, the real leather of school satchels, chalk dust, wax crayons, freshly sharpened pencils and rubbers (erasers). Wellington boots also had a smell. So did the diesel from buses, trains and ferries. As did sweets (candy) with their variety of aromas. And bookshops smelled of paper and cardboard.

Everywhere had a smell! Now, virtually nothing has!

Clean air. Sanitised surfaces. Air-conditioned buildings that emit nothing at all. Supermarkets are scentless. Public transport provides no odour, unless something has gone wrong. Homes are heated by scentless electricity, not by gas or paraffin heaters, that had “cosy” aromas.

This isn’t just nostalgia. Something has been lost; faded away without mourning. Smell is the oldest sense we have, wired directly into memory and emotion. The scents of childhood shaped us, or they did so for me. They fashioned a world rich in texture and associations, that you carried with you. Today, we have replaced scent for sterility. 

I miss the world when it smelled of life.

‘The Poetics of Ambiguity: Romanticism, Empiricism and the Modern Mind’ - free ebook

The new ebook from Argotist Ebooks is ‘The Poetics of Ambiguity: Romanticism, Empiricism and the Modern Mind’ by Jeffrey Side.

Description: 

“This book began life as a doctoral thesis written between 2000 and 2007, a period during which I became increasingly disillusioned with the dominant aesthetic assumptions underpinning both Romantic and contemporary mainstream poetry. At the heart of my research was a single question: why did so much poetry—even that which purported to challenge cultural norms—remain epistemologically conservative? Why did it continue to treat language as a transparent medium, perception as unmediated access to reality and the self as a stable, expressive core? The answer, I gradually came to realise, lay in the unexamined legacy of empiricism. What I found in Romantic poetry—especially that of Wordsworth, Coleridge and their successors—was not the radical inwardness or imaginative freedom often celebrated in literary histories, but rather a poetics that remained fundamentally tethered to an Enlightenment faith in perception and observation. Far from breaking with empiricism, Romanticism often perpetuated its core assumptions, reconfiguring them within a poetic vocabulary that lent affective weight to what were essentially epistemological structures of the empirical gaze.” 

Available as a free ebook here: 

https://argotistebooks.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-poetics-of-ambiguity-romanticism.html

'The DWP Restart Scheme Exposed: The Secret Job Searches and Sanction Threats Unveiled by an Insider' by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

Recent insider disclosures from an Employment Advisor (EA) working within the UK government’s Restart Scheme, shared openly on Reddit (see link at the end of this article) in 2023, reveal unsettling realities about how the scheme operates. These revelations highlight the significant power EAs hold over claimants and raise important questions about fairness, transparency and the true purpose of Restart.

The EA explained on Reddit that their role goes beyond simply advising jobseekers. They are actively responsible for securing job starts and outcomes, with their performance closely monitored against strict targets set by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The EA stated, “Part of an EA’s job is to get you into work, we are targeted on job starts and outcomes”.

This performance pressure leads to intensive management strategies designed to move participants quickly into employment, often regardless of job suitability or quality. The EA also revealed they have access to the “hidden job market”—vacancies not publicly advertised—and personally conduct job searches and “reverse market” by contacting local employers directly. “I do job searches myself for all my participants and send through jobs, I will also reverse market and ring local employers to find out jobs on the hidden job market i.e jobs that are available but not advertised in the usual places”, the EA wrote.

While this insider access may seem beneficial, it means claimants may be offered jobs without prior knowledge or choice, potentially being pressured into poor matches, sometimes at considerable distance. The EA admitted they hold sanction powers for non-engagement or refusal of suitable jobs, cautioning that sanctions can be cumulative: “602 [sanctions] is not the main focus, but for someone who is deliberately not engaging it can be a good shot across the bow to show how bad things can get, you can be under multiple sanctions in theory”.

The advisor made clear that their own job depends on meeting targets: “If my job is going to be put at risk by not being able to hit targets then I am going to use every tool I have to enable me to hit those targets”. Although supportive of participants with genuine barriers, the EA expressed a clear intent to push “work ready” individuals into employment quickly.

This insider perspective shines a stark light on why many claimants are wary of Restart, especially older people or those with alternative plans like education. The scheme’s design—focused on rapid placements rather than individual suitability—can coerce participants into accepting unsuitable roles, under threat of sanction.

While Restart offers access to exclusive job leads and active advisor support, the power imbalance and sanction pressures mean claimants should carefully consider whether engagement suits their circumstances. Awareness of this inside information, now available publicly thanks to the EA’s Reddit post, may help individuals navigate their options more strategically or decide that avoiding Restart altogether is the safer path.

Link to EA's Reddit post

https://www.reddit.com/r/DWPhelp/comments/12fo3bc/comment/jfxhk0p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

'How the DWP's Restart Scheme Funnels Welfare Money to Private Firms' by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

The UK government claims to be cutting back on welfare spending: tightening eligibility, toughening work requirements and cracking down on so-called “benefit cheats”. But behind the scenes, billions are being quietly diverted into the coffers of private employment firms via schemes like Restart. These firms are paid not for helping people, but for simply tracking them.

What’s happening is not illegal. But it’s a system designed in such a way that providers can profit handsomely with minimal effort or accountability. In effect, the Restart Scheme turns Universal Credit claimants into data assets. If you’re referred while on UC, and you later go on to earn a modest income (even if entirely through your own efforts) the Restart provider gets paid by the government.

Restart providers are paid in stages, according to a commercial model buried in the DWP's contracts. Once a Universal Credit claimant is referred into Restart (via the PRaP system), a clock starts ticking. For the next 547 days (about 18 months), the provider is eligible to claim job outcome payments if that claimant hits certain earnings milestones:

£1000 earned: First outcome payment

£2000 earned: Second outcome payment

£4250 earned: Final “sustained employment” bonus worth up to £3,000

These earnings can be cumulative, across multiple short-term jobs. And here’s the thing: the job doesn’t have to be found with their help. If the claimant gets work on their own (or even returns to a job they already had lined up) the provider still profits, as long as that PRaP referral is in place.

This is not about employment support. It’s about monetising unemployment. Once you're tagged in the Restart system, your financial movements are monitored for 18 months via real-time data sharing between HMRC and the DWP. This continues even after you close your Universal Credit claim, with earnings still reported for six months.

Restart doesn’t exist to help people into work. It exists to ensure providers get paid when people return to work anyway. That’s why Work Coaches are under pressure to refer as many people as possible.

These outcomes are funded through the Department for Work and Pensions. Restart is part of a vast ecosystem of outsourced welfare services, built on a logic of per-capita capture, automated tracking and staged monetisation.

The public is told that tough love and strict rules are saving money. But the truth is that a significant portion of the welfare budget is quietly redirected into opaque private contracts that are rarely scrutinised and often rewarded for doing little more than watching you earn.

There’s no fraud here, just an exploitative business model that feeds off claimant data. It's technically legal, politically useful and financially lucrative. But it’s also profoundly cynical.

At the same time claimants are harassed, sanctioned and made to jump through hoops for support, Restart providers are cashing in on their efforts, even when they contribute nothing at all to those outcomes. This is the hidden cost of welfare outsourcing. And it’s time more people knew about it.

The Evolution of the Western Film Score

I first came across the music of Aaron Copland in 1989. I already knew that his work had influenced the sound of Hollywood Western film scores, most notably Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven. I had assumed Copland had been the only influence behind this kind of music. I didn’t realise that what we now think of as “Western” film music had developed over time, influenced by several composers before Hollywood adopted it as the sound of the cinematic American West.

One of those earlier composers was Ferde Grofé. His Grand Canyon Suite came out in 1931, before Copland produced a similar sound with Prairie Journal in 1937. Though not written for film, its sweeping orchestration would go on to influence Hollywood composers during the 1940s.

While Grofé wasn’t a film composer himself, his orchestrational style gave Hollywood composers new techniques for evoking the American West. This can be heard in Max Steiner’s score for They Died with Their Boots On (1941), which has strong similarities to Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite.

Before the 1940s, the Western genre had no fixed musical identity. Early Westerns relied on film orchestrations that followed general film music conventions, without any attempt to sound specifically “American” or “frontier”.

That changed with composers like Dimitri Tiomkin and Jerome Moross. Tiomkin’s scores for Red River (1948) and High Noon (1952) incorporated folk melodies, hymns, guitar and harmonica. And Moross’s score for The Big Country (1958) had a spacious feel that matched the landscape.

So far, we’ve looked at how this musical style evolved through Grofé and the film composers he influenced. Now we will look at how Copland’s music fits into this evolution.

As mentioned earlier, Copland’s first foray into the kind of sound we now associate with the American West came with Prairie Journal. While this was not written with Western tropes in mind, it used many of the musical elements (open harmonies, folk-like melodies and a sense of spaciousness) that, as we have seen, would later become associated with cinematic depictions of the American West.

The following year, Copland’s ballet, Billy the Kid (1938), marked a turning point. It used cowboy songs, square dance rhythms, and a more minimalist style of orchestration. Although it was written for the stage, it would define how the West sounded in film, especially by the 1960s, when Elmer Bernstein drew heavily on it for his score for The Magnificent Seven.

Interestingly, though Copland had written a score for the 1948 Western, The Red Pony, it had no influence on Western film music in the '40s and '50s.

What emerges, then, from this brief history is not one clear origin point for Western film music, but two separate paths developing alongside each other. One came from Grofé (lush, grand and pictorial), which dominated the Hollywood Westerns of the '40s and '50s. The other came from Copland (minimalist, folk-based and direct), which became predominant in the 1960s and thereafter.

Exposing the Flaws in the Observer’s Salt Path Critique

A recent article in The Observer called ‘The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation’ has caused some controversy. It presents a damning investigation into Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir The Salt Path, calling into question its truthfulness and suggesting that Winn and her husband “Moth” built their public image on a foundation of legal trouble, financial misconduct and selective storytelling.

While the article presents serious claims, and cites multiple sources to support them, its tone, framing and rhetorical style raise their own questions, about journalistic bias, assumption-laden reporting and what truth in memoir really means.

From the headline alone, the tone is set: “spun from lies, deceit and desperation”, is not neutral language. It prepares the reader for scandal before the evidence has even begun. This isn’t unusual in click-bait media, but in investigative reporting, such language can subtly (or not so subtly) shape a reader’s judgement.

Throughout the article, sources who speak critically of Winn (especially Ros Hemmings, a former employer’s widow) are presented as credible and emotionally grounded, while Winn herself is largely silent, represented only by a short legal statement. The article makes no serious attempt to balance its narrative with a fuller version of Winn’s perspective. The effect is to turn one side of a complex story into a presumed truth.

The article depends heavily on Winn’s past legal and financial troubles, most notably an alleged embezzlement case from 2008, settled out of court with a non-disclosure agreement. It’s a serious allegation, but the reporting treats this as a smoking gun that discredits The Salt Path entirely, without acknowledging that memoirs often include omission, thematic shaping and selective focus.

Similarly, the article notes that Winn and her husband owned property in France during their supposed "homelessness", and later refers to it as "uninhabitable". But this key context is folded into a paragraph mid-article, with little exploration of what "uninhabitable" actually meant in practice. The framing leans toward suspicion rather than clarity. If the property was uninhabitable in the sense that it could not be lived in, then Win and her husband were indeed homeless. The lack of clarity about this in the article, allows for the implication that they had options that they hid from readers. That might be technically true, but without examining the real condition or accessibility of that French property, the reporting veers into insinuation.

An assumption running through the article is that because Winn omitted parts of her past, she must have intended to deceive. But memoir is not autobiography. It’s an inherently selective genre, based around emotional truth and narrative arcs, not exhaustive chronology. Many people who write memoirs, write under pseudonyms, simplify time-lines, or emphasise thematic resonance over literal precision.

The article also assumes that because some readers were moved by the story, they might have acted on it in misguided ways, and that therefore Winn’s alleged misrepresentations could cause “real harm”. That claim is speculative and unsupported by evidence. It functions as a rhetorical device, not a documented consequence.

One of the strongest challenges raised in the article is over Moth’s diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Several neurologists are quoted expressing scepticism about the longevity and reversibility of his symptoms as portrayed in the book. Yet even here, the article admits there is nothing to disprove the diagnosis. It also acknowledges that medical anomalies do happen.

Ultimately, the article tries to draw a hard line between fact and fable in a literary form that has never been that tidy. The claim that The Salt Path misrepresents Winn’s life might have merit, but does that invalidate the emotional and symbolic journey that so many readers found meaningful?

The article suggests that Winn’s supposed deceptions disqualify her from telling a redemptive story. But that’s a moral judgement, not a literary one. The uncomfortable reality is that flawed people can write true things, and inspirational books don’t have to be written by saints. Of course, redemptive arcs can be misused or feel too convenient—but that doesn’t mean they’re always inauthentic, or that "flawed" narrators can’t earn them.

The article raises serious questions. It uncovers contradictions, omitted facts and unresolved tensions between the private past and the public story. But its tone is adversarial. 

It’s worth noting that the journalist behind the Observer piece, Chloe Hadjimatheou, was previously found by the BBC’s own Executive Complaints Unit to have breached editorial standards in a separate investigation—specifically, a 2021 Radio 4 documentary that included false claims and unsupported insinuations. The BBC later admitted the programme failed to meet its accuracy standards. Given this prior finding, it’s reasonable to approach her current reporting with caution—especially when it relies heavily on implication and selective framing.

This kind of history suggests a need for caution when weighing reporting that relies heavily on implication and selective framing.

Good journalism should probe. But when it loses sight of balance, it can resemble the thing it critiques.

‘How the UK Benefits System Became Punitive’ by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

In 1989, if you were unemployed in the UK, you were entitled to Unemployment Benefit, Income Support and Housing Benefit without being subjected to regular interrogations at the Jobcentre. Today, the welfare state looks very different. Universal Credit claimants are forced into relentless job search routines, and sanctioned often for no reason. This shift didn't happen by accident. It’s the result of a decades-long transformation—one that replaced the old welfare state with a system designed not to support the poor, but to discipline them.

The roots of today’s punitive benefits system lie in the 1980s, when the Thatcher government began framing welfare as a problem rather than a public good. The introduction of the Restart Programme (a predecessor to today's Restart Scheme) in 1986 was a significant moment. Unemployed people were summoned to interviews a couple of times a year to discuss their job prospects. In theory, if you missed one your benefit would be stopped, but this seldom happened.

This marked the beginning of what policy makers called “activation”—the idea that claimants should be prodded or pushed into work. Thatcher’s successors took this even further. Under New Labour in the late 1990s, people had to earn their benefits. The New Deal introduced under Blair linked welfare to mandatory training and job applications. Rights were increasingly tied to responsibilities.

The real transformation came after 2010, when the Coalition and Conservative governments built an entire system on coercion. Universal Credit rolled six benefits into one, but more importantly, it introduced digital control mechanisms that let the Department for Work and Pensions track claimants in real time. Under Universal Credit, you can be sanctioned for:

Missing a job centre appointment

Applying for “too few” jobs

Turning down a zero-hours contract

Not updating your journal promptly enough

A missed click or misunderstood instruction can mean weeks without income. The DWP doesn’t need to prove you’re lazy or fraudulent, they only need to catch you failing to meet their requirements. The result is a system of bureaucratic cruelty, dressed up as “encouraging independence”.

The most glaring contradiction is that all of this has happened during a period when secure, decent jobs have declined. In 1989, the UK still had large-scale manufacturing and public sector jobs. The labour market has since fractured into insecure work, gig economy scraps and stagnant wages.

And yet the benefits regime assumes there’s a job for everyone—as if full employment still exists, and the only obstacle is personal failure. It’s a fantasy. But it’s a convenient one, because it justifies cutting support while blaming the claimant.

Several forces have driven this shift:

Welfare has been reframed as a problem to be fixed rather than a right to be upheld.

Crackdowns on “scroungers” play well in the press and among older, property-owning voters.

Algorithms make it easy to track, control and punish claimants.

After 2010, slashing welfare became a core part of budget-cutting measures

Perhaps most crucially, the idea of a social contract, where the state protects the vulnerable, has eroded. In its place is a doctrine of compliance, where you have to prove your worth every week, or go without.

The UK benefits system has not failed—it has been redesigned to behave exactly as it does: to deter claims, enforce low-paid work and punish those who fall through the cracks. It’s no longer about lifting people out of poverty. It’s about managing poverty through pressure, stigma and surveillance.

And all of this in an era where there are no jobs for a large majority of the working age population.

‘A Critical Look at the Restart Scheme’s Structural Flaws’ by Andrew Davies—guest blogger

The UK government’s Restart Scheme is presented as a lifeline for long-term Universal Credit claimants, an intensive employment support programme designed to help people back into sustainable work. But behind the glossy promises of “tailored help” and “enhanced support” lies a system riddled with structural flaws. For many, Restart doesn’t feel like support, it feels like coercion dressed up as care.

Restart is framed as something that helps you, but for most claimants, it's not optional. Once a person has been on Universal Credit for six months or more, they can be referred without choice or prior agreement. Participation is backed by sanction threats: fail to engage, and you could lose some or all of your benefit.

Even the introductory “warm handover call”—which sounds friendly—is part of a formal compliance chain. It marks the beginning of a process where your cooperation is no longer simply encouraged, but expected and enforceable.

Restart isn’t delivered by Jobcentre Plus. It’s outsourced to private providers: companies that are paid by the government per referral, and can receive further payments when a claimant secures employment. This structure has built-in negative incentives.

Providers are financially rewarded for getting people through the door, not necessarily for giving them useful help. The pressure to meet performance targets can outweigh the quality or relevance of the support offered. And individual needs are often overlooked in favour of tick-box exercises, quick job placements or unsuitable training schemes. In short, profit is prioritised over people.

Claimants are often asked to sign documents like participation agreements and data consent forms. These forms are presented as routine, but they carry real consequences. The participation agreement gives the provider leverage to enforce tasks and activities (including job searches, training courses and workshops). And the data consent forms may give the provider access to share personal details with third-party organisations.

These documents are not always mandatory, but the pressure to sign is immense. Refusal can lead to friction, suspicion or implied threats of being reported as “non-compliant”. Those who exercise their right not to sign certain documents are often met with passive-aggressive resistance. While they retain legal autonomy, they may:

Face hostility or resentment from provider staff

Be treated as “problem claimants”

Have to constantly defend their position and remind staff of their rights

It creates an adversarial atmosphere where the burden is on the claimant to assert their rights repeatedly—a psychologically exhausting task, especially for those with mental health conditions.

Restart is particularly hard on people with anxiety, depression or other vulnerabilities. The scheme’s structure (regular appointments, compliance demands and the threat of sanctions) often worsens mental health rather than improving job prospects. Instead of personalised support, many claimants experience:

Micromanagement of job search activities

Inflexible scheduling

Patronising workshops

And an overwhelming sense of being watched, judged and pushed. Rather than building confidence, Restart can strip away autonomy and dignity.

Once someone is referred to Restart, they are usually on it for up to 12 months. During that time, they are expected to:

Attend multiple appointments

Complete provider-set tasks

Accept job offers, training or interviews—sometimes regardless of suitability

There is no easy way out. Requests to leave the scheme are refused—even when alternatives would be more helpful.

Despite claims of being “personalised”, Restart operates on a one-size-fits-all model. People from all backgrounds, including skilled professionals, carers, those with long-term health conditions and those already engaged in their own job-seeking strategies, are treated identically. Instead of flexibility and genuine help, the scheme offers rigidity and delivers bureaucracy, surveillance and pressure.

The structural flaws in the Restart Scheme aren’t accidental—they’re built into the foundation:

It punishes non-compliance more than it rewards effort

It treats claimants as risks to be managed, not individuals to be supported

It serves the needs of contractors and targets, not the people it claims to help

Any real solution would require more than tweaks. It would need a complete rethinking of what support for unemployed people should look like: with respect, choice and real empowerment at its heart.

People on Universal Credit deserve genuine support, not mandated compliance under threat. The Restart Scheme may work for a few, but for many, it is a source of unnecessary stress, surveillance and stigma. Until the system stops prioritising targets and payments over people, schemes like Restart will continue to fail those they claim to serve.