Justice for victims of sexual abuse and harassment. Lessons for Westminster?
Dr Lis Bates is a researcher in gender-based violence at the School for Policy Studies, and a former clerk of the House of Commons
The problem with Westminster
As a former clerk of the House of Commons, the recent Newsnight coverage(i) depicting a culture of unchecked bullying and sexual harassment by some MPs took me by surprise. Not because of the allegations: the stories reported, and many more, have long been open secrets in Westminster. But because, for the first time, the corrosive culture of normalising this behaviour was revealed. What is new is that the careful investigation of reporters Chris Cook and Lucinda Day has exposed a pattern of abusive Members not being held to account, and a historic management culture of quietly moving victims who speak out. This is a culture which has normalised the acceptance of bullying behaviour, refused to shine a light on the bullies, and thus tacitly condoned it. This is the same cultural quicksand which led us to Weinstein, Bennell and Saville: a wilful collective blindness. Continue reading
One benefit, one payee – does Universal Credit encourage financial abuse?
Photo by GotCredit
Marilyn Howard, University of Bristol Law School
The Government’s flagship benefit reform, Universal Credit, could be sailing into choppy waters.
Universal credit aims to simplify benefits and to make work pay. It does this through amalgamating different means-tested benefits and tax credits, paid for different purposes and potentially payable to a different member of a couple. Included in Universal Credit are payments previously paid separately for housing costs and for children (Child Tax Credit). Continue reading
From Meatless Meat to Trustless Trust – can Blockchain change the way that we work together to create Knowledge in Smart Cities?
BySmart Cities apply technology, connectivity and data to the urban experience, but they could easily become Fake Cities. Their factories still produce things – but they are staffed by robots. Their cars still take you where you want to go – but they are driven by autonomous systems. You can hold their digital products in your hands – but only via a smart phone.
In the worst case, Smart Cities trade down authentic human experiences for something artificial, virtual and ersatz. But can the Smart City ever trade-up and improve on the original? Continue reading
Repeat prescriptions are expensive and time consuming – it’s time for an NHS rethink
Rupert Payne, University of Bristol and Céline Miani, University of Bielefeld
Over a billion NHS prescription medicines are issued by pharmacists in England every year – at a cost of over £9 billion. Many of these are prescribed by GPs to manage long-term health conditions, such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease.
The current “repeat prescription” system allows patients to request a further supply of medicines without the inconvenience of another doctor’s appointment. Continue reading
No single food or nutrient is to blame for obesity, so what is the right balance?
Dr Laura Johnson, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences, discusses her new paper in which she assesses the impact of dietary patterns on obesity and how modelling may help influence change in both personal habits and public policy.
No single food or nutrient is to blame for obesity. There so many routes from diet to overeating and weight gain, and in real life foods and nutrients aren’t eaten on their own. So, it’s misleading to look at foods that way in research, it’s the overall balance of diet that matters. Continue reading
Cutting through: overcoming the barriers to academic engagement with policy processes
Lindsay Walker, Lindsey Pike, Marsha Wood, Hannah Durrant
Access to reliable and timely evidence is essential for parliaments to effectively execute their four main functions of scrutiny, legislation, debating and financial oversight. Sources of evidence can be diverse, with academic research only one type of information that is used in parliamentary processes.
A substantial recent study, led by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), examined the role of academic research in the UK Parliament. Findings revealed that, while research in its broadest sense is useful for parliamentary work, challenges remain, with academic research still “not cutting through”. General surveys and follow-up interviews – including with MPs, MPs’ staff, parliamentary staff and peers – identified lack of accessibility and poor communication as challenges to the use of academic research. For example, evidence in academic sources was commonly thought to be presented in a complicated way, with one MP commenting: “Academic research is usually not that user-friendly from our point of view as users”. An earlier study of UK parliamentary staff also found that academic research was seen to be “too abstruse.” Continue reading
‘You are unfit for the city’: Bodies of right and rights of bodies in Iran
Image credit: Ali Rankouhi
Why does Iran have one of the biggest markets in the world for aesthetic surgery? In seeking the answer to this question, I found that a number of different factors are at play: the market for cosmetic surgery is informed by culture, geographic and urban spaces, religion, and even politics.[1]
In Iran, bodies are scrutinised to be physically “fit” within the narrowed-down standards of beauty, ability, health, gender, age, class and so forth. Cities have the power to constantly eliminate individuals’ bodies that are considered “unfit” for the urban space; these include, but are not limited to: the so-called overweight, oversized, obese, visually impaired and people with any mobility impairment, wheelchair users, the elderly, cyclists, runners and even people using pushchairs. In a sense, all people are dealing with some form of disability and at some point in their lives will become disabled by the city’s physical layout. The city’s physical structure reinforces the notion of ‘the right body’, and raises urgent questions around the right to access – a fundamental human right.
A Day in Parliament: Kate Oliver STEM Finalist 2018
Image Credit: STEM4Brit
A day in Parliament: Kate Oliver, STEM Finalist 2018
On the 12th of March I went to Parliament, for the second time in my life, this time accompanied by a rolled up piece of A1 paper. I was going to ‘the major event bringing early career researchers and parliamentarians together’, STEM for Britain*.
This poster session, now in its 21st year following its founding by Eric Wharton MP, invites around 50 exhibitors in each of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Engineering and Biological sciences to explain their work to the employees of Parliament and a panel of expert judges. Five of us from Bristol had been selected to present – around a third of applications are successful – all in different categories, and we had been preparing our two-minute pitches for a few weeks, with the help of our supervisors, university support staff, and patient friends. Continue reading
How women rice weeders in Italy took on fascism and became heroines of the left
Flora Derounian, University of Bristol 
In an era before the dawn of pesticides and mechanisation, an all-female workforce was employed to “disinfect” and harvest Italy’s rice crops. These Italian rice weeders may be a thing of the past, but they have a remarkable political legacy.
Italy was, and remains, Europe’s largest rice producer. The rice weeders, known in Italian as “mondine”, could be found knee-deep in flooded fields from May until July, across Italy’s “rice belt” which spans the northern regions of Piedmont, Emilia Romagna, Lombardy and the Veneto. In my ongoing research, I study oral histories of rice weeders who worked between 1940 and 1965, collected from several interview projects and documentaries. Continue reading
Why the idea of ‘good work’ in a gig economy remains a distant ideal
Tonia Novitz, University of Bristol; Alan L Bogg, University of Bristol; Katie Bales, University of Bristol; Michael Ford, University of Bristol, and Roseanne Russell, University of Bristol
Don Lane’s employment contract for his work as a courier described him as an “independent contractor”. This meant he was neither an “employee” nor a “worker”, so not entitled to legal rights such as protection against dismissal, paid holidays, or statutory sick pay.
The 53-year-old also suffered from diabetes, and had previously been fined £150 by the delivery firm he worked for for missing work to attend a hospital appointment. He died in January 2018 after working through the Christmas season despite his illness. Continue reading
