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In April 2004, Wiley released his debut album Treddin’ on Thin Ice. The MC’s first full-length project after years of releasing tracks and performing at raves and on pirate radio, Treddin’ on Thin Ice is undoubtedly a foundational part of grime’s history.

The album not only delineates and establishes grime’s distinctive sound at the turn of the century, it also represents a key work through and against which subsequent grime artists have continued to define and develop the genre.

For British author Jeffrey Boakye, the album represents “a moment of self-promotion and self-realisation for Wiley that transcends the individual and begins to raise a culture”. April marks 20 years since the release of Treddin, now considered a seminal grime album.

Among the most significant musical developments within the UK music scene in recent decades, grime grew from a highly localised east London-based subculture to a national and global cultural phenomenon.

The culmination of this growth came in 2019 when Stormzy became the first black British solo artist to headline Glastonbury festival. This historic performance, coupled with the chart success of his debut album Gang Signs and Prayers, marked grime’s commercial rise into the British cultural mainstream from underground obscurity.

Alongside Dizzee Rascal’s Boy In Da Corner (2003), Treddin’ On thin Ice is considered to represent a blueprint for one of Britain’s most exciting music cultures. Wiley’s debut helped to define grime against preceding UK musical trends and established a powerful visual and aural model for future artists.

It’s not garage

Until the genre’s mainstream rise in the 2010s, grime’s stars were relatively few.

Eskibeat – Wiley’s own term for his early sound – was a “defiantly low-rent mass of jabbing rhythms, crude samples and rumbling bass frequencies” that established a powerful aesthetic model for future artists.

Treddin’ marked grime’s separation from garage and other prevailing musical trends. Wiley does this not only through sound but in what he says as he draws comparisons and differences between his own sound and what came before.

Wiley establishes a musical meta-commentary on the evolution of grime from garage in the album’s first single Wot Do U Call It?:

Here in London there’s a sound called garageBut this is my sound, it sure ain’t garageI heard they don’t like me in garageCause I use their scene but make my own soundThe Eskimo sound is mine

The instrumentals Eskimo, Avalanche, and Ice Rink further the delineation, crafting grime’s soundscape and introducing what will come to represent the genre’s key musical and extra-musical characteristics. In particular, these songs engender and embody the scene’s association with “coldness”. Coldness describes the experience of radical alienation, or the articulation of black urban life on the margins of British society – “it’s a cold, dark sound because we came from a cold, dark place”.

Grime: from infancy to adolescence

Wiley is credited with not only fuelling grime’s emergence from the British underground’s post-garage music scene but also for carrying the genre from its infancy through to adolescence. He mentored pioneers Kano and Dizzee Rascal, as well as grime’s second-wave heroes Skepta and Stormzy.

He also did much to pioneer grime’s early methods of production, distribution, promotion and consumption. Wiley appeared on pirate radio stations (both independently and with his crew Roll Deep) and sold his own record pressings to independent stores, as well as directly to customers from his car.

He released music on white labels (produced in small quantities and distributed without any official labels or branding) and dubplates (test recordings prior to mastering on which many early cuts from Treddin’ first appeared) and founded rave and club nights, including the now-legendary Eskimo dance.

It is his musical influence, however, that remains Wiley’s most significant contribution. The “Eskimo sound” and grime are essentially different only in name.

Skepta’s Mercury prize-winning Konnichiwa (2016), deemed a triumphant return to grime’s key aesthetic principles and golden-era sound, is essentially a nostalgia trip that does not revive and reinvent grime’s early sound palette so much as simply restate it. More specifically, it restates Wiley’s sound palette: Ice Rink and Pies, both of which feature on Treddin’, for example, form the musical and lyrical building blocks of Konnichiwa’s pivotal lead single That’s Not Me.

Skepta’s use of the tracks in this way shows that grime music continues to be defined largely by the extent to which it relates to the music that initially defined it. At 20, Treddin’ remains as powerful and important as ever.

Wiley, however, has fallen from grace following a torrent of antisemitic remarks he made on X in 2020. As a result, he has been dropped from his management company, banned from virtually all forms of social media, and has generally faded from public consciousness.

As Wiley continues to face the deserved consequences for his bigotry, his spectacular fall leaves a tangible absence in grime’s musical and cultural tapestry. A figure both symbolic of and synonymous with grime’s noughties golden era, the cultural space that surrounds Wiley is no longer habitable. The scene moves on.

As grime’s constellation continues to alter, however, and its stars remain in motion, the question persists as to whether the scene can ever truly detach itself from the giant whose heat can still be felt.

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Polls have consistently shown that the incumbent mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, appears to be on track to win a third term in office at the upcoming mayoral elections on May 2.

One poll we commissioned as part of our Polling London series in October 2023 put Khan ahead of his Conservative rival, Susan Hall, by 50 points to 25 (a 25-point lead for Khan). The next poll in our series (conducted in February 2024) had Khan leading by the exact same margin, albeit with the figures 49 to Khan and 24 to Hall this time.

While the mayoral race clearly didn’t narrow much in this period, there is reason to believe the race may become tighter as election day nears.

Low satisfaction ratings

Khan’s lead in the mayoral race is not built on high levels of satisfaction with his previous performance in the role. Our February 2024 poll showed that only 27% of Londoners say they are “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with the way he has performed since becoming Mayor of London. Meanwhile, 45% claim they are “somewhat” or “very” dissatisfied. Khan’s rather lacklustre approval ratings make his lead appear rather more shallow.

Mayoral candidates Zoe Garbett, Sadiq Khan and Susan Hall, at the Jewish Community Hustings in April 2024.
Andy Sillett/Alamy

People living in outer London appear to be particularly dissatisfied with Khan. Half of residents (49%) say they are either “very” or “somewhat” dissatisfied with his performance, compared to 37% of those living in inner London.

This could be due to Khan’s decision, which came into effect in August 2023, to expand the ultra low emissions zone (Ulez). We know that outer London residents were considerably less supportive of this policy. Data from our October 2023 poll shows that while 52% of those living in inner London supported the Ulez expansion, it garnered the support of only 32% of those living in outer London.

That said, the popularity of the Labour party, and the relative unpopularity of the Conservative party in London, works to Khan’s advantage. We know that Londoners tend to vote along party lines at mayoral elections. Analysis of our February 2024 polling data suggests that approximately 80% of the Londoners who would vote Conservative and Labour if there were a general election tomorrow would also vote for the Conservative and Labour candidates if there were a mayoral election tomorrow. This helps to explain why Khan is doing better in the mayoral race than his satisfaction ratings might suggest.

The Liberal Democrat and Green party’s mayoral candidates – Rob Blackie and Zoe Garbett – are currently polling at only moderate levels (10% and 9% respectively). If their vote shares were to improve, Khan’s could take a hit.

What’s more, in the 2021 mayoral race, the polls overstated Khan’s lead over his nearest rival, the Conservative’s Shaun Bailey.

In the lead up to election day, candidates would do well to pay attention to Londoners’ concerns about policing, crime, personal safety, housing, health services and the cost-of-living.

Policing, crime and personal safety

A recent poll, commissioned by the Mile End Institute, where we are both based, and fielded by YouGov from February 12-19 2024, found that 52% of Londoners felt policing, crime and personal safety was one of the most important issues currently facing the city and its population. Meanwhile 46% opted for the provision of affordable quality homes and 37% for healthcare provision in the capital.

The next most important issue, according to Londoners, was the affordability of public transport, which 25% of respondents highlighted.

Londoners’ concerns about policing, crime and personal safety are likely, at least in part, to be a reflection of their low levels of trust in the Metropolitan police service. In the same Mile End Institute/YouGov survey, just 5% of Londoners were found to have “a great deal” of trust in the Met. By contrast, 36% had “not very much” trust in the service and 14% had “no trust at all”. Trust in the Met is particularly low among ethnic minority Londoners. We find that almost one fifth (19%) of black and ethnic minotiry Londoners report having “no trust at all” in the service, compared to around one tenth of white Londoners (11%).

Londoners are also worried about the affordability of city living. The same survey found that 60% of Londoners described the city as “expensive”, up from 43% in September 2018. That represents a 17-percentage point increase. In light of the cost-of-living crisis and rising inflation, this is not surprising. It suggests mayoral pledges which seek to make life in London more affordable may be popular across large swathes of the electorate.

The question is whether these same issues will be at the forefront of the minds of Londoners when deciding how to vote. Recent polling, commissioned by ITV News, and fielded by Survation from March 21-26 2024, certainly suggests so.

When asked to select the single most important issue in deciding how to cast their vote at the upcoming London mayoral election, the most popular option chosen by respondents was the cost of living (41%), followed by crime (12%) and healthcare (11%). London’s economy and housing came in fourth and fifth places, respectively, selected by just less than 10%. Läs mer…

Champagne corks popped on December 3 1989 as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US president George H.W. Bush met on the cruise ship, Maxim Gorky, off the coast of Malta to declare the end of the cold war.

Gorbachev and Bush’s predecessor in the White House, Ronald Reagan, had – at two summits over the past five years – thrashed out agreements that would limit and reduce both sides’ nuclear arsenals. With the cold war over, Gorbachev liberalised the Soviet Union, presiding over its dismantling, which formally occurred on December 26 1991.

To those adversaries who accused him of capitulation and the tame surrender of the Soviet bloc countries, his reply was simple: “To whom did we surrender them? To their own people.”

Reagan and Gorbachev agreed that a nuclear war couldn’t be won, so must never be fought. Yet this month, the UN’s high representative for disarmament affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu, warned that “the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is higher now than any time since the height of the cold war and the architecture designed to prevent its use is ever more precarious”.

So how did we get here? Russia’s aggression under the leadership of Vladimir Putin has plunged the world into a new era of nuclear uncertainty by reasserting Soviet isolationist strategies. By embracing the notion of a nebulous western threat, he has preserved his totalitarian leadership, while justifying political isolation, party control within Russia, and revanchist adventurism abroad – the latest of which has been the unlawful invasion of Ukraine.

Nuclear sabre-rattling and posturing are unsettling features of Putin’s military strategy. He has now explicitly threatened to resort to use of nuclear weapons three times since launching his invasion in 2022. And he recently ordered that tactical weapons be stationed in Belarus.

His strategists clearly see the threat of a nuclear confrontation as a realistic deterrent to Nato intervention in Ukraine. Nuclear blackmail is being used to guarantee Russian sovereignty, to coerce and force adversaries to adhere to Russian terms, and to dissuade global actors from meaningful intervention or resolution in Ukraine.

Putin’s behaviour is emblematic of a global shift in attitude towards the nuclear taboo. Other leaders, among them the former US president Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un have carelessly returned nuclear warfare to the table as a viable strategy instead of a deterrence.

‘Nuclear neolateralism’

This is an age of nuclear neolateralism. Nation states have unstable and mercurial political, economic and cultural relations involving new networks, conflicts and complexities. Since the turn of this century, the world has seen the resurgence of populism and religious nationalism, the near ubiquity of digital technology, and an increasing velocity of nuclear proliferation and brinkmanship.

These factors make our current situation more complex than the cold war. A new Silk Road nexus has emerged across China, Russia, Iran, Israel and North Korea since the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. This web of relationships is shaped by regional dynamics, strategic interests and global power shifts that influence security and global weapons proliferation.

China and Russia have recently developed stronger strategic ties. But tensions remain along shared borders – and freshly leaked classified papers reveal Russia’s fear of Chinese nuclear attack. China has 500 active nuclear warheads, and is expanding its nuclear arsenal. Beijing is also learning lessons from Russia and Israel about how a future Taiwanese conflict may unfold.

An unexpected alliance has arisen between North Korea and Russia. Historically, Russia advocated for diplomatic solutions to North Korean nuclear proliferation. Pyongyang has supplied weapons to Russia since 2023 in violation of UN security council sanctions, and seeks to leverage this support to gain acceptance as a nuclear state.

Cosying up: Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, speaking with North Korean foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, at a dinner in Pyongyang, October 2023.
EPA-EFE/KCNA

In 2019, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned his people to prepare for war with the US by 2024. A leaked military document confirmed this, saying: “the Dear Supreme Commander will dominate the world with the nuclear weapons”. On April 22, Pyongyang claimed it had tested a new command-and-control system in a simulated nuclear counter-strike exercise.

South Korea has responded by developing its own submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) in 2022 and is the only nation state to possess SLBMs without nuclear warheads. In February 2023, the leader of the People Power Party, Chung Jin-suk, argued that South Korea needs nuclear weapons. But this strategy could also make South Korea more vulnerable to attack from hostile North Korea.

Iran and Russia are cooperating in the nuclear sphere. Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was limited under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. But Trump pulled the US out of the treaty in 2018 and there is strong evidence (denied by Iran) that it has reinvigorated its weapons programme. In 2023, UN inspectors reported that Iran had enriched trace amounts of uranium to almost weapons grade.

Israel has targeted Iran with assassinations, cyberwarfare, drone attacks and commando raids to destroy its burgeoning nuclear programme, adding to Middle East tensions. Saudi Arabia does not have nuclear weapons, but officials have said that they will acquire them if their regional rival, Iran, becomes nuclear.

A new arms race

The UN has said that a quantitative arms race seems imminent. The latest US nuclear posture review revealed a plan worth US$1.5 trillion (£1.21 trillion) to modernise US nuclear capability and create a “nuclear sponge” of 450 nuclear silos to absorb a future Russian attack.

Now the UK has announced it will increase its defence budget to 2.5% of GDP to put it on a “war footing”. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to its nuclear arsenal, despite Britain’s UN ambassador, James Kariuki, stating: “Nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought” at a recent security council meeting.

Professor Ramesh Thakur, the director of the Centre for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament at the Australian National University, expressed the same thought more hauntingly when he wrote: “If you want the peace of the dead, prepare for nuclear war.” We must hope that this new cold war doesn’t become hot. Läs mer…

“Tennis is a relationship,” says Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) in director Luca Guadagnino’s new film The Challengers. However, this relationship is not simply between the game and the player. Rather the heart of tennis, and perhaps of all competition, is a three-way relationship between two contestants and a third person. Their presence, and observation, is what gives competition its intensity.

The Challengers fuses sex and sport in a straightforward but effective way. Early on, at a junior tournament, we see friends Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) fall in lust with tennis’s hot newcomer – Tashi. They’re good, but not great. Meanwhile, she’s all business, demolishing her opponents.

The two boys compete for her attention and one night she ends up in their room, where they share a three-way kiss before she leaves. The match in the morning won’t play itself.

The trailer for The Challengers.

Patrick wins the film’s first set and he and Tashi get together. Art, however, remains a “good friend”, religiously attending her games even when Patrick doesn’t. When Tashi’s playing career is ruined by an injury, he is there to support her. The two get married and she becomes his coach, the architect of his international success. Meanwhile, Patrick’s career remains in the doldrums, though he and Tashi maintain contact. When Art’s career also hits the buffers, she suggests he play the New Rochelle tennis tournament, at which Patrick will be waiting.

The psychology of competition

What’s the point of all this competition? Tashi and Art are rich, thanks to their sporting success, but it’s clear that wealth doesn’t motivate them – and Art is nonplussed by the fandom that swirls around him.

Perhaps it is the pursuit of excellence that drives them. This, however, is clearly not the case for ill-disciplined Patrick, who spends his time in bars and sleeping in his car, despite coming from an inordinately wealthy family. Art too seems ready to give everything up rather than ruthlessly recover his brilliance. Even Tashi, apparently the most dedicated and driven of the trio, is ready to risk professional excellence for an erotic thrill.

Zendaya as tennis pro Tashi in Challengers.
Niko Tavernise/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

In his 1903 essay, The Sociology of Competition, philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel argued that competition between two competitors is often aimed at impressing a third party. It is the presence of that third person that gives competition both its meaning and its intensity.

The Challengers can be viewed as a representation of precisely this three-way dynamic of competition. In the film’s erotic scenes, the desire for Tashi is conditioned by the sexual charge between Art and Patrick. She is attracted to them both at various times.

Having apparently “won”, Art remains insecure about his status and the presence of Patrick. The borders between sporting and erotic competition are often blurred. “If you don’t win, I’ll leave you”, Tashi tells Art. Is her incitement to rivalry between the two purely strategic, a means of pushing Art to achieve better performance? It may be. Yet she seems to enjoy the attention of either one when it is on display for the other, be it on the court or in the bedroom.

There is a sexual charge between Art and Patrick.
Niko Tavernise/Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Any tension can only be held so long before one starts to tire, and it is as well that The Challengers reaches its stylish pitch when it does.

The film ends with a genuine display of affection between two of the characters. This might lead the audience to conclude that an intimate two-way relationship can transcend the competitive urge to perform for another. Yet the very public and performative nature of that moment leaves us wondering whether even reconciliation stems from the need to be wanted, and the desire to impress.

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Some young South Africans have begun to question Nelson Mandela’s legacy, and the choices made in the transition to democracy after the end of apartheid in 1994. Some have even called him a “sellout”.

To mark 30 years since South Africa’s post-apartheid transition began, The Conversation Weekly podcast is running a special three-part podcast series, What happened to Nelson Mandela’s South Africa?

In this final episode of the series, we talk to two academics about the way Mandela is viewed by young South Africans today, and the challenges facing the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed the country for three decades, and its current president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

Young people make up 34% of South Africa’s population. Many of them were born after 1994.

Known as the “born free” generation, they never lived through the persecution of apartheid. And they’re not afraid to question the state of the country they’ve inherited.

“There’s this grappling of the new generation trying to understand why South Africa still looks the way that it does,” explains Sithembile Mbete, a lecturer in political science at the University of Pretoria.

I think that there’s a revision or a review of Nelson Mandela’s legacy, mainly just from a dissatisfaction with the present and seeing the persistence of inequality of all sorts of manifestations – of white supremacy and racism and then all of the big political issues that we have for young people… and you’ve seen then a backlash to that amongst young people who are, like, why can’t we criticise him? Why can’t we criticise the decisions that were made?

Principal among the issues facing young people, she says, is unemployment. At the end of 2023, the unemployment rate for young South Africans between the ages of 15 and 34 was 44%. Mbete says that young people are asking serious questions about the way the economy is structured, but they’re not yet playing enough of a role in shaping the country. She adds:

Our expectations of what could have been done in the past are too high, but then our expectations of what we should be re-imagining in the present for the future are too low.

Elections looming

South Africans head to the polls on 29 May in a closely fought election in which polls suggest the ANC may, for the first time since 1994, lose the electoral majority needed to form a government.

Says Richard Calland, an associate professor in public law at the University of Cape Town, who recently co-wrote a book assessing South Africa’s post-apartheid heads of state:

We’re coming to the end of that period of domination by the ANC now; we’re into the period of what I call the second transition.

Despite the electoral dominance of the ANC over the last 30 years, says Calland, the party has had leaders of very different character, from Mandela to Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma and now Cyril Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa has had the very difficult task of rebuilding the state, rebuilding confidence in public ethics. And it’s really a tough battle. It’s like Sisyphus pushing and pushing that big stone up the hill. And it’s going to take quite a long time, I think, to recover lost ground.

Listen to our interviews with Richard Calland and Sithembile Mbete on The Conversation Weekly in the third and final episode of our What happened to Nelson Mandela’s South Africa? series. And read more coverage of the 30th anniversary of South Africa’s democratic transition from The Conversation Africa.

A transcript of this episode will be available shortly.

Disclosure statement

Sithembile Mbete has received grant funding for research on South African foreign policy from the National Research Foundation, National Institute of Social Science and Social Science Research Council. She’s received research support on South African democracy from the Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Richard Calland is a partner at The Paternoster Group: African Political Insight. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.

Credits

Newsclips in this episode from ITV News, CNBC Africa and SABC News.

Special thanks for this series to Gary Oberholzer, Jabulani Sikhakhane, Caroline Southey and Moina Spooner at The Conversation Africa. This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany, with production assistance from Katie Flood. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Stephen Khan is our global executive editor, Alice Mason runs our social media and Soraya Nandy does our transcripts.

You can find us on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or contact the podcast team directly via email. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s free daily email here.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. Läs mer…

In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner.

Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to being told to take down from X (previously Twitter) the video of the stabbing of bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at a Sydney Assyrian church.

Admittedly the matter isn’t clear cut, and the bishop himself has now said he wasn’t opposed to the video being on the platform, citing freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

But in this case public interest in removing (partially – it can still be found) the depiction of a violent alleged crime trumps arguments about censorship.

The alleged attack, over which a 16-year-old boy has been charged, fell within the definition of a terrorist act. The video’s suppression is justified to try to reduce the risk of further violence – the stabbing had been followed by a riot – including copycat attacks.

This point was reinforced when this week counter terrorism police raided Sydney houses and arrested minors with alleged connections to the boy. Five were later charged with terrorism-related offences. Police had been keeping watch on the youths but decided they “posed an unacceptable risk to the people of NSW, and our current purely investigative strategies could not adequately ensure public safety”.

The fight between Musk and the government is in court. But in the court of public opinion, Anthony Albanese’s rejection of the up-yours attitude of the man he labels an arrogant egotistical billionaire is Likely to resonate with many Australians.

This isn’t just, or even mainly, because of the video incident. It’s that so many people are increasingly alarmed about the harm social media is doing. For all its pluses, its destructive aspects are becoming more and more threatening, and frustration at the (often ugly) muscle of the tech companies is growing.

Leave aside the way these platforms have debased political debate, with many users losing all inhibitions as they lash out, not to mention trolling and the like.

Go to the issue of domestic violence, which Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus described the other day as an “epidemic”. It has multiple roots, but there’s little doubt appalling material on parts of the internet is a contributor.

Some parents despair about how addiction to social media can capture their children as strongly as addition to hard drugs. Young kids access degrading porn. Susceptible teens have their mental health destabilised. Parents are told to monitor their children’s use of social media, but that often proves impossible.

Tech companies see themselves as free markets for communications. But dysfunctional markets require regulation, or effective self-regulation.

Ways to do this may not be easy or obvious. But you get the impression Big Tech is on notice and the pressure will only become greater. Big Tech needs to win a social licence, something it often fails to comprehend.

Another battle the Albanese government has been waging is over the decision of Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) to stop paying for news content harvested from other sites.

The former government, under Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, struck a deal for platforms to pay for content they obtained from other media, the proceeds of which went back into journalism. With the deal expiring, Meta has walked away from the arrangement, and Facebook has just closed its news tab in Australia although it still has news in its feed. It says this is part of its general step back from news. The implied threat is to stop carrying news in Australia – a course Meta has followed in Canada.

The money involved is peanuts, while the implications for an Australian community where so many young people access their news through these platforms, rather than in the legacy media (TV, newspapers, radio), are significant.

On yet another front, this week the chief of ASIO Mike Burgess and the Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw appeared jointly at the National Press Club with a plea for more cooperation from the tech companies, especially in dealing with the challenges the expansions of end-to-end encryption poses for intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

Burgess said he wasn’t asking the government for more powers. “I am asking the tech companies to do more. I’m asking them to give effect to our existing powers and to uphold existing laws.

”Without their help in very limited and strictly controlled circumstances, encryption is unaccountable. In effect, unaccountable encryption is like building a safe room for terrorists and spies, a secure place where they can plot and plan.”

Kershaw said: “Some of our children and other vulnerable people are being bewitched online by a cauldron of extremist poison on the open and dark web.

”That’s one serious problem. The other is that the very nature of social media allows that extremist poison to spray across the globe almost instantaneously.

”We can look at it another way. Social media companies are refusing to snuff out the social combustion on their platforms. Instead of putting out the embers that start on their platforms, their indifference and defiance is pouring accelerant on the flames.”

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman is urging a minimum age (say 16), with age verification, for access to social media. While this would see pushback from young people and difficulties in enforcement, Coleman points to legal obligations related to age in both the United Kingdom and Florida. He concedes no online regulation is perfect but argues it would be far better than the current situation.

Coleman says the eSafety Commissioner recommended a trial of “age assurance” technology, which could include social media in its scope. “The fact that kids are seeing this horrendous, violent material on social media is just completely unacceptable. We wouldn’t accept it if it was TV. We wouldn’t accept it if it was movies, we wouldn’t let ten-year-olds access this sort of material. And yet on social media, it happens every single day,” he said on radio this week.

The debate over social media has brought back into the frame the government’s proposed legislation to crack down on “misinformation” and “disinformation”. An exposure draft it earlier released has been on the backburner, with more consultations after a broad backlash on freedome-of-speech grounds.

The government hopes the fuelling of concern about social media by recent events will help muster support for whatever new version of this legislation it produces. But while there is overlap, the misinformation/disinformation debate should be treated separately. It involves core free speech issues, and the balance of risks is different from the harms caused by the worst aspects of social media. It is dangerous territory and should be approached very warily. Läs mer…

The American poet Adrienne Rich once asked: “To say that a poet is responsive, responsible – what can that mean?” This question about poets bearing witness and being the “conscience” of their society is something I’ve pondered over the years.

My own political awakening was something of a slow burner. As a fledgling poet from a middle-class background, growing up in Carrick-on-Shannon in the Irish county of Leitrim in the 1980s, I watched the news each night in shock as another bomb exploded not far away across the Northern Ireland border.

Poetry by Wordsworth, Yeats and the only woman poet on our school curriculum, Emily Dickinson, became my sustenance. In my teens, I was deeply affected by the plight of Ann Lovett. In 1984, her death in childbirth, in front of the Virgin Mary statue in Granard, Co. Longford, stoked my incipient feminism and indignation at the way unmarried mothers were treated by church and society.

During my final year in secondary school, however, as I prepared to sit my Leaving Certificate, new hope glimmered on the horizon in the form of Ireland’s first female president. At her inauguration in 1990, Mary Robinson referenced the poetry of Eavan Boland.

Finally, I was discovering new voices like Boland, Eithne Strong and, in time, Paula Meehan, who were all questioning the status quo and articulating the female experience.

Read more:
How Wordsworth informed the poetry of the Arab Spring

When my first collection of poetry, No Vague Utopia, was published in 2003, it was still driven more by sonic and lyrical elements than by my social conscience. The habits of a smiling Irish female, conforming to societal expectations and diffident in the face of the mostly male Irish canon, were hard to break.

Gradually, with more life experience, I gained perspective and poetic nerve. My most recent collection, Conditional Perfect (2019), offers a broader emotional range, including anger about many forms of oppression.

While it’s true to say that I didn’t always think of myself as a political poet, I am more aware than ever of my own level of responsiveness and responsibility to the urgent issues of my time. I recognise that poetry can indeed be “the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness”, as the author Alice Walker once stated.

Successful poems evoke empathy in the reader.
Sweet Life/Unsplash

Poetry for social change

Poetry has played a crucial part in the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay liberation campaign and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

In a world teeming with injustice, it is more urgent than ever to read (and write) poetry that engages with social realities and inequities. Poetry, as Audre Lorde memorably stated, “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we can predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change”.

In our social media-driven era, where it often feels as if nuance is in jeopardy, it is timely to think about how poetry can embrace the political while not succumbing to the lure of rhetoric.

During the Arab Spring in 2010, Abu Al-Qasim Al-Shabi’s poem The Will to Life captured the emotions of Tunisian protesters in their struggle for democracy and change.

In Afghanistan, women are harnessing the power of the landay (a two-line form of poetry) as a vital lifeline in resistance against the Taliban, who can be threatened by the simple act of composing and sharing couplets.

The poignant concision of the following landay is especially striking:

When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.

When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.

Last December, the tragically prophetic poem of Palestinian professor Refaat Alareer, who was subsequently targeted and killed by an Israeli bomb, called us to bear witness, as global citizens, and speak out about the horrors in Gaza:

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story.

Writing political poetry

If we want to infuse our poems with a greater robustness, to take a stronger stance, how can we gain confidence to tackle these issues with authority? What are the skills writers need to enable them to speak out, while avoiding the didactic and over-simplistic meaning?

These are some of the questions my colleague, poet Eoin Devereux, and I are discussing today with special guest poet and renowned activist Sarah Clancy, in a unique online event for this year’s Poetry Day Ireland.

Successful poems evoke empathy in the reader and expand horizons of possibility. They make us feel, rather than preach at us. They remind us of our common humanity and our interconnectedness to the world. To quote American poet Joy Harjo:

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.

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South African president Cyril Ramaphosa recently painted a rosy picture in which the country’s youth – “democracy’s children” – had enormous opportunities for advancement, all thanks to successive post-apartheid governments led by the African National Congress (ANC) that he leads.

But what is the real state of young South Africans – defined as people below the age of 34 – after 30 years of democracy?

I have more than 30 years’ experience in socio-economic and development research as well as political and governance reform. My recent research paper tracing 30 years of analysing youth marginalisation has found that youth in South Africa, who make up 34.3% of the population, have not fared well under democracy. They are the hardest-hit by unemployment and the lack of opportunities, and show high alienation.

Fewer young people are doing as well as their counterparts from 30 years ago; most are muddling along, searching for opportunities.

Measuring marginalisation

The idea of “marginalisation”, as used in my analysis, had its origins in the early 1990s. In 1992 a large survey, Growing up Tough, was run among South African youth of all races so that the first democratic government could understand what they needed most. The survey recorded indicators like unemployment and level of education, as well as subjective views like feelings of alienation (not belonging in society). The results were arranged on a scale of how far some young people had been pushed to the margins of society. Those who scored in the negative on all, or almost all, indicators were labelled “lost”. Those who barely featured or did not score at all on the negative indicators were labelled “fine”. Others fell in between.

The survey was run again in later years, with amendments. The most recent, analysed here, was in 2018, as part of a broader quality of life survey.

Comparing data from the 1992 and 2018 indices of youth marginalisation, the same proportion (5%) is clearly “lost” – scoring off the chart on virtually every indicator. Sadly, at the other extreme, where 25% of youth were “fine” in 1992, this had dropped to 16% in 2018.

In the two categories in between – “marginalised” and “at risk” – the more worrying “marginalised” has shrunk, which is positive, while “at risk” has grown.

Marginalised youth index scores.
Author

South Africa has changed profoundly since apartheid, and for some, including some young people, there are countless more opportunities than previously. But, analysed as a generational cohort, youth today are only a little better off than when apartheid ended in 1994. And the share of young people are doing well now has fallen by 9 percentage points.

Looking at the 15-24 cohort in late 2023, using the “expanded” definition of unemployment, a staggering 60.7% are officially unemployed; among the group aged 25-34, unemployment only drops to 39.8%.

Youth are meant to be a generation enjoying a democratic dividend and contributing to a demographic dividend. Neither appears true. In terms of how much potential South Africa has squandered, they represent an entire generation of opportunity lost to the country.

Marginalised but not lost

In the 1980s and early 1990s, youth had taken on adult roles in political struggles. As ever, they demonstrated their instrumental value to the adults controlling violence on various sides. Those same adults and the media spoke of a “lost generation” – specifically, black, male, urban youth.

For the South African Council of Churches and Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference involved in organising the youth in the 1990-94 interregnum through their NGO, the Joint Enrichment Project, the lost generation discourse was anathema. Firstly, because in their view no-one is ever “lost” in spiritual terms; and secondly because of the stigmatising and policy implications of writing off young (black) people entirely.

This gave rise to the “marginalised youth” movement, which sought to understand youth on their own terms, to identify those at risk, those who were doing fine, and those who were pushed right to the margins of society – and design policy responses accordingly.

Marginalisation over time

In 1993, after first presenting to assembled youth organisations in 1992, we released the first iteration of the marginalisation index, Growing up Tough. It comprised 12 dimensions of concern and 32 variables. These included personal experiences of abuse, recidivism, exposure to violence, family status, attitudes to race, self-image, health, political alienation, social involvement, employment status, generational conflict and fatalism.

Despite the belief of our church sponsors that no-one is ever truly “lost”, that became the central category of the index. In all, 5% of respondents scored high on all, or most, of the indicators in the 12 dimensions. “We use the term ‘lost’ with care”, we wrote at the time, but some 500,000 people had “slipped through, or been shoved through, the social net entirely”.

We found that a quarter of youth were “fine” – they only registered positive outcomes on the index. Four in ten were “at risk”: they were showing signs of concern on a few dimensions in the index. “Marginalised” youth were most in need of urgent intervention. They comprised more than a quarter (27%) of the 1992 sample and scored high on many of the 12 dimensions of concern. How to keep them from slipping further should have been a key policy challenge for the democratic period.

The index was changed after 1994, since some indicators were specific to the transition South Africa was going through and others, such as HIV and AIDS, had barely featured in the early iteration of the index.

It was rerun in 2000 (only on black African youth), and results suggested their status was improving: no respondent scored high on more than eight of the 12 areas of concern.

In other words, eight years after the first measurement, where 5% of youth appeared “lost”, no urban black African youth in 2000 fell into the “lost” category. Four in ten (44%) respondents were “at risk”, scoring high on two or three areas of concern; another 33% scored high on slightly less than half the areas of concern. It seemed that progress was being made.

Most of the items in the index were later used by the Gauteng City Region Observatory in its early Quality of Life survey, allowing analysis of marginalisation across the entire Gauteng province population.

The total of those who are were “fine” (using the 2018 data) fell to 16% of youth, from a high of 25% in 1992. At the other extreme, we found 5% of Gauteng youth were again “lost”. The trend suggested that 2000 was a high point. After that, young respondents were doing less and less well, both objectively and subjectively.

Behind the overall data is a predictable racialisation. For example, in the 2018 analysis, while a third of white (33.3%) and Indian (34.8%) youth were “fine”, this was true for only 14.1% of African and 22.1% of coloured youth. This pattern has remained true since the index began in 1992. In 2018, to be young, black and male in Gauteng was to have the highest likelihood of being marginalised. Only 0.3% of white youth (and 0.5% of Indian youth) showed signs of high marginalisation.

Yet, despite having failed young people, the governing ANC’s 2024 election manifesto only manages anodyne promises to “create opportunities” for young people, suggesting South Africa will continue to waste the massive resource represented by our youth. Läs mer…

Vaping is now more common than cigarette smoking among young people, according to a new report coordinated by the University of Glasgow and commissioned by the World Health Organization.

This echoes research that has found the popularity of vaping among young people in the UK has surged in recent years. The number of children experimenting with vapes increased from 7.7% in 2022 to 11.6% in 2023, according to a survey conducted by anti-smoking charity, Ash.

Most of these children wanted to try vaping “out of curiosity” and were aware of the promotion of vapes in shops and online. Other motivations for using vapes included the ease of obtaining them, the flavours (young people are particularly attracted to fruity or dessert flavours) and help connecting with peers.

But vaping comes with many risks to young people, including harm to the lungs and brain.

Adolescence is a delicate period for the development of the brain. During this time, the brain grows, changes and forms new connections. The parts that control emotions and reward develop faster than those that help with planning and self-control. This can lead to teens taking more risks, such as vaping.

Nicotine, which is contained within vapes, affects teens differently to adults, as their brains are more sensitive to it. Brain receptors affected by nicotine are important for learning and addiction. Even low levels of nicotine exposure can make teens more likely to get addicted to other substances, experiment with risky behaviour, or develop mental health problems.

Nicotine can have long-lasting effects on the adolescent brain. Nicotine exposure can harm a young person’s ability to learn and focus, and make them more likely to act impulsively when they reach adulthood.

Even a small amount of nicotine can be risky for teens who are predisposed to conditions such as asthma, making them more sensitive to stress and possibly leading to mood problems later in life.

Young people who vape may be more likely to start smoking and find it harder to quit any nicotine use at all. And using vaping products alongside other products containing nicotine, like cigarettes, for example, may be even worse for their health.

Hidden risks

There are many less obvious risks to vaping too. The chemicals in vape liquids – including various toxins, heavy metals and possibly even radioactive polonium – may be harmful. The ingredients, how much of each is used and the temperature to which they’re heated can also affect what ends up in the vapour.

Some vapes may also deliver more nicotine than the user expects. This could be because of the specific mix of ingredients different brands put in the vape liquid.

The variety of flavourings in vapes is concerning, especially for teens. With over 7,000 flavours on the market such as fruit, candy floss, mint and chocolate, vapes are designed to be appealing to young people. A 2023 US study found teens are especially drawn to the more fruity flavours.

But these flavourings might also damage the lungs, potentially causing a serious condition called “popcorn lung” or bronchiolitis obliterans. This is a condition that affects the smallest airways of the lungs and can lead to coughing and shortness of breath.

There are more than 7,000 flavours of vapes available on the market.
Michael Kemp/Alamy

There’s also some evidence that these flavourings, which are often highly concentrated in the vape aerosol, can harm cells in the body.

The Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association is the national body representing the flavour industry in the US. It has raised concerns about how well vape flavourings are tested for safety, particularly for inhalation purposes.

This is important because some flavourings, like diacetyl, which can be used to give a butter-like flavour to food, seem harmless when you eat them but can cause serious lung problems if inhaled. This is a chemical linked with popcorn lung, which has been seen in workers exposed to high levels of diacetyl in food factories. As a result, major popcorn manufacturers have removed diacetyl from their products. But it is still available in vapes.

The process of extracting nicotine from tobacco can leave behind other chemicals like nornicotine and residues such as cotinine. And improper handling or storage of these substances can create impurities that are harmful to health.

Even if a vape liquid is advertised as being nicotine-free, it might still contain chemicals called nitrosamines, which are known to cause cancer.

Is a ban on disposable vapes enough?

The forthcoming ban on disposable vapes in England, Scotland and Wales may not be enough to deal with the problem. With more than 400 vape brands already on the market, a more comprehensive approach is needed.

This should include a crackdown on adults buying vapes for young people and prominent health warnings displayed both online and in stores that are as clear as those on cigarette packs.

Read more:
To stop teenagers vaping they need to see it as cringe, not cool

We also need restrictions on flavours that target young people, stricter age verification for all vape sales and regulations that cover not just the nicotine content but also the ingredients and packaging of nicotine-free vapes.

The continued monitoring of the safety of these products is also vital, particularly in light of the loopholes exploited by “rogue firms” providing children with complimentary samples of nicotine-free vapes.

Anyone considering vaping as a way to quit smoking should aim to eventually stop vaping altogether, not just switch one habit for another. Vaping isn’t risk free for non-smokers and can have harmful health effects, especially on young people. Läs mer…

How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been pottery sherds, burial sites and ancient texts.

But the study of ancient DNA is changing what we know about the human past, and what we can know. In a new study, we analysed the genetics of hundreds of people who lived in the Carpathian Basin in southeastern central Europe more than 1,000 years ago, revealing detailed family trees, pictures of a complex society, and stories of change over centuries.

Who were the Avars?

The Avars were a nomadic people originating from eastern central Asia. From the 6th to the 9th century CE, they wielded power over much of eastern central Europe.

A gold earring from a 7th-century female grave at the Rákóczifalva site, Hungary.
Hungarian National Museum, CC BY

The Avars are renowned among archaeologists for their distinctive belt garnitures, but their broader legacy has been overshadowed by predecessors such as the Huns. Nevertheless, Avar burial sites provide invaluable insights into their customs and way of life. To date, archaeologists have excavated more than 100,000 Avar graves.

Now, through the lens of “archaeogenetics”, we can delve even deeper into the intricate web of relationships among individuals who lived more than a millennium ago.

Kinship patterns, social practices and population dynamics

Much of what we know about Avar society comes from descriptions written by their enemies, such as the Byzantines and the Franks, so this work represents a significant leap forward in our understanding.

We combined ancient DNA data with archaeological, anthropological and historical context. As a result, we have been able to reconstruct extensive pedigrees, shedding light on kinship patterns, social practices and population dynamics of this enigmatic period.

Excavations at the cemetery of Rákóczifalva, Hungary in 2006.
Hungarian National Museum, CC BY

We sampled all available human remains from four fully excavated Avar-era cemeteries, including those at Rákóczifalva and Hajdúnánás in what is now Hungary. This resulted in a meticulous analysis of 424 individuals.

Around 300 of these individuals had close relatives buried in the same cemetery. This allowed us to reconstruct multiple extensive pedigrees spanning up to nine generations and 250 years.

Communities were organised around main fathers’ lines

Our research uncovered a sophisticated social framework. Our results suggest Avar society ran on a strict system of descent through the father’s line (patrilineal descent).

Following marriage, men typically remained within their paternal community, preserving the lineage continuity. In contrast, women played a crucial role in fostering social ties by marrying outside their family’s community. This practice, called female exogamy, underscores the pivotal contribution of women in maintaining social cohesion.

Additionally, our study identified instances where closely related male individuals, such as siblings or a father and son, had offspring with the same female partner. Such couplings are called “levirate unions”.

Read more:
In a Stone Age cemetery, DNA reveals a treasured ’founding father’ and a legacy of prosperity for his sons

Despite these practices, we found no evidence of pairings between genetically related people. This suggests Avar societies meticulously preserved an ancestral memory.

These findings align with historical and anthropological evidence from societies of the Eurasian steppe.

Our study also revealed a transition in the main line of descent within Rákóczifalva, when one pedigree took over from another. This occurred together with archaeological and dietary shifts likely linked to political changes in the region.

The transition, though significant, cannot be detected from higher-level genetic studies. Our results show an apparent genetic continuity can mask the replacement of entire communities. This insight may have far-reaching implications for future archaeological and genetic research.

Future direction of research

Our study, carried out with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, is part of a larger project called HistoGenes funded by the European Research Council.

This project shows we can use ancient DNA to examine entire communities, rather than just individuals. We think there is a lot more we can learn.

An expert at work harvesting ancient DNA from a human bone.
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Now we aim to deepen our understanding of ancestral Avar society by expanding our research over a wider geographical area within the Avar realm. This broader scope will allow us to investigate the origins of the women who married into the communities we have studied. We hope it will also illuminate the connections between communities in greater detail.

Additionally, we plan to study evidence of pathogens and disease among the individuals in this research, to understand more about their health and lives.

Read more:
Ancient DNA reveals children with Down syndrome in past societies. What can their burials tell us about their lives?

Another avenue of research is improving the dating of Avar sites. We are currently analysing multiple radiocarbon dates from individual burials to reveal a more precise timeline of Avar society. This detailed chronology will help us pinpoint significant cultural changes and interactions with neighbouring societies.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions to this work of Zsófia Rácz, Tivadar Vida, Johannes Krause and Zuzana Hofmanová. Läs mer…