According to expectancy theory, people eat food that they expect will bring positive emotions. The present research aimed to identify food and non-alcoholic beverages UK adults most expected to bring positive emotions; test influences of high fat, salt and/or sugar (HFSS) and branding on expectancies; and investigate associations of expectancies with diet quality and comfort eating (i.e. eating induced by negative emotions). A representative sample of UK adults (n 1203; Mage = 47 years; 52 % women; 87 % white) viewed food and non-alcoholic beverage images and completed the Anticipated Effects of Food Scale-Brief, a food frequency questionnaire, and questions about comfort eating and sociodemographic background. We ranked means of positive expectancies, conducted multilevel modelling to test influences of HFSS and branding on expectancies and examined correlations among expectancies, diet quality and comfort eating. Participants more strongly expected eating branded HFSS (e.g. Cadbury Twirl chocolate) v. generic non-HFSS (e.g. prawn curry) would result in positive emotions [b = 0·10, se = 0·04, p = ·02, 95 % CI (0·02, 0·18)]. Greater positive expectancies for HFSS – branded and generic – were associated with worse diet quality, especially positive expectancies for ice cream sundaes, fizzy drinks and chocolate (rs = –0·14 to −0·19, ps < ·001). Greater positive expectancies for HFSS and negative expectancies for HFSS and non-HFSS were associated with more frequent comfort eating (rs = 0·08 to 0·30, ps < ·05). Targeting positive HFSS expectancies through food environment policy and behavioural programmes may be a promising strategy for improving diet quality and reducing comfort eating in the UK adult population. Adults who comfort eat may also benefit from challenging negative expectancies for all foods.

Engaging with International Political Economy scholarship on crisis, this article emphasises the need for a social reproduction approach that recognises the socially necessary labour that sustains life within conditions of everyday crisis. We set out a context-sensitive understanding of crisis, attentive to place-based struggles, and long-standing gendered, class, and racialised inequalities – an approach that chimes with calls for greater pluralism and engagement with diverse contexts in the development of social reproduction theorising. Our argument is illustrated through two cases: one from post-war Sri Lanka and the other from the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seemingly distinct, these cases enable reflection on the development of social reproduction approaches grounded in the everyday spaces of both Global South and Global North. We suggest that there is something particularly productive in holding these geographies together in a discussion of crisis. Together, our cases demonstrate how crisis is entangled with the ongoing undermining of social reproduction. At the same time, the comparison keeps in view the multiscalar nature of crisis, showing how crises of social reproduction take shape through wider processes of state restructuring, colonial legacies, and geopolitics, while also recognising the forms of agency exercised in everyday efforts to sustain life.

Malaysia is a rapidly ageing country. Relative to the United Kingdom, its social protection systems are underdeveloped. What is more, its political structure and social practices are different from those of the United Kingdom. Accordingly, the political economy of ageing seems to suggest a stark contrast when the two countries are considered alongside one another. Nevertheless, when programmes concerning income for the retired and the provision of care services for the frail elderly are considered, there are more similarities than might have been expected. Both countries face problems with inadequate pension coverage, and the paper considers how more of the self-employed might be brought into savings plans. In both countries, there is debate on whether pension savings should be directed towards investments in the domestic economy. Both countries face a rapid increase in the number of the ‘oldest old’—those most likely to need support, and policymakers are asking themselves how provision for these people should be improved. This article points out how fiscal constraints have led policymakers in the United Kingdom as well as in Malaysia to encourage the family to increase the part they can play. But in both countries, family members, especially women, are no longer willing, or even able, to carry out ‘traditional’ roles. There are lessons to be learnt in both directions. Moreover, in both countries, more attention should be devoted to understanding and explaining the economic and societal consequences of demographic change.

As an increasing number of psychiatrists complete training in the UK and move into post-qualification specialist practice in Canada, challenges can arise with adaptation and professional recognition. In this reflection, we examine our experiences over the past 5 years working in and delivering undergraduate and postgraduate medical education in Canada. Patients recognise the unique value of UK psychiatry training; however, this training can also present challenges. We explore some of these issues across the domains of undergraduate medical education, postgraduate psychiatry education and post-qualification specialist practice, using a comparative narrative.

The ongoing revolution in the field of genome editing (GE) has ignited intense debate around new genomic techniques (NGTs) in Europe. Their societal and ecological implications underscore their critical importance. However, the development and implementation of NGTs present significant challenges from a democratic perspective. Amid calls for democratizing NGTs governance, democratic innovations have been proposed as potential solutions. This paper investigates the efficacy of democratic innovations in democratizing NGT governance within the European context. Employing an assemblage democracy approach, we conduct an in-depth analysis of online documents and activities related to two important public engagement processes addressing NGTs in France and the United Kingdom. Our findings reveal context-specific challenges in each country and propose potential remedies to enhance democratization efforts. This research contributes to the ongoing debate on science governance and participatory democracy in Europe, offering insights for scholars engaged in the intersection of emerging technologies and democratic processes.

This article critically appraises the UK Labour government’s early approach to parental leave reform following the 2024 election, comparing pre-election promises with post-election policy directions. Drawing on Daly’s conceptualisation of care as a policy good (Daly, 2002), we analyse Labour’s reforms across three overlapping dimensions central to their pre-election pledges: access and pay levels, leave design and entitlements, and inclusion of diverse families. We argue that Labour’s current approach adheres to liberal welfare principles, with market-oriented reforms prioritising economic productivity over care provision, perpetuating implicit maternalism while systematically excluding working-class, minority ethnic, and self and precariously employed families. In contrast, care-centred approaches pioneered elsewhere in Europe demonstrate that gender equality, social inclusion, and economic productivity are mutually reinforcing rather than competing objectives. Echoing calls from the Women and Equalities Committee for transformative change, we argue that Labour’s incremental approach cannot achieve reforms that work for parents or the economy without embracing care-centred policies.

Lameness remains an ongoing challenge to the health and welfare of UK sheep flocks. Whilst effective recommended practice exists in the UK in the form of the five-point plan (5PP), it is not always used or used effectively, particularly in relation to culling. A more in-depth understanding of farmer lameness management behaviours and decision-making is crucial for driving positive change. Behaviour change frameworks offer useful tools to do this, specifically the Behaviour Change Wheel and its central tenets of capability, opportunity and motivation (COM-B). This research sought to explore on-farm management practices surrounding lameness, particularly focused on the 5PP and culling in relation to COM-B. Findings are drawn from five online focus groups with UK farmers (n = 19) and one with veterinarians (n = 4). Thematic analysis led to the identification of themes in relation to the role of capability, opportunity and motivation to enact the steps of the 5PP, particularly culling. Culling, alongside prompt treatment, were the only tools used by all participants. Yet, culling practices did not always follow recommended advice. Factors that influenced behaviours included those self-controlled by farmers, e.g. records kept; outside of their control, e.g. space available, and those controlled by other actors, such as market prices. Considerations of the individual farm and the wider UK sheep sector context were important. Findings suggest a need for interventions aimed at encouraging good record-keeping, collective industry action against lameness and opportunities for vet-farmer interactions. These should be pursued together to achieve the goal of reducing lameness and subsequently improving sheep welfare.

In 2024, the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the UK Parliament published a report entitled Misogyny in Music. It included the recommendations that ‘music colleges, conservatoires and other educational settings need to do more to address the gendering of instruments, roles and genres and improve the visibility of and support for female role models’. While there is a dearth of policy levers available to implement this recommendation, this article critically analyses three existing policy/regulatory frameworks that could be used for its implementation in England. The article also highlights a significant limitation of the report – its exclusion of trans and non-binary musicians.

In a time of polycrisis, internal contestation, and strained transatlantic relations, European identity is timelier and more relevant than ever. Do EU public policies operating in a multilevel governance system contribute to European identity-building, and what can jeopardise the process of identity formation at the level of policy elites? The article adopts a social constructivist and discursive approach and brings to the fore the lacking process of EU socialisation via discursive practices as a key reason leading to failed identity-building. Focusing on EU Cohesion Policy in Wales (UK), Crete (Greece), and Silesia (Poland), the analysis employs primary data and grey literature sources, along with 64 semistructured elite interviews, to show that, despite key differences among the three cases, Cohesion Policy has not contributed significantly to European identity-building among policy elites at different government levels and among the public. This is because the coordinative discourse about EU policies is dominated by ideas about economic goals and practical aspects of policy-making, while the respective communicative discourse is controlled by domestic political elites and the media and is ultimately determined by broader national/regional political cultures about the purpose and limitations of EU membership. Overall, the article contributes to the literature on European identity-building, EU socialisation, and discourse by arguing that the way EU public policies are designed, implemented, and communicated do not favour the achievement of political goals, such as the cultivation of a shared European identity.

Charitable status is inherently linked in many jurisdictions with the requirement that an entity must be established for public benefit. But, until recently the public benefit principle had relatively little impact on the operations of most established charities. However, in England and Wales, reforms linked to the Charities Act 2006 led to a new requirement for public benefit reporting in the trustees’ annual report (TAR) of every registered charity. This new narrative reporting requirement had the potential to affect the understanding of accountability by charities. The paper investigates the impact of that requirement through a study of over 1,400 sets of charity reports and accounts and subsequent qualitative work with trustees and others involved in preparing TARs.

This article reviews recent non-statutory attempts at charity fundraising regulation in the UK and Ireland. It explores the definition of success for each regime and examines whether broader policy lessons for fundraising regulation may be learnt from these implementation experiences to date. To this end, the article compares the UK framework for fundraising regulation (via the Fundraising Standards Board) with recent Irish proposals for non-statutory regulation. It also identifies the key challenges facing each regime. The article draws upon current Canadian, Dutch and American regulatory experiences and benchmarks these alternative non-statutory efforts against the Anglo-Irish models by way of comparative analysis. The article tackles the broader question of how we measure success in regulatory terms and argues for better identification of the constituency to be regulated, thereby enabling prioritisation of the salient performance indicators that should be included in any non-statutory framework.