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Major Tory donor investigated over fraud and money laundering allegations

Indian rice tycoon Karan Chanana, who gave the Conservatives more than £220,000, is under scrutiny by India’s finance ministry

Conservative donor Karan Chanana, an Indian rice magnate, is being investigated by his country’s finance ministry over alleged fraud and money laundering. 

Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Image

Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Solomon Hughes

THE OBSERVER

Sat 20 May 2023 

A leading Tory donor who has given more than £220,000 to the party is being investigated over allegations of fraud and money laundering.

Karan Chanana, head of the global rice brand Amira, is being investigated in India over claims that tens of millions of pounds of bank loans were unlawfully diverted into shell entities. Chanana has not responded to the claims.

The allegations come as the UK government faces mounting pressure to tighten up rules on foreign donations and improve diligence checks. The Conservatives face calls this weekend to freeze the money donated by Chanana, pending an inquiry.

The enforcement directorate in India, which is part of the country’s finance ministry, said it conducted search operations on 2 May at 21 locations in India connected to Chanana, the Indian company Amira Pure Foods and other parties.

Nearly £100,000 in Indian currency was seized in the searches, which were conducted under India’s Prevention of Money Laundering Act, said the directorate. No charges have been filed to date.

In a statement, the enforcement directorate said: “Investigations revealed that the accused entities in connivance with each other as well as other related/unrelated entities have illegally diverted loan funds sanctioned by the consortium of banks by way of transferring loan funds into the accounts of various shell entities under the guise of genuine business transactions.

“It was also known that Karan A Chanana had donated to a political party of [the] United Kingdom since 2019 … while the accused entity had itself defaulted on repayment loans.”

Chanana, 50, has been credited with transforming a family business into a global conglomerate.

His company Amira Nature Foods was listed on the New York stock exchange in October 2012, specialising in Indian basmati rice grown in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Chanana, its chairman and chief executive, operated the business from its headquarters in the 35-storey Gold Tower in Dubai, while its official company registration was in the British Virgin Islands.

Its subsidiaries included Amira Pure Foods in India, now under investigation, and Amira G Foods in the UK, according to corporate filings.

Amira G Foods, controlled by Chanana, donated £222,104 to the Conservative party between September 2019 and December 2021.The latest accounts for the UK company show net liabilities of £5.96m, with its parent company in the British Virgin Islands providing financial support.

Amira Nature Foods was delisted from the New York stock exchange in August 2020 after it missed deadlines for filing financial information.

A consortium of banks, headed by India’s Canara Bank, filed an information report with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation in November 2020 alleging bank fraud.

It accused New Delhi-based Amira Pure Foods, Chanana and his fellow directors of “wrongfully and dishonestly” transferring loans into “paper companies” between 2009 and 2018, causing wrongful bank losses of more than £116m. Amira Pure Foods in India is now under liquidation.

The enforcement directorate said it initiated its investigation based on the information report filed by the banks. It says further inquiries are continuing, and did not respond to a request for comment last week.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP and chair of the all-party group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, said the Conservative party should now establish the source of the funds donated by Amira and freeze the money until the inquiries are completed.

She said new reforms were required for election finance to ensure more effective checks on political donors. Hodge added: “The Tories have been too dependent on major donors and have not been doing proper checks. They should now be forced to do so by new legislation.”

The BBC last week reported that, along with the Evening Standard, it had won a legal battle to name a Conservative donor whose foreign companies were named in connection with a global money-laundering case. The donor, Javad Marandi, has denied any wrongdoing and is not subject to criminal sanction.

Marandi’s legal representatives said last week that he had not been investigated or questioned by the authorities. His lawyers previously said that funds transferred to his companies “were lawfully earned, and lawfully transferred, and there is no question of money laundering”.

The case prompted an urgent parliamentary question by the Scottish National party MP Alison Thewliss on the implications of the case. Chris Philp, the minister for crime, policing and fire, responded that the government could not comment on investigations by law enforcement.

The Electoral Commission said it had recommended the government consider how to improve controls to prevent foreign money being used in UK politics and to enhance checks. A spokesperson said: “Companies don’t need to show that they have made enough money in the UK to give to [parties]. We have been recommending that this situation needs to be reviewed.”

“We have also recommended that the UK government should introduce a duty on parties for enhanced due diligence and risk-assessment of donations, adapted from money-laundering regulations.”

A Tory party spokesperson said: “The Conservative party only accepts donations from permissible sources, namely individuals registered on the UK’s electoral roll or UK-registered companies.

“Donations are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission, openly published by them and comply fully with the law.”

Chanana and Amira Nature Foods did not respond to a request for comment.

Nobel winners demand release of Belarusian peace laureate Ales Bialiatski

Open letter condemning the detention of the human rights activist, who won the 2022 prize, signed by more than 100 laureates including Kazuo Ishiguro and JM Coetzee

Sarah Shaffi

THE GUARDIAN

Sun 21 May 2023 

More than 100 Nobel laureates, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Olga Tokarczuk and JM Coetzee, have called for the release of Nobel peace prize winner Ales Bialiatski and said they “stand with the fearless people of Belarus who continue to fight for their human rights”.

Bialiatski founded an organisation called Viasna (Spring) to provide support for demonstrators who were jailed after protesting against dictatorial powers granted to Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko following a constitutional amendment in 1996.

After its founding, Viasna evolved into a human rights organisation that documents the authorities’ abuses against and torture of political prisoners.

Bialiatski’s work has seen him targeted by the authorities: he was jailed in 2011 for alleged tax evasion by the government, and released in 2014. But in 2021, the year after an election led to protests against Lukashenko’s dictatorship, Bialiatski was again jailed, this time without trial or conviction.


Belarus jails Nobel peace prize-winning dissident Ales Bialiatski

The Nobel peace prize was conferred on him in 2022, during his detention. Since then, he has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Now, 103 Nobel Laureates have signed an open letter from Pen International expressing solidarity with Bialiatski and condemning the actions of the Belarusian president.

The letter, also signed by authors including Svetlana Alexievich, Mario Vargas Llosa and Annie Ernaux, says that Bialiatski “has devoted his life to the promotion of democracy and human rights in Belarus.

“He has dared to hold President Lukashenko accountable for his brutal, relentless and systematic crackdown on independent voices,” continued the letter. “For this, he is paying the heaviest price: 10 years in prison on spurious grounds.

“Bialiatski is a symbol of hope and an inspiration to human rights defenders around the world, who should be celebrated as such.”

The signatories say they stand with Bialiatski and the fellow members of Viasna – Marfa Rabkova, Valiantsin Stefanovich, Uladzimir Labkovich, Leanid Sudalenka, Andrei Chapiuk – who have also been imprisoned.

“We stand with the multitude of writers, journalists, cultural workers, human rights defenders and citizens of Belarus who are serving lengthy prison terms merely for peacefully expressing their views and speaking truth to power,” the letter said. “We stand with the fearless people of Belarus who continue to fight for their human rights.”

Bialiatski won the Nobel peace prize jointly with the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties. The citation for the prize said they demonstrated “the significance of civil society for peace and democracy”.

Trudeau’s wide-stance pose with Korean politician splits critics



Korean media praises prime minister’s gesture, known as ‘manner legs’, while some Canadians say it is embarrassing country

Leyland Cecco in Toronto

THE GUARDIAN

Fri 19 May 2023

Justin Trudeau’s hair has made international headlines, as have his fumbling handshakes and propensity to appear shirtless when cameras are near. Now, the Canadian prime minister’s well-mannered legs are getting their moment in the spotlight

Ahead of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Trudeau and a delegation of Canadian ministers were in South Korea to celebrate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries, as well as an attempt to salvage a multibillion-dollar battery plant deal.

Before giving a speech to the national assembly, Trudeau posed for photographs with Korean politicians, including with the national assembly speaker, Kim Jin-pyo.

Amid the clatter of camera shutters, Kim raised on his tiptoes, poking fun at the 20cm (8in) height gap between the two leaders.

Justin Trudeau’s greetings: from 'manner legs' to the three-way handshake – video

Trudeau bent momentarily down to Kim’s level, prompting laughter from the Korean delegation. He then spread his legs to put himself at a similar altitude to Kim, a move known in South Korea as “manner legs”, meant to level the height between two people.

Korean media largely praised the gesture, with the outlet Chosun calling it a “heartwarming scene” and YTN suggesting it showed a “caring” mindset.

The Canadian conservative outlet True North, however, wrote the meeting had “some Canadians accusing Trudeau of embarrassing Canada while abroad once again”.

It was not the first time the prime minister’s greetings with political leaders have received attention.

In February, a handshake with the Alberta premier, Danielle Smith, a fierce critic of the prime minister, quickly devolved into an awkward fumble.


Canada’s Justin Trudeau greets political opponent with awkward handshake

Trudeau was also the first to effectively dodge former president Donald Trump’s forceful handshake strategy that left world leaders and political rivals looking bewildered. In their first meeting in 2017, Trudeau put a hand on Trump’s shoulder to brace himself.

And in 2016, Trudeau attempted to shake hands with former presidents Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, awkwardly crossing his arms over and grabbing Peña Nieto’s wrong hand.

In his visit to Seoul, Trudeau also met with President Yoon Suk Yeol, pitching greater collaboration between the two nations, but also drawing distinctions over how the countries pursue gender equality and child care policies.

As part of the state visit, Trudeau visited the grave of Frank Schofield, a Canadian missionary who supported Korean independence from the Japanese empire and is the the first foreigner buried in the Seoul National Cemetery.

‘It was utterly surreal’: police accused of farcical error after 14 arrested at seminar on day of coronation


Primary teacher and ex-civil servant were among those attending class. Here they recount what happened

Daniel Boffey Chief reporter

THE GUARDIAN

Sun 21 May 2023

“I felt that they knew by the time they had taken us to the station in the van that they had the wrong people,” said Lauren, 26, a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry.

The post-coronation wash-up over the last fortnight has been marked by an array of surreal stories of bungled arrests, from the republican activists swept up by police for possession of luggage straps to the pro-monarchy Australian architect who had been simply seeking to enjoy a pleasant day out at Westminster Abbey.

It has been notable that in each of those cases, after intense media attention, the Metropolitan police has since admitted some regret and announced that no further action would be taken.


‘It massively backfired’: Republicanism in spotlight after arrests

On the subject of a third raid that morning in Haggerston, east London, about five miles away from the coronation at Westminster Abbey, where shortly before 10.30am 14 people were arrested “on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”, there has been no such candour from Scotland Yard.

Today, in a frank and occasionally humorous account of the day, despite the clear shock those involved continue to feel, Lauren and those detained alongside her – including a primary school teacher, an owner of an animal rescue centre and a former senior civil servant – ask that Scotland Yard breaks its silence about what they say was manifestly a farcical case of mistaken identity.

The group, almost entirely female or non-binary, aged between their mid-20s and late 60s and largely new to activism, let alone its more extreme manifestations, were arrested on suspicion of being a Just Stop Oil cell intent on disrupting the crowning of Charles III.

In reality, they had gathered in a small nondescript room in a rented work space in east London for a seven-hour seminar about the theory, history and practice of non-violent protest after expressing an interest in the social activist group Animal Rising, largely via its website.

“I was there to actually avoid the coronation,” said Tony Jenkins, 58, the only male attender, who runs South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty. His last involvement with the police was when working alongside officers in Operation Takahe as they sought to track down the so-called Croydon cat killer.

“It was utterly surreal,” said Caitlin, 29, from Finsbury Park, north London, who until a few weeks before her arrest – her first – had been a civil servant with high-level of security clearance. “I had almost brought my husband and dog along, and I am glad I didn’t because I don’t know what I would have done with the dog.”

Louisa Hillwood, 29, a primary school teacher in Hackney, was due to lead the “non-violent protest” training course that day from 10.30am to 5pm. She had attended a couple of the sessions herself and was comparatively experienced. There was coffee and tea on hand for people as they drifted into the ground-floor room. A whiteboard had “non-violent training” written across it.

The morning would be given over to introductions. Each of the group, sat in chairs in a circle, would be asked to speak of their hopes and fears about protesting and in relation to the day of quite intense and – dare it be said – quite dry learning ahead of them.

A discussion about the history of non-violent protest, taking in the civil rights movement, and then some pointers on their rights, would follow. The highlight of the day, for those looking for some action, would be at the end when the attenders would be invited to take part in some role play about how to react if someone is shouting abuse at you.

“It would be things like active listening, like trying to empathise with the people, but also not tolerating violence from others and ensuring that the situation doesn’t escalate,” said Hillwood.

“None of us had met before, I still didn’t even know most of their names and then about 10.25, we hear ‘police, police, we are coming in’,” recalled Hillwood, who had been arrested once before at a “rescue” of dogs last year from a breeding centre used by the medical researchers.

About 25 officers swarmed around the seated group, with all the drama of a terrorist swoop.

“They were all talking at once, saying you are under arrest, so I couldn’t hear why,” Hillwood said. “I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ Because they were saying that we were Just Stop Oil and that we were going to disrupt the coronation. And I was just like: ‘Absolutely not. I mean, we’re miles away. And we’re going to be here all day. We’ve got no intention of leaving.’” By this time, the king’s procession was already arriving at Westminster Abbey.

Jenkins was told not to sip his coffee. “The officer said: ‘You can’t do that, it could be poisoned or something.’ And then we were searched.” Only two of the 14 did not get handcuffed. There was one female officer. It took a while for her to make her way round the group. “They found my old Cabinet Office business card in my wallet, and were, ‘Ehm, OK’,” said Caitlin.

They were put in minivans outside the building, with eight of the group taken to Brixton police station in south London and six to Stoke Newington in north London. Hillwood was sat in the vehicle for hour and a half before disembarking in Brixton. There was a further 90-minute wait outside the station before being checked in at the custody desk.

It was 4pm by the time Hillwood was led to her cell. She asked for her solicitor and was served a vegan “all day breakfast”.“It was literally beans,” Hillwood said. A solicitor advised her to offer no comment to the officers’ questions.

But when it came to his turn, Jenkins felt no such compunction. “I said my intention was to sit in an all day training course learn about non-violent protests, meet some new people and avoid the coronation.”

The group were let out late in the evening on bail pending further investigation. Those arrested have since tried to piece together what may have happened. They learned that Just Stop Oil had previously used the building for meetings, along with many other organisations.

The police had mentioned some placards lying around in part of the building, and some paint unconnected to the training. The truth, said Caitlin, was that it was a horrible bungle. Animal Rising is planning a civil case for wrongful arrest and imprisonment. “I want the police to drop it,” said Caitlin. “I want my phone and my watch back and I want this wiped from the police database.”

The Metropolitan police has declined to comment.

Farewell, racial stereotypes. Now we have the true tale of an Indian princess turned suffragette

South Asian actors are at last leaving behind terrorist roles for ones drawn from history

Sophia Duleep Singh selling a suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace in 1910. 

Photograph: Alamy

Anjli Mohindra

THE GUARDIAN

Sun 21 May 2023

My first major role on an award-winning, crowd-rousing, primetime British television show, Bodyguard, as the suicide-bomber Nadia, became a national talking point on the portrayal of South Asian women on screen. To be the poster person of this timely moment of discourse felt terrifying. It made me question my internal GPS: what was my own position in this global conversation on representation?

I did what actors do – I humanised the character before me. But the bigger picture was that the industry was ready for a shift; no longer was the terrorist trope only frustrating for us brown folk, it had become a wider issue.

As reductive as it feels, for many South Asian actors of my generation, playing stereotypes had become a rite of passage: you held your breath and got on with it. Then, once you’d scaled the ladder high enough to be taken seriously, you could use your platform for change. You could even be brave enough, or naive enough, to take matters into your own hands by building your own offshoot ladder while simultaneously clambering – joining the small but tenacious pool of ethnic minority creatives tackling representation from the front.

Eager to tell more South Asian stories, I began screenwriting a few years ago and am working on my first series. Trying to repurpose obstacles into vaulting poles has become my new strategy, and this is exactly what the subject of my upcoming writing project, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, did 100 years ago. As the daughter of the last Maharajah of Punjab, and goddaughter of Queen Victoria, Sophia’s life was nothing short of extraordinary: her actions so bold and anarchic that the press were urged to keep them under wraps lest it cause a royal scandal and tarnish the British crown.

One might have understood their need for positive optics after refusing to return the north Indian kingdom to its Punjabi king. The East India Company had been circling Punjab for decades, and, on the death of Sophia’s grandfather, King Ranjit, it had seized its opportunity. It posed as a friend, offering to help protect the young King Duleep from external threats, and then forced him and his mother, the formidable Jindan Kaur, into exile in Britain, separating him from everything he knew.

My father proudly worked for the British army as a budget manager in the UK and Germany, but years later was held at gunpoint in an attempted robbery. “Go home” was spat at him. The injustice of my dad spending decades working for his country only to be told he didn’t belong, boiled my blood. It’s been on something of a gentle simmer since. Princess Sophia’s father went through the wringer himself. His former kingdom brought a chunk of wealth to the British empire, yet in Britain, a country he was kept in against his will, he was labelled an ineligible bachelor. Though women defied convention to flirt with him, no noble family would accept his proposal of marriage – he was regarded as coming from an inferior race.

The royal office refused Duleep’s re-entry into India, fearful that his presence might spark an insurrection. Feeling trapped, he turned his attention to fashioning his British countryside home into a Moghul palace. Sophia grew up with leopards prowling in pens below her bedroom window and Indian hunting hawks falling from the sky due to the cold. Duleep eventually died alone in Paris.
From the debris of her father’s dynasty, Princess Sophia channelled her fury into becoming patron saint of the underdog

From the debris of her father’s defalcated dynasty (a Game of Thrones-esque story in itself), Sophia channelled her fury into becoming the patron saint of the underdog. She built shelters for neglected migrant workers, treated wounded Indian soldiers (more than a million of whom fought for Britain in the First World War), and battled for the advancement of women both British and Indian.

While her sister Catherine and her partner, Lina, hid Jewish children from the Nazis and her other sister, Bamba, trained to become one of the first female doctors, Sophia was busy in London throwing herself at the prime minister’s car, smacking a “Votes for Women” poster on to his windscreen. It’s no wonder Winston Churchill labelled Sophia “a dangerous woman”. For many South Asians, seeing the brilliant Sharma sisters lighting up our screens in Bridgerton has been thrilling. Those who cry “woke!” may call it unnecessary “diversity” casting, but the truth is the Duleep-Singhs were out there in their silken skirts making major moves.

Statues are being felled as my generation hungers for the truth; the time has never felt riper for stories like Sophia’s. We’ve had flying nannies with magical handbags, talking cars and time-travelling doctors. I almost can’t believe there was a real-life British Indian heroine who did incredible things in the face of adversity. Her story might have been lost were it not for trailblazing Anita Anand, whose “Punjab-(ra)dar” homed in on a sepia photograph of Sophia, prompting years-long research that she compiled into her book, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary. On Friday, Sophia will be officially commemorated with a blue plaque, at her former home Faraday House, opposite Hampton Court Palace in London.

Sophia features on Anand and William Dalrymple’s podcast Empire (with its millions of downloads) and with mainstream successes of books such as Sathnam Sanghera’s Empireland it’s clear there is an appetite beyond South Asians for this story. Throw in the fact that the Koh-i-noor diamond (formerly in the possession of Sophia’s forefathers) has made global news, with many calling for the world’s most valuable diamond to be returned to India after the death of Queen Elizabeth II: Sophia’s story is a veritable goldmine.

From Never Have I Ever and Ms Marvel to Wedding Season, there’s been an exciting shift. The world’s first brown female superhero and stories that centre Indian characters are hugely important steps for South Asian kids the world over to feel seen and to know that the opportunities afforded their white counterparts are within their reach too. As Marian Wright Edelman said, “you can’t be what you can’t see”. Even if some of these shows are for audiences that the navigation system would flag as “American”, I feel hopeful that the waves will lap the industry here too. Let’s pole-vault our way into the reality we’re hungry for: game-changing South Asian women at the fore and cue the lights up on the incredible Princess Sophia Duleep Singh.

Anjli Mohindra is an actor and writer

The uncounted: how millions died unseen in America’s post-9/11 wars

 

A new report puts the loss of life from Afghanistan to Yemen at 4.5 million – the bulk of them poor women and children who are victims of economic collapse and continuing trauma

Simon Tisdall

THE GUARDIAN
Sun 21 May 2023 

Abdoulaye is a lost child of the post-9/11 world – one among millions. Born into a village community displaced by Islamist violence, he and his family found refuge in an abandoned school near Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Weakened by malnutrition and anaemia, Abdoulaye, 3, contracted malaria. Despite frantic efforts to save him, he died, unremarked and unknown to the world at large.

“Abdoulaye is doubly uncounted: as a displaced person and as a war death,” writes Stephanie Savell, a cultural anthropologist, recalling his brief life in a disturbing new report that reveals the vast, unacknowledged human costs of contemporary global warfare. “Though he is mourned by his family and his community, officially, he never existed. His story is emblematic of how this kind of death, and its omission in counts of the dead, happens in any number of conflicts.”

Savell’s report, How Death Outlives War: The Reverberating Impact of the Post-9/11 Wars on Human Health, published by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, focuses on what she terms “indirect deaths” – caused not by outright violence but by consequent, ensuing economic collapse, loss of livelihoods, food insecurity, destruction of public health services, environmental contamination and continuing trauma, including mental health problems, domestic and sexual abuse and displacement.

Calculated this way, the total number of deaths that occurred as a result of post-9/11 warfare in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia rises dramatically from an upper estimate of 937,000 to at least 4.5 million, of which up to 3.6 million were “indirect deaths”. Such deaths grow in scale over time. In Afghanistan, where the war ignited by the 2001 US-led invasion ended in 2021, the indirect death toll and related health problems are still rising.
Levels of child malnutrition are indicators of the scale of war-related damageStephanie Savell, anthropologist

Experts suggest “a reasonable, conservative average estimate for any contemporary conflict is a ratio of four indirect deaths for every one direct death”, Savell says. The poorer the population, the higher the resulting indirect mortality when conflict erupts. “Indirect deaths are devastating, not least because so many of them could be prevented, were it not for war,” she writes. Generally speaking, men are more likely to die in combat. Women and children are disproportionately affected indirectly.

Savell does not attempt to apportion blame between various actors, although the US, which launched the “global war on terror” in 2001, bears heavy responsibility. She concedes that establishing definitive figures for war deaths of any kind is problematic and politically contested. Using the best available sources and data, her aim, she says, is to expand awareness of the fuller human costs of these wars and support calls for governments to alleviate continuing harms.

“The mental health effects of war reverberate through generations, impacting parents and children, and then their children after that. Estimates [suggest] … anxiety and depression are two to four times greater among conflict-affected populations than the global average,” she writes. “Women tend to suffer [these effects] more acutely due to gender-based violence, which is heightened in wartime. In Iraq, rape and sexual violence increased sharply after 2003 [when the US and UK invaded] … Children are also particularly vulnerable. [Those] who experience high levels of collective violence are twice as likely to develop chronic diseases.”

Levels of child malnutrition are indicators of the scale of war-related damage. “More than 7.6 million children under five are suffering from acute malnutrition, or wasting, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia,” the report estimates. “‘Wasting’ means not getting enough food, literally wasting to skin and bones, putting these children at greater risk of death, including from … weakened immune systems.”

In Afghanistan specifically, where the economy has collapsed after the Taliban takeover, more than half the population now lives in extreme poverty. Tens of thousands of children under five are dying of preventable diseases such as cholera and measles, of acute malnutrition and neonatal complications. “As much as anyone killed by an airstrike or a gunshot wound, their deaths must be counted among the costs of war,” the report says.

This scrupulously compiled examination of war’s unconsidered, long-term lethal impacts has great power to shock. In Pakistan, for example, between 2004 and 2010, the US conducted “double-tap” drone strikes, mostly on Pashtun villages in Waziristan, along the Afghan border, in which a second strike targeted people rushing to help victims of an initial bombing.

“Reports document that residents of these regions suffered from PTSD, chronic anxiety and constant fear,” Savell writes. “A local resident explained: ‘God knows whether they’ll strike us again or not. But they’re always surveying us, they’re always over us, and you never know when they’re going to strike.’” Untreated, such trauma is debilitating and unceasing.

In many conflict zones, deliberate attacks on healthcare facilities are a favoured tactic. Both direct and indirect deaths result. At one point in Syria’s civil war, according to a 2019 study quoted in the report, “each attack on a healthcare facility corresponded to an estimated 260 reported civilian casualties in the same month”, because of the resulting non-availability of medical assistance.

Displacement is another big driver of indirect deaths, caused by physical insecurity, heightened mental stress, and abuse, exploitation and indifference suffered during attempted flights to safety. An estimated 38 million people have been displaced since 2001. Britain fought in many of these wars. As it debates tougher anti-migrant regulations, the UK must acknowledge its part in causing this crisis.

The report details many additional, lingering deathtraps, including environmental contamination, unexploded ordnance, landmines, and damage to water, sanitation and aid and food distribution systems. More research data is badly needed, Savell writes, but it’s already evident governments must do more to mend what they broke – and that “reparations … are imperative”.

Those who have died are beyond help. But for millions of adults and children still suffering the consequences of the post-9/11 conflicts, the need is urgent. They are condemned to war without end.

It’s not enough for women to ‘feel’ safe in parks

The point is to change society so they really are safe

‘Bright lights in parks and shortcuts out to the street might make a handful of women feel safer, but they are unlikely to actually prevent men’s violence’: Eva Wiseman. 

Photograph: Juice Images/Alamy

Eva Wiseman
The Guardian
Sun 21 May 2023 

Last week I wrote about parks. I’ve been feeling uncommonly agitated recently, a new kind of rage bubbling in the pit of me, increasingly politicised perhaps – it’s come upon me as I approach middle age, like acid reflux or gout. And that day the sun was out and the news was thick and I focused on parks, because that was where my lividity landed. It was inevitable, perhaps, because these are the places, as a parent of young children, that I spend much of my time, cheering from the bench, bending down to look at snails. And they’re the places, too, that as a migraine-haver and reluctant runner, I circle quickly in leggings on alternate mornings, listening to podcasts about such things as miscarriages of justice or the truth about sugar.

And as in life, so in news – I’m back in the park this week, and so are the papers, to report on a conference called Women and Girls’ Safety in Parks. The takeaway is: women should be involved in the design of the UK’s parks to tackle “unfair and unequal” safety fears. Research commissioned by Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, involved interviews with more than 100 women and girls, with most reporting they felt parks were unsafe. “The girls in particular,” said Brabin, “were wonderfully individual and brutally honest, challenging us to ‘change society’ as well as reworking parks.” The conclusions were that changes to the design of parks like better lighting, lower hedges and “escape routes” could reduce the risks of harassment and assault. Environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy’s Allison Ogden-Newton said: “It’s critical that we understand what makes women and girls feel safe or unsafe across our green spaces and what needs to change to make them feel able to use their local park.”

Parks are the only urban public space, I think, dedicated to freedom. And the effort to uphold that freedom is vital

I read this expecting to be cheered, but instead I felt a familiar bleakness, and my mind immediately went to a bar in Brighton in the early 2000s where, upon entry, I was offered an anti-rape lid for my glass. It was a good night; it was a weird night, overshadowed by this grand and well-meant idea that we could prevent “date-rapists” simply by sticking something over the top of our drinks. These little lids joined a long tradition of anti-rape devices, from nail varnish that changes colour when dipped into a drink laced with Rohypnol to anti-rape underwear that is resistant to attempts at cutting, or has a siren built in. One issue with all of these devices (and there are a few issues) is that they ask potential victims to assume responsibility for their own safety and attempt only to deter individual strangers, rather than address, say, the high level of sexual violence enacted by partners. They’re not solutions, they’re distractions.


It was the suggestion, I think, that the aim of the project was to make women “feel safe” in parks that took me back to that Brighton bar. “Feel” safe, as opposed to actually “be” safe. I know, I sound dickish and ungrateful, and it’s not that I want to minimise the intentions of this project, the attempts to make things better, but God, “escape routes”? This conference and this research is a noble step towards safer parks, but it seems grimly limited by ambition and imagination. Yes, women should probably have more of a say in building our public spaces, not so they can point out the high hedges where men might hide, but because diversity in design benefits everyone. Yes, better designed parks would be welcome, but not if it means quickly cycling past the interviewed girls’ real solution, to “change society”.

Because, while the bright lights and shortcuts out to the street might make a handful of women feel safer, they are unlikely to actually prevent men’s violence. And not only that, but these adjustments to the places where we play, the places where we exercise and socialise and drink after work, these plans for escape routes, in fact, seem to suggest that this violence is something we should be prepared to live within, to live beside, to accommodate and be vigilant for every time we leave the house. The only real way to make women feel safer is to make sure they are safe.


And while it is far harder and far more complex a task to try to prevent violence by educating around gender equality, funding long-term public campaigns to shift misogynistic beliefs and counter stereotypes, giving men and boys the responsibility to actively stop male violence against women, offering positive ideas about what it means to be a man, and socialising our sons without aggression, shame or emotional repression than it is to cut down a hedge, it is surely worth a go.

There’s a reason I’m increasingly obsessed with parks, beyond the fact I’m forced to spend so much time in them. They’re the only urban public space, I think, dedicated to freedom. And the effort to uphold that freedom is vital – but only if it focuses on the fact that it’s not a dark park that makes women feel unsafe, it’s the few violent men that lurk there.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman

Constant craving: why we can’t shake the salt habit

We know it’s bad for us, so why can’t we stop sprinkling it?

Emma Beddington

The Observer
Sun 21 May 2023 

Over the years I have done some awful things for work: got up at dawn for a month; done a juice fast; eaten disgusting TikTok foods. But when I find myself contemplating going a single day without salt, my whole being mutinies – I just don’t want to. There’s a French expression, “Long like a day without bread”, and my equivalent is a day without salt: interminable, grey and tasteless.

I know, because I’ve done it before, and not just for a day. Aged 20, I was prescribed high-dose steroids for an auto-immune condition and instructed to cut out salt. I tried – I stopped salting my food and avoided everything obviously salty – and found it a joyless, despair-inducing slog. Since then, I’ve made up for lost sodium. I liberally salt food before tasting, crave olives and capers and have enthusiastically bought into the vogue for salted chocolate (literally, I buy M&S vegan hazelnut sea salt bars in bulk). My favourite drink is a dirty martini – mmm, brine – and I eat crisps every day. Since I cut out dairy, they’re my go-to treat. I gave blood yesterday and surveying the snack table afterwards, happily selected and ate a packet of Seabrook Ready Salted. At 10am.

My favourite drink is a dirty martini – mmm, brine – and I eat crisps every day

But salt is… bad? Right? Unequivocally so, according to Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine and chair of the campaigning group Action on Salt, though getting that message across is tricky. “It’s a very difficult battle because salt is seen as a normal part of our diet – it’s not. Every time you turn on the television there’s a chef adding salt – of course, they’re all salt addicts, they probably have high blood pressure. A lot of chefs have strokes.” The headline issue with salt is precisely that it raises blood pressure, increasing the risk of hypertension, the “silent killer”. “High blood pressure is the biggest cause of death in the world,” says MacGregor, adding that “60% of strokes are due to high blood pressure, and 50% of all heart disease is due to raised blood pressure.” In addition, as MacGregor explains, salt can increase your susceptibility to stomach cancer and a high salt intake causes you to excrete more calcium. “That makes it much more likely that you’ll get bone thinning as you get older.” Excess sodium can increase your susceptibility to kidney stones and, he says, according to research, “There seems to be a link between high salt intake and loss of immunity.”

How worried should I be? I’ve been comforted by the knowledge that my blood pressure is fairly low, but the thought of a stroke terrifies me, osteoporosis is a real concern, not to mention the other nasty stuff. I’m relatively health-conscious: I eat carefully and don’t drink to excess, smoke or vape; I take my vitamin D and omega 3s. So why am I ignoring these risks? What is the hold that salt has over me?

For a start, I’m hardly exceptional. We need salt – our muscles and nerves require sodium to function – meaning we’ve sought it out since we emerged from the primordial ooze. The evolutionary move to land meant we needed to maintain our “internal sea”, turning us into salt seekers, explains professor of physiology Matthew Bailey, who has a particular interest in salt. “As we evolved from marine animals to living on land, we faced the challenge of getting salt. Our body fluids are essentially salt water and you need to replenish that, so mammals evolved lots of molecules that allowed them to find salt in the environment. When the body detects the depletion of the ‘internal sea’, your brain triggers you to go out and find salty food.” That was how prehistoric man operated in salt-scarce times, generating an intake of around 0.5g a day. Now, with salt cheaply, freely available – and added to almost everything we eat – we consume around 8.4g in the UK, vastly in excess of what we need. Our bodies haven’t evolved to cope with that, and our salt-seeking has no off switch.

Our uncontrollable impulses have meant human history is heavily seasoned – we’ve been extracting it from the sea and land since prehistoric times. In 2021, a 6,000-year-old salt hub was discovered in northeast England, the oldest in the UK. There have been salt wars and rebellions, and salt has been used as currency and incorporated into religious rituals. Louis XVI’s salt tax, the gabelle, was one of the key grievances aired in the French Revolution, and Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March protested the salt monopoly and tax imposed by the British, which forbade Indians from making or gathering their own. Our geography is marked by salt, too: prehistoric man followed animals along salt paths to natural deposits of salt, then later salt roads mark the routes along which it travelled and was traded. The common “wich” suffix in British place names sometimes derives from an Anglo-Saxon term for saltworks.

‘I tried to stop salting my food and found it a joyless, despair-inducing slog’: Emma Beddington.

 Photograph: Alex Telfer/The Observer

We initially valued salt as a preservative (and as an antiseptic – “salubrious” is derived from salt), but gradually we’ve shifted to using salt mainly because we like it. We’re hardwired to find eating salt pleasurable. “There’s a molecule on the tongue – an ion channel – that links the gustatory nerve from the tongue to the brain and when sodium passes, a nerve signal goes to the brain and triggers the limbic system, all that pleasurable stuff happens,” says Bailey. “It’s a little bit like the reproductive drive: when you eat salt, you get pleasure for your reward.”

Can we also accept it makes food delicious? Chef James Strawbridge certainly thinks so: “It can provide such sensation and taste and flavour.” His new book, Salt and the Art of Seasoning, is a paean to the transformative effects of natural salts (as opposed to harsh, chemical varieties) on food, from sardines to sauerkraut, amplifying flavour in the mouth and conveying it to the brain. Strawbridge prepares flavoured salt blends (including rhubarb, leek ash, and roast dinner salt) and provides food pairing notes, salt sommelier style, explaining the notion of merroir, the sea version of terroir (how a product’s origins affect its taste).

Speaking from his seaside home in Cornwall, Strawbridge describes salt as “part of my lifestyle”, though he assures me he doesn’t carry salt around with him, à la Nigella and her handbag pinch pot of Maldon. “I get a lot of joy from handling salt, using it and understanding it and that’s what I’m keen to share.” He believes keen cooks can curate collections of salts, learning when and how to use them as they do for herbs and spices.

Strawbridge guides me through a taste test on two slices of tomato: industrial table salt v Cornish flakes. Table salt is “a bit intense, almost chemical. There’s a tang to it which is yuck.” The Cornish is “a lot more tomato-y”. He’s right: the table salt tomato tastes flatter, less sweet and subtle, even to my Hula Hoop-deadened palate. “Like speakers with surround sound compared with a rubbish old radio,” agrees Strawbridge.

Salt as a product with history, provenance and complexity is foodie catnip. I watch the Netflix adaptation of Samin Nosrat’s bestseller Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, in which she discovers there are more than 4,000 varieties of Japanese salt, tastes soy sauce fermented in century-old barrels and visits Kami-kamagari, where prized moshio salt is extracted from hondawara seaweed. This hipsterification of salt does not impress MacGregor, particularly cheffy sprinklings of flakes and crystals. “The bigger the salt crystal, the less salty it tastes. A tiny crystal dissolves much more quickly and you get a strong salty taste straight away.” Chefs prefer large crystals, he says, because “when you put it on your tongue you don’t get that really salty taste. The danger is, you eat more salt without actually tasting it. A lot is consumed before it’s actually dissolved.” He has no time for claims about their beneficial mineral content either. “You’d have to eat a lethal dose of salt to get your potassium intake.”

The one thing everyone agrees on is that we’re consuming far too much salt accidentally, unconsciously, in bread (three in four supermarket breads contain as much salt per slice as a packet of crisps, according to Action on Salt), breakfast cereals, sauces and… well, everything. Processed foods use salt to mask quality and flavour deficiency. “The message is, anything in a packet from the food industry has had salt added unless you can prove it hasn’t,” says MacGregor.

Anything in a packet from the food industry has had salt added unless you can prove it hasn’t

It doesn’t have to be like this. From 2001 to 2010, the UK made a concerted effort to reduce salt content in processed foods, with industry-wide targets and progress monitoring, achieving a reduction of 20-40%. That cut the average salt intake from 9.5g to 8.1g a day with knock-on public health benefits: a fall in population blood pressure and deaths from stroke and heart disease, preventing an estimated 9,000 deaths. But from 2011, the coalition government shifted responsibility to the food industry and salt reduction stalled.

Now, hunting out lower-sodium options requires a PhD in label semiotics and plenty of time. Action on Salt has an app, FoodSwitch UK, to help people navigate the shelves, though MacGregor warns, “you have to go to about 10 supermarkets”. If you can, cooking for yourself at least lets you control your own salt intake. For Strawbridge, “The more you cook from scratch, the more you have a physical, tangible understanding of salt.”

Of course, unless you’re so off-grid Ben Fogle might turn up with a camera crew, it’s near-impossible to avoid processed foods. There are interesting developments afoot, though. Bailey says major food-industry players are investigating substances other than sodium that might trigger the limbic system pleasure response (MSG is one strong contender). Food research is also exploring how complex, umami-rich salted products, such as soy, may also allow the pleasure sensation of salt to be triggered at a lower concentration level.

My salt intake must vastly exceed the UK recommended 6g a day. Bailey has tested his own careful, salt-aware intake on several occasions (it involves peeing in a bucket) and was disappointed to find it was “pretty much the national average, between 8g and 9g”. So should I cut down? What a grim prospect. “It’s not grim,” says MacGregor. “Once you get used to it, food tastes so much better.” Your salt taste receptors readjust and become more sensitive after a month or so, he says. Neither he nor Bailey use “discretionary” salt at home. “It’s a chemical dug up from the ground, why do you want to put it on your food?” says MacGregor. He has even foresworn most cheeses – “if you like eating seawater, go on eating cheese” – based on salt content (English Brie is his top tip).

Some people go cold turkey and adapt even quicker than MacGregor’s prediction. “It takes about a week; just have to replace it with other flavours,” one convert tells me. “Korean red pepper flakes were the key.” “Took me about a fortnight, now I absolutely hate the stuff,” says another.

But in my long-ago year without salt, I never lost my craving and right now, I can’t even manage a single day. Porridge for breakfast is boring but fine and I don’t add soy sauce to my lunchtime supermarket vegetarian sushi (though newly alert to hidden salt, I realise it’s in the rice, the nori, everywhere). But by evening, I’ve fallen entirely off the wagon, sneaking a fistful of crisps as I cook, then sloshing soy into my fried rice and adding a topping of salted peanuts. I’m addicted. I fear they’ll have to drag salt from my cold dead hands; unfortunately, that might be sooner rather than later.

Salt and the Art of Seasoning by James Strawbridge is published by Chelsea Green at £27. 

https://beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/tool/the-salt-march

The Salt March - Beautiful Trouble 

In 1930, Gandhi famously led a march to the sea to collect salt (which Indians were banned from producing), forcing the British Raj into a classic decision ...

https://thenonviolenceproject.wisc.edu/2021/08/19/salt-march

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Aug 19, 2021 ... Gandhi's concept of satyagraha has 3 factors – truth, nonviolence, and self-suffering. ... Using these 3 factors, Gandhi abstains from anything ...

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Gandhi's Salt March, The Tax Protest that changed Indian... 

Gandhi's idea was to lead a march about salt. At the time, the British Empire had a stranglehold on salt in India. The essential mineral was heavily taxed ...

‘Care bots’: a dream for carers or a dangerous fantasy?

Robots that can assist caregivers have been talked up as being transformative. But some researchers fear such technology could take more than it gives

Emily Kenway
Sun 21 May 2023 

Ingrid’s 22-year-old son Tom doesn’t understand danger. He cannot leave the house by himself because he does not know that cars may kill him and, in winter, he forgets to wear enough clothes to stay warm. He was born with Down’s syndrome and Ingrid says that “he’s calm and shy and really polite, but he needs help with everything”.

Ingrid is one of millions of people caring for a loved one at home today. In the UK, “family caregivers” constitute about 9% of the population and they outstrip paid care workers by more than three to one. This is because most care continues to be carried out in people’s homes, rather than in residential facilities or by paid workers in the community. For this oft-overlooked army of supporters, it’s a difficult life. According to an annual survey of family caregivers in the UK, 45% had been providing support for 90 hours or more each week, and a similar proportion had not taken a break from caring in the past year. Caregivers consistently report lost income, higher than average rates of depression and anxiety, lack of time to rest, exercise or socialise, or to attend their own medical appointments – to do much of anything for themselves, really.

Many are of working age and juggle their caring responsibilities around paid employment. Ingrid is a teacher and a musician by day and then, from 4pm until the next morning, she is Tom’s caregiver, and on weekends too. Tom has a propensity to wander at night and because he is not aware of danger, this used to mean Ingrid barely slept. She was doing a “double shift” – working at school in the daytime and conducting a waking watch at home. But nights have been eased recently by the installation of an alarm on Tom’s bedroom door that goes off if he leaves.

Semi-humanoid care bot Pepper was built to engage in conversation and lead people in exercises and games. 

The company that made the robot ceased production in 2021 because of lack of demand. 

Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

Technology has enhanced their lives in other ways too. Because Tom cannot speak, he uses a “talking board” on which he presses buttons to communicate what he wants – often, it is Coca-Cola or orange juice. These two technologies – the alarm and the talking board – are rudimentary, but the new generation of care tech may markedly alter their lives in years to come. In Japan, a team is developing a “conversation partner” that can use images or words to broaden the choices available to people like Tom – perhaps he wanted apple juice all along?

While Tom cannot talk, “he can understand”, Ingrid says, and she spends a lot of time reminding him to do daily tasks such as getting dressed or keeping clean. This presents another avenue for care tech to change their lives for the better. The ElliQ is an AI-driven social robot that looks a little like a bedside lamp and actively communicates with its users (rather than waiting for voice commands, as Amazon’s Alexa does). It could learn Tom’s daily needs and provide timely and encouraging reminders. This could be invaluable for Ingrid, removing her feeling that she’s “had a small child for 22 years who needs constant attention”.

It is this sort of potential that makes Madeleine Starr, director of business development and innovation at the charity Carers UK, exuberant about the “revolutionary” potential of technology. “Technology can take the pressure off,” she says, as it does with Ingrid’s improved nights. “It gives carers peace of mind, and that’s everything.”

Even more revolutionary would be “care bots” such as Pepper, a semi-humanoid bot that engages in conversation and leads exercises or games. It’s one of several such bots that the Japanese government has introduced to residential care facilities. Robear, another Japanese creation, looks exactly like you might expect a robot bear to look – big round eyes and a stocky body. It is apparently capable of lifting people from beds to wheelchairs. This could be hugely helpful to caregivers, more than half of whom report having their own long-term health condition or disability and so find the physical tasks of care difficult.

But according to James Wright of the Alan Turing Institute, this is little more than fantasy. He spent a year and a half researching the reality of care bots in Japan and warns that “their real-life abilities trail far behind the expectations shaped by their hyped-up image”. He found that care bots were used initially and then “locked away in a cupboard”. Tellingly, the company behind Pepper ceased producing it in 2021, citing weak demand. Wright also found that care bots often created more work for caregivers, who needed to maintain, monitor and operate them. Dr Kate Hamblin leads on digital research for the UK’s Centre for Care, and she echoes the concern that care tech may not be the labour-saving dream it seems. “Context is so important,” she says. “Technologies can support carers… but can also add a layer of complexity and frustration if they’re poorly delivered and designed.” While Wright’s work disabuses us of the idea that a dawn of humanoid care bots is on its way, Hamblin’s focuses on technologies that are already here. This includes simpler tech such as Ingrid’s night alarm and similar devices such as fall sensors, and more cutting-edge machinery like ElliQ, which came to market in spring 2022. And as we have seen from the difficulties faced by caregivers, these very real forms of care tech seem to be sorely needed.

In discussions of care and technology, the focus is usually on care receivers and the ethics of outsourcing their care to machines. When caregivers are considered, it’s usually regarding the liberating potential of technology that Starr describes. But are we missing something about the potential impact of these technologies on caregiving? Because for all Ingrid’s frustrations, she also thinks that caring for Tom has improved her work as a teacher: “I have a good connection with my pupils. I can see when they’re not happy and when they need me to stop in the hallway and just say, come on, let’s talk … I’ve learned how to read people.” She ascribes this to the years of acute attention she has paid to Tom’s facial expressions and body language.

Patience, confidence, purpose – it seems that caregiving generates faculties many of us consider desirable

The benefits of caregiving, like Ingrid’s honed awareness, are being recognised increasingly by social scientists. For decades now, caregivers have been assessed in clinical settings using a tool called the Zarit burden interview, originally developed in 1980 and against which caregivers rate themselves on a score of 0 to 4 with questions such as: “Do you feel your health has suffered because of your involvement with your relative?” “Do you feel angry when you are around your relative?” Now, German researchers are developing a counterpart – the “benefits of being a caregiver scale” – to measure the positive aspects of caregiving such as those described by Ingrid. The scale assesses issues such as time management, patience and feelings of confidence and purpose.

“Carers I have spoken to in my research often see the positive sides,” says Hamblin, “and they wouldn’t want to entirely withdraw from caring.” The scale could help to explain Hamblin’s observation, showing us a different side to caregiving than stories of burden and burnout – that is, the stories that underpin part of the rationale for care tech. In fact, there is already a substantial body of evidence that caregivers routinely report benefits alongside their difficulties. One study, which focused on family caregivers for young people with muscular dystrophy, found that 88% had gained something positive from the situation, including a sense of personal growth, resilience, altruism and increased sensitivity to other people. Another found that parents like Ingrid, who care for adult children with impairments, scored highly on deriving satisfaction from their caring duties. Compellingly, they also felt they had a stronger grasp of what matters in life.

Patience, confidence, purpose – it seems that caregiving generates faculties many of us consider desirable. Perhaps caregivers know something under-recognised in discussions of care and tech: that care, like love, is multidimensional – the good and the difficult coexist.

Prof Shannon Vallor is concerned that the brave new world of care tech has overlooked this dimension of caregiving in its laser-like focus on alleviating hardships. Her work as a philosopher of technology, currently at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, is drawing our attention to the ways in which jettisoning care to the machines might mean we lose important capabilities. For Vallor, the assumption “that caregiving is generally not only a burden upon caregivers … but that it is nothing except a burden” is not only a falsehood, but also a moral risk. What if removal of the caregiving role is also the removal of an important, and importantly human, educational experience – one in which we learn “to practise and cultivate empathy”, among other capabilities, and to develop what she calls “an ethical self”?

Ursine care bot Robear can lift people in and out of bed. In doing this strenuous work, devices like it could be of great benefit to caregivers. 

Photograph: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images

There is a risk in talking about care as a moral good, of which Vallor is aware. Today the millions of unpaid caregivers in the UK are suffering. Will sharpening our focus on the benefits of caregiving undermine the changes that they say they need? Starr thinks not. “The answer is this: we can only experience the benefits of care if we have the support we need, otherwise it overwhelms us.” Ingrid’s story bears this out. She brightens when she talks about her work as a teacher, describing it as a source of great satisfaction. It’s a crucial arena in which she can see what she’s gained from being a caregiver, such as her ability to read her pupils’ moods. But Ingrid can only work because Tom has a place at a free day-care centre. “Benefit-finding”, as the social scientists call it, is exactly what it sounds like: an active process, reliant on someone being able to seek the good. And seeking requires energy, and forums in which the good can become apparent. We cannot cultivate the “ethical self” envisaged by Vallor if our practical and material circumstances grind us down too far. As she puts it: “Caregiving in inadequate circumstances is likely to drain us of emotional power and starve empathic responses rather than cultivate them.”

There is a paradox at the heart of care tech. If Vallor is right, then caregiving is a crucial route through which we can help realise our humanity. The “benefits of being a caregiver scale”, and the growing body of evidence underpinning its development, suggest she might be. In this case, the technologies being developed on behalf of caregivers to free them from their “burden” may have an unexpected cost: the loss of important human capabilities. But experts are clear that technology can be vital for reducing caregivers’ load, too. Paradoxically, then, while tech may prevent us reaping the rewards of caregiving, it may also enable them.

Ingrid still finds herself listening out for the alarm, half asleep, through the course of the night. But she is less exhausted than she was. Tom is on a list for a place in sheltered accommodation but the prospect of him moving out scares her, because although caring for him is hard, it is also very important for Ingrid’s fulfilment. Perhaps the same is true for all of us.

Emily Kenway is the author of Who Cares: The Hidden Cost of Caregiving and How to Solve It (Wildfire £22).