UK

Tory ministers accused of ‘rigging the rules’ to help rail firm bosses get bonuses

'They are desperate to help their chums, the privateers, keep their private snouts in the public trough'

Hannah Davenport 

Yesterday
 Left Foot Forward

The Shadow Transport Secretary has accused the Tories of a “scandalous misuse of taxpayers’ money” after it was revealed that more rail operators have had their performance targets lowered, helping company bosses get bonuses.

At least eight rail firms have had their performance targets lowered by the Government as Labour accused ministers of “rigging the rules” to reward “abject failure”.

In February it was reported that Tory ministers cut the standards for train cleanliness, ticketing, staffing and customer services at Govia Thameslink Railway, after the company had failed to reach service quality standards on most measures.

Now the Mirror has revealed that a further seven other operators have had service standards on key measures lowered, after failures to meet targets. Government rule changes in 2020 mean that companies are now paid an annual fee for operating lines and have the chance to earn bonuses for performance on top.

Rail bosses have raked in billions in bonus payments from the Government, with the two Chief Executive of First Group, which owns major stakes in South Western Railway, sharing a £1.3m bonus.

Labour has urged the National Audit Office to launch an investigation into the scandal as Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh laid out Labour’s plan to renationalise the railways.

“Rather than demand better on behalf of passengers and taxpayers, ministers appear to be engaged in a last, desperate attempt to prop up these failing rail firms,” Haigh accused.

“With Labour change is coming – we will bring our railways back into public ownership as contracts expire, ending this something-for-nothing culture once and for all.”

Train drivers’ union Aslef accused the Tories of attempting to de-rail Labour’s plans to renationalise rail by easing performance targets for train bosses.

In a statement to the Morning Star, an Aslef spokesperson said: “They are desperate to help their chums, the privateers, keep their private snouts in the public trough.”

The rail workers union RMT responded on X: “Cut standards, lower targets, reward failure: The Tories abysmal railway legacy.”

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “Performance targets are regularly reviewed to ensure they end up delivering meaningful improvements for passengers, and we continue to hold operators to account for matters within their control.”

(Image Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

Plans submitted to restore Manchester’s trans monument to counter anti-trans political and media rhetoric

‘We’ve observed a troubling surge in anti-trans rhetoric, with media coverage often sensationalised for ‘click-bait’ or as a political scapegoat, leading to consequences for the trans community.’

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

Left Foot Forward

 20 April, 2024 

Aimed at shifting the rising anti-trans narrative peddled by some politicians and much of the right-wing media, an application for a new monument to replace the National Trans Memorial sculpture in Manchester’s iconic Gay Village has been submitted.

The original monument was irreparably damaged in a fire in 2022. It was the first and remains the only monument of its kind in Britain.

The plans were submitted by the national transgender charity Sparkle, in alliance with New Practice, a women-led and LGBTQ+ architectural practice, and the global professional services company Arup.

Commenting on the planning application, Jay Crawford, chair of Sparkle said: “It was important to the charity that the views and lived experience of the communities we serve helped shape the project to replace the previous memorial, so it’s fantastic that a trans person and their allies submitted a visionary design which fulfilled the original brief in such a captivating and uplifting way.”

Tony Lovell, chief operating officer at Arup said the company is “proud to be part of this historic project that celebrates the diversity and resilience of the transgender community.

“As a firm that values inclusion and social impact, we are committed to creating spaces that reflect the needs and aspirations of all people.”

The design of the new monument was conceived by Bek Ziola, a senior architect at New Practice. Named the ‘Passing on Light,’ the monument aims to provide a place of contemplation and reflection, as well as being symbolic of the resilience and vitality of trans and gender diverse people.

Speaking to Pink News, Ziola commented on rising anti-trans rhetoric.

“We’ve observed a troubling surge in anti-trans rhetoric, with media coverage often sensationalised for ‘click-bait’ or as a political scapegoat, leading to consequences for the trans community. I’ve personally witnessed and experienced the impact of this,” said the architect.

In the same week that the news emerged that plans to rebuild the monument in Manchester had been submitted, the right-wing press lived up to its reputation of promoting anti-trans rhetoric and political scapegoating.

Writing for the Express, Tory MP Miriam Cates, who is well-known for her anti-trans campaigning, framing it as being centred on women’s rights, argued that a gender identity clinic is ‘not fit for purpose’ and served as a ‘focal point for a cabal of pro-trans activists to push their agenda on vulnerable children.”

But even Express readers were keen to share their disproval of the article.

“Looking forward to her [Cates] losing her seat later this year. And she’ll be far from alone,” one reader commented.

But the MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge is no stranger to being criticised for anti-trans rhetoric. In response to her comments earlier this year that Scotland’s gender recognition reform law would make it “vastly easier for a predator to gain access to children” and that it would have a “chilling effect” on single-sex spaces, Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said the speech was “probably one of the worst transphobic, dog whistle speeches” he had heard in a “long time.”

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

The Sun’s latest out of court settlement evokes anger and dismay

‘The cost to Rubert Murdoch of keeping the full, sordid details secret is staggering.'

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

Left Foot Forward

 20 April, 2024 

Hugh Grant has settled a High Court claim against the publisher of the Sun newspaper after being offered what he referred to as an “enormous sum of money.”

The actor was suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) for claims that reporters had used private investigators to burgle his house and tap his phone. NGN denies the claims, rejecting any wrongdoing by staff at the Sun.

Grant said the money had a “stink” about it. In a statement, he explained how persisting with the legal challenge risked making him viable to pay legal costs for both parties that could approach £10m, as “Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers are very expensive.”

“I would love to see all the allegations that they deny tested in court,” he wrote.

“As is common with entirely innocent people, they are offering me an enormous sum of money to keep this matter out of court.”

Following Grant’s settling of the lawsuit against the publisher of Murdoch’s British tabloid, the lawyer for Prince Harry said the Royal could also be ‘forced’ to agree a deal. Like Grant, Prince Harry is suing NGN for alleged widespread unlawful gathering information.

David Sherborne, the lawyer for both Grant and Prince Harry, told a hearing at the High Court in London on April 17 that the prince and other claimants face a similar predicament and have settlements “forced” upon them.

“The Duke of Sussex is subject to the same issues that (actress) Sienna Miller and Hugh Grant have been subject to, which is that offers are made (which) make it impossible for them to go ahead,” Sherborne said.

Prince Harry has regularly spoken of his “mission” to purge the British press.

In March, Harry and other claimants sought to drag Murdoch into the case, alleging the media mogul was personally involved in a cover-up of wrongdoing.

Murdoch’s NGN has settled more than 1,000 cases without making any admission of liability, and has paid out £1 billion to keep cases out of court.

Former footballer Paul Gascoigne, actress Sienna Miller, comedian Catherine Tate, Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm, and radio presenter Chris Moyles have all settled cases with the NGN. Miller settled a lawsuit against NGN in 2021, which at the time her lawyers said was due to the risk of having to pay millions of pounds in legal fees even if she won.

An earlier allegation that Hugh Grant made against the publisher in relation to the now defunct News of the World was settled in 2012. The newspaper, which at one time was the world’s highest-selling English-language newspaper, was shut down by Murdoch in 2011 following public outcry to the phone hacking revelations. The phone hacking scandal broke over a decade ago, when investigations showed the newspaper was engaged in phone hacking activities, targeting celebrities, members of the Royal Family, politicians, and the phones of the relatives of the deceased in high-profile cases.

News that Hugh Grant was ‘forced’ to settle out of court was met with anger. Broadcaster and author John Simpson shared his dismay:

“Not a single one of the many cases brought against the Sun for illegal activity (unlike the defunct News of the World) has come to court, where the full evidence would have been made public. The cost to Rubert Murdoch of keeping the full, sordid details secret is staggering,” he posted on X.

“I understand why the UK doesn’t want to allow frivolous lawsuits to flourish, but this law is wild. It ensures that companies with the deepest pockets will never be held accountable for wrongdoing. The system is literally rigged. No surprise, sadly,” was another comment.

Chris Packham takes apart UK Government’s climate policies

'Our government’s policies.. are not only cooking the planet, they are justifying that by cooking the books'

Left Foot Forward 
Hannah Davenport
Yesterday

Naturalist Chris Packham obliterated the UK Government’s climate policy achievements during a debate about the government’s record on tackling climate change.

It followed an interview with the Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho on Sunday where she defended the government’s approach to the environment and argued that Tories had a “very strong track record of delivery”.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Coutinho also repeated the Conservative Party line that it is tacking a “sensible and pragmatic” approach to achieving net zero, as she argued she didn’t want to “heap costs on families”.

However environmental activist and broadcaster Chris Packham took apart the government’s rhetoric, accusing ministers of “cooking the books” over their climate policy achievements.

“Our government’s policies at the moment are not only cooking the planet, they are justifying that by cooking the books,” said Packham.

“She’s saying we’re ahead in all of our targets. That’s not actually the case, it’s the way that data is presented and analysed.

“In a simple case, if we are exporting oil or coal from a coal mine in Cumbria, what isn’t integrated into those figures is the fact that it will be burned in another part of the world.

“So the total carbon cost when it comes to our country’s achievement is not calculated. Nor do they calculate what is imported into our country either, so those figures are not justifiable in the way they’re being presented.”

During the show, the head of the Climate Change Committee, Chris Stark, said the Prime Minister’s recent climate policy rollbacks had “set us back” on climate change, further undermining the government’s climate record.

When questioned by Kuenssberg on the cost of using green technology such as heat pumps and whether it was right that the government give people “room to breathe”, Packham highlighted the “grotesque” profits oil and gas companies continue to rake in.

Packham said: “They’re giving people at this point room to breathe, what about their children and their grandchildren? And if they can’t afford that, and of course there are many people who can’t afford that, what we need is a just transition.

“What wasn’t mentioned in any of these conversations is the grotesque profits being made by our energy companies at a time when there’s a very high level of volatility in that market which has driven the cost-of-living crisis.

“Had we not cut the green crap 13 years ago we would have been far ahead when it comes to renewables which are much cheaper than oil and gas and much more resilient when it comes to pricing.”

(Image credit: Political World / YouTube screenshot)

A ‘car crash’ of different disasters has left UK with among the worst bathing conditions in Europe, campaigners warn

Campaigners are attributing privatisation, extreme weather, and politics to collectively creating the water pollution crisis.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Yesterday

Almost all of Britain’s waterways are polluted. In 2023, sewage spills into England’s waterways more than doubled. Recently released figures from the Environment Agency show that there were 3.6 million hours of spills compared to 1.75 million hours in 2022.

A separate report from the Rivers Trust confirms the ‘desperate state’ of the country’s seas and rivers.

The State of Our Rivers Report concluded that no single stretch of river in Northern Ireland or England is in good overall health. The report follows an earlier damning verdict by a House of Commons Committee report in 2022, which concluded that no river in England was free from chemical contamination.

Within Europe, Britain’s polluted waterways have been described by Loughborough University as an “anomaly,” which have fallen behind other European countries in reporting significant improvements in bathing water quality in recent decades. In France, for example, authorities have spent billions of euros improving storm water and sewage treatment in an effort to clean up the River Seine for Olympic swimming events this summer.

As research lays bares the deterioration of the state of the nation’s waterway quality, anger is mounting over the dumping of untreated sewage into Britain’s seas and rivers, which are now ranked among the worse countries in Europe for water pollution.

A ‘car crash’ of causes

Campaigners are attributing a ‘car crash’ of privatisation, extreme weather, and politics to collectively creating the water pollution crisis. They note how sizeable profits within the water industry have been distributed to shareholders, but very little investment or improvements to infrastructure and services have been made in recent decades.

This is coupled with a growing number of extreme weather events over the last decade, which are attributed to climate change. This month’s Storm Kathleen was the eleventh named storm in eight months. Conservationists have expressed concern over the frequency of such extreme weather events.

“It is worrying to see how frequent these ‘extraordinary’ weather events are becoming,” said Steve Nash, Wild Planet Trust’s Chief Impact Officer.

During heavy rainfall, the sewage handling capacity cannot cope with the demand. An underinvested and inadequate system is being overloaded, which is leading to more sewage spilling into seas and rivers.

“You either allow sewage to back up into people’s homes and businesses, back up the pipes – which is obviously completely and utterly unacceptable – or you open the other end of the pipe and release it into nature,” explains Charles Watson, founder and chair of campaign group River Action.

Louis Reddy, policy officer from environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), shared some alarming statistics.

“Last year, there were 1,271 discharges of sewage into waterways a day across England alone. So we know that this is a huge systemic issue, that water companies are relying on waterways to deal with the sewage that they can’t face treating,” said Reddy.

On top of this, between 2009 and 2022, government funding for the Environment Agency (EA) dropped by 50 percent, as analysis by Prospect, a trade union representing professionals in the public sector, shows.

Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect, said that in 2022 the agency had been left in the “grips of a recruitment and resources crisis making it harder to hold polluters to account.”

“Unless this is fixed, sewage in bathing waters will only become more common,” he warned at the time.”

Governmental response to sewage spillage and polluted water is likely to be an influencing factor in the upcoming general election.

A survey by River Action in 2023 found that just 6 percent of respondents were happy with the government’s efforts to protect the country’s waterways. A separate survey by Survation found that the government’s handling of sewage spills is likely to influence the way more than half of people vote in the general election.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

What is the Heritage Foundation up to?

By participating in their activities and by mimicking Heritage Foundation events, our own home grown NatCons are clearly hoping to bring to fruition the same thoroughly reactionary politics in Europe.

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Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead

LEFT FOOT FORWARD

21 April, 2024 

Political right-wingers have dominated the headlines this week. Promoting her new book ‘Ten Years To Save the West,’ Liz Truss claimed she has ‘unfinished business’ and refused to rule out returning as the Conservative Party leader. Such a prospect will “send shivers down the spine of ordinary people,” said Labour. Speaking to LBC, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister said “it hasto be” Trump in the White House, and told the Spectator “the world was safer” when the Republican was in power.

Fresh off the airwaves promoting her new book, and endorsing Donald Trump for US president, and Truss, who as PM managed to tank the UK economy with a £45bn package of unfunded tax cuts, grabbed more limelight during the Commons’ debate on smoking. She argued that it was profoundly unconservative to try and stop people from killing themselves.

In Brussels meanwhile, a National Conservatism jamboree of hard-right political figures descended into chaos, as police moved in to shut down the gathering at the command of the city’s socialist mayor.

“Simply monstrous,” a smirking Nigel Farage told the NatCon audience about the attempted termination of the event. The intervention was however overturned by the court, leaving the UKIP founder crying a “victory for free speech in the face of Brussels bullies.”

The ‘drama’ certainly helped put the conference in the news bulletins and on front pages, leaving Farage and his fellow far-right NatCon attendees, including Suella Braverman and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, feeling relevant and important.

Global NatCon’ers and Liz Truss’s quest to spread their ‘free market,’ ‘free speech’ ideologies, resemble the Heritage Foundation, the conservative US think-tank that came to prominence during the Reagan years. The think-tank fights for individual freedom, traditional American values, free enterprise, and limited government, and has historically been ranked among the most influential public policy organisations in the US.

3,500 miles from Truss’s legacy of political and economic chaos, whose tenure at the top was likened to the shelf-life of a lettuce, the influential right-wing think-tank, which lobbies against LGBTQ+ rights and rejects climate science, seemingly holds the former British prime minister in high esteem.

Truss has long had links to the US think-tank. As treasury minister, she met with representatives of several libertarian groups, including the Heritage Foundation. A former Obama administration climate adviser warned it would spell disaster if Truss sought to replicate the tactics of groups such as the Heritage Foundation.

More recently on April 12, Truss delivered a lecture on free markets and free speech to the Heritage Foundation, where she attacked trans rights, rallied against ‘woke culture,’ praised Ronald Reagan, and, mimicking Trump, portrayed herself as the victim of a vast political conspiracy.

This month’s speech followed a similar address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February, where she called for a true conservative president in the White House, “one who is able to take on the deep state and lead the free world.”

The speech was lapped up by free-market, Heritage Foundation ‘Trussites.’

“Liz Truss is one of the few British politicians who really understand the United States and the direction America’s conservative movement is taking,” drooled Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

But Truss isn’t the only alliance the US think-tank has with UK political figures and groups. She is one of several leading UK Conversative political figures and their donors who are connected to the think-tank. Others include Sajid Javid, Daniel Hannan, Owen Paterson, and Dr Liam Fox, who delivered the think-tank’s annual Margaret Thatcher lecture in 2018.

Heritage Foundation staff were present at the National Conservative (NatCon) conference in London in June, where the usual suspects, including Suella Braverman, Miriam Cates and Jacob Rees-Mogg, preached to the converted. The think-tank staff were, as reported by Peter Geoghegan, openDemocracy’s former editor-in-chief who had attended the event, handing out leaflets on ‘How to speak up against gender identity.’ In a speech about the death of ‘global Europe,’ the think-tank’s president, Kevin Roberts, decried the ‘woke industrial complex.’ Roberts had arrived in London from a US Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest, where the far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had called for Donald Trump to be returned to office.

Like Orbán, the Heritage Foundation is committed to getting Trump elected for a second term and is partnering with far-right political figures from the international stage to help accomplish its goal.

Viktor Orbán and the Ukraine war

In March, Orbán, who regularly attacks immigrants, LGBTQ+ rights, and has gutted the civil service and replaced it with loyalists, raised eyebrows when he flew into the United States, not to meet the sitting President Joe Biden, but his long-term ally Donald Trump. Even Biden commented on what was considered a severe breach of diplomatic protocol, saying that Orbán was “looking for dictatorship.” Following the meeting between the two right-wing firebrands, Orbán said Trump will totally stop funding Ukraine if he wins the US election in November.

“He will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Orbán told Hungarian state media. “Therefore, the war will end, because it is obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own feet.”

But a meeting that drew considerably less media attention when Orbán was in the US, and one that illustrates just how much the Hungarian prime minister is attempting to influence politics in Washington, took place behind closed doors at the Heritage Foundation’s headquarters in the US capital.

Like Liz Truss in April, Orbán spoke in front of a Heritage Foundation audience, which according to Hungarian state media included “renowned right-wing politicians, analysts and public personalities.”

Orbán was joined by the think-tank’s president Kevin Roberts, and Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and former Republican presidential contender, whose provocative hard-right agenda failed to strike a chord in a space already occupied by Donald Trump.

As with Truss, Orbán’s speech covered matters related to economic policies and the “conservative family.” It also focused on the war in Ukraine.
In sitting with the leadership of the conservative think-tank, Orban, much like Liz Truss, is using the Heritage Foundation, as a “platform to access and influence conservative Americans about both foreign and domestic policy, “ as the New Republican describes.

The appointment of Kevin Roberts as head of the Heritage Foundation in 2021 is central to this discussion. Roberts has never kept his support for Viktor Orbán secret. In 2022, following a visit to Hungary, the think-tank head tweeted that it “was an honour” to meet Orban.

“One thing is clear from visiting Hungary and from being involved in current policy and cultural debates in America: the world needs a movement that fights for truth, for tradition, for families, and for the average person,” Roberts tweeted.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2023, Orbán claimed that Hungary is “the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.”

In an interview with the New York Times in January, Roberts said that Orbán’s comments were “all true” and “should be celebrated.” The interview’s author Lulu Garcia-Navarro notes how, under Robert’s leadership, the right-wing think-tank has been pushed away from its “hawkish roots by arguing against funding the war in Ukraine, a turnabout that promoted some of the think-tank’s policy analysts to leave.” Roberts told Garcio-Navarro that he views the Heritage’s role today as “institutionalising Trumpism.”

Project 2025

Intent on turning Trumpism into a governing agenda, the Heritage Foundation leads the multi-million-dollar Project 2025, involving a coalition of 100 right-wing organisations, aimed at mapping out a future right-wing presidency. The “left-wing media seems to be up in arms over Heritage’s Presidential Transition Project, better known as Project 2025,” the Heritage Foundation claims.

And rightly so, it seems.

Among Project 2025’s visions are to restore family values, defend the nation’s sovereignty and borders and secure what it refers to as “our God-given individual rights to live freely.”

Project 2025’s 900-page 180-Day Playbook lists a number of ‘actions’ designed to be implemented within 180 days of the new Administration to “bring quick relief to American suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.”

The New Republic describes the Playbook as being a ‘remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.”

“These 900 pages lay out a Christian nationalist vision of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not exist,” the New Republic continues.

Such right-wing ideologies bear a worrying resemblance to those peddled by Britain’s ‘NatCon’ movement, which, like Project 2025, is ramping up campaigning projects about the future of Conservatism. At the London NatCon conference last June, Tory MP Miriam Cates, a rapidly rising star among the Conservative right, devoted her speech to rallying against falling reproduction, a lack of family-friendly tax policy, and, what she described as the mass indoctrination of young minds.

These right-wing figures and groups also share a common goal to defend their nation’s borders and ‘take back control’ of their country.

Heritage Action

In February, Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation think tank, urged US lawmakers to oppose the bipartisan border security bill, which would also provide aid to Ukraine. The border agreement includes provisions to raise standards for asylum screening and to process claims faster.

Trump’s reluctance to provide aid to Ukraine echoes that of the Heritage Foundation. Prior to Congress voting to approve $40bn in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine in May 2022, the think-tank reportedly privately pressed Republicans to oppose the measure. The vote was blasted by Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage’s lobbying operation. In a statement on the Heritage Action website entitled Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last, Anderson framed the measures as ill-considered and reckless.

The Heritage Foundation’s position on Ukraine, one that is mimicked by Donald Trump and his ally Viktor Orban, is representative of the mounting potency of the “America First” impulse in the Republican Party.

In Britain, this patriotic rhetoric is shared among many on the Right, acutely demonstrated by Brexit and the desire to ‘make Britain great again.’
The Heritage Foundation, which brands itself as a beacon of intellectual conservative establishment, has been quietly working behind the scenes, creating alliances with leading right-wing figures and groups, to ultimately influence political direction both sides of the Atlantic.

“I am proud that The Heritage Foundation has worked to convince Americans and the British people about the necessity and mutual benefits of Brexit,” said Jim DeMint, former president of the think-tank following the EU referendum.

Plans to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision is the think-tank’s present target. By participating in their activities and by mimicking Heritage Foundation events, our own home grown NatCons are clearly hoping to bring to fruition the same thoroughly reactionary politics in Europe. They would probably even love to have our very own Donald Trump. Perhaps Liz Truss even dares to dream it could be her.

Right-Wing Media Watch – Right-wing nationals rejoice over Michaela School keeping its prayer ban

As our Foreign Secretary holds talks in Israel to urge against a war with Iran, UK inflation falls by less than expected, and Dubai experiences its heaviest rainfall in 75 years, the Daily Mail devotes its front page to this:

“Victory for the bravest headteacher in Britain’…. Katherine Birbalsingh hails landmark court ruling backing prayer ban at her school after claim by Muslim pupil.”

“The headteacher hit out at ‘bullying identity politics’ yesterday after she won the right to ban Muslim prayer rituals,” the lead story continued.

And it wasn’t the only national that chose to lead with the news that a Muslim pupil had lost their court case against the London school’s prayer rituals ban, saying the policy was discriminatory and ‘uniquely’ affected their faith.

“Victory for all schools’ as prayer ritual ban is backed,” splashed the Express.

The report even quotes Esther McVey, known unofficially as the government’s minister for common sense, saying: “Hallelujah…from time to time, we all struggle to understand decisions made in the courts. Thankfully, this one is a victory for common sense which will allow Michaela to continue doing what it does better than anyone else.” (Poor common sense – a much abused phrase on the right to describe whatever nasty politics they favour).

In another kick in the teeth of the family who took the school to court over its prayer policy, the Telegraph went further, dedicating an article to Birbalsingh’s questioning of the level of legal aid for the pupil who lost the prayer ban challenge.

“Can it be right for a family to receive £150,000 of taxpayer-funded legal aid to bring a case like this?” Birbalsingh is quoted saying in the article, which goes on to cite the opinions of a number of right-wing Tories, including Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Common Sense Group of backbench Tory MPs, Jacob Rees-Mogg, education secretary Gillian Keegan, and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch

‘A victory against activists trying to subvert public institutions,’ said Keegan.

“No pupil has the right to impose their views on an entire school community in this way,” said Badenoch.

A far cry from the celebratory tone of the right-wing press’s reports, the ruling marked a dark day for the richness that religious diversity brings to school life, and for the wider message it sends out about Muslim culture and its faith.

“It is difficult to view this high court judgment in isolation from the backdrop of normalised Islamophobia we have seen emerging in recent times,” wrote
Nadeine Asbali, a Muslim teacher at a secondary school in London, in an op-ed about the ruling in the Guardian.

Sadly, the right-wing press’s cheerleading of the ruling feeds into the moral panic about the Islamic faith in Britain and shows where their priorities lie. Amid a toxic media ecosystem towards Islam, which has seen the Mail claim there are no-go areas for white people in Britain because of Islamic extremism, it is not surprising that British people are three times more likely to hold prejudiced views against Islam than other religions. We can only hope that all those headteachers who have been quietly providing prayer rooms for their Muslim pupils for years will have the courage to continue to do so. I reckon they will.

Smear of the Week – ‘Raynergate’ smear backfires

With the Easter recess now over, you would have thought, or perhaps hoped, that the ‘Raynergate’ non-story would have finally run its course, deemed as sensationalist filler content when parliament was adjourned. After all, it’s been going on for weeks, having first surfaced in February when extracts from the mischievous Tory donor and former party chair Lord Ashcroft’s biography made their way to the pages of the Mail on Sunday.

Ensuring the Tory ‘smear,’ as Keir Starmer has described it, was kept in the media limelight, Mail columnist Dan Hodges has devoted column after column to the story.

‘Three Homes Rayner,’ Hodges splashed this week, in a provocative piece of clickbait that does little more than speculate about who will reside in the 18th-century house in Buckinghamshire known as Dorneywood, if Starmer wins the next election.

The Labour deputy operates under ‘Rayner’s Law,’ Hodges claimed in a separate article, on which he argued:

“When Tories are accused of wrongdoing, they must publicly prove their innocence. But not so for Keir’s deputy, who operates under Rayner’s Law.”

Yet another piece screamed ‘so much for Keir’s pledge for honour, integrity and accountability in Labour policies.’

On April 14, the Mail on Sunday made ‘Raynergate’ its front-page lead. ‘She is lying, Rayner aide tells police,’ it splashed.

But with every antagonising, not to mention incredibly boring, ‘exclusive’ and ‘op-ed’ about the furore designed to paint Rayner as a ‘hypocrite’ for making a profit on the sale of her council house, desperation radiates from a party that is facing what looks to be an election wipeout.

The desperation hasn’t gone unnoticed, quite the opposite in fact. At this week’s PMQs, Sunak was left humiliated after he attempted to attack Angela Rayner over her tax affairs, with Starmer accusing the billionaire Prime Minister of ‘smearing a working class woman.’

LBC presenter Carol Vorderman said she was “absolutely incensed” about the Rayner police probe, which has made her “even more determined to do everything I possibly can to make sure they lose as may MPs as possible…”

Describing the “absolute stench of Tory desperation” in going after Rayner, Vorderman pointed to how it’s “backfiring on the Tories, as they’ve hit a new 19% low in the polls.”

Writer and political campaigner John O’Farrell meanwhile described the story for what it is on the Laura Kuenssberg show on Sunday, when the host quizzed him on how well the Labour Party handled the news of Angela Rayner being investigated by the police.

“I think this is such a ridiculous non-story. And when we’re sitting here and we’ve got war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East and we’re talking about something that happened that long ago, something that the police could only prosecute within the first year after it happening,” said O’Farrell.

The following day, the Daily Mail broadened its attack to the Labour leader, splashing: “Rayner’s making a fool of you Keir – Scandal over deputy’s home is ‘corrosive to your reputation’, Tory chairman tells Starmer.”

Surely, Angela Rayner is not that much of a danger to Labour’s election hopes?

It seems the only ones being made of fool of is the Conservative Party and the mainstream media by hyping a ridiculous story which, as John O’Farrell was quick to point out to Laura Kuenssberg, is ‘not a story just because the Mail says it’s a story.” There are even signs that more reasonable Tories are embarrassed by the excessive and phoney furore surrounding Angela Rayner. The former MP and minister, Nick Boles, has described the attack as ‘snobbery’ and out of all proportion to any offence she may or may not have committed. And so say all of us, which might be a first for Right-Wing Watch – ending on a note of agreement with a Conservative.

 

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

Judith Butler’s new book explains how the right spreads lies about gender

The right uses gender to attack transgender people and non-binary people as well as abortion rights, women's rights and LGBT+ rights.

By Isabel Ringrose
SOCIALIST WORKER 
Monday 22 April 2024

Judith Butler’s new book

The right is trying to paint “gender” and “gender ideology” as a threat to humanity. In their new book Who’s Afraid of Gender? Judith Butler exposes the bigotry and the contradictions within such claims. The right uses gender to attack transgender and non-binary people, as well as abortion rights, women’s rights more broadly, and LGBT+ rights.

Butler explores the relationship between biological sex and gender and dispels the myths that claim these are either the same thing or have no relationship at all. They conclude that gender is not the social face of biological sex, but “a site where biological and social realities interact with one another”. They argue that both biology and gender have changed throughout history and are not fixed.

“Gender is minimally the rubric under which we consider changes in the way that men, women and other such categories have been understood,” they say. “Despite sex assignment at birth, we continue to be gendered by society.” Sex assignment “relays a set of desires, if not fantasies, about how one is to live one’s body in the world.

“No one arrives in the world separate from the set of norms lying in wait for them,” they add.

Butler says that oppressive systems don’t exist through biology, instead “oppressive systems contort biological matters to achieve their own unjust ends”.

They refer to gender as becoming a ghostly presence—“a phantasm with destructive powers, one way of collecting and escalating multitudes of modern panics”. This “phantasm” can be seen when Russia calls gender ideology a “threat to national security”. And when the Vatican, which Butler accuses of sparking this discourse on gender, poses it as a threat to “both civilization and to ‘man’ itself”.

Pope Francis compared gender theory to a nuclear arms race and said that gender advocates seek to steal the powers of God. Butler roots the attacks here. For Evangelicals and Catholics, gender seeks to “destroy the traditional family”. It is also a “code for paedophilia or a form of indoctrination” teaching children to become gay.

The fears of ordinary people—climate change, war, cost of living crisis, violence and racism—clash with the right’s fears about the state, family Christianity, racism and nationalism. Butler says the right takes the fears of ordinary people and attributes them to “gender” and even “critical race theory”. The right uses gender to collect and incite our fears. This stops “us from thinking more clearly about what there is to fear and how the currently imperilled sense of the world came about in the first place”.

Butler says this is a way for states, churches and political movements “to externalise their fear and hatred onto vulnerable communities”. That’s why in the United States attacks on gender are dealt out by scrapping homosexual and abortion rights. The same forces also displace Indigenous people and strip black people of their rights.

And gender, the family and the “national population” are linked by the likes of Viktor Orban in Hungary to the threat of migrants. Butler explains that gender was once a “relatively ordinary” term that among academics could mean different things, from women’s inequality, homosexuality and biological sex.

Now, Butler writes, “The ‘anti–gender ideology movement’ treats gender as a monolith, frightening in its power and reach”, considering so-called gender ideology as “a matter of extraordinary alarm”. Gender has been painted as an attack on science, religion, a danger to civilisation, denies nature, attacks masculinity and erases the differences between sexes. While Butler writes that there is “no one historical or global direction of influence” they name US Evangelicals, the Vatican, Russian Orthodox, Christianity, right wing Islamic policies and Hindu nationalism as key players.

Butler analyses the contradictions of the right. “The contradictory nature of anti-gender ideology stokes fear but with no logical cohesion,” they said. The right claims that educating children about gender amounts to child abuse. Butler says the church “conveniently forgets the long-standing and hideous history of the sexual abuse of young people by priests who are subsequently exonerated and protected”. Anti-choice academics like Jorge Scala says gender is both a form of personal liberty and indoctrination. Gender therefore teaches children that they are free, but also takes their freedom away.

Butler adds that the right has “a precise gender order in mind that they want to impose upon the world”. This is a rigid view of men and women supposedly fixed in their roles and genders that are unchanging. Butler also accuses the “fearsome phantasm of ‘gender’” of being “authoritarian at its core” —“fuelling fascist tendencies”.

They attribute rights-stripping to fascism—a loose definition they don’t expand on, but is implied to include the right, far right and fascists themselves. Butler examines the rise of the “phantasm” in countries like Spain, Italy, Russia, Colombia and the United States. Global organisations such as CitzenGo that mobilise against LGBT+ rights are “rooted in religious ideology”, and since 2015 use “gender” to represent everything they oppose.

In the US in 2020 79 state bills targeted trans people. In the first six months of 2023 this passed 400—and the word gender was found in almost all. Florida banned gender-affirming heathcare for minors in February 2023. This led to more bills restricting pronouns, asserting “sex is an immutable biological trait” and banning “homosexuality” in schools.

The book makes clear that the overturning of Roe v Wade—the US supreme court ruling that decided the right to an abortion is protected—galvanised the right, which came hand in hand with the “Don’t Say Gay” bills. For instance, in Alabama laws are set to criminalise gender-affirming care for trans children—because biology comes from conception.

Butler also slams the gender-critical movement in Britain. They dispel the transphobic myths perpetuated by the likes of JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock that trans women are not women, and are a threat to cisgender women.

“Rowling identifying trans women with rapists, and refusing to check the speed and layering of her fantasy, namely, that trans women are really men (beware!) and that men are rapists or potential rapists (all of them, really?), by virtue of their organs (understood how?),” Butler writes.

They add that Stock and Rowling “believe they possess the only language that yields reality and anyone who disagrees is deluded”—meaning they “concur with right wing discourse on trans life”. Rowling, Butler says, also forgets that sex is not an unchanging reality and can be changed through various technological means.

“In her view, whatever subjective feeling leads trans women to believe they are women is not to be taken seriously. At the same time, Rowling surely asks that her subjectivity be taken very seriously,” Butler writes.

“Rowling finds herself riddled with contradictions.” And Butler makes clear that any feminists who undermine gender “attack the alliances of which feminism is an integral part”.

This weakens broader campaigns against gender oppression, the exploitation of women’s work, and sexual justice. These gender-critical feminists, Butler says, “claim proprietary rights to gender categories, especially the category of women”. Yet “gender categories change through time,” they write.

“Feminism has always relied on the historically changing character of gender categories in order to demand changes in the way that women and men defined and treated,” Butler adds. Women have revolted against the idea they are less than men or can’t do certain jobs. They have fought against the way some on the right want simultaneously to contain them to the home—and herd them into low-paid work.

This premise “has allowed women to pursue possibilities that were traditionally denied to their sex,” says Butler. Butler dispels the myths and contractions around gender that the right creates. But as their analysis is removed from materialism, the origins of where these attacks on gender are rooted are not investigated.

Without exploring why this attack has suddenly emerged, or linking it to an understanding of the emergence of class society and the rise of capitalism, there is no analysis of how these oppressive systems develop. There is only a nod to the reproductive capacities of women these systems are reliant on.

Instead, the blame is given to the Church and vague social structures. As Butler’s analysis is focused on ideology, their conclusion is too. They rightly say that unity is needed to challenge the right and to bring together women, trans people, black people and all those who are attacked by the right. But there isn’t much of a conclusion on how to do this, other than to change the ideas and narratives that exist in society.

KIER accelerates international cooperation on 'clean energy' with Europe's largest research institute

KIER signs MOUs with research institutes under the Helmholtz Association of Germany. Close cooperation in various areas, including technological collaboration and personnel exchange in the fields of hydrogen, photovoltaics, and batteriesMeeting Announcement

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY



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MOU SIGNING CEREMONY BETWEEN KIER AND FZJ AND HZB (FZJ PETER JANSENS ENERGY DIRECTOR, KIER PRESIDENT YI CHANG-KEUN, HZB BERND RECH SCIENCE DIRECTOR FROM THE LEFT)view more



CREDIT: KOREA INSTITUTE OF ENERGY RESEARCH

On April 19 (Friday), 2024, the Korea Institute of Energy Research (hereinafter referred to as 'KIER') held a ceremony to sign Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) in the field of clean energy with Forschungszentrum Jülich (hereinafter 'FZJ'*) and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for Materials and Energy (hereinafter 'HZB'*), both of which are under Germany's largest research institute, the Helmholtz Association*.
*The Helmholtz Association: Germany's largest research organization, conducting diverse research activities in health, energy, environment, earth and space, transportation, and materials. It comprises 18 research institutes and centers distributed throughout Germany, carrying out medium to long-term research in national strategic areas using large-scale research facilities.
*Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ): A leading global research institution located in Jülich, Germany, pioneering in the fields of information technology, energy, and life sciences. With the goal of developing sustainable energy systems, it conducts innovative research in various areas, including solar power, hydrogen technology, and biological/environmental studies. It is the largest single research institution in the world, with 7,250 personnel, including visiting scientists from 79 countries.
*Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB): A leading research institution in Berlin, Germany, specializing in material science and energy technology. It focuses particularly on the development of high-performance solar cells and material science research, conducting research and development for clean and efficient energy solutions.

With the rise of global competition for strategic technologies, the significance of mutually beneficial technological partnerships between nations is gaining greater recognition. In response, the government is planning to triple the proportion of international cooperation in the total R&D budget and is exploring a shift from domestic-focused research to international cooperative research. Moreover, as climate change becomes a global security issue, the importance of international cooperation is expected to grow even more since achieving carbon neutrality is unattainable without it.

At the signing ceremony held at the Daejeon headquarters of the KIER, approximately 40 representatives from each institution attended, including KIER President Yi Chang-Keun, Helmholtz Association President Otmar Wiestler, FZJ Energy Director Peter Jansens, and HZB Science Director Bernd Rech.

Since 2022, the KIER and FZJ have been conducting joint research in the fields of next-generation secondary batteries and hydrogen production. Through these MOUs, they will promote research cooperation related to renewable energy and low-carbon technologies, including hydrogen energy, next-generation solar cells, and Power-to-X (P2X).
* P2X (Power-To-X): A method of converting renewable energy-based electricity (Power) into various forms of other energy (X).

Starting from December 2023, over a period of three years, the KIER and HZB will focus their joint research within the Horizon Europe program* on the field of tandem solar cells**. They plan to enhance technical cooperation in various areas, including clean hydrogen energy production, next-generation secondary batteries, and manufacturing and characterization of high-efficiency tandem solar cells.
* Horizon Europe: A European Union multilateral research innovation financial support program that started in 1984. It aims to secure Europe’s own scientific and technological capacity and drive by promoting research innovation projects at the EU level, which are difficult for individual member countries to undertake, and to foster cohesion among European researchers. The KIER has been selected as part of the consortium for the 'Ultra-lightweight Flexible Multi-junction Solar Cells' project and will conduct joint research with leading European institutions, including HZB, from December 2023 for three years.
**Tandem solar cells: Solar cells that layer two different energy-absorbing bands (bandgaps) vertically to increase the utilization of light, a technology that can surpass the theoretical efficiency limit of conventional single-junction solar cells.

In addition to technical cooperation in the fields of hydrogen, photovoltaics, batteries, and clean energy, the KIER, FZJ, and HZB also plan to conduct substantial cooperation such as information and personnel exchanges, and hosting academic conferences and workshops. Through this, they aim to establish a solid foundation for close international cooperation between Korea and Germany and to build a partnership that leads the energy market by securing scientific and technological competitiveness.

At the signing ceremony for the MOUs, KIER’s President Yi Chang-Keun, said, "International cooperation with leading technology countries is essential to secure global technological sovereignty in response to energy transition and climate change," and added, "starting with this agreement, we will utilize the KIER’s global cooperation network, which has been built up over many years to advance strategic international cooperation with global top research groups."

QUIONE: Announcing the birth of a unique analog quantum processor in the world

ICFO-THE INSTITUTE OF PHOTONIC SCIENCES

 

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THE TEAM IN THE LAB. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: SANDRA BUOB, ANTONIO RUBIO-ABADAL, VASILIY MAKHALOV, JONATAN HÖSCHELE, AND LETICIA TARRUELL.

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CREDIT: ICFO

Quantum physics needs high-precision sensing techniques to delve deeper into the microscopic properties of materials. From the analog quantum processors that have emerged recently, the so-called quantum-gas microscopes have proven to be powerful tools for understanding quantum systems at the atomic level. These devices produce images of quantum gases with very high resolution: they allow individual atoms to be detected.

Now, ICFO researchers (Barcelona, Spain) Sandra Buob, Jonatan Höschele, Dr. Vasiliy Makhalov and Dr. Antonio Rubio-Abadal, led by ICREA Professor at ICFO Leticia Tarruell, explain how they built their own quantum-gas microscope, named QUIONE after the Greek goddess of snow. The group's quantum-gas microscope is the only one imaging individual atoms of strontium quantum gases in the world, as well as the first of its kind in Spain.

Beyond the impactful images in which individual atoms can be distinguished, the goal of QUIONE is quantum simulation. As ICREA Prof. Leticia Tarruell explains: “Quantum simulation can be used to boil down very complicated systems into simpler models to then understand open questions that current computers cannot answer, such as why some materials conduct electricity without any losses even at relatively high temperatures”. The research of the group at ICFO in this area has received support at national level (award from the Royal Spanish Society of Physics, and projects and grants from the BBVA Foundation, Ramón Areces Foundation, La Caixa Foundation and Cellex Foundation) and European level (including an ERC project). In addition, QUIONE is co-financed by the Government of Catalonia, through the Secretariat of Digital Policies of the Department of Enterprise and Work, as part of the Catalan Government's commitment to promote quantum technologies.

The singularity of this experiment lies in the fact that they have managed to bring the strontium gas to the quantum regime, place it in an optical lattice where the atoms could interact by collisions and then apply the single atom imaging techniques. These three ingredients altogether make ICFO's strontium quantum-gas microscope unique in its kind.

 

Why strontium?

Until now, these microscope setups relied on alkaline atoms, like lithium and potassium, which have simpler properties in terms of their optical spectrum compared to alkaline-earth atoms such as strontium. This means that strontium offers more ingredients to play with in these experiments.

In fact, in recent years, the unique properties of strontium have made it a very popular element for applications in the fields of quantum computing and quantum simulation. For example, a cloud of strontium atoms can be used as an atomic quantum processor, which could solve problems beyond the capabilities of current classical computers.

All in all, ICFO researchers saw great potential for quantum simulation in strontium, and they set to work to build their own quantum-gas microscope. This is how QUIONE was born.

 

QUIONE, a quantum simulator of real crystals

To this end, they first lowered the temperature of the strontium gas. Using the force of several laser beams, the speed of atoms can be reduced to a point where they remain almost motionless, barely moving, reducing their temperature to almost absolute zero in just a few milliseconds. Then, the laws of quantum mechanics rule their behavior, and the atoms display new features like quantum superposition and entanglement.

After that, with the help of special lasers, the researchers activated the optical lattice, which keeps the atoms arranged in a grid along space. “You can imagine it like an egg carton, where the individual sites are actually where you put the eggs. But instead of eggs we have atoms and instead of a carton we have the optical lattice”, explains Sandra Buob, first author of the article.

The atoms in the egg cup interacted with each other, sometimes experiencing quantum tunnelling to move from one place to another. This quantum dynamics between atoms mimics that of electrons in certain materials. Therefore, the study of these systems can help understand the complex behavior of certain materials, which is the key idea of ​​quantum simulation.

As soon as the gas and the optical lattice were ready, the researchers took the images with their microscope and could finally observe their strontium quantum gas atom by atom. At this point, the construction of QUIONE had already been a success, but its creators wanted to get even more out of it.

Thus, in addition to the pictures, they took videos of the atoms and were able to observe that, while the atoms should remain still during the imaging, they sometimes jumped to a nearby lattice site. This can be explained by the phenomenon of quantum tunnelling. “The atoms were “hopping” from one site to another. It was something very beautiful to see, as we were literally witnessing a direct manifestation of their inherent quantum behavior”, shares Buob.

Finally, the research group used their quantum-gas microscope to confirm that the strontium gas was a superfluid, a quantum phase of matter that flows without viscosity. “We suddenly switched off the lattice laser, so that the atoms could expand in space and interfere with each other. This generated an interference pattern, due to the wave-particle duality of the atoms in the superfluid. When our equipment captured it, we verified the presence of superfluidity in the sample”, explains Dr. Antonio Rubio-Abadal.

“It is a very exciting moment for quantum simulation”, shares ICREA professor Leticia Tarruell. “Now that we have added strontium to the list of available quantum-gas microscopes, we might be able to simulate more complex and exotic materials soon. Then new phases of matter are expected to arise. And we also expect to obtain much more computational power to use these machines as analog quantum computers”.

 

About QUIONE and Quantum Technologies in Barcelona

QUIONE is a program created by ICFO that aims at using quantum processors based on individually controlled and detected ultra-cold atoms to solve problems hard for classical computers. The program includes the analog quantum processor QUIONE I, the quantum-gas microscope mentioned in the study, and a hybrid analog-digital processor named QUIONE II, which is currently under construction. QUIONE is part of the eight major programs that Government of Catalonia, through the Secretary of Digital Policies, co-finances as part of its commitment to the promotion of quantum technologies.

 

Bibliographic reference:

S. Buob, J. Höschele, V. Makhalov, A. Rubio-Abadal and L. Tarruell, “A strontium quantum-gas microscope”. https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.5.020316

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map of the lab and location of the quantum simulator

Picture of the glass cell with the strontium gas cloud in the middle

CREDIT

ICFO

JOURNAL

PRX Quantum

ARTICLE TITLE

A Strontium Quantum-Gas Microscope

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Apr-2024

 

Unveiling the secrets of Montesinho's honey: a blend of tradition and science

ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY

 

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CIRCLES REPRESENT HONEY SAMPLES FROM MONTESINHO NATURAL PARK (MNP), TRIANGLES REPRESENT HONEY SAMPLES FROM THE BOUNDARY’S LIMITS OF THE MNP (RED TRIANGLES, M2; YELLOW TRIANGLES, M1) AND SQUARES REPRESENT COMMERCIAL HONEY SAMPLES (DARK GREEN TRIANGLES, C2; SOFT GREEN TRIANGLES, C1).

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CREDIT: FOOD QUALITY AND SAFETY

A study illuminates the physicochemical properties and nutritional value of honey from Montesinho Natural Park (MNP), a cherished natural reserve in Portugal. This research serves as both a tribute to the enduring heritage of Portuguese honey and a significant advancement in comprehending how geographical factors influence honey's quality. 

Montesinho Natural Park (MNP) is celebrated for its diverse flora and unique climate, creating an ideal environment for producing honey with distinctive attributes. With the demand for natural products and Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) honey on the rise, understanding the nuances that contribute to honey quality becomes paramount.

Published in the prestigious Food Quality and Safety journal on March 11, 2024, a new study (DOI: 10.1093/fqsafe/fyae015) by researchers from REQUIMTE/LAQV and Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto offers a comprehensive analysis of various honey samples from MNP. The study reveals that the honey consistently meets quality and regulatory standards.

The study conducted a thorough analysis of 13 honey samples from diverse apiaries. Employing sophisticated techniques, researchers assessed crucial physicochemical and nutritional variables, such as moisture, ash content, acidity, electrical conductivity, proteins, carbohydrates, and minerals. Additionally, they looked into specific indicators like 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, diastase activity, and color. Across the board, the honey demonstrated remarkable uniformity in quality, consistently adhering to or surpassing the rigorous criteria set by honey regulations. Notably, the study found that the honey's excellence was unaffected by MNP's varying geographical terrains, indicating a minimal impact of location on its key qualities. The uniformity in quality across different apiaries within MNP confirmed the honey's compliance with legislative standards and its alignment with established quality benchmarks, showcasing MNP honey's adherence to its esteemed PDO status.

Professor Cristina Delerue-Matos, a leading authority in food quality and one of the study’s principal investigators, emphasized the importance of this research: "Our findings not only confirm the superior quality of MNP honey but also highlight the negligible impact of geographical variations within the park on its physicochemical properties. This underscores the park's unique biodiversity and the consistent practices of local beekeepers in maintaining honey quality."

This research not only reinforces the prestigious PDO status of MNP honey but also illuminates the path for future studies aimed at preserving the legacy and integrity of honey production in natural reserves amidst changing environmental conditions.

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References

DOI

10.1093/fqsafe/fyae015

Original Source URL

https://doi.org/10.1093/fqsafe/fyae015

Funding information

S. Soares and M. Moreira thank FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) for funding through the Scientific Employment Stimulus—Individual Call (CEECIND/00588/2022 and CEECIND/02702/2017, respectively). The authors also thank the project SYSTEMIC “an integrated approach to the challenge of sustainable food systems: adaptive and mitigatory strategies to address climate change and malnutrition”.

About Food Quality and Safety (FQS)

Food Quality and Safety (FQS) is an open access, international, peer-reviewed journal providing a platform to highlight emerging and innovative science and technology in the agro-food field, publishing up-to-date research in the areas of food quality, food safety, food nutrition and human health. It is covered by SCI-E and the 2022 Impact Factor (IF)=5.6, 5-yr IF=6.2.

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JOURNAL

Food Quality and Safety

DOI

10.1093/fqsafe/fyae015 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Exploring Geographical Influences on Physicochemical Characteristics of Honey: the Montesinho Natural Park scenario