The Open University

Explainer: What is national insurance?

11 March 2017

A tax called national insurance has become the centre of a row within Britain’s ruling Conservative Party. The recent budget announced a rise in the tax for the self-employed (from 9% to 11% on profits above £8,060 – still less than the 12% paid by employees). But a number of Conservative MPs have strongly criticised […]

Britain’s dark history of criminalising homeless people in public spaces

10 March 2017

Since the onset of austerity in 2010, the estimated number of people sleeping rough in England has more than doubled, from 1,768 in 2010, to 4,134 in 2016. As the number of homeless people increases, while support services and hostels are diminishing, rough sleepers are becoming ever more visible in British cities. But rather than […]

Home Office rule change adds to febrile atmosphere for EU nationals in Britain

3 March 2017

The House of Lords may have backed an amendment to protect the rights of EU nationals after Brexit, but the level of fear among nationals of other EU countries about their future has hit new highs. On March 1, the Lords voted by 358 to 256 in favour of an amendment to the Brexit bill, […]

Why we must reduce the prison population rather than build new prisons

26 February 2017

The justice secretary Liz Truss has published a new bill to reform the prison and court system in England and Wales. The Prisons and Courts Bill proposes new laws emphasising audits and league tables of prisons and a legal responsibility for both prison staff and the secretary of state for justice to ensure that prisons […]

A Clockwork Orange: ultraviolence, Russian spies and fake news

25 February 2017

The writer Anthony Burgess is most famous for his novel, A Clockwork Orange. This month marks the centenary of the writer’s birth and his dystopian vision still casts a long shadow over popular culture. But what is perhaps more intriguing is how the book was once drawn into a world of Russian espionage, fake news […]

Solar system with seven Earth-like planets found around nearby star – here’s what they could be like

22 February 2017

There have been many discoveries of potentially habitable planets orbiting stars other than our own over the last few years. Now things are getting even more exciting. Scientists have documented a star surrounded by no fewer than seven Earth-like planets – several or all of which could be at the right temperature for liquid water, […]

Organic molecules found on giant asteroid Ceres – why that’s such a huge deal

17 February 2017

Sometimes, I think scientists are just that little bit too modest. A new paper in Science has a humdinger of a title: “Localized aliphatic organic material on the surface of Ceres”. It doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue and may not even seem that important. But what the researchers have discovered is a huge deal. […]

Why there is such an enormous demand for drugs in British prisons

15 February 2017

The BBC’s Panorama documentary on HMP Northumberland recently put the problem of drug taking in prisons firmly under the spotlight. The terrible harms that psychoactive drugs create for both prisoners and prison officers were laid bare – secretly recorded footage showed prisoners overdosing on drugs, prisoners threatening an officer with a weapon, and one prison […]

The environmental costs of Trump’s wall

13 February 2017

It looks like Donald Trump’s “great, great wall” is actually going to happen. Its likely impact on human society has been well-noted, but in the longer-term a barrier across an entire continent will also have severe ecological consequences. The US-Mexico border is around 1,900 miles (3,100 km) long and some of it has already been […]

Four ways Britain could guarantee the right to remain for EU citizens after Brexit

12 February 2017

During the second reading of the bill that will give the government the go-ahead to trigger Britain’s exit from the European Union, MPs had a chance to safeguard the rights of EU citizens after Brexit. An amendment, tabled by Labour MP Harriet Harman, would have forced the government to preserve the current residence rights of […]

OU News