United Kingdom (UK)

For anybody who loves British television from the 1970s and 80s, this is just delightful.

It is only comparatively recently that performance in arenas other than theatre and cinema has begun to receive serious academic attention. The ‘Spaces of Television’ project and the University of York’s ‘Playing the Small Screen’ symposium have each opened up discussions regarding the impact of production process and space upon television acting, yet little consideration has been given to those spaces in which performances were traditionally prepared prior to studio transmission or recording. This article attempts to address this by focusing on the BBC’s ‘Television Rehearsal Rooms’, better known by those who used them as the ‘Acton Hilton’, which offers a precise model of the ‘outside’ rehearsal process which characterised multi-camera studio production. A creative hub for not only drama, but also sitcom and light entertainment, the Hilton represented an extended community for the many performers who gathered there to rehearse – a community that has all but disappeared in the modern era of single camera location work, where prior rehearsal of the type conducted at Acton has virtually disappeared. Drawing upon a combination of archive research and interviews with practitioners, this piece examines the important role played by the Acton Hilton in the history of UK television acting.

A grounding in the queer history of the legal system in the United Kingdom reveals striking parallels between the moral panic leading to the enactment of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, and the current moment’s discourse surrounding the inclusion of transgender people in social spaces and their potential right to self-identification of gender in law. Through use of moral panic theory, this article examines and contextualizes the historical forces at play in the formation of laws around queer and trans lives in the UK, and in particular the instrumentalization of fears over the safety of children and cisgender women. The article also provides a practical example of the influence of the trans moral panic on law reform, by evaluating the debate surrounding the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill 2022. It concludes that there is no ‘gender crisis’ in the UK, but there are powerful social forces at work to stoke a moral panic and, in doing so, stigmatize and alienate trans people in a similar manner to the stigmatization of homosexuality as an illegitimate way of life under Section 28.

The criminalisation and repression of climate and environmental protest is problematic for at least two main reasons. First, it focuses state policy on punishing dissent against inaction on climate and environmental change instead of taking adequate action on these issues. In criminalising and repressing climate and environmental activists, states depoliticise them. Second, they represent authoritarian moves that are not consistent with the ideals of vibrant civil societies in liberal democracies.

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Governments, legislatures, courts and police forces should operate with a general presumption against criminalising climate and environmental protests. Instead, climate and environmental protest should be regarded as a reasonable response to the urgent and existential nature of the climate crisis, and activists engaged as stakeholders in a process of just transition.

The BBC has published an article by Deborah Cohen on the NHS puberty blocker trial that is due to begin in 2025. In this article, Cohen quotes a member of conversion therapy activist parent organisation Bayswater Support Group as a neutral source.

The article is heavily weighted with those opposing trans healthcare for children and young people. It quotes WPATH, yet all of the other medical opinions are from those opposing the use of hormonal treatments. The section on parent opinions includes an academic whose research involves parents of young trans people, but no quotes from supportive parents themselves.

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Bayswater Support Group are a conversion therapy parent group operating under the guise of a support group for parents of trans children. The organisation's internal forums were exposed earlier this year which uncovered evidence of parents preventing their children from accessing Childline, mental health resources and rape crisis centres for fear of those services affirming their children's gender identity. Parents in the forum openly admitted to destroying or damaging their children's belongings, such as accessories and clothing, behaviour that constitutes domestic abuse. Bayswater support group still link to a DIY conversion therapy manual on their website.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health said the refusal or withdrawal of HRT for trans patients raised “ethical and clinical” concerns.

“Hormones should not be stopped for political reasons or in the absence of a recognised medical issue,” a spokesperson told TBIJ. “If GPs are withdrawing prescriptions despite recommendations, this could result in negative impacts on patients' mental and physical wellbeing.”

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The issue appears to reflect a wider rollback of access to gender-affirming healthcare in the wake of April’s publication of the controversial Cass Review into health services for trans young people. This review claimed that the evidence base of using puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones for young people was “weak”. Some of the same medicines are used in adult care.

The review did not recommend a ban on puberty blockers but resulted in one for young people experiencing gender dysphoria (they are still permitted for children experiencing early puberty). The ban was extended by the new Labour government in August. Adult gender services are now also under review.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health said the refusal or withdrawal of HRT for trans patients raised “ethical and clinical” concerns.

“Hormones should not be stopped for political reasons or in the absence of a recognised medical issue,” a spokesperson told TBIJ. “If GPs are withdrawing prescriptions despite recommendations, this could result in negative impacts on patients' mental and physical wellbeing.”

The general election did not allow for the full expression of people power. Rather, we saw a rejection of the political establishment, leading to a loveless landslide; this election saw the second-lowest turnout since 1918 and the smallest combined vote share for the two main parties since 1945. Public discontent with a broken political system will only grow as the government fails to make the real change that people expect.

That energy needs somewhere to go. It needs to be channelled. It needs to be mobilised. That’s why our campaign will organise with those who have been inspired by our victory to build community power in every corner of the country. Once our grassroots model has been replicated elsewhere, this can be the genesis of a new movement capable of challenging the stale two-party system. A movement that offers a real alternative to child poverty, inequality and endless war. A movement that provides a real opposition to the far right – one that doesn’t concede ground to divisive rhetoric, but stands by its principles of anti-racism, equality and inclusion.

I have no doubt that this movement will eventually run in elections. However, to create a new, centralised party, based around the personality of one person, is to put the cart before the horse. Remember that only once strength is built from below can we challenge those at the top.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced a 12-year plan for the building industry when peace came.

The Ministry of Works had come up with Emergency Factory Made Houses, or EFMs.

They devised an ideal floor plan of a one-storey bungalow with two bedrooms, inside toilets, a fitted kitchen, a bathroom and a living room.

The homes would be detached and surrounded by a garden to encourage householders to grow fruit and vegetables, and would have a coal shed.

Soon better known as prefabs than EFMs, the homes were cheap to produce and, for many, an improvement on their previous living conditions.

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In the first decade after the war, nearly 500,000 homes were built using some form of prefabrication.

Originally intended as an interim solution until the country could return to building permanent homes with traditional materials, 156,623 prefab bungalows were built between 1945 and 1949.

Each was expected to last for a decade. About 8,000 remain today.

Now, as concerns about the UK's housing-affordability crisis continue to grow, author and journalist Anna Minton believes changing public sentiment about social housing may be turning the tide against further estate regeneration.

"The stock has been decimated and people would love to live in it," said Minton, a vocal critic of estate regeneration. "I think it's lost its bad reputation – people think, 'if only houses were available on council estates in the way they used to be'."

"There is a renewed interest because affordable housing and the housing crisis is right at the top of the political agenda in a way that it wasn't before," she told Dezeen. "This big push on estate regeneration – I think it has kind of peaked."

As Michael Gove launched his preposterous and dangerous new extremism definition, some of the groups he targeted have hit back – calling it a “deep dive into authoritarianism” and laying cover for the government “aiding and abetting” Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

As set out in JRF's recent report Making a house a home, the shifting balance of tenure has played a key role in myriad housing problems, from unaffordability and poor conditions to insecurity, and a plan for building a more equitable housing market must reckon with who owns our housing stock (Baxter et al, 2022).

This should take the form of efforts to shift tenure over time, and doing that directly through socialisation could play an important role. However, there are criticisms of this approach, and there needs to be a consideration of how acquisition may be best used within the housing system.

This briefing explores these criticisms, how they may be best overcome, and proposes the best way of deploying socialisation, arguing for a focus on:

• reducing the cost of providing temporary accommodation (TA), while supporting efforts to drive up standards in the sector
• growing a community rented sector in lower-cost housing markets that are otherwise plagued by poor conditions, poor management, and where rental payments are not benefiting local communities
• a wider plan to reform the Right to Buy scheme to arrest the decline of social housing and to keep subsidies in the system.