Pnewsology

The week’s news with a dash of psychology!

Jane Ogden (Professor in Health Psychology, Emeritus; email janeogden509@gmail.com; based on a conversation with James Cannon at Radio Surrey; 8.40 am 10/07/2026)

Week ending 10/07/2026

All opinions are those of Jane Ogden

I am feeling cross and have lost faith in government!  I watched ‘Dirty Business’ on Channel 4 which is the most amazing dramatized exposé of the British water companies and how they keep illegally pouring sewage into our rivers and seas, covering it up and then how the regulatory bodies do nothing.  It also shows how water companies were asset stripped by private companies and how the CEOs paid themselves a fortune rather than repairing any damage to the infra structure.  And we see how the PR people twist and turn their language to pretend there’s nothing to see.  This was all known decades ago; there was a Panorama documentary in 2021 and this programme came out in Feb 2026.  So I was already upset!  Then, this week, Thames Water announced they had upgraded Burstow sewage works.  This was using customer money (not their dividends), is clearly too little and you could see in their framing that the language was exactly the same as it always has been.  Why does nothing change?

We also heard this week that a Which report identified 150 baby products, which have been found dangerous and subjected to product recalls, STILL on sale on Amazon, Ebay and Tik Tok.

And we heard that some money has been made available to have dangerous cladding removed.  Grenfell was 2017!! Buildings still have the same cladding!! It hasn’t been removed!

Its all like the Post Office scandal.  Dreadful things happen.  There’s a cover up.  Then there’s a big reveal.  Then nothing happens and people just get away with it!

But not everything is slow!

This week Trump phoned Fifa to overturn a red card for a US football player.  It was overturned.

Andy Burnham is set to be our new PM by the end of July due to overwhelming support by Labour MPs.  The whole process has taken about 6 weeks.

And Nigel Farage decided to trigger a by election by resigning from his seat in Clacton.  He resigned and the by election was called!  Just like that! Go Count Binface by the way!

There is red tape which makes things slow and nothing happens.  But when this is removed, we have tragedies of e coli in our water, dangerous baby products and cladding that creates roaring flames that no one can put out.  Then we have red tape when we need to find out what has gone wrong.  And this takes forever so we never seem to get anywhere.  There are no consequences, no justice and no change.

But where there’s a will there’s a way and when the powers that be really want something to happen, suddenly all the red tape vanishes and stuff changes.

So – the red tape isn’t the problem.  It’s the way the red tape is used or blamed or hidden behind that is the problem.   We need the red tape to keep us safe.  But we don’t need people hiding behind the red tape when it suits them.  Without that there won’t ever be any closure or any justice and without that we will lose faith in government which is slippery slope towards the kinds of governments people end up when they have lost faith in government.