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 17/07/2026)

Week ending 17/07/2026

All opinions are those of Jane Ogden

I love a to do list and this week the need for a good plan was clear!

Last week Morgan McSweeney, the ex-Chief of Staff for Keir Starmer disclosed that they didn’t really have plan when they took over as the government 2 years ago.  A bit shocking! I’ve been shouting at the TV for 14 years as to what I would do if I was PM! Surely, they must have had some idea!

Then this week (ironically) Rachel Reeves announced that Andy Burnham really needs a worked through plan in order to govern and then as we speak, the man himself is preparing to announce this very plan before he takes over as PM next week.

Then we also heard from the COVID enquiry how we wasted £10bn due a lack of a plan for the epidemic and it is forever clear that Trump has no plan how to end the war in Iran.  It is one of those forever wars he vowed never to have!

And then there was the football and England lost to Argentina.  It was so painful to watch and has been so upsetting to deal with for many reasons – one being that my Dad is a massive football fan and often tells a story of 1966 when I was on his knee and how he threw me up in the air when we won and he says ‘and she hasn’t come down since’.  He now says each time ‘maybe this is my last World cup’ and I so wanted us to win for him.  But we didn’t.  We had a great plan – to score goals.  It worked and we scored a goal (and dealt with endless pushing and punching and tripping from Argentina with a surprising amount of cool and resilience).  But then we changed our plan and went defensive.  Aiming to do this for 40 mins!  This plan didn’t work (they scored – of course they did) BUT we didn’t change that plan and they scored again!  Basic psychology – have a plan, if it works do it more.  If it doesn’t work change it.  And I am back to shouting at the TV.

Plans are good.  They take away our spontaneous decisions which in the moment are often off the back of panic and pressure whilst plans encourage us to behave as we would wish to.  Plan to eat well (buy it and bring it into the house) and it’s easier to say no to cake and plan how to drink less (I’ll have a zero beer) and its much easier not to have another glass of wine.  And as with all things, if our plan is rewarded by success we tend to carry on with that planned behaviour.  If it fails however, we then are not rewarded so we change it.  Unless we are the England football team, or Trump or the government, in which case no plan or a bad plan seem to carry on regardless of the consequences. 

As a good psychologist I’ve always believed we are all fairly simple at heart.  Plan things. Reward things if you want more of them and give bad things negative consequences and they are less likely to happen again.  This week something when awry!  It seems some of us are more like pigeons than others and the universal rules of human behaviour are not as universal as I thought.  And it also seems that shouting at the TV has no effect whatsoever!