1. This Demos report, Inside the mind of a 16-year-old: From Andrew Tate to Bonnie Blue to Nigel Farage – what do first time voters think about social media, politics, the state of Britain and their futures?, is encouraging overall https://demos.co.uk/research/inside-the-mind-of-a-16-year-old-from-andrew-tate-to-bonnie-blue-to-nigel-farage-what-do-first-time-voters-think-about-social-media-politics-the-state-of-britain-and-their-futures/ PDF below.

The key insights, “which challenge many assumptions and misconceptions about this generation”, say Demos, are:

Andrew Tate’s influence is fading – today’s teens follow a far wider mix of creators, from MrBeast to HasanAbi.

Young people are incredibly media-savvy, cross-checking what they see on TikTok with mainstream sources.

Mainstream politicians are not communicating effectively with young people – Nigel Farage is not liked but admired for using social media and for his straight talking. Keir Starmer is not disliked, he is invisible.

Knife crime is the number-one concern raised by young people, and is seen as a symbol of politicians’ failure to keep them safe.

Schools are closing down space for debate and discussion, leaving students craving honest discussion.

Despite their frustrations, most remain hopeful and confident that Britain can improve, and that they’ll build better lives than their parents.

2. Carbon Brief have produced a masterful summary of the key outcomes agreed at COP30 https://www.carbonbrief.org/cop30-key-outcomes-agreed-at-the-un-climate-talks-in-belem/

A voluntary plan to curb fossil fuels, a goal to triple adaptation finance and new efforts to “strengthen” climate targets have been launched at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil. After all-night negotiations in the Amazonian city of Belém, the Brazilian presidency released a final package termed the “global mutirão” – a name meaning “collective efforts”. It was an attempt to draw together controversial issues that had divided the fortnight of talks, including finance, trade policies and meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C temperature goal. A “mechanism” to help ensure a “just transition” globally and a set of measures to track climate-adaptation efforts were also among COP30’s notable outcomes.

3. And on the same general theme, Where does our waste go? is a London Review of Books podcast with Brett Christophers & Thomas Jones https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/where-does-our-waste-go

‘Since the 1980s’, Brett Christophers wrote recently in the LRB, ‘firms have made vast amounts of money by sending the rich world’s waste to the global South’ – hazardous waste at first, joined more recently by discarded electronics, clothes and plastics. Literal mountains of our rubbish are accumulating on the peripheries of cities such as Accra and Delhi. Waste, like wealth, is unevenly distributed. In this episode of the LRB podcast, Brett joins Tom Jones to discuss what happens to our rubbish after we throw it away. They talk about where it goes and why it’s so difficult actually to get rid of it, let alone reduce the amount we discard, when the creation of waste is so much more profitable.

4. The BBC has most usually been accused of pro-Palestinian bias, and I was surprised to read this piece https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251110-bbc-editor-suing-owen-jones-over-pro-israel-bias-expressed-admiration-for-mossad/ Puzzling that the only other language that Middle East Monitor seems to offer in addition to English is Portuguese?

5. And, finally, an account of the curious career of James Watson, the author of The Double Helix, who died earlier this month, from STAT, whose mission is “to deliver trusted, tough-minded journalism on the business of making medicines, health tech, science, public health, hospitals, and insurance”. James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers https://www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/james-watson-remembrance-from-dna-pioneer-to-pariah/

And here’s The Telegraph obituary https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/b09813cd5a26039d He chronicled the search for ‘the secret of life’ in his bestseller The Double Helix but damaged his career with his controversial views. Has a great photo of the young Watson and his collaborator, Francis Crick, captioned ‘they shared the sublime arrogance of men who had never met their intellectual equals’.