The trans athletes debate is polarised in the extreme. These two cases should find consensus in delimiting the bounds of reasonableness. — You are the President of The International Olympic Committee, and at the next annual session of the IOC, you will have to put forward a policy on the participation of transgender athletes in their self-identified gender categories to the committee to be voted on. What will your policy be? (For…

‘Net zero’ is a useful organising principle for climate action. But some companies are using it to kick the can and avoid decarbonising. — ‘Net zero’ has become one of the most important terms in debates about climate change. Though it has been used in niche climate discourse for many years, it is since the Paris climate conference in 2015 that it has been elevated to celebrity status. There it was used to organise…

The Northern Ireland Protocol in the Brexit deal is causing shortages and violence in the region. Here’s how it can be fixed. — Every version of the world where the UK left the EU is worse than every version of the world where the UK remained in the EU. The UK could either have had true independence to make its own trade deals, meaning huge economic loss, disruption to supply chains, and trouble…

The current social care system is plagued by poor standards and low funding. But even if we fix these problems, there’s another lurking ahead. — The British social care system needs reform. On that, almost everyone can agree. There is simply not enough funding in the system, nor good enough provision, nor sufficient staffing levels. Ultimately, though, most problems in the sector flow from funding, and, in particular, the mechanisms through which the social care…

The stakes of the climate crisis have never been higher — and now they’re staring us in the face. — Over the last 5 years in politics, decades have happened. Politics — both global and national — has moved at break-neck speed. Populism rose from the ruins of the financial crisis, and was blunted by the cruel, complex reality of a pandemic. In such a rapidly-changing political climate, the pace…

The NYT’s Visual Investigations Team does vital work — verifying information and bringing clarity to chaos. We need more of this type of journalism. — Protests, riots, conflicts: chaotic situations are vacuums of information. There’s little conventional reporting on them, because they’re so difficult to cover properly. And what information does come out is via social media. It’s difficult to verify, especially for the layperson trying to work out what’s going on as they scroll…

The government seems keen to reinvent social care — but it’s not yet clear how. Here are the key decisions they have to make. — If the early rhetoric of new Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid is anything to go by, the Tories’ manifesto commitment to reform the social care system is, for the first time, back at the top of the government’s priorities. The Secretary of State told MPs on Monday that…

There’s panic about a double-mutation variant of coronavirus spreading in India and beyond — but what does this variant actually mean? — Throughout the last month, the world has looked on in horror as India has racked up the world’s highest death tolls at any point in the pandemic during a devastating second wave. At the peak of the epidemic in India, new daily cases soared above 400,000, and over 4,000 Indians…

A more informative lens for the Israel-Palestine conflict could help to reduce tensions, reveal the truth, and pave a way forward. — I don’t intend to discuss the events of recent days at length. I’ll mostly leave that to people far better placed than me to dissect exactly what’s happened, but here’s a very basic potted summary of the flare-up between Israel and Palestine. The violence started a couple of days ago…