United

Christmas Day

Felixstowe, Suffolk
A proper community affair, with hundreds of participants resplendent in festive finery racing into the North Sea at 10am sharp while much of the town gathers along the promenade to watch. The event raises funds for St Elizabeth Hospice, and every year brings new tales of heroics and even romance (there’s been the odd mid-plunge proposal). The atmosphere is as heartwarming as the water is not. Afterwards warm up with a stroll around town, with its four-mile promenade and seafront gardens.
10am, £16, stelizabethhospice.org.uk

Penarth and Porthcawl

The Dawnstalkers meet daily to greet the sunrise with a swim beside Penarth pier, three miles south of Cardiff city centre – and Christmas morning is no exception. Anyone can join this inclusive sea-swimming collective. A wood-fired barrel sauna will be parked on the prom from 21–29 December, offering a toasty post-dip reward. The Christmas swim at Porthcawl (25 miles west along the coast) began in 1965, when local swimming legend Arlon Owens, dressed as a clown, was pushed off the pier by another dipper dressed as Father Christmas. More than a thousand swimmers – many still in fancy dress – take the plunge, raising thousands for local charities.
Penarth: 8am, free, dawnstalkers.com. Porthcawl: 11.15am (enter water at 11.45am), suggested donation £10, christmasswim.org

Peter Pan Cup, the Serpentine, Hyde Park, London

One of the UK’s oldest festive swims, the Serpentine Swimming Club’s Christmas Day race has been held in Hyde Park every Christmas morning since 1864. The event was later named for JM Barrie, who donated the first trophy in 1904. This short but speedy 100-yard race is open only to members, but spectators are encouraged to gather along the lakeside to cheer on the swimmers.
9am, serpentineswimmingclub.com

Weymouth, Dorset

Started in 1948, when pub landlord Dill Laker and taxi driver Reggie Bugler made a boozy bet to swim the harbour after Christmas Eve drinks, Weymouth has grown into one of the UK’s biggest and best-loved festive plunges. Hundreds of swimmers splash 70 metres across the harbour, cheered on by thousands of spectators, raising funds for a local disability charity. The harbour itself is pretty, but make time to stroll the huge sandy beach too, backed by colourful beach huts.
From 9.30am, £15, love-weymouth.co.uk

Hunstanton, Norfolk
One of Norfolk’s largest festive events, the swim has been running for more than 60 years. Taking place just off the town’s central promenade, it’s organised by the Hunstanton and District Round Table and supports local charities. Lots of prizes and free hot soup to warm up after.
11am (register from 10am), free, hunstantonroundtable.com

Bude, Cornwall

This legendary swim has been organised by the Bude Surf Life Saving Club at Crooklets beach for over half a century. Thousands gather to watch as swimmers – many in Santa suits – dash into the Atlantic for a short but spirited dip. It’s all for a good cause, raising funds for the life-saving club that keeps the local beaches safe year-round.
10.45am, free (donations welcome), visitbude.info

Boxing Day

Folkestone, Kent
This event brings hundreds of swimmers to Sunny Sands, cheered on by a boisterous crowd. Organised by the Folkestone, Hythe & District Lions Club, it raises funds for the Lions and other local charities. There are prizes for fancy dress and the youngest and oldest dippers.
11.30am (register from 9.30am), £10, free with sponsorship, folkestonelions.org.uk

Seaton Carew, County Durham
The North Sea isn’t exactly a welcoming proposition for a swimmer at this time of year, but that doesn’t deter hundreds from joining Hartlepool Round Table’s Boxing Day Dip. A parade sets off from the Marine Hotel on the seafront at Seaton Crew, just outside Hartlepool, before the plunge. Bacon butties and beer are available back at base afterwards.
11.30am, £5, hartlepoolroundtable.co.uk

Paignton, Devon

A Boxing Day classic, with hundreds of swimmers, many in fancy dress, gathering on Paignton Sands for the local Lions Club’s Walk into the Sea. There’s a fancy-dress competition at 11.45am before the mass dip at noon. A great way to shake off Christmas Day indulgence in this lively English Riviera town.
12pm, £10, englishriviera.co.uk

St Ives, Cornwall

Blow away the Christmas Day cobwebs with this relaxed dip on golden Porthminster beach. Wetsuits are allowed, fancy dress is encouraged and even dogs can join in. Porthminster Café keeps post-swim spirits high with hot chocolates and bacon butties. St Ives is particularly pretty in winter and the narrow cobbled streets make for pleasant festive wandering.
12pm, free, £1 donation suggested, no website

Ventnor, Isle of Wight
Once a smugglers’ haunt, Ventnor Bay now welcomes hundreds of swimmers dressed in pyjamas, tutus and rubber rings for this swim on the Esplanade. The event raises funds for local cancer charities and for Ventnor Carnival. Post swim, mulled wine and doorstop sandwiches await brave bathers at the Spyglass Inn.
12pm, free, donation suggested, on Facebook

Fraserburgh Harbour, Aberdeenshire
Few causes are closer to sea swimmers’ hearts than the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Association). The 17th annual 52-metre harbour swim will raise funds for Fraserburgh lifeboat station, with participants diving in from the side of a lifeboat and swimming across the icy water, cheered on by the whole town.
1pm, free, donation suggested, rnli.org

New Year’s Day

Salford Quays, Manchester

No seaside? No problem. Manchester swimmers can head to Dock 9 at MediaCity, a 2002 Commonwealth Games venue that hosts a New Year’s dip in 7C waters. This “big, bold and mighty cold” event, run by Uswim, raises lots of cash for local charities. With the Lowry theatre as a backdrop, three waves of swimmers enter the water at 15-minute intervals. A best-dressed hat competition adds to the fun.
11am, £25, uswimopenwater.com

Keswick, Lake District
Cumbria’s hardiest wild swimmers take to Derwentwater in fancy dress to raise funds for the Calvert Trust, which helps people with disabilities experience the outdoors. Afterwards there will be lakeside hot chocolate and cake.
11am, free, £5 donation suggested, calvertlakes.org.uk

Bangor, County Down
Swimmers plunge into Bangor’s Ballyholme Bay in fancy dress to raise funds for Cancer Focus Northern Ireland. There are prizes to be won, hot drinks and proper facilities – but no guarantee of feeling your toes afterwards. Ballyholme Yacht Club also organises a Boxing Day swim in aid of the RNLI (£5 entry) if you fancy a double whammy.
12pm, £15, cancerfocusni.org

Saundersfoot, Pembrokeshire
This is one of the UK’s larger New Year’s Day swims – there were 2,535 registrations on 1 January 2025. It turns 40 in 2026, with a ruby theme promising a sea of vermilion-clad dippers and plenty of sparkle in the sea.
12.30pm, £5 (£3 under-16s), saundersfootnyds.co.uk

Lyme Regis, Dorset

The Rotary Club’s Lyme Lunge fills sandy Cobb beach with wigs, wings and inflatable flamingos. Fancy dress is encouraged, fundraising optional, desire to run like a loon into the sea obligatory (though just a quick paddle will suffice). Thousands of spectators flock to the beach and gardens above it to watch the mayhem.
1pm, free, donations welcome

Loony Dook, nr Edinburgh
What began as a “hangover cure” for a few friends in 1986 is now a beloved slice of post-Hogmanay madness. The Loony Dook (dook is Scots for dip) sees hundreds of dressed-up swimmers parade through South Queensferry before plunging into the Firth of Forth.
1.30pm, free

A remarkable, chaotic, mesmerising Premier League thriller at Old Trafford captured the imagination even of the clinical operators in the dugout.

“Really difficult to explain,” said Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola. “But I prefer 4-4 to 0-0.”

“Fun,” was Manchester United counterpart Ruben Amorim’s initial observation.

Analysing for Sky Sports, Jamie Carragher went further.

“The best game of the Premier League season so far,” said the former England and Liverpool defender. “It was almost a throwback to Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United with attacking football.

“It is the best I have seen Man Utd. For the majority of the game, they were absolutely fantastic.

“For the first time under Amorim – and first time in a long time – I felt like I was watching what Man Utd are supposed to be. Wave after wave attack, but the inability to defend has hurt them.”

For the record, Ferguson took charge of two games when United scored four and didn’t win.

The first was a significant factor in his side’s failure to win the 2012 title as United threw away a 4-2 lead and drew 4-4 with Everton at Old Trafford.

The other was Ferguson’s very last match, an extraordinary 5-5 draw at West Brom in 2013.

Amorim has a very long road ahead before he can be compared to Ferguson.

But at least, on a night when his side led twice in the first half, then fought back to get their noses in front again after conceding two in a matter of minutes at the start of the second, and finally had to settle for a point as Bournemouth finished the stronger, he understood what everyone had witnessed.

In a vibrant first half, the hosts’ had the highest non-penalty xG value (2.49), most shots (17) and joint-most touches in the opposition’s box (30) of any side in the opening 45 minutes of a Premier League match this season.

“If you understand a little bit,” Amorim said. “If you follow the club like I follow the Premier League for so long, you [know you] have not just the duty to try to win the games. The way you try to win the games is so important for the fans.

“Of course they are desperate to win, but also, I feel that they are desperate to be inspired when they come to Old Trafford.

“Today was inspiring, I think, also because of Bournemouth. But in the end that’s the feeling of frustration of not winning the game.”

The catastrophic violence in Gaza has unfolded within an international system that was never designed to restrain the geopolitical ambitions of powerful states. Understanding why the United Nations has proved so limited in responding to what many regard as a genocidal assault requires returning to the foundations of the post–World War II order and examining how its structure has long enabled impunity rather than accountability.

After World War II, the architecture for a new international order based on respect for the UN Charter and international law was agreed upon as the normative foundation of a peaceful future. Above all, it was intended to prevent a third world war. These commitments emerged from the carnage of global conflict, the debasement of human dignity through the Nazi Holocaust, and public anxieties about nuclear weaponry.

Yet, the political imperative to accommodate the victorious states compromised these arrangements from the outset. Tensions over priorities for world order were papered over by granting the Security Council exclusive decisional authority and further limiting UN autonomy. Five states were made permanent members, each with veto power: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China.

In practice, this left global security largely in the hands of these states, preserving their dominance. It meant removing the strategic interests of geopolitical actors from any obligatory respect for legal constraints, with a corresponding weakening of UN capability. The Soviet Union had some justification for defending itself against a West-dominated voting majority, yet it too used the veto pragmatically and displayed a dismissive approach to international law and human rights, as did the three liberal democracies.

In 1945, these governments were understood as simply retaining the traditional freedoms of manoeuvre exercised by the so-called Great Powers. The UK and France, leading NATO members in a Euro-American alliance, interpreted the future through the lens of an emerging rivalry with the Soviet Union. China, meanwhile, was preoccupied with a civil war that continued until 1949.

Three aspects of this post-war arrangement shape our present understanding.

First, the historical aspect: Learning from the failures of the League of Nations, where the absence of influential states undermined the organisation’s relevance to questions of war and peace. In 1945, it was deemed better to acknowledge power differentials within the UN than to construct a global body based on democratic equality among sovereign states or population size.

Second, the ideological aspect: Political leaders of the more affluent and powerful states placed far greater trust in hard-power militarism than in soft-power legalism. Even nuclear weaponry was absorbed into the logic of deterrence rather than compliance with Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which required good-faith pursuit of disarmament. International law was set aside whenever it conflicted with geopolitical interests.

Third, the economistic aspect: The profitability of arms races and wars reinforced a pre–World War II pattern of lawless global politics, sustained by an alliance of geopolitical realism, corporate media, and private-sector militarism.

Why the UN could not protect Gaza

Against this background, it is unsurprising that the UN performed in a disappointing manner during the two-plus years of genocidal assault on Gaza.

In many respects, the UN did what it was designed to do in the turmoil after October 7, and only fundamental reforms driven by the Global South and transnational civil society can alter this structural limitation. What makes these events so disturbing is the extremes of Israeli disregard for international law, the Charter, and even basic morality.

At the same time, the UN did act more constructively than is often acknowledged in exposing Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and human rights. Yet, it fell short of what was legally possible, particularly when the General Assembly failed to explore its potential self-empowerment through the Uniting for Peace resolution or the Responsibility to Protect norm.

Among the UN’s strongest contributions were the near-unanimous judicial outcomes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide and occupation. On genocide, the ICJ granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures concerning genocidal violence and the obstruction of humanitarian aid in Gaza. A final decision is expected after further arguments in 2026.

On occupation, responding to a General Assembly request for clarification, the Court issued a historic advisory opinion on July 19, 2024, finding Israel in severe violation of its duties under international humanitarian law in administering Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. It ordered Israel’s withdrawal within a year. The General Assembly affirmed the opinion by a large majority.

Israel responded by repudiating or ignoring the Court’s authority, backed by the US government’s extraordinary claim that recourse to the ICJ lacked legal merit.

The UN also provided far more reliable coverage of the Gaza genocide than was available in corporate media, which tended to amplify Israeli rationalisations and suppress Palestinian perspectives. For those seeking a credible analysis of genocide allegations, the Human Rights Council offered the most convincing counter to pro-Israeli distortions. A Moon Will Arise from this Darkness: Reports on Genocide in Palestine, containing the publicly submitted reports of the special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, documents and strongly supports the genocide findings.

A further unheralded contribution came from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, whose services were essential to a civilian population facing acute insecurity, devastation, starvation, disease, and cruel combat tactics. Some 281 staff members were killed while providing shelter, education, healthcare, and psychological support to beleaguered Palestinians during the course of Israel’s actions over the past two years.

UNRWA, instead of receiving deserved praise, was irresponsibly condemned by Israel and accused, without credible evidence, of allowing staff participation in the October 7 attack. Liberal democracies compounded this by cutting funding, while Israel barred international staff from entering Gaza. Nevertheless, UNRWA has sought to continue its relief work to the best of its ability and with great courage.

In light of these institutional shortcomings and partial successes, the implications for global governance become even more stark, setting the stage for a broader assessment of legitimacy and accountability.

The moral and political costs of UN paralysis

The foregoing needs to be read in light of the continuing Palestinian ordeal, which persists despite numerous Israeli violations, resulting in more than 350 Palestinian deaths since the ceasefire was agreed upon on October 10, 2025.

International law seems to have no direct impact on the behaviour of the main governmental actors, but it does influence perceptions of legitimacy. In this sense, the ICJ outcomes and the reports of the special rapporteur that take the international law dimensions seriously have the indirect effect of legitimising various forms of civil society activism in support of true and just peace, which presupposes the realisation of Palestinian basic rights – above all, the inalienable right of self-determination.

The exclusion of Palestinian participation in the US-imposed Trump Plan for shaping Gaza’s political future is a sign that liberal democracies stubbornly adhere to their unsupportable positions of complicity with Israel.

Finally, the unanimous adoption of Security Council Resolution 2803 in unacceptably endorsing the Trump Plan aligns the UN fully with the US and Israel, a demoralising evasion and repudiation of its own truth-telling procedures. It also establishes a most unfortunate precedent for the enforcement of international law and the accountability of perpetrators of international crimes.

In doing so, it deepens the crisis of confidence in global governance and underscores the urgent need for meaningful UN reform if genuine peace and justice are ever to be realised.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.