Archive for the ‘Law’ Category
Will Michael make the Grade at Ofcom?
By MARCUS STEAD
THE APPOINTMENT of Michael Grade as Ofcom chairman should be greeted with an open mind. There is plenty of room for optimism, but there are also good reasons why a few notes of caution are advisable.
First of all, the positives: Grade comes from a strong media and entertainment background. His father was the theatrical agent Leslie Grade, and his uncles were impresarios Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont.
Grade isn’t a typical BBC executive who went to public school then on to Oxbridge, but there is no doubt at all that his family connections have helped him in his career. He joined the Daily Mirror after leaving in 1960, a job that was organised by his father, but he made the most of his opportunity and in 1964, at the age of just 21, he was given his own sports column.
Two years later, Grade left the Daily Mirror after his father suffered a serious stroke, and took over his theatrical business responsibilities.
In 1969, Grade moved to London Management & Representation, where Morecambe and Wise were among the performers he represented.
Grade entered the television industry in 1973 when he joined London Weekend Television (LWT) as Deputy Controller of Programmes (Entertainment).
Again, Grade deserves credit for the decisions he made in this role. LWT was still recovering from its poor start in 1968, when it launched to a schedule consisting of too many high-brow, worthy and niche arts-related programmes. As a consequence, viewers deserted LWT for the more mainstream Friday and Saturday night viewing on BBC One. Some other ITV regions refused to show LWT’s programmes in prime time, and relegated them to late-night slots to accommodate more populist tastes.
By the time Grade arrived, the original board members (including David Frost) had left, and Rupert Murdoch was a major shareholder.
LWT became influenced by the same character as Murdoch’s newspapers. LWT was populist and conservative, compared to its more high-brow and liberal weekday counterpart at Thames.
Grade was ahead of his time in making what appeared on screen reflect how modern-day Britain truly was. He bought the scripts to an African-American sitcom The Good Times, which had an all-black cast, and adapted it as The Fosters, which became the first British sitcom to have an entirely black cast.
He also commissioned Mind Your Language, which was shown on prime time ITV for three series. I have to say, I still find the programme hilarious.
For those unfamiliar with it, the premise is of a teacher with a classroom full of adult students who are learning English as a foreign language.
Each of the characters is effectively a stereotypical caricature of the country they are from. For example, Francoise Pascale played a sex-obsessed French au pair. Jacki Harding played a stern German au pair. Robert Lee played a Japanese electronics executive who always had a camera around his neck and would stand up and bow before speaking.
It was silly, it was caricatured, but I would argue it was not racist. Much of the programme consisted of the class effectively ganging up on their teacher, Mr Brown, with often-hilarious consequences.
Indeed, it remains very popular in overseas markets, in countries where political correctness effectively seen the abolition of humour.
Nevertheless, Grade cancelled Mind Your Language after three series, and at the Edinburgh Festival in 1985, he said it was ‘really irresponsible’ to put it out. Millions of viewers in Britain and around the world would disagree.
Grade’s actions in cancelling Mind Your Language should act as a warning to those who insist he will stand up to the ‘woke brigade’ in his new role at Ofcom.
During his time at LWT, Grade maintained a high profile in the media, with his distinctive red braces, big cigars and red socks.
Grade left LWT in 1981 to spend two years at Embassy Television in the USA, where he mainly worked on sitcom scripts, but in early summer 1984, he returned to Britain and took a massive pay cut, from $500,000, excluding large bonuses, to £37,000 per year as Controller of BBC One.
His time at BBC One was in many ways hugely successful. He made the evening schedule more disciplined, with programmes usually starting on-the-hour or at half-past the hour. Previously, scheduling had been much more hotchpotch with programmes running at less structured lengths.
The scheduling itself also made much more sense. Terry Wogan’s chat show, live in front of a theatre audience, was to run three nights per week at 7pm. On the other two evenings, the new soap opera EastEnders would occupy the slot.
The BBC One schedule under Grade was well-structured with a strong variety of programmes on each evening.
Grade also wasn’t afraid to take sensible decisions which wouldn’t make him popular with everyone, such as axing Doctor Who, which at the time still had appalling special effects in an era when Hollywood was making the most of ever-improving technology.
At the time of its cancellation, Doctor Who had higher ratings than Wogan and Match of the Day, but realistically, Grade made the right decision, and it returned after a hiatus revamped and much more suited to the modern era.
Grade was correct to axe all beauty pageants from the BBC One schedule, as they were naff and from a bygone age, but there were signs that he was a bit woke in his thinking when one Christmas, the ident designers wanted to put snowmen as the BBC One idents. Grade considered this sexist.
It was impossible for the designers to create ‘snow women’ without it appearing like a nude sculpture, so they settled on the neutral ‘snow people’.
In commissioning dramas, Grade was bold and ambitious, and wasn’t afraid to take calculated risks. He launched BBC One’s first full daytime schedule, which included Australian soap opera Neighbours, which was initially shown in the mornings and after the lunchtime news. When Grade’s daughter told him she couldn’t follow it because she was in school, Grade moved the morning edition to 5:35pm, where it was to remain for many years.
With Neighbours coming to an end later this year, it is important to remember just how popular it once was, with audiences of 18 million, and Grade deserves credit for his decision to back it.
In 1988, Grade moved to Channel 4 as its second ever chief executive, taking over from Jeremy Isaacs, who criticised the appointment and threatened to throttle Grade if the nature of the channel was altered.
It’s worth remembering how Channel 4 operated in the early years from its launch in 1982. Its remit was to make distinctive programming that wasn’t being catered for elsewhere.
Channel 4 was funded commercially, but as a public trust, it did not have any shareholders and did not need to make profits. Essentially, the purpose of advertising was to pay for the programmes. That was a far easier task in 1982 than it is today in an era of hundreds of channels, the internet and streaming services, where advertisers have numerous ways in which they can reach their target markets. This reality has led to Channel 4’s current serious financial problems.
All Channel 4 programming was, and indeed still is, made by independent production companies, with nothing made ‘in-house’, as was the case at LWT and the BBC.
Under Isaacs, Channel 4 was distinctive, but it had a tendency to be rather too niche on occasions, and the difference between being ‘public service’ and ‘downright obscure’ was often blurred.
Grade scrapped a lot of Channel 4’s more high-brow programming or moved it to less favourable timeslots. Until 1992, Channel 4 was a sort of half-sibling to ITV, where they would cross-promote one another, and ITV would use Channel 4 as a ‘dumping ground’ for some of its more difficult scheduling options.
For example, under Isaacs, ITV would often transfer its afternoon snooker coverage to Channel 4 so they could show Australian soap operas. Grade put a stop to that.
Grade’s commissions at Channel 4 were often distinctive in that he knew what a ‘Channel 4 programme’ was when he saw it, but there was a tendency to push boundaries to the edges of taste and decency, with edge and somewhat pornographic content appearing on the channel.
Grade wasn’t afraid to take risks. When Channel 4’s first attempt at breakfast television, The Channel 4 Daily, was a flop, Grade received several commissions from independent production companies. He could have ‘played safe’ and gone for a ‘sofas and jumpers’ breakfast show, but instead he took a plunge and commissioned The Big Breakfast, which had many ups and downs during its ten year run, but is remembered fondly by viewers.
While Grade succeeded in making Channel 4 distinct, there is little evidence that his instincts are in any way socially conservative or anti-woke.
Channel 4 News moved firmly to the left during Grade’s tenure. The programme fronted by the late Peter Sissons from its inception in 1982 until he left for the BBC in 1989 was replaced by a left-wing programme that became, over time, ‘The World According to Jon Snow’.
Dispatches and Cutting Edge were valuable documentary strands on Channel 4, but there was little programming on there that could be classed as socially conservative during Grade’s tenure. His Channel 4 years are also remembered for his long-running feud with BBC Director General John Birt, who he had previously worked alongside at LWT.
By the time of Grade’s departure, Channel 4 had drifted away substantially from its original remit, and that process has accelerated in the years since. There is little on modern-day Channel 4 that wouldn’t look out-of-place elsewhere, with lots of formulaic lifestyle programming and downmarket twaddle that would easily fit ITV2’s remit.
Grade’s commercial activities after leaving Channel 4 in 1997 had mixed success. He left the media to head First Leisure Corporation, but left two years later after substantial internal restructuring. He went on to head the new Pinewood and Shepperton film studios company.
Other areas where Grade was less-than-successful include the poorly-received Millennium Dome project, of which he was a board member, and at online food retailer Ocado, where he was non-executive chairman between 2006 and 2013, where he left at a time when the business was encountering substantial difficulties.
Grade returned to the media in 2004 as BBC Chairman in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry, which led to the resignations of Director General Greg Dyke and Chairman Gavyn Davies.
Grade steered the BBC into calmer waters following the biggest crisis in its history, though his time in the role was to be short as in November 2006 he announced he was defecting to ITV to become executive chairman.
His time at ITV wasn’t altogether successful. He tried to persuade Ofcom to allow ITV to allow more advertising minutes per hour in prime time in return for fewer minutes per hour in daytime, but this was refused.
Grade’s restructuring of ITV regional news in a bid to save money by amalgamating programmes and newsrooms was widely regarded as ineffective. Viewers were left cold by having to sit through reports about stories that had taken place 100 miles or more from where they lived, and were, in effect, irrelevant to them as they came from a very different part of the country.
The changes were partly-reversed after a few years and to this day a situation exists where lengthy sub-regional pre-recorded opt-outs exist on the main evening news bulletins to give viewers more relevant content for the areas they live in.
ITV Plc’s share price had plunged to just 28p by the time of Grade’s departure in April 2009.
Former Managing Director of BBC Television Will Wyatt wrote a letter that was published in The Times last week in which he pointed out that under Grade’s stewardship, ITV had broadcast The Jeremy Kyle Show on weekday mornings, possibly the nastiest programme ever to air on British television.
Grade has spent much of the last decade sitting as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords, and, at the age of 79, he is now set to begin his four-year tenure as Ofcom chairman as a three-day-a-week job with a salary of £142,500 per year.
Grade will now resign from the Conservative Party and sit as a crossbencher in the Lords, and he rightly said that his role at Ofcom is not a political one.
Grade has ‘made the right noises’ when he appeared before MPs during the week. He was repeatedly critical of the woke brigade, he defended the right of Laurence Fox to express his views, and he said that the Black and White Minstrel Show could be repeated on TV.
To be fair, Grade did write to Ofcom in early 2021 when the quaint and very likeable channel Talking Pictures TV was being investigated after one complaint flooded in when a ‘blackface’ image was shown during a repeat of Rogue’s Rock the previous Boxing Day. In the letter, which reached the Daily Telegraph, Grade warned Ofcom not to take sides in the ‘culture war’ and that the regulator ‘faced ridicule’ if it upheld the complaint. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the complaint was not upheld.
The main weakness in Grade’s appearance before MPs was in his lack of knowledge or understanding of social media. He confirmed he is not on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, and he had never been tempted by a dance video on TikTok.
Grade’s defence was that he had three children who used the social media platforms a lot. That reminds me very much of how, as a toddler, I was the best person in hour house to know how the VHS player worked. Did that somehow make my parents suitable candidates for heading the media regulatory bodies of the time? Of course not.
One of Grade’s key responsibilities will be the implementation of the forthcoming online safety bill, and he will both need to improve his knowledge of social media AND surround himself with key appointments of people who really do understand the workings of it if his tenure is to be a success.
There’s plenty to get his teeth into in that respect. Twitter, in particular, has become an unpleasant, highly toxic platform.
Numerous studies easily available online show very similar conclusions about Twitter. 70% of the population is not on Twitter at all. 90% of the population do not use Twitter very much.
Of the remaining 10%, most use it to keep up-to-date with music stars or sports teams. The number of people who use Twitter for news and political engagement is tiny, yet its influence over the political sphere is disproportionately large.
The nature of Twitter means it appeals to the worst elements in society. It allows people to say appalling things and to behave in a highly abusive way whilst hiding behind a pseudonym.
On Twitter, people are not accountable for the things that they say. And politically, Twitter gets everything wrong.
If you took Twitter activity as a barometer of public opinion, the pro-independence side was going to win the Scottish referendum of 2014 by a landslide. Yet they lost by a sizeable margin.
Twitter said that Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 US Presidential election, but she lost. Twitter said the Remain side was going to win the EU referendum of 2016, but Leave won by a significant majority.
Twitter portrays Wales as a country dominated by foul-mouthed and highly aggressive Welsh nationalists, whereas in reality Plaid Cymru’s vote has declined in recent years and the party finishes a distant third in both Westminster and Welsh Parliament elections. With 20% of the population of Wales having been born in England, and with 50% of the population living within 20 miles of the English border, appetite for independence is limited.
Twitter said that a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party would win the elections of 2017 and 2019, but thankfully for us all, he was heavily defeated on both occasions.
Twitter encourages organised mobs hiding behind pseudonyms to attack individuals and companies that step out of line in terms of the woke agenda. JK Rowling is subject to daily horrendous abuse due to her stance on gender identity.
The launch of GB News saw Twitter mobs co-ordinate an attack against all its advertisers, to the point where the likes of IKEA and Nivea pulled their advertising. I made a point of boycotting the companies that pulled their advertising while supporting those that stood their ground and continued to advertise on the channel.
Twitter is also dangerous in terms of the way it operates outside the laws of libel and defamation. There is no straightforward way for people to get recompense when false claims or statements have been made about them on Twitter. The platform’s internal complaints procedure is highly unsatisfactory.
It also falls outside the norms of court reporting laws. In short, it is never a good idea to discuss ongoing court cases on social media. Newspaper and radio/TV/online reporters know the importance of sticking strictly to what is said in court on their reports.
Discussing the wider case or posting ill-informed ‘man in the pub’ opinions is highly unadvisable, yet a lot of people using Twitter have no idea as to how dangerous their behaviour is.
On two occasions, Tommy Robinson’s crass behaviour in this regard nearly led to the collapse of serious court cases.
In summary, legislation is needed to ‘keep up’ with the way social media technology has evolved over the last 15 years.
Grade would be well advised to do three things in this regard:
- The laws of libel and defamation are complex and expensive. What is REALLY needed is a ‘Small Claims Court’ equivalent for libel and defamation, so that people can get swift and affordable recompense for false statements made about them on social media.
- All users of social media platforms should have to use their real names and provide a recent photograph alongside their profiles, as well as provide verifiable identification to the platforms upon signing up, so they can easily be traced should the police or libel courts need to contact them.
- Give the police the power to issue social media platforms with a bill every time they have to spend time and resources investigating abuse on their platforms.
Social media is like the Wild West at the moment. People are not held responsible for the things that they say, and platforms are not held accountable for what appears on their services.
Beyond that, Grade will have to oversee the end of the BBC licence fee as we know it. There is no moral justification for its continuation in its current form.
In this day and age, what does the BBC do so much better than everybody else that it is worthy of a compulsory tax on any household wanting to watch television?
Are BBC News bulletins and the BBC News Channel really superior to those in the commercial sector? No.
Is the BBC the home of sport on free-to-air TV? I’d argue that ITV Sport is considerably stronger nowadays, especially when we take the Olympic and Commonwealth Games out of the equation.
BBC Four used to be a good source of programming for thoughtful, well-educated people, but it has had its budget cut to the bone in recent years.
Sky Arts is the home of arts programming. The BBC doesn’t really offer much outside the Proms season. Ballet, opera, Shakespeare plays, book festivals and more are covered by Sky Arts nowadays.
The BBC still brings us the occasional great drama, though they often leave me with a feeling I’m being preached at with some kind of woke agenda in terms of the make-up of the cast and the storylines.
ITV Hub, which already contains a substantial archive, will be replaced by ITVX later this year, and will be massively upscaled as a result. This is a substantial commercial rival to the BBC’s iPlayer.
The BBC’s institutional bias was best summed up by its former Political Editor, Andrew Marr, who in 2006 said: “The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities, and gay people. It has a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.”
Marr, who is himself a man of the left, understands the problem. Current Director General Tim Davie has made noises about redressing the balance, but actions speak louder than words, and the four names on the shortlist to replace Laura Kuenssberg as Political Editor are all left-wing women.
The second reason the BBC licence fee is rapidly becoming obsolete is because people are increasingly consuming their entertainment via streaming services that do not require a TV licence.
A very large number of younger people mainly consume their entertainment via services such as Netflix, Britbox and Amazon Prime. Linear TV channels are largely redundant for them, apart from perhaps talent shows which need to be watched live to see the results and sporting events.
Netflix began to move its business from mail order to streaming from 2007, but it really began to gather pace from the early 2010s, as faster broadband became available in more and more homes.
By the middle of the 2010s, streaming had replaced linear television as the primary means by which younger people consumed entertainment, and in the years since, older generations have become increasingly familiar with streaming services and are comfortable in using them.
TV schedules in general feel increasingly obsolete. BBC TV and Channel 4 schedules are padded out with filler programmes, often involving house renovations, antique auctions or property purchases. They are becoming less and less relevant by the year. People of all ages increasingly realise they do not need a TV licence to watch the entertainment they consume.
Michael Grade’s track record is mixed and his in-tray at Ofcom is very full. Let us wish him well. It is in all our interests that he succeeds. But the magnitude of the challenges that lie ahead should not be underestimated.
Some ideas on how to clean up social media…
By MARCUS STEAD
IS SOCIAL media more trouble than it’s worth? Celebrities, including Ed Sheeran have quit Twitter, the most toxic platform of all, while others, including Daniel Radcliffe and Scarlett Johansson, refuse to go anywhere near social media.
Cyber-bullying is by far the biggest reason people in the public eye leave social media, or in some cases, never join it in the first place. The ability to communicate directly with fans and people with whom you have similar interests is offset by the inevitability of abuse and unpleasant behaviour.
During the May bank holiday weekend, sports bodies and numerous people in the public eye joined in a social media blackout in protest at the inability of the various platforms to deal with abuse effectively, though it was noticeable how many of those with a track record of unpleasant behaviour on social media virtuously announced they were joining the three-day boycott.
At the heart of the problem is the reality that technology is way ahead of parliamentary legislation in terms of dealing with abuse on social media. This is nothing new.
One of my guilty pleasures is watching old episodes of The Bill. It gives me brief glimpses into the world I grew up in during the 1980s into the 1990s, while also giving an account of the radical changes in policing that took place during that period.
I recently saw an episode from 1994 in which a young boy had a somewhat distant relationship with his father. The boy was a computer geek, whereas the father was a big football fan. They didn’t have much in common. As a result, the boy had a much older adult male friend who shared his enthusiasm for computers, and he would spend a lot of time at the man’s house.
What initially seemed like innocent geekery turned out to be something altogether more sinister. The older man was sharing images of underage children with other computer geeks. He is eventually arrested, though the modern-day viewer can’t help but laugh at the sheer size of the modem in his room, and at the amount of effort it took to send the appalling pictures. The whole concept of the internet, primitive as it was at the time, seemed to go entirely over the head of Inspector Monroe (played by the late Colin Tarrant).
The episode ends with the man being released without charge. Monroe explains to him that however repulsive he found his behaviour, the fact was that Parliament hadn’t yet caught up with the technology in terms of legislation, and therefore no offence had been committed.
In 1994, we were still around three years away from the internet becoming widely-available in the homes of the general public. At that stage, it was largely confined to university academics and computer geeks. But within a few years, Parliament had ‘caught up’, and the offences the man had committed would have carried a custodial sentence.
There are comparisons to be made with the modern phenomenon of social media. Facebook’s popularity really began to take off around 2007. I well remember, having left university two years earlier, being able to reconnect with numerous people who had drifted out of my life in the intervening period, along with others I hadn’t seen since I left school. By the end of the decade, Twitter was gaining popularity, though well into the 2010s, it was largely ‘a bit of fun’ and lacked the toxicity of today.
Twitter, in particular, is like the Wild West. It acts almost entirely independently of the laws of the land. The laws of libel, defamation, qualified privilege and absolute privilege are largely irrelevant on there. Flag up a complaint on Twitter, and it’ll be dealt with (or not) by someone remote, thousands of miles away, months later, who, at the absolute most, will ban the account, or, more likely, will do nothing at all.
It’s clear that the social media companies themselves cannot be trusted to deal with the problem, or acknowledge that they are subject to the law. So what can the Government do to rectify this? It’s easier than it seems. I would recommend it does two things:
- Pass an Act of Parliament that allows the police to send any social media platform (but especially Twitter) a bill whenever it has to allocate time and resources into investigating bad or abusive behaviour on its platforms. This would soon force the social media platforms to get their houses in order.
- Introduce a ‘libel and defamation equivalent’ of the Small Claims Court. The current process for gaining recompense for lies and malicious falsehoods on social media is costly, time-consuming and the outcome is hugely unpredictable. In short, the onus is on the complainant to prove damage has been done to his or her reputation, and the process is laborious and prohibitively expensive for many people. The Small Claims Court, while far from perfect, is a useful and affordable way of obtaining money owed. A similar setup for libel and defamation, where both sides can outline their case in advance and discuss it in a semi-formal setting in front of a judge, would remedy the current problems, though there would need to be an upper limit in terms of pay-outs of £20,000. Of course, this is far from a perfect solution, as social media is, by definition, international, so for such a model to be fully effective, it is in the UK’s interests to work closely with our allies, primarily in the Commonwealth, the Anglosphere and Europe, to develop courts and systems that operate in a broadly similar way.
Social media has utterly poisoned debate and political discourse in Britain and across much of the world. In his final book, ‘Groupthink: A Study in Self-Delusion’ (2020), the late and much-missed Christopher Booker wrote in great depth about the toxicity of social media.
Booker wrote: “Those outside the bubble must be marginalised and ignored, and if necessary their views must be mercilessly caricatured to make them seem ridiculous.
“If this is not enough, they must be attacked in the most violently contemptuous terms, usually with the aid of some scornfully dismissive label – such as ‘bigot’, ‘prude’, xenophobe’, ‘Little Englander’ or ‘denier’.
“Dissent in any form cannot be tolerated, as is seen too often in daily life today…
“…Society has become divided between groups of people with wholly different and incompatible views of the world.
“On the one hand, a group with a rigid mindset in respect of what it is permissible for people to say, think or do. They are constantly on the lookout for anyone or anything likely to give offence, and they express their disapproval in a series of all-too-familiar cliches.
“The other group, meanwhile, stares at them in utter amazement, baffled as to how anyone could be so obsessively blinkered and humourlessly intolerant – and to have departed so wholly from the dictates of basic common sense…
“…There has been no greater influence on the rapid spread of groupthink in recent years than the internet. With social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the internet has given a powerful new platform for people to spread their views to others.
“And so we witness what is known as ‘virtue-signalling’ – the desire by people to highlight a view to demonstrate that they side with those who they consider to be morally ‘virtuous’.
“But even more, it allows them, often anonymously, to vent personal abuse at anyone expressing contrary opinions.”
Booker’s intellect, humour and ability to write with authority and charisma on such a wide range of topics was extraordinary, and, nearing the end of his life, he articulated this particular problem very well.
Social media platforms would be well-advised to ensure people can only post using their real identities, accompanied by a recent picture, and it may be necessary for the Government to legislate to achieve this.
The arguments in favour of allowing continuing anonymity usually centre around political dissidents being able to expose corruption and human rights abuses in far away lands. Well, under those conditions, it would be highly risky for people to post on a social media platform, even anonymously. The other argument sometimes used is that anonymity allows those in need of help to find it. I don’t buy into that. First of all, there is a very real risk they would receive bad advice on social media, which would make their problems worse. Secondly, they would be better off speaking to trained professionals or volunteers via Government services or charities. The arguments in favour of allowing continuing anonymity on social media are weak.
Social media ‘pile-ons’ are something broadcasters, newspapers, magazines, sports organisations and even supermarkets have encountered. Any joke, however innocuous, can lead to ‘performance offence-takers’ tweeting the organisation en masse to demand an apology or to force somebody out of their job. Toby Young created the Free Speech Union as a remedy against this mob role, which has seen numerous people forced from their jobs with their careers in ruins over largely irrelevant or what would once have been regarded as harmless incidents. All too often, organisations view a barrage of tweets from a specific echo chamber as a sign of wider public discontent, when in reality, no such discontent exists. Paul Embery deserves credit for his writing on these matters from a left-wing traditionalist perspective.
Many celebrities, too, have encouraged this sort of behaviour, by retweeting a comment from an ordinary member of the public with whom they disagree, accompanied by a comment of their own above it, which they know full-well will result in a pile-on against that person from their own echo chamber of sycophantic followers and like-minded people.
In a sense, the problems are nothing new. 20 years ago, we didn’t have social media, but what we did have was that nutcase shouting nonsense from the back of the bus, and the workplace weirdo most of the staff chose to have as little to do with as possible. Nowadays, these people have been given a platform because of social media. It is also wise to be aware that when encountering abuse, you may well be dealing with alcoholics, drug users, and people with mental health or personality disorders, who use the platforms as a means of exorcising their demons. This is not your problem – it’s theirs.
But there is another problem people, especially near the young, need to consider, and that is the danger of echo chambers on social media. When I began university nearly 19 years ago, I was, and indeed still am, opposed to the UK’s membership of the European Union.
Going to university made it very obvious to me that among my age group and with people of a similar level of education, my view was a minority one. Upon returning home for weekends or holidays, I was mixing with friends my own age with varying levels of education. For the most part, they either disagreed with me, or had little interest in thinking about or discussing it.
I wasn’t the only Eurosceptic student on campus by any means, but it was obvious I was in a minority. If I was a student starting out today, I could, with ease, find a like-minded community on social media who reinforce my views. This presents several dangers. The first is that it would risk encouraging me to spend disproportionate amounts of time on social media where my views could be reinforced, at the expense of being exposed to differing views among my university or home friends.
The second is that it gives one a false sense of security – getting lots of ‘likes’ on Twitter and Instagram means absolutely nothing in terms of overall public opinion. Let’s not forget that the conventional wisdom on Twitter was that Scotland was going to vote for independence in 2014, Remain would win the 2016 referendum, Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 US Presidential election and so on. In other words, social media, but especially Twitter, is dominated by a certain type of political activist, but it is seldom reflective of overall public opinion.
The third danger is that as one’s views become reinforced time and time again, tolerance towards differing opinions and outlooks risks being diminished. This is a particular problem among the younger generations today. All too often, there is no nuance in their arguments.
You can believe somebody is ‘wrong’ as much as you like. But once you start to believe somebody is ‘bad’, it is very hard to reason with them or enter into constructive dialogue. Social media has led too many people, but especially the young, to believe that those who take a differing view are not only ‘wrong’, but ‘bad’, and they seek reinforcement of that judgement through their own echo chambers.
Human beings are, to a greater or lesser extent, ‘pack animals’. We tend to seek company in those most like ourselves, in terms of values, ethics, humour, educational attainment, hobbies, interests and so on. There is nothing new about that. But before the advent of social media, we were forced to spend at least some of our time around friends, colleagues and others who had different views to our own. Social media has the negative impact of encouraging people to form electronic communities only with those who share their outlooks.
This goes some way towards explaining the phenomenon of ‘cancel culture’ on university campuses. Many (though by no means all) of today’s university students come across as whiney narcissists and excessively virtuous. With regards to ‘cancel culture’, it’s difficult to assess how many students are performance offence takers, and how many are genuinely distressed at the prospect of having to listen to opinions and outlooks with which they differ.
Social media companies have been given ample opportunities to bring their platforms under control, or more specifically, to ensure that users comply with the same laws and standards that wider society has to operate by. They have not done so. It’s time for the Government to act.
Brexit and Northern Ireland
By MARCUS STEAD
ON TUESDAY 16 March, I appeared on Radio Sputnik to discuss the possibility of the EU taking legal action against the UK Government over breaches of the Withdrawal Agreement with regards to border checks in Northern Ireland.
I argued that more than two months after the Brexit deal was implemented, it has been an overwhelming success, with supermarket shelves well-stacked, while being outside the EU has undoubtedly benefitted UK citizens with regards to the rollout of the Covid vaccine, which has been far more speedy and efficient than in EU countries, saving lives as a result.
However, I argued that the situation with regards to Northern Ireland urgently needs addressing.
This particular threat of legal action by the EU will prove to be a storm in a teacup, we shouldn’t make light of the wider issues, which are affecting people’s lives in Northern Ireland.
For example, people are seeing notices saying ‘we don’t deliver to Northern Ireland’ when ordering items such as CDs on Amazon, which is clearly an absurdity.
Furthermore, there are concerns over the need for pet passports. Tourists and visitors bringing dogs from Great Britain to Northern Ireland are going to have to get a rabies certificate and a health certificate, despite the fact we haven’t had rabies in Great Britain or Northern Ireland for years.
Ignoring this problem will only make things worse. UK law and EU law are still very similar at the moment, but as they diverge in the months and years ahead, this will create problems.
First of all, it risks Northern Ireland not benefitting from any positive changes the UK makes, and also, when the EU decides to change something, Northern Ireland is going to have to go along with it, even if it is damaging to the country.
Looking at the bigger picture, we are already seeing the benefits of being outside the EU. On New Year’s Day, VAT on sanitary products was abolished. That would not have been possible if we were still in the EU. By the end of this year, the UK looks set to ban the export of live animals for slaughter. Good! But that isn’t going to be able to happen in Northern Ireland because Northern Ireland will still be subject to EU rules.
Right now, it feels as though Northern Ireland is being treated as a second class part of the United Kingdom. This is the one area of the whole Brexit package that gives cause for concern. And it needs addressing URGENTLY.
Twenty Minute Topic Episode 49: President Biden
By MARCUS STEAD
Twenty Minute Topic Episode 69: The Royal Family In Crisis – Talk Podcasts
JOE BIDEN will become the 46th President of the United States. It’s been an extraordinary week – Marcus Stead and Greg Lance-Watkins return to assess the situation.
Biden won the most votes of any presidential candidate in US history. Donald Trump won seven million more votes than he got in 2016, and four million more than Hillary Clinton got, but still lost.
Marcus and Greg discuss just how divided and polarised the United States is. How can bridges be built? And is this the sign of a hegemonic power in decline?
There are good reasons NOT to like Joe Biden – are those who despise Donald Trump getting a little over-excited?
Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities are a real cause for concern. Is he mentally fit to be president, and is his presidency likely to be a short one before he hands over to Kamala Harris?
What does a Biden presidency mean for Brexit? Biden doesn’t have a close relationship with Boris Johnson’s administration, and his priority is likely to be the EU and the Republic of Ireland.
The podcast is available on the Talk Podcasts website, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify and the TuneIn app.
Marcus Stead on Radio Sputnik: 08 October 2020
By MARCUS STEAD
Marcus Stead
EARLIER today, I appeared on Radio Sputnik to discuss the latest developments with Brexit negotiations.
It’s now October and there are two fundamental truths that we should focus our minds on at the moment.
The first is that time is short. The Brexit negotiations are NOT something that can be taken right up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. Realistically, they are going to have to be concluded by the end of this month so that businesses and ports can prepare to implement whatever the reality will be from the start of January.
The second is that the entire business community can handle bad news a LOT better than it can handle uncertainty. If you’ve received bad news, you can act accordingly. If there’s a poor deal coming, or no deal at all, business can use the time to adapt and adjust for that. It’s the not knowing that’s causing a lot of the angst and unrest. The lingering uncertainty is doing nobody any good at all.
The British people voted for Brexit 52% to 48% in the referendum of 2016. In 2017, we had a General Election where both the Conservative and Labour parties made a firm commitment to implement the result of the referendum. And at the end of 2019, we had another General Election, where a Conservative Party led by Boris Johnson won a clear mandate from the British people, with an 80 seat majority, to implement the result of the referendum. And they won seats that had been Labour for living memory for even the oldest members of society.
The British people voted Leave, and they reaffirmed that decision in TWO General elections since the referendum.
However, even as recently as last December’s General Election, nobody could have predicted what a horrendous year 2020 would be not only for Britain, but for the world. The Covid pandemic has changed everything. We saw this week how Cineworld is going to mothball all 127 of its UK cinemas until at least March of next year. Will they ever reopen? Who knows? Just yesterday, pub chain Greene King announced it was cutting 800 jobs. 79 sites will be closed for the time being, some of those will close permanently.
Come the end of the month, Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s furloughing scheme is being rebranded, in real terms this means that it’s being scaled back quite considerably as employers are asked to take on more of the burden of paying staff for effectively not working. That’ll inevitably mean a huge number of redundancies in the retail and hospitality sectors.
Let’s not mince words on this – next month, November, is going to be a very difficult time for this country. A large number of people are facing the very real possibility of redundancy. If we, personally don’t lose our jobs, there’s a very high chance we’ll have friends or family members who do lose their jobs. And for all of us, places we like, restaurants, pubs, cinemas, will be closing for good, and it won’t be pleasant.
Even the most committed Brexiteer would appreciate some clarity as to what the situation will be come January, which is why the end of this month is really as far as we can push talks, with a more likely scenario being things really hot up next week.
Later in the interview, I was invited to comment on today’s news that the Information Commissioner has concluded that Cambridge Analytica was ‘not involved’ in the EU referendum following a three-year investigation.
I pointed out that neither official campaign was without blame during the 2016 referendum. Indeed, official Remain campaign used exactly the same spending tactics as Vote Leave, except far worse.
I concluded by saying that the British people gave their endorsement of Brexit in the referendum of 2016, again in the 2017 General Election, and again in last December’s General Election, which a Boris Johnson-led Conservative Party won with an 80 seat majority on the back of a key manifesto pledge to deliver Brexit.
A full and complete Brexit means:
- National sovereignty.
- The supremacy of British courts.
- The ability to set controls on immigration.
- The ability to form trade deals with the wider world.
- A truly independent foreign policy.
Anything less than this falls short of the Brexit the British people voted for.
Marcus Stead on Radio Sputnik: 11 September 2020
By MARCUS STEAD
ON FRIDAY, I appeared on Radio Sputnik to discuss whether Boris Johnson’s government will be breaking international law with the proposed changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, and if so, what would the implications be?
This is a complete dog’s dinner. The first question we have to ask is ‘how on earth did the Government get into this mess’? They won December’s general election with an 80-seat majority, winning seats in places that had been Labour heartlands for generations. There was a great deal of public good will towards Boris Johnson and the new Government at that time, so the question has to be, how did they make such an elementary mistake that their own Withdrawal Agreement needs amending after such a short space of time?
Boris Johnson is not a man known for his attention to detail. It’s a character fault that caused him considerable problems during his tenure as Mayor of London, and now as Prime Minister we’re seeing he’s not really somebody who reads through policy documents and studies them in the way Margaret Thatcher did, she often got by on four hours’ sleep per night. Now I’m not saying Boris Johnson has to have that level of dedication to the job, but it does seem as though he has a lazy streak in him with an attitude of ‘act now and never mind the long-term consequences’.
Let’s cut through the jargon on exactly where we’re at. The relevant parts of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill are sections are Clauses 42 and 43, which apply to Northern Ireland. And of the two, it’s Clause 43 that gives most cause for concern.
It refers to Article 10 of the Northern Ireland Protocol referring to State Aid, specifically in relation to agricultural products. And this Clause 43 allows the Minister (currently Brandon Lewis) to interpret Article 10. That effectively puts them on a collision course with the EU in relation to its own internal market rules and it’ll cause issues with exporting goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
There’s a key line in Clause 45, which states that Clauses 42 and 43, when they become law, will have effect “in spite of any relevant international or domestic law with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent”.
And that puts the UK on a collision course with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, of which the UK is a party, specifically Article 27, which states: “A party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty”.
On Thursday, we saw how emergency talks on these issues inevitably broke down, and that was followed by a rather stern statement from the European Commission in which it made it clear it would take legal action. But that said, there won’t have been a breach of international law until the Bill receives Royal Assent and is implemented.
However, the EU itself has a problem. Look at the Withdrawal Agreement passed in January, specifically Article 168. The ‘end point’ of the procedure is arbitration, with the provision for a lump sum or penalty payment in the event of non-compliance and, in the event that that is not paid, the Commission would be entitled to suspend application of parts of the Agreement (with the exception of citizens’ rights).
The more immediate response is likely to be the EU suspends Future Relationship talks.
Number 10 is churning out complete gibberish in its statements on this. The UK’s Chief Negotiator, David Frost, issued an unbelievably bland and cliched statement late on Thursday night. In reality, the Withdrawal Agreement is close-to-dead, and when the blame game comes around, we know where to look.
Working from Home – It’s Here to Stay
By MARCUS STEAD
A RECENT report revealed that almost nine out of ten employees who worked from home during lockdown wish to continue doing so in some capacity.
The report, called ‘Homeworking in the UK: before and during the 2020 lockdown’ said 88% of employees who worked from home during lockdown would like to continue doing so in some capacity, with 47% wanting to do so ‘often’ or even all of the time.
Lord Sugar
It came as no surprise today that in his column in the Sun newspaper, ‘Lord’ Alan Sugar called for Brits to return to the office. He wrote: “Like my returning employees, they will likely find a workforce raring to go. They’ll find their staff will be more creative, better trained and it will be better for their mental health.”
How very conscientious of him. What Lord Sugar omitted to mention is that companies he owns make a fortune from renting out office space, and that if home working becomes the ‘new normal’ for millions of people, it’ll cost him a massive sum of money in lost rent.
For millions of Brits, working from home has been a life-changing experience for the better. Once they came to terms with the initial period of adjustment at the start of lockdown in March, they settled into a happier daily routine that they’re more than willing to stick with for the future.
After enjoying an extra hour in bed in the morning, they put on their ‘around the house’ clothes and sit down to a relaxing breakfast. Men don’t have to worry about ironing a shirt, and women don’t have to spend time sorting out their hair and make-up.
The boss insists they’ve logged on to the online portal at a set time. The email and phone are on hand if you have any questions or problems. Office team meetings are conducted via Zoom or Skype. At lunchtime, people have enjoyed an hour in their gardens, before returning to work for the afternoon, and when they finally log off the portal at 5pm, that’s the day done.
Compare that to the world we lived in before March, of having to pay for an overpriced rail season ticket which saw commuters packed on to crowded trains like cattle. For millions of Brits, the train journey to work meant getting up before sunrise to catch the train (which often ran late), and having their head up someone’s armpit as they held onto the handrail. Those who drove to work faced long periods stuck in traffic jams. The house price inflation of the last 25 years means that people often live far further away from their place of work than in the past. The reality for millions was a long and unpleasant daily commute after which they’d arrive at work tired and agitated.
Come 5pm, they would face a similarly arduous journey home, and would spend the evening exhausted. Why would they want to go back to that? Working from home during the last six months has given them a much happier work-life balance.
There are, of course, downsides to working from home. Large numbers of people meet their future husband or wife while at work, and that opportunity to connect with like-minded people will now largely be lost. For those who live alone, interaction with work colleagues is a vital part of avoiding social isolation. And most seriously of all, those in abusive relationships see work as a refuge and confiding in colleagues is often an important first step in getting themselves out of their situation.
Furthermore, the knock-on effects for the wider economy are enormous. The loss of town centre office blocks means a lack of custom for the nearby coffee shop where you buy your takeaway latte or the convenience store where you buy your cigarettes.
Lord Sugar’s ‘personal interests’ aside, you might not care very much about businesses vacating London office blocks, and the way so many parts of the capital have effectively been turned into ghost towns, but there is a very good chance that your private pension is dependant on the performance of the companies that own those buildings. If those property businesses fail, your pension will likely take a big hit.
In the current context of an ongoing Covid pandemic, working from home suits both employer and employee. Lord Sugar says that social distancing measures have been put in place at his Loughton offices. Good for him. But for millions of other employers, rearranging offices in such a way that social distancing can be maintained, along with other safety measures, means there simply isn’t room for all staff to be in the office as they would have been before March. The company also prefers not to take the risk of Covid spreading in the office, with the legal implications and decreased staff numbers this brings.
From the employee’s point of view, the official advice is still to travel to work by walking, cycling, or by car. For most people, that means a car. But years of anti-car policies in town and city centres around the UK mean that car parking is now prohibitively expensive if done every day. A £20 daily car parking charge means £100 per week, or £400 per month. A very large number of people can’t afford that. And that’s without even mentioning the additional London congestion charge of £15 per day.
Trains and buses are operating at well below capacity, and, realistically, most of us would consider spending more than half an hour with a face mask on to be an unpleasant experience, as after around that time they become moist and soggy. And workers, especially those who spend time living with or caring for elderly relatives, are understandably nervous about becoming carriers of the virus, and want to spend as little time as possible in close proximity to those outside their household for the time being.
Yes, Lord Sugar is right to say that you cannot learn from colleagues in quite the same way without being in close proximity to them. But recent months have proven that email, phone calls and Zoom meetings have provided a work routine by which both employer and employee are happy to continue with into the future.
Many businesses are already concluding that they no longer need expensive city centre premises, and that their staff can work from home. Rather than have several floors of office space with room for 400 staff, in future, they may well have a much smaller office where staff pop in from time to time for appraisals, or where small groups meet for training.
This frankly hideous London Underground advert from Dettol (which many thought was a Government poster!) portrays a rather trite, cliched image of office culture, and during the course of today it has spectacularly backfired for them. In any large workplace, whether the office, the building site, or the football team, colleagues fall into three categories. Firstly, there are those you get on very well with and become good personal friends. Secondly, there are those with whom you have a good working relationship, but wouldn’t really choose to have much to do with beyond the workplace. Finally, there are those you don’t really get on with at all, but have to try your best to work with for the greater good.
What do these phrases actually mean to me?
Hearing an alarm = not a noise I enjoy, but I’d rather hear it at 7:30am than 6:30am. Working from home gives me an extra hour in bed.
Putting on a tie = they’re useless, uncomfortable and easily stained. I don’t even have to consider this when working from home.
Carrying a handbag = not something I’ve ever done, but I imagine a lot of women are glad of not having to do this.
Receptionists = erm, what about them?
Caffeine-filled air = you mean your colleagues can’t be bothered to put their empty Starbucks cups in the bin, or leave their coffee mugs lingering on the table for hours, causing the air to become filled with stale coffee residue.
Taking a lift = not something I much fancy doing in this era of social distancing.
Seeing your second family = erm, see my remarks above as to the three categories in which we all place our colleagues. If I consider them ‘second family’, I will arrange to see them in my own time, on my own terms.
Watercooler conversations = do you mean malicious office gossip or clique-forming at the expense of others?
Proper bants = yuk! The words ‘banter’ and ‘bants’ are generally used by not-very-well-educated young men who need to grow up, or by people who are looking for a ‘get out of jail free’ card after saying something obnoxious.
The boss’s jokes = David Brent has just popped into my head.
Plastic plants = I could happily live the rest of my life without seeing one.
Office gossip = you mean people spreading malicious rumours about colleagues they don’t like.
Those weird carpets = OK, I would miss those…
Face-to-face meetings = yes, they can be useful and can convey ideas more easily and comfortably than on Zoom. But people are adapting to the Zoom culture.
Not having to make lunch = I’ve been telling people for years that the best way to save an absolute fortune is to take a packed lunch of sandwiches and a Thermos flask of coffee to work each day, rather than head to Starbucks and Greggs. If you do it every day, you’ll easily save enough money for an extra holiday over the course of a year.
CCing/BCCing/Accidentally replying-all = people do that whether working at the office or from home.
Hearing buzzwords = urgh! These are usually used by middle-managers who want to sound far more intelligent and sophisticated than they actually are.
Leaving early for a cheeky afternoon in the sun = how often does this really happen in town and city centre offices? Yet lunchtime in the sun in your back garden or a stroll in the local park becomes part of daily life when working from home.
We need to get real about this. Ten years ago, when millions of people didn’t have access to reliable, fast broadband, the seismic change we’ve seen in working habits couldn’t have happened. The Covid pandemic has seen a home working revolution that may have taken a decade or more to play out take place in a matter of months. Workers and businesses have settled into a happier, less stressful routine that works for them.
Yes, there are downsides. We risk becoming more lonely and socially isolated as a society due to not having daily interaction with colleagues, for the reasons I have outlined. But the advantages of working from home are enormous, and millions of people don’t want to go back to how things were before. So much travelling we did in the past was stressful and unnecessary, and in the current climate, travel on public transport is especially unpleasant.
Clearly, the ramifications for the companies that own huge office blocks will be enormous, and life will never be the same for the nearby shops frequented by office workers. The home-working revolution was coming anyway in the next decade. The pandemic has made the process much faster. But we cannot turn the clock back.
When one set of doors close, others open. The ability to work from home, and from rural areas, and the convenience of online shopping and the comparative ease with which we can set up an online business will result in opportunities that would’ve seemed unthinkable even a decade ago. Few of us really like change. It means letting go of the familiar and the routine, and, to an extent at least, taking a leap into the unknown. But that same change can also transform our lives for the better. Working from home is here to stay. It’s time to embrace it.
The Wales Essays
By MARCUS STEAD
DURING the course of the last 18 months, I have published a series of essays and shorter articles about the state of Wales. I have focused on themes including the damaging effects of dogmatic Welsh language imposition, the toxic behaviour of Welsh nationalists, the severe failings of the Welsh media and the damage devolution has done over the last 21 years.
I am now linking these together, along with my articles for Spiked online magazine and the ‘Devolution Disaster’ podcast for easy access:
1. Wales – A Country Divided
Wales is becoming a downright hostile place for the more than 80% of us who don’t speak the Welsh language. We are treated as second class citizens and it intensifies with every year that passes. CLICK HERE
2. Meic Stevens racist rant shines a spotlight on bigotry among the Welsh language community
A RACIST RANT by one of the Welsh language’s best-known musicians has highlighted the growing problem of anti-English and anti-immigrant bigotry in parts of Wales. CLICK HERE
3. WJEC exams branded ‘nearly impossible to fail’ entered by schools across England in bid to inflate grades
IN THE WEEK thousands of 16-year-olds received their GCSE results, concern is growing that the true value of the grades is being affected by schools entering pupils for tests set by exam boards whose papers are perceived as easier. CLICK HERE
4. What’s the point of S4C?
YOU’RE probably familiar with this exchange from Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde:
CECIL GRAHAM: What is a cynic?
LORD DARLINGTON: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
CECIL GRAHAM: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.
Public subsidies are always a contentious issue. To what extent should taxpayers’ money be used to subsidise commercially-unviable types of theatre? Or what about niche art galleries? Or should taxpayers be expected to fund equipment, coaching and travel costs for talented young sportspeople? CLICK HERE
5. Holocaust Memorial Day: Welsh Nationalism’s Shameful Antisemitism
WITH EACH year that passes, the number of Holocaust survivors still living dwindles ever further. For many years after the liberation of the concentration camps, survivors often did not tell their stories, the full horror of what they had experienced being too painful to recount. CLICK HERE
6. How devolution is hampering the pandemic response in Wales
THE FAST-MOVING events of recent weeks have demonstrated that during this time of national crisis the two most important qualities needed by the Government are clarity and a co-ordinated approach. CLICK HERE
7. S4C receives funding boost despite tiny audience
LITTLE-WATCHED Welsh language broadcaster S4C will receive a funding boost following an announcement from the Treasury that it will get back the VAT it pays on costs, worth £15 million per year. CLICK HERE
8. Double standards in commemorating complex legacies
WHICH CONTROVERSIAL historical figures are worthy of statues in prominent public places, and which are not? CLICK HERE
9. The Welsh media in crisis
IN ANY democracy, it is essential there is a free and independent media, that rigorously holds those we elect to account, and is widely consumed by the public. This is not the case in Wales. CLICK HERE
10. The True Cost of Welsh Independence
WHAT WOULD the implications of Welsh independence be in terms of living standards and the practicalities of daily life?
The Welsh nationalist movement is given a soft ride by the media in Wales. Veteran journalist Paul Starling long ago pointed out that the Welsh media is dominated by people who are sympathetic to Welsh nationalism. Much more recently, former Panorama journalist Phil Parry exposed the close links between BBC Wales and Plaid Cymru. And in the last few years, the print and digital publications owned by Reach Plc in Wales have been increasingly sympathetic to the Welsh nationalist agenda in editorial tone, with a steady stream of articles sympathetic to Welsh independence appearing on the Wales Online website. CLICK HERE
11. The Welsh Language: A Reality Check
WE ARE frequently told by the mainstream media that the number of Welsh speakers is growing rapidly and that there is ever-increasing demand for Welsh language provision. But do the facts really back up these claims? CLICK HERE
Spiked Articles
1. Welsh independence just isn’t going to happen
To the untrained eye, months of chaos and confusion at Westminster appear to have resulted in raised levels of interest in Welsh independence. Crowds in the low thousands have attended ‘independence’ marches in Cardiff, Caernarfon and Merthyr Tydfil. Labour first minister of Wales Mark Drakeford and his predecessor Carwyn Jones have made noises that a badly handled Brexit could lead to Wales breaking away from the union. CLICK HERE
2. We need to talk about Welsh devolution
Wales is the country whose devolution settlement is talked about the least – for understandable reasons with all that is happening in Scotland and Northern Ireland. But big problems are emerging. CLICK HERE
3. Wales doesn’t need a nanny-in-chief
Wales is the sick man of Britain. The 20 years since devolution have been a story of failure and decline. And the current leadership of first minister Mark Drakeford offers little hope. CLICK HERE
4. Welsh ministers don’t even know their own rules
The ongoing pandemic has exposed the fundamental flaws of Welsh devolution, in ways more obvious than at any time in the 20 years since its inception. At best, it has led to comical absurdities. At worst, it has led to dangerous levels of incompetence among the Welsh government and confusion among the population. CLICK HERE
Podcast
IN A SPECIAL ‘double dose’ edition of Twenty Minute Topic, Marcus Stead and Greg Lance-Watkins assess the impact of devolution in Wales 20 years after its inception, and at a time when the institution has recently changed its name to the ‘Welsh Parliament’.
Greg played an important role in the ‘No’ campaign leading up to the referendum of 1997, in which the ‘Yes’ side won by the narrowest of margins.
Greg makes some shocking allegations of foul play, both during the campaign of 1997 and at crucial counts on the night.
The term ‘crachach’ is discussed extensively during the podcast. It is a term that refers to the Welsh-speaking middle class elite, often sympathetic to Welsh nationalism, nepotistic in character, that has huge influence across the Welsh arts, media, civil service and higher education sectors.
Veteran left-leaning journalist Paul Starling observed in his Welsh Daily Mirror column on 26 April 2002 that ‘our country is run by no more than 50 extended families or individuals’.
Indeed, far from being a swivel-eyed conspiracy, the crachach was thought to be very real by former First Minister Rhodri Morgan, who saw their elitist control of so many tenets of Welsh civic life as a real threat to the success of devolution. He said: ““As well as horizontal devolution – spreading power and responsibility more widely – we have to have vertical devolution as well. I have sometimes tried to sum up this dimension by describing our devolution settlement as a shift from crachach to gwerin, from government by a self-replicating élite to a new engagement with a far wider and more representative group of people, women and men, people from north and south Wales, Welsh speakers and not, black people as well as white, and so on.”
Marcus and Greg agree that Rhodri Morgan’s words were not heeded, and far from creating a more diverse and inclusive civic sector in Wales, devolution has led to a consolidation and intensification of crachach power and influence.
Leighton Andrews, a former Education Minister in Wales, also spoke out against Crachach influence in the Welsh higher education sector.
The podcast begins with a brief history of devolution, beginning with the referendum of 1979, in which the Welsh electorate categorically rejected the proposal for an Assembly. The discussion moves on to the ‘quango culture’ of the 1980s and 90s, the impact of the Welsh Language Act of 1993, through to the referendum on giving the Assembly primary law-making powers in 2011.
There is discussion on the broken promises of 2011. The people of Wales were told it was a ‘tidying up exercise’ and the ‘end game’ for devolution, but in the years since, income tax powers have been devolved, and the institution’s name has been changed to the ‘Welsh Parliament’.
The podcast is available on the Talk Podcasts website, iTunes, Google Podcasts Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and the TuneIn app.
Marcus Stead on Radio Sputnik 12 August 2020
By MARCUS STEAD
ON WEDNESDAY 12 August, I spoke to Alexander South from Radio Sputnik, where I gave my reaction to the news that the UK is now formally in recession.
I believe this is very much the tip of the iceberg, and the true state of unemployment will only become clear when Government-subsidised furloughing ends in October.
Marcus Stead 
Mark Drakeford’s most dangerous legacy
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By MARCUS STEAD
Mark Drakeford’s tenure as First Minister of Wales is over, and there is little to celebrate from his five-year tenure.
The Welsh NHS, which lurched from crisis to crisis during his three years as Minister for Health between 2013-2016, continues to go from bad to worse, with appalling A&E waiting times, dangerously long waiting lists for important operations and extreme difficulty in getting GP appointments.
Welsh educational attainment goes from bad to worse as the country continues to slip down the internationally-recognised PISA rankings.
Drakeford’s handling of the pandemic saw countless businesses needlessly ruined, families kept apart for long periods without good reason and absurd policies of being different from England for its own sake. The devastating impact of Drakeford’s Covid policies on children’s education, mental health, small businesses and the way so many once-active older people have become more reclusive and withdrawn has still not yet been properly understood.
Like a very large number of Labour politicians, Drakeford has never worked in the private sector. Prior to becoming a member of what was then the Welsh Assembly in 2011, Drakeford worked as a teacher, a social worker, a probation officer, a youth justice worker, a university lecturer and the Welsh Government’s special adviser on health and social policy.
This sort of career path is very common among Labour elected representatives in both Cardiff Bay and Westminster. There are lots of former trade union workers, charity workers, third sector workers, ex-teachers, ex-social workers, ex-university lecturers, ex-civil servants, ex-special advisers and so on.
What there is little of is people who have spent at least part of their careers in the private sector. Indeed, there is not much evidence that Drakeford has ever really even encountered the private sector. People without private sector experience often have little comprehension of how wealth is created. They often have very little interest in the private sector, and are sometimes downright suspicious of it.
With the successes of the Welsh Development Agency attracting inward investment in the 1980s and 90s now a distant memory, the skilled private sector in Wales is grossly under-developed, and Drakeford showed little interest in rectifying the situation. It may well be that he rather likes the reality that vast swathes of the Welsh population are either directly or indirectly dependent on the Welsh Government for their salary, and are therefore more likely to vote Labour.
All of Mark Drakeford’s legacy is bad, but an especially, indeed highly disturbing aspect is the way in which Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) is now compulsory in primary schools for children aged SEVEN and above. Parents do not have the right to remove their children from these classes. What is especially disturbing is the possible influence campaign group Stonewall has had on forming Welsh Government policy.
Parents no longer have the right to inform their children about the birds and the bees at an age they consider to be appropriate, using language they consider to be appropriate, that align with their religious and moral values. This is a dangerous invasion of parental rights by a far-left government.
In 2015, Stonewall went from being an LGB organisation to one that endorsed LGBTQ+. Many gay and lesbian people have distanced themselves from the organisation in the years since.
Stonewall is a firm defender of the belief that people should be able to self-identify with the gender they choose, but has also been accused of attempting to stifle free speech on the issue and push companies to adopt policies that some argue could be harmful to women.
A number of high-profile employers, which had been part of its Diversity Champions programme to promote inclusivity in the workplace, have ended their partnerships with the charity. Among them are Channel 4, Ofsted, the Cabinet Office, and the UK’s equality watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the latter two of which said the scheme no longer provided good value for money.
Broadcaster Simon Fanshawe was one of the co-founders of the British version of Stonewall in May 1989, but he has now cut all links with the organisation due to the direction in which it has gone during recent years.
In Mr Fanshawe’s own words: “Far from championing a ‘diversity’ of opinions and beliefs, subscription to Stonewall’s scheme encourages a strict adoption of a narrow political ideology.
“Companies, for instance, have been urged to replace references to ‘women’ or ‘mothers’ in internal documentation in favour of terms such as ‘parent who has given birth’, or to ask that employees state their ‘preferred pronouns’ in emails.
“Stonewall also scores firms based on an ‘Equality Index’ marking firms down for a failure to parrot the charity’s narrow views on ‘gender identity’ and trans issues.
“While Stonewall started out as a well-meaning organisation that championed gay rights, it has, in recent years, morphed into a propaganda machine that preaches extreme and divisive gender ideology under the guise of ‘factual’ information. It is dogma that is far from universally accepted seeing your sex at birth not as an immutable fact but as open to personal choice.
“And it is one that is fast eroding women’s rights and their protection in female-only spaces, as well as posing a potential risk to children, who might be led to believe that irreversible medical intervention is the solution to common adolescent insecurities about identity.
“Of course, gender dysphoria (when somebody feels at odds with their biological sex) is a genuine and profound psychological issue for some people. But Stonewall’s obsession with reframing the entire narrative around gender to placate a very small minority of individuals is dangerously disproportionate.
“And the problem is, Stonewall’s influence is not insignificant. From government departments to media organisations, schools and the NHS, the charity’s reach has grown rapidly in recent years, offering highly contested ‘advice’ to public bodies with almost unquestioned authority.
“Stonewall has published a wide-ranging reading list aimed at ‘schools, colleges, parents and carers’, including books on ‘trans inclusion’ for children as young as two, with titles such as Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl?”
The Welsh Government handed Stonewall £552,326 of taxpayers’ money between 2015-19, long after it repositioned itself as an LGBTQ+ organisation. It gets worse. Accounts show Stonewall received £100,000 from the Welsh Government in grants during the year ending March 31, 2023. Stonewall also received £89,700 from the Arts Council of Wales and £52,971 from the Welsh Council for Voluntary Action.
More than 300 schools have been told to stop calling pupils ‘boys and girls’ after signing up to Stonewall’s School & College Champions programme. Schools receive awards if they ‘remove any unnecessarily gendered language’. This is the reality of where we’re at in 2024.
How is this relevant to Drakeford’s compulsory RSE policy, implemented by Jeremy Miles, the Education Minister?
Take a look at the 14-page Welsh Government document for teachers titled ‘The Curriculum for Wales – Relationships and Sexuality Education Code’. This is where the clues are as to where Stonewall just might be influencing Welsh Government policy, and the rather, how shall I put this…’non-traditional’ mindset of Drakeford and Miles.
It mentions ‘sexuality’ and ‘diversity’ 11 times each, along with five references to ‘LGBTQ+’ and the word ‘sexual’ appears 22 times. The words ‘love’, ‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘male’, ‘female’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ do not appear AT ALL, while the word ‘marriage’ appears only ONCE.
Close reading of the document reveals that from the age of just SEVEN, children will be taught:
One has to wonder why Drakeford and Miles are so keen on brainwashing young, innocent children. Parental values, family values and religious values have been superseded by the values of a far-left government.
There have always been ‘tomboy’ girls who prefer climbing trees and playing football to dolls and make-up. There have always been boys with effeminate personalities who pursue interests such as ballet dancing rather than rugby.
Very often, there is nothing more to it than that. As they get older, they may conclude they are homosexual, as is their right.
But exposing children to dangerous, sexualised messages in recent years has led to many with such traits to conclude, wrongly, that they have gender dysmorphia, and have been given drugs to block puberty, which has led to devastating consequences. Last summer, we learned that 1,000 families were suing the Tavistock Gender Service after wrongly being given such drugs, and as a result the law firm representing them said they were facing a “physical and psychological permanent scarring that will last the rest of these victims’ lifetimes.”
Earlier this month, the UK Government announced that children in England would be banned from receiving puberty-blocking drugs on the NHS with immediate effect. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss called on the ban to be extended to private practises. Soon afterwards, the Northern Ireland Government said it would be extending the ban to its area. But from the Welsh Government? Nothing.
In this day and age, most reasonable people have sympathy with the tiny number of the population who were ‘born into the wrong body’, and will support them if they choose to have surgery AS ADULTS to correct this. The late writer Jan Morris is an example of a person who underwent such a medical procedure, yet she is known and remembered for her impressive work and her engaging personality, NOT her ‘gender identity’.
Beyond the oddballs and weirdos that have huge influence over the Labour Party, most regular, everyday people believe that there are TWO genders, a woman cannot have a penis, and that the definition of a woman is an ADULT FEMALE.
Most people, including many everyday people who happen to be homosexual, also believe that, under normal circumstances, it is the job of the parents, not the state, to educate children in their own way, and in their own time, about relationships and sex. And in most cases, they will wish to do so when their children are considerably older than seven.
People can draw their own conclusions as to why Drakeford and Miles are so keen to talk about sex to other people’s children. But parents deserve to know what values and standards are being imposed on their children by the Welsh Government and its hangers on.
I urge all parents to take half-an-hour to carefully read ‘The Curriculum for Wales – Relationships and Sexuality Education Code’, and to then react as they see fit.
Written by Marcus Stead
March 20, 2024 at 8:52 pm
Posted in Business, Cardiff, Comment, Law, Opinion, Politics