Saturday, October 31, 2026
The Red Lady of Paviland
As the BBC reports, two-hundred years ago scientists unearthed one of the most intriguing and controversial finds in Welsh archaeological history:
On 18 January 1823, The Red Lady of Paviland was discovered in a cave on the Gower peninsula, Swansea, by William Buckland, a reverend and Oxford University's first ever professor of geology.
"She" was immediately transported to the Oxford University museum, prompting a two-century campaign for the remains to be repatriated to Wales.
Yet, for at least the first century after the discovery, no-one was entirely sure about what they'd found.
A skeleton covered in red ochre, which is naturally occurring iron oxide, Prof Buckland presumed The Red "Lady" to be a Roman prostitute, or witch.
However, further investigations over the centuries have revealed "she" was a "he", and in fact dates from between 33,000 and 34,000 years ago.
But Prof George Nash, of the University of Liverpool and Coimbra University in Portugal, believes we should guard against judging Buckland too harshly.
"In 1823 the science of archaeology was very much in its infancy," he said.
"There was no careful stratified removal and recording of artefacts, great quantities of material were just hoiked out of the ground and dumped in a massive jumbled pile by unskilled labourers.
"There were indications that the skeleton could have been a woman due to the amount of seashell beads and ivory wands discovered around her."
Prof Nash, who is also convener of the Welsh Rock Art Organisation, added: "You also have to bear in mind that Buckland was a clergyman and a creationist and - almost half a century before Darwin - his conclusions wouldn't have seemed that outlandish at the time.
"He wasn't a literalist, he believed that the seven days creation of the bible was a metaphor for seven billion years of the world's development, but this assumption did lead him to make some massive errors in his dating."
The first breakthrough in the quest to establish the Red Lady's true identity came in 1912, when archaeologist William Solace revisited Goat's Cave in Paviland where "she" had been discovered and found flint arrow heads and tools.
Solace concluded, correctly, that he, in fact, had been a hunter-gatherer or warrior during what is commonly known as the last Ice Age, though over the last 100 years his date has been pushed back from the Mesolithic period (4-10,000 BCE) to the Palaeolithic era (35,000/10,000 BCE).
Prof Nash said this fits in better with what we know of the climate and landscape at the time.
"It's likely that many of the early attempts at carbon dating were contaminated by modern DNA rubbing off the fingers of the scientists handling the exhibits," he said.
"It's only in the 1980s that we start to get a more reliable date, and even that has been finessed over the years as technology has improved."
The skeleton is on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, although there have been calls for it to return to Wales
Prof Nash added: "33,000 years ago makes much more sense, as it falls during the warming period before the last Ice Age, when the Welsh ice cap was beginning to expand within mid Wales, and eventually covering the whole of Wales."
He explains that the Gower landscape would have looked very different in those days, with sea-levels having retreated so far it would have been possible to walk from Northern Africa all the way to southern England and then over the Bristol Channel into the few navigable sections of south Wales.
"The Red Lady and his cohorts were most likely tracking herds of Mammoth, deer or bison, and the ritualistic nature of his burial shows one of the earliest examples of spiritualistic thinking in Western Europe."
"Some have attempted to portray the remains as some sort of ancient Welsh ancestor, which is palpable nonsense," he said.
"Whoever he was, he was almost certainly of African or Arabian distinction, fleeing conflict or over-crowding in his more hospitable homeland.
"What's more, after the brief thaw of the Palaeolithic era, Wales was cut off again for several thousand years, so there's absolutely no chance of these remains having any genetic or cultural relationship to any modern Welsh person."
Yet Prof Nash does agree with Lord Davies in some respects.
"He may not be part of our genetic lineage, but he is a significant part of Welsh History.
"If there was a way the remains could be brought back to Wales safely - and that's a very big 'if' - I think it would definitely be the right thing to do."
Labels: lochist
Friday, October 30, 2026
Farage in hiding from the 'orange ninjas'
My favourite posts from that thread include;
'The famous violent thuggery of (checks notes) the Lib Dems. The trained orange ninja assassins from places like Wantage and Barnstaple. Yeah, right. He doth protest too much methinks.', plus
'Well, you wouldn't have wanted to start a fight with Paddy Ashdown, and we do have a number of ex-military types in the current intake, plus another who rowed across every ocean, so maybe he's wise.' and
'You don't mess with Daisy "Crusher" Cooper.'
The Guardian has a story that fills in between the lines:
They say that Nigel Farage has been accused of having shoved a female Liberal Democrat MP earlier this year:
The Reform leader said on Wednesday that he skipped John Healey’s speech in the House of Commons due to his seat reservation having been moved.
He claimed that he had been involved in a “physical altercation” with another MP on the day of the state opening of parliament in May, so he decided to give it a “wide berth” in order to “avoid conflict” in the chamber.
It later emerged his reservation had been removed by Commons staff as it did not have the proper date stamp.
However, the row then escalated as Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, claimed that her party’s MPs were involved in the May incident mentioned by Farage.
Cooper told Sky News: “My understanding – I didn’t see it, I wasn’t there – but my understanding is that he physically shoved one of our female MPs out of the way, and that one of our male MPs then challenged him on that.
“I didn’t see it, I didn’t witness what happened, but that was several months ago.
“And let’s be really clear: it’s Reform UK that had a problem at their conference with bundling female journalists and members out of their hall. So, we’ll take no lessons from them on this.”
The Lib Dem MP involved in the incident is believed to be Caroline Voaden (pictured), who posted on social media: “We both know that’s not true Nigel don’t we?
“I’m still waiting for the apology you were required to write to me … Though I won’t hold my breath.”
Farage playing the victim again, when the truth is that he appears to be doing everything he can to avoid doing the job he was elected to do.
The Guardian has a story that fills in between the lines:
They say that Nigel Farage has been accused of having shoved a female Liberal Democrat MP earlier this year:
The Reform leader said on Wednesday that he skipped John Healey’s speech in the House of Commons due to his seat reservation having been moved.
He claimed that he had been involved in a “physical altercation” with another MP on the day of the state opening of parliament in May, so he decided to give it a “wide berth” in order to “avoid conflict” in the chamber.
It later emerged his reservation had been removed by Commons staff as it did not have the proper date stamp.
However, the row then escalated as Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, claimed that her party’s MPs were involved in the May incident mentioned by Farage.
Cooper told Sky News: “My understanding – I didn’t see it, I wasn’t there – but my understanding is that he physically shoved one of our female MPs out of the way, and that one of our male MPs then challenged him on that.
“I didn’t see it, I didn’t witness what happened, but that was several months ago.
“And let’s be really clear: it’s Reform UK that had a problem at their conference with bundling female journalists and members out of their hall. So, we’ll take no lessons from them on this.”
The Lib Dem MP involved in the incident is believed to be Caroline Voaden (pictured), who posted on social media: “We both know that’s not true Nigel don’t we?
“I’m still waiting for the apology you were required to write to me … Though I won’t hold my breath.”
Farage playing the victim again, when the truth is that he appears to be doing everything he can to avoid doing the job he was elected to do.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
How reliable is public consultation in the age of AI?
In many ways the dawn of an online society has made this process much easier, though there is the unresolved issue of the technically-challenged and those who do not have access to computers to contend with, something that nobody appears to have got to grips with yet. However, just how reliable is this sort of consultation?
The Mirror reports that a study has found that a public consultation on new laws to curb the sale of vapes was hijacked by bots in a "co-ordinated campaign" to "manipulate" the result.
The paper says that researchers found that AI robots accounted for more than three quarters of responses to a Government consultation on plans to restrict the sale of disposable vapes. They generated replies which were "overwhelmingly targeted" at opposing measures around disposable e-cigarettes:
Researchers believe it is the first instance of large-scale, automated interference in a formal, public health consultation. Experts made the discovery when they analysed 118,756 responses to a consultation in October 2023 for the Tobacco and Vapes Act.
The University of Edinburgh study said the Department of Health and Social Care had identified 76% - more than 90,000 - as fraudulent using bot-detection methods. Almost all bot-generated responses targeted multiple choice questions opposing plans to restrict sales of disposable vapes. The same number reported they had learnt of the consultation on social media.
After the bot responses were excluded, some 79.6% of valid responses supported plans around disposable vapes. Researchers said: "This appears to be the first documented instance of large-scale, automated interference in a formal, public health policy consultation.
"The scale and directional consistency of bot responses suggest a co-ordinated campaign, consistent with prior evidence of tobacco industry efforts to manipulate public consultations through mass co-ordinated submissions."
They added that is it "not possible to ascertain the commercial origins of such a campaign", but highlighted that "transnational tobacco companies have sought to swamp earlier public consultations with favourable responses, using mass recruitment campaigns and postcard submissions".
Experts also warned that bolstering detection capacity and safeguards "will be essential" as "bot sophistication increases". They said: "While in this instance these submissions were screened and excluded, developments in bots require a constant evolution of screening tools, and such campaigns often take place with little or no public awareness, particularly in areas such as vaping regulation, which remains an active topic of policy discussion in many geographic contexts.
"Consultations at other levels, or in other contexts where resources are more restricted and there is a lack of capacity to screen such findings, may be at greater risk of influence." A DHSC spokesperson said: "We always have robust controls in place to prevent the manipulation of our public consultations and those controls worked effectively in this case.
"As a result, the fake responses were removed and the consultation helped inform the landmark action we are taking to create a smoke-free generation. We will remain alert to interference of this kind in future consultation processes and we will not be deterred from doing what is necessary to promote healthier living."
The Tobacco and Vapes Act gained Royal Assent in April, making it illegal to ever sell tobacco products to anyone born on or after January 1 2009. It also included a ban on the sale of disposable vapes - which came into effect in June last year - as well as measures to restrict the flavours and marketing of e-cigarettes.
The aim was to create a smoke-free generation. Speaking at the time, the then-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, said: "This legislation marks a turning point for the nation’s health. By ending the cycle of tobacco addiction for future generations, we are taking one of the boldest steps in decades to prevent illness before it even begins.
The abuse was caught this time, but as artificial intelligence gets more and more sophisticated, can we be confident that it will be exposed in the future? It may well be that public bodies need to go back to the drawing board or they might find themselves exclusively talking to computers with the rest of us on the side-lines, oblivious to their plans.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Reform's overseas donors exposed
The paper says that an analysis of data from the Electoral Commission shows the amount received from donors who were based abroad in the past two years by Nigel Farage’s party dwarfs that of other parties amid growing concern about overseas influence in British politics:
In comparison, Labour and the Conservatives received just 0.15 per cent and 3.57 per cent of their donations from people or companies based abroad respectively during the same period.
While there is no suggestion of any illegal activity, Labour Party chair Bridget Phillipson said the scale of Reform’s reliance on donations from wealthy overseas backers “raises further questions about the party’s financial affairs”.
It comes after Reform UK was given two record-breaking donations of £36m each last month from cryptocurrency billionaires Ben Delo, who was previously based in Hong Kong but moved back to the UK earlier this year, and Christopher Harborne, who was based in Thailand. These donations were not included in The Independent’s analysis as they fell outside the reporting period.
Of the 79.41 per cent of Reform UK’s donations that came from overseas in the year 2025-2026, £8m was given by Mr Delo and £15m from Mr Harborne. Companies with controlling directors who were based abroad were also included in the figure for overseas donations.
The other donations include several donations of tens of thousands of pounds from Timothy Mallott, the chief operating officer of brokerage and financial tech firm BGC Group’s EMEA division. His Companies House profile locates him in Hong Kong, while his LinkedIn puts him in Dubai.
Reform also received a donation of £100,000 from Lucas Bitencourt, a British entrepreneur, investor and founder of asset management firm Arbra Partners, whose Companies House profile locates him in Portugal, as well as £45,000 from Flow Lloyds HOLDCO Limited – a UK-registered holding company operating in the insurance sector, whose British director resides in Italy.
Ms Phillipson told The Independent: “The scale of Reform’s reliance on donations from wealthy overseas backers raises further questions about the party’s financial affairs.
“The public deserves to know exactly who is bankrolling Nigel Farage’s party, what interests these donors are seeking to advance, and whether those interests align with the priorities of the British people.
The sooner the government brings in its legislation to restrict the funding of political parties from abroad the better.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Ianto's shrine to be saved
The shrine, which stood at Cardiff Bay, pays tribute to the beloved Torchwood character Ianto Jones, whose untimely death left fans so bereft they created a lasting tribute to him in the location where the series was filmed. Now, Nation Cymru reports that the attraction has been saved - for the time being at least.
The news site says that the display is to be relocated elsewhere in Cardiff Bay:
Speaking to Radio Times as Torchwood turns 20 this week, Gareth David-Lloyd who played Ianto revealed some very welcome news.
“Nathan Wyburn, the brilliant artist from Cardiff, he’s taken all the bits and pieces from the shrine and he’s making a a piece of art that will last forever,” he said.
“I think they’re displaying it at the Red Dragon Centre to fall in line with the 20th anniversary – it might be a bit later now, I think it might be the beginning of next year. I know it’s going to be there up until the Red Dragon Centre closes, and then hopefully it’ll find a new home.”
Earlier this year, David-Lloyd said the shrine “has been a reminder for me all these years, through a lot of hard times, through times when I [wondered] whether I was going to carry on acting, those times where you don’t feel like anyone wants to employ you or even consider you for something, it’s a reminder that the work I’ve done has mattered to somebody somewhere, and it’s kept me going”.
He added: “It’s always been close to my heart in that way. So, a big thank you to Carol-Ann [Hillman, the shrine’s official caretaker] and everyone involved with its upkeep and looking after it and visiting it and posting about it, posting pictures of themselves by it. Thank you to everyone who’s helped with that, because it’s kept me going in quite a few ways.”
Looking back at the early days of the show David-Lloyd told Radio Times that he never expected fans to love Ianto as much as they did.
“The popularity of Ianto and the shrine, that sort of knocked me for six,” he said. “I knew he was turning to a cult character as we were shooting, with comments that were being put online and reactions.
“The first convention that I went to, I was expecting like two or three people to turn up to get pictures signed. But it really shocked me how many hearts he touched and how many hearts that relationship between him and Jack touched.
“It still makes me well up when I think of fans that come up and say that Ianto helped them come out to their families and help them accept themselves and believe in themselves. All of that was a big surprise to me, and it still makes my heart warm and fuzzy today.”
Who would have thought that the short-lived science fiction programme could have endured so long?
Monday, October 26, 2026
Reform's link to Iranian regime revealed
The paper says that Hossein Ghandehari, also called Sasan, was little known in the UK until he pledged to give millions to Reform UK this summer and donated £50,000 to Farage to cover the cost of two passes for the Davos World Economic Forum.
They add that he has said he is moving his tax residency from Switzerland to the UK in order to make “regular payments” of more than “one or two million” to the party:
The 61-year-old Iranian-born British businessman, who says he runs a $10bn (£7bn) fund called HP Trust, has declined to give details about how his family made its money beyond saying the fund owns assets in Europe and North America.
Now, a French arbitration decision unearthed by the Guardian sheds some light on Ghandehari’s past dealings with Iranian state-linked entities between 2013 and 2016.
It also reveals Ghandehari’s further Iranian business links to another Reform UK donor, John Richard Simpson, an administration professional and church warden from Potters Bar, north of London. Simpson’s design firm, Interior Architecture Landscape, counts the Ghandehari family as a client and gave £200,000 to Reform UK last year.
Farage has been highly critical of Iran over the past year, and in March accused it of being a bigger danger to the UK than Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
The French judgment reveals that Ghandehari was the major investor behind a deal to supply and build a fibre-optic cable to carry telecoms traffic across Iran in a joint venture with a state-linked Iranian partner.
The businessman’s HP Trust was the ultimate owner of Ori Group, which took a 49% stake in the venture, called Omran Razavi International Co, in 2015.
The other 51% of the venture was owned by Astan Quds Razavi (AQR), a multibillion pound religious foundation in Iran’s second city of Mashhad.
AQR’s leader at the time was ayatollah Abbas Vaez Tabasi, who was appointed custodian of the foundation by the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, and served from the 1979 revolution until his death in 2016. Vaez Tabasi had been an ally of some reformers but remained close to the next supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and, according to the BBC, was reported by state media in 2009 to have said of opposition protest movements that those behind “sedition” in the country were “enemies of god” who deserved to be executed under sharia law.
The joint venture ended in about 2016, with the Ghandehari-backed entities being pushed out of the deal as a hardliner was appointed to replace Vaez Tabasi.
The US imposed sanctions on AQR in 2021, saying it controlled “large swaths of the Iranian economy, including assets expropriated from political dissidents and religious minorities, to the benefit of supreme leader Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian government officials”. It describes it as a bonyad, one of the “opaque, quasi-official organisations generally controlled by current and former government officials and clerics that report directly to the supreme leader”.
Ghandehari’s lawyers said it would be misleading to characterise him as “working with Iran” without the context that, after 2016, he was targeted by Iran’s supreme national security council with the false allegation that he was working with hostile western powers. They also said his involvement was intended to promote political change through greater access to information, which he believed was why the US and French authorities authorised the project.
Tom Keatinge, the director of the Centre for Finance and Security at Rusi, the foreign affairs thinktank, said dealing with Iran “has always been a risky business as a financial institution because of this blurring between kind of state and the private sector. The private sector is not free to operate. It’s just very hard to operate in that country without touching a live rail.”
He said there was clearly a range of positions among ayatollahs but it would be “pretty difficult to operate in an industry like telecoms” without the acceptance of the core leadership.
The judgment also revealed that, until 2016, Ghandehari’s HP Trust was the owner of Orico General Trading LLC, which was contracted to supply telecoms equipment from France’s Alcatel-Lucent and transport it from Dubai to Iran. After 2016, this company was transferred to Simpson, the administration professional, who was responsible for winding down Orico’s operations and taking hundreds of staff out of the region.
Simpson told the Guardian he acquired the company after Iranian extremists took over AQR, when the project’s assets were seized and those involved faced political persecution on national security grounds, including accusations of working for hostile western governments. He said his plan was to wind down the business, adding that he carried out detailed checks before acquiring Orico.
Ghandehari’s lawyers said AQR was independent and respected, and therefore the only viable choice for a joint venture in Iran. They said Ghandehari had never met Vaez Tabasi and that he did not regard him as an advocate for freedom or human rights but had believed him to be the only force in the Iranian hierarchy capable of holding back the hardliners in order for the project to go ahead.
I wonder of Donald Trump knows.
Sunday, October 25, 2026
British music only!
According to its promotional blurb, it will be “dedicated exclusively to artists from Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, with tagline “all British, all day”. By way of further explanation, one of its presenters, the black GB News host Nana Akua, says that “It’s easy to forget how this country has shaped the global music landscape” – a strange point instantly disproved by a mention of any number of artists (such as those four fairly successful fellas from Liverpool). But here, perhaps, is the strangest thing of all: according to GB Media, every track on the station’s playlist will be an “artist from Great Britain or Northern Ireland, or where the main proportion of the band is British.”
This sparks no end of questions. Does anyone in the ordinary world actually perceive music like this? Will someone frantically be employed to sift through Wikipedia, finding out whether this or that band fits the “main proportion” criterion? What will happen in the case of, say, the Gallagher brothers, who self-identify as Irish – and should, therefore, be excluded for the same reasons as U2, CMAT and Fontaines DC? Should the Jimi Hendrix Experience be ruled in or out, given that the two supporting members of the trio were respectively from Ealing and Folkestone? And to get into the real nitty-gritty, how exactly are the programmers defining “British”?
We all know the jaw-dropping conversations taking place in GB News-adjacent circles about national identity. The Tory-to-Reform defectors Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman see Englishness as an ethnic identity. If this definition wins out, which is quite conceivable, what will happen then? A playlist cull that will leave little apart from the musical equivalent of sliced white bread?
There are more fascinating questions to ask. There has been an on-off debate about whether Britpop was partly responsible for Brexit. As the writer of a book about that cultural wave, I have always clung on to the idea that because its nationalistic(ish) animus was focused on the US, and the demographics of Leave voters do not map on to the Britpop generation, no one had any case to answer. But this latest development brings on a slight pang of unease. In retrospect, the large-scale whiteness of Britpop was, as we say these days, rather problematic. On a musical level, it accounts for its chronically limited range of influences and inputs, which led to it burning out pretty quickly. But it also left it open to what might turn out to be a belated act of appropriation: whatever music the new station plays, I would imagine that Oasis, Blur, Pulp et al will be an integral part of its output. Put another way, the Farage-ist tanks are now surely heading for Britpop’s metaphorical lawn.
Inquiries to a couple of music lawyers established that musicians cannot stop radio stations that possess the relevant licences and pay the required royalties from playing their material. Self-evidently, however, they could quite easily express their displeasure at the prospect of being part of a constant Farage-ist soundtrack. In the excellent new Oasis documentary, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Noel Gallagher rightly says that his band was never “a rightwing thing … All are welcome. It’s we and us.” In the context of GB Music Radio, he should translate that into something slightly more specific. So should the already embattled Ed Sheeran, Adele, what remains of the Rolling Stones, the former members of Dire Straits and everyone else who is – and isn’t – mentioned in the station’s launch statement. The music all of them make, after all, is founded on precisely the kind of cultural mixing that so many voices associated with GB News take against.
I don't think I will be listening.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
The church and the lifeboat memorial
The Gower Holidays website says of St Cattwg's church in Port Eynon that it was founded during the 6th century by St. Cattwg’s missionary to Gower, St. Cennydd:
The present building dates from the 12th century and was given to the Knights of St. John by Robert de la Mare around 1165.
The doorway is probably sixteenth century, and the holy water stoup in the porch is said to have been given by a Spanish sea captain in gratitude to his rescuers.
In the south wall of the chancel is a blocked up leper’s window which can be clearly seen from outside the church. During alterations in 1861 the gallery in the nave was removed and the west end enlarged to accommodate the parish’s growing population.
The stained glass windows are by Celtic Studios and Glantawe Studios, two leading Welsh firms of the 20th century. There are other memorials of interest to discover in the church and churchyard.
In the churchyard, is a memorial to the three lifeboat crew who lost their lives at sea in 1916. The lifeboat station was closed in 1919, when it was considered too dangerous to be located in Port Eynon. A new lifeboat station was opened in Horton in 1968.
In the churchyard, is a memorial to the three lifeboat crew who lost their lives at sea in 1916. The lifeboat station was closed in 1919, when it was considered too dangerous to be located in Port Eynon. A new lifeboat station was opened in Horton in 1968.
Labels: lochist
Friday, October 23, 2026
Plaid Cymru bottle council tax reform
They say that Elin Jones claimed that the decision was made because she could not afford the kind of financial relief she would want to put in place if she went ahead with a planned revaluation in two years' time.
However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank has described her explanation as "nonsensical" and "absurd logic", while the Welsh Labour finance spokesperson Huw Thomas accused Plaid of failing to back progressive policies in government, pointing out that in opposition, Plaid claimed the moral high ground on this issue and promised action in their manifesto, but instead they are showing political and moral cowardice.
The reasoned and intellectual case against this delay, however, was made by David Phillips, an economist working for the IFS. In a thread on Twitter, he argued that both the government and opposition were wrong in their analysis of what the revaluation would mean:
1. With council tax bills based on 2003 property values, households living in properties with the same values now can face bills differing by hundreds of pounds a year. In effect over 40% are in the wrong band, over 20% paying too much and 20% too little council tax.
2. Revaluation and reform was aimed to be revenue-neutral. Guaranteeing that would be hard given councils set tax rates not Welsh Govt but Welsh Govt planned to reset bands based on modern values and maintain council funding - so no need to increase overall average bills.
3. There is a big change to revaluation process. Back in 2003 they fixed the bands BEFORE doing valuations. Because property values in 2003 were booming, they'd ended up setting thresholds too low. This time they'd VALUE FIRST then set bands, so could avoid this problem!
4. Without a revaluation, any reform to make council tax less regressive (e.g. a new top band) is only fiddling around the edges and risks applying it to the 'wrong' properties. The Scottish Govt had to shelve plans to make its tax less regressive because values were out of date!
5. The government's stated reason to delay revaluation makes NO SENSE. It says it will cost too much to phase in bill increases. It refuses to phase in bill decreases too to cover the cost. So instead those due cuts in bills won't get any cut at all. That's absurd logic.
6. Is the supposed cost of transitional relief instead a convenient fig leaf for a Government not wanting to expend political capital on the necessary but thorny task of fixing an out of date unfair system? Two delays in a row risks this can being repeatedly kicked.
7. As the Minister says we have been undertaking analysis for Welsh Govt and will publish a report to inform stakeholders about what revaluation and reform of council tax would entail - and so what delay means.
8. But our views on the desirability of revaluation and reform are well known. And the Welsh Govt has always respected our independence and that that means we must be able to make our views known. Despite today's disappointment I'm thankful for that mature relationship.
The Plaid Government are committed to making council tax fairer, but as David Phillips says, without a revaluation any reform will be ineffective. They cannot do this piecemeal. It is likely thought that, after this decision, it may not happen at all.
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Senior Reform official casts doubt over legality of huge donations
The paper says that James Orr, who was then Reform UK’s head of policy and a Cambridge professor, discussed potential difficulties around future donations from Harborne and Delo in undercover footage captured by the investigative reporting group Verbatim:
A reporter was posing as a potential donor when Orr talked to him about “filling the war chest in anticipation” of tougher donations rules, describing it as the establishment trying to “kneecap” the party.
Orr was suspended as Reform’s head of policy last month after Channel 4 broadcast some of Verbatim’s undercover filming in which he appeared to discuss ways to get around funding laws to allow donations from a US-based donor.
The matter is under police investigation and he remains suspended, although Reform has released its own report clearing Orr and another official of wrongdoing.
The new footage has been shared with the Guardian after a public debate about whether the two £36m donations from Harborne and Delo to Reform UK will be allowed under the cap. The party maintains the donations are legal, pointing out that the retrospective overseas donor cap has not yet been passed into law.
In the footage, recorded in July this year, Orr expressed doubt about whether Delo and Harborne would still be able to donate given that, when it does become law, the £100,000 overseas donor cap is to cover party donations dating back to March this year.
Orr believed Delo would probably meet the residency test as long as he was not required to have been a tax resident, in which case he would be “stuffed”. He said Harborne was “probably more of a challenge” in terms of avoiding the overseas cap and he “can’t do anything for 12 months” after moving back.
Harborne had been living in Thailand until he registered to vote in Hampshire this summer, and Delo has long been resident in Hong Kong, though he has been on the UK domestic register for some years.
The new law will limit overseas donors to giving £100,000 a year to a political party. It will apply to donations made after March 2026, and will require any domestic donor who wants to give more than £100,000 to have been resident in the UK for at least a year.
Until the bill becomes law of course, we will not know whether the donations are legal, but the fact that a senior official in Reform had doubts must be enough to question whether the party undertook due diligence before accepting the money.
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
More ministerial dissent over Labour's immigration policies
The paper says that Miatta Fahnbulleh said that extending the time that foreign citizens had to wait before being granted indefinite leave to remain threatened “the process of building cohesion”, she also warned that Labour needed to “raise the level of the debate” around migration and “challenge divisive political rhetoric”:
Under plans set out by Mahmood last year, foreign citizens would have to live in Britain for 15 years before they could be granted permanent settlement, up from five years at present. Migrants would be able to shorten the wait if they received a salary at a certain level or contributed to their communities, such as through voluntary work.
Opponents of the plans have criticised the impact they would have on social care workers in particular, many of whom are migrants and poorly paid.
In an interview with The Times last month, the housing secretary Angela Rayner said the plans were unfair because they would “change the goalposts” for migrants already in the UK.
Andy Burnham is also understood to be concerned about the proposals, which are expected to be watered down by the Home Office later this year.
Writing to voters in her Peckham constituency, Fahnbulleh suggested the proposed changes to the rules lacked compassion and that there should be a “much stronger focus on integration”.
In a post on her constituency website seen by The Telegraph, Fahnbulleh said her own area of southeast London was “a good example” of what can happen when “people are given the opportunity to integrate and participate”.
“Ultimately, I want to see a system based on control and compassion, with a much stronger focus on integration,” she wrote. “If we continually prolong the time people have to wait for settlement, we can also prolong the process of building cohesion.
“We need to raise the level of the debate, challenge divisive political rhetoric and make the case for communities like the one we have in Peckham. That means talking about immigration with care, control and compassion.”
Fahnbulleh, who is seen as being on the left of the Labour Party, is the latest senior figure to criticise the plans that were championed by Mahmood and the former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Fahnbulleh is not alone in her concern, more than 100 Labour MPs, as well as trade unions, have come out in opposition as well.
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
A U-turn too far
The news site adds that Transport Action Network (TAN) Cymru said public transport improvements should take priority in tackling congestion around Newport, ahead of a Senedd debate tomorrow.
Labour’s motion calls on the Welsh Government to begin work on a new relief road and rule out closing junctions 25, 26 and 27. Given their record on this issue it feels like opportunism on their part:
Welsh Labour leader Ken Skates has backed an amended version of the previously proposed black route south of Newport.
TAN Cymru transport campaigner Gwynfor Edwards said: “A new motorway is the wrong answer for Newport. Building more road capacity risks generating more traffic, while the financial and environmental concerns that led to the scheme being scrapped in 2019 have not gone away.”
Mr Edwards called for the South East Wales Transport Commission’s recommendations to take priority.
“The South East Wales Transport Commission set out a better way forward, with public transport alternatives that could improve connectivity between Cardiff and Newport, including new rail stations,” he said.
“These options should be prioritised before committing to another major road scheme.”
However, the group backed Labour’s opposition to junction closures.
“Ruling out junction closures, however, is the right decision. Closing junctions would simply push traffic onto local streets,” Mr Edwards said.
“Whatever Members decide, people in Newport deserve more than another delay. They need a clear timetable, a properly funded plan and practical action to tackle congestion.”
Then first minister Mark Drakeford cancelled the relief road on cost and environmental grounds. His government subsequently established the commission, also known as the Burns Commission, to examine alternatives.
The current Plaid Cymru government has ruled out reviving the black route but announced an 18-month study into other roads-based options, after which it intends to select a preferred scheme.
Ministers say a review found that no single measure would resolve congestion and that road improvements were needed alongside other changes.
A five-year programme will include motorway maintenance, changes to traffic management, targeted road and junction improvements, and measures to encourage freight operators to use alternative routes such as the A465.
Public transport plans include accelerating delivery of Cardiff Parkway and Magor and Undy railway stations, improving access to Severn Tunnel Junction station and better bus connections between Newport and Cardiff.
I am with the environmental lobby on this issue. I am also against the closure of junctions. When they tried that in Port Talbot a decade or so ago, it caused chaos.
Welsh Labour leader Ken Skates has backed an amended version of the previously proposed black route south of Newport.
TAN Cymru transport campaigner Gwynfor Edwards said: “A new motorway is the wrong answer for Newport. Building more road capacity risks generating more traffic, while the financial and environmental concerns that led to the scheme being scrapped in 2019 have not gone away.”
Mr Edwards called for the South East Wales Transport Commission’s recommendations to take priority.
“The South East Wales Transport Commission set out a better way forward, with public transport alternatives that could improve connectivity between Cardiff and Newport, including new rail stations,” he said.
“These options should be prioritised before committing to another major road scheme.”
However, the group backed Labour’s opposition to junction closures.
“Ruling out junction closures, however, is the right decision. Closing junctions would simply push traffic onto local streets,” Mr Edwards said.
“Whatever Members decide, people in Newport deserve more than another delay. They need a clear timetable, a properly funded plan and practical action to tackle congestion.”
Then first minister Mark Drakeford cancelled the relief road on cost and environmental grounds. His government subsequently established the commission, also known as the Burns Commission, to examine alternatives.
The current Plaid Cymru government has ruled out reviving the black route but announced an 18-month study into other roads-based options, after which it intends to select a preferred scheme.
Ministers say a review found that no single measure would resolve congestion and that road improvements were needed alongside other changes.
A five-year programme will include motorway maintenance, changes to traffic management, targeted road and junction improvements, and measures to encourage freight operators to use alternative routes such as the A465.
Public transport plans include accelerating delivery of Cardiff Parkway and Magor and Undy railway stations, improving access to Severn Tunnel Junction station and better bus connections between Newport and Cardiff.
I am with the environmental lobby on this issue. I am also against the closure of junctions. When they tried that in Port Talbot a decade or so ago, it caused chaos.
Whatever road the Welsh government builds will fill up quickly as happens with virtually every other major road scheme. The only solution is to get local traffic off the M4 by providing reliable alternatives.
Monday, October 19, 2026
Green leader doubles down on Zionism is racism policy
They add that Polanski did not attend the vote, prompting accusations of a lack of leadership, but he made clear he agreed with the broad thrust of it even if he felt it was unhelpful to have what he called a “debate about semantics”:
Asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg whether he thought Zionism was racist, Polanski said: “I don’t think this is actually controversial.
“What’s controversial is that 75,000 Palestinians have been murdered in the last few years, including more child amputees than ever in modern history. So when you take that to account, the fact that they’re being murdered because they’re Palestinian – that’s very obviously a racist ideology.”
He added: “I think Zionism is racism in the practical application of it. Now the conference had a debate about the motion, about the word. I said I think debates about words are unhelpful, and I still think that.”
Asked whether he believed Israel had a right to exist, Polanski, who is Jewish, said: “I don’t think any state has a right to exist under international law,” adding that the idea of a two-state solution was “for the birds” given Israel’s opposition to it.
The Green leader also insisted he had no regrets about the way he had handled the recent controversy, despite criticism from some prominent Jewish Green members, including Vivien Lichtenstein, the head of the Jewish Greens.
“I’m not sorry at all,” he said. “Vivien is someone I’ve had respect for and do have respect for, and partly co-founded the Jewish Greens together … Actually, when the Jewish Greens were surveyed about this motion, a majority supported it.”
How this will go down with the Green MPs who regretted the passing of the motion and who believe that Polanski should have been there to speak against it, will have to be seen.
Sunday, October 18, 2026
Farage let off Reform staffer accused of racist slur
The paper says that secretly filmed footage showed Farage telling his director of communications, Ed Sumner, that the party’s mayor candidate for Hampshire and the Solent, Chris Parry, must apologise to David Lammy for a social media post in which he said the then-deputy prime minister should “go home to the Caribbean”. However, the apology was a compromise that fell short of what should have happened:
The footage cuts to Mr Sumner saying to Mr Farage “you’re protecting him”, before the party leader says: “It’s showing a bit of... bit of sorrow. Look, ‘I’m sorry’ is probably a good thing to hear. Just take the f***ing deal.”
In Mr Parry’s social post in January over speculation that the government could be considering talks about reparations for slavery, he wrote: “Lammy must go home to the Caribbean where his loyalty lies.”
At the time, Labour described the remarks as “racist and grossly offensive”. Mr Parry later apologised “for any distress or offence” caused.
The new footage, part of a documentary by ITV Exposure to be screened on Sunday night, captured the conversation between Mr Farage and Mr Sumner following a press conference where the party leader said Mr Parry should apologise.
It showed Mr Farage saying Mr Parry “must apologise to Lammy”, before Mr Sumner tells him they had written him a text that he’s “not too happy with”.
Mr Farage said: “No, I'm sure, but he must do it and move on…Tell him that from me.”
When the Reform UK leader left, Mr Sumner said: “He's lucky, if it was up to me, I'd have kicked him out f***ing months ago.”
Mr Parry was later suspended after he appeared to liken a Jewish neighbourhood watch group to “Islamists on horseback” following an arson attack on Jewish community ambulances.
Mr Sumner told ITV News: “Nothing in the excerpts [of filming] discloses any wrongdoing, criminal activity or breaches of Reform UK policy by me… I do not endorse extremism or bigotry, or any concealment of extremism and bigotry”.
Labour has condemned the footage as “shocking and deeply disturbing”, and told Mr Farage he needs to “urgently explain why he allegedly stood by [Mr Parry]..... instead of kicking him out of his party”.
“These latest shocking and deeply disturbing revelations go right to the top of Reform UK, Nigel Farage needs to wake up and realise the buck stops with him,” Labour party chair Bridget Phillipson said.
“Time and again Farage has had every opportunity to demonstrate leadership and get Reform’s house in order and every single time he has failed.
“In Reform’s own words: they’re defending the indefensible. They are completely unfit for office.”
The paper adds that other revelations, which come a day after the same investigation secretly filmed councillors calling Muslims “parasites” and describing Black children as “animals”, include Reform MP Sarah Pochin saying senior party officials “just exclude you if you are a woman”:
Speaking at a time she was the party’s only female member of parliament, Ms Pochin said in response to being told a new female press officer was starting work: “Oh thank f*** for that. God! We so need women press officers… They are so f***ing chauvinistic.
“I go out on all the shows and go ‘Oh no, it’s lovely, oh they’re all so welcoming’. Sh**... they just exclude you if you’re a woman...
“It’s really tough being a girl with all of this alpha male sh** going on.”
A Reform UK spokesperson said Ms Pochin had raised concerns about her experience, and “those concerns were taken seriously”.
“Reform has come a long way as a party. We’ve grown enormously in a short space of time, and we’ve been working to address issues as they arise,” they said.
An undercover reporter was also told to delete their social media account if they were considering running to be a Reform UK councillor.
In a vetting interview with the chair of a local Reform branch in Chester, Ian Frost, the reporter told him he had posted on social media in support of Tommy Robinson.
Mr Frost replied: “Anything where you've got, things, Tommy Robinson or anything like that, okay, I would delete the account and I'd start again.”
This is the reality of Reform UK and why they are unfit for office.
Saturday, October 17, 2026
The pub with no name and the Swansea poet
These subterranean levels—known today as The Vault—were built in the 1600s as wine and spirits cellars. They feature parallel brick-arched rooms separated by old cast-iron columns, alongside an antique gantry crane on rails once used to hoist heavy casks of liquor.
The cellars were famously immortalized as the "Wine Vaults" in poet Dylan Thomas's short story "The Followers", during an era when the bar was a bohemian gathering spot. Today, the historic cellars operate as a large capacity space hosting live music on weekends, events, and private functions.
It was a legal requirement for each public house selling alcohol to have a recogniseable sign. However as the building was a bar and not a public house, a sign had not been allocated. This was soon rectified and the premises was officially presented with the title of “No Sign”. As for the building itself, it is listed as Grade II and was “the first site of Swansea’s Chamber of Commerce and one of the first recorded libraries in Swansea.” It has been licensed throughout its recorded history being in turn brew house, brewery, wine and spirits merchants and Public House.
The 1930s was a golden era for the City of Swansea and with musicians, writers and artists among its regular patronage, the No Sign became a significant creative bohemian hotspot. Most notably of these was the Welsh poet and beloved scoundrel Dylan Thomas. He and his creative contemporaries became known as “the Kardomah gang” and would be frequently found reveling in the image of the drunken artist. As a result the No Sign is one of the significant venues included in the cultured literary pub crawl by the Dylan Thomas Experience.
“I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet-brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners.” ―Dylan Thomas
Labels: lochist
Friday, October 16, 2026
Labour to shun pacts with Greens
The paper says that although Andy Burnham has ruled out a future power-sharing deal with the Green Party, it was unclear whether this would extend to local councils.
However, the party has now asked its councils in joint administrations with Zack Polanski’s party to “review” its arrangements, saying if Green groups did not issue a “clear and unambiguous statement” condemning the motion within seven days, any local power-sharing arrangement will end:
Labour Party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said: “The prime minister has been completely clear: this policy is wrong and antisemitic, and has no place in British politics.
“Where local Labour Parties currently have an arrangement with the Greens in local government, we expect their Green counterparts to make clear that they reject this position and to call on their national leadership to reconsider the policy.”
The ultimatum will impact 17 councils across England and one in Wales, according to the Labour Party, also will urge their Green partners to call on the party’s national leaders to condemn the motion.
The Greens hit back at the decision, calling it “undemocratic” and “disappointing.
“For the Labour Government to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism is disappointing and wrong,” a spokesperson for the party said.
“Trying to tell local parties what to do and who they can work with is undemocratic.
“Whilst Labour continue to try to meddle in our internal democracy, arm a genocide and lock up protesting pensioners, we will not take lectures from them.”
But Ms Phillipson added: “We have asked local Green groups to respond as a matter of urgency. Where they are unable to provide that assurance, Labour will bring any such local arrangement to an end. This isn’t an issue of party politics; it’s about doing what is right and upholding the values anyone holding public office should share.
“The Labour Party fought hard to address antisemitism within our own party and ensure it had no place in our politics. We have a responsibility to uphold those same standards in our relationships with other parties.”
The Liberal Democrats are much more decentralised than Labour and this sort of command and control instruction from the centre is not part of our culture, but I think it would be wise for those administrations, where the party is in control with the Greens, to start asking for the same assurances.
Labour Party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said: “The prime minister has been completely clear: this policy is wrong and antisemitic, and has no place in British politics.
“Where local Labour Parties currently have an arrangement with the Greens in local government, we expect their Green counterparts to make clear that they reject this position and to call on their national leadership to reconsider the policy.”
The ultimatum will impact 17 councils across England and one in Wales, according to the Labour Party, also will urge their Green partners to call on the party’s national leaders to condemn the motion.
The Greens hit back at the decision, calling it “undemocratic” and “disappointing.
“For the Labour Government to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism is disappointing and wrong,” a spokesperson for the party said.
“Trying to tell local parties what to do and who they can work with is undemocratic.
“Whilst Labour continue to try to meddle in our internal democracy, arm a genocide and lock up protesting pensioners, we will not take lectures from them.”
But Ms Phillipson added: “We have asked local Green groups to respond as a matter of urgency. Where they are unable to provide that assurance, Labour will bring any such local arrangement to an end. This isn’t an issue of party politics; it’s about doing what is right and upholding the values anyone holding public office should share.
“The Labour Party fought hard to address antisemitism within our own party and ensure it had no place in our politics. We have a responsibility to uphold those same standards in our relationships with other parties.”
The Liberal Democrats are much more decentralised than Labour and this sort of command and control instruction from the centre is not part of our culture, but I think it would be wise for those administrations, where the party is in control with the Greens, to start asking for the same assurances.
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Senedd bans poem by Wales National Poet
So I was interested in a story in Will Hayward's latest newsletter, one that does not reflect well on the Senedd Commission, who are responsible for running the parliament and arranging the official opening.
He tells us that the National Poet of Wales has been barred from reading a poem in front of the King at the opening of the Senedd today because it is “too political":
Hanan Issa, who has been Cymru’s national poet since 2022, was commissioned by the Senedd to produce and read a poem ahead of the official opening of the seventh Welsh Parliament tomorrow. Her planned appearance in front of the King, Queen, First Minister and Senedd Members was, as of last week, widely publicised.
The brief that she was given was “to celebrate Members and their achievements being elected” but also to serve as “a reminder of their commitment to the people of Wales”.
It also added:
“We are happy for Hanan to execute the poem as they wish. It can be a solo piece or it could have a community focus, potentially gathering and crafting views from across 16 constituencies on people’s hopes for Wales’ future and turn this into a poem to be read in the Siambr.”
So in summary, Cymru’s national poet was commissioned to remind politicians of their commitment to the people of Wales however she wished.
Ms Issa spent time speaking to people in Wales about the issues they felt mattered to them and produced a powerful poem called “To Grow” (you can view it at the bottom of this newsletter).
In it she referenced a wide range of issues including the recent wildfires, cuts to women’s health services, Welsh water being guzzled up by new data centres and the atrocities committed in Gaza.
Upon submitting this poem, this newsletter understands that she was told it was too political for the opening of parliament. Following this, she compromised by making these references less overt. She then submitted a second version of the poem.
However, this too was rejected with the comment that while the Senedd Commission are “mindful of respecting the poet’s artistic independence and freedom of expression” they feel that “some aspects of the poem may still not align with the brief”. It’s worth bearing in mind that this is not a decision made by the Welsh Government but rather by the Senedd.
Will Hayward reproduces both version of the poems on his substack, suggesting that if the ears of politicians are too delicate to hear issues affecting the lives of Welsh people in a poem, what hope have we got for them to listen in real life?. I have reproduced the revised one at the top of this post, which in my view is actually a better poem. You can read the original version by clicking on the link above.
When will reality bite in Wales?
However, Cardiff University academics Ed Gareth Poole and Owain Cynfab believe that the deal is just a stopgap that leaves wider pressures on Welsh public services unresolved.
Nobody expected Welsh finances to be sorted by a supplementary budget of course. Its purpose is to just move money around in year, pulling some from reserves, from additional Barnett allocations and reprioritising spending to meet the expectations of the new government.
But the analysis, published by Wales Fiscal Analysis at the university’s Wales Governance Centre, warns of far more difficult decisions ahead.
Ed Gareth Poole and Owain Cynfab for example, calculate that core NHS spending will fall by roughly 0.4% in real terms this year, despite an additional £100 million for waiting times and elective care and predict rising costs across public services that will make Plaid's uncosted commitment to expand childcare that much harder to achieve.
They note that Additional Learning Needs (ALN) spending is heading towards £1 billion a year and, according to ministers, has grown 2.5 times faster than overall education spending over the past decade.
The news site quote Poole and Cynfab as warning that the energy price shock linked to the conflict in Iran is increasing the cost of pay, services and infrastructure.
It adds that for Wales, much will depend on whether Chancellor John Healey compensates English departments for those pressures in his forthcoming budget, but he has his own problems namely £35bn worth of spending pressures.
All the indications are that Welsh budgets will struggle to keep up with inflation over the next few years, meaning that the new Finance Minister will be firefighting to keep the show on the road while struggling to meet her election promises.
Ed Gareth Poole and Owain Cynfab for example, calculate that core NHS spending will fall by roughly 0.4% in real terms this year, despite an additional £100 million for waiting times and elective care and predict rising costs across public services that will make Plaid's uncosted commitment to expand childcare that much harder to achieve.
They note that Additional Learning Needs (ALN) spending is heading towards £1 billion a year and, according to ministers, has grown 2.5 times faster than overall education spending over the past decade.
The news site quote Poole and Cynfab as warning that the energy price shock linked to the conflict in Iran is increasing the cost of pay, services and infrastructure.
It adds that for Wales, much will depend on whether Chancellor John Healey compensates English departments for those pressures in his forthcoming budget, but he has his own problems namely £35bn worth of spending pressures.
All the indications are that Welsh budgets will struggle to keep up with inflation over the next few years, meaning that the new Finance Minister will be firefighting to keep the show on the road while struggling to meet her election promises.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
MI5 chief confirms Russian interference in Brexit referendum
However, McCallum has cautioned against aiding Russian propaganda after Andy Burnham outlined Moscow’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 Brexit referendum, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s online trolls would be "delighted" should the controversy surrounding the Prime Minister’s statements continue:
The spymaster verified that Russia targeted the vote, whilst simultaneously pointing out the "comparative unimpressiveness" of such operations.
He added that Britain must avoid trying to "play into our adversaries’ hands" through exaggerating the influence of Russian trolls.
Addressing MPs on Monday, the Prime Minister stated Russia attempted to interfere in the 2019 general election "and we think it is inconceivable that this was the first time".
Mr Burnham earlier told The Rest Is Politics podcast he learned upon arriving in Downing Street that it was "clear" Moscow had aimed to disrupt the vote.
Opponents saw those remarks as a strategy to question the referendum's legitimacy – an intention the Prime Minister has strongly rejected.
Speaking at MI5’s Thames House headquarters, Sir Ken said: “There is a really important difference between interference attempted and outcome swayed… It’s quite important to focus on the difference between what may have been attempted and what actually resulted.
“It is a matter of public record including in select committee reports published in 2019 – the DCMS Committee did a bit and the Intelligence and Security Committee did a bit also – that in 2016, before you even get to any secret intelligence… it is openly on the record that Russia Today and Sputnik and other Russian media organisations came in pretty strongly around the referendum.
“And it is also a matter of open source record that there was a certain amount of interference attempted through trolls and bots and so forth.
“I agree strongly with what the Prime Minister said yesterday, we did see a hack and leak thing inside the 2019 general election campaign.”
But he added he was concerned about the ongoing debate about Russian interference.
“It is kind of up to us how far we allow our various adversaries to divide us,” Sir Ken said.
“And I’m a little bit worried that if we all stay in this debate for another few days that Russian trolls who didn’t appear to do all that much at various points over the years, they’ll be delighted because they are front page news again despite the comparative unimpressiveness of what they do at all points along the journey.
“I am a little bit anxious that we don’t play into our adversaries’ hands by making these trolls look 10ft tall.”
In many ways it is no point revisiting this, the past is the past, but it does highlight the danger facing democratic processes throughout the world and the need to be alert to this sort of interference in future.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
IFS warn on the budget
The paper says that as the war in the Middle East rattles the public finances, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said that the damage from higher inflation meant the chancellor would need to either top up funds for his current government spending plans or impose deep real-terms cuts by the end of the decade:
Against a febrile backdrop in the bond market, the thinktank warned Healey that failure to address the issue at his 28 October budget risked leaving the impression that Labour was setting unrealistic spending plans.
Helen Miller, the director of the IFS, said: “Simply pencilling in implicit cuts that he has no intention of delivering would make the budget a work of fiction.”
Her comment echoes a criticism levelled at Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor, who before the 2024 general election was accused by the then head of the Office for Budget Responsibility of setting unrealistic spending plans.
Publishing its influential “green budget” report, which analyses the public finances before Healey’s speech to the Commons, it called on the chancellor to avoid announcing a “steady as she goes” budget that delayed decisions until next year’s spending review.
“If John Healey sets out spending envelopes for public services that he would not be willing to live within, his plan for meeting the fiscal rules will not be credible,” it said.
Last week, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, said fiscal policy “must be credible and be seen as such by financial markets”. The following day, the Times quoted a government source as saying: “Andrew Bailey needs to focus on doing his job.”
Miller said the Treasury adopting an assumption that “everything can be kicked forward” to next year’s spending review risked undermining the chancellor’s credibility.
“We would be better served by a chancellor who hopes for the best, but plans for the worst, rather than sets out plans that either say, ‘I hope it’ll be fine and some money will come in’, or ‘I’ll get a plan in a year’s time’.”
Attention before the budget has largely focused on the hit to the chancellor’s headroom against Labour’s main fiscal rule to balance day-to-day public spending with revenues in 2029-30.
With the war in the Middle East fuelling a dramatic sell-off in the market for government debt, higher borrowing costs are expected to erase a significant chunk of the £24bn buffer left by the former chancellor Rachel Reeves at the spring statement.
Leading economists have predicted the market moves since the start of the war in February could wipe out about half of the headroom, adding to nerves in the Treasury over the risk of a market backlash.
The IFS said that although the surge in debt interest costs could add £10bn to borrowing in 2029-30, the exchequer would benefit from higher inflation boosting tax revenue – meaning Healey could see headroom cut by only £4bn.
However, it warned against focusing on this buffer because the inflation shock rippling from the Middle East would also dramatically hit the government’s plan for funding public services.
Higher inflation squeezes public spending power, forcing the government to choose between accepting real-term cuts and finding efficiency savings or topping up departmental budgets either by raising taxes or allowing an increase in borrowing.
The IFS said a choice to leave spending totals unchanged at the budget would implicitly mean allowing the quality or quantity of public services to fall. However, it said compensating for the inflation shock, and funding Healey’s pledge to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030, would require tax rises or benefit cuts of about £35bn.
How Burnham and Healey deal with these issues could make or break this government.
Monday, October 12, 2026
What is Christian nationalism?
Faced with studied indifference by the owners, the council has twice now painted over these tags, and the culprits appear to have moved on to defacing walls in nearby parks. However, I noticed the other day that a makeshift wooden cross (pictured) has been erected above the billboard in a clear attempt to differentiate the perpetrators from the multi-cultural society we now live in.
The Ku Klux Klan of course, used to brandish burning crosses as they murdered black Americans, thankfully it hasn't come to that here, yet.
The Guardian carries an interesting article about the sort of people responsible for this type of vandalism, labelled as Christian nationalists. They describe this group as being driven largely by people who rarely attend church and are more concerned with defending the country’s Christian heritage.
They focus on a report, by the thinktank Theos, which has identified five different groups within the UK in a survey that looked at their attitudes to Christianity and Britishness. They say that the group whose views most closely resembled Christian nationalism, termed “identity integrationists” by the researchers, accounted for 11% of respondents, making it the smallest of the five groups:
Although 81% of this group identified as Christian, just 13% attended church weekly, only slightly above the 11% average across the population surveyed. Less than a third (31%) prayed weekly, while 47% expressed an interest in the Bible.
The group was strongly hostile to immigration and Islam. Just 19% agreed that Christian values required welcoming and supporting asylum seekers, while 30% supported the equal treatment of religions in public life.
In contrast, another group in the survey with high levels of Christian affiliation, were considerably more religiously observant and less hostile to immigration and religious diversity. They comprised 13% of respondents.
Among these “belief integrationists”, 31% attended church weekly, 46% prayed weekly and 62% expressed an interest in the Bible.
Almost half (48%) agreed that Christian values required welcoming and supporting asylum seekers, while 63% supported the equal treatment of religions in public life.
Although they are the group containing the highest proportion of practising Christians, only 18% of belief integrationists think that defending Britain’s Christian culture and heritage is important for being Christian, compared with 90% of the Christian nationalist group.
At a time when crosses have been carried at Unite the Kingdom rallies and crowds have chanted “Christ is King” at protests, the research challenges the idea that the growing prominence of Christian nationalism in Britain reflects a revival of Christianity.
Instead, the findings suggest that Christianity is increasingly being invoked as a marker of British identity amid wider anxieties about immigration, Islam and cultural change.
These agitators and nationalists are not Christian in any sense of the word, though I am sure that some of them think that they are carrying on the work of Pope Urban II, who initiated the first crusade. But we should give the final word to the Rev Dr Helen Paynter, a theologian who has researched the far right’s use of Christianity:
“The church is and has been since its inception a multi-ethnic, multinational group, and may not rightly be equated with any nationality or ethnicity. In fact, the ‘average’ Christian in the world today is poor, female and black.”
For Paynter, one of most important findings is the starkly different attitudes evidenced by those who are practising Christians, compared with those who claim the label.
“The Christian faith is not just an identity that we can put on like a coat; it involves an encounter with transcendence which must be transformative of all our values.”
If these protestors really embraced Christianity, then they would understand that.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Can Davey survive as leader?
This politics website reports that Maynard left his role as a Treasury spokesman on Friday afternoon amid wider criticism of Davey among Liberal Democrat MPs. He follows Alison Bennett, the Liberal Democrat MP for Mid Sussex, who left her role as care and carers spokesperson on 5 October without issuing a public explanation.
As I posted here, earlier this month, Tom Gordon, the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, said that Davey had “missed the point” in a BBC Radio 4 Today programme interview in which he strongly criticised Andy Burnham’s speech to Labour conference. Gordon told his leader to “think again”.
Gordon was joined in that criticism by Vicky Slade the MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole who posted on BlueSky: 'Pensioners will gain more from free social care than a linking rise of state pension to earnings. Proud of triple lock in coalition but we must plan for future not venerate the past.'
Maynard cannot really be more than a stalking horse. He has no profile within the party and many of us had to look him up to see who he is, but his actions reflect a deeper dissatisfaction amongst the parliamentary party and the wider membership. Tuesday's meeting of Lib Dem MPs is going to be interesting.
The reaction has been predictable, with the leadership recruiting the usual suspects to go public in support of Ed Davey. Their social media posts are all suspiciously similar., and also slightly ridiculous, but, as can be seen on the map above, what is really interesting is how few of them have gone public in this way.
The politics.co.uk website lists just 17 out of 72 prepared to pin their support of Davey to a public mast. The rest appear to be keeping their powder dry.
The fact is of course that the Liberal Democrats had their best result since Lloyd George because of widespread disillusionment with the sitting Tory government, and they did it despite Ed Davey's ridiculous stunts, not because of them. That is reflected in the fact the party polled fewer votes in 2024 than they did in 2019.
Since that election, Davey, who, rather bizarrely, is credited by the usual suspects of leading us in the fight against hate and the far right, has been largely anonymous. Even worse, there is no clear vision as to what the party stands for, nothing that sets us apart from the rest. It is little wonder that the party is in fifth place, with opinion poll ratings hovering just above single figures.
I think it is quite clear by now that Davey is not capable of turning things around. His defence of the triple lock and his promotion of tax cuts in the face of huge pressure on government finances and the need for investment in public services is simply unsustainable, especially when he is also advocating spending more on defence and social care. And don't even get me started on his ludicrous advocacy of keeping Winston Churchill on the £5 note.
I can't say who should replace Davey, but at least if there is a contest we can evaluate candidates on their vision for the country and the party. It is time for Davey to stand aside to allow such a contest to take place.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
The oldest pub in Swansea and the secret tunnel
He writes that the name is a nod to the legend that St Peter held the keys to the gates of heaven. It is a clue to the building's godly past:
The building it self was built by Bishop Henry de Gower (Bishop of St Davids) in 1330, not as an inn but an almshouse and early hospital annexed to a monastic cell. The charter of 1332 says that it was established for ‘the support of other poor chaplains and laymen deprived of bodily health.’ It was not only there to look after people taken ill or injured, but to support the destitute, poor and starving.
The institution must have had some significant patronage, as it survived right up until the Reformation and the dissolution of monasteries in 1536. It was then confiscated by the Crown and sold to Sir George Herbert, who was a very powerful and rather unscrupulous man, descended from a family of ‘Marcher’ lords. And to make matters worse, he was from Cardiff.
He was a man of very different moral fibre to Henry de Gower, and as there was no money to be made from feeding the starving or tending to the sick, he closed down the hospital and almshouse and broke the estate up, turning the old buildings into shops and an inn. Later all the other buildings were demolished, but the inn thrived.
By the beginning of the twentieth century the pub was very dilapidated and run down. and its origins had largely been forgotten, so it was a very brave undertaking to get it all restored and renovated. But when the rendering got stripped away, to the delight of the owner who oversaw the work, a lot of the original features, like the stone arched windows and medieval timber, were re-discovered. The two bays on the St Mary Street side were added onto the original building in the seventeenth century, and it is believed that when they were built, they contained two narrow shops separated by a passageway which ran to the back of the building.
Inside there are some lovely features. The massive ceiling beams tell a story of all the walls and partitions that have been added and taken away in the last 700 years, and there are fragments of medieval roof trusses on either side of a small seating area in the lounge.
The layout of the pub today suggests that this part of the original building had two uses. The old hall would have been located on the first floor, which would have been a cleric’s living accommodation. Meanwhile below would have been part of the old hospital, possibly a ward.
But not everything is as it is seen. Wales-on-line reports that there is a secret tunnel stretching from St Mary Street as far as Wind Street and possibly to Cross Keys itself, which has been hidden for 200 years:
Historian Gerald Gabb has cast doubt on the theory that the tunnel was used for smuggling, suggesting instead it might have connections to an ancient hospital. "History always shocks you, I would be surprised if the tunnel was used for smugglers," he remarked.
He added: "I'm not saying that it is impossible, but you are close to the centre of town." Gerald pointed out the historical significance of the area, noting, "An open air market was above us many years ago and the town hall. This isn't the sort of place where you would try and sneak stuff in."
Expressing his surprise at the tunnel's existence, he mused: "You might look at St Mary's Street today and think it's just an alley but really it was one of the main streets in Swansea. It was the way to the church. It has some of the oldest things in Swansea, the castle is just up there and if you go down to the bottom you come to The Cross Keys.
"If you look at the windows by the doors of the pub, they are from 1332. It could be that these tunnels have something to do with what The Cross Keys used to be, which was St David's hospital."
He concluded by explaining the hospital's extensive reach: "It was a religious thing where older people were looked after by priests, It had land all the way from Princess Way to the Uplands so it could have easily spread up here," he said.
We will never know for sure of course, but this sounds like a plausibke explanation to me.
Labels: lochist
