Sunday, December 14, 2025
Labour under fire over tackling violence against women
The paper says that important voices in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector have privately accused ministers of sidelining first-hand expertise and expressed concern that the strategy will not be sufficiently radical to achieve the government’s flagship manifesto promise to halve the rate of VAWG in the UK in a decade:
Initially expected in spring, the VAWG strategy was delayed until summer and then autumn.
On Friday it emerged that schoolboys would be the target of the strategy, which the BBC reported would be built around the pillars of preventing radicalisation of young men, stopping abusers and supporting victims.
But multiple sources from organisations working in the VAWG sector said they had felt sidelined during the devising of the strategy.
One figure in the sector, comparing the past 18 months with the process before the strategy produced in 2019 by the Conservative government, said: “It is worse than under the Tories. In fact, we were so much better off under the Tories, you could get a meeting, they engaged with you. This whole process has been incredibly haphazard.”
Another figure in the sector noted that after the murder of Sarah Everard, the Conservative government reopened a public consultation. “We saw more senior ministers and had more contact with the secretary of state under the last government,” they said. “Ministers like Alex Davies-Jones and Jess Phillips have clearly worked hard on this, but it feels the machine has worked against them.”
Further concern is that the publication of the strategy, which is expected just before parliament closes for the Christmas recess, will be lost. “They’ve had 18 months and now they’re scrabbling around in the last week of parliament. It just feels like an afterthought,” said one source. “It hasn’t felt like it’s been a properly considered process where they’ve really sought the expertise in a considered way. It’s been slightly haphazard.”
On Tuesday Karen Bradley, the chair of the home affairs committee, wrote to Phillips and Davies-Jones to complain that “there has been poor engagement and transparency with VAWG stakeholders throughout the development of the VAWG strategy”. She noted that the VAWG advisory board – which contained experts to guide policy – had met only twice in person and once online and its role had been limited.
Andrea Simon, the director of the End Violence Against Women and Girls coalition, said there had been positive moves from the government, including £550m of funding for victim support, and proposed law changes to improve the fair treatment of victims in rape trials and ban depictions of strangulation in pornography. She called on the government to commit to a monitoring and evaluation structure for the strategy, to ensure accountability.
“Without that, the government will potentially fall foul of the lack of oversight we’ve seen in previous, underresourced strategies,” she said. “There has been a lot of rhetoric about commitment to halving VAWG through a cross-government approach, but that won’t stand up unless they are willing to be open, transparent, and bring in external scrutiny.”
While stories were emerging about the strategy in the press, a different figure said a full document had not been shared with even a small number of trusted parties. “You have to ask how a cross-governmental, strong strategy is being built if none of the experts are at the table,” they said.
Karen Ingala Smith, a co-founder of the Femicide Census, said it was “disappointed” not to have been invited to join the VAWG advisory board, adding that the two wider meetings she or her co-founder, Clarrie O’Callaghan, had attended felt like “box-ticking” exercises.
“It felt like it wouldn’t have mattered what we said, it wasn’t going to make any difference to what was written,” she said. “It felt perfunctory and tokenistic.”
Who knew Labour could make a bigger mess of this issue than the Tories?
Saturday, December 13, 2025
Swansea's link to the development of radar
Near the end of the war, he moved to Australia, where he used this knowledge to carry out research that he headed as Chief of the Radiophysics Division of CSIRO:
These programs, which included his enduring personal interest in cloud physics, artificial rainmaking, and the causes of natural variability in rainfall, were undertaken in the stimulating environment that he fostered at the radiophysics laboratory.
Wikipedia adds more detail about the revolutionary work carried out by Bowen in fitting radar into an aircraft, which they describe as difficult because of the size and weight of the equipment and the aerial:
Furthermore, the equipment had to operate in a vibrating and cold environment. Over the next few years Bowen and his group solved most of these problems. For example, he solved the problem of the power supply in aircraft by using an engine-driven alternator, and he encouraged Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) to produce the first radio-frequency cables with solid polythene insulation.
Further refinements continued until September 1937, when Bowen gave a dramatic and uninvited demonstration of the application of radar by searching for the British Fleet in the North Sea in poor visibility, detecting three capital ships. Bowen's airborne radar group now had two major projects, one for the detection of ships and the other for interception of aircraft. Bowen also experimented briefly with the use of airborne radar to detect features on the ground, such as towns and coastlines, to aid navigation.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, Bowen's unit was moved to St Athan. One of the first things that Bowen did there was to try to detect a submarine by radar. By then, the cavity magnetron had been improved by John Randall and Harry Boot, making airborne radar a powerful tool. By December 1940, operational aircraft were able to detect submarines at up to 15 miles (24 km). This technology had a major effect on winning the Battle of the Atlantic which eventually enabled forces to be built up by sea for the invasion of Europe.
In April 1941, RAF Coastal Command was operating anti-submarine patrols with about 110 aircraft fitted with radar. This increased the detection of submarines both day and night. Few of the attacks were lethal until the introduction in mid-1942 of a powerful searchlight, the Leigh light, that illuminated the submarine. As a result, the U-boats had to recharge their batteries in daylight so that they could at least see the aircraft coming. The radar and the Leigh light cut Allied shipping losses dramatically.
It is fair to say that this work would have proved fairly significant in helping the Allies win the war in the Atlantic.
Wikipedia adds more detail about the revolutionary work carried out by Bowen in fitting radar into an aircraft, which they describe as difficult because of the size and weight of the equipment and the aerial:
Furthermore, the equipment had to operate in a vibrating and cold environment. Over the next few years Bowen and his group solved most of these problems. For example, he solved the problem of the power supply in aircraft by using an engine-driven alternator, and he encouraged Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) to produce the first radio-frequency cables with solid polythene insulation.
Further refinements continued until September 1937, when Bowen gave a dramatic and uninvited demonstration of the application of radar by searching for the British Fleet in the North Sea in poor visibility, detecting three capital ships. Bowen's airborne radar group now had two major projects, one for the detection of ships and the other for interception of aircraft. Bowen also experimented briefly with the use of airborne radar to detect features on the ground, such as towns and coastlines, to aid navigation.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, Bowen's unit was moved to St Athan. One of the first things that Bowen did there was to try to detect a submarine by radar. By then, the cavity magnetron had been improved by John Randall and Harry Boot, making airborne radar a powerful tool. By December 1940, operational aircraft were able to detect submarines at up to 15 miles (24 km). This technology had a major effect on winning the Battle of the Atlantic which eventually enabled forces to be built up by sea for the invasion of Europe.
In April 1941, RAF Coastal Command was operating anti-submarine patrols with about 110 aircraft fitted with radar. This increased the detection of submarines both day and night. Few of the attacks were lethal until the introduction in mid-1942 of a powerful searchlight, the Leigh light, that illuminated the submarine. As a result, the U-boats had to recharge their batteries in daylight so that they could at least see the aircraft coming. The radar and the Leigh light cut Allied shipping losses dramatically.
It is fair to say that this work would have proved fairly significant in helping the Allies win the war in the Atlantic.
Friday, December 12, 2025
Starmer adds more peers than he has removed
They say that the prime minister has put forward 25 new members for the House of Lords, including his former director of communications Matthew Doyle and Rachel Reeves’s ex-chief of staff Katie Martin:
The list of potential new Lords follows staunch opposition from peers to Labour’s flagship Employment Rights Bill.
A Labour source said: “The Tories stuffed the House of Lords, creating a serious imbalance that has allowed them to frustrate our plans to make working families better off. This needs to be corrected to deliver on our mandate from the British people. “
Women’s rights activist Sharron Davies was nominated by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, alongside ex-Tory cabinet minister John Redwood and journalist and historian Simon Heffer.
Another Labour aide Carol Linforth, seen on stage removing Sir Keir’s jacket when he was glitter-bombed during his 2023 Labour conference speech, is also on the list, as well as Sir Michael Barber, who served in No 10 during Sir Tony Blair’s premiership.
Last year, he was appointed an adviser to Sir Keir to help him drive forward the delivery of his five “missions”.
At least Starmer avoided the faux pas of nominating former Welsh First Minister, Vaughan Gething, a move that would have really undermined Labour's Senedd campaigning.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats made a total of five nominations, including former MP and coalition government minister, Sarah Teather.
How anybody can justify the continuation of this over-bloated institution is beyond me, it needs fundamental reform to democratise it. As the Electoral Reform Society says it's 'ridiculous' that Starmer has created more peers than he's removed.
Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, issued this statement criticising the appointment of more political peers:
Keir Starmer himself not long ago described the wholly unelected and grossly bloated House of Lords as ‘indefensible’. Nothing has changed since then so it is deeply disappointing to see even more peers being stuffed into the upper chamber.
Firstly, it is absurd for the Lords, which at more than 800 peers is already the second largest legislative chamber after China’s National People’s Congress, to be getting even more members. It is also patently ridiculous that the government has now added more peers into the Lords than the 92 hereditary peers it is in the process of removing.
The ending of the remaining hereditary peers is a step in the right direction, as people should not be making our laws because of who their parents were. But [the new peerages] highlight just how unsustainable a wholly unelected and unrestrained chamber is.
I can understand why Ed Davey nominated additional peers, but really, he and the rest of the party should be fighting tooth and nail to abolish the Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber.
Darren Hughes, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, issued this statement criticising the appointment of more political peers:
Keir Starmer himself not long ago described the wholly unelected and grossly bloated House of Lords as ‘indefensible’. Nothing has changed since then so it is deeply disappointing to see even more peers being stuffed into the upper chamber.
Firstly, it is absurd for the Lords, which at more than 800 peers is already the second largest legislative chamber after China’s National People’s Congress, to be getting even more members. It is also patently ridiculous that the government has now added more peers into the Lords than the 92 hereditary peers it is in the process of removing.
The ending of the remaining hereditary peers is a step in the right direction, as people should not be making our laws because of who their parents were. But [the new peerages] highlight just how unsustainable a wholly unelected and unrestrained chamber is.
I can understand why Ed Davey nominated additional peers, but really, he and the rest of the party should be fighting tooth and nail to abolish the Lords and replace it with an elected second chamber.
Thursday, December 11, 2025
How UK aid cuts have consequences for our security
The article points out that major reductions in development funding from the US, Germany, France, and the UK mark the biggest contraction in aid spending in decades, adding that by some projections, aid spending by the top donors in the world will decline by $67 billion (£50bn) from 2023 to 2026, a drop of almost a third:
This is driven primarily by Donald Trump's administration shuttering the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and cancelling 80 per cent of its foreign aid programmes. Its sudden and chaotic decision to cut USAID has been coupled with an increasingly uninterested, if not adversarial, approach to multilateral cooperation in general – skipping G20 meetings and calling the language of the Sustainable Development Goals (the global, UN-set targets for addressing poverty) "adverse" to American interests.
Cuts and disruption at this scale will have human consequences. By some projections, 100,000 deaths so far, and potentially millions in future. But as my colleague Jerome Puri and I outline in the report "Rethinking UK aid policy in an era of global funding cuts," they will also have security and geopolitical implications that we should not ignore.
The international organisations through which much aid spending is channelled – particularly UN agencies –– work on global challenges which affect UK security too. This includes controlling infectious diseases, pandemic monitoring and preparedness, and biosecurity.
An analysis by the World Health Organisation (WHO) of its 108 country offices’ work through March–April 2025 found that 70 per cent reported disruptions linked to aid cuts since the start of 2025, particularly for systems needed to monitor, prepare for and respond to outbreaks of preventable diseases. Analysis by Germany’s Kiel Institute has found there is evidence of significant returns for aid donors who invest in health in poorer countries, particularly in controlling and managing infectious diseases which if left unmanaged would result in wider crises. Preventing pandemics is more cost-effective than responding to them.
The UK government cut Britain's aid budget earlier this year not for the ideological reasons of the Trump administration, but because it wanted to find tactical cuts to provide more funding to defence. Parliament's Defence Select Committee has rightly said it is critical and urgent that the UK improve its readiness to fight a war to defend itself. But one of the biggest risks to UK security in the past five years was the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning the structures for controlling and addressing risks to global health are critical to our security too.
The government has sought to preserve – even as it cuts spending – part of its contributions to major global health funds. But it has nonetheless cut funding for some initiatives, including those focused on critical but less attention-grabbing issues, such as combatting anti-microbial resistance – and it will be affected by the wider reduction in resources for international health institutions.
This year’s cuts in aid spending are also likely to particularly hit countries most affected by conflict – recent trends in spending suggest what aid remains may well be channelled to more stable countries where impact is easier to measure, or reserved for short-term emergency responses.
Countries like Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Palestine have all already been hit by the UK’s cuts to aid it spends directly in specific countries. The difficult work of preventing conflict in the first place, or trying to reduce the likelihood it spirals out of control into wider regional wars is likely to lose out from wider cuts too. Uncontrolled conflict creates fertile ground for illicit finance, organised crime, and refugee flows. And, most refugees fleeing conflict head for more stable neighbouring countries, many of which – Kenya, Bangladesh, and Jordan, for example – have been hosting massive refugee camps for years. Reduced UN capacity and funding will make it harder for these countries to manage these situations – without sufficient international support, these governments may face domestic pressure to restrict rights or push refugees back, in ways that could affect regional security too.
As the article says, aid and defence spending are often described as opposed "soft" and "hard" power tools, but it might be better to see investment in global public goods such as health security or climate action not as soft power – but as practical and direct investments in collective security.
It adds that ensuring some resources are concentrated on neglected conflicts also has wider benefits, in guarding against those conflicts spiralling out of control in ways which can have long-run effects on regional stability and irregular migration.
These are wise words that the government would be wise to take note of.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Covid fraud under the Tories cost the taxpayer £10.9 billion
Hayhoe's report says that the response to the pandemic had led to "enormous outlays of public money which exposed it to the risk of fraud and error", with employment support schemes set up by the previous Conservative government, including furlough and help for the self-employed, suffering £5bn of fraud:
Many of the support measures were credited with propping up the economy throughout the Covid lockdowns. However, Mr Hayhoe said the "outrage" at fraud, abuse and error was "undiminished".
Mr Hayhoe had been asked by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to investigate the amount of public money lost to fraud given his experience in procurement as the former chair of an NHS trust.
The near £11bn lost to fraud and error is close to what the government spends on the UK's justice system. The report said £1.8bn had been recovered, although: "Much of the shortfall is now beyond recovery."
However, it added that there were still areas "where investing in recovering money paid out incorrectly is worthwhile and work should continue".
The report said weak accountability, bad quality data and poor contracting were among the main reasons for the losses.
Most public bodies were unprepared for "a crisis that required spending on such a scale and with such urgency".
"Consequently, some measures to protect against potential fraud were inadequate."
This applied to the procurement of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) where the volume of orders "overwhelmed the newly created supply chain and involved measures that invited mistrust, opportunism and profiteering".
It found £13.6bn was spent on PPE procurement, with 38 billion items purchased - although 11 billion were unused by 2024. Losses were estimated at £10bn from over-ordering and £324m of fraud.
The support for small businesses was also criticised, where "lending relied on self-certification with inadequate checks to prevent abuse".
It said the design of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme "created specific vulnerabilities to fraud and error", with the programme estimated to have incurred fraud and error losses of up to £2.8bn.
The report acknowledges that the schemes were designed and rolled out at speed but Mr Hayhoe says that fraud prevention should be more embedded into future disaster responses.
What adds to the feeling of outrage about this lost cash is that in many instances it was facilitated by people who should know better, through fast track VIP streams that failed to deliver.
That was the main reason, in my view, why pandemic-era PPE contracts cost the British taxpayer £1.4bn on undelivered contracts and unusable gowns, masks and gloves, with only a small fraction of that - £400m - having been recovered.
The government must continue to try and recover this money, while ensuring that lessons are learnt for the future.
Tuesday, December 09, 2025
Labours energy price cut could be swamped by rising costs
The paper says that in her Budget last week, the chancellor promised to take £150 off household bills by scrapping the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme, but the former Labour donor and green entrepreneur Dale Vince has now claimed that the impact of paying for building nuclear energy capacity will largely wipe out the £150 because of the £1bn cost in the first year and ongoing costs for nuclear power:
Further analysis shows that, under plans announced by Ofgem, levies on bills to fund gas pipelines and the high-voltage electricity grid are set to rise £40 from £222 a year in April when the government’s £150 discount is due to come into effect.
The levies are due to rise for the following four years - reaching £338 a year by April 2030, according to Ofgem’s impact assessment.
Meanwhile, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) also revealed in its report with the Budget that £1bn a year will be added to household energy bills to fund energy secretary Ed Miliband’s next auction for renewables projects, known as “allocation round 7” (AR7).
The concerns are that instead of reducing household bills by £150, energy bills will instead rise.
Mr Vince told The Independent that the chancellor’s much-publicised £1bn in energy bill savings will be entirely wiped out by the costs of the Sizewell C nuclear project — costs the government is forcing households and businesses to pay years before construction even begins.
He claimed that the £150 discount is almost identical to the total annual charges that will hit homes and businesses through the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) nuclear levy, created to fund Sizewell C.
He said: “The chancellor’s energy savings will be wiped out overnight by the cost of Sizewell. From November, the government has decided to load the financial risk of this project straight onto our energy bills — before a single shovel hits the ground. And this isn’t some one-off charge.
“We’ll be subsidising Sizewell for at least 10 years, maybe longer — nuclear projects always run late. And we could still be paying for decommissioning well into the 22nd century.
“Imagine ordering a car and the dealership starts charging you before they’ve even built the factory — that’s what’s happening here.
“EDF say Sizewell will be ready in 2035, but Hinkley Point is running 14 years late and its price has jumped from £18 billion to £46 billion. Sizewell won’t bring bills down or help us get to Net Zero in time — but it will cost us for years.”
He claimed that the extra cost would be at least £35 and grow to £140 for a small hairdressing salon.
The government of course denies it. But realistically, raising expectations of a cut in bills, when extra costs are being added to them and when many of the factors leading to price rises are out of the government's control is a big gamble.
Monday, December 08, 2025
Following the Russian playbook
The paper says that three more British MEPs from Nigel Farage’s bloc are alleged to have “followed the script” given to Gill, who was being bribed by an alleged Russian asset, according to prosecutors, as a police investigation into the affair continues:
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has named Jonathan Bullock, Julia Reid and Steven Woolfe, saying they followed the script provided to Nathan Gill by Oleg Voloshyn when giving interviews to 112 Ukraine, a pro-Russian TV channel in March 2019.
In all, at least eight MEPs elected for either Ukip or the Brexit party are now known to have been the focus of efforts by Reform UK’s former Wales leader Gill to co-opt them into fulfilling tasks set for him by his Kremlin paymasters.
The claims that the three followed Gill’s talking points – disclosed in CPS documents in Gill’s case – are among those which have raised fresh questions over the extent of Gill’s influence since his jailing last month. There is no suggestion that any of the three committed criminal acts or had been aware Gill took bribes to promote Russian interests.
Amid the continuing police investigation, the Labour party has called on Farage to voluntarily offer to help investigators, who have already spoken to MEPs he led in the European parliament.
The chair of the Labour party, Anna Turley MP, said: “He must order an urgent investigation into pro-Russia links in Reform, and he should voluntarily go to the police for interview and help them with their inquiries.”
Last week, another former leading member of the group of MEPs headed by Farage denied taking money as part of a campaign to promote Russian interests.
David Coburn, who was also the leader of Ukip in Scotland for four years, was mentioned in WhatsApp messages between Gill and Voloshyn – a former Ukrainian MEP who is accused of the bribery – that were released by prosecutors.
The messages showed Gill and Voloshyn apparently discussing how much should be set aside for Coburn, who was also an MEP for Reform UK’s precursor the Brexit party. Coburn denied taking any payment when confronted by BBC journalists outside his home in France.
The messages were sent in April 2019 before a meeting at the European parliament of the editorial board of 112 Ukraine, whose membership included Gill and Coburn, and which was connected to Viktor Medvedchuk, Vladimir Putin’s ally in Ukraine.
The case for an investigation into foreign interference in UK politics is becoming compelling. The focus at present is on associates and former associates of Nigel Farage, but there are suggestions that others may well have been approached from other parties.
I don't believe that we can rely on Reform to conduct an investigation into its own affairs, this has to be a UK government inquiry, and an all-embracing one at that.
Sunday, December 07, 2025
Farage under pressure as the past comes back to bite him
In an angry performance at a press conference in London, the Reform leader suggested he would boycott the BBC and said ITV had its own case to answer, as he repeatedly shouted “Bernard Manning”.
Manning, a comedian from Manchester who died in 2007, was a regular face on British television in the 1970s but he drifted from the public eye after claims that his material was racist and misogynistic.
The intemperate performance by Farage, whose party has slipped in the national polls in recent weeks, came as a further five school contemporaries came forward to the Guardian with allegations that they had witnessed deeply offensive racist or antisemitic behaviour by him.
The former Dulwich college pupils said they had been motivated to speak now by the response of Farage and others in his party to an investigation by the Guardian based on multiple accounts of racism.
This is a classic deflection tactic, playing the victim in the hope of flipping the script, shifting the blame for his youthful issues, and trying to make the BBC the problem in the hope that we'll all forget about the appalling behaviour he is accused of.
Farage claims that the BBC has no moral right to scrutunise him on his past because of their own history with dodgy individuals. However, the difference between them is that the BBC has apologised for their past and moved on. Farage has not apologised, while his career has consistently been about identifying target groups and exploiting them for political gain, a tactic, as any historian will tell you, is reminiscent of Germany in the early 1930s.
A perfect example of this behaviour is Farage noting that a third of Glasgow’s children didn’t learn English as their first language, and railing against the ‘cultural smashing’ of Glasgow.
As Ben Wildsmith asks on Nation Cymru, Glaswegian kids haven’t instituted their own ‘English Not’ in the classrooms of that city, so what is Farage’s actual problem?:
Well, it’s not that the children can’t or won’t speak English. The Scottish Government’s figures relate to pupils studying English as an additional language, so, by definition, these kids are speaking English. The objection seems to be that it isn’t their mother tongue.
Now, think about that for a moment. If Farage is saying that learning English – i.e. actively engaging with the host culture and trying to conform to it – is irrelevant to his notion of who belongs here, then what are his qualifiers?
I’m old enough to remember when Farage was insisting that Brexit wasn’t a racist enterprise because it would open the door to immigration from Commonwealth countries. Now that European exclusion is safely in the bag, it seems that the goalposts have moved.
This argument is all the more astonishing when viewed through a Welsh lens. Imagine bursting into a classroom full of Welsh-learners and accusing them of culturally smashing Wales because they hadn’t learned the language before moving here.
Bullying people who are demonstratively doing their best to fit in is as counterproductive as it is contemptible.
It’s only counterproductive, however, if your aim is to produce harmony. If your product is division, resentment, and anger, then suggesting that people can do nothing to advance their prospects of being accepted in a country you propose to run is, of course, extremely effective.
Farage doesnt get away with his youthful indiscretions that easily and he certainly doesn't get a pass by seeking to deflect attention back on his accusers.
Well, it’s not that the children can’t or won’t speak English. The Scottish Government’s figures relate to pupils studying English as an additional language, so, by definition, these kids are speaking English. The objection seems to be that it isn’t their mother tongue.
Now, think about that for a moment. If Farage is saying that learning English – i.e. actively engaging with the host culture and trying to conform to it – is irrelevant to his notion of who belongs here, then what are his qualifiers?
I’m old enough to remember when Farage was insisting that Brexit wasn’t a racist enterprise because it would open the door to immigration from Commonwealth countries. Now that European exclusion is safely in the bag, it seems that the goalposts have moved.
This argument is all the more astonishing when viewed through a Welsh lens. Imagine bursting into a classroom full of Welsh-learners and accusing them of culturally smashing Wales because they hadn’t learned the language before moving here.
Bullying people who are demonstratively doing their best to fit in is as counterproductive as it is contemptible.
It’s only counterproductive, however, if your aim is to produce harmony. If your product is division, resentment, and anger, then suggesting that people can do nothing to advance their prospects of being accepted in a country you propose to run is, of course, extremely effective.
Farage doesnt get away with his youthful indiscretions that easily and he certainly doesn't get a pass by seeking to deflect attention back on his accusers.
Saturday, December 06, 2025
Too risque for the House of Lords?
As the Glyn Vivian website records the ensuing battle ended with Swansea winning the bid:
The building of the new Guildhall was underway and the city council proposed raising the Assembly Hall ceiling to 13.4 metres to accommodate the Panels. This tipped the scales in Swansea’s favour. With great pomp and excitement, the Assembly Hall was renamed the Brangwyn Hall – in honour of the Panels – and inaugurated with the rest of the building in October 1934 by the Duke of Kent. In 1937, it was visited by King George VI.
Following this purchase, Brangwyn gifted Swansea the preparatory drawings and studies for the Panels – all of which are under the care of Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. These sketches and small paintings, teeming with delicate foliage, flora and fauna are fabulous natural studies of the lands that Brangwyn travelled to (as well as the animals he visited regularly in London Zoo).
For Brangwyn had an enduring Romance with Asia, the Middle East and Moorish Spain that earned him accolades in America and Europe. Art historian Libby Horner argues that he was amongst the most revered artists of the 1900s for his merging of the so-called ‘decorative arts’ with fine art traditions. This holistic approach to art-making was inspired by his voyages. Brangwyn sailed the seas for much of 1880s and 1890s, visiting Spain, Japan, North and South Africa and Istanbul. Influenced by the Continent’s fascination with Orientalist paintings, he made vivid-hued paintings of Egypt, Turkey and Morocco, which he visited in 1893.
The panels are controversial as they are both risque and hark back to an earlier age of empire. The Glyn Vivian site suggests that the House of Lords’ reason for rejecting them in 1930 was because they were teeming with “tits and bananas”:
They hardly sit comfortably with current sensibilities either. How can one help but notice the bare bodies and servile positions ascribed to the ‘native’ females? In the light of BlackLivesMatter and the urgent need to ‘decolonise’ the past, one has to agree with young activist Stevie MacKinnon Smith’s assessment that the Panels’ regressive colonial narrative needs to be addressed; that “their continued display without this acknowledgment is problematic”.
This article on Wales-on-Line says that Brangwyn intended for them to be a memorial to the First World War, and for a gloomy hall to be brought to life with a representation of the British Empire:
The plan was for them to be situated in the Royal Chamber, and Brangwyn made many considerations to the chosen location when painting the work, from the lighting that would enter the room, to allowing for the darkening of his work through the thick smoke from the peers' cigars.
But five years later came an announcement that the artist could not have foreseen.
After years of work and effort, a decision was made for the commission to be rejected, something at the time which was considered a great scandal, and a decision which reportedly left the artist heartbroken.
The Fine Art Commission made the decision as it felt it was not of the Cubist style then in vogue.
Whatever the reason for their rejection by the House of Lords, they remain a colourful addition to Swansea's premier concert hall.
Friday, December 05, 2025
Labour's march towards authoritarianism
They are proposing a 10-week consultation that will ask for views on how the technology should be regulated and how to protect people’s privacy, as well as creating a regulator to oversee police use of facial recognition, biometrics and other tools:
Policing minister Sarah Jones described facial recognition as the “biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching” saying that it has already helped catch thousands of criminals.
“We will expand its use so that forces can put more criminals behind bars and tackle crime in their communities,” she said.
According to the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police made 1,300 arrests using facial recognition over the last two years, and found more than 100 registered sex offenders breaching their licence conditions.
But the technology has faced criticism, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) describing the Met Police’s policy on use of live facial recognition technology as “unlawful”, earlier this year.
The equalities watchdog said the rules and safeguards around the UK’s biggest police force’s use of the technology “fall short” and could have a “chilling effect” on individuals’ rights when used at protests.
Other organisations also have doubts about this roll-out:
Reacting to the consultation, human rights organisation Liberty said the Government should halt the roll-out of the technology and introduce strict safeguards, including for independent sign-off before it is used and at least 14 days’ notice to the public when live facial recognition will be active.
It also called for police to only use facial recognition to prevent an imminent threat to life or people’s safety, search for suspects of serious criminal offences or missing people and victims of abduction and human trafficking.
Liberty director, Akiko Hart, added: “The public is finally getting a chance to have its say on this surveillance tech, but it’s disappointing the Home Office is starting a consultation with a pledge to ramp up its use.”
Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberty group Big Brother Watch, said: “For our streets to be safer, the Government need to focus their resources on real criminals rather than spending public money turning the country into an open prison with surveillance of the general population.
“Facial recognition surveillance is out of control, with the police’s own records showing over seven million innocent people in England and Wales have been scanned by police facial recognition cameras in the past year alone.”
Mass surveillance as a matter of routine, coupled with a growing database of images is not a good look in a democratic society. That is why it is important that this technology is tightly regulated, open to scrutiny by the public, and that the ad hoc expansion of facial recognition cameras by police forces is halted in the meantime.
The biggest concern is that this latest announcememt comes on the back of proposals to introduce compulsory digital ID cards and to do away with jury trials. Put them all together and it is beginning to look like the UK is turning into a much more authoritarian state.
