UK

Tory plans to axe Civil Service diversity jobs condemned as ‘ticking off culture war talking points’



The FDA Union, which represents professionals and managers in public services, said Esther McVey is targeting a ‘convenient punch-bag’

Jabed Ahmed

Esther McVey announces ban on 'activist lanyards' in the civil service

Unions and charities have accused the government of “rattling off of a tick list of culture-war talking points” over its plans to axe equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) jobs in the Civil Service.

Esther McVey, the government’s “common sense” minister, claimed public money was being wasted “on woke hobby horses”, in a speech at the Centre for Policy Studies on Monday morning. Ms Mcvey said there will be no more spending on external EDI contracts, such as those with LGBT+ charity Stonewall, without an explicit sign-off from a minister, and no more EDI-focused Whitehall jobs outside human resources.

However, the FDA Union, which represents professionals and managers in public services, hit back warning the changes could lead to more problems in the future.

Lucille Thirlby, Assistant General Secretary of the FDA union, said: “Yet again the government is attacking the equality, diversity and inclusion spend in the civil service. It’s become a convenient punch-bag for when it wants to demonstrate that it’s taking a tough stance, when in reality these changes could actually lead to more problems in the future.

“Public servants need to ensure that the services they provide reflect the needs of the public at large. How does this happen if you have reduced - or in some cases, no - specialist knowledge of how equality legislation operates?


“Equality outcomes matter, and employers need specialist knowledge as do organisations providing public services. Otherwise, the Government could find itself spending a lot more money defending employment tribunals for discrimination or judicial reviews on the lack of public service provision.”

Conservative minister without portfolio Esther McVey (Jeff Moore/PA) (PA Wire)

Ms McVey claimed a “concerted effort” had been made by “politically-correct woke warriors” in public bodies, in her speech.


“These Left-wing, politically-correct woke warriors have made a concerted effort to get themselves into positions of influence within the public sector,” she said. “They did not stand for election on these views because if they had they would not have won.

“So instead some have got themselves in academia and the civil service, local government, charities and arms length bodies and we need to make a similarly concerted effort to ensure they cannot use their positions in these public bodies to hijack them to impose their own political ideology.”

In March, Women and Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch, commissioned a report which found that most of the money spent on EDI was wasted.

However, The Cabinet Office has not released the details of the audit which asked more than 100 government departments and Civil Service agencies how many staff work on EDI and the cost associated with the roles.

Ms McVey also announced a ban on rainbow and other “random lanyards” in the civil service.

Ms McVey announced a ban on rainbow and other ‘random lanyards’ in the civil service (PA Wire)

Lucille Thirlby told The Independent: “Nobody joins the civil service in order to ‘impose their own political ideology’. Civil servants understand they serve the government of the day and have been doing so for a Conservative-led government for the past 14 years.

“At a time when the country is facing serious challenges, should the colour of a civil servant’s lanyard really be a ministerial priority?

“Equality, diversity and inclusion is a serious topic worthy of serious consideration and debate. Unfortunately, we got nothing of the sort from Esther McVey, who instead rattled off of a tick list of culture-war talking points.”

Dr Shabna Begum, Interim CEO of the Runnymede Trust, a leading race equality think tank, described the announcement as “cynical” and “regressive”.

"This is the latest in the government's calculated public withdrawal of support and funding for EDI initiatives, a cynical move which panders to certain sections of Britain’s political elite, who seek to undermine progress towards racial and social justice as a distraction from the real issues facing the British public,” she told The Independent.

"EDI initiatives tend to focus primarily on changes at an individual and cultural level, without challenging the systems and structures which hold people of colour back. EDI initiatives have always been the bare minimum the government can do to tackle racism in society.

“The government’s refusal to uphold even this basic commitment demonstrates a clear lack of leadership promoting equity in the workplace, and broader human rights issues. We urge the government to revoke this regressive step and take genuine action to address structural injustices."

Why is S.C. one of five states that continues to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day? | Opinion

Sun, May 12, 2024 



BOB SOFALY | The Beaufort Gazette

Holiday past its prime

On Friday, we celebrated Confederate Memorial Day here in South Carolina, a holiday I believe it is far past time to do away with.

We are one of only five states that recognize Confederate Memorial Day as a state holiday, meaning state offices are closed.

We are also one of only two states, the other being North Carolina, where Confederate Memorial Day is on May 10 because that is the day that Gen. Stonewall Jackson died in 1863 after being accidentally shot by his own men just a week earlier.

May 10 is also the day Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia by Union forces of the 1st Wisconsin and 4th Michigan Calvary.

The Confederate States of America was a failed, traitorous nation birthed to preserve the institution of slavery.

And if you don’t want to take my word for it that the Confederacy was born to preserve slavery, just take a look at South Carolina’s own seceding documents.

The declaration laid out the primary reasoning behind South Carolina’s secession from the Union as an “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery.”

Hayden Laye, Walhalla

 

A handbook for changing everything

Andrew Chuter

May 3, 2024

GREEN LEFT

Issue 

1405

Culture

Print

Images: scribepublications.com.au

12 Rules for Strife
By Jeff Sparrow and Sam Wallman
Scribe Publications, 2024

Combining the distilled wisdom of socialist writer Jeff Sparrow and the graphic ingenuity of comic artist Sam Wallman, 12 Rules for Strife is a handbook for changing everything.

The 12 rules operate more as general principles ranging from "Direct Politics Works" and "Together We Are Strong" to "Mistrust the State" and "Practise Persuasion", that activists through the centuries have found to work and lead to lasting positive change.

See also

Sam Wallman shows us the past, present and future of unions and workplace organising

Sam Wallman: A people’s comic artist

Video: Jeff Sparrow discusses 'Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating'

The book cautions us against self-congratulatory smug politics and instead promotes the hard work of winning people over. We can't delegate to figureheads that reinforce hierarchy but must build confidence through collective action.

Wallman continues the mind-expanding style demonstrated in his previous book Our Members Be Unlimited. Each page bursts forth with breaking walls, connecting ribbons and masses of people combining as one. So much is communicated with relatively few words.

It's complemented by excellent suggestions for further reading. Topics and writers include green bans, the Stonewall riots, Naomi Klein and Jane McAlevey.

This is a book to be acted upon, to inspire effective action and to share around with friends, colleagues and comrades.

[12 Rules for Strife will be launched in Gadi/Sydney at 6pm on May 23 at the Maritime Union of Australia auditorium in Sussex Street, Haymarket and in Naarm/Melbourne 5.30pm on June 7 at the MUA, Ireland Street, North Melbourne.]

Climate Reporters Share Tips for Investigating the Fossil Fuel Industry

by Serdar Vardar • May 2, 2024

GIJN Program Director Anne Koch moderates a panel on investigating fossil fuel companies at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.

 Image: Joanna DeMarco for GIJN


There is a “central contradiction” that sums up the problem of our energy consumption — and journalists’ efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry to account, observed Anne Koch, GIJN program director, at this year’s International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.“It’s a lot easier to get whistleblowers at a PR agency” than from high-level executives inside fossil fuel companies. — Amy Westervelt, Drilled podcast host

Never has the world been more in need of a scientifically-based process for transitioning away from fossil fuels, said Koch, “and at the same time, never has the fossil fuel industry tried so hard to slow down or stop that effort… They don’t want to throw away their business plans, and we rely on those fossil fuels.”

Koch led the panel discussion for “The Investigative Agenda for Climate Change Journalism: Tracking the Fossil Fuel Industry,” which was organized by GIJN and brought together prominent climate reporters who shared tips for investigating the fossil fuel industry — and explained why this work is more vital than ever.

Panelist Amy Westervelt, host of the Drilled podcast — which investigates the obstacles to meaningful action on climate change — delved into the recently updated Carbon Majors Database report, which found that a mere 57 companies are responsible for 80% of global carbon dioxide emissions since the Paris Agreement was signed in late 2015. “It’s a pretty small number of companies contributing the largest share of emissions,” she said.

Westervelt stressed the importance of investigating state-owned fossil fuel companies such as Saudi Aramco, Abu Dhabi’s Adnoc, and Norway’s Equinor, which have significantly increased production compared to private or investor-owned companies. “It’s very hard to investigate state-owned oil companies, but we need to figure out a way to do it because increasingly, they’re becoming the lion’s share of this problem,” explained Westervelt. Fossil fuel majors also invest heavily in influencing policy and shaping favorable outcomes.

She also noted that carbon capture — the practice of capturing and transferring carbon emissions from large power sources to be applied elsewhere and is often touted as a climate solution — actually leads to more resource extraction because about 80% of captured carbon is then used to get more oil out of the ground. “How that became a climate solution is a mystery,” she added.
Fossil Fuel ‘Enablers’


Amy Westerveld, climate reporter and host of the Drilled podcast. Image: Joanna DeMarco for GIJN

One strategy for investigating fossil fuel companies is to uncover government ties to the industry, and Westervelt shared a method for getting started: Obtaining government representatives’ calendars and tracking their meetings with fossil fuel companies and lobbyists — and how many meetings they have with lobbyists from that industry compared to others.

She also recommended that journalists explore the “enabling industries” — companies engaged in public relations, insurance, lobbying, and consulting work for fossil fuel giants. This includes financial institutions that support major polluters. “There’s an entire ecosystem of enablers around the oil and gas industry,” she said. These industries play a significant role in shaping policy outcomes and should also be held accountable.

Disillusioned employees in these industries willing to blow the whistle have been a crucial source for Westervelt’s reporting. “It’s a lot easier to get whistleblowers at a PR agency,” than from high-level executives inside fossil fuel companies, she explained, “because most of the people working for these entities did not think that they were starting careers to carry water for a fossil fuel company that wanted to lie about climate change.”

The Problem with Carbon Credits and Net Zero

Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, an editor and reporter at the Costa Rica-based El Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP) agreed that whistleblowers are a crucial source for covering the industry, and urged journalists to think creatively to seek them out. (In another IJF24 session, on pantropical investigations, Liévano revealed that experts who helped create environmental laws became his primary whistleblowers. When they realized the laws they helped create weren’t being enforced as intended, their disappointment made them important sources of information.)

Andrés Bermúdez Liévano of Costa Rica-based El Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP). Image: Joanna DeMarco for GIJN

Liévano also said it’s important to investigate carbon offset projects because they can actually contribute to the growth of the fossil fuel industry, and pointed out that the ability to “sell net zero oil” through these schemes enables fossil fuel production to increase and for those companies to continue business as usual.

To illustrate his point, Liévano mentioned pop star Taylor Swift, who thanks to her use of private jets reportedly racks up the highest carbon emissions worldwide among celebrities using private planes. “She flew from Tokyo to Las Vegas to watch her boyfriend win the Super Bowl, but she claims to be net zero,” said Liévano. “The way she can [make this claim] is through buying carbon credits and offsetting her carbon footprint. And fossil fuel companies do that on a much larger scale.”

When it comes to investigating carbon credit projects, “the devil is usually in the details,” Liévano observed. He pointed out that many of these carbon offsett projects are not working as they should, citing a recent CLIP investigation into a carbon credit project in the páramos, high-altitude moorlands in Colombia near the Ecuadorian border.

“It is a very important ecosystem in Andean countries, and it’s an Indigenous community where 99% of the community had no idea that they were part of a carbon credit scheme… This project had already sold 350,000 credits to Chevron,” explained Liévano. Nobody from the community had been consulted, and nobody knows where the money credits went. “We even found a gigantic conflict of interest. The businesswoman… running the project hired her former company to audit the project.”Journalists shouldn’t forget about sectors such as cement, steel, and others that “fly under the radar” despite contributing significantly to emissions.

The panelists agreed that such wrongdoing is widespread in carbon credit projects. Liévano stressed that there is a steep learning curve for anyone starting to investigate carbon credits, but added: “We can shorten this curve by radical collaboration. We can learn from each other. There are many specialized NGOs and journalist communities willing to share their knowledge and experiences.”

Fact-Checking Climate Change Promises

Ajit Niranjan, the Guardian’s European environment correspondent, shared sobering statistics about global progress towards climate change goals. “The total spending on clean energy projects from the global oil and gas industry is only about 2.5% of their revenue. I think that does also include carbon capture projects,” he explained. “The International Energy Agency calculated that by 2030 that should be about 50% if we want to stay on track for 1.5°C,” he said, referring to the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global surface warming below that threshold temperature.

There are many companies responsible for these greenhouse gas emissions that are not facing enough pressure, Niranjan emphasized. “One thing to consider is how we define the fossil fuel industry. It’s not just about the companies drilling for oil or mining coal… They argue that if they don’t do it, someone else will,” he said.


Ajit Niranjan, European environment correspondent for the Guardian. Image: Joanna DeMarco for GIJN

“And, while this doesn’t excuse their lobbying or influence on government policy, there is a point to be made about the demand from other sectors like airlines, car manufacturers, and others. If these industries don’t transition to cleaner practices, we won’t solve the problem.”

Journalists should naturally focus on major oil and gas companies, but shouldn’t forget about sectors such as cement, steel, and others that “fly under the radar” despite contributing significantly to emissions, Niranjan added.
‘Creative Carbon Accounting’

Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, joined the panel via video call. She emphasized that while investigating the greenwashing efforts of fossil fuel companies is important, “the larger part [for investigative journalists to play] is holding governments to account for inaction… all over the world.” Some hard climate justice questions also need to be answered, she said, such as: Who needs fossil fuels? Does Africa have the right to use its fossil fuels? Does Europe have the right to extract them?


Sunita Narain, Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, joined via video link. Image: Joanne DeMarco for GIJN

She also highlighted the critical role of financing in climate justice, advocating for scrutiny into whether financial assistance comes as grants or adds to countries’ debt burdens during transitions away from fossil fuels, and stressed the need for effective financial systems to support green transitions and adaptation efforts in impoverished nations grappling with climate change impacts.

Narain also shared some of the challenges she has faced investigating carbon credit projects in India, and the creative methods companies used to stonewall her team. “One of the top carbon credit companies wrote to us that they could not talk to us because they were in a “period of silence,” — a meditative practice associated with yoga. “A French company had the temerity to write to us that we could not visit their project sites in South India because it was dangerous and there were bad roads, bad connectivity, and insurgencies.”

The projects and companies she investigated went to great lengths to avoid scrutiny, she observed, but she added that despite facing numerous obstacles, investigative journalists are “like a dog with a bone,” and keep drilling down to put the story together.

Watch the full IJF panel video below.

Serdar Vardar is an investigative journalist with a political science degree from the University of Buenos Aires. After living more than a decade in South America he moved to Germany to cover Turkey and global environmental stories for Deutsche Welle. Vardar was part of ICIJ’s global Pandora Papers and Shadow Diplomats investigations.

RELATED RESOURCES

Reporter’s Guide to Investigating Carbon Offsets
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The Investigative Agenda for Climate ChangeExplore the Resource Center →

The Observer Billy Bragg  Interview

Billy Bragg: ‘There’s nothing like going out there singing your truth. That ain’t changed’

The singer-songwriter’s brand of stubborn protest songs with a strain of tenderness has kept him relevant for 40 years. Here he talks about why he’s fighting for trans rights, his late-night tweeting habit and his forthcoming tour – with his son


Tim Adams
Sun 28 Apr 2024 

Recently, Billy Bragg showed his two young granddaughters a little promo film he put together celebrating his 40 years of making records. The girls were nonplussed by the early scenes on picket lines and spiky festival stages, but towards the end, recognising an avuncular white-bearded bloke with a guitar, they brightened: “Look, it’s Grandad Bill!” they chorused. “It was actually all Grandad Bill,” their father pointed out, but they weren’t having any of it.

Meeting Bragg at the station car park in Weymouth – not far from where he lives along the Dorset coast – and heading up to a cafe on the headland overlooking the sweep of the bay, I sympathise a little bit with their sentiment. The first time I saw the singer in the flesh was sometime late in 1984, when he was giving it his full “one-man Clash” performance on student stages at miners’ benefits. Even at the time that felt like it might be a hard act to grow old with; yet here he is in the seaside retirement resort, still fighting the good fight.

View image in fullscreenOn stage at Victoria Palace theatre, London, 1984. 

Photograph: Peter Brooker/Shutterstock

You could never claim he has not put in the hard yards. As his old friend and former NME editor Neil Spencer says of their days together in Red Wedge, the mid-80s attempt to build youth opposition to the Thatcher government: “Billy was always first on the bus.” Bragg’s doing some concerts this summer, supported by his son, Jack Valero, also a singer-songwriter, to celebrate 20 years of the anti-Nazi collective Hope Not Hate. The promotion for those gigs gives a flavour of his commitment: “Bill’s words and actions have galvanised thousands of anti-fascists across the country,” the blurb states, going on to say: “During a difficult campaign against the fascist British National party in 2010, Billy delivered refreshments to hungry and tired activists – before performing a storming set on the eve of the elections. Barking and Dagenham was liberated, and the fascists were finally sent packing.”

Such billing brings pressures, not least that ever-present danger on the British left of looking like a 1980s tribute act. Bragg tells me he no longer plays what is perhaps his most easily parodied song of that era, Between the Wars: “I started to feel that my audience were becoming a bit nostalgic for the miners’ strike and Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher. I wasn’t comfortable with that.”

Since his initial activist days, Bragg has found a solid international audience, particularly in the US and Australia. This began with his appearance at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in Central Park in New York in 1992. After that performance, Guthrie’s daughter Nora approached Bragg to put music to some of her father’s unrecorded lyrics, which in turn led to a Grammy-nominated album of “new” Guthrie songs, Mermaid Avenue, performed by Bragg and the American rock band Wilco. Bragg remains the unofficial keeper of Guthrie’s radical flame; Nora gave him a Navajo blanket to sleep under in Dorset. He had a T-shirt bearing the question: “What would Woody do?” and you imagine it is a question that is never that far from his mind.
Some people sing about love, some about war, some about a better world to come. Well, I sing about all three


His most recent album, 2021’s The Million Things That Never Happened, featured the song Mid-Century Modern, a pointed attack on any complacency in his fans and himself:


It’s hard to get your bearings in a world that doesn’t care
Positions I took long ago feel comfy as an old armchair
But the kids that pull the statues down they challenge me to see
The gap between the man I am and the man I want to be

As he says: “If you are going to ask your audience to raise their fist in solidarity, you’ve also got to challenge them now and then.”

His own challenge is the restless motivation to keep finding the edge of political relevance. In recent years this has led him to various campaigning positions – on the train down to Dorset, I’ve been reading his thoughtful manifesto for reclaiming English nationalism from the right, The Progressive Patriot.

That desire for relevance also encouraged his response to Oliver Anthony’s viral folk song Rich Men North of Richmond, the adopted anthem of Donald Trump’s Republicans. Bragg wrote a quick version, Rich Men Earning North of a Million, to counter the way in which Oliver “shamefully punched down on people on welfare”.

View image in fullscreenBragg and Paul Weller promote Red Wedge, 1985. 

Photograph: Steve Rapport/Getty Images

And, of course, that need to be on the latest contested frontline has expressed itself in Bragg becoming a prominent late-night warrior in that most fevered of all contemporary arenas: tweets on X about trans rights. (His first forays into these debates so enraged gender-critical feminists that several adopted his name as an ironic moniker.) Though he might speak to me of the need for compromise, he is not temperamentally inclined to take a step back from that fray.


If “Which side are you on, boys?” intransigence were Bragg’s only trait, he would probably be crankily insufferable after four decades. Listening to that adult lifetime of music, however, the vehemence of the ballads of working-class anger is in tension with the strain of vulnerable tenderness that has always been a feature of his writing. “Some people sing about love, some people sing about war, some people sing about a better world to come. Well, I sing about all three,” he says. Or to quote perhaps his most famous lines: “I don’t want to change the world / I’m not looking for a new England / I’m just looking for another girl.”


How we made: Billy Bragg’s A New England

Read more

The rasping Bragg voice still has the capacity – like any Ken Loach film – to make a grown man’s lip tremble. This happened most recently in his pair of songs for his “sweetheart and life partner”, Juliet De Valero Wills, who was being treated for breast cancer during lockdown: I Will Be Your Shield – a poignant reference both to his and the NHS’s encircling care – and The Fourteenth of February, a beautiful little acoustic hymn to their 30 years together.

He’s chosen this cafe because it’s at one end of a favourite cliff walk that he and Juliet do (in answer to my question about her health, he says happily: “She’s doing well now, thanks”). I’d originally asked if we might meet at his home, but he declined because he didn’t want it identified (I suspect he also may be wary of the seafront villa backdrop complicating his image). Anyhow, sitting down, the first thing we talk about is the impossibility of the fact that he has been doing this stuff for so long. Could he have imagined it?


“I was in New York last week and I was talking to someone about [the American folk legend] Pete Seeger,” he says. “They’re doing a biopic. I realised I first met Pete at the Festival of Political Songs in East Berlin in 1986. I thought he was like the ancient old man of the mountains. He was 66.” He laughs. “Same fucking age as I am now.”

Bragg has lost none of his Essex accent in his singing, and in conversation little of it has been softened by a quarter-century in proximity to West Country vowels. Sitting in the cafe’s windswept conservatory eating bubble and squeak and a fried egg – in homage to a favourite from his childhood – he occasionally attracts alarmed glances from retired couples in anoraks when talking in suitably robust terms about, say, the scandal of the Rwanda flights. He unashamedly closes his concerts with the same line he always used: “My name is Billy Bragg. I’m from Barking, Essex,” and he insists that it feels as true to him now as it ever did.
There’s a rural union tradition in this country as well as an industrial one. Why Labour has little to say to this part of the world I have no idea

I wonder how that line is understood by audiences in Austin or Adelaide? “As a sort of useful explanation for everything you’ve just heard,” he says. “Particularly if you are sitting there thinking: ‘What the hell was that?’” But the line is also a kind of political shorthand for the brand of identity he advocates. “I’ve never bought into this whole bullshit divide between ‘people of somewhere’ and ‘people of nowhere’,” he says, referencing David Goodhart’s explanation of the Brexity attractions of populism in a globalist world. “You can be a person who both has a cosmopolitan view of things, but who also has a strong sense of belonging to this particular group in this particular place.”

With this in mind, one of his lockdown projects was to put together an internet book of family history for his cousins and nephews.

View image in fullscreenBilly Bragg with his father in 1960 in Barking. 

Photograph: Courtesy Billy Bragg

He gives me a quick potted history of the family tree. The Bragg side of things was mostly contained in a box of old pictures handed down from his great-grandfather, who ran a pub on Barking quay. His mum’s people were Italian immigrants, ice-cream sellers, who first settled on Cable Street in London’s East End, scene of the battle against Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. “The D’Ursos were all modern people, listening to Radio Luxembourg and all that. But the Braggs in Barking were stubbornly Victorian. My dad’s aunt was born in 1876, she lived round the corner from us; she still had gas lighting in her house when I was a kid.”

When he moved out of London in the millennium year, it might have looked as if he was distancing himself from some of his past, even selling out (that mortal fear of 1980s rebels), but that’s not how he viewed it.


“It was a commitment to spend more time with Juliet and Jack. And I’m glad I did it. It gave me a different perspective on this country. But I’m still a Londoner – I’ll always be a Londoner.”

Anyhow, he suggests, wherever you are in the world, you are never far from one frontline or another. He points to the fact that the Bibby Stockholm barge of asylum seekers is moored just around the bay. And that Richard Drax, whose £150m fortune originates in part from the family legacy in the slave trade, is the local MP. And that’s before you get to “the farmers and rural communities who have been sold down the river by Brexit”.

“We are a few miles down the road from Tolpuddle here, where it all started,” Bragg says. “There is a rural union tradition in this country, as well as an industrial one. Why Labour has little to say to this part of the world I have no idea.”

In this election year, Bragg has (once again) cut ties with the Labour party. What caused him to cut up his card on this occasion?

“All that ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’” he says. “And to be fair, I felt I had put up with a lot. I voted for [Keir] Starmer as leader and I’ve still got on my desk his list of pledges. The nationalisation of utilities, the green New Deal, doing something on proportional representation. Those pledges suggested to me that Starmer was a development on [Jeremy] Corbyn, who was very much a 20th-century politician. And then you watch him just get rid of those pledges one after the other. The position on Gaza was the last straw for me.”skip past newsletter promotion

Bragg in 1985, watched by then Labour leader Neil Kinnock. The singer has recently cut ties with the party. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex Features


We briefly talk through that checklist of reasons not to be at all cheerful: Ukraine, Trump, the climate crisis. But he insists, despite everything, he is – raising his mineral water – a glass-half-full person. There’s a simple reason for that: “Because when I get depressed or cynical, I have the privilege of being able to go out in the dark and sing my songs, and when everyone claps, I don’t feel so bad. What I hope to do in my gigs is for the audience to feel like that too. That at least there’s this roomful of people in their town who do give a shit. Music can’t change the world, but it can do that.”

There is an entertaining authorised biography of Bragg, Still Suitable for Miners, by the journalist Andrew Collins, which details his steps towards his vocation. Born Stephen Bragg, he was badly bullied at school, he lost his dad when he was 18 and briefly joined the army before strapping on his guitar and finding other battles.

“The first Rock Against Racism concert [in 1978] was the spark for me,” he says now. “It was all there ready, but I needed to see those 80,000 kids just like me in Victoria Park [in east London]. On that day, my generation found our issue, as the previous generations had with Vietnam and CND. And it was to end discrimination of all kinds. Not just racism, but homophobia – we would be the generation that defeated apartheid and supported Pride.”
This isn’t something that comes from Twitter. [Being trans] is something that people feel inside

And he could immediately see a role for himself in that generational campaign? He smiles. “One thing was I had never met an out gay man until then. I’m sure I had met gay men in Barking but none of them were out. And then on stage Tom Robinson starting up with (Sing If You’re) Glad to Be Gay and all around me these blokes started kissing each other. I thought: ‘Fucking hell, what’s this?’ But it didn’t take me long to realise that it was a common cause – that the fascists are after anyone who is different, any minority. But you need those experiences to discover that solidarity.”

It’s a memory of that moment, I think, that has prompted his partisan anger on the issue of trans rights, his opposition to feminists such as JK Rowling, who argue for biological women’s right to their own protected spaces.

Speaking to the self-styled “luxury communist” Ash Sarkar earlier this year, Bragg suggested he was embarrassed to have come to the issue fairly late. His instincts went back to old ties of solidarity against discrimination. In particular, remembering the role that the campaigning group had played in gay and lesbian liberation during the 80s: “I wanted to start by saying it’s not a good idea to bring down Stonewall.”

The day we meet is the day after the Cass report on NHS gender identity services for children and young people has been published, which at the very least seems to offer sensible checks and balances to the position that the current incarnation of Stonewall has promoted and to the online and real-world efforts to cancel those who refuse it.


Bragg tells me he welcomes Dr Hilary Cass’s findings, at least up to a point: “I’m 100% behind a holistic approach to supporting kids,” he says. But he considers Cass to put too strong an emphasis on social media. “That’s just victim blaming,” he says.

A Stop the War demonstration in London, 21 January 1991, with Emma Thompson (far left), Jeremy Corbyn (third from left) and Ken Livingston and Billy Bragg (centre). Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

Though he recognises the potential harm of early medical intervention in dysmorphia cases, he fears that the report will give strength to those who “say that trans kids don’t exist. They tried to do that with section 28 with gays and lesbians. But this isn’t something that comes from Twitter. This is something that people feel inside. This is a serious problem that people need help with. And when we say trans kids, we mean people up to the age of 16; not – as Cass weirdly seems to say – people up to age 25.”

There are plenty of voices out there that rebut that latter interpretation, and a subsequent Q&A between Cass and LGBTQ+ groups clarified some of those contentions. My own strongest feeling, I tell him – I reported on the cultish-seeming evangelism of the Mermaids group lobbying for the untested certainties of hormone treatment way back in 2016 – was that if ever there was an issue that social media is ill-equipped to debate, it is this one. I haven’t seen evidence for Bragg’s assertion that his most prominent opponents are “saying that trans people don’t exist”. Surely it is more the case that we are talking about different complex views in a genuine conflict of rights.

“My problem with people like Rowling, like Julie Bindel, is really who they are lined up with,” he says. “[Rowling and Bindel] are people who I agree with about women’s rights. I agree with them about abortion. But we don’t agree on this. It reminds me of a TV debate I did back with Red Wedge; on one side of the table was me, Jerry Dammers and Clare Short, and on the other Stewart Copeland, a Tory MP called Greg Knight and Chris Dean from the Redskins. Now, me and Chris had toured during the miners’ strike, but I looked at Chris, and pointed to who he was sitting with, and told him he was on the wrong side of the table. And that’s what I see with Rowling and the others: they are on the wrong side of the table.”

His argument is that some of his opponents on the issue appear to be giving strength to anti-trans campaigns on the fundamentalist religious right in the US and elsewhere – that if any ground is given “the next thing will be an assault on equal marriage and abortion”. But of course there is no suggestion at all that Rowling or Bindel have any sympathy with those groups so, again, isn’t that a problem of social media platforms themselves, which are engineered to promote simple binaries over nuanced argument, and which reinforce “which side are you on” tribalism.

He seems to agree, when we talk, that it might be better to aim fire at those extremist reactionary groups but reserves his right to defend his corner if “people are spitting at him” on X. We go around the houses on this for a while, before finding a bit of neutral ground in the idea that it is partly the job of our generation to “get out of the way” and let the young find their solutions. Subsequently, he sends me one or two extreme tweets (not from any of his prominent “opponents”) that confirm his view that there are people out there who argue trans children do not exist. Last week he was still firing off threads – all rigorously refuted – that cast doubt on Cass’s conclusions.


In our interview, though, talk of future generations brings us off the subject and on to discussing how he feels about performing alongside his son, Jack, on his forthcoming mini tour. I ask what advice he’s given him about following in the family trade?

Billy Bragg with his son, Jack Valero, who goes on tour with him in May. Photograph: Jill Furmanovsky

“I wouldn’t dare to tell him how to write songs – that’s not my place at all,” he says. “And he learned to play guitar by playing Guitar Hero. What he doesn’t have is any illusions. I came into this job with lots of fabulous preconceptions about limousines and playing Wembley stadium. Jack’s grown up seeing what it’s like behind the curtain. It’s a very different landscape now. But still there’s nothing better than going out there singing your truth. That ain’t changed.”

We talk a bit about the challenges faced by that generation in terms of mental health – how social media has fractured collective identities.

“The thing is,” Bragg says, “my therapy group was me and my friends sitting around playing guitars in my mum’s back room. Not only did they save me from getting my arse kicked in Barking, it also gave me the confidence to express myself. And going out on stage on my own, not as Stephen Bragg but as Billy, was my final proof to myself that I wasn’t afraid of anything.”

He regrets not standing up a bit more to bullies as a kid, but he’d like to think he’s made up for that since.

“Stephen Bragg was this sad guy I went to school with,” he says. “I feel so sorry for him when I see photographs of him – he was a good lad and he didn’t stand a fucking chance. I like to think Billy Bragg put his arm around him and said: ‘Listen, stick with the guitar player; we’re gonna be OK.’ I sort of think they are two completely different people, but my old friends would probably disagree. They’d say: ‘It’s just that these days’” – as his granddaughters understand – “‘one of them’s got grey hair and a beard.’”

Billy Bragg is on tour from 8 May

We asked a government agency about AI. They sent us 62 blacked out pages.

Alexandria Jacobson, Investigative Reporter
March 27, 2024

Raw Story received 62 blacked out pages in response to a Freedom of Information Act request about artificial intelligence. 

Shutterstock/William Potter

When it comes to understanding artificial intelligence and its role in the government, expect to encounter a black box.

Or two.

Or 62.

That’s exactly how many entirely blacked-out pages Raw Story received in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that asked a federal government agency for records about its use of — and potential threats from — artificial intelligence.

The Export-Import Bank — the federal export credit agency that supports American businesses in exporting their products abroad to compete in foreign markets — responded in a decidedly non-transparent fashion, sending Raw Story a heavily redacted 136-page document earlier this month

An “IT Modernization Strategy” planning document, for example, was blacked out in its entirety.

The few records that included comprehensive information often addressed AI- and computer-related security concerns. The Ex-Im Bank disclosed presentation slides from a routine security awareness training and a warning from the agency’s chief information officer about phishing attacks, which attempt to trick recipients into sharing personal information or downloading malware by posing as legitimate people or organizations via messages.

Howard Spira, the Ex-Im Bank’s CIO and senior vice president, noted on June 8 “an uptick” in phishing emails targeting staff through messages pretending to be from “EXIM Senior Officials.”

ALSO READ: ‘Abuse’: Politicians are fretting about AI stealing their faces and voices

“The rapid release of powerful generative AI tools, e.g., ChatGPT, is also quickly leading to a significant improvement of the quality and believability of phishing attacks,” Spira wrote. “Scammers are using AI to automate various aspects of a phishing attack, making them more effective and targeted.”

Otherwise, any information about how the agency itself is using artificial intelligence — a rapidly evolving technology giving machines the power to simulate human intelligence and problem solving — was withheld by agency officials.

Raw Story filed its FOIA request, which sought agency records from a seven-month period starting in November 2022, on May 25. It took the agency nearly 10 months to respond with its heavily redacted documents.
‘No government-wide guidance’ for AI

The Export-Import Bank’s refusal to release detailed information about its use of and relationship with AI comes as government entities and private business alike grapple with the potential benefits and threats of AI technology.

Congress, for one, has conducted several recent hearings on various aspects of AI.

And AI has become an unchecked force on the campaign trail, too, with many politicians fretting about bad actors using AI to misrepresent them and harm their reputations.


But the government, as a whole, lacks consistency around how it regulates the use of AI.

ALSO READ: A criminologist explains why Judge Cannon must step away from Trump trial immediately

“There’s no government-wide guidance on how agencies should acquire and use AI,” said a December report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Without such guidance, agencies can't consistently manage AI. And until all requirements are met, agencies can't effectively address AI risks and benefits.”

President Joe Biden issued an executive order in October announcing a "coordinated, Federal Government-wide approach" to the development and use of AI, which he said "holds extraordinary potential for both promise and peril."

In response to Raw Story’s questions about how the Export-Import Bank uses AI, Lennell Jackson, a FOIA public liaison with the Ex-Im Bank, pointed to an undated webpage that said the agency did not identify any AI use cases — ”specific challenges or opportunities that AI may solve,” according to the Government Accountability Office.

Jackson declined further comment. Any other questions about the Ex-Im Bank’s AI policies and procedures, she said, could only be addressed by Raw Story administratively appealing the agency’s decision to not release unredacted AI-related records. Raw Story is awaiting a response to its appeal.

The Ex-Im Bank’s Office of Communications and External Engagement did not respond to Raw Story's request for comment.
‘They pick and choose’: Obtaining government records

The Freedom of Information Act is a 57-year-old law intended to provide the public with transparency about the federal government through access to previously undisclosed information and documents.

But the government may choose to withhold records by claiming one of nine exemptions

In Raw Story’s case, the Ex-Im Bank withheld records by citing the “deliberative process privilege.” This exemption aims to protect the agency’s decision making processes and its staff’s ability to express “candid opinions” and “free and frank exchange of information,” said a March 15 letter from Lance Matthews, deputy chief FOIA officer at the Ex-Im Bank.

“We have applied the ‘foreseeable harm’ standard in reviewing these records and have balanced the harm that disclosure would have to a protected interest against the goal of maximizing discretionary disclosure,” Matthews wrote.


Jamie Wright, a California attorney and political strategist, told Raw Story she has found government agencies to not be forthright and transparent when fulfilling FOIA requests as “they pick and choose when they want to be,” she said.

Oftentimes, lack of disclosure from government agencies relates to “fraud, waste and abuse” or toeing “the ethical line when it comes to a lot of their decision-making processes,” Wright said.

“Whenever you're dealing with a government entity you can expect to get stonewall after stonewall after stonewall, and typically they're not going to be forthright, absent some kind of court order compelling them to,” said Wright, who has won her own legal battles against government agencies using the “deliberative process privilege” exemption.

ALSO READ: TikTok disinformation is no more dangerous than this Fox News disinformation

However, given how new and quickly evolving artificial intelligence is, Wright expects that the Ex-Im Bank is likely protecting itself from “serious legal ramifications” by avoiding premature disclosure of any AI policies, she said.

Over the past year, Raw Story has fought for disclosure of public records from public universities to local governments, revealing previously undisclosed information about taxpayer money usage and public and government concerns about political appearances.

In August, Raw Story filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of the Navy, following the agencies’ refusal to release records related to a former U.S. Marine and avowed neo-Nazi.

US must speed permits to spur renewable energy growth, execs say

Story by Reuters • 1d • 1

FILE PHOTO: Solar panels are set up in the solar farm at the University of California, Merced, in Merced, California, U.S. August 17, 2022. REUTERS/Nathan Frandino/File Photo© Thomson Reuters

HOUSTON (Reuters) -The U.S. government needs to streamline permitting for renewable energy projects, including development of power transmission infrastructure and grid connectivity, to support needed growth, executives said on Thursday at a conference in Houston.

"It's a tremendous issue," said NRG interim CEO Larry Coben, pointing to difficulties around interconnection, the rules that new electricity generators must follow to connect to the grid.

It can take up to four years to move a project through the interconnection process, according to the American Clean Power Association.

Coben lamented that it is much harder to move through permitting processes in places like California than Texas.

States with fewer regulatory restrictions are going to be the big winners in attracting renewable investment and growth, said Andrés Gluski, CEO of utility firm AES Corporation.

Hurdles around permitting have been discussed frequently among executives attending the annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston Texas. Earlier in the week, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin told participants that permitting reform "will get done."

The call for faster permitting comes as renewable deployment is forecast to grow by as much as 17% to 42 gigawatts this year, representing about a quarter of electricity generation, consultancy Deloitte said in a report, citing U.S. government figures.

"We've got to get infrastructure built, transmission lines built. We’ve got to work through these kind of political forums that are being used to stonewall and stop progress,” said Chris Womack, chief executive at utility firm Southern Company.

(Reporting by Liz Hampton in Houston; Editing by David Gregorio)

Tsunami on the plains: Researchers find that sea waves once swept Canadian Prairie Provinces

by Chris Putnam, University of Saskatchewan

USask assistant professor Colin Sproat stands by a wall of a quarry north of The Pas, 

Manitoba, one of the sites where the researchers found evidence of an ancient tsunami.

 Credit: Brian Pratt

Hundreds of millions of years ago, an earthquake sent a series of massive waves across the ancient sea that covered part of Western Canada and the northern United States.

That is the conclusion of a new paper by two University of Saskatchewan (USask) researchers, who have found the strongest-ever evidence of a tsunami in a shallow inland sea.

The research by Dr. Brian Pratt (Ph.D.) and Dr. Colin Sproat (Ph.D.) of USask's College of Arts and Science is published in Sedimentary Geology.

Saskatchewan and its neighboring areas are not known for their coastal views—or for their seismic activity. But 445 million years ago, in the period called the Ordovician, the region looked very different. Much of what is now Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada, along with Montana and the Dakotas in the U.S., was covered by a sea known as the Williston Basin.

"It was a completely different environment, completely different geography. Back then, we were much closer to the equator than we are today and the sea level was high, so we would have been in a tropical, shallow inland sea rather than a temperate grassland like today," said Sproat, an assistant professor in the USask Department of Geological Sciences.

Pratt and Sproat visited three sites north of The Pas, Manitoba, where they found evidence of a short, high-energy event in this ancient sea, which had gone unnoticed by geologists until now.

Certain beds of sediment at the locations had been torn into pebbles and mixed with clay. The floor beneath the deeper waters of the basin contained no clay, so it could only have come from the land.

"We realized we needed an event that rips up the sea bottom and then somehow comes back again with all this clay, and does it a few times," said Pratt, a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences.

The answer could only be a tsunami. No animal life and almost no plant life existed on land to witness that day nearly half a billion years ago, but if an observer had been around, they would have seen a dramatic event.

Faults in the region's crust, quiet now for thousands of millennia, were then still active. One of these faults somewhere in the northern half of the Williston Basin suddenly slipped, sending violent shockwaves through the sea.

The water at the shore would have briefly dropped, then rushed back in a relentless surge. The wave might have pushed a kilometer or more across the gently sloping land, scouring the rocky surface. When it finally receded, it washed clay back into the sea. More waves followed.

A tsunami is a "radical interpretation" of the evidence, acknowledges Pratt, but the USask researchers had an advantage. The strata of the Williston Basin in Canada are almost entirely hidden under Manitoba's and Saskatchewan's flat landscapes, which limited past geologists to studying only a few natural outcrops, core samples and roadway cuts.

An outline of the Williston Basin in the Late Ordovician period. 

Credit: Brian Pratt / Colin Sproat

In the last decade, several new quarries have been dug in Northern Manitoba and revealed more of the basin's secrets.

"It was checking out the quarries that opened our eyes. We go into these quarries and we can see the layering extending laterally for 100 meters or more, and we can find the same bed in more than one place. And so that gave us sort of the 3D perspective that nobody had before," said Pratt.

Similar deposits can be made by major storms, but Sproat and Pratt ruled out a storm as the cause due to a lack of other telltale signs of regular storm activity. Furthermore, the region was too close to the ancient equator to have experienced hurricanes.

The new paper gives a clearer picture of the forces that shaped an environment lost to history: one in which early marine life flourished and diversified.

"The Williston Basin was covered by this really unusual sea on top of the continent, an environment we don't have a good modern analog for. Given that, we have a unique opportunity here to study geological processes and their impact on ancient ecosystems in a setting unlike anywhere on the planet today," said Sproat.

The USask researchers plan to visit sites elsewhere in Canada to see if other beds show overlooked evidence of seismic sea waves—and whether tsunamis might have been a bigger part of Earth's history than is commonly believed.

"It's a subject you won't find in the geology textbooks," said Pratt. "I think it's time for a paradigm shift."

More information: Brian R. Pratt et al, A tsunami deposit in the Stonewall Formation (Upper Ordovician), northeastern margin of the Williston Basin, Canada, and its tectonic and stratigraphic implications, Sedimentary Geology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.sedgeo.2023.106518

Provided by University of Saskatchewan 500-million-year-old worm 'superhighway' discovered in Canada

UK

Badenoch claim on ‘extensively’ engaging with LGBT groups challenged in Commons

Kemi Badenoch said she has engaged ‘extensively’ with LGBT groups (Liam McBurney/PA)

By Ben Hatton, PA Political Staff

Today at 08:45

Kemi Badenoch said she had engaged “extensively” with LGBT groups when she had not even met them, a Labour former cabinet minister has claimed in the Commons.

Ben Bradshaw questioned if the Business Secretary and equalities minister has a “problem” with the truth and was critical of the Conservatives’ approach to transgender issues.

An ally of Ms Badenoch told the PA news agency she had meetings with the campaign groups Transgender Trend and Sex Matters, and “exchanged multiple emails and letters with other LGBT groups”.

It comes in a week when her statements on two unrelated issues – her sacking of the Post Office chairman and her claims trade talks had been ongoing with Canada – have both been publicly questioned.

Mr Bradshaw was speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions and referenced comments Ms Badenoch made last year.

What is the problem the Prime Minister, and a section of his party, have with trans people, and his equalities minister has with the truth?

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw

The Labour MP said: “In December, the Cabinet minister for equalities told this House that she had engaged, and I quote, ‘extensively’ with LGBT organisations since her appointment 18 months ago.

“A freedom-of-information answer published this week reveals that in fact the minister hasn’t met a single LGBT organisation, but has met two fringe groups that actively campaign against transgender rights.

“What is the problem the Prime Minister, and a section of his party, have with trans people, and his equalities minister has with the truth?”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak responded: “This Government has a proud track record of supporting those in the LGBT community and will continue to do so.

“I’ve also always said that those who are questioning their gender and identity should be treated with the upmost dignity and compassion and sensitivity as they consider those questions.

“But it is completely reasonable alongside that to highlight the importance of biological sex when it comes to those questions. Nobody should be stigmatised or demonised for pointing out that fact.”

In December, Ms Badenoch was speaking in the Commons about issues related to gender recognition and told the House: “We have engaged with numerous LGBT groups.”

She then posted on social media platform X the same day: “I have engaged extensively with LGBT groups in my role as minister for women and equalities.”

Mr Bradshaw’s remarks appear to refer to information published by PinkNews.

The outlet reported in December that Ms Badenoch had not had meetings with any of the UK’s largest LGBTQ+ organisations since taking on her role as minister for women and equalities, citing information provided by Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence, the Kaleidoscope Trust and Stonewall.

PinkNews reported on Tuesday that Ms Badenoch did not attend any events related to LGBT Pride in an official capacity last year, citing information released under the freedom of information act.

An ally of Ms Badenoch told the PA news agency: “As well as her meetings with Transgender Trend and Sex Matters, Kemi has exchanged multiple emails and letters with other LGBT groups.

“This all counts as engagement and supports her tweet. But the truth is that Ben Bradshaw really just wants her to meet the likes of Stonewall and Mermaids, who support self-ID – something that Kemi does not support and is not Government policy.”

Ms Badenoch has clashed with Henry Staunton this week, with each providing differing accounts of a conversation in which she dismissed him as chairman of the Post Office.

Labour chairman of the Business and Trade Committee Liam Byrne has also said Ms Badenoch has “questions to answer” over remarks she made in relation to trade negotiations with Canada.

The Business and Trade Committee’s X account said on the social media site that the Canadian High Commissioner “refutes” the claim made by Ms Badenoch in January that trade negotiations on cheese and rules of origin are ongoing.

A Government source said: “The Business and Trade Secretary told the House she was having ‘multiple discussions’, these are very different to the ‘formal negotiations’ or ‘technical discussions’ that were ruled out by the Canadian High Commissioner.

“Badenoch has remained in contact with her Canadian counterpart and next week she will be travelling to WTO MC13 (World Trade Organisation’s 13th Ministerial Conference) in Abu Dhabi where among her meetings she will be continuing discussions with her Canadian counterpart regarding the cheese and rules of origin issues.”

UK’s Kemi Badenoch challenged over Canada trade claims

The government says discussions with Canada are continuing.


Kemi Badenoch walked away from negotiations on a trade deal with Canada amid a row over food standards | Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images

FEBRUARY 21, 2024
BY GRAHAM LANKTREE

LONDON — Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch faced pressure in the U.K. parliament Wednesday after Canada challenged her claim that talks to avert a cliff edge for British car exports are still “ongoing.”

Under the U.K.’s current trade continuity deal with Canada, rules of origin giving British manufacturers the right to use EU parts in their exports without penalty expire on April 1.

It’s prompting major uncertainty for carmakers. British car exports to Canada alone are worth upwards of £700 million annually.
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But Badenoch — who walked away from negotiations on a trade deal with Canada amid a row over food standards — told MPs late last month that she could “state explicitly that the talks have not broken down” and discussions on the rules of origin issue were “ongoing.”

Canadian officials subsequently pushed back, telling POLITICO in January “there has been no discussion separately on rules of origin."

That claim was bolstered in a letter sent by Ottawa’s top diplomat in the U.K., Ralph Goodale, to the chair of the Commons business and trade committee, Labour MP Liam Byrne, which was published on Tuesday.

Goodale said there had been “neither negotiations nor technical discussions with respect to any of the outstanding issues.”

Byrne raised the issue in a point of order in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

“How do we get to the bottom of whether these trade talks are going on in the secretary of state’s mind or whether they’re happening in real life?” he asked.

Badenoch “told the House she was having multiple discussions, these are different from negotiations or technical discussions (as described by Goodale),” a spokesperson for the Department for Business and Trade said. “She has remained in contact with her Canadian counterpart.”

Next week Badenoch will travel to a World Trade Organization conference in Abu Dhabi “where among her meetings she will be continuing discussions with her Canadian counterpart regarding the cheese and rules of origin issues,” the spokesperson added.

Analysis by the Department for Business and Trade shows “exporters of automotives, plastics, chemicals and processed food are likely to be impacted" by the looming rules of origin changes, Industry Minister Nusrat Ghani said earlier this month.