Electric car batteries: France leads us four to one

 The UK, after one false start (Britishvolt) is on the brink of making a deal with Tata to build a factory to produce much-needed lithium-ion batteries. With the legal end of IC-powered cars fast approaching, the Bridgwater plant will come none too soon.

Meanwhile, France has just commissioned a new plant which will start production later this year. Three more battery plants are planned for northern France, Reuter reports;

The development by Automotive Cells Company, a joint-venture between Stellantis (STLAM.MI), Mercedes (MBGn.DE) and TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA), involves total investment of 2 billion euros ($2.20 billion) - with the French state and local authorities providing nearly half.

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It highlights the race between European governments to attract global car makers as they seek to bring the supply of components for electric vehicles closer to their main markets.

"ACC's new plant marks a key milestone in Europe's transformation to make its auto industry more resilient, competitive, and sustainable, also in the electric era," Ola Källenius, Chief Executive Officer of Mercedes-Benz, said ahead of the inauguration.

The plant will start production of lithium-ion batteries later this year with an initial capacity of 13 gigawatt hours (GWh), to be ramped up to around 40 GWh, enough to fit some 500,000 cars a year. It is expected to help create up to 2,000 jobs by 2030, the companies and regional authorities have said.

Where has this woman been for the last decade?

 "Di Laccio is also the founder and curator of the charitable foundation Donne - Women in Music, which makes a positive change and to readdress the gender inequality within the music industry."

The soprano Gabriella Di Laccio was interviewed by Ben Boulos on BBC News' business programme this morning. She gave the impression that she alone was fighting the gender inequality in music, disregarding the strides which have been made just in the last decade. UK has a female Master of the King's Music for the first time in our history. At least two British orchestras, including BBC's National Orchestra of Wales, have women as principal conductors. It is surprising that Boulos did not tax Di Laccio on this.

All right, it is not nearly enough, but I remember the days when the only woman in a London orchestra would be the lady harpist. Things were slightly better outside the capital, but the fact that I remember seeing a young woman in the ranks of the Royal Liverpool wind-players shows how rare they were even as late as the 1960s.

Things have changed on the composing front, too. We have not done as well historically as France - Farrenc, Viardot, Boulanger, Jaell, Tailleferre and especially Chaminade come immediately to mind - but we have been catching up, culminating in Judith Weir's appointment. A few years back, I had a competition with a Facebook friend as to how many British women composers we could name and if I recall correctly the total was over thirty - and that was before Isobel Waller-Bridge came to the fore.

Now we need a woman conducting the Last Night of the Proms who is not Marin Alsop.

Everton stay in Premier League... possibly

 Everton FC did what was necessary on the football field yesterday in order to extend their 70-year membership of the top tier of English football. In Sean Dyche they have the calibre of manager to keep them there. However, hanging over the club is a Premier League investigation into breaches of financial fair play rules. The Liverpool Echo reported on 25th March:

The Premier League revealed its belief Everton have a case to answer in a statement issued publicly on Friday afternoon. That followed a referral made earlier that day by the organisation of “an alleged breach of the league’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules”. The precise details of the accusation Everton face were not released but the club will have the opportunity to defend itself in front of an independent commission appointed by Murray Rosen KC, the chair of the Premier League Judicial Panel. The case will be heard in private but its conclusion will be made public. Should Everton be found to have been in breach of the regulations, which they have made clear they deny, possible sanctions include a fine or points deduction.

The breaches in question clearly occurred before the 2022/23 season, and the club has been cooperating with the League to ensure compliance with financial regulations. This may be enough to ensure that any penalty, if Everton are found guilty, will not involve a points deduction. There will, however, be pressure from Leicester City, the only team which stands to gain if Everton are relegated.

What would Lord Denning say?

In a High Court ruling against the Attorney-General in January 1977 Lord Denning, in his distinctive Hampshire accent said: "To every subject of this land, however powerful, I would use Thomas Fuller's words over three hundred years ago, 'Be ye never so high, the law is above you'.." 

From Boris Johnson down, there has been a pattern of ministers in recent Tory governments putting themselves above the law, or at least from the ministerial code which provides an ethical framework for the conduct of government business. This web page cites 40, and that was before the accusation that Suella Braverman misused her civil servants at the Home Office.

Perhaps Tory candidate manifestos in future should contain the words: "Vote for me and against the rule of law".

Finland shows the way on "fake news"

Yesterday's i newspaper told how primary school children in Finland  are taught "how to traverse the turbulent and often toxic digital landscape so that they can assess news stories, challenge conspiracy theories, handle data and spot hate speech".

The article goes on:

These are the children of Generation Z - digital natives of the post-truth age, brought up from infancy using the internet, social media, tablets and mobile phones. Yet in Finland, a country famous for one of the world's finest and most equitable education systems, they are also taught critical thinking, from an early age  to help them resist the flood of fake news and conspiracy theories.

The UK would do well to learn from these lessons, too, Democracies face increasingly fraught online struggles against dictatorships, fanatics and fraudsters, with artificial intelligence looming to make the fight even harder - so we need to do everything possible to equip our own children for the realities of the world in which they live.

When early years education in Wales was overhauled by Kirsty Williams and her team, the Finnish system was borne in mind. I would like to think that Jeremy Miles, MS for Neath and the current education minister, is looking to Finland again.

Police in London and Cardiff need to answer questions

 Yesterday, a lady finally gave up the ghost after being struck by a police motorcyclist on 10th May. The outrider was part of a police escort for Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, the King's sister-in-law. One has to accept that in these dangerous times even minor royalty needs protection. However, questions must arise as to whether Metropolitan Police standards are going down. It is understood that police enquiries are continuing, with more witnesses to the incident being sought. An independent inquiry should not be ruled out.

On the same day, two teenagers died in a suburb of Cardiff after being followed by a police van. South Wales Police initially denied that a pursuit had taken place until independent domestic surveillance footage submitted to the BBC showed the teenagers on an electric bike being followed by the van. There was then a more nuanced statement from the police who admitted that the pair had been followed for a time but suggested that it had not been a "pursuit" because the van was not sounding its siren or flashing its lights. Further, there was no police vehicle within fifty yards of the scene of the fatal crash. Locals later pointed out that this was because bollards prevented the van continuing to follow the teenagers.

It seems that Ely has been plagued by youngsters joy-riding on two-wheelers, which may even have been stolen. Residents would be entitled to some protection by the police, but not high-speed chases through an area of housing. It is clear that feeling in the area is on the side of the families of the victims, rather than the police, with whom relations seem to have been broken for some time. There will be an inquiry by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

Through all this, the conduct of the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Alun Michael, has been less than admirable. As readers will probably know, the Liberal Democrat party has consistently opposed the institution of PCCs. They are "elected by the public to hold Chief Constables and the force to account, making the police answerable to the communities they serve" as the official Association website has it. Instead, Mr Michael has acted merely as a spokesman for the police force, repeating the briefing that he had clearly been given. Clearly, one expects a PCC to stand up for the police within his area if they have been unfairly criticised, but to leap to their defence when there is doubt about their conduct and all the facts are not known is hardly "making the police answerable". The old system of chief constables being called to account by a committee of councillors, who are in constant touch with their electorate, was more effective. In South Wales at least, the post of Commissioner has shown itself to be little more than a sinecure. 

An apology saved up for the right occasion

 

A nice updating (available from Temu) of Brahms:

Johannes Brahms could be insufferably sarcastic and rude - even to his friends. On one occasion, after he had upset several people with a series of offensive remarks, Brahms rose to his feet and, preparing to leave the room, paused briefly at the door. "If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted," he said, turning, "I beg his pardon!" (Sources: P. Latham, Brahms; Leon Botstein, americansymphony.org

The Mounties at 150

 The Canadian Parliament passed an Act on 23rd May 1873 establishing the North-West Mounted Police.

Rail reliability

Network Rail (NR) throws in the towel. From a recent Railfuture bulletin:

One of rail's selling-points is that it can (properly maintained) keep going when exceptionally bad weather stops normal road transport. There was a striking illustration of this in the mid-1960s. There was a pressure group named "Rail Into Road" or something similar, led by prominent motoring enthusiasts, including the designer and racing motorist Sydney Allard. Their pitch was that rail was no longer economically viable and that railway lines should be torn up and wherever practicable turned into roads. A successful media campaign led to a meeting arranged at St Christopher House, then the Ministry of Transport HQ. Unfortunately, there was a snowstorm on the arranged date, and the only representative of the group who made it to Southwark Street was Sydney Allard, who took the precaution of travelling by train.

Climate change is a reason for beefing up railway maintenance rather than an excuse for giving up on it. It seems to me that as extreme weather events become more frequent a reliable rail network is essential for economic reasons and for the cohesion of the nation. A government which allows it to fall into disrepair, either through ignorance or through bribery and bullying by vested interests, betrays both our traditions and the future of the economy.

Caring Conservatism is not quite dead ...

 .. though Tory governments from Margaret Thatcher's onwards have almost extinguished it. 

There was a Backbench Business Committee debate on public access to nature, launched by Green MP Caroline Lucas, in the Commons last Thursday. Apart from some well-deserved criticism of the government for not doing enough, there was rare cross-party agreement about the benefits of opening up the natural world. The absence of a time limit also made for some well-developed arguments.

I was particularly struck by the contribution of Richard Graham, the Conservative member for Gloucester. He began by remarking how easy it was to escape from the city to well-known beauty spots like the Cotswolds and the Malvern Hills. But his main theme was how the council and local activists had managed to bring nature into the city. At times, he sounded like a Liberal Democrat.

Colleagues have made points about people from ethnic minority communities who live further from nature than others. That is true in some parts of the country, no doubt, but in a city our size of only 5.5 square miles, where we have a primary school that has more than 50 nationalities, we are all very close to the extraordinary combination of the canal, the hill, the river and the lakes. The question is, does everyone have equal inspiration and drive to go and find, use and draw pleasure from those great natural assets? That is where schools play a major part.

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At Matson and Robinswood, towards the great hill, we have done a huge amount. When I say “we”, I mean everybody collectively. Nobody should try to take individual ownership, because we must encourage everybody to create and to take individual and collective community ownership to make these projects sustainable and successful for more generations. Matson Park has improved, as has Haycroft Drive. We can see similar trends across the constituency of allowing more wild flowers and meadows, with paths through them. That greatly increases the amount of insects and birds that we can all see on our walks or cycle rides around the city.

 Part of the success of an active wildlife trust is stimulating friends of parks organisations, whether that is the Friends of Gloucester Park, the Friends of Tuffley Park or others. There are more such groups and the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust co-ordinates them. There are sessions where they can share best practice, look at how best to access new seeds, talk about tips on planting, and look at the management of friends’ groups, so that the finances are in good order and the governance is safe and accountable. All those things add to a greater sense of ownership. It is less about, “Why hasn’t the council done this, that or the other?” and more about, “What can we do, as friends of the park close to where we live, to help improve the state of the park, to litter- pick it ourselves and to take much more ownership and joy in what is being done?” 

 That can include restorative justice. Some 18 months ago, I planted 20 cherry trees—the sakura tree—donated by Japan in Gloucester Park. Just as they came into blossom, in spring last year, sadly all 20 of them were cut down by an individual. That was captured on CCTV and we know who the individual is. I am going to ask him to come and plant another 20 trees, which have again generously been donated by Japan. We will do that this autumn. I hope that the individual involved will come and take ownership and want to protect these trees, rather than to attack them, forever after.

Richard Graham was a Remainer. Sadly, his voting record on social issues, including cuts to various benefits, followed the government line. For that reason, Gloucester (largely unchanged in the new boundary disposition) may well change hands at the next election. Labour has, however, handicapped itself in constituencies like Gloucester in proposing a return to centrally-imposed house-building targets and a willingness to infringe greenbelts.  It is to be hoped that Liberal Democrat housing policy for England, currently being developed, does not follow suit. (Nor should the Welsh Labour government or, especially, its supporting MSs Jane Dodds and Plaid Cymru.) There will be many wavering normally-conservative voters, appalled by the state in which successive Tory administrations have left the economy and therefore minded to switch their vote, who may be put off from doing so.

Ed Davey should go further

 One can count on ones fingers the number of  Westminster party leaders who were born or brought up in difficult circumstances: David Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald, James Callaghan and possibly John Major come to mind. (All twentieth century, one notes. Labour/TU sponsorship began in the 1870s and MPs were not paid until 1911. Until then, MPs needed independent income to sustain their political careers.)  Surely none could have received more body blows in life than Ed Davey and his wife Emily, as the article referred to in the local party's blog lays out in detail. To have reached a seat at the cabinet table after all that is a tribute to Ed's fortitude.

There were some achievements in the face of Conservative opposition, too. He and Vince Cable stopped the programme of closure of post offices, begun by John Major and continued under Blair and Brown. He allowed newcomers to break into the charmed circle of big energy companies, though he was not to know how poor regulation would allow several in with poor economic structures which were bound to fail.

However, I would contend that he (and fellow Liberal Democrat ministers) could have done more to prevent the 2011 reversal of much that the coalition had achieved in its first year, even to the extent of threatening to pull out of the coalition (the terms of which the Conservative Health minister had already broken). How Osborne and company persuaded Nick Clegg that his party would lose more seats in an immediate general election than if they saw out the full term is a mystery. Further, for all Clegg's undoubted charm, there should have come a point when fellow-ministers should have ceased following him like sheep. The party on the back benches had already seen the feet of clay and would surely have backed a rebellion.

That Guardian article is headed with an apology. "We didn’t show we cared enough. We won’t make that mistake twice". I believe he should go further, and admit that he got it wrong over a whole slew of policies from selling Royal Mail on the cheap, through failing to maintain PPE in the NHS to signing away nuclear power generation to the French and Chinese. For someone who used to campaign against nuclear power, that was some U-turn. He should come clean over these things now, because otherwise they will come back with more force during next year's general election campaign. 

Nor is a simple "I hate Tories" message right for the time, though it may be effective come the election. In this period between the English local elections and the general, we should be emphasising our unique brand, as in Zoe Williams' final quote from Ed  “I believe in our environmental stuff, I believe in our political reform, I believe in our internationalism, I believe in civil liberties, I believe in our support for public services, I believe we’re caring," - and a return to at least a European free trade area, I would add.

Water treatment: we want action, not apologies

 Water UK chair Ruth Kelly's performance on BBC TV News yesterday recalled reminiscences of songwriter Johnny Mercer. Sober and by day, he was the epitome of the Southern gentleman. But, as one obituarist recalled:

he was one of those drinkers whose personality changed. He had the reputation of being a "mean drunk," even to the extent of many times insulting the hostess of a party given in his honor. But the next day remorse set in, and he sent apologies in the form of roses.

Apparently, one of those hostesses on receiving the latest such bouquet sent him a message to the effect: "I don't want your damned roses, just the nice you."

Sufferers from repeated sewage overflows and discharges over the years are not interested in warm words. They want long-overdue action to repair and upgrade the sewage infrastructure of England and Wales. Even Dŵr Cymru, which is not subject to shareholder pressure to maximise profit is not guiltless, though it could be argued that industrial south Wales suffered more than most from rapid unregulated building of infrastructure in the Industrial Revolution, so that the burden of correcting the errors of the past is all the greater.

 Faced with the enormous bills which the modernisation of our water and sewage systems required, and wanting to keep public spending down, Mrs Thatcher off-loaded the problem on to the private sector. She may even have naively believed that private sector efficiency and access to loan capital would transform the water industry. Instead, its new masters treated it as a cash cow and we have suffered ever since. It is impractical to re-nationalise the system, but it is not too much to hope that the water regulator Ofwat takes more vigorous action over transgressions, even if it has to be given more teeth.

Another anniversary to make one feel old

 The Watergate hearings started on this day fifty years ago.

How much did Tory donor know about money-laundering?

 The BBC is clearly very sure of its ground in naming top businessman Javed Marandi as a person of interest in a current investigation into money-laundering. 

Mr Marandi, 55, was born in Iran and grew up in London, where he still lives.

His ties to the Conservative Party emerged through reports of his generous donations. Between 2014 and 2020, he gave £633,800 according to Electoral Commission records.

[...]

He owns the iconic design brand, The Conran Shop, a stake in Anya Hindmarch Ltd, the luxury handbag firm, and an exclusive private members' club and hotel in Oxfordshire.

Along with his wife, he heads the Marandi Foundation, which funds the Prince and Princess of Wales's charity.

In 2021, Mr Marandi became a special adviser to homelessness charity Centrepoint, providing guidance on how it could expand its work with disadvantaged young people.

None of Mr Marandi's UK businesses or these organisations form any part of the NCA's investigation, which looked at earlier events.

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed how $2.9bn (£2.3bn) of dirty money - cash stolen from Azerbaijan's people and economy - had been spirited away by members of the country's elite. It was largely for their own benefit, but also to bribe European politicians.

Money route

According to documents from the NCA's case at Westminster Magistrates' Court, the suspect money that made its way to the Feyziyev family accounts in London had originated in bank accounts belonging to a company with neither employees, nor traceable records of its activities.Based in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, Baktelekom looked like a state-owned firm that has an almost identical name.

District Judge John Zani found that "substantial funds from this criminal enterprise" were then moved into two bank accounts in the Baltics belonging to Glasgow-registered shell companies.

Some of the cash was then moved onwards to accounts linked to Javanshir Feyziyev and Javad Marandi, according to the NCA.

There are more details in the BBC report.

Now those stories of splits have been denied ...

 ... do we believe them?

ttps://uk.news.yahoo.com/mornings-schofield-denies-willoughby-feud-084700233.html

https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2023-05-12/labour-plaid-cymru-agreement-should-remain-according-to-former-first-minister

Dangerous talk among Conservatives

 Liberal England draws attention to the Bournemouth symposium organised by the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), the party-within-a-party which supports Boris Johnson. The i newspaper quotes a passage which it says will appear in a keynote speech by the former Home Secretary, Priti Patel, criticising Rishi Sunak for "taking down a vote-winning political giant who was on course to secure a record-breaking fifth consecutive general election win for our party".

This delusion is apparently shared by many Tories. They seek to blame Sunak for English voters' putsch of Conservative councillors up and down the land, whereas - local issues apart - local electors formed their view of the Conservative brand based on the whole of the last four years, for most of which Johnson occupied No. 10. They do not accept that Sunak and Hunt have in fact steadied the economy. Confidence abroad is rising. After some profit-taking on the back of the Bank of England's latest rate rise, sterling has settled on a dollar value 3-4% above last year's. Admittedly, middle- to low-earners will not see the benefit of the drop in inflation which is clearly on the way, but they would hardly vote Conservative anyway. 

Political strategists in opposition parties clearly want the Tory rebellion to succeed. They know that a clearly divided party does not win elections. They also intuit that Johnson, having been seen through by the electorate with the help of the media, will be a vote-loser rather than a vote-winner. They would like nothing better than to see Johnson back on the political throne. But what would be good for Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Nationalists almost certainly spells disaster for the economy. For the sake of the country, CDO must not succeed.

Jonathan Calder suggests that the Conservative grass-roots are more extreme than the leadership, just as they were in Margaret Thatcher's day. Apparently, it was grass-roots pressure which caused the community charge (poll tax) to be rushed into operation rather than be phased in over ten years as was originally envisaged. Certainly, there is a lot of Johnson support out there, but I believe the picture is more mixed. There were actually two Conservative council gains amidst the bloodbath last Thursday. The i reports that in both Torbay and Wyre Forest, the successful campaigns were built on local issues, leg-work and "back to basics". Torbay's new leader puts his faith in his prime minister turning round the fortunes of the party, and that is echoed by Wyre Forest's Tory group leader: "The one thing Rishi has done is to restore an element of stability".

It will be too late to save the Tories, of course, but it should mean that there is a stable economy for an incoming progressive government to build on in 2024, Clearly Labour is set to be the largest party, but in a hung parliament, Liberal Democrats will be able to drive a hard bargain for their support. Hopefully, this time the parliamentary leadership will not drop the ball as they did in 2011.

Migration

 Sunak and Braverman's Illegal Migration Bill rightly had a mauling when it reached the Lords on Wednesday. It was even attacked by Andrew Green, the co-founder of Migration Watch UK, for not addressing the real concerns of his organisation. There were many fine speeches in the Second Reading debate, including several by Liberal Democrats. Mike German, former leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, made a telling contribution citing a real case where an abused victim of trafficking, now safe, would have been thrown out under the Bill being discussed. There was praise from Lord Alton, a former Lib Dem now on the cross-benches, for Theresa May. She had

steered the landmark modern-day slavery and human trafficking legislation through Parliament, providing pre-legislative scrutiny and building bipartisan and bicameral consensus and support. Last week, with my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss and the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, we spent an hour with Lady May and Sir Iain Duncan Smith. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will explain why their amendment on trafficking victims, alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, in his remarks, has not been accepted.

Let us be clear: the changes proposed in the Bill will not stop the boats, as modern slavery victims are just 6% of small boat arrivals. However, it will remove support and protection from many genuine victims, and will deter slavery victims exploited on British soil from coming forward, leaving them trapped in exploitation and making prosecuting criminal gangs even harder.

I was particularly struck by the contribution of another cross-bencher who was once a leading Liberal Democrat. Alex Carlile, Baron Carlile of Berriew, had been a government adviser on terrorism and, while a supporter of the European Court of Human Rights, has consistently pointed out its flaws. No soft liberal, he. So the government should have paid attention to his speech: 

My Lords, I declare a specific interest as a member and former chair of the Cambridge Woolf Institute’s independent Commission on the Integration of Refugees. I resigned as chair to be able fully to participate in the proceedings on this Bill.

I have listened with great care to all the speeches we have heard so far. I particularly agree with those of my noble and learned friend Lord Etherton and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. I recognise that the numbers of unprocessed asylum seekers and refugees speak for themselves. There should not be so many; there should not be a backlog of the kind that we have. 

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I agree with the Government to this extent: we need changes in asylum policy, management and possibly the law. However, I agree with others that the changes to the law proposed in this Bill are neither necessary nor proportionate.

I listened with great care to the interesting and persuasive speech by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, on rule 39 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That should be changed not through this Bill but through discussion in the Council of Europe, which is the appropriate organisation. Knowing his skill as an advocate, I can imagine him persuading courts that the British Government have been right in many cases to stick to decisions given under rule 39 because of the precedent they have set in doing so. This is not the place to deal with it.

I was concerned to hear some highly respected Peers whom I admire enormously suggesting that, because the House of Commons has passed this Bill, we are obliged to do so. Indeed, it led me during the short adjournment to play the game of cross-examining ChatGPT to see whether I could get it to agree with any of those propositions. I am sorry to say to those Peers that I failed; ChatGPT has consistently come up with something like, “The Members of the House of Lords are appointed to provide scrutiny and review of legislation passed by the House of Commons. They also act as a consultative body, providing expertise in various fields to assist in decision-making. Additionally, they may participate in debates and question government Ministers on policy issues”. Perhaps even former Cabinet Ministers should turn to ChatGPT before they decide to join your Lordships’ House. We have the duty, never mind the right, to do just what ChatGPT has insisted to me that we should.

Surely it is an imperative of sound public policy that it should enjoy an unimpeachable ethical and legal foundation. Where on the moral ground does this stand? The noble Lord, Lord German, reminded us of the title page of this Bill. If he or I in moving an amendment in Committee said, “I am unable to say that my amendment is compatible with convention rights but nevertheless I wish the Committee to proceed with it”—exactly the words on the front page of the Bill—the Minister, whoever it was, would shout me down for the effrontery of trying to break the law during a debate. But that is what the Government are doing. They should not get away with it. They are deliberately breaking the law.

How big is the problem we are dealing with? Has it been exaggerated by political rhetoric? My noble friend Lord Green, perhaps an unlikely source, reminded us that asylum seekers are a small proportion of immigrants, and the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, referred in her excellent speech to the figures in other countries, such as France, Germany, Italy and, above all, the United States. Why do we have this problem? Has it come upon us secretly in the night? Of course not; it is the result of years of failures by the Government to deal with the predictable and to reform the processing of refugees within existing law. To reform the law, they want to break the law—a most extraordinary proposition, particularly to the revising Chamber. Surely breaking the law should be the last resort.

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We should not flatter totalitarians by imitating their addictions. I think we should have a Committee stage on this Bill, during which we will show the Government how this work can be achieved much more empirically and efficiently. I hope to be able to play a part in doing so.

He was followed by Baroness Sugg, a Conservative peer, who raised questions about the treatment of pregnant women, of unaccompanied children, of victims of modern slavery, the lack of safe and legal routes for refugees and the unacceptable backlog of immigration and asylum claims; In conclusion, she echoed the concern from all sides of the Lords:

my noble friend will be well aware of the concerns from many eminent Members of your Lordships’ House, the UNHCR and many others that, as the Bill stands, it would breach the UK’s obligations under international refugee law. I hope that during the passage of the Bill the Government will be able to reassure noble Lords that it does not breach international law or international obligations, including the European Convention on Human Rights. That is not a position we should be in.

It seems to me that if the Lords' Committee does its job in removing the bad parts of the Bill, there will be virtually nothing left of it. There is sadly little prospect of this government accepting any of their Lordships' amendments, but at least the committee discussions will delay its enactment.

Heat And Dust

 "Receiving a rare showing" (Radio Times reviewer) last Wednesday on Film4 was "Heat and Dust", the culmination of Merchant-Ivory's India-set films. Merchant-Ivory Productions is now associated with a particular kind of period drama centred on the works of E.M. Forster and Henry James, but the partnership made their first real money from productions largely financed by major studios who, at that time of strict Indian currency controls, could not repatriate their rupee profits. Clearly production costs were lower in addition. One cannot imagine the big set-piece banquets, processions etc. of "Heat and Dust" being shot these days except perhaps for the guaranteed box-office of a Bond movie. It was also beautifully photographed. It was not surface glitz, though, a criticism which has stuck to later Merchant-Ivory films. The themes of colonialism, of convention - both Indian and British - and the interplay between them dominate the film.

Any production which boasts both Greta Scacchi and Julie Christie has a head-start, but the whole thing was perfectly cast. The cutting between the two time periods (1921 and 1982)  was clear, unlike some more modern movies. I did find certain passages within the same time-frames too episodic, but I accept that is a matter of personal taste. More pertinent, perhaps, is the character played by Nickolas Grace, who links the two periods, does not seem to have aged the requisite 60 years.

Sadly, the 1982 segment, originally a modern contrast with the fractious relationship between Indians and British, also appears as a period piece now. Anne (Julie Christie) relates how a tomb built in the past by a Nawab, a Muslim, is now treated as "sacred by both Hindus and Muslims", who jointly participate in an annual festival at the shrine. One wonders if those days will return to a country now in thrall to Hindu nationalism.

Fascism must not be confused with Nazism

Michael Rosen's guest on Radio 4's Word of Mouth yesterday was Jacob Stanley, author of How Propaganda Works (2015) and How Fascism Works (2018). The two had a valuable discussion, but I would quarrel with the good professor's assignment to "fascism" the worst excesses of Hitler and Himmler. The point is that fascism has been clearly defined in a book by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini, the man who coined the term. It does not necessarily involve genocide; this was an evil twist added by the Nazis. Indeed, many Italian Jews initially supported Mussolini's rise to power. It was only later that the Italian dictator followed Hitler in turning against Judaism. Even then, only a minority of Italy's Jews were sent north to the death camps.

I am not defending fascism. Its underlying illiberal philosophy is anathema. Nobody should have to live in a conformist militarist state ruled by a single strong man whose every word is law, and where dissent is forbidden. But one should be precise in the use of language. "Fascist" in particular has been thrown about as an insult, usually inappropriately.

Having said all that, the Rosen-Stanley discussion turned up some disturbing parallels between then and now. The sort of language used by Mussolini and his cohorts to gain populist support is cropping up again on both sides of the Atlantic, not to mention Moscow and Budapest. A wedge has been inserted into our democracy. We must ensure that it is not driven in further.