Over 200 statues and street names are at risk of removal across Wales, after Mark Drakeford dived headfirst into the culture war. Last November the First Minister commissioned a “Monuments and Street Names Audit” to look at anti-woke names and statues in Wales’ public life. It ended up listing 209 monuments…
The Welsh Government has now confirmed it is openly committed to “address[ing] fully the recommendations from the Monuments and Street Names Audit”, which listed the statues’ historical links to slavery following the Black Lives Matter protests last year.
The audit highlights those who “were directly involved with the slavery and the slave trade or opposed its abolition“, and states that those commemorated are often “presented solely as role models rather than representatives of challenging aspects of the past“. Following the audit’s release, Drakeford claimed it was “the first stage of a much bigger piece of work“. Now, in the Welsh Labour’s new Programme for Government, it looks like Drakeford’s open to renaming or toppling every anti-woke monument the audit identified…
Among those found to be offensive by the report included:
- A Gandhi statue in Cardiff Bay (unveiled by Carwyn Jones and Mark Drakeford themselves back in 2017). “Fascist, racist and sexual predator” according to one cited petition from Leicester
- Three statues of Admiral Nelson. Appeared on UK crowdsourced map ‘topple the racists’
- Two statues of the Duke of Wellington. “There have been calls to remove statues in Scotland by reason of his Indian campaigns.”
- Any pub named The Clarence. The Duke of Clarence: “spoke out strongly and on many occasions in favour of plantation owners and against abolition of the slave trade”
Drakeford will be marching to topple Nelson’s Column before long…
After his Sunday morning media round yesterday – following his shock defection to Labour in the Observer – Bercow immediately whizzed over to the Queen’s Club in West Kensington for an afternoon of tennis. Despite having just leapt into bed with a bunch of rabid socialists, Bercow and his son took up seats in the most expensive area. His old MP register of interests suggest the tickets were well over £600…
Awkwardly, Bercow’s Tory-esque courtside revelling already puts him at odds with his new comrades. Last week, King of the North Andy Burnham accused the government of elitism for prioritising the Wimbledon finals’ audience over Wembley’s Euros matches, claiming it is “one rule for tennis, another for everyone else.”
One rule for tennis, another for everyone else.👇🏻 https://t.co/iLiOC46zo0
— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) June 14, 2021
Bercow may be hoping for a second serve in politics – for now, it looks like he’ll continue being a ball boy…
Camden Council has spent £93,000 on an anti-racism training contract, despite cutting £230,000 worth of jobs. Priorities…
The council’s Library Service has committed to slashing jobs in order to save £230,000. The council will cut management/ back-office roles and frontline staff as part of its Mid-Term Financial Strategy and instead hopes to recruit more volunteers to compensate for this loss. The council will also cut further jobs to ensure the new Library Service structure costs remain within the revised service budget. Guido wonders why the council – which is clearly hard-pressed for cash – chose to waste £93,000 on ‘woke’ training instead of saving some of those jobs…
Slides leaked from the anti-racism training session include lessons on “types or racism” such as “white privilege, micro aggressions, intersectionality, [and] tone policing”. Sounds like £93,000 well spent…
Dominic Cummings’s Substack fan club certainly kept him busy over the weekend. So far, he’s received over 400 questions and sent 100 replies on topics varying from Corbyn and the culture wars, to Biden and border policy. Guido’s collated the best material below…
The most entertaining exchange was with Carole Cadwalladr, who forked out the £10 fan club fee to fire off a five-paragraph diatribe on her political grievances, lambasting Cummings on everything from Vote Leave campaign spending to his involvement in Boris’s election. The latter of which she adds: “by your own reckoning, this has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths”…
Cummings responded in equal length; on Cadwalladr’s claims that the Electoral Commission [EC] acted “unlawfully“, Cummings accuses it of being “an incompetent and confused entity”:
“Remember: the EC literally refused repeatedly to take evidence from the key 6 people involved!! […] Yes they came to [those] findings but the most extraordinary thing was they literally hired lawyers to fight lawyers hired by the crucial 6 to try to force them to take evidence from us.”
In response to allegations over Vote Leave’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica, Cummings added:
“Remember: CA had nothing to do with us, we never had the infamous Facebook data your mate Wylie had, there was no conspiracy!”
Turning to Carole’s ongoing campaign to spuriously ruin Darren Grimes’s life, Dom has pointed out the failure of the Electoral Commission to interview key witness during their biased investigation, which was “of course partly why the courts threw out the Grimes case, cos the EC had totally botched it… Also NB. the courts threw out Grimes case but this got no coverage cos of covid!” Carole is yet to respond…
Read the rest of Cummings’s views below:
At the start of the pandemic Khan ostentatiously accepted a £15,300 pay cut in an attempt to balance London’s books and coincidentally ahead of the Mayoral election. Now despite the fact the pandemic is not yet over and the books are still far from balanced, Khan has with much less fanfare decided to accept his full £152,734 salary. This salary is currently £20,000 more than the Prime Minister is paid…
Despite the fact that the delayed re-opening could cost the UK £1 billion a week, Khan no longer thinks the Greater London Authority needs help with its finances. This is in spite of the fact that under Khan’s watch, staffing costs for City Hall rose by 82%. Guido suspects Khan’s £15,000 pay cut did little to tackle this £29 million increased cost…
Guido spots the political world is once again set to collide with Love Island. The latest contestant announcement is 25-year-old Sharon Gaffka, a former beauty queen who now works as an Operations Lead for the DfT in Oxford. Awkwardly for a DfT advisor, it’s still unknown whether Love Island can film abroad this year…
Viewers have previously seen Zara McDermott compete – a then-Department for Education advisor – as well as an informed debate about Brexit and its effect on the trees. If civil servant Zara educated fellow contestants, presumably Sharon will cause some e-motion. The Love Island social media announcement says she’s “worked on government policies”, with The Sun claiming the policy in question was the Test & Trace system flop. Sharon’s friends have told the paper there’s no chance she’ll have sex on TV. Thankfully she won’t need a disease tracing system then…
UPDATE: The DfT has distanced itself from Gaffka, claiming she no longer works for the Department:
“Miss Gaffka was a contracted employee (non-permanent), working for the department for six months as an operational lead, before leaving to go on Love Island.”
