Diversity essential so outlaw online abuse
Women’s Equality Network (WEN) Wales stands in solidarity with Stephen Doughty MP and all politicians who experience abhorrent levels of online abuse every day and are left unprotected by social media companies.
It is not acceptable for these companies to do nothing, and no wonder that women and minorities remain so under-represented in Welsh society given the abuse levelled at them. Internet trolls are frequently able to hide behind the curtain of online anonymity.
With little or no protection offered by social media companies, it remains shocking yet unsurprising that a hundred years since the first women got the vote that there has never been a black, Asian or ethnic- minority woman Assembly Member in Wales, and that disabled people and those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or trans are so under-represented in public and political spaces in Wales and the UK.
We at WEN Wales are advocating a 50:50 gender-balanced National Assembly for Wales by 2021, with proportional representation of diversity among candidates and elected politicians and officials. Social media companies must acknowledge their role and take proper responsibility for their place in society so people of all walks of life can step into the public eye without fear of constant abuse both online and offline.
Hilary Watson
Policy & Communications Officer / Swyddog Polisi a Chyfathrebu
Women’s Equality Network (WEN) Wales / Rhwydwaith Cydraddoldeb Menywod (RhCM) Cymru Cardiff
Look at Lesotho example
Along with my late wife, I had the pleasure of living in Africa. In our case it was in Lesotho, whose Basotho people warmly welcomed us throughout our stay with them.
Like Wales, Lesotho lives in the shadow of a bigger neighbour. For Wales it is England, for Lesotho it is South Africa, by which it is completely encircled. That is where the similarity ends. Lesotho established full sovereignty from the UK in 1966: Wales has yet to do so, and continues to lag behind England, Scotland and Northern Ireland in the economic stakes.
As far as I can find, Mrs May did not actually venture into Lesotho. Had she done so, she might have returned to London having learned how to deliver a mega-project like the prize-winning, World Bank- acclaimed, US $3.6bn phase one of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project Water Project (“LHWP”) on which I worked for nine years. This was a project that was completed on time and within budget. It stands in marked contrast with the news that Mrs May received on returning home, that the completion of Crossrail 1, the UK’s latest mega-infrastructure project, would, like so many others, be delayed, with the budget, like so many others, having to be increased.
Converting the £4bn, reportedly, extra money that Mrs May put on the table for the whole of Africa into US$, the American National Public Radio calculates it to be US$5.1 billion: in other words, aside from any fluctuation over time, what the UK is so “generously” offering the African continent is only US$ 1.5 billion more than Phase 1 of the LHWP cost: even then it is reported to be funded out of the aid budget.
Of course, this takes no account of the wealth forcibly extracted out of this continent by imperial Britain by way of mining and other activities: nor does it take account of missionary-enforced adoption by Africans of Christianity, something that the man in whose name the religion was enforced would have abhorred; uprooting Africans into slavery to the other side of the Atlantic, and the recently exposed treatment of the Windrush generation.
As regards Lesotho in particular, by the time we left in 2003 Chinese presence had increased exponentially and it is possible that the Chinese had more in common with the Basotho, and other African peoples, than the British might have: after all, China had at one time also experienced assumed racial superiority, plus enforced trade. Now, especially as Brexit looms, it might well be that China seeks its pound of flesh, as might their African counterparts in the fullness of time.
To close with Mrs May, there is one thing for sure, it is that the Basotho, and Africans in general, will not have thought much of her dancing repertoire.
Derek Griffiths
Llandaff, Cardiff
Boris’s ambition outstrips ability
Boris Johnson is making yet another bid for the premiership despite his disastrous stint as Foreign Secretary which clearly demonstrated that his overweening ambition far outstrips his ability to do the job.
It’s thanks to him and his extreme Brexiteer clique in the Tory Party that Mrs May felt obliged to rule out our membership of the single market at a Tory conference, which makes the Irish Border an insurmountable obstacle to a deal with the EU.
Johnson is the leader of a wealthy elite who will be totally unaffected by the disaster of a chaotic no-deal Brexit. He is totally unashamed of having lied in front of the bus that promised £350m a week for the NHS, which was a reason why many voters voted Leave who don’t normally vote because they know their votes won’t count in our first-past-the-post voting system.
We desperately need an effective opposition to get their act together and rid us of this minority government that has totally failed to deliver for the people of Britain, whichever way they voted in the referendum.
Margaret Phelps
Penarth
‘Global Britain’... don’t be fooled
The current impasse in Brexit is the result of 40 years of whinging and two years of fairytales provided by Brexiteers.
If, for example, the government held a referendum as to whether or not every adult in full-time work in this country should get a salary of £100k per annum then doubtless it could pass, but said government would soon find the result impossible to implement. Likewise with Brexit.
You simply cannot have a hard Brexit with a soft border as in Northern Ireland, and if “fangs”- type business such as Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google and Samsung demand access to a single market then Theresa May will have little choice but to give in to them.
She has already allowed French and Chinese companies to build an unwanted nuclear power station here and to give a British fig leaf to Trump’s attacks on Syria. This is regardless of the result of the referendum.
It’s high time those shouting for a hard Brexit realised this instead of fooling themselves about “a great trading nation” and “global Britain”.
Nigel Baker
Roath, Cardiff
