Lloyd’s announcement this week that it is going invest £12m in a series of initiatives to support recruitment and career progression for black and minority ethnic staff, in a programme called Inclusive Futures, as part of its response to the market’s historic involvement in the slave trade has been met with a mixed response.
This follows extensive research by Black Beyond Data, funded by the Mellon Foundation, a project based at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, USA, which was initiated just over three years ago when the Black Lives Matter movement cast new light on the involvement of London’s powerful financial institutions in financing, supporting and perpetuating the slave trade.
To no-one’s surprise it found that Lloyd’s played a significant role in that vile, brutal and inhumane trade.
In addition to £12m going into Inclusive Futures, Lloyd’s says US$50m (£40m) will be invested globally through the African Development Bank and Inter-American Development Bank focused on “regions affected by historical enslavement”. We await greater clarity on what that means.
Other initiatives include establishing a permanent memorial at Lloyd’s to remember the victims of transatlantic slavery, sponsoring a requiem by composer David Önaç to memorialise enslaved Africans, and inaugurating an annual lecture to be given by speakers on diversity and history – the Flint Lectures – named after the first black broker to work at Lloyd’s.
This is good as far as it goes.
It has run into predictable criticism from some campaigners who want institutions that benefitted from slavery to pay reparations directly to the descendants of slaves. This sounds laudable in principle but would be fraught with difficulties and could see a lot of money spent on administering what would inevitably be a highly complex scheme. The passage of time, coupled with the patchy historical records would mean that identifying the right people and fairly allocating money would be almost impossible.
Is £12m enough? I don’t know the answer to that. It seems a very modest sum considering the extent of its involvement in the slave trade and the wealth of the modern insurance market. I think the pressure to increase that investment and extend the scope of its Inclusive Futures project could well see it increase.
Lloyd’s has done a good job in laying out its past, much of which can be viewed in an online exhibition called Underwriting Souls. There is also a modest physical exhibition in the Lloyd’s building for those who work there to visit.
The big omission, and one that I have raised before, is the lack of any connection to slavery today.
Modern slavery is a serious problem. There are clear definitions of it and far too many examples around the world, the most serious, and probably the largest, being the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province in China.
It is all very well making an effort to acknowledge the part the London insurance market played in facilitating slavery 250 years ago but what if we are repeating that crime now? How will our descendants judge us if we stand by and do not ask serious questions about the way some of the businesses that are insured into Lloyd’s operate and their involvement in modern slavery?
They will judge us harshly, and rightly so.
Lloyd’s has decisively put to bed the speculation that has been running since the Covid pandemic lockdowns that it might leave its present Lime Street HQ. Earlier this year it finally stopped the persistent rumours that it might exercise the 2026 break clause in its lease. Now, the market authorities have said they are looking to extend the lease beyond its current end in 2031. This is not just talk. They have backed their words with investment in the main underwriting floor which re-opened recently after a major summer re-fit.
This should be welcomed by everyone who cares about ensuring London maintains its key position in the global insurance market.
Some people forget that Lloyd’s is merely a tenant in its own building. Although it commissioned the building on the site of an older Lloyd’s building from the 1920s, it no longer owns it. It was first sold to Commerzbank for £231m in 2005 before Chinese insurer Ping An paid £260m for it in 2013. The current lease extends to 2031, with that now dismissed break clause in 2026.
It is an iconic building, designed by Richard Rogers and once damned with faint praise to me by Alan Lord, the market’s chief executive when the building opened in the mid-1980s: “If you look around London at the buildings constructed since the war it makes every other office look as about as innovative as an igloo. You might love it or loathe it but you cannot be neutral about it.”
Over the subsequent decades most people have at least come to appreciate it, if not love it. It is seen the world over as the Lloyd’s building, the only truly distinctive building associated with the insurance industry in the City of London. Although people may argue that a physical presence in the City is less important in this digital age, it still sends out a clear message about the importance of the insurance industry to the fortunes of the City and, in turn, the UK economy.
The faith being shown in the building is more than affection for an important architectural feature of the City of London. It says Lloyd’s believes it has an important part to play in the market’s future – a future that also includes significant investment in a wide range of digital initiatives. It is now up to insurers, underwriters, brokers and everyone who does business through London to show they, too, are committed to that vision of a varied future.
“Brexiters outraged after crowds wave EU flag at Last Night of the Proms”, screams a headline on The Guardian website this morning.
You have to weep at the ignorance and stupidity of these brain-dead Brexiters. They pretend to care about freedom but when people exercise their own individual freedom of choice over which flag to wave at a concert they foam at the mouth with outrage.
Nobody was forced to take a flag. It was a matter of personal choice. I think it says a lot for the sort of world these right-wing fanatics want us to live in that this offends them so much. Perhaps they ought to contemplate what “Britons never shall be slaves” or “Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free” really mean.
They also profoundly misunderstand the Last Night of the Proms. It is a party at the end of a two-month long season of music concerts, the longest, and widely acknowledged as the greatest, classical music festival in the world. For many years I went to the Proms every summer and you make some great friends there – indeed, it is where I met Mariette, my wife of over 40 years. The Last Night is a farewell to many of those friends for another year, an opportunity to let one’s hair down and have a sing-song together with people you have shared the most wonderful musical experiences with night-after-night for those two months. Even in the 1970s it was never, for the Promenaders, a festival of patriotism, beyond the pride of being part of a great music festival.
Even back then flags of other nations were mixed in with the Union Flags, and EU flags have been growing in number over the last decade. The fact that so many people took them when given the opportunity yesterday is a commentary on where music lovers, always internationalists, now stand on one of the great debates of our time. I expect many people were waving both an EU flag and a Union Flag: I know I would have been.
The trouble is that those now so upset about one concert in a season of over 80 events see it in isolation, having no understanding of its context. They are also no defenders of the sort of freedom I treasure.
• (Of course, there are some flags that you would not expect see there and which would be antithetical to the values of an international and increasingly diverse music festival. The EU flag is certainly not one of those. That is a wider debate for another day)
The letters column of The Guardian has been carrying several comments from readers about the media owner’s decision to block Open GI, which powers ChatGPT, from harvesting its content. Many of these correspondents argue that The Guardian should set aside its commercial interests and concerns about intellectual property and allow developers of artificial intelligence tools to use its content to “train” its own content generating machines.
The Guardian is not alone in taking this approach. Other reputable media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic are doing the same.
They are right to do so.
The argument that if you do not allow AI developers to exploit quality content then the output of their products will be poor quality because it must draw on less reputable sources is deeply flawed. Of course the developers want to be able to draw on a wide variety of sources, especially those that have invested time, money and skills in producing top quality content. It is in their commercial interests to do so. If their products produce rubbish then people will not want them – once they realise they are not reliable. It is not the job of The Guardian and the content creators that work for it and other media outlets to boost the profits of AI developers.
If the developers of AI products want to use content created by others they should negotiate proper terms and offer appropriate payment for doing so.
This seems very reminiscent of the early days of the internet when some people threw their hands up in horror at the idea that they might actually have to pay for some online content. Many argued that the internet was an open shop where anyone could use anyone else’s content – be that words, images, illustrations – without having to pay the creators. Of course, those same people would never contemplate working for nothing themselves.
We seem to be allowing artificial intelligence to drag us back into that dismal space where people think it is OK to rip off other people’s work and not pay for it.
It is not the job of content creators or media owners to polish up AI products. That is the job of developers. They will have to work much harder in vetting sources, checking facts and editing the output. Just like the rest of us who have ever worked in publishing, journalism and the creative industries do.
In the meantime, that old adage “Buyer Beware” must be first and foremost in the minds of the users of generative AI tools.
There is no end to Tory sleaze. Johnson’s shameful Resignation Honours List, Nadine – Give me a Peerage – Dorries, Sunak’s feeble excuses for not declaring huge shareholdings and soon we will have Liz Truss’s Resignation Honours List.
All of these scandals have things in common: a complete disregard for rules and conventions, unparalleled arrogance and a deep sense of unearned entitlement.
Truss dishing out honours for 49 days of unmitigated disaster as Prime Minister embodies and magnifies all these deeply corrosive faults. Corrosive because they undermine respect for public service and further lower all politicians in the public’s minds. Those are not ingredients for a healthy democracy and public space.
You have to applaud the decency of the two people rumoured to have declined to be named in this list of shame. Perhaps they realised the association with Truss would haunt them for the rest of their lives, much as people will forever question those on Johnson’s list, especially his new Peers.
This will only heighten the need for a complete overhaul of our honours system, although there is no chance of that happening under this Tory government. It knows its days are numbered and is determined to milk the system for all it is worth, diminishing the value of honours for all those wonderful people who dedicate their lives to genuine public and community service. Of course, they are largely the very people Tories care nothing about, except when it comes to empty election slogans.
Most countries have a system for honouring people who deserve public recognition for their service. Many prohibit the award of any honours to serving politicians. That would be a start.
Much else needs fundamental reform before we end up with an honours system fit for the 21st century, starting with the House of Lords. If the next non-Tory government wants to be seen as progressive, sweeping away the 18th century anachronism at the heart of our Parliamentary system is essential.
Further down the honours ladder more needs to be done to make them inclusive. The mostly widely awarded honours retain a heavy legacy of Empire. I have long thought that a simple change from Order of the British Empire to Order of British Excellence would be a seamless transition to the more inclusive era we now live in.
And one of the simplest reforms would be to scrap the privilege granted to Prime Ministers to create their own honours lists. Truss certainly doesn’t deserve one.
When Twitter was launched in 2006 it quickly became a social media phenomenon. Its brevity, ease of use and sheer novelty saw it surge past other social media platforms in popularity and usage.
Now, under the ownership of Elon Musk, with the cack-handed re-branding to X, it is in decline, with long-term users deserting it in droves. Every decision Musk makes seems to accelerate this downward trajectory.
As someone who joined Twitter over 14 years ago, has used it extensively and helped many organisations establish their own Twitter presence, this is not something I relish. However, it cannot be ignored.
Almost from the day he walked into the Twitter boardroom, Musk has seemed bent on its destruction. The savage cutbacks in staff meant that offensive, inaccurate and outrageously false content found its way back onto the platform. The ending of the blue tick verification and its replacement with a worthless paid for option was another blow to those of us who wanted to use Twitter responsibly and engage with others of a similar disposition.
Musk has also ended the ability of many other apps to display Twitter/X content, including WordPress which this site uses. The Twitter feed that was such a familiar feature of so many websites has disappeared. In many ways, this is the most baffling of Musk’s decisions. The Twitter feeds were a showcase for the platform, inviting people, including non-users, to engage with it. Surely, it was a useful marketing tool?
The cumulative effect of these changes has had a negative impact.
Decline in engagement
Over the last few months, I have noticed a sharp decline in engagement on Twitter, even before its rebranding to the sinister looking black X. The same type of content has been getting far less response, sharing and comment than previously. I have also seen less and less content of interest to me in my timeline. This suggests the new algorithm relegates content that interests me to the fringes or that people who posted that sort of content have deserted the platform. I suspect it is a combination of the two.
I was already questioning the value of Twitter, on which I have a modest following of just over 5000, but have despaired over the last two weeks as Musk has continued with his bizarre campaign of wonton destruction of the platform.
The withdrawal of Tweetdeck and its replacement with an inferior paid for option is among the worst of the many poor decisions Musk has made. It was a fantastic tool for organising accounts and content into manageable groups, sharing those communities with others and quickly focussing on the specific content that was of interest to you just when you needed to. Without it, my timeline has become almost unmanageable.
Yes, there are other tools – communities, hashtags and so on – but they do not offer the same control, ease of use and focus that Tweetdeck offered.
Contempt for customers
The way Tweetdeck was canned also laid bare Musk’s contempt for his customers. No warning, no explanation, no incentive to explore his new alternative: it was just turned off one morning.
Now, comes the announcement that the ability to block accounts is being withdrawn. This cancels the basic right to chose who you engage with and who you want to see your content. Leaving the option to mute accounts is hardly an adequate substitute.
It is a further step into the sort of unfettered anarchy that many imagined Twitter was previously. It might have been messy, occasionally leaving you open to seeing content you would rather avoid and being on the receiving end of unwelcome engagement but you had a range of tools available to help you deal with that. Whittling away those tools will drive away more professional users, businesses and responsible organisations. It is a trend that is already powerfully in motion. I know people who left Twitter when Musk took over, many more who have lost interest in it and use it less. I will join the latter group. I will not be casting anything more that the occasional glance at it, adding far less content than I have done over the last 14 years, all while I watch Musk bury a once thriving social media platform – X marks the spot.
Mike Bright, who died from sepsis last week, aged 78, was a polarising character. It was impossible to be neutral in your response to him in life, and so it is in death.
The comments from those who knew him, worked with him and for him captured in Jonathan Swift’s report of his death in Insurance Post give an accurate flavour of how the insurance world viewed Bright. The comments on the LinkedIn post of that story go even further in exposing the respect and affection he inspired, and the contempt and hate he provoked.
I have written many times about the legacy of Bright and Independent Insurance, having been at the editorial helm of Post and Insurance Age while he was in his pomp at Independent and, before that, Lombard Elizabethan/Continental.
Here is my summary of that legacy from 2011, with thanks to Jonathan Swift and Insurance Post for allowing me to reproduce it here.
•••••••••••••••••
From the day a group of insurance journalists found themselves huddled on windswept airfield [in July 1987] waiting for an airship to emerge from a hanger, which it never did, we knew Independent Insurance was going to be different.
I had followed Michael Bright’s career since his early days at Lombard Elizabethan so I knew that his transformation of Allstate into Independent would be done with some panache and genuine sense of purpose. He had plenty of outspoken views on the insurance market, especially the relationship between insurers and brokers, so it was no surprise to see this as one of the key focuses. Its broker clubs transformed the market, as did its fresh, modern approach to branding and advertising.
Hospitality was big with Independent, whether it was the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra or its box at Wembley. Accepting it often came at a price, however, as on more than one occasion I was chided by Mr Bright for something I, or one of my colleagues on Post, had written. Indeed, this stormy relationship stretched back to the Lombard days, when I was once greeted at a cricket match by the booming Mr Bright announcing to a tent full of brokers: “Worsfold, I don’t know how you have the cheek to show your face here after what you have written.” That said, he could be very entertaining and engaging as a host when he wanted to be.
Mr Bright has often been cast as a bully but there was much more to him than that. He once invited a long-serving very junior member of staff to the box at Wembley for an FA Cup final because he was a Liverpool fan, who were in that year’s final. It wasn’t his fault they lost to Wimbledon that day. He was genuinely upset for the guy that his gesture had backfired.
Despite all the outward success of the company, there were always tensions right at the heart of Independent. The departure of senior directors such as Robert McCracken, Keith Rutter and Alan Clarke always left one nervous about what it was like right at the heart of Independent, although the bluff and loyal — disastrously loyal as it turned out — Phil Condon always offset some of those concerns. Questioning Mr Bright about this at a press conference rendered me virtually persona non grata as far as he was concerned for the last three years before the firm’s ignominious collapse. [It also left Post considerably poorer as, having failed to get lawyers to bring me to heel, he withdrew Independent’s substantial advertising and sponsorship from Post. The upside of this was that when Independent went down it owed Post virtually nothing, unlike other publications he threw money at].
Independent always did everything with a certain style and lavish, if not always classy, luxury. At the Monte Carlo Reinsurance Rendezvous you met everybody else in one of the bars or cafes where brokers, insurers and reinsurers buzz around with a manic sense of purpose. You met Messrs Bright and Condon in their shorts and t-shirts sitting at a beach table under a bar umbrella with Del Boy-sized cocktails in hand. That was the same Mr Condon who claimed at his trial that he knew nothing about reinsurance and never had anything to do with it.
Independent Insurance was Michael Bright, and in the end it was his ego that brought it down. He really believed he could buck the market and spin a deal or six to get through the downturn without sacrificing his promises to grow and grow.
•••••••••••••••••••••••
There is more background on the demise of Independent and the trial of Bright, Condon and Lomas in the piece I wrote in 2007 in the wake of their conviction, From Pomp to Prison
One of this government’s most dishonest policies is the Voter ID scheme which obliges people wanting to vote to arrive at polling stations with a form of photo ID chosen from a cynically constructed list.
Superficially, it looks like a solution in search of a problem. That is where the dishonesty comes in.
The weak, disingenuous arguments put forward by the Tories that it was to stop voter fraud, where someone impersonates a registered voter, were simply lies. Voter fraud is an insignificant, almost non-existent, problem. The real reason was a crude, misdirected attempt at voter suppression. Armed with their highly selective list of acceptable ID they hoped to bar many young people – far less likely support the Tories at the best of times, let alone this corrupt shambles – from voting.
Did it work?
Only up to a point. The report from the Electoral Commission says 14,000 people were officially recorded as being turned away from polling stations in the local elections in May and did not return. That is 14,000 too many, especially as many were identified as being from disadvantaged groups. Added to that has to be the number of people who did not even get into a polling station as they were met by “greeters” who asked if they had ID, turning away those without it before they had a chance to have their presence at the polling station officially recorded. 40% of polling stations used this system.
I certainly saw this happen at my own polling station in the Brentwood Borough Council ward of Shenfield. Some of those I saw who were put off at this stage came back later but, although I wasn’t outside the station for more than a couple of hours, I suspect many did not.
I had to smile at some of the findings in the Electoral Commission report which suggested that the elderly – who are usually more likely to vote Tory – were disproportionately represented among those 14,000 disenfranchised voters.
Some research has suggested that as many as 400,000 people could be put off from voting at a General Election because of the hassle of finding suitable ID, or because they do not have something that is on the list and do not know about the ways of obtaining acceptable identification from their local council. That is a shocking number.
Turnout in elections has been steadily falling over the years. That is not good for democracy. Let’s not mince words: anything that makes it less likely citizens will vote is an attack on democracy.
This policy needs to be scrapped as part of a wider reform of electoral law in this country. This should include lowering the voting age to 16 and introducing proportional representation for all elections. The latter could have an explosive impact on democracy in the UK as it would remove the need for the awkward permanent coalitions we call the Conservative and Labour parties. Both would fragment as the pressure to form large parties uncomfortable in their own skins would be removed.
- I am happy to record that, despite the new impediments to voting, the good people of Shenfield still produced one of the largest ward turnouts in the recent local elections, 41.4%.
- To those who throw their hands up horror at the thought of coalitions running national and local government, I can report that the Joint Administration we – the Liberal Democrats – have formed with Labour in Brentwood to wrest control of the Council from the Tories has hit the ground running and has all the hallmarks of a successful partnership. It can be done.
The UK government this week started to deliver on its promise to rein in SLAPPS (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) but its proposals do not go far enough.
SLAPPS are a major challenge for the media. They are used to bully journalists and publishers and deter genuine investigative journalism. They are a worldwide phenomenon and are often accompanied by serious threats to the safety of journalists. The people who use SLAPPS have few scruples.
The scope and scale of SLAPPS varies enormously but usually feature a barrage of flimsy claims for defamation or breach of privacy from wealthy, powerful individuals seeking to prevent investigation of potential wrongdoing. They were especially popular among Russian oligarchs but by no means limited to them.
Now, the UK government has announced that the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, currently going through Parliament, will be amended to provide judges with greater powers to dismiss lawsuits relating to economic crime that are designed to evade scrutiny and stifle freedom of speech.
The limitation to economic crime is disappointing. The government says around 70% of SLAPPS are related to economic crime and corruption and will be caught by the new rules. That still leaves many important areas of investigative journalism exposed, especially where the issues are reputational and not economic.
For instance, the initial exposure of Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual predator was subject to a barrage of legal threats in an attempt to close down the investigation. That was a reputational issue, not an economic one.
The proposals have other weaknesses.
The amendments to the Bill propose allowing judges to apply a two-part test. First to determine whether a case meets the definition of an economic crime and, second, whether it has a reasonable chance of success. The scope for protracted and expensive arguments about whether a particular case falls within the definition of economic crime is especially worrying. It is just the sort of uncertainty that law firms love.
There is also the suggestion that a case must get as far as the courts before any action to curtail a SLAPP can be taken. The damage is often done long before a case gets near a court: that is the purpose of most SLAPPS.
The users of SLAPPS are frequently making claims that could never realistically be pursued but have the sole purpose of deterring investigation. They are taking advantage of the fact that investigative journalists often do not have access to the sort of very expensive legal advice needed to defend these claims, so they give up at the first hint of trouble. It is unclear how the government proposals will stop this happening, although there is mention of introducing limits on costs.
Campaigners for free speech, the media and many legal professional bodies have advocated a much broader three-fold test to be applied:
• The investigation that has provoked the SLAPP has to be in the public interest.
• There must be some “abuse of process”.
• The complaint must be of insufficient merit to require further judicial investigation.
The other weakness is that the proposals only apply in England and Wales. There is nothing in the pipeline for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The UK government has at least moved faster than the European Union which is still deliberating on how best to clamp down on SLAPPS. The longer the EU takes, the greater the scope for the unscrupulous to indulge in a bit of forum shopping and find a jurisdiction that allows them to bully and harass.
We need more comprehensive and speedier action to end this menace.
A week ago we were being reassured by regulators and an army of experts that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was an isolated case and that there would be no contagion across the banking and global financial system. Those reassurances look rather futile and misplaced today, as we wake up to the news that another bank, First Republic, has had to be rescued, following the dramatic intervention of the Swiss Central Bank to stabilise Credit Suisse.
How has it come to this just 13 years after the last crisis in the global banking system?
Of course, it is different this time. In 2008 it was the failure of banks and regulators to spot the risks bubbling up in the US sub-prime mortgage market and the implications for a range of financial instruments built on those shaky foundations. This time it is the rise in interest rates as major economies try to put the brakes on inflation.
Just stop for a moment to think about that.
If banks cannot identify and manage interest rate risks what is going on? Surely, this should be a core skill. What appears to have happened is that the years of cheap money and rock bottom interest rates have so distorted business models and blunted risk management skills that we now find ourselves teetering on the brink of another global banking crisis.
You may ask where have the regulators who promised tougher regimes, better monitoring and forensic stress testing been?
There is an ugly war of words brewing among global financial regulators with the principal European regulators pointing angry fingers at their US counterparts for watering down some of the safeguards put in place after the Global Financial Crisis at the behest of many banks, including SVB. There is a lot of truth in this accusation but the UK and Europe is not without its share of blame in relaxing their scrutiny of bank’s business models and asking searching questions about their ability to respond to changing market conditions.
We must pause solvency reforms in UK
While the world’s financial markets look around nervously to see whether the contagion will spread further, there needs to be a rapid reassessment of the various plans in the pipeline to relax solvency rules for banks, insurance companies and pension funds, especially in the UK where the reform agenda has been hijacked by Brexit zealots. Their desire to portray the UK as an easier place to set up and do business in the financial services sector is fraught with danger and the planned watering down of the solvency rules for insurance companies and pension funds needs to be reined back and paused so its impact can be reassessed in the light of the latest wave of instability whirling around the global financial system.
David Worsfold 