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On Thursday afternoon the governments preferred candidate for the chair of the BBC, Richard Sharp, will appear before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee as part of the process that leads to his formal appointment to a four-year term at the apex of the BBC hierarchy.

When news of Sharps appointment broke last week, left-leaning commentators were quick to call it another example of Tory cronyism: Sharp has given more than 400,000 to the party or its MPs since 2001. He is also reported to have mentored the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, at Goldman Sachs and to have acted as an economic adviser to Boris Johnson when he was London mayor.

Conservative commentators replied, reasonably enough, that Labours record was no better. Twenty years ago, Blair appointed the Labour donor (and Goldman Sachs partner) Gavyn Davies as BBC chair. Davies, who was later forced to resign after the Hutton inquiry, was also very close to the then chancellor, Gordon Brown, whose office was headed by Daviess wife, Sue Nye.

This unedifying debate distracts from the real issue with all these appointments that the chair of an organisation with a self-described mission to hold power to account is appointed by the government. As one BBC insider remarked on Sharps appointment: Whatever you think of bankers, he is very client-friendly, and our biggest client is the government. At best, it is a system that threatens the BBCs independence; at worst, its very public purpose.

The first chair to have ambitions and a mandate to change the culture of the BBC was the Conservative peer Charles Hill. His appointment in 1967 signalled the beginning of the end for the much celebrated golden age of growth and innovation at the BBC under director general Hugh Greene. As chair, Hill marginalised Greene, strengthened governmental oversight and commissioned a series of reports from McKinsey, leading to unpopular organisational reform and a severe loss of morale.

If appointments to the role of BBC chair have usually been less controversial, it is not because the mechanism itself has become more political, but that there has usually been a higher degree of elite consensus. Lord Hill was not appointed by his own party, but by the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson. Davies was certainly close to the Labour party, but he had served as an adviser to the Conservative treasury and as an investment banker, he was hardly a figure of the left. When establishment consensus and constitutional niceties are broken, it tends to be by the right. It was the Thatcher era that saw the most overly politicised appointments to the BBC, with the chair Marmaduke Hussey eventually orchestrating the removal of the director general Alasdair Milne.

To some extent, therefore, Sharps appointment as chair follows the general pattern: an establishment figure with close ties to the government of the day. Just like the incumbent chair, David Clementi, Sharp studied PPE at Oxford, worked in investment banking and has held a position at the Bank of England.

Given the context of his appointment, however, and what we know about his political affiliations, there are very good reasons to be concerned.

First, Sharp will serve alongside a director general, Tim Davie, who was a Conservative party member and business executive, creating a rightwing, market-oriented duo at the top of the BBC. Second, like Clementi, he arguably has more power than previous BBC chairs, who headed boards kept at one remove from the management.

Finally, Sharp is not merely a Conservative, and not even merely a Conservative donor. Since 2002 he has been a director of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the Westminster thinktank founded by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph to win over the Conservative party to what would later be called neoliberalism. Given the size of his donations to the Tories, Sharp is also likely to be a major donor to CPS (the CPS refuses to identify its funders).

Sharps family foundation donates to the Institute for Policy Research, an obscure charitable organisation that funnels money to the CPS as well as to other organisations aligned with the right of the Conservative party, among them the Taxpayers Alliance, MigrationWatch UK and News-watch, an organisation that has produced a number of reports alleging anti-EU bias in BBC reporting. His foundation has also funded the controversial counter-extremism organisation Quilliam, which lobbies in support of strict counter-terrorism policies.

Sharps prominence in the British conservative movement is a worry for the political independence of the BBC but what is more worrying still is that he arrives at a time when the future of public media is in jeopardy. BBC supporters breathed a sigh of relief at the departure of Dominic Cummings from No 10, but Sharp is drawn from the same political milieu; if his CPS affiliation is anything to go by, he will be no friend of public service broadcasting. Allegations of liberal-left bias and endless culture wars make the headlines, but what has really driven government media policy is the commercialisation of programme-making and the erosion of the BBCs public service ethos.

Central to the rightwing critique of the BBC is the assumption that culture is not a common resource to be publicly supported, but a matter of personal preference something to be consumed or, for the wealthy, patronised. What truly offends the neoliberal sensibility about the BBC is that citizens are compelled to support an organisation that offers no mechanism for market-based consumer preference. The BBC has never really mounted an effective response to this critique.

Generally, it has instead pointed to the quality of its output and, quite correctly, to the greater efficiency and value for money that public provision offers. The latter point might seem counterintuitive given that we normally associate efficiency with the private sector. But profitable private media requires considerable investment in marketing and customer management, which have significant costs.

The challenge for public provision is that it requires political support. The right has always been more attentive to the politics of the media than the left, and there is now a concerted effort under way to reshape the media environment in the UK, as is evidenced by GB News, Times Radio, and a new broadcaster in the offing from News UK.

The rights strategy is not to take the BBC head on, but to usher in a new media regime dominated by corporate players. The debates and negotiations around the future of the BBC between now and 2027 will determine what shape this emergent media system takes. The present direction of travel promises highly politicised broadcasters and a global oligopoly of rival digital content platforms perhaps with some requirements for public interest content at the margins. Such a system of journalism and cultural production will be no more responsive to audiences than the BBC, and crucially will not offer the universal provision that should be core to its mission.

A BBC headed by Davie and Sharp is highly unlikely to publicly champion universality in news, education and culture, still less a vision of accountability outside market mechanisms or the state, which is exactly what a modern public platform might offer us. If we want a BBC that can deliver on the great promise of public media in the digital age, these arguments and this vision will have to come from elsewhere.

Tom Mills is lecturer in sociology at Aston University. He is the author of The BBC: Myth of a Public Service

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Richard Sharp's arrival at the BBC will entrench conservative influence - The Guardian

The culture wars do not resonate with most Britons, according to a report, which says that despite Brexit the country is actually united on many fronts especially climate change

Brexit, immigration and successive coronavirus lockdowns have left the British public divided and entrenched in partisan views or so the narrative goes. But a landmark study into peoples beliefs suggests that, while a small minority of political extremists have stoked the so-called culture wars, the rest of us have formed broad consensuses around supposedly divisive issues.

Conducted by More in Common, a thinktank founded after the murder of MP Jo Cox, the study used focus groups, academic interviews and a poll of 10,000 voters to gauge the mood of the British public following a tumultuous five years.

The results published in October in a report titled Britains Choice: Common Ground and Division in 2020s Britain concluded that the them v us narrative playing out in newspapers and on social media is largely inaccurate and that the fault lines in society are not as deep as we might believe.

Our conclusion is that Britain is not divided into two opposing camps of remain versus leave, left versus right, north versus south, or rich versus poor, read the report. Instead, we find seven distinct groups, who are distinguished not by who they are, where they are from, or what they look like, but what they believe.

The seven tribes progressive activists, civic pragmatists, disengaged battlers, established liberals, loyal nationalists, disengaged traditionalists and backbone conservatives certainly have differing opinions on subjects such as Brexit. However, they overlap on many issues that some commentators have attempted to weaponise, including climate change, which 85 per cent of participants believed should concern everyone regardless of politics.

There is a lot of consensus on the climate agenda. I have not seen this anywhere else, said Mriam Juan-Torres, the reports lead author, who carried out similar studies in the US, Germany and France. Its astonishing the desire for action.

Despite divisions over Brexit, Britain reportedly remains united on many fronts. Image: Jannes van den Wouwer

Racial and gender equality are other issues on which there is consensus, with 79 per cent of participants claiming they felt proud of Britains progress on gender equality, and 77 per cent agreeing that racism is a problem. However, differing views were offered when it came to how racial injustice should be tackled.

Juan-Torres warned that such divisions have the potential to widen, but hoped the study would help lay the foundations for an agenda built on empathy and understanding, not division and polarisation.

Compared to the picture we get from our screens every day it gives us much reason for hope

There was also agreement on the subject of Britain being too London-centric, including from Londoners. And across the board there was a perhaps surprisingly loose affinity to political parties, with just 13 per cent of people saying they felt proud of their partisan identity.

The picture of our country that comes from this study is sometimes surprising, concluded the report. Compared to the picture we get from our screens every day it gives us much reason for hope.

Illustration: Cristina Estanislao/UN

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British society is more united than we are led to believe, finds study - Positive.News

The Pope is being vaccinated as early as this week. Yet some ultra-conservative groups on the fringes of the Churches prey on the fears of vulnerable people to claim the vaccination programme is part of a conspiracy to rob them of their freedom

Some 1.5 million people in the UK have now received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and the NHS working hand-in-hand with the Army is creating new local vaccination centres, hospital hubs and even mass vaccination sites at sports stadiums in a massive national effort to control the spread of the vaccine.

The vast majority of Christians like the vast majority of citizens of other faiths and none will take their place in the queue for a jab. Receiving the vaccine will be a tangible expression of the common good; recognising that our own health and that of others are closely interwoven. Just as we flourish through seeking the flourishing of others, we cooperate with public health measures in an act of solidarity. Unless there is an overriding medical reason for not being vaccinated, its very simple. To show our love for our neighbour means to have the jab.

Some are hesitant about being vaccinated because of concerns over the rapid development and testing of the vaccine; fears that often arise from misunderstanding and misinformation. Some Christians hesitate because some vaccines are grown in cell strains derived decades ago from an aborted foetus; in a Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines approved by Pope Francis, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made it clear that it is morally permissible to receive the currently available vaccines. The Pope said this week he planned to be vaccinated and urged others to have a jab. It is an ethical choice because you are gambling with your own health, with your life, but you are also gambling with the lives of others. But there are more troubling reasons why some Christians are vaccine-hesitant or even anti-vaccination. Vaccination is becoming a new front in the culture wars.

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The Christians who fear vaccination - The Tablet

White Ridge, green lungOfficially, last weeks decision by the appeals committee at the district planning committee to approve the construction of thousands of housing units on Reches Lavan (White Ridge), just outside of southwest Jerusalem in the area of the Jerusalem Zoo, Kiryat Hayovel and Moshav Ora, means the deed is done. Yet Naomi Tsur, founder and chairwoman of the Jerusalem Green Fund and a prominent opponent to the project, says the game is far from over. Tsur will appeal to the High Court of Justice against the plan, which will ruin or at least significantly reduce one of the most important green lungs in the Jerusalem region and surroundings. Simultaneously, Tsur and several environmental associations, including the Society for Protection of Nature, are advancing their alternative project for that area a national park that, if approved by the district committee, will prevent the implementation of the construction project there. One of the main objections to the construction, which is actively promoted by the municipality, is that contrary to the promoters declaration, it will destroy a large part of the natural resources in that area, which are a public asset for leisure and nature and need to be saved from destruction by this project, which includes some 5,000 units in several 12- to 15-story towers. For now, a committee that will include representatives from the district committee and the city engineer will supervise the plans to minimize damage, but members of the city council, from both the mayors coalition and the opposition, are skeptical about their ability to protect the area. Expansive maneuverThe culture wars continue, this time in Rehavia. The iconic and non-kosher Cafe Yehoshua on Azza Road is trying to expand, but haredi representatives at city council see this as an alarming threat to Shabbat. Cafe Yehoshua is closed on Shabbat, but some fear the next step after the enlargement would be to change that. As a result, the citys planning and construction committee rejected the request to expand the coffee shops space beyond the current wall. Neighbors in the same building oppose the project, arguing it would change the atmosphere of the small, quiet street (Radak) on the corner. City councilwoman and coalition member Laura Wharton expressed frustration, saying that in light of the severe damage to Jerusalems economic life and restaurant businesses caused by corona, this is a foolish decision.

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This week in Jerusalem - A round-up of city affairs - The Jerusalem Post

By Robin Connolly, Co-Editor-in-Chief

In October of last year, three members of the Bristol Free Speech Society Harry Walker, Ben Sewell and Izzy Posen were approached to form part of a Free Speech Youth Advisory Board. Two months later, both Harry and Ben withdrew from the initiative, claiming it had been astroturfed by the Free Speech Union (FSU), which is led by Toby Young. Speaking to Epigram, the trio offered their differing perspectives on the programs management and objectives.

It was the issues relating to transparency, management and the nature of conversation and discussion that forced Harry Walker and Ben Sewell, along with another member of the group, to outline their concerns in an email to the facilitators of the Free Speech Youth Advisory Board, claiming they felt it had been astroturfed by the FSU.

Astroturfing is a practice whereby external bodies mask their involvement within groups which claim to be grassroots in nature. These sorts of campaigns attempt to convince audiences that their beliefs and opinions are held by a majority in order to create a bandwagon effect.

Walker and Sewell felt their initial excitement for the project, which they expected to be a grassroots movement in favour of positive attitudes towards free speech at universities, had been tainted by decisions relating to the groups name and belligerent attitude towards the culture wars decisions they felt had been made despite the advice of the young people within the group.

While they had been made aware of the financial sponsorship of both the FSU and another charity, The Battle of Ideas, in the first group meeting of the board, the members who left said they felt the extent of the affiliations had been downplayed.

An announcement of the group, under the name Free Speech Champions, made by Toby Young on the Darren Grimes podcast in November, two months before the programs planned launch, proved to be the turning point for Sewell and was when he realised how entrenched the organisations influence was.

Speaking to Epigram, Sewell said the reason I left was because I personally didnt feel Id been treated with the kind of respect I deserve. I think that I had been misled.

He spoke of the lack of professionalism shown by Young in the announcement on the Grimes podcast its either the fact that the FSU has far more influence over the project than we thought, or he [Toby Young] has lied about the influence that the FSU have over it and tried to claim it for himself. Either way, its not good.

Furthermore, this was a name Free Speech Champions that hadnt been agreed on as democratically as some members of the group had expected. A shared Google document was set up for people to share their ideas and suggestions for the name, yet, when it was announced by Young, the name was one that We hadnt heard before, according to Sewell.

Disappointing that on the day some of the most powerful companies in the world decide to censor anyone who dissents from prevailing orthodoxies, the Guardian launches another attack on the Free Speech Union. When will the paper realise everyone stands to lose from this attack?

However, Izzy Posen, original founder of the Free Speech Society, who has remained a member of the Youth Advisory Board, had a different take on what happened.

The Battle of Ideas and the Free Speech Union are co-sponsoring this project and this has been made clear to all participants from the very start. Were proud and grateful to be working collaboratively with these organisations, Posen told Epigram.

Most of those involved in this project are very happy with it and with the direction that it is taking, Posen added. We are a group of passionate young people, from diverse backgrounds and diverse views on all kinds of issues, but were united on our commitment to freedom of speech.

In conversation, it was clear both Walker and Sewell agree with Posen on the nature and make-up of the group itself both sang its praises in terms of the diversity in the backgrounds of the members, which include students from all over the world, of different economic backgrounds and from across the political spectrum.

For them, it was not the students and young people themselves, but the external decisions made on behalf of the group that they felt limited the effectiveness of its debates.

Walker explained that, I think this tendency of astroturfing organisations at universities and in education is really worrying for free speech, for open and honest discussion.

I think its one thing for a right-wing organisation to start up and have a free discussion, thats absolutely fine no problem with that. The problem is an outside group of people, who are not students, coming in with a specific aim of starting a group pushing students to discuss topics that benefit them.

He continued, I think it is hugely problematic when you are influencing people, without being honest about it, to make these discussions happen inorganically.

Walker went on to explain he felt this would be the same of organisations on either side of the political spectrum and that he would have responded the same if the Free Speech Youth Advisory Board had been astroturfed by organisations on the left.

University campuses have long been a battleground over free speech, with Bristols own campus being particularly prominent in this, having made national headlines on multiple occasions over the platforming of controversial speakers. More recently, this has culminated in Bristols Free Speech Society disassociating from their Facebook discussion page due to personal attacks and insults that had been posted on it.

Free speech and debates around it are ever-present and relevant on student campuses. Over the summer, the University and College Union (UCU) accused the Conservative Party of attempting to force political objectives through the pandemic, as Gavin Williamson stated that Universities would have to demonstrate commitment to free speech if they required financial bailouts due to the repercussions many are facing because of COVID-19

It is clear The Free Speech Youth Advisory Board, under whatever name it ends up being launched, has ruffled more than a few feathers. Sewell and Walker were just two of a group of six who ended up walking away from the project due to personal disagreements with its direction.

However, almost two thirds of the board have remained involved, making it clear the decision to leave remained one amongst a significant minority.

In a parting thought, Sewell made clear he wanted people to be able to make their own decision about the program, that They should have the freedom to interact with it with as much knowledge as can be made available to them.

He hopes people will take what weve taken away from the project as a bit of information and advice so they have a better idea of what getting involved might look like.

In the meantime, Walker made clear that the Bristol Free Speech society does, and will continue to, provide a grassroots approach to free speech and discussion on campus this academic year, theyve held conversations on freedom of speech in drug science, on art and freedom of expression and on Chinas oppression of the Uighurs. For those interested in getting involved, please see their page on the SU website, HERE.

Toby Young and the Free Speech Union have both been contacted for comment.

Featured: Epigram / Siavash Minoukadeh

What are your thoughts on the experiences of these students?

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Free to disagree? Bristol students tell all on controversial free speech youth organisation - Epigram