Weekend Box: Titan Tragedy, New Face of the NPG & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
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TITAN TRAGEDY: WHAT HAPPENED TO OCEANGATE?
On Thursday evening BST, the deep-sea rescue mission for Titan became a retrieval operation. Debris found on the ocean floor suggests an implosion shortly after the vessel embarked on its journey, killing all five passengers. While it will take some time to understand exactly what went wrong, it is an undeniably tragic situation. And whatever the answer to that question, the one that will be asked in coming weeks and months is: should Titan ever have been allowed to operate?
In the days following the sub’s loss, reports have emerged about historic safety concerns. Similar vehicles can apply for certification from marine organisations, a process OceanGate never executed. In a 2019 blog, now defunct, they explained that Titan’s design fell outside the accepted system but that “does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply.” It also explained their belief that classification agencies “slowed down innovation… bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.”
Questions about the sub’s safety were raised by a former employee and the Marine Technology Society. They explained the vessel had “numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns” and that their ‘experimental’ approach “could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic).” Passengers viewed the Titanic wreck at 3,800m below sea level through a porthole, made of glass certified to depths of 1,300m. Numerous previous passengers spoke to the media about experiencing loss of communication en route to the seabed.
The trips offered by OceanGate cost punters $250,000 and are one of many options in the 21st Century trend for exploration tourism. From Space travel ($250,000 - $500,000) to summiting Everest ($50,000), what would once have been the preserve of professional adventurers and explorers is now open to anyone with the bank balance to pay for it. The impact of this is becoming increasingly apparent: 2023 was Everest’s deadliest year yet, with inexperienced mountaineering and variable weather due to climate change cited as reasons for the high death toll.
As yet, we lack any real understanding of the unintended consequences of exploration tourism. While no one would begrudge the rescue operation for Titan, its cost will be colossal. Who foots the bill? Questions will also be asked about the discrepancy between the rapid inter-governmental cooperative effort to support Titan, and the lack of it for the hundreds of Pakistani migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean the same week.
AI MARKET INTELLIGENCE DEEMED ARTIFICIAL
This week, the Times reported that Downing Street is overhauling its advisers on AI amid concerns that the government was not receiving the best or most timely insight on the rapid changes in the market.
The article, published on Monday, claimed that the AI Council, an independent committee of experts set up to provide advice to the government on AI, together with the Alan Turing Institute, were accused of being blindsided by the sudden rise of large language models such as ChatGPT. Figures in the tech industry had voiced concerns that the government lacked advice from those on the frontier of research and product development and were too reliant on academics and the public sector.
Among those questioning the role of the AI Council were Tony Blair and William Hague. In a recent report, they said that the government “failed to anticipate the trajectory of progress” and needed to up its game.
On this issue, Blair and Hague find themselves unlikely bedfellows with one Dominic Cummings, who has been committing thoughts to digital paper about the AI challenge. Cummings, like Blair and Hague, recommend setting up a body akin to the COVID Vaccine Taskforce to tackle the challenge.
The creation of the AI Foundation Model Taskforce, chaired by Ian Hogarth, suggests the government is taking those steps. In an op-ed on Monday, Mr Hogarth called on AI experts to come forward and join him in shaping AI policy.
As James Phillips, a former No.10 science and technology adviser put it: “You need people who fundamentally and deeply understand the tech, and the only way to do that is with people who have built it themselves.”
You can certainly argue this kind of approach is needed by the government on many more areas beyond AI.
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FAILING TO DO THE BARE MINIMUM
It appears the news this week brings about yet another story which plunges some of the UK public into further financial stress.
Retailers such as WH Smith, M&S, and Argos have been condemned by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for failing to pay their worker’s minimum wage.
Approximately 63,000 employees are reportedly owed almost £5m. The investigation which HMRC has conducted since 2017, found these companies were at fault due to a variety of different reasons including making their staff pay for uniforms and not adhering to the payment schedules stipulated by the national minimum wage regulations.
While some retailers appeared to show remorse over the situation arising, others have put the fault down to an administrative error, stating: “Like many other organisations, M&S is only named in the list because of an unintentional technical issue from over four years ago.”
Genuine error or otherwise, the companies have been made to pay fines to the tune of £7m, compensate the employees for what is owed as well as having their fair share of negative headlines this week. Chairman of the Low Pay Commission, Bryan Sanderson was supportive of the latter tactic by commenting “regular naming rounds should be a useful tool in raising awareness of underpayment and helping to protect minimum wage workers.”
This news comes at the same time that the Bank of England raise interest rates for the 13th time in a row this week to 5%, and food prices in England remain 19% more expensive than a year ago. So despite the minimum wage increasing to £10.42 for people aged 23 and over as this is significantly below the rate of inflation, it will make little to no difference for those struggling to make ends meet. This is made worse of course, if employers renege on their responsibility to pay it in the first place.
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THE NEW FACE OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
When doors shut across the world in 2020, it was with the promise that before long, the places we loved to visit would be there for us to step into again. With some we’ve had to wait longer, which is why the reopening of London’s National Portrait Gallery after a three-year programme of refurbishments is welcome news.
The National Portrait Gallery this week opened to the public again after closing its doors in March 2020 to conduct a £41m facelift, undertaken by Jamie Fobert Architects and Purcell. The external changes include a new, accessible threshold modelled on a Florentine palazzo and bronze etchings of 45 female faces on the Gallery doors by artist Tracey Emin. Meanwhile, recognising that the visual arts are all about how we see and see anew, the Gallery has taken the opportunity of this revamp to offer visitors a refreshing experience of its portraits. The collection has been rehung to place portraits in chronological order, taking visitors “on a journey through history…telling the history of the United Kingdom through portraits.”
Reviewers have been quick to note the Gallery’s re-tooled approach to providing historical context to its collection. The Gallery has not shied away from educating visitors on the history behind works, nor from celebrating the diversity of its artists. Instead, perhaps to avoid “stoking the so-called culture wars” as has been claimed, captions have been rewritten to be “informative and balanced” without “passing fashionable moral judgment on historical figures,” in the words of Director Nicholas Cullinan. This may help the Gallery avoid the controversy that has recently beset the National Trust, from certain groups eager to raise alarms over perceived ‘wokery’.
With many famous faces captured by Britain’s greatest on display, and an exhibition of never-before-seen photographs by none other than Paul McCartney soon to open, now is your chance to get reacquainted with one of the nation’s most treasured collections of art.
VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: A CALL TO ACTION
This week saw Russian opposition politician-turned-political prisoner Alexei Navalny back in court, facing up to 30 years prison for allegedly ‘creating an extremist organisation’. This in addition to his current sentences of over 11 years for alleged fraud and other dubious charges. The 47-year-old, previously poisoned with novichok nerve agent by Russian FSB agents, according to evidence produced by Bellingcat, faces further ill treatment in custody, yet shows continued defiance at what he and supporters say are attempts to break him and terrify others into submission.
Meanwhile, another Russian political prisoner faces eerily similar treatment at the hands of the Putin regime. In this case, he’s a British citizen, whose wife and supporters have been campaigning this week for our government to do more to help keep him alive and secure his release.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a 41-year-old Russian politician, journalist, and filmmaker. He has dual British citizenship after growing up and completing his education here and he is a husband and father of three teenage children. He has been a vocal critic of the Putin regime for many years and has travelled the world speaking in favor of Magnitsky legislation which bans visas and freezes the assets of human rights abusers. In response, he was poisoned twice with a nerve agent by Russian agents in 2015 and 2017 and has been diagnosed with polyneuropathy – loss of feeling and potential paralysis – as a result.
Kara-Murza was arrested in Russia in April 2022, after returning to give a series of speeches publicly opposing the war and political repression in Russia. He was charged with treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Since his detention, his health has declined rapidly. As a result of the polyneuropathy, he has now lost feeling in both feet and one arm and he has lost over 20 kilos.
Audley had the privilege of hearing Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, speak movingly this week at an event to campaign for the British government to act. Speaking of her fury at the vengeful actions of “this monstrous bloody regime,” she called for our government to respond to the recommendation by parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee to create a new position in the Foreign Office (FCDO): a ‘Director of Arbitrary and Complex Detentions’, or more simply, an Office of Hostage Affairs. The role is similar the existing US Office of the Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, held by a former special forces soldier, Roger Carstens. Its purpose would be coordinated action to fight for the rights of UK citizens arbitrarily locked up abroad and to secure their release. We can see the US system in action this week, with legal representations in Moscow for US citizen and Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, also wrongfully imprisoned, most likely as a hostage for trading.
The demand for the UK government to act reflects the fact that increasingly around the world, individuals are arbitrarily imprisoned by autocratic states, either to warn others or often as hostages to become bargaining chips for prisoner swaps with other countries. Activists say traditional low profile UK government approaches no longer address this reality, as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband attest. It took a Whitehall hunger strike on his part to help drive a change of approach after six long years.
Evgenia Kara-Murza and supporters hope that raising Vladimir’s case with the UK and other governments, and their electorates, will increase his value and keep him alive, and that more targeted sanctions and dedicated diplomatic efforts could help secure his release. As with Alexei Navalny and other political prisoners in Russia, Vladimir has shown brave defiance at his treatment. The Kara-Murzas need and deserve all the support they can get. They have ours.
If you would like to show your support, go to Write to Them, find your MP and write to them. Ask them to push the government to establish an Office of Hostage Affairs and to act urgently to seek the release of Vladimir Kara-Murza.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.