14/12/2017 Newsnight

As we seek each other's help and

resolve, to build on our hopes for

the future in which the tragedy that

struck Grenfell Tower will never

happen again.

Tonight, an emotional service

at St Paul's to remember

Grenfell six months on.

We'll speak to one of those

who escaped the blaze that night.

And we spend time at a school

in the shadow of the tower

to find out how staff

and students are coping.

I've had children during my PE

lessons saying,

"Oh, look, that's

where my bedroom was".

It's in their view at playtime.

The one time that they are meant

to be coming out to play,

there's a juxtaposition there,

because we've got the

tower being a shadow.

We'll ask a leading

child psychologist just

what can be done to help.

Also tonight:

A warning about bitcoin

from one of Britain's top

financial regulators.

"Don't buy it", he says, "unless

you're prepared to lose your shirt".

If you want to invest in bitcoin, be

prepared to lose all your money,

that would be my serious warning.

And is a white journalist asking

a black journalist for contacts,

quotes or information

simply "good research"?

Or is it the culturally

inappropriate theft

of intellectual property?

They came to St Paul's Cathedral,

1500 people of all faiths

and none, to remember.

Six months ago, 71 people

died in Grenfell Tower,

an event that shocked so many not

simply because of the horror

but because of what it revealed

about how many people live

today in this rich country,

seemingly out of sight and out

of hearing of so many of us.

Joined by members of the royal

family and the Prime Minister,

survivors and the family and friends

of those who died honoured loved

ones and gave thanks

to the emergency services

who risked their lives

on that fateful June night.

We pray for those who have

offered their support,

for all who sustain us

with their care and friendship.

So now, together, we

remember and reflect.

# Insha Allah, insha Allah

# You'll find your way.#

For a moment, we all lost

our fear of each other.

We lost our obsession

with ourselves, and we reached out

across the city in love

for our neighbour.

# Every time you take one look

around,

# You then remember that

they're really gone.#

With me now is Mohammed Rasoul

who escaped from the fifth floor

of Grenfell tower with his wife,

father and two young children.

He was at the service today.

Thanks very much for joining us. A

difficult day, I am sure, but maybe

uplifting in some senses.

Most

definitely. It was a very emotional

day but at the same time deeply

meaningful. It was a day we came

together as a local community and as

a nation, to remember those we lost

in that tragic fire, who were

victims of a gross injustice. To see

people turn up today from our local

community, all around the country,

our country's leaders, it was deeply

significant. And to have it in such

an iconic national landmark, to me,

shows that when that fire happened

and those people lost their lives,

innocent people lost their lives,

men, women and children, that the

country felt our pain and felt the

pain of everyone who was bereaved,

and felt the pain of the survivors

and the whole community.

There has

obviously been a lot of mistrust. Do

you feel that an event like today

helped start to build some trust

between the different groups? The

Prime Minister was there,

representatives of those in

authority. Is there a way of this

being at least part of some of the

healing process and building some

trust?

Well, we are hopeful of that,

but there is still a long way to go.

You still have four out of five

families, survivors, still not

re-homed. You have some people that

arboretum that are still waiting to

bury their loved ones. But we are

hopeful -- some people that are

bereaved are still waiting to bury

their loved ones. But we are hopeful

that the Prime Minister and others

will listen to our concerns and

amend the mistakes of the

establishment, the system that

failed those people and caused them

to die. There is a petition going on

at the moment which was presented to

the Prime Minister, and we are

optimistic that she will consider

and pay attention to the voices of

the bereaved and survivors, and

allow their to be a panel of experts

alongside the judge that will report

back to her.

What is your situation?

I know you have been rehoused in a

hotel and moved at least once. Where

are you living now?

In a family with

-- in a hotel with my family, my

86-year-old father, the oldest

surviving resident, my wife and two

children. My son is five and a half,

and my daughter just turned two at

the beginning of this month. She has

spent a court of her life in hotels.

What do you feel about the fact that

you are still in a hotel six months

on?

I try not to think about it. If

I let concepts like that... If I

internalised it too much, I believe

I will break down. I just get on

with my daily life. I go off to

work, soldier on. My family and my

wife is a big support in that.

You

have touched on the enquiry, do you

think it is moving quickly enough,

and do you think it will ultimately

answer all the questions you have?

I

think it is early days but we are

hopeful. I think our community

recovered from what happened, and

because of the neglect we were shown

before the fire, the blatant

disregard and indifference from the

council's side to residents concerns

about health and say the, to the

refurbishment, the community and

people lost a lot of faith in the

justice system. But it's never too

late to build bridges, and it's

never too late for myself or anyone

from the community to be proven

wrong. I am hopeful that, I try to

be optimistic. And today was a day

of immensely deep sadness, but with

everything that has gone on in the

last six months, the public response

has been amazing and deeply moving

at times. We have witnessed beauty

that has moved us to tears, people

from all around the country,

different backgrounds, different

ethnicities, with their differences,

coming to help us and transcending

their differences and coming to help

us and offer us clothes and food and

opening up their hearts and their

homes to us. That has renewed my

confidence in humanity. So for me,

there is a lot of hope there, a lot

of hope.

Thank you so much for

coming and sharing your thoughts.

Hopefully that hope will be

rewarded. Thank you very much.

On the morning of the tragedy,

Oxford Gardens Primary School, just

half a mile from Grenfell Tower,

opened its gates not

knowing what to expect.

The school wanted to offer sanctuary

to children who might

have lost everything.

It later emerged that a third

of the children at the school had

witnessed the fire or been

evacuated, some had lost

friends or relatives

or knew people in hospital.

And, though it couldn't be

officially confirmed for weeks, one

of the school's own eight-year-old

pupils died that night

with his family.

For the last six months,

staff have been much more

than everyday teachers.

They've had to counsel children

through their grief,

while also dealing with their own.

And all in the shadow

of the burnt out shell

that is all that is left of Grenfell

Tower.

Last week, Newsnight spent time

at Oxford Gardens Primary School.

I am from this community, I am born

and bred from this community.

It is a very warm community,

it is a very diverse community.

I love the energy,

I love the enthusiasm.

It is a little different

from most areas.

We have got politicians living

right beside immigrants,

David Cameron lives across the road

for example, so such

a melting pot of different

personalities and cultures.

I definitely think that this school

is a microscopic look at the larger

community that we are surrounded by.

At 6am I made a phone call

to my headteacher to say it looks

like there is a very serious

incident on our doorsteps.

They never teach you how to deal

with these things and I just

remember just looking at it and not

believing what I was seeing at all.

I have never seen so much stuff

all over the school.

These grounds, all the three

playgrounds, they were just

covered everywhere.

Black ash, chunks of it.

And I just thought, how

are we going to clear this up?

My first thoughts were with my

friends that were in the tower

and then it dawned on me

the children that we

teach at school.

We decided that we wanted to open.

We knew that this terrible,

terrible, tragic disaster had

happened and we wanted to make sure

that the school was a safe place

for children to come

if they were able to.

We were very aware that we would

have a lot of children

who would not be able to come.

This was done after we found out

Mehdi had passed away.

Some children wanted to say goodbye,

other children just wanted to write

as though he was still here.

We had lost somebody,

he was a member of our class

who was there all year,

he was a beautiful, lovely boy.

He was there one day

and he was gone the next.

Having to explain to a class

of children that somebody has died

and in quite a horrific way was very

sad and quite traumatic.

There is a sense of shock

and disbelief, there is a sense

of anger and outrage.

There is the loss, the anxiety.

You cannot underestimate

the enormity, I think,

for a child to go to sleep and come

in the next day and a whole

family has been wiped out.

I would say it has been very

tough professionally.

At times I felt like a counsellor,

not just a teacher.

I have had to drop particular

sessions to talk about how

they are feeling, how we should deal

with our emotions.

Some of the questions they had

were truly horrific.

How could this happen?

Why has it happened?

How did some people

get out and he didn't?

Really tricky questions and I don't

have all the answers.

I have had children during my PE

lesson saying, "Look,

that is where my bedroom was."

It is in their view at playtime.

The one time they come out to play

there is a juxtaposition

there because we have got the tower

and we are in the shadow.

Move your feet quickly.

Stop!

We have had children saying

they wished they were in

the tower rather than Mehdi.

And when a child says that

to you what can you say?

Do you know what you are

going to do tomorrow?

I knew you would be happy.

There are lots of different

ways that children want

to share their story.

I have had children who want to draw

the tower again and again and again.

What they saw that night,

what they felt that night.

I have got children who wanted

to make the tower, I have got

children who wanted to decorate

the tower with beautiful stars

and to shroud it in something lovely

because it is so ugly for them

at the moment.

I have had people wanting to be

firefighters and save

the people in the tower.

Everybody's story is so different

and everybody needs a different

kind of way through.

What shall we put there?

It is a huge thing to take

in for an adult, let alone a child,

but I do feel like they have been

amazing at handling it.

They have given me strength

because they have just been

so honest and they have

just been themselves.

Morning, boys, morning.

Six months on it is still

fresh because families

still talk about it.

There are still some

who haven't been re-homed yet,

they are still in hotels.

Cabs every day coming to school.

I never imagined that when Christmas

came we would still have

families who were displaced.

We had no idea that it was going

to really impact for this long.

We have a lot of children in this

year group who were not only

there and saw it but were evacuated

and are still in

temporary accommodation.

That is just a constant reminder

of what has happened to them.

Their routine has been

spoiled for six months.

In counselling what we want to do

first of all is make sure that

people's basic needs are met,

so to try and work with their

well-being and emotional health

when they still don't have a home

I think is really hard.

It is only natural that people

want to understand why it happened.

Why in 2017 a modern tower block can

burn from bottom to top.

It has been the most traumatic event

that our community has had to deal

with and it is really

just relief now.

For us it is about bringing

our community back,

uplifting people's spirits,

and we owe that to the

families that we lost.

The things that they have written

in here really show how

they are feeling about it.

It makes you remember that, well,

not that we don't already know it,

but we have got a long way to go,

we know that.

And we will get there.

Through all this terrible mess

and all this sadness we are looking

at how strong we are now.

People have stood together

and people have united

and that is how we move forward.

We all share this grief

and it is a little bit

like losing a family member.

I think it is hard for people to

understand that you were with them

9 to 3:30 every day.

He was a beautiful member

of our class and we do miss him,

we miss him every day, we do.

We should not be saying goodbye

because he should still be here.

Oxford Gardens school,

six months on.

And our thanks to their staff

and students for helping us make

that piece by Sara Moralioglu

and Katie Razzall.

Well, dealing with a community-wide

emergency of this scale demands

a huge amount of those involved.

With me now is Laverne Antrobus,

a child psychologist

from the Tavistock Clinic

who offered support to some

of the first people to respond

to events that night.

Thank you very much for joining us.

What is remarkable that comes out

from the film we have just seen that

teachers changed literally overnight

from worrying about the everyday

things they are teaching like maths

and PE kits who suddenly caring

about the emotional well-being of

the children they were looking after

and teaching. What kind of advice do

you give to people in that type of

situation?

As you say it was very

complicated. It was unprecedented

and it was an event nobody could

imagine happening. What the teachers

were saying was they had to change,

they had to start responding to the

needs of the children and I think

that is exactly what you would want.

Children have lots of questions but

I think as adults we can imagine

that we have got to give them much

more information than they are

seeking. It sounds to me as if the

teachers in the school were able to

take their time, slow things down.

We know clear facts about what has

happened, so there are some things

children are able to answer

themselves, but I am never so sure

we need to go into a huge amount of

detail. We need to listen to primary

age children to hear what they think

about what has happened, but also to

build on that.

It must be true that

children react in different ways and

you are teaching may be 25 children

in a class and some children may be

do not want to talk about it, they

want to escape a bit, some children

wanted to draw the tower every day.

How do you help each child with

their different responses? Some may

be want to hide away and others want

to really engage.

It really is about

watching. The curious thing about

young people is they are very

watchful themselves and they are

looking to see what the adults are

making of their behaviours and

emotional states. Children find it

important to draw and talk about the

things they would like to do when

they are older because that would

help them think about looking after

people. Those are important things.

I thought it was interesting that

the teacher acknowledged that

teachers spend most of their time

with these young people, more than

parents sometimes, and being aware

of the difficulties they find

themselves in is important, but also

keeping things going is also

important.

Normality.

It is a huge

relief for a lot of children who do

not find themselves in the same

situation, we are going to do our

English lesson today, that gives me

structure and comfort. It would be

quite comforting in and of itself.

What is striking, and this is not

true of all tragedies, is that the

tower is there, very much a monument

as to what has happened, a reminder,

what difficulties can that create

when you are everyday literally

walking to school or playing in the

playground as the teacher said? It

is standing there are always

reminding you.

It becomes part of

the community presence. I imagine

for some children there are moments

when they forget about what has

happened for a little bit, but

suddenly the reminder is there. That

is quite tricky. How do you go on?

How do you live your life and move

on and have hope as we heard in that

film? That things can change and

feel a bit better? But also that the

community can feel a bit better. I

am sure a lot of the children are

responsive to the fact that the

community must feel very sad. How do

you go about your ordinary, everyday

business and be happy in the

playground and play games with your

best friend and suddenly be reminded

that something truly terrible

happened? I think it is a really

difficult time for a lot of people,

but you have got to keep sight of

the fact that life does move forward

and children should be allowed to

catch themselves being a little bit

happy and hopeful.

Thank you for

coming in.

Thank you for coming in.

The Prime Minister, Theresa May,

arrived in Brussels this afternoon

for yet another crucial summit,

where she's hoping that the other 27

countries of the EU will decide

to move forward to those

all-important trade talks.

She admitted she was disappointed

by last night's House

of Commons defeat, but insisted

that the necessary legislation

is making "good progress".

Our Political Editor,

Nick Watt, is there.

Nick, how was the atmosphere today

with the EU 27? A little bit chilly

over there there are lots of warm

hugs?

We had a rare sight this

evening over dinner with a 28

leaders including Theresa May which

was a UK Prime Minister being

praised by fellow EU leaders. I have

covered more of these summits than I

care to remember and I cannot think

of a president of having a UK Prime

Minister being praised like that.

Tony Blair, the most pro-EU Prime

Minister since Ted Heath, had

stand-up rows with Jacques Chirac

and Gerhard Schroeder. What is going

on? The EU are impressed with

Theresa May's message which is she

was an orderly Brexit, it is a

difficult journey, but she praised

EU leaders for working with her. The

other message was she wants in the

future for the UK and the EU to be

close friends and allies. But these

EU leaders are also making a raw

calculation. They believe Theresa

May is gritty, they quite respect

her and they think she would be far

better than the alternative and that

alternative they believed would be

Boris Johnson. Another point is the

vote in parliament last night and

they have knowledge that and they

have said we are negotiating with

you, Prime Minister, and not your

parliament.

Any more news on the

timetable about the all-important

transition phase or implementation

phase, whatever we call it, and the

trade talks themselves? The really

important bit.

Well, Theresa May

made clear this evening she would

very much like to move onto the next

stage and particular urgency on

transitional arrangements as the EU

calls them. The problem for her is

the draft Council conclusions are

saying in the two-year period the

entire body of EU law would apply to

the UK and any new regulations

introduced, they were also applied

to the UK and the UK would not have

any votes. That crosses a Boris

Johnson red line. On the future

trade arrangements there will be

guidelines published tomorrow and

the UK is very hopeful that they

will be quite vague and that will

give the Prime Minister Time to talk

to a cabinet next week, to talk

about the future, and not have her

padlocks into a definitive EU

position on that just yet.

Nick

Watt, thank you very much. It is the

gift that does not seem to stop

giving. Bitcoin is a so-called

currency created by Bocelli, we are

not quite sure who. A year ago one

bitcoin was worth a measly £5.80.

Then it rose up and suddenly in the

last few months it's spiked up to

£12,400, something of a one-way bet

one might think, despite its extreme

volatility and links to the criminal

underworld. And this week more mania

as people who want to speculate on

the future value were allowed to do

so on the first regulated platform

in Chicago. I spoke to the chief

executive of the Chicago board

options exchange and asked him if

this was another gamble.

options exchange and asked him

if this was another gamble.

We're not endorsing bitcoin

but what we wanted to do was bring

transparency to a commodity

where there was interest.

And your only choice before

we launched on Sunday

was to represent that interest

on a crypto exchange

somewhere around the globe,

one without the oversight that

we're used to.

Reassuring words

from Ed Tilly there.

But on this side of the Atlantic

tonight, a warning,

and a pretty strong one.

I spoke to Andrew Bailey,

Chief Executive of the

Financial Conduct Authority,

an important regulator.

I asked him how concerned

he is about bitcoin's

meteoric rise in value.

It's actually not regulated by us

in its bitcoin form.

Where we come in is where there

are instruments that

are referenced to bitcoin.

It's a very volatile commodity

in terms of its pricing,

if you look at what's

happened this year.

And I would caution to people,

we know relatively little

about what, in a sense,

forms the price of bitcoin.

It's an odd commodity as well

because the eventual

supply is fixed.

If you want to invest in bitcoin,

be prepared to lose all your money.

That would be my serious warning.

What evidence do you have

at the FCA about who is

actually buying bitcoin?

We don't regulate bitcoin, as such.

Isn't that the problem, Mr Bailey,

that you don't regulate?

The technology is ahead of you.

Well, I'll come back to that.

I think the decision

on what we regulate is appropriately

for government and Parliament.

And we don't regulate commodities.

We regulate instruments that

are referenced to commodities.

So if you buy a future or an option,

then we do come into the picture.

But we don't regulate

commodities per se.

And that's clear.

It would be for Parliament,

ultimately, to make that choice

if it wished to do so.

I don't press for that, providing

people understand very clearly this

is a very volatile commodity.

What evidence do you have,

or do you have any intelligence,

on who actually is buying bitcoin

itself, rather than the instruments

referenced to bitcoin?

Well, we have no evidence, as such,

because one of the features

of bitcoin is the anonymity

of who the recorded owners are.

And that emanates from

the technology that supports it.

You can't go somewhere and look up

the record of who owns bitcoin.

The fact that it's called

a currency, the fact

that there are ATMs,

do you think that people actually

realise that they are not investing

in something like the pound

or the dollar?

Well, I think there's

a risk to that.

You're right that by adopting

the name crypto currency,

there is a risk that some people

regard it as the same

as what in an economist's world

you call a fiat currency.

A fiat currency

is backed by a state.

That's what keeps the value,

preserves the value

of fiat currency,

through the actions

central banks take.

Bitcoin is not that.

It's a commodity,

it's not a currency.

Would it make your regulating

of financial stability,

protecting consumers, easier,

if you had more powers in this area?

I don't think bitcoin is prevalent

enough at the moment to be

a systemic threat in the way that

we've experienced obviously

during the financial

crisis other threats.

It needs watching carefully, but I

don't think it's at that point.

If I thought there was evidence that

people are saying,

"You know what I'm going to put my

pension into, Bitcoin",

I would be very concerned.

Now, we don't see

that at the moment.

Maybe it's part of the big

portfolio, but again, if it is,

it should be done by people who say,

"I don't mind losing all the value

of that piece".

Some people might say the technology

is leaving the regulators behind,

that you're racing to catch up

and you simply don't understand how

that market working.

So there's a whole new technology

which is really about the bitcoin

production and sort

of maintenance process.

Pretty opaque.

Yeah, I mean they are mined.

My understanding is I think

21 million can ever be mined,

and I think possibly something

like 17 odd million have been mined.

So that makes it unusual.

And we'd like to understand that,

so that if it does begin to get

widely used, we've got greater

familiarity with it.

Andrew Bailey, thank you very much.

Thank you, Kamal.

For weeks, the United Nations has

been calling on the Syrian

government to allow those urgently

in need of medical help to leave

the besieged, rebel-held,

strategically important enclave

of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus.

More than 100 of those needing

evacuation are children.

But so far those calls have fallen

on deaf ears and some of those

waiting to leave have now died.

Newsnight has been reporting

on the situation in Eastern Ghouta,

which is growing worse by the day.

Here's Mike Thomson,

and a warning there are distressing

pictures in his piece.

After four years of siege

Eastern Ghouta's health care system

is close to collapse.

And it's the young,

like eight-year-old Rowan,

who are suffering the most.

TRANSLATION:

She was born

as a perfectly healthy

child who could walk.

Suddenly, she complained of eye pain

and we rushed her to the doctor.

Doctors took biopsies from her head

and then she fell ill.

Now she's completely paralysed.

Little Rowan has kidney failure,

subcranial haemorrhaging

and cirrhosis of the liver.

Like nearly 12% of other

children here she also has

severe malnutrition.

Yet treatment is out of reach.

TRANSLATION:

The road was blocked

and I could no longer

provide her with any medical help.

It all stopped.

Her medical condition

is constantly deteriorating

and she's going from bad to worse.

Starved of medicines and equipment

doctors in Eastern Ghouta can't

treat complex cases.

Yet such care is available,

just a stone's throw away.

TRANSLATION:

We need

immediate evacuation.

15 people have died and more

are dying on a daily basis.

People have tumours,

heart deformities and others

requiring surgery.

Their lives could have been saved

had they been given medical help.

We only ask for safe passage

to treat them in Damascus,

which is only a few miles away.

Rama has a very serious condition -

she's unlikely to survive for much

longer but if we had more medical

supplies, drips and pain

killers, we could at least

alleviate her pain.

Four year-old Rama has

cancer of the throat.

Her desperate mother

knows that evacuation

is her daughter's only hope.

Yet the Syrian government

still refuses to allow it.

TRANSLATION:

I plead

with all humanitarian organisations

and the entire world,

and anyone who's listening

to us for help.

Help Rama by either allowing us

safe passage to Damascus

or by letting medical aid in.

Some in Eastern Ghouta blame

the outside world for not putting

enough pressure on the Syrian

government, saying organisations

like the UN are more talk

than action, an allegation

that the UN children's charity,

UNICEF, strongly refutes.

We are lobbying very heavily

on the ground on all sides.

We talk to all parties

in order to get access, and

we are preparing.

We have the materials

there, in order to be to

get in and to get

these children out.

But unless we are given

humanitarian access, unless all

sides give us a corridor,

it's going to very difficult for us.

The lives of 137 severely

injured or ill children,

as well as more than 400 adults,

continue to hang in the balance

as they wait, so far

in vain, for evacuation.

And as the bombardments continue,

their numbers look likely to grow.

12-year-old Mukdeen was leaving his

school when a mortar struck,

throwing him to the ground.

Several of his friends were killed

and many more injured.

Young Galeb survived, but only just.

Today's peace talks in Geneva

haven't helped morale.

They ended in failure.

Leaving the lives of those

urgently needing evacuation

in continuing, agonising limbo.

Yesterday an Evening Standard

journalist contacted gal-dem,

an online magazine for black

and Asian women, to ask for help

on writing an article about how

to have a "woke" Christmas.

The word "woke" originates

from African American

activist communities

and the Oxford English Dictionary

defines it as "alert

to racial or social

discrimination and injustice".

The magazine called

the Evening Standard's request

"a classic case of women of colour

being asked to provide their input

and knowledge for free".

But does this argument mean

journalists should be stopped

from asking questions from specific

groups of people?

And should any form of knowledge be

considered intellectual property

that one group owns?

Joining me now are

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff,

deputy editor of gal-dem,

and Kenan Malik, contributing

opinion editor at the

International New York Times.

Welcome, both of you. What brought

the response when the e-mail arrived

from the Evening Standard journalist

asking about, he wanted to write

about a woke Christmas? What sparked

the anger?

The context is that

gal-dem is an online and print

magazine which is hoping to

challenge the homogenous white media

landscape, because we think it's

important that lots of different

voices and narratives are heard. The

problem with the e-mail is that for

the editor in chief, it was a

tipping point for her. We get asked

to do things like this all the time,

and people use us in a very

tokenistic way, as a voice of

diversity. And I think she just had

enough, really. And she was upset

with the fact that instead of

leading the narrative, we were just

being commentators. We want to be

the people running the show, running

things like Newsnight in future.

You

are quite welcome to do that! Wasn't

he just a journalist trying to find

things out, which is what

journalists do?

Yes, I appreciate

that, but I think you have to look

at the context in which he was

finding it out. This is a white male

journalist writing about a topic he

is not comfortable on. I don't know

whether he challenged his editors on

whether or not he should be writing

the piece, but a lot of the time

people don't. It's important to

remember sometimes that a writer

from gal-dem might be better writing

on a specific topic than the

features writer at the Evening

Standard.

We throw around the words

cultural appropriation. Is a

journalist asking for help from a

group of people to write about it

himself, if he is not of that group,

is that cultural appropriation?

No.

And I am not sure that Charlie is

saying that. We all get these kind

of requests, journalists who want to

use your knowledge for their ends.

Sometimes it is a genuine request

for information, sometimes lazy

journalism from people who can't be

bothered to do the research

themselves. It's not necessarily a

racial thing. I had a senior BBC

News journalist, non-white, I will

not say more than that, whose

researcher phoned me and said he is

writing a book about

multiculturalism and once a chapter

about Bradford. He doesn't know much

about the place. Can I interview you

to get information? So it is not a

racial or a cultural issue, it's a

question of lazy journalism,

sometimes unethical journalism.

What

is cultural appropriation? Is there

an issue there, which maybe this was

not a reflection of, with people

writing about groups they are not

of?

I think the problem is to see

some of these issues as cultural

appropriation. Cultural

appropriation is usually defined as

the use of cultural forms from other

cultures without permission. I think

that is problematic the two reasons.

One, because there is no such as

cultural ownership. None of us has

ownership of particular cultural

forms. The second question is, who

gives permission, who is it that

licenses someone from one culture to

use in whatever way cultural forms

from another culture? So the notion

of cultural appropriation is

problematic.

You wrote in the

Guardian that white people should

leave writing about issues of being

woke to black people. Is there a way

that non-lack or Asian journalists

can write about issues that are

about black and Asian people?

I

think that might have been the

headline, which I didn't write,

actually. I trust that a lot of

journalists out there do their

research and are well versed in

issues around being woke and other

things. In this specific incident,

this journalist did not feel

comfortable writing on this topic

and so should not have been doing

it, or else why did he reach out to

us in the way that he did?

Who are

the gatekeepers of a group's

identity and who can write about it?

People who license themselves to be

gatekeepers, who licensed themselves

to say that certain things are

allowed and certain cultural forms

can be used in certain ways by other

people. It is deeply problematic.

Certain people license themselves to

be the arbiter of the good use of

cultural forms. They then get the

power. What is being appropriated is

not culture but their rights to

police cultural forms.

Thank you.

That's all for this evening.

Kirsty's here tomorrow.

But before we go, Charlie Chaplin's

family have written an open letter

asking for London's Cinema Museum

to be saved.

It's in the former Lambeth workhouse

where the great man once lived.

They argue that it was

an inspiration to his genius.

And what genius it was.

Here's his first film appearance

as "the little tramp" in 1914.

Good night.

MUSIC: The Entertainer

by Scott Joplin