News

According to the lyrics of the late, great pioneering Afrobeat musician and cultural icon, Fela Kuti, ‘Music is the weapon of the future’. If that’s the case, then this month’s profile designer’s work is a laser cannon.

The defiance of a young Pakistani girl to confront terror and the assassination bullet has not only inspired millions of young women to believe they can achieve, but also the judges for the prestigious Nobel Prize for peace.

Malala Yousafzai now joins those greats including Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela in the pantheon of recipients.

Malala, now 17, was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years ago in her home country of Pakistan after coming to prominence for her campaigning for education for girls.

The Essex coastal town of Clacton-on-Sea made British history early this morning by heralding in its first UKIP Westminster MP Douglas Carswell.

Clacton-on-Sea, not a town noted for high immigration numbers, elected an MP and a political party whose main policies are anti-immigration, anti-European Union and some would argue anti-everything.

The size and significance of Ukip’s win will, whether by design or default, undoubtedly mean that racist attitudes will inevitably rise.

I just made it in time to be in Glasgow at the Lib Dem conference to hear Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron’s speech. It lifted my soul. Farron is not a grand orator in the Rev Jesse Jackson, or even Tony Blair mode, but yesterday he combined passion, bravery and decency in a speech that will speak to hundreds of thousands of Africans, Asians, Caribbeans and the many recent migrants to these shores. His message was simple. He said:

Thank you to those migrants who come to our shores and make our country great.”

http://www.mcb.org.uk/not-in-our-name

On Friday 10 October 2014 Time to Change, England’s biggest mental health anti stigma campaign run by the charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, will launch a six week innovative social marketing campaign targeting people from African and Caribbean communities.

The importance of small business being able to access funding in Britain is crucial for our growing economy, but recent rules by the Bank of England could lead to a several foreign-owned retail banks to close down, a worrying thought for many ethnic minorities.

Leading Asian Entrepreneur Dr Rami Ranger has challenged the Bank of England’s wisdom on minimizing retail services from banks outside the European Economic Area, arguing how it could potentially ‘harm small BME businesses’.

Ruth Hirsch is an intern with OBV from the University of New York. She is here helping with the 2015 General Election campaign and undertaking political research. We always encourage our interns and all staff to write and Ruth has started with a very relevant piece about the Ebola crisis.