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The most popular sport in the world - football- played in its greatest competition- the World Cup - never fails to conjure great drama, wonderful narratives, and stories within stories. World Cup Brazil 2015 has not let us down.

One element that has struck me profoundly watching the deluge of World Cup games has been the amount of Black players on show, not just of course from the African nations which you’d expect, but also from the two great footballing continents of America and Europe. It begs the question, ‘is this the Blackest World Cup ever?

What a brilliant way to build your confidence, start a career , and ensure your clientele positively talk about you long after they’ve been served the last delicious dish.

Restauranter and friend of OBV, Iqbal Wahhab, invited me and few others to his home to sample the cuisine from one of the small teams that make up ‘Mum’s the Chef’.

Retired journalist Mike Gardner visited Bristol for the first time recently. Here he pleads with the city’s politicians to acknowledge Colston’s role in the slave trade and erase Bristol’s many civic tributes to this controversial man.

Edward Colston, who was born in Bristol in 1636, was an enormously wealthy entrepreneur who gave generously to charities, churches and schools.

Beresford Edwards known to everyone as Nana Bonsu is the founding father of Manchester’s African Caribbean Community. He was born in Guyana in 1930 and moved to the UK in 1960. Inspired by people like Marcus Garvey, he was quick to start helping the community, getting involved in issues like education, better housing and political awareness.

Rape as a weapon of war is seen as one of the great mass crimes of modern times with it adding its own brand of shame to wars. From conflicts in Bosnia to Uganda thousands of women and girls have been victims to this traumatising crime, with many of these rapes leading to victims being murdered or committing suicide.

The police’s job is to tackle racism, but what do you do if the police themselves are too busy mocking black people instead of defending them. This has been the case in France, where a group of police officers were seen in photographs blacking their faces and posing with bananas at a ‘negro party’.

From the political Right, Left, and Centre it is truly open season on Britain’s Muslims. I read the papers, watch the news, and occasionally read the blogs, and shake my head in disbelief.

Under the guise of confronting Islamic extremism and terrorism, there is a daily deluge of Muslim bashing. The vitriol towards the Birmingham Muslim School governors, which is now spreading to Bradford and Tower Hamlets is polarising whole communities, worse still alienating a generation of young Muslims.

The aftermath of the European elections indicates a strong surge to the right, however one story which was not highlighted, was the historic rise in the number of BME MEPs from the UK.

Even though numbers of BME MEPs across Europe is still alarmingly low, it is fantastic to observe that 7 BME MEPs from the UK were elected, which is 3 more than in previous elections and which is approximately half of all BME MEPs across Europe.

In two days time, the samba drums will beat to the ‘beautiful game, played in beautiful Brazil in front of billions of global fans.

With the exception of countries such as Argentina and Uruguay,-explanation is for  another article- Brazil will be most people’s second favourite team to win the World Cup, outside of their own, of course.

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