News

In one of her most candid interviews to date, Conservative Foreign Office Minister, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi informed the Eastern Eye newspaper that:

The Conservative Party still has a problem attracting BME voters."

In a passionate plea to her own Party she demands:

We must do more to reach out, to listen, to engage with issues that matter."

12 Years a Slave is a film adaptation of the memoires of Solomon Northup, a freeman who was kidknapped and shipped to Indiana to work as a slave on a plantation in 1841. But what does this historical film teach us about our own day and age?

I guess I’m part of an unfortunate club called insomniacs. For me this often means waking up around 3-4am and not being able to get back to sleep. As a result I’d often creep down stairs, make a cup of cocoa and watch the BBC News.

Introduction

We wrote about Rene Eddo-Lodge some weeks ago when she found herself on the recieving end of some pretty nasty abuse from the former MP Louise Mensch.

Councillor Sanchia Alasia, a graduate of OBV’s Parliamentary Shadowing Scheme, has been recognised for helping to drive the equality and diversity agenda forward. Alasia has been shortlisted out of 70 candidates for the 2nd Grassroot Diplomat Initiative Award which will be held in April 2014.

POLITICAL parties should be tackling the rise in inequalities between minorities and indigenous voters if they want to engage with Asians and other ethnic groups, a leading race campaigner has said.

Simon Woolley, the director and one of the founders of pressure group Operation Black Vote, which works to increase political participation among BME communities, said he believes that politicians should be doing much more to engage with black and Asian voters

You hear a lot about what is wrong with our youths today with particularly demonisation of Black youths. Truth is there are an awful lot of good young men and women, who are studying hard and trying to be good citizens.

One young man in particular stands out during a most extraordinary moment which saved the life of an elderly pensioner.

The chief inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick, has lambasted the privately run migration removal centre as behaving in an “ excessive and shocking manner” after its inspectrate made two unannounced visits to Geo-run Harmondsworth immigration removal centre.

In one case it found that an 84 year old man with dementia problems handcuffed to his bed. The man later died whilst being restrained. Hardwick lamented that it was difficult to see an ederly die in such undignifed and demeaning manner.

It seems that the Italian distributors of Steve McQueen’s epic ‘12 years a slave’, feel the need to fool people in believing this is a film centered around Brad Pitt, and not Chiwetel Ejiofor. The promotional posters seen around Italy to promote the film show a super large picture of Brad Pitt with a much smaller picture of Chetwell Ejifor below. Hollywood studio Lionsgate which made the movie seem deeply embarrased and are investigating how this occured.

Several hundreds gathered in Tottenham outside the police station on Saturday to both support the Mark Duggan family and to register their anger at the Royal Court of Justice findings that Mark Duggan was ‘lawfully’ killed by the police.

The atmosphere was tense, the rhetoric against the authorities particularly the police was of anger and frustration, but throughout this outpouring of pain and bewilderment the clarion call for a peaceful protest held good.