News

As the intrigue slowly begins to build for the next election, now is as good a time as ever to take a look at the challengers and challenges that President Obama faces in his bid for re-election, writes OBV intern Ben Fraimow.

A week ago US President Barack Obama announced his intentions to run for a second term in office. This announcement has been thought of by many as the unofficial start to the next US Presidential election, which will be held on November 6th, 2012.

There are many things that make me proud to be British. Our heritage, our world-class universities and our internationally renowned entrepreneurs. What doesn’t make me proud, though, is how tough we’re making it for British students to get an education in this country. Writes Shazia Awan.

Bishop Doyé T. Agama of the Apostolic Pastoral Association, Manchester has launched a new book, ‘Ancient Prayers for Today’.

The book is a spiritual journey of discovery through the ancient prayer principles of the Bible and it is aimed at increasing understanding of the historic prayer heritage of the church among modern Christians.

There are campaigns in the UK attempting to lower the voting age, reform the voting system and others like OBV that seek to encourage people from Black communities to greater engage in the democratic process.

However, today one Government Minister speaking to the Royal College of Nursing conference in Liverpool said that she believed that people should be excluded from standing for parliamentary elections until they're 45.

Trevor Philips addressed a volatile TUC Black Workers Conference this weekend. Held annually the event is a chance for trade unionists to gather together to address issues of concern to black workers.

As you would expect coming so soon after the historic TUC March the mood was both confident and determined. Speaker after speaker reported the massive scale of disproportionality in the implementation of spending cuts right across the country. The highlight was however, Trevor's speech to conference.

How important is ethnic representation at Oxford and Cambridge? Well, 11 out of the 16 Government Cabinet members attended these world leading academic institutions, including the Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne.

All the Labour party candidates standing in last year’s leadership election were Oxbridge educated. It’s not just in politics where a good and prestigious  education matters, those who reach high office in banking, law, the media, and medicine all have disproportionately high numbers from these two institutions.

As an OBV intern, I am lucky enough to write about a number of issues that concern BAME communities; it is something that I take great pleasure in. So when the opportunity arose to write about Debanma Supplementary School, a school set up by volunteers, which I was fortunate enough to be a part of, I could not be happier.

The launch of the final Count Me In Census report, has been met with calls for a renewed commitment to address the stark inequalities in treatment black people in need of mental health care.

Black Mental Health UK says, 'this sixth and final national census report, published last week shows that there has been no improvement in the deplorable differences in admission, detention or seclusion rate of black people who are detained under the Mental Health Act'.

April 11 was the 30th year since the Brixton Uprisings of 1981. On its anniversary Ade Sawyerr’s advice is that the black community must take ownership of its problems and fashion its own solutions.

Thirty years after the Brixton Uprising that was a watershed in the political, economic and social recognition of black people in Britain most of the challenges within our community still remain.

The TUC analysis of the Labour Force Survey confirms that Black and Asian workers are almost twice as likely to be out of work as white workers, and public sector spending cuts could see thousands more employees from ethnic minority backgrounds losing their jobs in the coming months.

The figures show that the unemployment rate for Black and Asian workers increased from 10.2 per cent in October-December 2007 to 13 per cent in the same quarter last year (a figure almost twice as high as the 7.1 per cent unemployment rate for white individuals).