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Reena Ranger, along with Tanmanjeet Dhesi and Marsha DeCordova, is an OBV alumnus-having been involved with OBV for many years, is nowstanding as a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate.  Reena is the Conservative candidate for Birmingham Hall Green, hoping to take the seat back from Labour on June 8th.

Last Thursday 18th May, OBV, with the support of Croydon Council, hosted a voter registration campaign in Croydon. 

Along with an ad van plastered with a 48 sheet poster, we took to various locations in Croydon to meet and engage with the borough’s citizens, including Market Square, Croydon College and Thornton Heath High Street. 

The bigoted self-publicist may have just played her last card in her wretched race hatred game.

As a nation is traumatised by the truly shocking events in Manchester in which a suicide bomber killed 22 and injured 59, Katie Hopkins used her massive public platform to give a rallying call for genocide. 

Speaking directly to TV host Peter Scholfield via twitter Hopkins posted :

A map released by Mind Hacks illustrates the levels of racism in different European countries.

The map is based on scores from Harvard University’s Implicit Association Test, which is a reaction-based psychological test designed to measure implicit racial bias – in other words, the test looked at how easily people associate black faces with negative ideas.  The data was collected between 2002 and 2015, and 288,076 White Europeans participated.

Blacks don’t vote... but if we did we’d change our world

Research by thinktank British Future has revealed that the Conservatives are likely to add three new Asian MPs to Parliament after the general election, whilst Labour look as if they will lose two of their own.

The Tory Asian candidates predicted to win seats are Resham Kotecha in Coventry North-West, Kashif Ali in Oldham East and Saddleworth, and Paul Uppal in Wolverhampton South-West (who lost his seat in 2015).

As it stands at the moment, the Conservatives have 17 MPs of ethnic minority backgrounds, whilst Labour have 23.

Adeel Akhtar has made Bafta history after becoming the first BME best actor winner.  On Sunday night he was given the award for his performance in the BBC Three drama Murdered By My Father, which featured Akhtar as a man who kills his daughter in an apparent honour killing.

Akhtar is also notable for his work in the 2010 film Four Lions, as well as dramas Apple Tree Yard and The Night Manager.

The Ghanaian footballer Sulley Muntari has said that he believes football bodies like Fifa and Uefa are ‘not taking racism seriously.’

Much of Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief at the news that Emmanuel Macron decisively beat the Far Right nationalist Marine Le Pen. As the results came in that Macron received 66% percent of the votes to Le Pen’s 34%, Macron supporters were jubilant on the streets of Paris and beyond.

OBV alumni Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi could make history on June 8th. If elected to the relatively safe seat of Slough he could become the only Sikh MP in Parliament. He won’t the first, Marsha Singh had that honour followed by Parmjit Dhanda.

For OBV it would be a particular honour, not least because the organisation has had a seven year relationship with Tan in his journey to be a main stream politician and serve his country.