On Wednesday last week, HIV expert Rebecca Balira was jailed for 6 months. She had been convicted of keeping a young Tanzanian woman as a slave, and of assaulting her. The court heard that Balira took the young woman’s passport away from her, that she gave her no pay, that she was forced to share [...]
On the Monday just passed which saw the heaviest rioting, I was getting something to eat from my local Chinese takeaway in Ealing Broadway when 40 masked and armed youths ran passed me towards the shopping centre. It was 8pm and I was relatively surprised to see the riots spread to the now baptised “leafy [...]
On Sunday night, the community here in Harringey were out on the streets. Groups of young Turkish and Kurdish men stood outside each of the shops that line this great high road, ready to defend them. Meanwhile other groups of young men, all masked up, came in by rail, ready to loot. The deterrent seems [...]
Mathew Bell’s interview with Lord Tebbit, in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday, predictably touched upon immigration. “When he steps off the train into London” the interview asks, “doesn’t he see an exciting and creative powerhouse, fuelled in part by the injection of foreign blood and money?” No, he says, he worries that Londoners are being pushed [...]
Whenever a modest tax rise is proposed, the rich show their patriotism by immediately threatening to leave the country. It has been an odd sight seeing bankers warning that they will jump ship to Switzerland if forced to pay rates of tax similar to the people who clean their offices: odd that they think this [...]
Here’s the final paragraph from an online Telegraph article on the tube strike: Having trouble getting to work? Please share your tales of travel woe below. For readers who live outside London, this is your chance to gloat about your trouble-free commute. Who said conservatives don’t have a sense of humour? Yes, vent your anti-union anger if [...]
It’s Sunday afternoon. I’ve just completed my first week in paid employment as a fully-fledged journalist and, having begun to appreciate the true value of weekends, I am determined to spend them doing something thought-provoking, engaging, cultural and generally productive. Thus, after a deeply thought-provoking, engaging, cultural and generally productive night on the town (well [...]
A Progressive Agenda to Stop the Right in 2012 Saturday 30th January 10am-5pm Congress House, Great Russell Street, WC1H www.progressivelondon.org.uk/conference/progressive-london-conference-2010.html An Interview with Ken Livingstone They say never meet your heroes. You’re only ever gonna be disappointed. And having had some bad experiences in the past – a particularly awkward conversation with a very reluctant [...]
The art and craft, the subtlety and subterfuge, the pomp and pageantry, and the dealings and misdealing of international politics easily lead to the conclusion that in the world of international diplomacy nothing – but nothing – is ‘a given’. And not even it would seem is it any longer a given that countries can [...]
In yesterday’s London paper the guest columnist, Mike Barnard, publicised the launch of a campaign to reinstate London’s rise festival. The background, for those who don’t know, is this: for about a decade, London – with financial support from trade unions – hosted a massive annual anti-racist music festival. When Boris came in he decided [...]
