Sanusi Lamido, Nigerian Central Bank Governor defends Fuel Subsidy withdrawal on Monday 23rd January in London
Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria
Date: Monday 23 January 2012
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
Chair: Professor Judith Rees
More details here
Why newspapers reflect the opinions of white middle class men
By Mehdi Hasan / @ns_mehdihasan
Newspaper comment pages don’t reflect the diversity of 21st-century readers.
The hypocrisy of Len McCluskey
Union leader slams Ed Miliband but who put him there in the first place?
Credit: Manchester Evening News
By Jerry Hicks
Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey has launched a stinging attack on the Labour leader Ed Miliband claiming that he is “leading Labour to destruction”. McCluskey lambasts the Labour leader for “failing to support millions of low paid trade unionists” and thereby “disenfranchising the party’s [Labour] core support”.
Two hundred years on; Haiti still waits for liberation
By Neil Griffiths / @_griff
Historically crippled by international debts, the middle of the twentieth century saw the IMF force Haiti (then occupied by America) to open its market to imported, highly subsidised U.S rice and sugar.
The productive country once known as ‘The Jewel of the Antilles’ was subsequently awash with cheap American grown goods. Some even reported U.S rice dumped on the shores, free to anyone who wanted it. The undermining effect on local infrastructure was deliberate, profound and lasting.
Unsung hero of the London Riots: Duwayne Brooks
By Matt Potter / @mattpotter
Some stories write themselves. Some never get written, though they’re better by far. There’s something irreducible about them, too many loose ends. They don’t have neat beginnings and endings. They don’t fit our (journalists’, readers’) idea of the arc. Sometimes they’re just collected impressions.
This one’s like that, and I’m setting it down here simply because I think someone should write the story that never got written. Maybe it isn’t a story after all, but a diary of sorts. You tell me.
It starts (though I didn’t know it at the time) nearly 20 years ago. As a newly arrived, young, white Londoner, I followed the Stephen Lawrence case through the 1990s, then the 2000s, if not avidly then certainly with the odd mixture of horror, casual compulsion, mounting disbelief at the catalogue of establishment errors or worse, and something… what was that other thing? I guess it a bit like shame, only less easily pinned down. It was a vague, nagging, sticky discomfort that came and went. Something I didn’t like feeling, but knew it wasn’t to be shied away from. It was an itching unease about what might, for others, lurk beneath the surface of a society that I, white, lower-middle-class and male, may not always have liked, but had always, personally at least, experienced as fair and neutral in its justice.
How Abbottgate restored white victimhood in order to brush the issue of racism under the carpet
By Koos Couvee
The media storm Hackney MP Diane Abbott caused last week as a result of her ‘divide and rule’ comment on Twitter is indicative of the ways in which Britain’s political elite is still able to turn issues of race and racism to its advantage and brush the lived reality of so many black Britons under the carpet.
When Diane Abbott tweeted: “White people love playing ‘divide & rule’ We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism”, she was not referring to 19th century colonialism, which is what she later said to defend her comment. Firstly, if that were the case she would have put the sentence in the past tense. Secondly, the tweet came as part of a conversation about present day politics with Hackney based freelance journalist Bim Adewunmi, who had expressed concern to Abbott about what she perceived to be the red herring ‘black community’.
Conservative blogger Harry Cole, who at times also refers to himself as a journalist, eloquently summed up the deep pain and outrage felt by white people as a result of Abbott’s tweet in his debate with race and human rights activist Lee Jasper on Sky News. He told viewers that Abbott’s comments were derogatory to an entire ethnic group, based on the colour of their skin. Indeed, Cole pointed out, racism works both ways and should not have been used as a political tool by the opportunistic Hackney MP.
Crack-heads, racism and Occupy London
by Damien Gayle / @damiengayle
Days after the NYPD imposed a media blackout to stop the world seeing how they evicted the Occupy Wall Street camp, I fell victim to Occupy LSX’s own press ban.
I had been visiting their newest occupation, a vast network of buildings owned by banking giant UBS, on Sun Street, near Moorgate station, on the edge of the City.
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The Tweeted #PMQs on Welfare Reform Bill Day
So it was the big day for Welfare Reform Bill, with plans of cutting benefit to disabled children, cancer patients and families living in adequate accommodation. Labour had a big chance to show whose side they were on and… well read it for yourself.
Farrely (Lab): You are cutting front line officers. Stop that shit
PM: Labour support the cuts and we’re sacking police pen pushers
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