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Peter Kellner
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Deborah Jack
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Philip Mansbridge
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European Parliament Web Team
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Neil Durkin
:A Week's Delay Should Suffice: Is the UK Still Dragging Its Feet on Guantánamo?
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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Jamaican Mary Seacole became an heroine when she travelled over 4,000 miles to nurse and attend sick British soldiers in the Crimea during the Crimean War. During her life her exploits were revered, by royalty, the military elite and thousands of ordinary citizens. More than 100 years later, tens of thousands of school children view Seacole as a wonderful role model.
Public and political discourses all too often spread negative perceptions about ethnic minorities and migrants and portray them as a 'burden' to European welfare systems and a constraint on economic growth in the EU. It's now time to put the facts right.
Throughout the UK, our students' unions democratic structures are being attacked, more often by their university rather than their elected student officers. It's time to tell QUBSU that they can't simply ignore the rules.
The feeling that I can't shake is that she has been alienated by feminism and the stigma that surrounds it. I am happy to admit to being a feminist, because I have my own personal interpretation of its meaning. Obviously feminism stands for the freedom to choose, and choosing to be one should be included in that.
I've called myself many things in public - a binge eater, an addict, a perfectionist, a workaholic, to name but a few - but I've never called myself a feminist. It's only now that I'm starting to wonder why.
While a large proportion of women in Islam-dominated regions of the world are indeed restricted and even oppressed, their issues are indicative of a larger cultural paradigm that is masked under the veil of Islam. They are not caused by the religion itself, rather by biased patriarchal interpretations.
The fact is that there is a dearth of women, at all levels of society, willing to go ahead and define themselves as feminists. Why is feminism seen by many as, at best, unnecessary, and at worst, terrifying? At its core feminism is simply the belief that all women should be treated equally. No controversy there for a rational human being. So where is the problem?
I moved into the banking industry as soon as I graduated - it seemed the obvious thing to do when you are good with figures and have a head for business. But then I decided to give it all up on the search for something else, something bigger. I needed to answer all those questions that had been making their presence felt in my life and in my head for some time.
I am deeply disturbed by the volume of misogynistic vitriol being spouted by certain members of the British public in the wake of Margaret Thatcher's death. What disturbs me the most is not that people are aggressively disagreeing with her politics, but that people are genuinely rejoicing at the death of another person - a mother and a grandmother.
I am the first person to stand up and bang the drum for Newbury - we're a great market town with a great sense of community. We're above average in almost every respect - most notably in employment and affluence, yet still we seem to be letting our young people down by failing to provide them with the education they so badly deserve.
In a world where volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are now the norm, are women missing a trick? Instead of playing catch-up in existing corporate structures, why not create newer, more sustainable ones?
To my mind, feminists must accept that 'Lad' culture is not the moral failure of individual men, but the symptom of neo-liberalisation, concurrent with the narrowing of masculinity in popular culture - see FHM - in to something damaging to both genders and their struggle for equality.
The perception that sexism has been solved - that modern Britain banished the historical evil of misogyny through equality legislation and the removal of formal barriers to employment - is pervasive. The rationale is: 'if I don't see it, it can't be that bad.'
Globally, women do two thirds of the world's work but earn only 10% of the world's income. This is partly because caring and domestic work is not always paid or recognised but here in Nicaragua, the Cooperativa Juan Francisco Paz Silva recognise "women's work" as part of the value chain of the coffee and sesame oil that they sell to the UK.
It is sometimes too easy to think that those with greater power and a greater following have more authority to make a change or make a difference. I believe anyone, as long as they have the compassion and passion can do just as much.
There is a new generation of active older women who have led very different lives from their mothers. Now in their 50s and 60s, they are the first generation of women to have been "doing it all". They have worked, as well as bringing up children. They've got educational qualifications and then when their children leave home, these women regard themselves as being into their stride and in their prime.
