Starbucks Pushes Plan to Hire 100,000 Young Workers

Truth tellers: Dr West on David Letterman

Common and John Legend keep it reall at the Oscars

Post by ABC Television Network.

BBC Hardtalk with Jay Naidoo: 'Tribalism' danger in South Africa

RIP President Atta Mills, God bless Ghana!

John Atta Mills being sworn in as president in 2008

When I received news this evening that the president of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills had died I was saddened and stunned. I immediately turned to my colleague, who I was with at the time, and told him the news. 

“Was it an assassination?” he asked, instinctively.

Appalled, but now used to such ignorance, I simply replied: “No.”

“Will there be civil war?”

Words actually failed me but controlled anger never does. 

For all those who think of Africa as a country populated by a barbaric, sub-human species, Google “Ghana” and see what you can find. 

Ghanaians are:

• A dignified people
• A friendly people
•  A God-fearing people
•  A peaceful people and, most importantly,
•  A united people.

RIP President John Evans Atta Mills. The whole of Ghana, and Ghanaians around the world, are in mourning at your passing.

God bless our homeland Ghana.

Piers Morgan Vs. Toure - Piers Morgan Tonight (3/30/12)

This was Whitney Houston

"You Give Good Love," "Saving All My Love," "How Will I Know," "All At Once"... too many good tracks to mention. Still remember every word.

Allmusic got it wrong on this one. Every track on this album is a classic.

 RIP Whitney.

Giving help and hope to children in need

From The Courier, Sept 2011: Safeguarding the rights of Ghanaian children is the preoccupation of Afrikids, a unique British charity which aims to put itself out of business through the development of sustainable enterprises.

Georgie Fienberg and Afrikids Ghana director, Nich Kumah

When Georgie Fienberg visited Ghana on a gap year fifteen years ago, she couldn’t have known the impact it would have on the rest of her life. Not just hers, but those of thousands of children in northern Ghana whose lives she would touch through the work of the charity she would create. Now, fifteen years later, Afrikids is a salvation for many young people who would otherwise be living without hope.

In 2001, Fienberg started Afrikids, a child rights organisation based in Ghana’s Upper East region. Inspired by the resourcefulness of those she met while travelling around the country, she felt compelled to do something. Contrary to the images shown on television of helpless natives, Fienberg found a creative and determined people who were making the best out of difficult circumstances.

Rather than go in and tell them how to do things, Fienberg worked with local people to help them improve on what they were already doing. In the process, she created an organisation which now employs 150 staff in Ghana with just a small, supporting team of four in London.

What distinguishes Afrikids from other development charities is its approach. It works to solve the root causes of children's problems, by improving community support services and by providing access to basic education and primary health care. “Our mission has always centred on children,” says Andy Thornton, Director of Afrikids UK. “We recognise that, in order to change the lives of children, you have to work with all of the surrounding factors. So we work very inclusively and holistically.”

Read more...

From SiP: Starkey doesn't think imitation is the finest form of flattery

Historian David Starkey looking very much like...?

From Stupidity is Painless:

Starkey and his peers live in a segregated world. A collective culture with people bound by economic circumstance where race once used to divide, is confusing to him. Whether you call his views racist or dismiss them asmerely  a ‘senior moment’, you have to call them plain ignorant and wrong.

 Read more.

The fallout: Michael Gove and Harriet Harman sparring on Newsnight

Classic!

Why can't we face the famine?

Oh, what the starving masses of East Africa would give to trade their life-or-death existences for those with bigger problems, like not having the latest trainers, mobile phones or laptops to pose with! You get me doh! In the midst of the madness in England’s cities, let’s not forget that people with eminently more critical problems are on the brink of starvation. 

Aid agencies have been saying for weeks that international governments have not been forthcoming with the much-needed assistance to alleviate the suffering of millions in Kenya. While they’re happy to stump up the money for the markets, as we’ve seen time and again in the last two years, when it comes to the people who are so often the victims of the market it’s a completely different story. 

Though the anguish of the people in the aid camps is due, in large part, to war and corruption, that doesn’t let the West off the hook. It’s rarely the fault of the people at the bottom that countries without governments or those with fraudulent leaders are where they are. The worst drought the region has experienced in 60 years has the potential to claim the lives of 13 million, two million of whom are children, according to reports. Thirty thousand have already starved to death.

Events of the last few days, if not months, have shown that governments, like those they purport to govern can’t always be trusted to do the right thing. Individuals, and communities of individuals, need to step up to the plate and take ownership of these causes that, in the midst of a global recession, are likely to be met with much resistance. That doesn’t make them any less worthy.

Unfortunately, many people don’t like to feel that they’re giving, especially to causes they have no natural affinity with. They’ll happily buy a charity single featuring their favourite artists without sparing a thought for the real reason they’re being asked to part with their cash. But that doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason people part with their cash, it’s the cash that counts. We can all take inspiration from the 11-year-old boy from Ghana who’s determined to raise an ambitious $13 million for famine victims in his school holidays and has so far raised a laudable £300. Compare Andrew Andasi to another 11-year-old who appeared in a London court this morning on riot burglary charges and it really is a telling story.

We need to come up with creative ways to raise funds for those in need, whether they’re our next door neighbours, as in the case of the donations that have been made to those displaced in English riot areas, or whether they’re further away. I don’t have the answers but the debate is necessary. That being the case, all contributions in the form of ideas are welcome. Actual donations can be made here.

Cry, the beloved country: Why London's burning

What was Allied Carpets, a georgraphic landmark in Tottenham, destroyed

I can't tell you how it feels to watch London implode from the distance (and sanctuary) of abroad. Not only my hometown but my home boroughs have been destroyed by the mindless thuggery initially fuelled by legitimate concerns. My daily London life stretches from Enfield in the north through Tottenham to Hackney and Tower Hamlets in the east. All have been the scene of senseless, destructive violence and looting.

But what I can tell you is that it’s been both interesting and sickening to watch how the news of the riots has been reported abroad, and how it’s been presented as a race war of unruly black youths – the implication being ‘immigrant’ youths – against the British authorities.

What is true is that there’s a real problem with urban youth. And ‘urban’ isn’t being used as a euphemism for ‘black’ as is so often the case. Inner city youths today have extremely limited ambitions. There’s an undeniable culture of low aspiration. Their whole world consists of the boundaries of their borough and, perhaps, slightly beyond. And, unfortunately, the opportunities that exist within that borough are often few and far between. So, they retreat into the community, speak in tongues using a bastardised street language that won’t help them get a job and withdraw into a world in which the only rule of law is that of the streets. They’ve taken the worst from rap music, upon which much blame has (somewhat rightly) been heaped, while ignoring the message that rappers always aspired to transcend their circumstances through their music not stay in them. Add to this the chasm that exists between the politicians and the people and you have an incendiary situation, the flames of which will be fanned indefinitely if serious measures to extinguish them aren’t taken.

The political divide

People don't trust politicians. And no one has trusted this Coalition since it was hastily cobbled together just over a year ago. Three days of rioting highlight what’s long been obvious. MPs are nowhere to be seen in the darkness of night but are all over the place when the illumination of flashbulbs and television cameras appear: holding brooms aloft in Clapham to be seen to lead the clean-up charge, showing solidarity with the police whose salaries and numbers they’re irrationally cutting and fronting press conferences where more questions are asked than are ever answered. Outside of these photo opps, these politicians are invisible in the communities they’re supposed to be serving.

When I was growing up, our local MP, Rhodes Boyson, a Conservative (Brent North), knew every family on our street by name. We’d regularly see him in the local community (not just at election time) and he’d stop and greet us and chat and it was all very cordial and genuine. Even the neighbouring MPs - at the time Ken Livingstone (Brent East) and Paul Boateng (Brent South) - were always around, on the ground, highly visible and ready to talk to the people they represented.

But when was the last time Boris Johnson, David Cameron or Theresa May was seen walking the streets of Tottenham, talking to people and listening to their opinions, gauging their concerns?

This week, I heard that a friend was on the train with David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham. She asked him to talk to a young man she was mentoring, who was also on the train and slightly in awe of the MP. She said he declined.

The BBC reported a Hackney resident as saying: "When you've got bankers taking their bonuses and MP's taking money off people like me for their moats, and their chateaus and their castles, this is the result." This is no excuse for criminal behaviour. But the gulf between politicians and the people has become almost unbreachable. 

They just don’t get it

Hearing politicians pontificating on TV saying that parents should know where their kids are and get them off the street shows just how out of touch they are. The parents already know where the kids are because they're looting the city with their kids. The parents are part of the problem, not the immediate solution. Worklessness is endemic in parts of London. Generational joblessness has been bequeathed from father to son and mother to daughter. By calling on parents to get their kids off the streets reveals massive ignorance on the politicians’ part.

A classic example of the lax parenting that exists in some communities is this: One day, while walking through Edmonton, a young (white) mother was out with her two infant children, one in a pram and the other, a toddler, walking beside her. Out of nowhere, this woman launched into a foul-mouthed tirade against the elder child saying: ‘Come here you f*&!ng c@nt. I told you to stay near me, you b@st@rd!’ Her son was no more than four years old. What hope for that child?

The failure of regeneration

Millions of pounds have been poured into regenerating poor communities in the hope that economic investment will produce a human capital return. But when the majority of the investment is in the form of Bettfreds, Ladbrokes and knock-off KFC chicken-and-chip shops the prospects for urban renewal aren’t quite as good as the multimillion budgets and fancy architectural designs make out. Since leaving Edmonton twelve months ago, I’ve noticed over time the complete decimation of the high street. Where once shops competed for business, they now sit empty. And instead of using the vacant space for community projects at a time when libraries across the borough are being shut down, the empty shops serve to remind the community that they’re not worth investing in. When even the pound shops won’t come, you know you that the powers-that-be see people like you as ten-a-penny, worthless.

The class war

This from my friend Athena in relation to the audio of young female rioters boasting about their criminal activities:

I think there is an anti-intellectualism movement in the working class youth of today and this audio is an example of it. Rather than have aspirations to improve oneself through education or work, they aspire to destroy others and bring others to their level. It’s a combination of entitlement and jealousy. There is no connection between work ethic and success - they believe everyone has inherited wealth, rather than worked for it. It's probably New Labour’s fault. Bad schooling, lack of discipline, lowering of academic expectations, materialism etc.

Also, imagine the parents of these girls and what they must have learnt from them. The parents are probably giving them a negative message e.g. they think they're poor because of society, and not because of a lack of discipline/education/manners/class etc. So rather than teaching them to have ambition, they say "this is your lot, live with it". So the kids riot because they think they have nothing to lose.

I would say these girls are quite typical of low income youth in this country. So many of these kids don't have life/work skills by the time they are 18 they are worthless to society, so society is worthless to them.

A woman leaps from a burning building into the arms of police officers in Surrey Street, Croydon. Photograph: Amy Weston/WENN.com

Ed said it best

On a visit to Peckham, Labour leader Ed Miliband said what the government is afraid to admit. "The issue of deeper underlying causes of some of the activity that we have seen, of why people indulge in this criminal behaviour, is something that, of course, needs to be looked at," he says. "We need to look at issues of parenting, issues of aspiration, issues of prospects for people, but there can never be any excuse for the kinds of things we have seen."

There is no excuse for the wanton violence on the streets of the great city that is London, my home. But politicians must recognise their role in creating the conditions for mayhem if not the mayhem itself. It’s not just the cuts. It’s the rhetoric. Multiculturalism hasn't failed. This is nothing to do with multiculturalism and everything to do with opportunistic criminality and class. To deny that would be to deny the fundamental facts at work. And that, too, would be criminal.

Watch the clip below for a more eloquent voice of reason.

Faster than the Eurostar: London to Brussels direct

Word on the street

This appeared overnight and was spotted and photographed by my eagle-eyed colleague this morning on the streets of Brussels, 'the capital of Europe.'

RIP Gil Scott-Heron

Libyans demonstrate in Brussels - what will it take to stop the butchery?

Link to a report from the European Council on Foreign Relations on what Europe needs to do on Libya here.

London: UK Uncut stage bail in at Barclays Bank

Protesters targeted more than 35 branches of Barclays bank, with pickets, poetry readings and even colouring competitions, in another of a series of days of direct action organised by the UK Uncut group. They were highlighting Barclays' admission that it paid just £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 – a year when it rang up a record £11.6bn in profits. At Tottenham Court Road (above), one of eight branches of Barclays in London to be targeted, some 40 to 50 people heard comedian Josie Lawrence pledge her support, before a group of people held a two-hour sit-in in the bank.

 

Copyright: Mary Carson

Italians protest for women - and against Berlusconi - in Brussels

Allahu Akbar: The people prevail in Egypt

History in the making, history now made.
A salute to the people of Egypt and their patience, resilience and courage over eighteen days of true people power. RIP to the fallen soldiers of true democracy, the martyrs. Respect to the Egyptian army.
Shame on America and Europe. Their words of congratulation sound hollow and fit firmly in the category of too little, too late.
January - Ben Ali, February - Mubarak. Just what will March bring? The people will decide.

Protestors demand sanctions against Lukashenka

Pro-democracy campaigners outside the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels where EU foreign ministers were meeting to decide on sanctions against President Lukashenka of Belarus.

Protests and the role of social media (BBC video)