Behind the veil: British thoughts on the French burqa ban

Four British muslim women, all adopting different forms of dress, agree on one thing: a woman’s choice of clothing should not be defined by the state.

Rehana Sidat, 41, was attacked two years ago by a man in the street who forcibly removed her face veil and shouted abuse at her. Mrs Sidat said she never considered changing her chosen form of dress.

“I have been wearing the veil for nearly 17 years now and choose to wear it to connect more with God and to express my love for him – for me, it is empowering and liberating.

“It is no different for me than when I dressed as a Goth or a Punk when I was young. As long it doesn’t do anyone any harm, I don’t know what the problem is.

“It was frightening for me when I had it torn off, but I didn’t even think about taking it off for a minute. It is a bit like the colour of my skin, I can’t rub out the colour of my skin and why would I?’

“People say that the veil is a barrier to integration, but I have never had a problem. I founded a charity for adults with learning disabilities and communication is a major part of my job. It is about confidence and not making the veil an issue.

“They argue in France that women are forced to wear the veil, but now they are forcing them not to. How is that any different? I wouldn’t travel to France– even to see a good friend of mine who lives there – the message they are giving to me is that I am not welcome anymore.”

Some food for thought from inside Fortnum & Mason

The occupation of Fortnum & Mason, best known for providing picnic baskets to the Royal Family, was held in typical UK Uncut style. Followers were directed to the secret meeting place by groups brandishing green and red umbrellas at Oxford Circus. At 3.30pm, 400 anti-cuts protesters, including me, entered the Piccadilly department store for a demonstration punctuated by poetry readings and guitar playing.

Shelves stocked with jars of marmalade, silver platters and bottles of champagne were soon home to carefully crafted banners, such as “Closed by UK Uncut” and “Big Society Bail In: We Won’t Pay for their Crisis”. While I was checking incoming tweets from news channels documenting the escalating violence outside, UK Uncut members were busy holding a meeting around the three-storey spiral staircase. They decided all actions via consensus-decision making, whereby you can indicate approval of an action by a quick show of jazz hands.

Unlikely stars step into the limelight

Keisha Riley-Douglas, 21, is holding a measuring tape against a teenage boy to fit him for his costume for tonight’s performance at Sadler’s Wells theatre. It is not her first time working as a project support officer for All Change, a community-based arts project set in Islington, but it seems a long time since she first got involved in the organisation seven years ago as a fourteen-year-old new mother.

 Two weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Nataleiah, Riley-Douglas decided to join a group of young parents in her borough that was working with professional artists and a local organisation to create a unique arts project. The premise then was simple: All Change believed that introducing a range of art forms to communities that might not otherwise experience them could give young people the skills to take control of their futures. Riley-Douglas, it seems, proves they were not wrong.

Dissidents left defenceless as regime bars their lawyers

By Sarah Morrison and Jerome Taylor

Lawyers who have dared to defend imprisoned pro-democracy activists in Belarus have been disbarred, in what human rights campaigners say is a deliberate move by the government to hamper fair trials.At least five lawyers who have stepped up to represent jailed opposition leaders have been struck off by Belarus’s Ministry of Justice, which controls who can enter the legal profession through a strict licensing system.

The five lawyers have been struck off on various technicalities but human rights activists say they are being deliberately disbarred because of their work with jailed democracy activists. Pavel Sapelka, who represented three candidates who ran against Alexander Lukashenko in last December’s elections, is the latest to be disbarred.

 The decision was passed by Minsk City Bar Association last Thursday at the request of the Ministry of Justice. Vadzimer Toustsik, Tamara Harayeva, Tatsyana Aheyeva and her son Aleh Aheyev have also had their licences revoked. They all either represented jailed members of the pro-democracy movement or were closely associated with them.

What Wandsworth reveals about the Big Society

For a phrase that no one seems to understand, the ‘Big Society’ really does seem to cover a lot of ground. Concerned about less police, cuts to legal aid, fewer hospitals, closed post offices? It turns out you really don’t need to be. In our bigger society, we get to empower ourselves. If we were under any confusion, Culture minister Ed Vaizey just re-defined the phrase once more. Are libraries involved in this far-reaching term? Why, but of course. “Libraries,” he said, should have a “home in the heart of the big society.”  Yes, that’s right, everything is covered. Each and every borrowed book.

It was only a matter of time, but this week one borough in London announced it was considering its very own pilot ‘Big Society’ library.  After an extensive consultation period, a committee in Wandsworth Council – governed by 47 Tory councillors and 13 Labour ones – has proposed a plan. In a bid to reach the 27% budgetary cuts it faces over the next four years, it will give York Gardens Library the most politically incorrect makeover in town. Firstly, opening hours will be reduced from 44 to 30 hours a week, community space will be leased out to a private Christian college, the IT training centre will be relocated to another library and the majority of adult books completely removed from the site. Sound good? Of course, the Big Society treatment wouldn’t be complete without throwing in some volunteers. Five library staff will be fired, or “deleted,” to use the council’s terminology, but a children’s homework club will be set up, ensuring of course, local residents aid its running, for free, two or three evenings a week.

19 Kosovans held after Trafalgar Square battle

Police are holding 19 teenagers after three young men were stabbed in Trafalgar Square in the middle of the afternoon. Violence broke out when rival groups of Albanian-Kosovans, armed with knives and hockey sticks, began to fight in one of London’s most popular tourist destinations.

Officers arrived at the scene on Thursday to discover running brawls between what is thought to have been Albanian-Kosovan gangs, gathered to “celebrate” the third anniversary of Kosovo’s independence. The youngest of those arrested is a 13-year-old boy.

Emergency services took a 19-year-old man suffering four stab wounds to his head, arm and back, and an 18-year-old with two stab wounds to his chest, to different hospitals. A third victim, aged 19, took himself to hospital after being stabbed in his neck, back and leg. The first victim has been discharged but the other two men are in a stable but serious condition.

Cowell signs 10-year-old spotted on YouTube

She is only 10 years old and has already been hailed as the next Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber rolled into one. Now, after taking the internet by a storm, the Canadian has become the latest talent to be signed by Simon Cowell.

Heather Russell, who cites her musical influences as Prince, Justin Timberlake, Queen and Alicia Keyes, is not new to the limelight. She wrote her first song on the piano at eight, and now, after posting a clip of her single “Every Step of the Way” on YouTube last July, has attracted the attention of Cowell, the music mogul and American Idol creator, and Rob Fusari, the producer who helped launch Lady Gaga.

In a rise to fame that has already been compared with fellow Canadian teen idol Justin Bieber, who was discovered four years ago on YouTube at the age of 12, Russell reportedly caught Cowell’s eye from the moment they were introduced.

Candid cameras capture street life in London over 150 years

A magazine seller at Ludgate Circus in 1893 is seen here after being covertly snapped by Paul Martin, the first photographer to use a hidden camera in an attempt to record life in London “as it is”. Visitors to the Museum of London are being given the chance to view life on the capital’s streets over the last 150 years in a photo exhibition, set to open on Friday.

The London Street Photography show will include the work of 70 photographers and aims to show the evolution of the city’s streets – from the first instantaneous black and white shots taken in the 1860s to colourful images of shoppers outside Sainsbury’s in 2010.

The exhibition, which is set to run until September, includes the work of well known photographers including Paul Martin, John Thomson and Roger Mayne, as well as anonymous artists.

The collection will explore the shift in approaches of those behind the lens, as well as the impact of new cameras.

This article appeared here in The Independent.

Police use CS gas against protest over tax evasion

Police sprayed protesters with CS gas yesterday at a demonstration in central London against tax evasion.

Trouble flared as police arrested a member of the protest group UKUncut on suspicion of criminal damage during a sit-in at Boots on Oxford Street, which closed the shop for four hours. Protesters said the woman was placing leaflets in between the gaps of the store’s doors when she was accused of damaging the building.

Dawn Foster, 24, said: “She was asked to follow officers into an alley and when she refused, she was grabbed and pulled around the corner. Then everyone followed police into the alley, chanting: ‘Shame on you.’ An officer sprayed a bunch of people with the gas. They were screaming.”

Tuition fees: is this really all we are worth?

Injured police officers, bloodied teens, broken glass and that picture of Charles and Camilla are now all etched into our memories. The vote to treble tuition fees and scrap Educational Maintenance Allowance has passed, and a record nearly one million people under 25 are now unemployed. But while idealism might have waned, young people around the UK are gearing up to play their part in the next day of action against the cuts this Saturday, with a very clear (if not appropriated) message: “What Parliament can do the movement can undo!”

In fact, as the fight to save education is propelled into 2011, one thing is now more noticeable: young people are enemy No 1 as the distance between politician and protester deepens. Yes, the fight against the cuts began with the last government and the Independent Review of Higher Education and Finance, commissioned by Lord Mandelson to advise on the sector’s future funding. But while the Coalition seems intent on blaming Labour for every blow they have been dealt, the fondly called Browne review has been described as “a serious, paradigm-shifting publication” by Universities Minister David Willetts.  Now for the questions.