Articles

Hackney is well known for being one of the most diverse areas in the country. It is a place where you can walk past Turkish supermarkets, Jamaican take-aways, fish and chip shops or Nigerian restaurants on one road.

“They said this day would never come” These were the first words of the speech that Obama gave this January when he pulled off his surprise victory at the Iowa caucus.

In the past weeks there has been much talk of the credit crunch, the economic down-turn and what we can do to stabilise the economy.

In recent days the Jamaica Producers Group has announced that it is finally going to stop growing bananas for export. This announcement, by Jamaica’s largest commercial banana producer, will mean that over four hundred people will lose their jobs.

Here in Britain the television news is dominated by the hurricane of financial bad news which is engulfing America, Britain and Europe

Not many people know the name Joanna Vassa. And the woman herself is not a well-known historical character. But her part in the history of slavery and race in this country is valuable and what is more, her tombstone in Abney Park Cemetery has just been awarded a Grade II Listing.

With both American political conventions over, the contest for the White House is now on the home straight. Up until now, it has been something of a phoney war with breaks for the Olympics and the summer holidays. On the day that Democratic nominee Barak Obama made his big speech formally accepting the nomination, Republican nominee John McCain even felt obliged to screen an ad in which he congratulated Obama. But that will be the last nice ad we see from McCain. The campaign from now is going to get down and dirty. And it will all be about race.

Antigua is probably most famous for being the birthplace of the legendary West Indies cricketer Viv Richards. But one of the big media stories this week in Britain has been the gunning down in Antigua of two young British tourists Catherine and Benjamin Mullaney.

Hackney schools are proving that every child really does matter with the help of a huge government investment.

The world’s greatest sporting spectacle, the Olympics, will be held in Beijing next month. Jamaica will be taking 51 track and field athletes there, including 39 sprinters. And Jamaicans, both those at home and those of us overseas, will be expecting those athletes to make our hearts swell with pride and bring home the medals.