Archive for January, 2007
I attended Waltham Forest’s 101st Citizenship Ceremony, as guest of honour, on Wednesday morning. It was a fantastic and moving experience that lifted my spirits for the whole day. I was particularly delighted to present new British citizen Maureen Paul (pictured with me above) who comes from Dominica, where my family is from.
The Labour government introduced citizenship ceremonies in February 2004, as part of a wider agenda to celebrate citizenship in schools and local communities. I think they are a brilliant idea and they have been well received by the new British citizens who’ve taken part in them.
I have a little saying that Leyton is “the world in one place” and on Wednesday it really was.
Below are a few snaps of some the new British citizens I was privileged enough to meet and present with certificates confirming their new British citizenship.
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A new British family, formally of Columbia.
Mum and her two little pink ladies, formally of Jamaica, embrace their new nationality.
Britain welcomes Sri Lanka.
Her majesty smiles down on two of Waltham Forest’s new Turkish British residents.
January 11th, 2007
I had a brilliant time on Monday night, taking part in Colourful Radio’s ‘Front Line’ show, which aims to raise the profile of local government and the work of councillors.
Pascoe Sawyers (pictured above sitting, with myself and Councillor Emma Hoddinott from Beverley in West Yorkshire), Director of the Leadership Academy for the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) for local government (www.idea.gov.uk) is the presenter of the Front Line programme, which has now been running for the past seven weeks, going out on Colourful Radio at 8pm every Monday.
The programme is a kind of ‘Desert Island Discs’. As well as talking to me about my work as a councillor, Pascoe played three of my favourite tunes: a dance/ garage mix of Jill Scott’s ‘Golden‘, an extract from Dvorak’s ‘New World Symphony‘ and the uplifting gospel tune ‘I believe‘ by Sounds of Blackness.
The programme also heard from Mithran Samuel (pictured above on my right), who’s the Chief Reporter of ‘Community Care’ magazine. Mithran shared his views on the big local government stories of the week from his journalistic perspective.
The highlight of the show was meeting and hearing from Cllr Emma Hoddinott (pictured above right), who is a parish councillor in Beverley, West Yorkshire.
Emma is only 25 but has been a Councillor for four years(!!) and has already stood as a parliamentary candidate at the last general election. Emma is seriously impressive and it was really great to meet another young councillor who feels just as passionately about her role as I do. I now also have a much better idea what parish councillors actually do! 
A huge well done to Pascoe for coming up with the idea of the ‘Front Line’ show. It will really help to demistify and humanise the work of councils and councillors.
Indeed, Pascoe’s bosses at IDeA are so impressed with how the last seven weeks have gone, they have pledged to continue sponsoring another series of ‘Front Line’ when the current series comes to an end in five weeks’ time.
To listen to Monday night’s programme in full click here (the programme will start automatically).
or to listen to an extract from the full interview go to www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=5541594
January 9th, 2007
Just before Christmas, I posted a story about the Voice Newspaper and why I believe that the leadership of the Labour party should do more to cultivate the UK’s ethnic media in the same way they cultivate the mainstream tabloids and broadsheets – particularly when you consider that four out of five BME citizens will vote Labour if they actually go out and vote.
On top of this, I have also recently been informed that one-fifth of all Labour party members are estimated to be of Black or Minority Ethnic Origin. This is a staggering figure considering that BME communities only make up eight per cent of the UK population.
With this in mind, I was therefore absolutely delighted to open this week’s Voice newspaper (which came out this morning) and see this fantastic interview with Jon Cruddas MP, who is running for Deputy Leader of the Labour party.
The interview confirms to me why I chose to back Jon Cruddas and why I will continue to back him. Here is someone who actually wants to reach out to Labour’s traditional supporters and win back their trust.
Jon Cruddas is the first and only Deputy Leadership candidate to have done an interview in the Voice.
As a Black councillor, I have been even more reassured by this interview that Jon will be a powerful voice for BME members if he becomes the Deputy Leader of our party.
January 8th, 2007
I popped up to the BBC Television and Radio studios in White City on Tuesday morning, to take part in a studio debate on Radio 4′s flagship political programme ‘Today’ with presenters Sarah Montague (pictured above left) and Edward Stourton (pictured above right).
The independent local government Think Tank, the New Local Government Network (NLGN), has published a new pamphlet entitled ‘Local Government: Young at Heart?‘, which calls for councillors – particularly young councillors – to receive better pay and conditions. The NLGN asked me to go on the programme to talk about what my role as a councillor involves.
I have to say that there is no way on earth I would be able to finance myself as a local councillor if I did not receive some income from my councillor allowance and my full time job – and that’s what I said when I went on this morning’s programme. The retired independent councillor I was debating with strongly disagreed!
Someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but it may be that in the ‘olden days’ the only people who were councillors were rich people with a trust fund to do their shopping. Well not in 2007. For this young councillor from a single parent household in Leyton, East London, I simply wouldn’t be able to afford to carry out this incredibly important role without some remuneration, to supplement the salary I receive from the full time job I still very much need to do.
If we really are serious about increasing the number of people going into local government, who come from backgrounds like mine, and if we really want to improve on the extremely unrepresentative statistics the New Local Government Network reports: that only 29.7 per cent of British councillors are women, that only 3.5 per cent come from a Black or Minority Ethnic Community, and that only 62 out of 20,000 councillors are aged under 26 - then improving conditions for councillors is going to have to become the norm – however controversial.
This morning’s programme certainly sparked a fierce debate!
What do you think?
Download the New Local Government Network’s Report by clicking here.
And listen to Tuesday’s radio debate by going to www.bbc.co.uk/today and clicking on the ‘listen again’, then the ‘Audio Archive‘ tab, then clicking on Tuesday the 2nd of January’s 8.47am clip entitled ‘Should local councillors get better pay and conditions?‘
January 2nd, 2007
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