Diversity

Thursday

David Lammy

The BBC must address its lack of diversity – or risk losing viewers

Growing up in my Mum’s house, Wogan was king. Throughout the 1980s leading lights like Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Sammy Davis Jr sat on his sofa and – vicariously – in our living room in Tottenham too. As well as its historic duty to ‘inform, educate and entertain’, the principle of universality has always been at the very heart of what the BBC stands for. Our most cherished cultural institution is at its root a universal service that must reflect all of Britain by virtue of the simple fact that it is funded by all Britons. In a multi-platform, digital age where more content is available than ever before

Thursday

Ismene Brown

Why is British dance training so poor? ‘Diversity’ is trumping quality

A very British thing happened at the dance industry conference last weekend. Three of the UK’s most celebrated contemporary choreographers said British contemporary dance training is not up to snuff. Foreign dancers were better trained from a younger age, they said, were fitter, readier, worked harder. That’s why they got more jobs in British companies than UK-trained graduates. The two instant results were (a) a chorus of outraged denial from the dance establishment and (b) the resignation of the chairman of Dance UK, the umbrella body and ‘voice of dance’, which staged the conference. Now, its chairman, Farooq Chaudhry, was certainly playing some fairly brutal politics. He is the producer

Tuesday

Nick Cohen

Celebrating diversity means imposing misogyny

People talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can ‘celebrate diversity’ and support equal rights without a smidgeon of self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a principled choice. Then, whether they admit it or not, they find that they can believe in equality or they can believe in diversity, but they cannot believe in both. If this sounds like the start of a patient exploration of a delicate philosophical distinction, don’t be deceived. There is nothing difficult to understand, and my

Saturday

Ben Cobley

Labour’s mixed up views on race and diversity are driving voters away

In the past few weeks, Sadiq Khan has made a couple of interventions that show how hopelessly confused the Labour Party is on issues of race and diversity – and Ukip looms large in the background. First up, a couple of weeks ago, Khan made a Labour’s pitch ethnic minority votes in a speech to Operation Black Vote. He said: ‘The fact is that if you are black or Asian in Britain today: you are significantly more likely to be unemployed. You will earn less and you will live a shorter life than your white neighbours.’ Invoking Policy Exchange’s recent ‘Portrait of Modern Britain’ report, he added: ‘Entire racial groups are significantly

Tuesday

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Remember what really bad, racist TV looked like? I give you London Live

So Lebedev’s London Live has launched. And I don’t know about you but I’m hooked. I’d totally forgotten what really bad TV looked like. It’s as if the chief execs at Channel 5 got together with Alan Partridge for a 21st-century rebrand. London’s new TV channel did get one nice review from the, oh, Lebedev-owned Independent – moving swiftly on. From what I’ve seen of London Live’s first full day, it’s as if a posh, ethnically very chic primary school won a Blue Peter competition where they got to dress up as adults for the day and run their very own TV channel – all by themselves! The top news story

Friday

Ed West

Playing down Australia and New Zealand’s role in the Great War is shameful

Back in the 1950s my grandmother wrote her memoirs of childhood in Edwardian London, a story that ends in the summer of 1914, when she was 14. In contrast to the image we’re given of cheering men skipping to war, she recalls her father in tears at the breakfast table, lamenting that the politicians had failed. He foresaw total disaster (optimism runs in the family). She then finds that her brother has joined up, not out of excitement or glory but because he’s ashamed not to be in uniform; he survived, although broken by shellshock, and his elder son was killed in the next war. It’s clear from her recollection

Thursday

Marverine Cole

It’s not just older women. Where are the BBC’s black female presenters?

Harriet Harman missed something on this morning’s Radio 4 Today programme. Yes, the paucity older women appearing on British television remains a very relevant one, since the BBC axed Moira Stuart in 2007. Yet at the same time it single-handedly wiped out 100pc of its primetime black (African-Caribbean) female newsreader talent. That hole left by Stuart has never been filled and no-one has ever been able to explain why. Not even former Mark Thompson, the ex-BBC chief, when I asked him face-to-face that same year. As a teenage swot in Birmingham, I felt proud watching Moira reading the news. She inspired me. After years of faffing, I finally studied journalism

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

The City: a beacon of diversity

Now, what would those in the Equalities industry say to an industry so diverse that it has — in proportion — seven times as many Hindus, five times as many Indians, three times as many atheists and three times as many gays or lesbians as the rest of the country? And that this was achieved not by a positive discrimination employment strategy, but by sheer hard-headed hunt for the best talent? It would likely be hailed as an exemplar of diversity, an example of how Britain is the most tolerant country in the world. But if they happen to be bankers? Well, that’s another issue altogether. The study from Astbury