UK News

Oona King to run as Labour candidate for mayoral election

Once one of “Blair’s Babes“, former Labour MP Oona King has thrown down the gauntlet to former Mayor Ken Livingstone with the announcement of her official bid to become Labour’s candidate to run for London mayor in 2012.

King served as the second black woman MP in Britain after Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, who was elected in 1987.

Until her defeat by Respect’s George Galloway in 2005, King represented Bethnal Green and Bow in the Commons for 8 years from 1997 to 2005 under Prime Minister Tony Blair’s leadership.

In a 2007 autobiography titled “House Music: The Oona King diaries“, King details her life as an MP, including the challenges she faced after announcing her support of Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

King, currently head of diversity at Channel 4, will have to defeat anti-establishment Labour candidate Livingstone to compete against Conservative incumbent Mayor Boris Johnson in 2012. Last year, Livingstone announced a challenge to Johnson.

Livingstone was the first elected mayor of London. He was elected as an independent candidate in 2000, but in 2004 he ran for the post again under the Labour banner and served as mayor until 2008 when he was defeated by Johnson.

He was leader of the Greater London Council from 1981 until Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government abolished it in 1986.

from The Great Debate UK:

Women get paid less; but at least we get cheaper car insurance…

-Rachel Mason is public relations manager at independent financial service providers Fair Investment Company.The opinions expressed are her own.  Reuters will host a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in.-

In this day and age, it seems that things are pretty much equal between the sexes; men and women have equal rights, and in theory, can do the same jobs, so why is it that when it comes to money, the gender gap still exists?

Currently, the difference between what men and women earn is a staggering 22 pe cent. Women have to pay more for pensions because they live longer. So, it seems, one of the only financial advantages we seem to have over men is car insurance.

Men moan about this fact, and claim it is not fair that they should pay more to insure the same vehicle than a woman, but, unlike the gender pay gap, which could be construed as wholly unfair, the car insurance gender gap is more justifiable – women get cheaper car insurance because they have fewer accidents. Fact.

Many men would claim this is not true, and that they have fewer accidents than women, but that depends on your definition of ‘accident’. Women may have more minor bumps and scrapes than men, but men win hands down when it comes to serious accidents that cause more damage and therefore, cost more money for car insurance providers.

Home Office statistics reveal that men cause 89 percentof all serious driving offences. Men are responsible for 94 percent of death by dangerous driving offences, 97 percent of dangerous driving offences and 91 percent of offences caused as a result of drink or drugs. Men are also responsible for 86 percent of speeding offences and 85 percent of accidents as a result of neglecting traffic signs, directions and pedestrian rights.  And it is these types of accidents that affect insurance premiums.

According to Moneysupermarket.com, men pay, on average, 71 percent more for their car insurance than women. The average premium for a man is £886, whereas women pay £517 on average - £369 less than their male counterparts. And the gap is even bigger for younger drivers; 18 year old men pay £2,318.83 on average, where as 18-year-old girls pay a staggering 87 percent less at £1,237.33 on average.

from The Great Debate UK:

Time to break the silence on injustices against women

- Giselle Portenier is an  award-winning documentary filmmaker who focuses on human rights abuses around the world and a member of the Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival committee. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters will host a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in.-

Soon it will be that famous Ladies’ Day again, International Women’s Day, when the Western press packs their pages with stories—and it’s already started-- either celebrating all we have achieved, or lamenting all that still eludes us—equal pay for work of equal value, glass ceilings, balancing work and family life, domestic violence, and so on.

And while these stories are worthwhile, as we head into the hundredth year celebrating International Women’s Day, the time has come to slow down this navel-gazing, change this narrow focus, and come to the aid of millions of women worldwide.

The time has come to break the silence, in a big, real, systematic and very public way, on all the human rights abuses endured by girls and women in the developing world in the name of culture and religion.

It's tough to get attention for these issues, and they have been tremendously under-reported; I know, because I tried for five years before I finally succeeded in getting a documentary  titled "Murder in Purdah" commissioned about honor killings in Pakistan.

A film about the murder of baby girls and the abortion of the female fetus in India titled "Let Her Die"  was marginally easier. Both these documentaries had tremendous impact—each resulted in changes in the law.

In Pakistan, the first law against honor killings was introduced; in India, the government banned sex determination tests.

from The Great Debate UK:

Workplace bullying: the dark side of organisational life

- Dr Linda Alker is a princpal lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.  Her areas of expertise include organisational change, leadership and workplace stress. The opinions expressed are her own. -

Workplace bullying is identified as one of the greatest sources of stress that you can put upon your employees, although organisations and managers are often slow to react to cases of bullying because bullying is not always accepted as a credible label for the kind of abuse that employees face in the workplace.

For many the term ‘bullying’ carries with it too strong an association with childhood and the difficulties victims experience at school or on the way to school.  A denial that it exists then ensures that it remains a major stressor within the darker side the workplace.

The evidence speaks for itself and there is a suggestion that the increasing pressures of the recession are highlighting the problem of workplace bullying.

Research undertaken by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) and public service trade union Unison,  in January this year identified that one in 10 employees is likely to experience workplace bullying and harassment.

In addition, Unison reports that more than one third of workers have said they were bullied in the past six months, which is double the number a decade ago.

We know that bullying is persistent unwelcome behaviour, mostly using unwarranted or invalid criticism, sometimes threats, exclusion, isolation, etc.