District councillor for Sutton, Mepal, Witcham, and Wentworth (East Cambridgeshire District Council) and county councillor for Coveney, Little Downham, Mepal, Pymoor, Sutton, Wardy Hill, Way Head, Witcham, and Witchford (Cambridgeshire County Council)
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s household recycling centres will remain open during lockdown under their existing health and safety measures.
The booking system for vehicles and trailers requiring e-permits at all sites remains in place, as does the requirement for booking for all vehicles at Alconbury, Bluntisham, Milton, St Neots, and Thriplow.
From 1 January, business with countries in the European Union is going to get a whole lot more expensive and complicated.
East Cambridgeshire District Council’s business support unit Enterprise East Cambs now has a new web page about the end of the transition and what businesses will have to do https://www.enterpriseeastcambs.co.uk/uk-transition/changes-ahead.htm
And there’s also a link from that page to the Government’s master checklist of all the new forms, declarations, and everything else businesses will need to do if they want to keep doing business with our European neighbours https://www.enterpriseeastcambs.co.uk/ugc-1/1/2/0/Transition%20Period%20Master%20Checklist.pdf
I was interviewed today for BBC Look East about the national COVID lockdown, and the obvious question: why does East Cambridgeshire, with one of the lowest COVID rates in the country, have to lock down because rates elsewhere are so much higher?
I said a lot more than they used (that’s always the way), but what I said in full was:
When COVID numbers start to rise, they rise very fast.
The tiered approach has failed to halt the spread of the virus.
The Government’s Track and Trace operation has also failed, and the Government must used the lockdown time productively, to improve its ability to test large numbers of people, trace contacts effectively, and get more of them to self-isolate for the necessary period of time.
Today is the last day of October and of Black History Month. I hope you have enjoyed my series of portraits of people of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
My last entry is Maggie Aderin-Pocock – a personal heroine of mine for smashing through multiple glass ceilings to achieve in her chosen field.
Margaret Aderin-Pocock MBE is a British space scientist and science educator. She is an honorary research associate of University College London’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. She has co-presented the long-running astronomy television programme The Sky at Night, and this year was awarded the Institute of Physics William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize for her public engagement in physics.
Born in 1968 to Nigerian parents, Aderin-Pocock was raised in Camden, and attended La Sainte Union Convent School in North London. She has dyslexia. My favourite story about her is that as a child, when she told a teacher she wanted to be an astronaut, it was suggested she become a nurse, ‘because that’s science, too’.
She gained four A-Levels in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, graduated with a BSc in physics from Imperial College London, and completed her PhD in mechanical engineering in 1994.
Aderin-Pocock has worked on many projects in private industry, academia, and in government – as a systems scientist on aircraft missile warning systems, as a project manager developing hand-held instruments to detect landmines, and back at Imperial College working on a high-resolution spectrograph for the Gemini telescope in Chile.
She was the lead scientist at Astrium, where she managed observation instruments on a satellite measuring wind speeds, and is working on and managing the observation instruments for the Aeolus satellite which will measure wind speeds to help the investigation of climate change. She is also a pioneering figure in communicating science to the public, and also runs her own company, Science Innovation Ltd, which engages children and adults all over the world with the wonders of space science.
She has spoken to approximately 25,000 children, many of them at inner-city schools, telling them how and why she became a scientist. She also helps encourage young people into science by being a celebrity judge at the National Science + Engineering Competition.
Aderin-Pocock was the scientific consultant for the 2009 mini-series Paradox, and also appeared on Doctor Who Confidential. She has also presented Do We Really Need the Moon? (2011) and In Orbit: How Satellites Rule Our World (2012) on BBC Two.
As well as presenting The Sky at Night Aderin-Pocock has presented Stargazing on CBeebies with Chris Jarvis, and Out of this World on CBBC with her daughter Lauren. She has also appeared on Would I Lie to You, Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit, and Richard Osman’s House of Games.
Since 2006, Aderin-Pocock has been a research fellow at UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies. She has previously held other fellowships related to science communication, and in 2006 she was one of six “Women of Outstanding Achievement” winners with GetSET Women. She is an honorary research associate of University College London’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Despite her impressive record of achievement, Aderin-Pocock has not been immune from claims that she has been selected for appearances because of her gender and ethnicity rather than her ability. The right-wing Ephraim Hardcastle diary column in the Daily Mail claimed that she and BAME astro-physicist Hiranya Peiris had been chosen to discuss an experiment on BBC Newsnight for these reasons – comments condemned by the Royal Astronomical Society and University College London among others, forcing the publication to back down.
We still have a long way to go in addressing prejudice and discrimination against people of colour.
More about Maggie Aderin-Pocock at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Aderin-Pocock
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
John Sentamu was born in 1949 near Kampala, Uganda, the sixth of thirteen children. He retired in June 2020 as Archbishop of York, the first black Archbishop in the United Kingdom.
Sentamu studied law in Uganda, and became an advocate of the Supreme Court there until 1974, being briefly a judge of the High Court. In 1973, he married his wife Margaret. Three weeks later, he incurred the wrath of the dictator Idi Amin and was detained for 90 days. In a speech in 2007, he described how during that time he had been “kicked around like a football and beaten terribly”, saying “the temptation to give up hope of release was always present”. He fled his home country to arrive in the United Kingdom in 1974.
Sentamu read theology at Selwyn College Cambridge. He studied for ordination at Ridley Hall Cambridge, and was ordained in 1979. In 1996 he was consecrated as the area Bishop of Stepney and in 2002 moved to the position of Bishop of Birmingham. He served as advisor to the Stephen Lawrence judicial inquiry, and chaired the Damilola Taylor review.
In 2005 he was appointed to the position of Archbishop of York. He has held the Chancellorship of the universities of York St John and of Cumbria, and has been awarded a number of honorary degrees and doctorates.
There have been eight occasions on which a Church of England bishop has been stopped and questioned by the police, and on every occasion it was John Sentamu. He has been critical of the standards of ‘reasonable grounds to suspect’ applied by police.
Sentamu famously cut up his dog collar live on television in protest against the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, vowing not to wear it again until Mugabe was no longer in office. He returned to the television studio ten years later to resume his dog collar on Mugabe’s leaving office.
Sentamu has a history of being outspoken on a large number of issues, in some cases adopting very traditionalist church positions such as opposition to same-sex marriage. In 2016 he was one of six bishops accused by a survivor of child sexual abuse by a clergyman of procedural misconduct for failure to respond appropriately to his disclosures.
While Archbishop of York, Sentamu had a place in the House of Lords by virtue of his church office. However, during Black History Month this year he was snubbed on his retirement by failing to be granted an automatic life peerage like his predecessors.
(On a personal note, John Sentamu is the only person in my list of 31 people of colour for this month whom I have actually met. I was a student at Selwyn College Cambridge at around the same time as him, and he and his wife and their first child were even guests at my wedding in 1979.)
More about John Sentamu at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sentamu
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. According to former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become “the most prominent citizen” of the country.
Yousafzai was born in 1997 to a Pashtun family in Pakistan, where her family came to run a chain of schools in the region. She was particularly inspired by her father, an educational activist, and his humanitarian work. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for BBC Urdu detailing her life under Taliban occupation. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. She gave interviews in print and on television, and was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by Desmond Tutu.
In 2012, while on a bus after taking an exam, she and two other girls were shot by a Pakistani Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism. Yousafzai was hit in the head with a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition in hospital, but her condition improved enough for her to be transferred to hospital in Birmingham. This attempt on her life arguably made her “the most famous teenager in the world”. Leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her, and the Pakistani Taliban were internationally denounced by governments, human rights organizations and feminist groups. Pakistani Taliban officials responded by further denouncing Yousafzai, suggesting they would try again to kill her.
Following her recovery, Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education. Based in Birmingham, she co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation, and in 2013 co-wrote I Am Malala, an international best seller. In 2012, she was the recipient of Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and the 2013 Sakharov Prize. In 2014, she was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Aged 17 at the time, she was the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.
In 2015, Yousafzai was a subject of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary He Named Me Malala. The 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured her as one of the most influential people globally. In 2017, she was awarded honorary Canadian citizenship and became the youngest person to address the House of Commons of Canada. She attended Edgbaston High School from 2013 to 2017, and graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from the University of Oxford.
More about Malala Yousafzai at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Lewis Hamilton (MBE HonFREng) is a British racing driver and six-time Formula One World Champion. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport, and considered by some to be the greatest of all time. He won his first World Drivers’ Championship with McLaren in 2008, before moving to Mercedes in 2013, with whom he has won a further five titles.
One of the most successful drivers in the history of the sport, Hamilton’s six World Championship titles is the second-most of all time, while he holds the records for the most wins (92), career points (3687), pole positions (97), podium finishes (161), points finishes (225), and championship points in a season (413).
Born and raised in Stevenage, Hamilton enjoyed a successful ascent up the racing ladder and was signed to the McLaren young driver programme in 1998. This later resulted in a Formula One drive with McLaren in 2007, making Hamilton the first and only black driver to race in the sport, as of 2020. That season, Hamilton set numerous records as he finished runner-up to Kimi Räikkönen by one point. The following season, he won his maiden title in dramatic fashion—making a crucial overtake on the last corner of the last lap in the last race of the season—to become the then-youngest Formula One World Champion in history. After four more years with McLaren without finishing higher than fourth in the drivers’ standings, Hamilton signed with Mercedes in 2013.
In the following years Hamilton won five further World Championship titles, including consecutive titles in 2014 and 2015 and again in 2017 and 2018. A third title followed in 2019 to complete a consecutive hat-trick of titles, bringing his tally to six overall, second only to Michael Schumacher.
Listed in the 2020 issue of Time as one of the 100 most influential people globally, Hamilton has been credited with furthering Formula One’s global following by appealing to a broader audience outside the sport, in part due to his high-profile lifestyle, environmental and social activism as well as his exploits in music and fashion. Hamilton has been targeted by racist abuse throughout his career and has been outspoken in his criticism of racial politics in Formula One as well as advocating for greater diversity in the sport. His treatment by British newspapers has also been criticised for carrying racial bias, and some have pointed to Hamilton’s race and physical appearance as reasons behind his perceived unpopularity among a portion of motorsport fans.
More about Lewis Hamilton at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Hamilton
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Moira Stuart is a British presenter and broadcaster, the second African-Caribbean female newsreader to appear on British television, having worked on BBC News since 1981.
Her mother was born in Dominica, and her father was a lawyer from Barbados. They divorced when Stuart was ten months old. Born in London, Stuart moved to Bermuda with family in her teens. She returned to the UK, and began working with the BBC in the 1970s and a production assistant, moving to become a continuity announcer and newsreader.
In four decades, she has presented many television news and radio programmes for the BBC, on every news bulletin devised on BBC Television apart from the Ten O’Clock News. The BBC announced her departure from BBC Television News in 2007.
From 2010 for nine years, she was the newsreader for The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, where she hosted her own music show every Sunday. In February 2019 she joined Classic FM as a morning news presenter and, from July 2019, as a weekend presenter with her own Saturday show. She has also presented music programmes on various other channels.
In March 2020 she received the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Harvey Lee Award in recognition of her five decades of outstanding broadcasting, including news presentation on BBC radio and television, documentaries, entertainment shows and her current news and music programmes on Classic FM.
Stuart has served on various boards and judging panels including Amnesty International, the Royal Television Society, BAFTA, United Nations Association, the Orange Prize, the London Fair Play Consortium, the Human Genetics Advisory Commission, the Queen’s Anniversary Prize, and the Grierson Trust.
In November 2004, she was the subject of an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing her family history. This took her to the Scottish Highlands, and to Antigua (where her great-great-grandfather was enslaved) and Dominica, where her great-grandfather was born. She discovered the story of how her maternal grandfather met his wife when both were studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh – Stuart’s grandmother was the first black woman student there, though she did not finish her medical studies, using money intended for her course to pay their bills instead. The couple ultimately settled in Bermuda, where in addition to being a physician Stuart’s grandfather became a parliamentarian, civil-rights activist and labour leader.
In March 2007 Stuart presented the documentary In Search of Wilberforce for BBC Television, examining the role of anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the British bill that banned the slave trade.
More about Moira Stuart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moira_Stuart
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Lenny Henry is an English stand-up comedian, actor, singer, writer and television presenter, known for co-founding the charity Comic Relief, and appearing in TV programmes including children’s entertainment show Tiswas, sitcom Chef! and The Magicians for BBC One.
Henry was born in Dudley in 1958, the fifth of seven children. When he was 10 years old, he learned that his biological father was Albert Augustus ‘Bertie’ Green, another Jamaican immigrant and a family friend with whom his mother had a brief relationship when she first arrived in England.
His earliest television appearance was on the talent show New Faces, which he won in 1975. The following year he appeared with Norman Beaton in LWT’s sitcom The Fosters, Britain’s first comedy series with predominantly black performers. He also performed in working men’s clubs, with occasional TV appearances.
He co-hosted the children’s programme Tiswas from 1978 until 1981, and subsequently performed and wrote for the show Three of a Kind. In 1980, he teamed up with alternative-comedy collective The Comic Strip, where he met his wife, comedian Dawn French (the couple divorced in 2010). She encouraged him to move over into alternative comedy, where he established a career as a stand-up comedy performer and character comedian.
The first series of The Lenny Henry Show appeared on the BBC in 1984, and the series ran periodically for a further nineteen years. Henry starred in film and on TV, including the comedy series Chef!, as well as the BBC drama Hope And Glory.
He appeared as a backing singer on Kate Bush’s album The Red Shoes in 1993,and at Amnesty International’s Big 3-0 fund raising concert. He co-founded Comic Relief, and has hosted the show and presented filmed reports from overseas on the work of the charity. In February 2009, he appeared in the title role in the Northern Broadsides production of Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.
He graduated with a BA Hons in English Literature, from the Open University, in 2007. He studied for an MA at Royal Holloway, London in screenwriting for television and film, where he received a distinction, and in 2010 he began studying at the same institution for a PhD on the role of black people in the media, which he received in 2018.
Henry was appointed a CBE in the 1999 New Year Honours. He was knighted in 2015 for services to drama and charity. In 2016, Henry became the chancellor of Birmingham City University; was made a fellow of the Royal Television Society; was awarded the BAFTA Television Special Award; and received an honorary doctorate from Nottingham Trent University.
More about Lenny Henry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Henry
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Mo Farah is a British long-distance runner and the most successful British track athlete in modern Olympic Games history.
Farah was born in 1983 in Mogadishu, Somalia, to a family from Gabiley, Somaliland. His father was a businessman in Mogadishu, but the family had to flee and Farah found himself living as a refugee in Djibouti with his mother and brothers.
He moved with his family at the age of eight to join his father in Britain speaking barely a word of English, leaving his twin brother behind in Djibouti – they remained separated for twelve years. Farah went on to be based in London, and ran for Newham and Essex Beagles athletics club, training at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham from 2001 to 2011.
Farah is the European record holder for the 10,000 metres, half marathon, marathon, and two miles, the British record holder for the 5000 metres, the British indoor record holder for the 3000 metres, and the current world record holder for the one hour run and indoor world record holder for the two miles.
Farah is the most decorated athlete in British athletics history, with ten global titles, and was the first British athlete to win two gold medals at the same world championships, although Dame Kelly Holmes had achieved the feat at an Olympic Games. His five gold medals at the European Athletics Championships make him the most successful athlete in individual events in the championships’ history. He has won the European Athlete of the Year award and the British Athletics Writers Association British Athlete of the Year award more than any other athlete, three times and six times respectively. Farah was made a CBE in 2013 and was knighted by the Queen in 2017.
Farah has been actively involved in a range of good causes. He launched the Mo Farah Foundation after a trip to Somalia in 2011 and the following year won £250,000 for his foundation on ITV’s The Cube – the only person to win the top prize on the show. He later took part in the 2012 Olympic hunger summit at 10 Downing Street, part of a series of international efforts seeking to respond to the return of hunger as a high-profile global issue.
In 2013, he joined other celebrities urging Chancellor George Osborne to clamp down on global corporations that avoid paying taxes in poor countries in which they operate. He has also expressed support for research into brain tumours. On 7 August 2017, Farah became a global ambassador for Marathon Kids.
Farah is a Muslim and an active supporter of the Muslim Writers Awards. He was named among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world in 2013. He is also an Arsenal fan and has trained with its first team squad.
More about Mo Farah at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Farah
