Idris Elba's Keynote speech to Parliament on Diversity in the Media
Thanks for such a warm welcome. I could almost feel at home…
In fact we’re not far from where I grew up in East London, but as a
young man, I never thought I’d come here.
In fact as an older man, I never thought I’d come here.
But Oona invited me to speak here today.
You know what she's like, she's a bit obsessed with diversity.
I told her to get out more, & stop watching TV.
Thing is, when you get out more, you see there's a disconnect
between the real world & TV world.
People in the TV world often aren't the same as people in the real world.
And there’s an even bigger gap between people who make TV, and people who watch TV. I should know, I live in the TV world.
And although there's a lot of reality TV, TV hasn't caught up with reality.
Change is coming, but it's taking its sweet time.
WOMEN STILL PAID LESS THAN MEN
Empowering women means giving them the practical tools to escape poverty and prejudice. Around the world, including here in Britain, a baby girl’s life chances are disadvantaged in comparison to her brother’s at almost every turn, and once she becomes a woman the disadvantage becomes entrenched.
THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES: WHY OUR FUTURE DEPENDS ON THEM
Speech to Parliament as Shadow Broadcast Minister:
A generation ago, in 1998, the Labour Government defined the creative industries as comprising any business with the potential to generate,
“wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”.
It seems strange now that, in the fairly recent past, the Blair Government became the first in the world to recognise the creative industries as an industrial sector in their own right. The Creative Industries Mapping Document published by former Secretary of State, Chris Smith—now the noble Lord, Lord Smith—set out for the first time to measure and map the impact of the creative industries on the rest of the economy. He wrote in the foreword to the document:
The online world is the real world for digital natives
Speech to the House of Lords 20 Nov 2014 :
Baroness King of Bow (Lab): My Lords, the online world is the real world for digital natives. That is exactly what worries so many of us. However, we would be doing our children a huge disservice if we viewed their online interactions in only a negative light. In fact, for many young people, the internet is far more likely to be a place of opportunity. The internet will bring them opportunities that generations before them could only dream of.
Leading or Leaving: What’s Europe worth to you?
The price, and value, of EU membership
Speech by Oona King at British Influence’s event Britain in Europe, 2015: Leading or leaving?
Let’s start by inverting Oscar Wilde and asking, like every cynic would, not the value of the EU but the price of the EU.
So how much does it cost us? The EU costs every single person in Britain 37p per day. What do we get in return?
We get peace. You’d think that was quite valuable.
We get access to a Single Market with 500 million consumers (worth £90 billion to Britain annually).
We get freedom of movement.
UK: shameful decline in gender equality hurts us all
Economists at the respected World Economic Forum (WEF) have kicked the UK out of the world's top 20 countries for gender equality. Their report in November 2014, The Global Gender Gap, measures something more intriguing than wealth: the gap between men and women's life chances. In other words, how much opportunity in a given country is governed by gender. You won't be surprised Saudi Arabia didn't make the top 20 either.
