So Israel has won Eurovision with Netta’s quirky Toy song, which is themed around strong women and features chicken noises. While Netta had been the favourite to win for some time, Cyprus was the unexpected frontrunner after an impressive performance in both the rehearsals and semi-final....
Travelling to Sweden for my first Eurovision in 2016, I thought I had reached the pinnacle of my love for Eurovision. But here I am, on the verge of travel again to a Eurovision winning country, this time to Portugal. It’s not just the idea of warmer climes that is appealing (Stockholm is lovel...
Would you like to hear a story? It’s about a forgotten deal between the UK and Turkey, which came to life in the 90s. For the past two decades, the Ankara Agreement has been a strong and vital option in enabling commercial immigration from Turkey to Britain. Recently, the significant rise in new app...
I have been a trade unionist all of my working life and would tell everyone reading this article, if you are working and not in a trade union, I urge you to join a union today. Currently, our community faces a bigger threat from the far-right than we have ever seen before and I am writing to bo...
One more year has flown away. Our lives shortened by one more year. A lot happened in this strange world of ours. Some happy, some crazy, some sad. A perfect example of the latter two was the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA. For us here in the UK, undoubtedly the single mo...
I do not like the word ‘Diaspora’. Its dictionary definition is “the dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland”. This evokes feelings of temporariness and permanent homesickness. For third, fourth generation Cypriots these feelings are meaningless. Their original homeland is Br...
Halla Barakat was many things to many people. Many of you might recognise her as a pretty face that has been appearing in your social media news feeds in recent days, but maybe you haven’t stopped to read what all the fuss is about. For those of you who have, you would know that Halla Barakat w...
A lovely, crisp day. The first day of autumn. I walk through tranquil gardens with two friends in bright sunlight towards an imposing building. A large crowd had started to gather in front of the building. The place is the St. Marylebone Crematorium in East Finchley. A sense of déjà vu washes over m...
With the academic year having drawn to a close, schools are often looking at ways of improving academic performance and productivity in the new Autumn Term. One strategy which has become popular is the practice of shortening pupil’s lunch breaks, in order to re-structure the school day. This pr...
I was not planning to write about my trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, where I attended a conference on Cultural Heritage in Migration. We all had an intense discussion on this issue with the conference organisers and participants, and later my personal experience of heritage in Sofia left me to conclud...
