Black Beauty will vanquish all her critics

By Lopa Patel, 27 July 2009

The crowning of black beauty queen Rachel Christies as ‘Miss England’ last week has been met with a flurry of feminist critics lunging for their lippy whilst hastily rearranging their previous opinions of beauty pageants. India Knight, in her column for ‘The Sunday Times’ (26 July 2009) wrote, “Oh sister, have I misjudged beauty queens”.

Ms Christie, aged 20, is the niece of athlete Linford Christie and is herself a budding athlete hoping to represent Britain in the Olympics 2012 heptathlon event. She lives with her mother, two brothers and sister in a council flat in west London. Her father was killed in a drugs war when she was just eight and yet, here she is - talented, beautiful, hardworking (she trains for six days a week) - an all round gorgeous gal.

Who cares if an outdated, sexist beauty pageant gave her a break? And who cares why they chose her over others who had garnered a much greater public vote? Grab it girl and head for the top, I say. The feminists can take some comfort from the fact that their protestations over beauty pageants might have forced the ‘Miss England’ judges to choose substance over beauty in this year’s contest: apart from Rachel Christie, the runner-up was Lance-Corporal Kat Hodge, 22, who won a commendation for bravery while serving in Iraq.

Whilst it may be depressing for feminists to read the young girls aspire to nothing more than looking pretty and marrying rich footballers WAG-style, the issue is that the hard-fought freedom and rights that were won by the previous generations give young girls the liberation to make a CHOICE. Some many squander the chance to become a neuroscientist or Prime Minister to go on and become a WAG, others may make good on the promise to break down closed doors and crack glass ceilings.

It is fantastic that Rachel Christie has won the ‘Miss England’ crown – the first black woman to have done so – and she deserves the support of the entire black community for having done so on her own terms.

Asian community confused about beauty

Of course, the Asian community is entirely confused about what it considers beautiful – all our ‘Miss World’ and ‘Miss Universe’ winners have conformed more to the Western ideal of beauty with their wheatish-to-white fair complexions, almond eyes, sharp features and non-voluptuous figures. I racked my brains to find a non-wheatish beauty queen (ideas anyone)?

Asian beauty queens go on to be Bollywood film stars and marry acting aristocracy (like Aishwarya Rai). Some even get snapped up to become the ‘face’ for beauty firms like L’Oreal (Aishwarya again), but depressingly they also spend a lot of time promoting skin-lightening creams - in India ‘Fair & Lovely’ (skin lightening moisturiser) is one of the best-selling creams on the market. Actress Shilpa Shetty gave all such cream makers a big boost by lathering up her face on Celebrity Big Brother.

Ironically it was Danielle Lloyd who was ‘Miss England’ when Shilpa was in the house and we all know how well that turned out! Lloyd lost the crown after stirring up scandals for posing nude for Playboy magazine and dating one of the judges during her participation in the pageant, not to mention her part in the racist bullying of Shetty in the Celebrity BB house.

We should let beauty pageants be, if - like talent shows ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and ‘X-Factor’- they give a young women a leg-up into the beauty-modelling-fashion-acting-music industries, then we surely we should be proud that there is a platform for this.

And Rachel, when you’re winning the heptathlon event in 2012, I’ll be there (like the rest of Britain) shouting myself hoarse with the words “Go Girl, Go!”

Beauty pageant winners who’ve become actresses:
Lara Dutta – ‘Miss Universe’ 2000
Priyanka Chopra – ‘Miss World’ 2000
Yukta Mookhey –‘Miss World’ 1999
Aishwarya Rai- ‘Miss World’ 1994
Sushmita Sen – ‘Miss Universe’ 1994
Preeti Desai – 'Miss Great Britain' 2006

Non-Doms – it’s time to “pay up or ship out”

By Lopa Patel, 27 July 2009.

As I have had a lot of feedback on my editorial from 23 July 2009 regarding the article ‘Indian businessmen pledge to stop bankrolling Labour if 'non-dom' tax bill passes’, here it is in full….

Britain's rich Indian businessmen just don't get it, do they? This week Lord Swraj Paul and Sir G K Noon have pledged to stop funding the Labour Party if the proposed £30,000 annual 'non-doms' tax goes through. Well, Good! 'We The People' (including all the other less-rich Asians living here) don't want you to be able to influence our Prime Minister by throwing money at their political campaigns anyway.

The irony is that neither man would miss the £30K from their multi-million pound fortune. What is being lost in this 'war of words' is that the British public (including all the less-rich other Asians living here) want UK politics cleaned up. We want useless Peers booted out of the House of Lords, we want corrupt and sleazy MPs kicked out too and we want those confused about their identity because of their untold wealth to "Pay Up or Ship Out".

Perhaps then, we might get a Government that works for 'Us', rather than un-elected self-serving individuals who don't do anything for anyone else. Britain has a lot going for it - let's not make it like South Asia.

Non-Dom status is all about money, not identity

I know that a lot of “non-doms” are not in the super-rich category enjoyed by Lord Paul and Sir G K Noon, but the issue of the “non-doms” is all about money and not about identity. The time to make difficult decisions is now – are you part of British society, enjoying free services like healthcare, state education and the state-supported pensions and benefits system, or are you here to earn as much as possible and repatriate this “back home” (where ever that may be)? If it is the former, then revoke your non-dom status, if it is the latter then “pay up or ship out”.

Non-Doms should not be able to make donations to political parties

It is right and just that non-doms should be barred from making donations to political parties. We, the British Citizens (including all the less-rich other Asians living here), do not want any U-Turns on this policy.

It is not irony that those who cannot vote in our democratic process should determine the outcome of a British General Election – it is just plain WRONG!

Britain is a great democracy and our politicians should acknowledge that now.

‘Bonfire of the Quangos’? Start with the GLA.

By Lopa Patel, 23 July 2009

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then my picture (left) with London Mayor Boris Johnson speaks volumes! Worry not; I have not become a dyed-in-the-wool, raving Tory. I was merely persuaded to attend last Monday’s (13 July 2009) London Assembly Conservative Group’s Summer Reception hosted at City Hall by Boris Johnson where he delivered a lectern-thumping pre-UK Election 2010 speech if I ever heard one. Still, it got me thinking.....

If Conservative Party Leader, David Cameron wants to have a “bonfire of the quangos” as he announced last week, then why not start with the GLA and LDA first? OK, they are not strictly quangos, but seeing as they suck London dry of money and deliver absolutely nothing of value in return – they sound like a quango to me!

Here are my top 5 quangos for the bonfire, David.

1. GLA and the LDA – Cost Saving= @ £400million
The advantages of scrapping the GLA (a precedent set by former Tory PM Margaret Thatcher) is the it: frees up Boris to help you fight the Election 2010 (yikes!), has minimal impact on London (Boris has not acquired the moniker “Do Nothing Mayor” for nothing you know) and the money can be returned to Londoners who’ll use it to support the Capital’s retail spending.

2. EHRC, Cost Saving = £70 million
The advantages of scrapping the EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) is that it has despot ‘Teflon Trevor’ (Phillips) as its head who has the support of Harriet Harman and no one else (in the entire country) and produces a number of surveys and reports widely disregarded by everyone whom they are supposed to effect.

3. Oftel, Ofcom, Ofqual….Of-with-them-all I say! In fact, any quango whose name starts with the word ‘Of’ should immediately be switched off, permanently. Potential Cost Saving = £250million

4. ACE, a poorly judged three letter acronym if there ever was one. The Arts Council England is anything but ‘Ace’. Set up to distribute funding to the Arts – this amounted to £533 million of tax payers money in 2009 - Ace should be axed and opera singers left to “sing for their supper”. I hear Covent Garden’s piazza is a good place for this.

5. Business Links are somewhat of a misnomer seeing has no business is actually done there. The advantage of scrapping Business Links is that, of course, the business community will not notice. Cost Saving=£200million

* Quango – non-departmental public body, funded by the taxpayer. It is estimated that there are between 790 – 1100 quangos in the UK. Official figures show that last year, the quangos accounted for over £34 billion of public spending, and received a twelve percent increase in funding. Last year, sixty-eight quango heads paid themselves more than the Prime Minister. Information from David Cameron's speech 'People Power - Reforming Quangos'
http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/07/David_Cameron_People_Power_-_Reforming_Quangos.aspx

Why are Indians so earnest?

Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest', is a comedy masterpiece about two flamboyant bachelors who secretly lead double lives. Using aliases and false alibis, the pair woo respectable ladies by day and cavort in music halls at night. As I sat through an hour long session with members of the CII-Yi London delegation on Thursday 25 June 2009, I wondered if they would be carousing in the music halls of London later, because, boy......the going was “heavy weather”!

The CII-Yi National chairman’s speech was followed by a Q&A session where one attendee (not me, for once) had the temerity to ask about the involvement of women within the organisation and the empowerment of women in India. The reply was a virtual tongue-lashing from Bhairavi Jani, the National Vice Chairman. What stunned the audience into submission was the sheer number of facts and figures she was able to recall – female heads of major Indian companies, ratio of men an women in the CII-Yi organisation, key female icons of India…..I wondered if she had eaten a feminist encyclopaedia!

CII-Yi is undoubtedly a worthy organisation with nearly 1000 members in 18 chapters (regions) in India, but chock full of very bright, very earnest lawyers, accountants and businessman, the London chapter is sadly destined to achieve great dullness in a very short space of time

Why are Indians so earnest, I wondered? Is it genetic? Is it environmental? Can we blame Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the most earnest’? I have no answers, only very earnest questions!


Click below for the ‘CII-Yi considers launching a UK Chapter’ story

http://www.redhotcurry.com/business/2009/cii-yi-25062009.htm