Jottings
News from the UK and around the World
. . . the wild, the wacky, the wonderful, the weird and the downright infuriating
Victor Meldrew moment
Daniel Parra-Braun, 37, burst into a
Coventry branch of a fast food
restaurant and pretended to be carrying
a gun. He slammed a note onto the
counter which read, “I am armed. Give
till cash now.”
But the server told him it wouldn’t open
unless a customer ordered food, so he
promptly agreed to buy a 99 pence
cheeseburger, obligingly handing over a
£5 note. Staff then gave him £136 from
the till and he fled. He was jailed for five
years last month after also admitting
other charges of robbery and attempted
robbery.
Seats of Learning
The University of Edinburgh has been
accused of “blatant racism” after hosting
a one-day conference called “Resisting
Whiteness 2019” at the end of
September. Ahead of the event, white
people were told they were barred from
speaking, while one of two “safe spaces”
for delegates was not to be open to
them.
The intention of the event was described
as “amplifying the voices of people of
colour,” and the literature explained that
white people would not be offered the
chance to speak in Q&A sessions. It
added that the “safe space” ban on white
people was to make it available for
others to retreat to if they feel
“overwhelmed / overstimulated or
uncomfortable.” University bosses are
reported to have “raised concerns” with
24
organisers before the event, and said
they had agreed to revise the “safe
spaces” policy. However, a local
bookshop which helped organise the
event took a swipe at the critics.
Lighthouse, which describes itself as
Edinburgh’s Radical Bookshop, accused
critics of “wilfully misunderstanding” the
group’s intentions.
The Students Union at Sheffield
University has also come under fire after
arranging focus groups on how it can
become more actively anti-racist, but
then banning white students from
attending. “Open to BME students only,”
it stated, BME being shorthand for Black
and Minority Ethnic.
As the political website Spiked put it, the