Immigration and asylum

Asked about Mr Blunkett and Mr Clegg's comments about Roma in Sheffield, he said: "Some people stand in groups and talk. In southern Europe that's very common. There's nothing in Roma behaviour that's inherently more offensive or intimidating than for any other group. This is ethnic profiling." … [Read more...] about Roma immigrants must behave sensitively, says Nick Clegg

How did Europe's refugee crisis start? Striking a deal with Turkey In early 2016, the EU and Turkey signed an agreement under which refugees arriving in Greece could be sent back to Turkey. The deal has been criticized by human rights groups and came under new strain following a vote by the European Parliament in November to freeze talks on Turkey's potential accession to the EU. … [Read more...] about Germany moves forward on taking in hundreds of refugee children from Greece

Esi Edugyan: I grew up in Calgary. My parents are immigrants from Ghana. They actually met in California – my father went to Stanford – and then later moved to Edmonton, Alberta. In the 1980s, Alberta was not a racially diverse place. In Canada today, around 3% of the population is black, and that percentage was even tinier in the 80s. And so I did feel very conspicuous everywhere I went. And that could be hard. There were a lot of little incidents. Maybe this is why I’m always looking at stories of people who aren’t necessarily part of the social fabric. They’re this one outlier, or they’re at a strange moment in history. It’s almost like I’m looking for the most marginalised within the marginalised, and this is what’s attractive to me, maybe because it comes out of my childhood. … [Read more...] about Attica Locke and Esi Edugyan, in conversation: ‘There is so much of our existence that has not been heard’

In photographs from the 1950s the cheerfully serious Bass, with his open moon-face and horn-rimmed spectacles, looks like his Bronx contemporary, the playwright Neil Simon. He was obviously looking for a more creative outlet for his talents than the lucrative commissions for trademarks, corporate logos, letterheads, TV commercials and packaging for which he was in constant demand. The answer proved to be film-making: imaginative documentaries, a single feature film (the rarely seen SF picture Phase IV, made in Britain in 1974), and pre-eminently title sequences for other directors' work on which he sometimes received the credit of "visual consultant". … [Read more...] about Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design by Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham – review

Eleanor Bull’s set is delightfully minimalist in its versatility: an initial backwall of school lockers switches from the classroom to Mushy’s home, the blackboard revolving to become a living-room cabinet, and then the cabinet revolving again to become the door of the boy’s toilets at school. … [Read more...] about Mushy: Lyrically Speaking review – smart musical about Educating Yorkshire star