Category: UK News

KannadigaruUK hosts an event at The Bhavan to honour Mr M.B. Patil, Minister for Large & Medium Industries & Infrastructure Development 

Mr M.B. Patil, Minister for Large & Medium Industries & Infrastructure Development, Government of Karnataka, engaged with the Kannada diaspora in the UK at a special event hosted by KannadigaruUK at The Bhavan.  

Accompanying him were Dr. S. Selvakumar, IAS, Principal Secretary of the Commerce & Industries Department, and Smt. Gunjan Krishna, IAS, Commissioner of the Commerce & Industries Department, as part of the delegation. 

Mr. Ganapati Bhat, Chairman of KannadigaruUK, opened the event by welcoming the esteemed delegates and diaspora representatives. He highlighted the organisation’s initiatives and the vibrant role of the Kannada community in the UK. Dr. Matturu Nandakumar, Executive Director of The Bhavan, extended a warm welcome to everyone. 

In his address, Mr M.B. Patil emphasised the state’s commitment to fostering small and medium-scale industries, startups, and initiatives beyond Bengaluru. He underscored the importance of Udyog Mitra, a program where nodal officers support businesses with clearances and other essential information. Minister Patil also outlined Karnataka’s investor-friendly policies, including the Industrial Policy and Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) Policy. He discussed the government’s cluster development approach, sector-specific focus, and the active promotion of Karnataka through global and domestic roadshows. 

Answering queries from the diaspora, the minister highlighted the government’s focus on supporting women entrepreneurs with additional incentives, turnover-linked benefits, and capital subsidies designed to boost small and medium enterprises. He invited the diaspora to participate in the upcoming Invest Karnataka 2025, scheduled from February 11 to 14, 2025, a global investors’ meet aimed at attracting foreign investments. 

The event witnessed the attendance of prominent diaspora members, including Mr. Ravi Venkatesh (Councillor, Swindon), Mr. Praveen Karadiguddi (CEO, Scrumconnect), Mr. Ashwin Kumaraswamy (Venture Capitalist, DeepTech), Mr. L. George (Luminary Networks Ltd), and Mr. Vivek Thontadarya (Co-Founder & Director, Tech VAT Ltd), among others. 

Minister Patil expressed his appreciation for the contribution of the NRI community in promoting Karnataka and fostering connections between the state and global investors. The event anchored by Ms Veena Vasantha of KannadigaruUK and concluded with a networking session, fostering collaboration between the Karnataka delegation and the UK-based Kannada diaspora. 

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The first round of tickets went on sale on 18 October…reports Asian Lite News

The final round of tickets for London’s annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display went on sale at midday on Monday. They are priced between £20 and £50, depending on the viewing area, and Londoners will be charged £15 less than visitors. 

The first round of tickets went on sale on 18 October. “I’m proud that every year the eyes of the world look to London to see how we welcome in the new year,” said Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. 

“Our tickets are always in high demand so I urge anyone wanting to attend this fantastic evening to buy them as soon as possible from our only authorised outlet.” The celebrations begin with Big Ben’s chimes and are shown live around the world. 

Tickets for some viewing areas have more than doubled – from £20 to £50 – for the 12-minute display. City Hall said prices had increased this year to “enhance security and crowd management”. It stressed only tickets from official sales partner Ticketmaster would be accepted. 

Individual purchasers can buy up to four tickets. For bigger families and groups, another adult in the family or group can buy up to the same number of tickets, according to City Hall. 

However, groups hoping to watch the fireworks together have been advised to travel to the event together and ensure they have booked the same viewing area and entry gate – as moving between viewing areas on the night will not be allowed. 

The ticket purchaser may also be asked to show photo ID to enter. 

The post on the Ticketmaster reads: “Welcome 2025 in style at the Mayor of London’s New Year’s Eve Celebrations. It’s set to be a night of unmissable moments, and it is one of the biggest celebrations of its kind in the world. To come to this event, you will need a ticket. These must be bought on this website. Tickets will not be available on the night.” 

Westminster Bridge, the Golden Jubilee Footbridge and Waterloo Bridge will all be closed before and after the event, with City Hall warning ticket-purchasers to “consider carefully how you will travel to your preferred viewing area on the night”.The London mayor’s office adds: “Stations will be very busy when the event ends. Choose the side of the river you want to be on afterwards to get home more easily. 

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Designers must commit to ditching skins of animals such as crocodiles and snakes from 2025…reports Asian Lite News

London fashion week has become the first of the four main fashion weeks to ban exotic animal skins from shows from 2025 – the biggest industry event to do so. 

All designers staging fashion shows at the event will have to commit to ditching skins of animals such as crocodiles, alligators and snakes from their collections. The ban was announced by the British Fashion Council’s deputy director for policy and engagement, David Leigh-Pemberton, in a speech to parliament this week. 

The move follows the ban on fur, which was first promised by the BFC’s chief executive, Caroline Rush, in 2018, and formally put in place in December 2023. Within the “big four” fashion weeks – New York, London, Milan and Paris – the British capital has been more progressive when it comes to animal materials. London was the first to ban fur and is now the first to ban exotic skins, and follows smaller but increasingly influential events such as Melbourne fashion week and Copenhagen fashion week. By contrast, fur is still seen at shows in Milan and Paris. 

Animal rights campaigners welcomed the development. “We celebrate this important progress,” said Emma Håkansson, the founding director of Collective Fashion Justice. Dr Charlotte Regan, a wildlife campaign manager at World Animal Protection UK, said the announcement sent an “important message throughout the global fashion industry that exploiting animals for their skins is both unethical and unnecessary. 

“Millions of animals continue to suffer and die for fashion when there are so many innovative and exciting animal-friendly materials designers and clothing companies can choose to create with instead.” 

Animal rights campaigners would also like to see a ban of feathers, which are sometimes “live-plucked” from birds, causing pain and distress. Regan said: “With both fur and now wild animal skins banned from London fashion week, our attention turns to the use of wild bird feathers in fashion. We look forward to working with the British Fashion Council on the last step of their journey to being a completely wildlife-free event.” 

Copenhagen fashion week announced in April that it would ban feathers from its shows from 2025. London fashion week is heavily dominated by emerging designers so the ban may be easier for it to implement, according to the Business of Fashion website, as it is “the leather goods powerhouses that more often use exotic [skins] in their collections”. 

Feathers are perhaps a trickier proposition because they are used so frequently by designers as trimming on clothing. It is also harder to ascertain real from faux. In 2023, it was discovered that retailers including Boohoo and Selfridges had mislabelled real feathers as faux. 

A press statement from the British Fashion Council described the ban as part of a wider package of standards under the organisation’s Institute of Positive Fashion which works across social, environmental and sustainability programmes, partly to reflect the changing feelings of the fashion industry in London. 

“We know that many of our designers have strong ethics and are working towards more sustainable practices and accurate measurement,” it read. “We are committed to providing our network with tools and resources to help them on this journey. As part of this, discussions are taking place around the use of feathers on the catwalk.” 

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Dr Jamie Ingram, who is heading a major project to study graffiti in the Tower of London, described the discoveries as “exciting”..reports Asian Lite News

The writing was on the wall for many of the prisoners incarcerated in the Tower of London over the centuries. Now, it can finally be deciphered. 

Hundreds of graffiti texts scratched into the historic stone walls by prisoners as they awaited their fate have come to light for the first time. Examples that were either overlooked or illegible are emerging through cutting-edge technology. 

Dr Jamie Ingram, who is heading a major project to study graffiti in the Tower of London, described the discoveries as “exciting”. He began studying the Salt Tower on the south-eastern corner – part of the curtain wall that Henry III built in the 1230s. Its prisoners included Hew Draper, a Bristol innkeeper accused of practising sorcery and imprisoned in 1561, who carved an astrological sphere with zodiacal signs into the wall, despite having claimed that he had destroyed all his magical books. No record exists of his fate. 

Ingram told the Observer: “There were supposed to be 79 examples of graffiti there, according to the historic survey. By the end of the survey that I conducted, there are 354. Very fine viewing of the surface of the walls has allowed us to identify what else is there … acknowledging that every mark is important, rather than just those that have been left by the famous prisoners.” 

The Tower of London, a secure fortress and royal palace, has held prisoners including the two princes, Edward V and Richard Duke of York, Anne Boleyn, her daughter Princess Elizabeth, and Guy Fawkes. Today it is managed by Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity, which Ingram joined last year specifically to research one of the UK’s most significant collections of historic graffiti. 

The latest technology, which includes raking light, laser scanning and X-ray analysis, has never been applied at the Tower before. “Light shone off at an angle … enhances the creation of shadows on that surface and lets us really see the detail,” Ingram said. “As soon as we bring these modern methodologies to bear on it, things start to change quite dramatically, and suddenly we can actually start to read it.” 

One section of a wall bears graffiti by possibly three hands. The dates 1571 and 1576 are also inscribed. These had been listed as “illegible”, but are now being deciphered. While the complete texts have not survived, certain words can be picked out. 

One of the passages seems to be in Breton and may well have been written by a woman. There are references to a “husband”, as well as honour and rivers. Ingram said: “We haven’t got any specific records of female prisoners in that tower. This is possibly a woman’s voice, which is incredibly rare in the graffiti, and the first example we’ve got in the Salt Tower itself. 

“We know that there were women at the tower. They’re just not represented in these physical first-person records. This is a rare primary record of a woman’s presence, whether she’s a prisoner herself or the wife of the prisoner.” 

Most of the graffiti is pictorial, including crosses, which reflect that “a lot of religious prisoners [were] held in this space,” he said. Most of the texts are relatively short and include biblical passages. 

Funding for the graffiti study has been made available by a private donor. . Ingram will next focus on the Byward Tower, at the south-west corner of the complex. He said: “There’s some amazing graffiti in there that’s going to allow us to ask some more questions.” 

But he expressed dismay that today’s visitors are adding their own: “If they’re doing it with a pen or pencil, there’s no evidence that it’s being done until it’s too late. Where we can, we clean it off [but] it gets into the stone and damages it. It’s horrifying that they’re doing it on a monument so significant to us.” 

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