Safiyyah's blog

If you have not yet heard, the scandal at Downing Street is making headlines right now. Government officials and Downing Street staff have been accused of holding Christmas parties in the winter of 2020, while millions abided by the Covid-19 restrictions put into place for the safety of the nation. This has sparked fury across the UK and could quite possibly be the end of Boris Johnson's run as Prime Minister.  The accusations have been denied by a number of ministers on public television. However, after a week of allegations towards his Party- no pun intended, the Prime Minister finally announced an investigation will commence. The Cabinet Secretary Simon Case will be investigating the events. These include an alleged gathering on the 27th of November, the Department for Education gathering on the 10th of December, the Downing Street Christmas quiz on the 15th of December and the main allegation, the Downing Street party on the 18th of December. Mr Case will be looking into the pu...

  As of right now , the coronavirus has taken more than 1.5 million lives. It has  hammered the world economy and upended our daily lives. The recently developed vaccinations are a marvellous way to end what some may call the worst year of their lives. This vaccinatio n has given us hope and light among the darkness that has been 2020. As the year comes to an end, things are finally starting to look up. However,  this may not be the case for everyone.   In a press release today, Amnesty International urged wealthy countries to stop hoarding the vaccines as this could severely affect low-income countries. They state that " Pfizer-BioNTech has already agreed deals for more than one billion potential doses of its vaccine". In an extensive study , they calculated that  “Nearly 70 poor countries will only be able to vaccinate one in ten people against COVID-19 next year unless urgent action is taken”.  But is it the responsibility of wealthy countries to wo...

Credits Greg Johnson Penn Today There is a missing perspective in COVID-19 news and that is of women.  Women have been left out of many things over the years. Although there is now more equality between genders than there was 50 years ago, we have not reached total equality yet. The gender pay gap still exists. There is an enormous und errepresentation of women in the news. Take the coronavirus, for example.  A report commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, "uncovers a substantial bias towards men’s perspectives in both newsgathering and news coverage of the pandemic, spanning across all regions." It demonstrates the gravity of the exclusion. Across the globe, women have been left out of crucial decisions related to the coronavirus, so what happened to equality? Statistics from AKAS analysis show that in England, there is not one woman in the COVID-19 response decision-making bodies. Countries like the US and Nigeria follow closely with the majority of t...

Illustrated by Rose Wong At this moment, COVID-19 cases are frightfully increasing across the UK and scientists have forecast 50,000 new cases a day by mid-October if we do not take action now. This virus has affected all of us, some more than others but today I'm going to be writing about the impact on university students, being one myself.  Senior politicians across the UK have suggested that young people may be the reason for the increase in coronavirus cases. However, a s Eisenhower once said, "The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions."  I believe that this virus is so extensive that there simply cannot be one culprit when it comes to the blame. Although it is true that many students do love to party and socialise, that is just a minority and a small part of the UK's population. How can this minute number cause such a rise? It's impossible. Instead of focusing on students and now closing pubs and restaurants at 10pm to diminish nigh...