Sadiq Khan, New London Mayor, Bans Ads Promoting Unhealthy Body Image

This from The New York Times:

LONDON — The young, thin model wore a bright yellow bikini and stared seductively at passers-by.

“Are you beach body ready?” asked the ad for Protein World, a maker of dietary supplements. The ad was defaced in subway stations across London when it appeared in April 2015, and it drew strong protests.

On Monday, London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, announced a ban on such ads — which critics call “fat-shaming” — from London’s public transportation system starting in July, saying the messages encourage unhealthy body images for young women.

“As the father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising, which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies,” Mr. Khan said. “Nobody should feel pressurized, while they travel on the Tube or bus, into unrealistic expectations surrounding their bodies.”

Read the full story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/world/europe/london-bans-ads-with-unrealistic-body-images.html?_r=0

Sadiq Khan does the sums over Muslim votes

He’s an artful one, Sadiq Khan. Labour’s London mayoral candidate told the Observer: “I accept that the comments that Ken Livingstone has made make it more difficult for Londoners of Jewish faith to feel that the Labour Party is a place for them, and I will carry on doing what I have always been doing, which is to speak for everyone.” Mr Khan also said, although he is well ahead in the polls: “This is a neck-and-neck race. It is all about turnout.”

It’s worth paying exact attention to these words. First, Mr Khan blames everything on Mr Livingstone, not on any wider problem of Labour anti-Semitism.

Second, he paints himself as the moderate. Third, he assumes that only voters “of Jewish faith” will be put off, and says nothing to welcome Jewish voters. He speaks as if the row were a rather obscure subject which need not trouble other voters. If he can narrow it down to practising Jews with votes in London, he is talking about not much more than 100,000 people, most of whose votes he probably had not got anyway.

You can find the remainder of this story here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/02/sadiq-khan-does-the-sums-over-muslim-votes/