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Gina Miller, the face of Brexit court case AsianVoiceNews
Asian Voice | 3rd December 2016
Gina Miller is the face of the Brexit legal battle. She is the lead claimant in the legal action against the British Prime Minister, arguing that individual members of the Cabinet have no legal power to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to leave the European Union without getting the approval of the Parliament and MPs. In short, Parliament has to be consulted before triggering Article 50. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is nothing but starting the formal process of the UK leaving the EU. Gina Miller was born in Guyana but grew up in Britain. Her father, Doodnauth Singh, was Guyana's attorney-general. She has a brother named Gary, a GP in East London. In 2009 she co-founded the investment firm SCM Private, now SCM Direct, with her third husband, Alan, a 52-year-old fund manager. They are settled in Chelsea, West London, and are pround parents of two children, aged 9 and 11. She
to take on the government after defying her abusive anti-EU ex-husband. She said she was given legal protection after being physically attacked by Jon Maguire, who stood on an antiBrussels platform at the 2010 General Election. She attended Moira House Girls' School, in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and then went to university in London. She is reported to have previously been a model and a chambermaid, but is best known for having campaigned for transparency in investment and pension funds. Gina Miller is also the founder and chairman of Miller Philanthropy, which s h e
has been married three times, and has three children. Married for the first time at 20, she had disabled daughter Lucy-Ann, who “was deprived of oxygen at birth”. She told The Times: “She's 28 now and has the mental age of a six-year-old and still lives with her. That's why when people make assumptions about me, I think, 'You don't know me at all'.” Her second marriage was to controversial financier Jon Maguire, whose investment fund later lost around £120 million. She walked away from that marriage after meeting Alan Miller in 2002. Gina Miller said businessman Maguire abused her before their marriage broke up 13 years ago. Gina Miller was inspired
Gina Miller and Alan Miller
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launched with Alan. The duo also launched the True and Fair Campaign, aimed at cutting charges on ISAs and wiping out “dishonesty” in the financial services industry. She and her husband have also been major contributors to the Margaret Thatcher infirmary at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. On November 3, she succeeded in the first stage of her attempt to overturn PM Theresa May's decision in judicial preview proceedings at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Gina Miller launched the Brexit legal case along with London-based Spanish hairdresser Deir Dos Santos and the People's Challenge group, set up by Grahame Pigney and backed by a crowd-funding campaign. They argued the government could not invoke Article 50 without seeking approval from Parliament. The government has appealed and the case will be considered by the Supreme Court next month.
Serena Rees: Laying bare the naked truth British Sikhs suffer increasing
She loves things to be spectacular but she is not a diva. We are talking about Serena Rees, a successful British businesswoman of Kashmiri Indian descent but more known for being the co-founder of Agent Provocateur. Agent Provocteur is a lingerie business that sells perfume, shoes as well as underwear. Tired of seeing women dressed in drab undergarments, Rees came up with an idea to start a lingerie store that was filled with colourful and stylish lingerie. In partnership with her then husband Joseph Corre, in 1994 the two opened Agent Provocateur on Broadwick Street, Soho. Years ago Serena Rees was quoted in the Guardian as saying: “Nice underwear is the basis of good style. Every woman should wear nice lingerie – you feel your best regardless of what else you're wearing.” Joseph Corre is the son Vivienne Dame of Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. She left in 2007 to pursue other business interests. Private equity firm 3i acquired the UK lingerie business Agent Provocateur for £60m in 2007. Serena Rees left London's fashion industry in shock when she left Corre for Paul Simonon, the ex-Clash bassist turned painter, in 2006. Serena Rees is also the co-founder of Cocomaya chocolate makers. She lives in central London with her daughter, Cora, and partner Simonon. Cora is Serena Rees and Joseph
racist abuse, says report
Serena Rees
Corre's daughter. The raven-haired 19-year-old Cora Corre is one of London's most-watched celebrity offspring, who made her modelling debut when she was just four.
Forty-eight-year-old Serena Rees,an adopted daughter of Indian parents, also has a secret passion that goes beyond panties and pastries, and that's nothing but buildings and
Joseph Corre and Serena Rees
architecture. For Serena Rees, buying, gutting and renovating properties across London has been an obsession. After leaving a rented flat off the King's Road, in Chelsea, in the 1980s, she bought her first property in Notting Hill, moving on to projects in St John's Wood and then a pair of huge townhouses in Pimlico. An industrial building in Clerkenwell followed soon. Then it was on to Charterhouse Square, Portland Place, in Marylebone, where she created a lateral home inspired by hotel suites on New York's Upper East Side. Now, with new businsess projects keeping her busy in New York and around the world, Serena Rees has decided to put her stylish Regent's Park home on the market for £15m. A report in the Sunday Times quotes her saying: “It's always exciting moving on to the next home.”
One in five British Sikhs has been the victim of racist abuse or discrimination in the past one year, including from public officials, according to a survey. The poll of 4,559 Sikhs released on Friday, by the Sikh Network, prompted calls from a committee of MPs for the Home Office to address the discrimination against Britain's 420,000 strong Sikh community. Speaking to Asian Voice, a member of the community, who did not want to be named said, “I think that the statistics in that report are incorrect. I have not heard so many abuses among my peers or community." However, Dr Rami Ranger CBE, Chairman of the British Sikh Association said, “Sadly, after Brexit there is a surge of racial attacks against minorities in Britain. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have made it clear that the Government will not tolerate such attacks in any shape or form. “As a matter of fact, there can be no place for racism in society as racism can easily destroy social cohesion, which is essential for everyone to progress. “Regrettably, most of the racial attacks particularly on Sikhs, are a result of mistak-
en identity. The fact of the matter is that Sikhs resemble Muslims in appearance and as most of the terrorist acts are being committed by Muslims, ordinary people mistake Sikhs for Muslims. Attacks on innocent Muslims must also be condemned as racism and must be nipped in the bud. Today it can be against Muslims but tomorrow it can be against Jews or other minorities. The cancer of racism if it gets hold in any society will be the end of civilisation as we know It.” In July 2016, according to a report by the Home Office, after the Brexit, the mainstream media had reported at least 41% increase in hate crimes since July 2015. Data from 31 police forces showed that 1,546 racially or religiously aggravated offences were recorded in the two weeks up to and including the day of the referendum on June 23. But in the fortnight immediately after the poll, the number climbed by almost half to 2,241. In September, the National Police Chiefs’ Council released figures which showed the number of incidents rose by 58 per cent in the week following the vote to leave the EU.