The Carnival is one of the longest running street parties in the world and the largest street party in Europe.
Over two million people, including thousands of tourists, attend each year to follow the three-mile parade through W10.
Expect an amazing parade showcasing the best of mas dancing, soca, calypso, steel bands and sound systems.
When is Notting Hill Carnival 2023?
Saturday 26 August to Monday 28 August.
What is the Notting Hill Carnival 2023 line-up?
A Brazilian steel band in August 2022
Saturday 26 August
Panorama. The UK’s biggest steel pan competition at Emslie Horniman Pleasance Park, 16:00-23:00 BST.
Sunday 27 August
J’Ouvert – Sainsburys Ladbroke Grove, W10 6HJ: From Jour ouvert in French meaning opening of the day is one of carnival’s best kept secrets. Kicking off just before sunrise, the hardcore revellers dance into the daybreak to welcome the carnival. Expect to see colourful paints and powders in place of the mud and oil of Caribbean tradition from 6:00 BST.
Official opening ceremony, Mas (masquerade) Judging Point, Great Western Road. Traditionally carnival is opened by local residents and participants, accompanied by the organisers and friends at 10:00 BST.
Children’s parade. This family-friendly morning event sees kids dancing in the streets in their homemade carnival costumes.
Traditional parade. Features mas, soca, calypso and much more.
Food stalls. There are hundreds of them, including Jamaican jerk chicken, Trinidadian roti and Guyanese pepper pot.
Sound systems. If you love to dance in the street but do not want to be “on di road” then sound systems are where it’s at. Notting Hill Carnival’s sound-system tradition is rooted in Jamaican culture and reggae music but you can hear everything from rare groove to house to samba. Kicks off at 12:00 until 19:00 BST.
Monday 28 August
Adult’s day parade. Expect lots of dancing, parading and partying.
Food stalls and sound systems
Live stages
Soca City, Emslie Horniman’s Pleasance Park, W10 5DH, 12:00-19:00 BST.
Powis Square Stage, W11 2AY, 12.00-19.00 BST.
Different music buses keep the party alive on the parade
How to get to Notting Hill Carnival 2023?
– By Underground
As Notting Hill’s roads will be closed off throughout the bank holiday weekend, you will not be able to get an Uber or catch a bus into the heart of the action.
Nearby Tube stations within walking distance of the main event including Notting Hill Gate, which will be exit-only from 11:00 to 19:00 BST each day.
Royal Oak and Westbourne Park will be exit-only until 18:00 BST, with Royal Oak closing thereafter and Westbourne Park closing after 23:30 GMT.
To leave the area before these times, you may have to walk up to 30 minutes to find an open Tube station.
Latimer Road will be closed from 23:30 BST on both days. Avoid Ladbroke Grove and Holland Park as they are both closed on Sunday and Monday.
There will be no interchange between the Circle and District lines and Central line on both days.
Do I need a ticket for Notting Hill Carnival and how safe is it?
The carnival is free for everyone but the police crowd-control a lot and you may not be allowed in to certain areas at certain times because streets get sectioned off. If you have mobility issues or get anxious in crowds, it is better to arrive early and leave early.
Police say this year there has been particular work devoted to identifying particularly dense spots along the carnival route, with 12,500 officers on the route.
Police are also trialling crowd safety camera technology to more quickly detect overcrowding, as well as deploying mounted officers throughout the parade.
Like last year, there will be a safe area for women and girls with specially trained professionals, with the Met working with charity Safer Spaces.
Police advise to:
Go with the flow of the crowd, don’t try and walk against it.
Don’t just rely on your phone, set a meeting place with family or friends in case you lose one another.
Keep your belongings with you at all times.
Plan your journey in advance; do not drive your car to the area, know your public transport options and routes to and from carnival
Make travel plans before you leave – Transport for London(TfL) has a dedicated website showing all the best and quickest options.
Travel to Tube and railway stations such as Shepherds Bush or Bayswater and walk in. Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill Gate and Westbourne Park will be exceptionally busy. Please consider this when leaving the area also
Performers in the procession on children’s day at the Notting Hill Carnival
King Charles has been presented with the crown jewels of Scotland in a historic Thanksgiving serving today, July 5.
The monarch received the Crown of Scotland, the Sceptre, and the Sword of State of the Honours of Scotland at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh eight weeks after his crowning at Westminster Abbey.
William and Catherine, known as the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay north of the border, joined Scotland’s leading figures and 100 individuals from all walks of society at the church on the Royal Mile.
The Right Reverend Sally Foster-Fulton, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, delivered the sermon, in which she called for action to tackle global warming to stop the world ‘baking to a crisp’.
A 21-gun salute rang out across the Scottish capital following the historic ceremony, before nine planes left trails of red, white, and blue as the royals watched from the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
The King and Queen Camilla stood side by side with the Prince and Princess of Wales to watch the Red Arrows flypast.
For the service, the Princess of Wales wore a Catherine Walker coat, hat by Philip Treacy and a necklace from the late Queen’s collection, while her husband was dressed in his RAF No1 uniform.
Delivering the sermon, the Right-Reverend Foster-Fulton told the congregation that society will be on the ‘right track’ if we understand that ‘the Heavens and Earth’ are not ‘human commodities or possessions’.
“Blessed are we, on the right track are we when we understand that our children do not inherit this Earth from us – we have borrowed it from them,’ she said.
“And it is our duty to return it still singing and surging and bathing, not baking to a crisp.”
If you’ve ever dreamed of leaving everything behind and living on a remote island, now might be your chance. Ireland will give you a grant of up to 84,000 euros ($92,297) if you settle one of the country’s coastal islands.
But there are conditions attached to the deal, as well as a few factors that may deter people from making the move. The islands in question are cut off from the mainland by the tide on a daily basis, and aren’t connected to it by bridges or causeways, according to the Irish government.
Around 300,000 visitors come to these islands each year, the government noted in its policy outline — but barely anyone lives there. Some islands have as few as two year-round inhabitants, while the largest has over 700. In total, around 3,000 people live across around 30 islands.
Declining population levels — especially the lack of young people — is a key concern, according to plan’s details published earlier this month. Between 1996 and 2016, the population of the islands covered by the policy was found to have fallen by 12.8%.
But the policy’s aims go beyond boosting population levels.
“‘Our Living Islands’ contains 80 actions which are designed to support and empower our island communities and the people living there,” said Heather Humphreys, Ireland’s minister for rural and community development.
“It’s all about improving housing, better access to essential services in health and education, delivering high speed broadband, and further developing our outdoor amenities, which will in turn increase tourism and support sustainable island communities.”
Improving infrastructure and increasing job opportunities, including the option for remote work, are also part of the 10-year plan, she added.
The moving process
With low levels of infrastructure and plenty of solitude, moving to a remote island might not be for everyone. And not all of those who make the move will get the full cash payout either.
The grants are part of an existing scheme the government runs across the country. Buying an existing, vacant property will get you 60,000 euros if it is on a remote island, just 10,000 euros more than if you bought on the mainland.
The largest amount — 84,000 euros — will go to those choosing to take over derelict properties. Moving into such a property on the mainland comes with a 70,000 euro grant.
The grants are designed to help people refurbish old properties that may otherwise decay — so the money could disappear quickly depending on the required levels of restoration. And it must be used for this purpose, for example, by adding insulation.
The properties in question also need to have been built before 1993 and have been unoccupied for at least two years. The scheme officially starts on July 1, but will apply to existing homebuying applications.
Similar schemes have also been launched in other countries. Sardinia, an island in Italy, offered people 15,000 euros to move there last year if they used the money to renovate a property, and various towns in the country have sold homes for just one euro or given them away for free in the past.
Other Italian towns and regions have tried to lure people to move there with low-cost accommodation and yearly grants, as have several towns in Spain and Switzerland.
Prince William, on Thursday, marked the 75th anniversary of the arrival of 1,027 Caribbean people on the Empire Windrush ship in 1948, by speaking out about the “hardships” they experienced settling into the U.K. in the 1950s and 1960s and celebrating their role in helping to rebuild Britain after World War II.
“Many of the young people on that historic voyage knew Britain well. They had fought by our sides in World War II,” William said in an Instagram video released Thursday.
“They and the generation of Commonwealth citizens who followed in their footsteps chose this country to start new lives,” the Prince of Wales, 41, continued. “We know they experienced hardships. But they also experienced joy and life did indeed change for them and their families.”
William added that the “voyagers also gave to our nation, helping to rebuild our country and adding to our culture. Their contributions to the Britain we know now cannot be overstated.”
“We are a better people today because the children and the grandchildren of those who came in 1948 have stayed and become part of who we are in 2023,” he said. “And for that, we are forever grateful. Today, we celebrate the Windrush Generation, their descendants and everything they have given to us all.”
The post was captioned, “Today we celebrate Windrush Day, a defining moment in our nation’s history. We honour the extraordinary contributions and resilience of the Windrush generation.”
Last year, William and his wife, Kate Middleton, participated in the unveiling of a memorial honoring the Windrush Generation. The prince used the occasion to recognize how the “past weighs heavily on the present” amid the controversy that followed the couple’s Caribbean tour in March 2022.
“My family have been proud to celebrate this for decades — whether that be through support from my father on Windrush Day, or more recently during my grandmother’s Platinum Jubilee, as people from all communities and backgrounds came together to acknowledge all that has changed over the past seventy years and look to the future,” Prince William said at the event.
Prince William’s video on Thursday came as his father King Charles spoke about a series of portraits that he commissioned to capture the Windrush Generation. The portraits of 10 people, who are in their 80s and 90s, are on display at Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland and in October will relocate to the National Portrait Gallery in London.
In a foreword to the catalog, King Charles, 74, wrote that “History is, thankfully and finally, beginning to accord a rightful place to those men and women of the Windrush Generation. The ten portraits in this series, together with the tributes to other members of that indomitable generation, are a small way to honor their remarkable legacy.”
“It is, I believe, crucially important that we should truly see and hear these pioneers who stepped off the Empire Windrush at Tilbury in June 1948 – only a few months before I was born – and those who followed over the decades, to recognize and celebrate the immeasurable difference that they, their children and their grandchildren have made to this country.”
King Charles also attended a service at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on Thursday to recognize and celebrate the 75th Anniversary.
Britain is like a sailing boat in the middle of the Channel, struggling for direction. It needs a bold new captain and a new crew
As we approach the seventh anniversary of Britain’s fateful vote, on 23 June 2016, to leave the EU, the state of UK-EU relations is superficially encouraging and structurally depressing.
Britain is like a sailing boat faffing around in the middle of the Channel. Most of its passengers want it to steer closer to the continental coast and even the captain seems willing to make some modest adjustments to his course. But strong winds and currents are pushing the boat further away from the continent.
It will require a much more decisive change of course from a new captain, after a different crew comes onboard next year, for the forces of convergence to prevail over those of divergence.
In YouGov’s most recent regular poll, taken last month, 56% of those asked said Britain was wrong to leave the EU against 31% who said it was right; 62% said Brexit has been “more of a failure” against just 9% for “more of a success”.
In a poll by Opinium, which offered four options for the future relationship, 36% of British respondents chose “we should rejoin the EU” and another 25% “we should remain outside the EU but negotiate a closer relationship with them than we have now”.
The politics lag behind the public. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, can see the pragmatic case for better economic relations with the UK’s biggest single market, but he’s also a more genuine Brexiter than his disgraced predecessor Boris Johnson ever was.
Sunak’s world is Silicon Valley at one end, dynamic Indo-Pacific capitalism at the other. He is even hesitating about paying the bill for Britain to rejoin the Horizon programme of scientific cooperation, despite an almost unanimous chorus of scientists from both sides of the Channel in favour of doing so.
Given the continued strength of the Brexiters in his party, and the intimidating power of the Eurosceptic press, only small incremental improvements can be expected on his watch.
Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, is relentlessly focused on winning next year’s general election. He believes this requires winning back voters in “red wall” seats who felt passionately about Brexit and, therefore, switched to the Conservatives in Johnson’s 2019 “get Brexit done” election.
(In her book Beyond the Red Wall, the public opinion researcher Deborah Mattinson, who advises Starmer, records one such voter saying that when he heard the referendum result in 2016, he felt “as if England had won the World Cup”.)
Starmer recently had an article in the rightwing, fiercely Eurosceptic Daily Express in which he roundly asserted that “Britain’s future is outside the EU. Not in the single market, not in the customs union, not with a return to freedom of movement.
Those arguments are in the past, where they belong.” He went on to say that “the paper-thin Tory deal has stifled Britain’s potential and hugely weighted trade terms towards the EU. Every day it isn’t built upon, our European friends and competitors aren’t just eating our lunch – they’re nicking our dinner money as well.”
On a close reading, this article was actually making the case for a new deal with the EU, but it was also playing the old New Labour game of appeasing the Eurosceptic tabloids – and thus giving hostages to fortune. (Shortly before the May 1997 election, Tony Blair got a commentary placed in the Sun saying he would “slay the Euro-dragon”.)
The Express savaged its own guest author, gleefully quoting a Conservative MP who said “trusting Sir Keir with Brexit is like trusting Dracula at a blood bank”.
If Labour wins the next election, with or without the need for some kind of parliamentary support from the Liberal Democrats or Scottish National party, the new government will undoubtedly seek a better deal with the EU.
Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy indicated as much in a speech to business leaders this week. It’s not implausible to think that by the 10th anniversary of the referendum vote, in June 2026, the review of the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement, which is scheduled for 2025, might have opened the door to a closer economic relationship.
This might include significant elements of involvement in the single market and customs union, with corresponding regulatory alignment. It’s hard to see how Labour can even remotely hope to achieve its hugely ambitious target of “securing the highest sustained growth in the G7” without reducing the post-Brexit friction with the country’s largest market.
There’s an interesting connection here with the war in Ukraine. The debate about Ukraine’s future relationship with the EU is now focused on incremental, progressive integration, in areas such as energy, environment, transport and the single market. If Ukraine can have progressive integration, can’t the UK have some progressive reintegration?
Yet there remains the underlying dynamic of cross-Channel divergence. With every passing month, the UK and the EU are visibly drifting apart. Previously strong cultural, commercial, artistic, scientific and political ties are weakening. A British university vice-chancellor tells me that his intake of EU students has fallen by 90%. Britain actually has more immigration overall than before the Brexit vote, but less from the EU.
I have spent time recently in Ireland, Estonia, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. In all these north European countries, which once looked on the British as special partners and friends inside the European Union, Britain is now barely mentioned, except as the object of pity, ridicule and contempt.
The grimy farce around Johnson’s resignation honours list and his disgracefully Trumpian departure from the House of Commons have only reinforced those sentiments. These countries have forged new partnerships, as people do after they separate. They have moved on. So has the EU itself.
In response to the Covid crisis, and above all to the war in Ukraine, Europe’s core political community is experiencing a period of rather dynamic integration in areas of vital interest to Britain: security policy and defence procurement; digital policy and the regulation of AI; large-scale support for industry to make the green transition, competing with US Bidenomics on the one hand and Chinese industrial policy on the other.
Britain is not standing still either. Both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition are developing their own variants of those policies, which may diverge from and compete with the EU’s. In several key areas, such as tech, AI, creative industries and financial services, Britain still has strengths that make it a serious competitor.
But it will take a lot of bold strategy from a new British government, and goodwill from both sides, to counter these deeper currents of divergence.
This is an opinion piece by Timothy Garton Ash published on theguardian.com
The 13th African Achievers Award (AAA) is to hold in United Kingdom on July 14th 2023.
Hosted by The Lord Woolley of Woodford, (Member of The House of Lords, Lord Temporal), the Arican Achievers Awards, which focuses on Africa and Africans, is one of the most prestigious awards recognising exceptional Africans for their contributions to the development of the continent.
The theme for this year’s event is ‘Unlocking Trade and Investment Opportunities for Sustainable Development in Africa’.
On the choice of this year’s theme, Chief Executive Officer of AAA, Dr. Tonye Rex Idaminabo, reiterated the importance of addressing the challenges in Africa for a prosperous, equitable and sustainable future on the continent.
History was made today as King Charles III and Queen Camilla were crowned in a Coronation full of symbolism and pageantry. The King hosted a scaled-back celebration, in keeping with his new role as ‘monarch in modern-day Britain’. Despite a stripped-back guestlist and a shorter service to that of his late mother’s, the reported £100-million-pound event was still rooted in long-standing tradition.
While millions of royal fans tuned in to watch the celebration across the world, some 2,000 guests were invited to witness it first-hand inside the grand Westminster Abbey.
The event brought together around 100 heads of state, kings and queens from across the globe, celebrities, everyday heroes and family and friends of the couple.
The majority of the royal family was also there to support the King and Queen – including Prince Harry who managed to make an appearance before dashing home to his son’s birthday party. In true British fashion, the extraordinary procession was greeted by rain and saw around 7,000 personnel take part in the largest military ceremonial operation of its kind in a generation. Months of meticulous planning and preparation went into the Coronation and now it has finally come to a close, we have taken a look at some of the best moments from the monumental occasion. While all eyes were undoubtedly on King Charles and Queen Camilla, their grandchildren arguably stole the show at times.
Princess Charlotte melted hearts when viewers spotted her sweet gesture for brother Prince Louis. The siblings were spotted holding hands as the ceremony got underway at the abbey this morning. During the sweet moment, Charlotte could be seen with her hand on top of her brother’s while she bowed her head, and the excited Prince looked on. Eagle-eyed viewers later noticed five-year-old Louis appeared to be dazzled by his mum’s occasion wear as she wore a traditional robe for the service. In one particularly sweet moment, the little boy was captured staring up at his mum, with his mouth wide open in awe.
Prince William swore his loyalty to his father in a solemn rite, kneeling to give an oath of allegiance to his father. He said: “I, William, Prince of Wales, pledge my loyalty to you and faith and truth I will bear unto you, as your liege man of life and limb. So help me God.” He then stood up, touched the crown and gave his father a kiss on the cheek. The King appeared to be moved by his son’s gesture as he nodded and appeared to say a few words to him.
The Princess of Wales wowed royalists when she arrived at the abbey in a show-stopping ivory dress complete with a royal blue robe and stunning leaf headpiece.
As part of her outfit, Kate paid a subtle tribute to her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, as she donned a pair of pearl and diamond earrings that had once belonged to Diana and had been gifted to her by her the then-Prince Charles just before their wedding in 1981. And it wasn’t just Diana who received a sweet nod from Kate with her outfit choice either, as she also honoured her late grandmother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, as she wore the George IV Festoon Necklace. The necklace was made in 1950 at the request of King George VI for his daughter, the now-late Queen.
The Princess was also twinning with her daughter Charlotte as the pair dazzled in similar sparkly headpieces.
THE CROWNING;
It was the moment we had all been waiting for when King Charles was finally crowned – and became the 40th reigning sovereign. The pivotal moment came at midday, when the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby placed the St Edward’s Crown upon Charles’ anointed head. The King prayed to be a “blessing” to people of “every faith and conviction”. The archbishop had to adjust the weighty crown for a few seconds on top of the monarch’s head. Once complete, it prompted a fanfare, as the abbey bells rang out as well as a Gun Salute fired by The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery stationed at Horse Guards Parade. Soon after her husband, Camilla had her own special moment when Queen Mary’s crown was placed on her anointed head by the Archbishop. While his wife Meghan Markle stayed home in California to look after their children and celebrate Archie’s birthday, Prince Harry managed to be there in support of his dad – even if it was just for a few hours. The Prince was shown walking into the abbey alongside sisters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
