While immigration was grabbing the headlines on the front pages of the national newspapers last month, I was lucky enough to attend two events which shone a spotlight on the achievements of the Asian business community.
The first event was the Asian Who’s Who International Awards where Ravi Gidar was named Asian of the Year.
Ravi came to the UK from India in 1966 and qualified as a pharmacist. He started his own pharmacy business at the tender age of 24 before founding a care home company which now operates 23 care homes including Queensway House in Hemel Hempstead.
As well as achieving all this in his professional life, Ravi finds time to raise oodles of cash for charity.
I also attended the Bangladeshi Caterer of the Year Awards to witness Humayun Rashid, who owns Aroma Radlett, pick up the Curry Chef of the Year award. The restaurant trade is notoriously competitive and to succeed in this field takes a huge amount of hard slog. Bangladeshi-born Humayun won over the judges with his lamb bhakara. Having tasted it for myself, I can understand why.
I can only applaud the Asian business community for its entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic. This country would be a better place if more took their cue from this group.
Totally agree. Many hardworking immigrants come to this country to integrate and work hard including my dad. Unfortunately there are others who come to our country and do not want to integrate and are happy to live off the state. It is a shame as the hard working immigrants get tarred with the same brush…
Absolutely – as a chamber director I work with many foreign born people who are driving the economy forward. The problem is that we are receiving too many asylum seekers who drain the resources paid for by other hard working people. We must regain our right to decide who we allow into the UK and must withdraw from the Human Rights Convention which leaves us hamstrung to determine our own future and is out of date.
We need a national debate free from all this racist rubbish. The worst rasists are those who accuse others of being racist and draw attention to any differences in colour, religion, nationality. I don’t think the average Englishman is a racist just frustrated.