Sir keir starmer has vowed to lead the labour party into a new era after a decisive victory to become labours new leader. The former director of public prosecutions, whos only been an mp for five years, took 56 of the vote, defeating rebecca long bailey and lisa nandy. Sir keirs first task will be to respond to the coronavirus emergency and he has accepted an invitation from the Prime Minister to take part in briefings from next week. 0ur Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg reports. Phone rings no eager crowd, no hush of anticipation. Instead, the ping of an e mail, the bleep of a text, labours new leader announced in lockdown. It is the honour and the privilege of my life to be elected as leader of the labour party. It comes at a moment like none other in our lifetime. Coronavirus has brought normal life to a halt. Under my leadership, we will engage constructively with the government, not opposition for oppositions sake, but we will test the arguments that are put forward. We will shine a torch on critical issues. And where we see mistakes orfaltering government or things not happening as quickly as they should, well challenge that and call them out. Sir keir starmer was in charge of labours troubled brexit plan, but was ahead from the start of this long contest. A former lawyer before becoming a london mp, hes considered less left wing thanJeremy Corbyn, but he won twice as many votes than his nearest rival. Back injanuary, these members in the marginal bury north gave him mixed reviews, but today. Ive been a supporter of keir for a long time and have in the past described him as sensible and steady, which werent particularly flattering adjectives, but i also think hes very trustworthy and inspirational. My current view is that hes a bit dull. If you could clone what a minister would look like, itd be him, mid fifties, wears a suit, but maybe thats what the party needs at this time. It needs that strong and stable element about it. I think his track record shows him to be a fair and determined person. Im also confident that he will be an effective and credible leader of the opposition. To become Prime Minister infouryears, though, Jeremy Corbyn left behind fewer labour mps than at any time since world war ii. The party shrivelled in many areas that it used to call home. Im just sorry that we have let people down. The new leader has already given a grave apology to the Jewish Community after so many accusations of anti semitism in the party. But on so many fronts, there is a huge job ahead. I understand the scale of the task, the gravity of the position that were in. Weve got a mountain to climb. Where that requires change, we will change. Where that requires us to rethink, we will rethink. Ultimately, labour needs to win the wider world. But after so much bitterness inside, there are wounds to heal. In the strangest of times, many in the party hope this is a chance at a new normal. Laura kuenssberg, bbc news. Now on bbc news, the travel show. My name is tony giles and im totally blind and severely deaf in both ears. Now were moving. Feel the wind in my hair. Ive spent the last 21 years travelling. Ive visited over 120 countries. Every continent in the world, including antarctica. My mission is to visit every country in the world. I started off in december planning this recent trip and i decided id just start in egypt, the top of north africa, and work my way through several countries to get to ethiopia. Have a try of that. Mm, its good, its quite sweet. Yeah, right . Its my passion, it is what i do. It always makes me happy. Its the biggest challenge i can get. When im travelling country to country, i usually take public transport. When i get to the city im visiting, i hear People Get Ready on a bus. The bus will pull up, stop. I usually wait for most people to get off. I get my backpack, get my stick out. Meskel square, yes . Bye bye. Bye bye, thank you. I follow the people. I can hear them so i know theyre getting off. Im looking for a phone shop. I will ask people, is there a shop nearby i can buy a sim card if i havent got one. You can show me . Thanks. Excuse me, mate, could you help me put my new sim card in my phone . I use a website called couchsurfing and ifind local people on the website and they have profiles and i have a profile so i contact them. Hello. Is that mr happy . Hi, this is tony, your couchsurfer. Can you tell me how to get to your place, please . Im going to take a taxi so what where do i need to tell him to go . 0k. Alright. So i will see in about half an hour, a0 minutes. Thanks very much. Bye. I need to find a taxi now. Taxi . Where are you going . Hello. I go to gotera. Gotera . Yeah, gotera, yeah. 200 birr. 200 150 . 0k, go on. I lost my dad when i was 15, i6. I lost my best friend when i was 16, i dont really talk about. It was a big loss for me. 0k. Thanks. It sent me off into alcoholism for a good six to seven years. By the age of 2a, i was almost an alcoholic. Once i got my head out of the bottle, i could see that there was a different road to go down. I was hung up about being blind for a long time, especially as a teenager, early 20s. And then i suddenly realised the more people i met, i realised they wanted to be around me not because i was blind or different, but because of who i was, my personality. Driving along a straight road, a bit of wind. Still smell the car fumes, theyre everywhere. Hello, mr happy. Its tony. I think im at your street, at your place. Im opposite a restaurant. I can smell the food, but im not sure how to get to you. Apparently im by the gates someones told me. Hey hey, tony hello guess whos here. Mr happy. Yeah, im glad, im glad to see you. Good to meet you. How are you . Thank you very much for coming. Welcome to addis, my place already. Thank you. Hes a really nice guy, really friendly. As his name would say, happy. Full of energy and was really happy to meet me, i was really excited to meet him. Take a step. Yes, there you go. You have it all easy. Welcome to your couchsurfing place. Thank you. Your happy home. My space, yeah, thank you. Take off the load. This will be your sleeping spot. 0k, just a mattress . Yeah, thats a mattress. I mostly even sleep here. 0k. I like to sleep on the floor. Great, yep. One of the main components about my travelling is food. Eating food, talking about food, sometimes buying food and cooking. Hello. Id like to buy shiro, please. I was very fortunate that mr happy very kindly offered to cook for me some local ethiopian food. How much is that altogether . 70 . I bought some shiro, and also a kilo of tomatoes and a kilo of chilli. People are lovely, very, very helpful, very kind. Some people speak a little bit of english. I asked a guy to help me to find shiro, he took right me to the shop. And then the shopkeepers helped me buy the food. It was a lovely experience. Sometimes it can be confusing, especially if theres a lot of people pushing each other, all shouting for the same thing. Even when you can see, you dont really quite know what youre buying. Sometimes it is a bit more confusing, but you just be patient and keep going, keep asking. Most people will help you. What is shiro exactly . Shiro is like a powder made of chickpeas. 0k. It is like one of the staple foods that we have here. So we call this dancing shiro time because the shiro kind of bubbles out and then dances. And you just cook it here, where the heat is coming from . Yeah, where the heat is coming from, we have a charcoal here, so natural fire making. Do you want to have a try of that . Give me your hand. You just put it here and then you can just put it to your mouth and taste it. Nice. Its good, its quite sweet. Yeah, right . Thats from the tomato. I hope it tastes as good as it smells. Of course, ready for it . Yeah lunch is here. What a nice smell, lunch thank you very much. Hungry . 0h, very hungry. Great. So we have our shiro in the centre, which is like the focal element of the food. And then we have a couple of vegetables. Do you like kale . Yep. Kale is like our green vegetable. Then we have some tomatoes by the side, and some chillis. Mostly we take time to bless the food in a way. We kind of give it a good vibration ina way so just take a few seconds to be just grateful and thankful for having this food. Thank you very much. Great. The other thing cultural in ethiopia as we eat together, is something called gursha. Gursha. Gursha is basically feeding each other. It is like, i made a bit of like a bite and then ijust give that to you. Beside the content of feeding a person, it is also a sign of respect and care. Its like a mother feeding a child, so theres some care into it. It is a culture that we do here. So im going to give you one of that now. Are you ready . This will be interesting. Open your mouth and you have your first gursha. Wow. Nice. This is incredible food. People, you have to come to ethiopia and eat this food. You like it . Its delicious, its tasty, its a little spicy, its a little. So rich. At least four or five different textures in this one dish i can taste on my tongue. So now is your turn to give me a bite of that. See how you do the gursha. Gursha. Here it comes. You are like a pro. Having this little ceremony, eating traditional ethiopian food with a lovely person, who i now consider my friend, is a wonderful experience. Its very humbling. To be able to share and Exchange Cultures is so wonderful. It is hard to describe, really. Very emotional. I cant pick up a book and think, lets go to this place or lets go to that place. So i had to have the research, i had to have the knowledge beforehand and i have a very, very good memory so i plan my route before i travel. I dont know who im going to meet, i dont know whats going to happen and to me that is all an adventure, it is exciting. Many people say i could not do that, i couldnt imagine it. But ive never really seen so me, i dont worry about it because i dont know. It is all the unknown and that is what i love and enjoy. Trying to find people that i can help me with on line. I found this guy called mike, a local guy, who seemed really interesting, good fun. I says i was coming to addis, want to meet up . Have a coffee or have a chat about ethiopian life and culture . Tony . Mike, hi, good to meet you. Thanks for coming. Welcome to ethiopia. Have a seat. Ijust really wanted to meet you and find out a bit more about ethiopia and what is going on in addis. Likewise, i really wanted to meet you, when we contacted. We recently had change in government so it was not an election but by popular demand a new government has come up to power. It is a new government, a young leader, a kind of visionary. The peoples man. The first time most people would have heard about ethiopia would have been 1985, the band aid and live aid, the famine. But there is more than that, whats more to ethiopia . That image stayed in peoples minds and shuttered everything else. When the famine was over and we were back to safe times, nobody was reporting on that. Like, if you take the farming side, ethiopia is the fifth largest country in the world with the number of livestock. It is not as depicted. 0k, mike, where are we going . Now we are going to the headquarters of the african union. So there, we are going to see a statue, a new statute that was just inaugurated and it is a statue of Haile Selassie, our last emperor. Ive heard of him. If you do this, you are getting a nice picture, and if you turn the camera sideways, because its. Vertical, yeah. Tony, youre a nice photographer. Thanks. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. You have a talent for pictures. Yeah, just shoot and point, hopefully something comes out. How important is Haile Selassie to ethiopian people . For some, he was a hero, for others he was a villain. Because whenever you occupy a throne, those are the things, the two balls you juggle. He had tried to modernise the country. So he did work a lot on education, that was one of his main interests. My grandfather was a big fan of him. He said, he used to come to their school, randomly, just to check on what the students were being fed. Every time he would come, he would bring them grapes, apples, oranges. And how was he viewed by young ethiopian people today . Haile selassie is immortalised, he is iconic. If you bring your hand, and interlace it here, and you do this. Yeah, yeah. It goes back to unity. Yeah, yeah, of course. So, we are heading into north addis. We are going to see an art gallery, an art gallery for blind and visually impaired people. Im assuming some kind of tactile art exhibition. Different textures to make a picture or pictures. Thats what im assuming. Well find out when we get there. Thank you. The entrance . Hi, tony. Welcome. Hi. Welcome to my studio. Thank you, im really looking forward to it. Let me show you one of the art pieces. Wow. So, were touching a piece of art. These are people, who are laughing. This is their mouths. 0k. This is their nose. This is their eyes. These are like buttons, are they . Yes. So it is a face. You can see their hands, they are screaming, happy, expressing themselves. Do you like it . Its really good, its really interesting. It really gives a blind person a better understanding of expression of people. Its amazing. Its really inspiring. So many times you go to Art Galleries with your friends, and you sort of feel excluded. Touching this made me feel included. A christian cross. Actually art i can appreciate. I felt equal. It was really nice, really positive. I feel just like anyone else looking at art. Radio ethiopias number one station for news, music and entertainment . Thats us, 105. 3 afro fm driving through addis one afternoon, got a bit hungry, so got a taxi to stop at a food stall on the street. I went in and talked to the guy there. I was talking to him and telling him my story, i travel around the world and im blind. Were about to go live on air. Are you ready . Yep he said, do you want to come on my Breakfast Show . I said, yeah, that would be cool, yeah. Talk to the people, share my story, maybe inspire a few people. Good morning, good morning, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Howre you doing . Its the best breakfast in town, your voice of motivation, inspiration. Every single day. Im sitting here with an amazing person, tony giles is here in the studio. He is a blind person, but also partially deaf, but he has managed to travel to 138 countries around the world. Good morning, everyone. The question i have for you right now, im sure a lot of our listeners are wondering as well, what are the main challenges you face doing this project youve been doing . One of the most difficult ones is getting money out of atm machines, cash machines. I have to find somebody i can trust. I have to check them out, listen to their story, how theyre sounding, figure out that i can trust them and go to the cash machine with them. They help me to read the screen, i can press the buttons and put my information in, and once i get the money, i have to ask them, what denomination are these . I cant read a menu in a restaurant, so i have to have an idea of the National Dish of each country i visit. In ethiopia its quite easy, injera. Probably one of the other Biggest Challenges for me is crossing borders. I have to hand my passport over to someone, and i dont know where that passport goes, and i have to hope its going to get back to me. What keeps you going, when you are faced with challenges . How do you keep your chin up . When i get tired and i think i cant do it anymore, i think about my best friend. He died when i was young. He had a serious disability, and he couldnt move most of his body. I always think of him, he inspired me. Ive got it easy compared to what he has. Just keep going, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, here you have it. The one and only tony giles here in the studio. It was such an amazing, inspirational story. Yeah, i have dark days. Not so many now. One of the main reasons i started travelling was escapism, escapism from my emotions. I can do things physically, thats easy. I run away from my emotions. I couldnt deal with relationships for a long time. Because i thought an everyday relationship would end the same way as my relationship with my friend, i thought. People would go away. I thought thats what would happen with a relationship. And for a long time, it did. I realised that theres more to life. I could stop grieving. I still occasionally gets dark days. But the way you overcome them, the way i overcome them, is, i think, when i get up tomorrow, i think, whats the next challenge . I know people love me. So thats enough. Some people might say im on the extreme edge of travel, and the extreme edge of disabled people. I do worry sometimes, when im giving talks, doing interviews, am i going to put people off . Am i going to make people think, wow, thats incredible, thats so out there, i couldnt do that, i couldnt possibly. I wonder if in a weird way, maybe i discourage people. I guess ijust thought id have to tell it and let people take from it what they will. Without people, i wouldnt be able to travel. I think its a two way thing. People are helping me, and im given something back. I show them theres an alternative way. They say, how do you travel, how can you see . Why have you come to my country, youre blind. I tell them, well, i come to eat the food and meet the people and hear the music and walk on the terrain up and down the mountains. I can feel it all through my skin and my feet and thats how i see a country. The terrain around the churches on the outside is up there with some of the toughest places and terrain i have visited. I just want to be normal. Its just so frustrating. Got to be strong all the time. Its the only way i can travel, the only way i can cope. I7 17 was a top temperature on saturday. I think sunday will bring temperatures into the low 20s for some of us. Wendy of sunshine across the uk. It will be breezy, especially in the west, where see outbreaks of rain arriving later in the day. A lot of sunshine around through day for many places. Sunshine turning hazy, wispy high cloud spreading from the west, and latest we see rain into Northern Ireland, western scotland, perhaps cornwall and pembrokeshire. Wendy for all of us, but we could see parts of 50 miles an hour or more in parts of 50 miles an hour or more in parts of 50 miles an hour or more in parts of Northern Ireland and western scotland. With the wind coming up from the south it will be one, 2 in london, even further north, glasgow likely to get to one, 21 in london, even further north, glasgow likely to get to 18. However that rain in Western Areas will push its way east as we go on through the night. Could see heavier bursts returning to the far south east corner through the early pa rt south east corner through the early part of monday morning. Very mild through the night. Double digits for many. Monday, a slightly cooler day for many, rain clearing the south east, it then warms up again as we head through the week. This is bbc news. Im simon pusey with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. New york state records its biggest one day jump in deaths so far. More than 3,500 people in the state have now died. Spain and italy, the two countries which have suffered the highest numbers of deaths in the coronavirus pandemic, both report progress in tackling the outbreak. People in the uk are urged to stay at home, amid another large rise in reported deaths. The queen will praise the countrys self discipline and quiet good humoured resolve in response to the crisis, when she makes a Rare Television address later on sunday
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