Speech – The Everlasting Flame of Zoroastrian Identity

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Lord Bilimoria was a keynote speaker at the School of Oriental and African Studies on the 12th October, 2013, where he presented a speech at the School of Oriental and African Studies entitled The Everlasting Flame of Zoroastrian Identity: An Unbroken Thread of Achievement from Cyrus the Great to Today as part of the “Looking Back: Zoroastrian Identity Formation Through Recourse to the Past” conference, held to mark the launch of a ground-breaking exhibition in the Brunei Gallery at SOAS.

It is a privilege to speak here today at SOAS at the conference, “Looking Back: Zoroastrian Identity Formation Through Recourse to the Past” and also on the occasion of the launch of the outstanding “The Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in History and Imagination” exhibition and catalogue, led by Dr Sarah Stewart of SOAS. I congratulate Dr Stewart and her editorial team, Pheroza Godrej, Ursula Sims-Williams, Firoza Mistree and Professor Almut Hintze, who I have always respected as one of the world’s leading living Zoroastrian scholars.

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Speech – Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

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My Lords, in the summer of 2003 my late father, Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, was here in the UK on a visit. It was his last visit to the UK because he passed away a couple of years later. At an event he was approached by a prominent journalist who said: “General, do you think that we should have intervened in Iraq?”. My father, without blinking, said: “No. Intervention should only have taken place with the authority of the United Nations”. My father spoke from experience because as a young captain he had served with the United Nations in the Congo.

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Speech – Finance Bill

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My Lords, I declare my interests in this area. I remember when qualifying as a chartered accountant it was very clear that tax avoidance was legal and tax evasion was illegal. Recently, there has been a huge public outcry about avoidance having escalated to abuse and companies operating within the law have been vilified.

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Speech – London Finance Commission: Raising the Capital

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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for initiating this debate. He said right up front that London is the greatest city in the world and I could not agree more. It is the greatest of the world’s great cities. He congratulated the London Finance Commission on its report, Raising the Capital. I had the privilege of serving on mayor Boris Johnson’s Promote London Council, which was a great experience. It came up with what ended up being London & Partners and had huge success. It really understands London and looks at its competitiveness.

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Speech – Business and Society

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My Lords, when I came to this country from India in the early 1980s, entrepreneurship had the image of Del Boy and second-hand car salesmen. There was a glass ceiling. Today, everything has changed. Entrepreneurship is cool, and I believe that we have a society where anyone can get anywhere, regardless of race, religion or background. Yet business still has such a bad image. We have executive pay. The noble Lord, Lord Sacks, spoke about the noble Lord, Lord Sugar. We have the “Apprentice” image of “You’re fired”. We also have the financial crisis and bankers. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, for initiating this debate.

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Speech – Queen’s Speech

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My Lords, the gracious Speech said a lot of really good things: build a stronger economy so that the United Kingdom could compete and succeed in the world; strengthen Britain’s economic competitiveness; ensure that interest rates are kept low and that people who work hard are properly rewarded; invest in infrastructure-I could go on. It is terrific.

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