Dib Lemming

Panic on the streets of fucking everywhere.

2011-08-09T16:53:00.001+01:00

Gloom. It's literally given me a headache just thinking about the amount of individual horror stories in the aftermath of the riots, and I very much doubt it's over yet. I'm tucked away in a quiet corner of Wales. Lucky me. Many friends of mine, and members of my family, are not so fortunate. And fuck that line of selfish thinking, many people I've never met too, but why should that make them less valuable? Homes destroyed, family pets trapped in blazes, jobs lost because businesses have been burned to the ground - apparently it's not enough to steal, the kids are angry enough and caught up on such a rush of adrenaline that they have to torch every place on their route of destruction. "We're showing the police and the rich people who've got businesses that we can do what we want" is the message.

Not that commentators are getting that message. The cuts, the cuts! Bullshit. The girls in that clip aren't even sure who the government is right now. They couldn't give a toss either. Why should they? This isn't the rioting of the angry, these kids don't have a cause, or aims. All they do have is a whole life of nothing better to aspire to than owning more clothes and phones and consoles, having a sesh and getting off their faces - all the better when you can get it all for free.

You don't fix that by sending in the army. Those are people who work literally fighting for their lives. The incendiary effect that it would have if some of these poor powerless little bastards, suddenly drunk on the attention of the world's media and the realisation that the police can't stop them, were killed by soldiers... it doesn't bear thinking about. Water cannons? Well. Water seems perfectly harmless until someone loses an eye. To be honest, and I do wish the talking heads on my tv would be honest about how little control they have, there isn't much more that can be done without getting far too heavy handed. The police are doing their best - hundreds arrested. It will calm down. In the meantime, the #riotcleanup hastag on twitter should give you some hope and some direction if you live somewhere that is affected. Take some responsibility and show love where it's needed. At the risk of being labelled a clueless hippy, I'm hearing far too much vitriol being levelled in every direction in all this and it's going to help nobody.

So what about after it has calmed down? How do we address the issues? You can't really fix the underlying causes by just throwing money at it, even if we had any. Sure, you need programs to train kids, give them some skills so that they can make an honest living. We have some of those, probably not enough. But you need something else. You need to remove the alternative. What we are dealing with is a society in which for a couple of generations now the most attractive option for those growing up with fuck all is criminality. Looking around me, all my life it's seemed the easiest, most lucrative thing for those on a low income to improve their situation is to start dealing drugs. The risk of a criminal record isn't enough to stop people tearing the streets apart by now, and I reckon it's at least partly because it hasn't been enough of a deterrent so far to stop them using drugs and/or the money they can get from dealing. It's understandable enough. Wouldn't you? Any attempt to escape the incredible stress of having no money to pay off bills and spiralling debts, while living in areas populated by people who are just as fucked up, and reacting in fucked up ways. Something our dear Prime Minister is probably never going to get his head around. I doubt he has a friend who spent a year struggling with addiction, running scared and refusing to get help because the illegality brings stigma and the possibility of losing their child. I bet he's never lived somewhere he has to work twice as hard as the cunts next door who seem to be having some kind of rave-up marathon, because they're dealing while he's feeling like more and more of a schmuck for getting a job.

So, let's do it. Let's make addicts patients, and dealers irrelevant and priced out of the market, so that criminality isn't the obvious option out of the hole people are in. Welsh Lib Dem policy is already to decriminalise drugs, for exactly these reasons. I probably won't be at federal conference this year because I can't afford it, but I think Ewan Hoyle is a brilliant man, and I am pretty psyched about his motion calling for a government backed inquiry. He's a lot more measured and succinct in his discussion than I am to boot: today he's said "It is important not only to examine the opportunities we haven't given youth, but also the hugely lucrative criminal opportunities we have. Removing the drug trade from criminal gangs would force many young people to seek legitimate employment elsewhere and be less likely to see criminal behaviour as acceptable or attractive. The culture of criminality likely stems from this massive market we have handed to criminal gangs that recruit footsoldiers, dealers and runners from the ranks of kids who should be studying, training, or practising skills."

It wouldn't do our looming economic crisis any harm, either. These figures I've seen come from Tom Lloyd, the former chief constable of Cambridgeshire police: "It's estimated that we spend about £10 billion a year on enforcing the drugs laws and that criminals make up to £6 billion profit a year. It is also estimated that up to 70% of acquisitive crime is committed by users seeking to fund their habits (ca. £16 billion)." If those are accurate, there should be more than enough to spare for rehabilitation projects and training schemes.

STUDENTS!

2010-11-04T14:57:00.004Z

You know, if the NUS pledge was that much of a priority for you, the time to mobilise yourselves, campaign and demonstrate was six months ago when the programme for government was being drawn up. As I recall, you were all more interested in dressing in purple and shouting for fair votes.

Right now, the Lib Dems are in no position to vote against the government on this issue. Would that they were. The coalition agreement and ensuing programme for government are effectively a contract, and supercede our own policies and promises because to break the agreement is to bring down the government and return to square one at worst, or at best a license for the tories to vote against any lib dem measures they don't like the look of, which makes the whole agreement a farce. It was a tough decision to enter into coalition, but I still believe, as do the majority of party members, that it was the right one. The ONLY alternative was a minority tory government. If we had said no, the country would have had six months of sweeties and inducements, followed by an election last week where Cameron got himself a tidy majority. This week, you would be staring down an emergency budget that would make the measures we've got, however harsh they are, look like manna from heaven. And if our MPs vote against any bill on top-up fees, that's what we'll face over the following six months. Rock and a hard place.

In the coalition agreement, the only concession regarding tuition fees was that Lib Dem MPs may abstain if they couldn't accept the recommendations of the Browne report. We knew at the time that abstaining on any vote won't stop it from going through - the opposition MPs total 279. The tories have 304. THIS HAS BEEN ON THE CARDS FOR MONTHS. Under the harrowing circumstances, the Lib Dems have been instrumental in thrashing out an arrangement that will be as fair as possible. There is no sense in which the poorest students will be stopped from attending university, and in fact the salary level at which graduates will be asked to start paying back student loans will be raised. Jo Swinson has written an excellent defence of our position and summary of the proposals. As she says: We could have left it to the Conservatives to present plans for unlimited fees, with no regard for a progressive repayment system, and no requirements for top universities to do better on access for poorer students. Instead, we got involved to make a Liberal Democrat difference, and create a fairer system.

You know something else? If self-interest wasn't the only guiding concern of students, if the critical liberal-humanist tendencies of the academic elite were really still alive and well, this would not be the top priority. The worst iniquities wrought by this government are those which affect the poorest and the disabled - in the changes to housing benefit and time-limiting Employment and Support Allowance. Visit those links and decide whether it's more important, as horrible as it is, that you don't swallow the cost of a degree rising from that of a Polo to that of a Porsche; or whether it's more worth your energy and your anger campaigning for those who will have nowhere to live or not enough to eat. I know which is my major concern.

Not Cricket.

2010-08-12T13:33:00.000+01:00

I just re-read Fever Pitch. Two thoughts: first, holy crap 1992 was actually a really long time ago now; second, I know something else these days that engenders almost identical tribal devotion. Yes, some of my friends in the Liberal Democrats have a kind of dogged loyalty to the party that makes the way Nick Hornby feels about Arsenal look positively capricious. And with this political version of club pride comes the equivalent type of gut loathing for the adversary. Every election is a derby match between your guys and all your old enemies... and this is where sound political thinkers lose the plot.

The name calling (of which Thom Oliver wrote a brilliant summary this week) from the soi-disant 'progressive left' is just par for the course, and most of the time you just laugh it off. Easy to laugh to be honest, when this breast-beating and baying is going on and the point of the Liberal Democrats has been missed entirely. What is a shame though, is when this we-hate-the-others mentality gets in the way of giving praise where it's due, on the issues that matter.

It seems to be too easy to forget sometimes that everyone who gets involved in politics does so initially because they feel that things ought to be fairer. Everyone is in it for what they perceive to be the right reasons and the good of all. I don't believe in the big (brother) state ideal of Labour for example, or the dog-eat-dog self-determination of the tories, but I can see where both and more are coming from and just occasionally I allow myself a beatific smile in the direction of a politician from a different party who gets something very important addressed. Nobody has a monopoly on moral fibre. Whether we view politics from the left, right or centre, we should all be able to agree that some of the things we can see are horrible and need action to change them.

Here's a cast-iron example of something that needs to be changed: we need to stop being confronted everywhere we go with unattainable ideals of female beauty, particularly when those ideals include being drastically underweight. Everyone agreed? Thought so.

So why is Laurie Penny, one of the most fantastic feminist writers of her generation, so angry with Lib Dem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone? Apparently, in naming Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks as a woman whose body made a refreshing change in the limelight from the constant parade of stick insects:

"Lynne Featherstone MP has given the impression that young women should aspire to look like saucy secretaries with accommodating attitudes to sexual harassment."

Please! Deliberately conflating character with actress just so you have a stick to beat Lynne with? Can't we stop with the hate and the lazy sensationalist Lib-Dems-are-all-swine "journalism" when it comes to something as important as this? So you have an article to write. What would have been so wrong with maybe agreeing with Lynne that Christina Hendricks has a healthy shape and is a more sane physical ideal than Kate Moss for the majority of girls, and going on to say it's a shame that because she's an attractive woman she is cast in a role where in your opinion she seems to be nothing but a sex-object? Or is the New Statesman paying people according to how much bile they can spout at either coalition partner these days? Sad. Some of the left have changed their pitch - they think it's all over. If they're going to start screaming hate at people who are doing good for commonly held causes, it is now.

For balance, if you did read Laurie's piece today, you might be interested to know that on Lynne Featherstone's own blog, she had this to say about the matter a whole eleven days ago:

"In that interview – because I was asked what I thought of Christina Hendricks (the MadMen star) and said I thought she was absolutely fabulous – as was Marilyn Monroe - echoes of that interview have been bouncing around the media ever since. Not surprisingly – I was not advocating that women should aspire to replicate Ms Hendricks’ figure – simply saying that it was nice to see an alternative to ultra thin models."

You can't score points over us there, much as you might have wanted to. I'm sure there's a phrase for football fans who have to watch a team they hate play beautiful games and come out on top, while their own side are in a mire of ugly infighting and recriminations, and going nowhere. Oh aye, that was it - sick as a parrot. Laurie want a cracker?

Breast is best, unless it's someone utterly witless beating theirs...

2010-08-04T17:16:00.005+01:00

I've been pointed at a story about the "last great supermodel", Gisele, and her bizarre proclamation that people should be banned by law from bottle-feeding their children.

Here we have a woman who is world-famous for having a pretty face and a great body. Nothing up with making the most of those free assets in a world where they can make you rich and famous, I guess. But it hardly gives you the right to start telling everyone else what to do.

If you are a celebrity, what you say publicly has an impact. By all means use your influence to advocate for a good cause! Support for breastfeeding is one I fully endorse too. But if you're going to get involved in politics, please don't do it by clamouring for bans of everything you don't approve of! It's lazy, and it does more harm than good.

There seems to be a myth in the minds of certain anti-formula campaigners that it's easy for all women to breastfeed. Let me tell you, even for those of us who are blessed with fully-functional adequate mammary glands, it's never easy. It's painful at times, it can be psychologically arduous, it affects hormones and therefore mental health the whole time you do it, not to mention the fact that appropriate places to semi-disrobe and start feeding are too few and far between. And that's those of us who *can* do it. Plenty of women find that much as they'd like to give it a go, they can't. One of those things that is affected by genetic variation, I guess. Some women are very fertile, others have to try for years before they can have a baby. In much the same way, some women produce enough milk and some to spare for their babies and have no problem getting the baby to latch on, and some just aren't that lucky. Imagine how you would feel if that were you and you started using formula milk.. possibly some combination of misplaced guilt and reduced self-esteem, hormonal blues and worry.

To my mind, there's nothing wrong with choosing to feed your child formula even if you can breastfeed, either. Scientific advancements to make our lives easier, in action! Once upon a time, the only way a busy woman with a life of her own outside raising babies could continue to be busy after giving birth was to find a wet-nurse. Nowadays researchers and companies have laboured for years to bring us balanced nutrition for infants. Brilliant! OK, so it's not the ideal but for some parents the advantages make it the best way for them to make sure their children are properly fed. Again though, the option comes with a burden of misplaced guilt, thanks to the ever-vocal 'breast is best' lobby.

If you're a new mum feeling hormonal, low and guilty... I think pretty much the last thing you need is the approbation of a perfect supermodel, who was allegedly making pancakes the morning after giving birth, and back into superhuman shape within weeks - amazing how that seems to be so much easier for people with endless pots of money at their disposal, isn't it?

There are positive measures that I believe we should take as a society, to encourage women who want to, to breastfeed. Basically, I agree with Sue Jacob of the Royal College of Midwives, who is quoted in the BBC article linked above:

"We need to have a debate about how to create a society which is going to accept breast feeding wherever women want to do it - in cafes, parks, public spaces and at work, if that's what they choose"

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Instead of using the blunt tool of legislation to restrict women's choices, can't we start by using it to enshrine new rights, so that women can breastfeed in public whenever they need to? Why always the banning? Please, Gisele, next time you want to help, try thinking first. Thinking is so important.

Cameron to Clean Up Thatcher's Mess?

2010-08-03T21:41:00.003+01:00

There's a huge problem in this country, that pervades pretty much all counties, rural and urban. It leads to fear, depression, and misery. It's something that the Conservatives of the 1980s made much worse, bizarrely making themselves popular with a quite significant section of society in the process.. and then Labour did nothing to ameliorate in their 13 years of power.

It's not foxes running riot in town centres.

It's a widespread lack of social housing. Yeah sorry, housing. That least sexy of all departments. I'd imagine the Housing Department is quite a doss to work at, actually. Especially since we don't need stupid HIPs any more. Seriously, HIPs were a stupid plan though, weren't they? Did Labour just invent those to give the Housing Department something to do and maybe take their minds off the fact that a supposedly progressive party seemingly had a big fat blind spot right where thousands of homeless people were living in B&Bs up and down the country? No council housing you say? Well sorry we're terribly busy starting wars over here, and simultaneously making sure more poor people go to university while ensuring that all poor people who *do* go to uni will be straddled with thousands in debt afterwards. No, we haven't got time to fix this most basic of human needs, tell you what, why don't you pop along and do some state meddling in an already well-regulated sector to make sure nobody can even buy or sell houses without an extra layer of bureacracy to pay for. Marvellous!

So, Thatcher ran this perfect scam when I was a kid called 'Homes for Votes'. Genius really - the tories and their iron lady were really quite unpopular after the whole wanton destruction of British industry and mining, and the thing with selling off the country's assets in a baby-after-bathwater sort of way when the privatisation of BT went well.. how did they stay in power when they should have been voted off in anger by the working classes? Remember the ethos of the time: "Greed is Good". People would always be happiest when they felt they were doing well for themselves. So with that in mind the Right to Buy Scheme for council tenants had been born right after Thatcher took power - with every passing election, there were more families who would vote Conservative because "we never would have owned our own home if it wasn't for them". And even better - there was the added bonus of making all that money from the house sales. Nobody ever said it had to be reinvested in new housing stock. Laughing all the way to the bank! Homes For Votes. Breathtaking large-scale gerrymandering. I call it the same thing as the 1990 scandal in Westminster purposely. The logical next step for that plan to make it even more dastardly is to make sure you really do only sell homes to designated people who would vote tory. It's one of those things though, that the Electoral Commission would draw the line at. Thatcher knew how to dance up to the line. Major got his feet tangled up in it and fell over.

So, what does all this have to do with today? Well. Seems Cameron's been let loose at a press conference again and just made up some policy from out of his arse when he's asked a question he can't answer. Honestly, trying to keep him in check is like having that annoying toddler-dressed-as-a-boss from out of the toilet roll adverts as Prime Minister. But dash it if this time he didn't talk some sense! I guess you know, monkeys and typewriters and all that, it had to happen at least once.. still. Cameron talking sense. Who'd have thought it?

He does it in a totally Bertie Wooster way though. He's asked what he's going to do about the lack of social housing and he blinks and almost stutters as he mumbles something about council tenancies no longer being for life - fixed term tenancies, maybe? Oh gosh this will cause such a row. He's so incoherent that somehow the measure gets translated as something to do with spending cuts (How does that even work? How could anyone expect to save money by complicating a process?). So now we've got this problem of Labour activists on twitter (tiresome losers) shouting and baying about the bloody idiot wanting to put people out on the streets... presumably to save money. Somehow. All of which rather harms the publicity of a quite wonderful idea which is this:

At present, I am a single mum and I struggle a bit, and so I live in a two-bedroom housing association property. This means I have a comfortable well-maintained home for a rent I can afford. One less thing to worry about! Hurrah! Need met by society in a time of hardship, I am a lucky young lady. Thing is though, I don't intend to stay penniless. I work hard, I move myself forward, and I'm fairly certain by the time I hit middle age I'll be doing quite alright for myself. But the tenancy in this place is assured to me for life. I could, if I possessed of less moral fibre, live in this place with its rock-bottom rent even if I had a bank balance that would finance buying four other houses. After my daughter left home I wouldn't have to move to a smaller place - as far as the contract is concerned, this is my home and I have a right to stay in it until I die. Regardless of the homeless young mums that will be in dire need of the place when I no longer depend on it. I think that's pretty sick, actually. As soon as I feel confident that I can afford to be out of here, I'll be gone.

But thousands don't think that way, like I do. They think of themselves. Even the ones who don't buy their council or housing association home to pass on as an inheritance to their kids, will stay in them long after their needs have adjusted without a thought to whether they are affecting someone else's life. So maybe they need a push to do the right thing. Whether that is giving parents a fixed term tenancy until their child is eighteen, and reviewing their case at that point to assess the parent and child's needs; or undertaking a rolling assessment scheme to give tenants a questionnaire every few years to check their level of need; or using electoral roll data to check whether only two people live in that house with six bedrooms, or all of these, I'm all in favour.

Damn it. I bloody agree with Cameron about something. Even if he said it in the manner of a bewildered animal in a suit who is scared of the poor, instead of like a reasoning human being.

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Sarah's Law Is A Backward Step For Society.

2010-08-02T14:18:00.000+01:00

Jonathan Calder has written a lovely little observation on Sarah's Law this morning. I agree wholeheartedly when he says the idea that every contact between adult and child needs to be licensed or policed by the state seems to me a totalitarian fantasy.

I adore my seven-year-old daughter, I would obviously hate for her to come to harm. But to expect to monitor every movement she makes and every person she meets is clearly nothing short of ludicrous, and doesn't actually do her any favours. She's growing up and learning, and there's no lesson learned more powerfully than by direct experience. I'm gutted that kids playing out is no longer the norm. It was only 22 years ago I was her age, and had a range of a couple of streets to roam with my friends after school, and went to the corner shop for sweets on my own, as they were all within sight of my home. Nowadays if you let your seven-year-old have that much free rein you'll be getting a visit from Social Services before long for having them 'inappropriately supervised'.

Childhood in the new millennium is all about sitting indoors and getting obese, scared to set foot out of the house because the world is full of paedophiles who lurk round every corner like slavering wolves. GET A GRIP, BREEDERS. The world is no more dangerous in that sense than it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago. You're doing your offspring far more harm filling their heads with patriarchal sex-obsessed brainwashing from cartoons and their tummies with junk food than you would letting them have some fresh air, exercise, sound instruction from you and a bit of responsibility for themselves!

While I'm trying to get certain things through the heads of hysterical parents here -'Innocent' does not mean 'pure and holy', it means' blank canvas'. Human beings are not born as special angels who can do no harm, to then grow into worthless hooded figures of hate at around age 15. Shocker, I know! Your precious little princes and princesses are just very young people with a lot to learn, and your job as parents is to filter down as much as possible in the way of examples of reasonable behaviour and how to live a good life as you can while they're in your care, so that when they leave it as young adults, the world will be a better place for having them in it. The world is not going to be a better place for your children, and your childrens' children, if we're all raising this generation to think that everyone who isn't government approved is a rapist-in-waiting. By the time a child is in junior school, you can explain to them perfectly straightforwardly in an age-appropriate manner what sex is, why adults do it, and how puberty comes about and why it's not a good idea for them to be involved in sex before their bodies and minds are ready. If your experience as a parent is anything like mine, you'll need to as images of sex are everywhere, and your kids will be drawing their own conclusions if you don't give them an explanation. Information is power. Limiting the information your kids have is leaving them powerless.

I am so sick to death of the hysteria. Serial rapists? Not as bad as paedophiles. People who maim, torture, commit arson, murder, armed robbery, abuse of the elderly? Not as bad as paedophiles. Let's decide that every other criminal, regardless of their propensity for reoffending, is considered to have paid their debt to society once they get out of prison, and left anonymous to give them a chance to make a good life for themselves. Not anyone who has touched a child though. They're different. Because children aren't resilient, they can't cope with the wind blowing on them. They're to be kept immune from bad things happening to them, unlike grown men and women.

Guess what else? Sarah's Law won't even guarantee your child doesn't ever meet a child abuser. All it will do is make you aware of all the poor bastards in your neighbourhood who ever got convicted. The ones who haven't ever been caught and convicted are safe from your fearful, hateful attitude. They might even be people you've known and trusted for years. They might even be living in your house. After all, in 2007, one or both parents were responsible for 69.9 percent of child abuse or neglect fatalities [source].

So, Sarah's Law is warped from my point of view, because it feeds into this growing culture where children are taught to mistrust and fear everyone they don't know well. This sad, sick culture where men are afraid to make eye contact and smile at children. The country I live in is one where everyone is considered a guiding light and a precious angel until they go through puberty, at which point they become second class citizens.

What is even more warped though, is the idea that party colleagues of mine are part of a government whose Home Office will put out an official supporting statement when they roll out Sarah's Law, which is repeated on the BBC evening news and even in the broadsheet press, saying "more than 60 children were protected from abuse during the pilot scheme which started in four areas of the UK in September 2008". I'm sorry, what kind of farcical NONSENSE is that? Can you name these 60 children that would have surely have been abused had there not been a register of previous child abuse offenders available for parents to view? I don't think you can. I think that's a fucked up thing to say, in that case.

You know when Nick Clegg said that this was going to be the most radical, reforming government since 1911?

2010-07-30T01:01:00.004+01:00

Well, now I believe him. Wow.

The 'Citizen's Income' model of benefits is something I've idly talked about as a lovely, lovely theory with politically-minded friends on more than one occasion.

Did you know there are 58 benefits an out-of-work person might claim, each one requiring its own mammoth form-filling task, and the presenting of various proofs of entitlement? Can you imagine what a complete and total arse-ache that is if you find yourself out of work and broke?

Now imagine that every person of working age gets a single benefit. In a similar way to the tax credits helpline, there's a number to call to inform of any change in your circumstances, and the amount of benefit you get rises according to various needs, such as disability or dependent children. If you work, your taxed wages are in addition to your benefit, making benefit fraud hotlines a thing of the past. If you are out of work, you know you won't have a lengthy wait to be assessed for eligibility for benefit, as you already receive it and will continue to do so. No stigma, less stress.

Pretty cool, huh?

Looks like we might really see it happen in this parliament!

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Scoring Points From Suicide. How Low Can You Go?

2010-07-28T01:15:00.006+01:00

This article in The Scotsman has been doing the rounds on twitter this evening. It's the tragic story of a talented writer who has been having a savage time, and killed himself because his benefits were to be cut.

As a left liberal, the progress of the parliament is troubling me. I am finding the cuts in housing benefit, and rise in VAT (for example) hard to swallow even if I try to justify it with pointing out the compromises we've managed to lever out of our coalition partners like the 10% rise in capital gains tax. I do think it's the job of the opposition and the press to hold the government to account on these issues and judge them by results. I think this very important as public opinion and strong enough pressure may strengthen the case of those in the coalition who would like to see policy remain as fair as possible in the face of some damn ugly ideology coming from the right.

However, this story does nothing to help that case as it's pure screaming hyperbole. Life on benefits is brutal, and the bureaucracy and hoop-jumping involved in justifying your uselessness enough to get helped to survive when you can't support yourself is depressing even for the strongest of souls. But that's nothing new. It has been ever thus. This guy's death can't be linked to any action of the current government as reforms don't come into force yet, and weren't even announced until the day of the funeral.

Paul Reekie's death was horrible, and it's certainly a sobering reminder of the responsibility the government has to protect and support the most vulnerable. In my view though, it's nothing short of cynically disingenuous to suggest (as the deceased's social circle, this journalist, and the left-activists who have been reposting the link have done) that the current administration is directly to blame. To really believe that this "wouldn't have happened under Labour", you'd have to be quite astoundingly unaware of life at the sharp end over the last few years when the supposed progressives were running the show. In case you need reminding, the gap between rich and poor in this country, in terms of education (education education), health, and income disparity, WIDENED in the thirteen years the last government held power.

It's pretty sick to use someone's death as a means of political pointscoring, and will turn people off listening and taking it seriously when *fair* and damning commentary is made.

Cameron vs Facebook: A Moat Point?

2010-07-15T11:39:00.005+01:00

So the Prime Minister is seemingly furious about the public sympathy for Raoul Moat, as expressed on a facebook group. I can't believe he could think ordering facebook to remove the group (as requested by Chris Heaton-Harris MP, unsurprisingly a keen brand new Tory safe-seat occupying backbencher) is any kind of answer to his problem.

There are those who are publicly sympathising with, lauding and mourning Moat. That fascination will only increase with time is the Krays or the Yorkshire Ripper are anything to go by. As much as David Cameron might not like that, the cult of celebrity killers far predates facebook. He claims to be a Morrissey fan - he probably needs to have a good listen to 'Last of the Famous International Playboys'. And then sit down and have a think about chickens and eggs. Social networking sites don't produce or manipulate public reactions, they merely provide a space for them.

Here's a thought. Maybe if you don't want the people's imagination to be caught by a tragic, horrific incident what needs addressing is the behaviour of the media. If you feel a public discussion of all possible points of view to be tasteless, why allow The Sun to publish a picture of Raoul Moat's mother with the headline "YOU'RE BETTER OFF DEAD, SON" - or is that different? What do we think caused more grief to the victims and their families? Interminable hours of rolling news channel footage that consisted of packs of reporters harassing every passer by and breathlessly repeating a heady mix of eyewitness reports and pure conjecture to camera, *live from the scene as police attempted to negotiate with the gunman*; or a few thousand idiots who are so short of a viable candidate for a hero, or the sense to distinguish real life from the movies, that they've decided to talk shit to each other on the Internet about how praiseworthy the gunman was, after he's dead and gone and the whole episode is over with? It's a horrible time for the victims and their families. But you know what's worse? Speaking for them, deciding what they should be allowed to hear. Stop bloody nannying them. There are idiots out there that have shitty opinions. You can't stop them talking shit down the pub, facebook is really no different except in the respect that if you don't like it, you can click a little 'x' in the corner of your screen and stop being subjected to it, making it that much easier than physically walking away.

You know what the saddest part of all this is? The lack of a sense of humour. I've had a look at the facebook group Heaton-Whatsit got so het up about. I'm fairly sure it's a parody - deliberately badly typed [EG "I DONT GET SUM PEOPLE :/ IF YOU ARE SOO AGAINST THIS GROUP Y DID U JOIN IT!?"], designed to garner the nowtrage expressed about everything by all the Daily Fail readers out there with a stick up their arses. And whoever put it together is probably rolling about laughing right now, not only at the Daily Fail lunatics but at the man who is supposed to be running the country jumping on their righteous raging bandwagon. For all their efforts to be the government of web 2.0, the coalition are hampered by the inclusion of the party that brought us the hilariously misconceived #cashgordon site and ensuing debacle a few weeks back. The thing about the Internet, and Brits on the Internet in particular, is that NOTHING is sacred, everything is up for being taken the piss out of and taken apart, all opinions are given an equal platform for expression and for ridicule. And that's exactly the way it should be. Sadly I don't think the tories are ever going to get it.

Excuse me while I bend over, I'm just being screwed by Swalec.

2010-07-14T01:29:00.004+01:00

I don't know how many people in the UK currently or have ever used prepayment electricity meters. It's not like it's something people will readily admit as it carries a certain amount of shame. It's a dirty secret, being poor. I have one. I have it because it's the default state of things in social housing. I'm in a housing association place, it was fitted when I moved in. I was informed, when I enquired, that there would be a significant charge if I wanted to change the way I paid for my electricity supply, so I have had to put up with paying a higher price for my energy than those who can afford to pay more. And that's just financially. There's a small cost to my soul every time I have to hand over my little plastic key to be charged at the newsagent, too. I feel utterly stigmatised by it, just like the period I was unemployed when my daughter was small, and I had milk tokens to pay for part of my shopping. But I digress.. where was I? Oh yes, little plastic keys.

I'm not a particularly organised girl. My mum and dad used to go crazy about the cost of all my lost keys when I was growing up. I forget to have the toll ready when I drive over the Cleddau Bridge to work. I leave my phone at home at least once a week and get home to text messages that I'm too late to answer in any useful way. But somehow, miraculously, I have managed over five years without losing my stupid little plastic electric meter key. So I didn't know what to do when I reached for my keys as the credit ran out and the lights went off at my house after work tonight, only to find the damn thing had fallen off somewhere. I hunted through my handbag and the car and didn't find it. Boo. I felt thankful for the luck I had in at least having a functioning fully-charged phone and laptop, and set about finding a number for Swalec to ask them for a replacement key before the end of office hours. Because I've never lost a key before, I didn't know what happens next.

Apparently what happens next is you get shafted by the company who own your meter.

I was given the choice between waiting for a replacement key to arrive in the post, or having one of their engineers come and deliver me one the same day. Evidently, with a six-year-old in the house and a freezer full of food, getting an electricity supply back on would be best not left for three days, so as I said to the lady on the phone, I was faced with no choice really. She chirpily clued me in that there would be a £66 charge for a replacement to be delivered. As if £66 was not very much money for a three inch piece of plastic. Of course, in the greater scheme of things, like for example when weighed against a balance sheet like that of a company their size, £66 really isn't very much money. But for a single mum on a low wage, it's well.. I have £2.50 in my bank account right now. When I told her I wouldn't be able to pay the charge, she maintained her breezy oh-that's-cool tone of voice as she told me that they would generously allow me to spread the cost by applying a charge of £3 per week to my meter (for what would be about five months, I pointed out to her, listening to her count on her fingers so see if I was correct). Er, I already pay over the odds for the electric I need every week, I really can't afford for that cost to go up. "I'm sure you won't really notice the cost;" she blithely continued, "it is added daily not weekly in fact, so you only pay by pennies at a time". Well fuck me, I hadn't thought of it like that. You're only taking about 43p a day from me for the privilege of owning a piece of plastic that entitles me to buy something from you when I need to. That's fair. I get it. That's just like someone taking some of my lunch money for the privilege of not being beaten up.

She attempted to justify the cost. "If you could wait for a replacement key to arrive in the post, that would of course be free. We can get one of our area engineers to come out to you, but they would charge us for booking that appointment". I'm sorry, run that by me again? The Swalec guy, being paid by the hour to drive the Swalec van full of tools and bits to fix your shit, including a box full of meter keys, yes? HE will charge YOU. The Swalec lady on the telephone. OK then. So you both work for the same company, but the charge isn't one from your company to me, but me covering the cost to your department of hiring your company's own engineer. I see. With perfect clarity.

She then offered me the secret difficult-caller third bonus option -- for me to drive to pick up a new key instead. From their centre in Cardiff, a mere 90 miles from where I live.

I give up. An extra £3 a week expense for nothing it is then. "Sod the expense, feed the cat another goldfish" as my mum would say. It's not like I can't afford it, right?

Edited 14/07/10 21.52 to add:

After posting this account of my problem, and contacting Swalec on Twitter, I received a phone call this afternoon during which the following points were raised in reply to the above:

Although the engineers who deliver replacement meter keys drive Swalec vans, I'm told they work for Western Power Distribution, who charge Swalec £66 for each callout and this was the cost passed on to me.
Charges for changing from a key to a credit meter are a thing of the past as Swalec reviewed some of their procedures a couple of years ago.
While they were growing a small amount of social responsibility, they also reviewed tariffs and set the prepayment tariff at somewhere around the median of the rates paid by credit meter customers, with no standing charge.
In view of the fact I had never lost or damaged my key in five years, £66 seems unnecessarily punitive, so they are going to waive half of the replacement fee.

All in all I'd say if you want to talk to Swalec and get any sense out of them, best thing you can do is skip the callcentre and contact @YourSWALEC on Twitter. Thanks guys.

Look, it takes me til this time of day to properly wake up, ok?

2010-07-08T14:08:00.001+01:00

I was half asleep as usual when the Today programme was mumbling on at me out of my radio alarm clock today... they were talking about food labelling. I'm quite sure I wasn't dreaming when I heard someone try to make a case for a traffic light food labelling protocol by saying that tables of nutritional information are too hard for 'housewives' to understand. What? I'm sorry... what century is this?

So we're still giving airtime to ultra-patriarchal, out-of-touch misogynists are we? Oh. And here was me thinking Radio 4 was some bastion of intellectual decency as far as media outlets go in this country. Shame.

The Second Hand Smoke Quiz

2010-07-01T14:21:00.003+01:00

Taken from the comments on this page of Nick Clegg's frankly AWESOME 'Your Freedom' government website, where members of the public are invited to suggest which draconian, unnecessary laws they want to see scrapped. I hope this one makes it onto the bill, and if it doesn't I might well see about a motion to conference next year - I've long argued that it's disgusting to tell owners of pubs they can't allow a legal activity on their own premises!

Test Your SHS (Second Hand Smoke) IQ

1. Who was the first European politician to implement comprehensive smoking bans?

a) Adolf Hitler

b) Bertie Aherne

c) Patricia Hewitt

2. In the government's own survey by the ONS in 2006 what % of the public did NOT want a complete smoking ban in pubs?

a) 67%

b) 37%

c) 17%

3. Which of the following has been linked to the highest increased risk of lung cancer?

a) drinking 3+ pints of milk a day

b) drinking 4+ cups of coffee a day

c) SHS

4. In 1998 a World Health Organisation study found what link between parents smoking & the risk of their children later developing lung cancer?

a) 20% reduced risk

b) no change

c) 20% increased risk

5. What’s the minimum no. of cigarettes that would need to be smoked in a sealed 20x22x9ft room in one hour for chemicals in SHS to become toxic?

a)1200

b) 120

c) 12

6. In 2006 the NHS spent £31 million on advertising campaigns, inc. new nurses, blood donation, drugs, immunisation, sexual health, etc. What type of advertising made up 73% of the total spending?

a)smoking

b) recruiting new nurses

c) blood donation

7. Following a single complaint to OFCOM, what scenes from Tom & Jerry did TV channel Boomerang have to cut out?

a) Tom smoking

b) Tom hitting Jerry with an axe

c) Jerry plugging Tom’s tail into an electricity socket

How did you score?

Mostly a) Congratulations, you already know a lot about the SHS myth!

Mostly b) There’s hope for you yet but the truth is still out there.

Mostly c) Oh dear, you appear to have been brainwashed by the anti-smoking lobbyists :)

Anyone fancy a sing-along?

2010-05-09T12:55:00.003+01:00

In the leaders' debate, Clegg's performance was gold
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold
In agreeing with Nick, both the others seemed bland
With warmth and with valour he spoke to the land

No Ashcroft had he, and no press on his side
Just fair honest policies gave him his pride
But then at election time, victory for dread -
Labservative scare tactics pulled them ahead

Keep your faith in Lib Dems for the change that we need
Nick is still about fairness, and never for greed
He'll fight to enact with the power of truth
Fair taxes, green futures and a fair polling booth

(with apologies to Jan Struther)

Nasty Nadine

2010-05-08T11:44:00.003+01:00

Nadine Dorries. The name is known to many. She's the Conservative MP who cheated on the Channel 4 programme Tower Block of Commons, which aimed to give MPs a taste of living in the same conditions as the poorest of their electorate, by hiding £50 in her bra. But her repulsiveness doesn't end there.

Like many politicians, she used twitter to boost her profile and communicate with people during her campaign for re-election. I like twitter. It's a great leveller, a place where celebrities, politicians, and big-shot journalists mix with anyone else who feels like having a say on an equal playing field. I really appreciate those politicians who take the time to update us on their thoughts directly in this way, it is inclusive and empowering. Evidently Nads didn't have quite the same idea, and saw it, much like divorcing her husband of 23 years when he developed MS, as a means to an end, a way of advancing her career, helping to ensure her re-election and hence begin in earnest the work of getting her fundamentalist Christian agenda influencing the statute book. If she really wanted to use social networking to connect with ordinary people, why would she delete her account immediately after her success in the election? Here, for reference (and with a hat-tip to Tim at Bloggerheads for providing it on twitter) is what her final few tweets looked like:

That last tweet she posted before her disappearance just demonstrates what a nasty piece of work she is. She's referring to our own Dr Evan Harris, who is not only alongside George Monbiot in my own pantheon of personal heroes, but is beloved nationwide for his tireless campaigning for equal rights and rational evidence-based policy (he was described by Stephen Fry in his marvellous post on which way he intended to vote thusly: "far and away the most persuasive and impressive parliamentarian in the cause of good and open science and enquiry that we have had in the past decade. He has been central to mould-breaking and inspirational multiparty cooperation in issues of scientific concern since 1997. It seems to me (almost!) that he should be elected unopposed like the Speaker"). There was a cross-party outpouring of sadness on twitter at the moment he lost his seat. I don't mind admitting I was crying my eyes out. And Nadine Dorries was making triumphalist slurs.

I have a queasy feeling about the next few years. This woman is heavily funded and backed by pro-life lobbyists, and considered a 'rising star' in the Conservative party. Much like her fellow fundamentalist Philippa Stroud, whose startling history as head of a church which aimed to cure gay people by exorcism thankfully stopped her becoming an MP, she's been named as a key influencer of David Cameron and tory party policy. And with only 58 Liberal Democrat MPs, and no Evan, the bill she is bound to put before parliament for a second time on reducing the time limit for abortion is going to be that much harder to oppose. And I have a feeling that's not the half of what horror she's going to try to force on us. Damn.

Resounding Lib Dem Victory!

2010-05-07T11:12:00.007+01:00

Is Dave the new Dizzy?

Sure none of you remember 1867, but I'm willing to bet a few of you know what happened then, when Benjamin 'Dizzy' Disraeli was running scared at the helm of a minority conservative government and bowed to pressure from the Whigs to introduce reform and enfranchise more people than ever, hoping that the gratitude of new voters would keep him in government at the next election. I find it one of the most exciting moments in British political history. And I'm really hoping we're about to get an action replay for the 21st century.

Don't Panic!

My friends are sending me frantic messages. Those same friends who have had their interest piqued by this election, who have suddenly for the first time become interested in politics and have been asking me questions since the election campaign began, or at least since those television debates that seem so long ago now. Those friends who have in many cases voted for the first time, only to wake up next day to the news I've been watching develop all night - a hung parliament! Oh noes! Nobody can form a majority so there is no clear 'winner' for the first time in my generation's memory. So what happens next?

If you learned anything by supporting the Lib Dems this year, you learned not to trust the media.

Well, friends of mine, they're listening to god-knows-what guff coming out of their media outlets and believing "announcements" that Nick Clegg is going to take the Lib Dems into coalition with the Conservatives. Hold your horses, guys, that's NOT what he's said. I was listening to his speech on the radio just now and what he ACTUALLY said was that David Cameron has the most votes, the most seats of any party and it is therefore up to him to prove he can govern. At no point did he say the Lib Dems would form a government in partnership with the tories. Indeed, he's not allowed by the party constitution to make that kind of a decision alone ANYWAY.

Do you know what he is saying? He's saying "go on Dave, take your *best* shot". Even with the help of the Democratic Unionist Party as the Conservatives often have, Cameron's tories will form a minority government. And a minority government is a far more obedient one to its people than a so-called 'strong' one, because all the time it clings to power it must be moderate enough to keep from getting itself thrown out on a vote of no confidence.

Here it comes..

I'm really excited. The atmosphere in this country right now, the howls of the people who in some cases even had their votes taken away from them by the chaos at the polling stations, the massive surge in turnout from 61% in 2005 to somewhere a rumoured 76% this time around, the people noticing that with only a small percentage more of the vote the Labour party have five times as many MPs as the Lib Dems... the appetite for change *is* delivering exactly the change you want. Stop, think, don't be scared. The election was not the end of your responsibility and your involvement, as elections have been for the last 35 years. This is what politics looks like. This is living in interesting times.

Minority government is weak government. Weak government is fearful government. It's weak where you're powerful. It has to give you what you want. So demand reform! I'm damn sure the Lib Dems will be doing the same from the opposition benches. We can take back our votes. We can overturn a rotten system that sees a party with 25% of the vote get 10% of the seats in parliament. This election could have been the last one where your vote counted according to your postcode instead of your true opinion. You've done yourselves proud, people, you hung your parliament and now you can get the fairness you want out of them.

Last night, like many Lib Dems, I was in tears over the friends and colleagues, the good people who were losing their seats. I was desperately disappointed, and I couldn't see the wood for the oh-so-emotive trees. Right now, I may be exhausted but I'm more optimistic and fired up than ever. It's a GOOD THING we didn't get those 120+ seats we expected and wanted. It highlights the iniquity of the system just beautifully. And it means nobody can look to us for some phony 'progressive coalition' with a Labour party who turned its back on the rule of law and respect for human rights many years ago. Off the hook nicely there, then: it's not possible so we don't even have to fall out with each other about it.

Ahaha we haven't lost. Far far from it. We're just about to start winning. Victory! Amber revolution!

The Only Election Post I'm Going To Make.

2010-04-21T23:39:00.008+01:00

Right, I've kept very quiet on here about this election. Not a murmur when the funny-til-you-realise-it's-true Labservatives campaign started. Not a peep as the warm and real man I have sat at a table with took to the podium last Thursday, to get a fair crack at airtime to explain who the Lib Dems were to 10 million British people who never did get told by the mainstream media before. Not even a triumphant crow as my party, of which I am SO proud, rose inexorably to the top of the polls over the last week.

I've got a lot invested in this election. I've got my faith in the humanity and the strength of the entire UK population hanging by a thread.

Do you remember 2005? The big election issues..? From where I was watching, I remember one huge campaign battleground from the point of view of a Lib Dem voter who as yet had never met a member of the party.

You know what I'm going to say. Iraq. Two years earlier, again as someone completely politically non-aligned, I had been pregnant with my daughter. I spent a certain weekend in February of 2003 in a little B&B in Llandudno, because I needed to be out of the urban sprawl of Manchester while everyone was watching and reacting to the million people who were marching through London to Stop The War. I couldn't take the chatter, and I couldn't afford to get to London and BE THERE, so I sat on a bed in a hired room and watched it on a small television, quietly, holding my tummy with mixed feelings of pride and trepidation. I cried happily to see so many people knew and felt so strongly as I did, that this action was badly wrong. Of course you know the next turn this story takes, and you must know how I felt when the Labour government, who had always talked of fairness and the importance of the little guy, led our country into war anyway, cheered on by the Conservative party to absolutely nobody's surprise. One in sixty of the entire population had taken to the streets to demand that the government not go to war, and they closed their ears to the noise and went anyway. That's not just wrong, it's totalitarian. As if to add insult to injury the totalitarian theme of current events in Britain continued.. I recall another day of my pregnancy with Alex. I was working for a telecoms company making dull postcode-checking phone calls to customers, when I had a different call to the run of the mill ones.

"I'm sorry love," said the elderly woman on the other end of the phone, "but can you call back later, there's a historic moment on my television, I'm watching them tear down the statue of Saddam Hussein, I don't want to miss this."

I hung up. As soon as practicable I found out what she'd been seeing. And it was this image, familiar I'm sure to all of you:

And since it's old news I'm giving you, you will also already know that the wide-angle version of this view, billed by CNN and the BBC as 'jubilant crowds' of Iraqi people celebrating the American and British saviours who had arrived to topple their savage leader.. turned out to look a little less far-reaching a celebration than it first appeared:

Our government and media started feeding us propaganda. And elderly ladies on the phone, and probably millions more people, lapped it up and never saw the websites that exposed it for what it was. And I saw more go on in the following years to make my thumbs prick - the Hutton report, then Ming Campbell asking the Prime Minister "Don't you understand ... that following the public response to the Hutton report that an inquiry that excludes politicians from scrutiny is unlikely to command public confidence...", and then the Butler Review happening as it did anyway. Do you remember all of that?

I thought everyone in the country could see what was going on, how led around by the nose we were. I actually think they did even now, I only give them the benefit of the doubt in not acting sooner to get us out of this authoritarian nightmare in 2005 because *just maybe* they really really didn't see how the Lib Dems were different. Some of them *did* anyway - 2005 gave us 63 Liberal Democrat MPs. 190 more seats where they were second place. In this screwed up electoral system as favoured and tweaked to their advantage by the two parties who have shared power in it for the last few decades of slowly turning us into a police state, that was bloody remarkable.

And *just maybe*, people believed that being ignored when they took to the streets was one thing, going back on a manifesto promise was quite another. Maybe they liked the look of the promises that the Labour Party were making in the 2005 election. After all, it was a truth universally acknowledged that once the country had gone to war in Iraq alongside America, it was impossible to leave with any shred of humanity or national pride until we had sorted out the terrible mess we had created. It couldn't be changed, and some people out there must have thought the government had learned to listen to the people who elected it. And nobody wanted Michael Howard as Prime Minister, the memory of his ineptitude and coldness in his reign at the Home Office was too fresh. People knew they couldn't trust the cash-for-questions, sleazy old tories, and they hoped that despite their mid-term hubris, Labour wouldn't go any further in taking the piss out of them. If that was the case, turns out they were dead wrong, doesn't it? Just have a quick google for 'Labour 2005 manifesto broken promises' if you need your memory refreshing at all.

In the last five years, this Labour government have had the support of the Conservative party in making sure you're all so whipped down that you wouldn't DARE take to the streets a million strong again even if you thought it would make a difference a second time around. WAKE THE FUCK UP, PEOPLE. You can now be arrested in this country and detained WITHOUT CHARGE for 28 days, if your government feels you *might* be a terrorist. Taken away from your family and interrogated for a MONTH without any need to explain to you what it is you're meant to have done wrong. Both Labour and the Conservatives made sure that would happen. That's because they have taken turns to run this country for so many years that they're realising they can get away with anything and they will always have another crack of the whip coming and a good number of MPs in the fallow periods.

Cash for Questions? The government will still win the election. Illegal wars? the government will still win the election. Gordon Brown and David Cameron are like two kids in a playground who are really best friends, arguing over whose turn it is with the toy. And you are the toy they're fighting over. So, this time around then - stripping you of your rights and liberties, and stealing your money to pay for second homes most of you couldn't afford as first homes: does the government STILL get to win? Please say they don't. Please say you're going to choose something else. I want to wake up on the 7th of May with tears in my eyes, knowing that I am free.

I think all Brits are liberal at heart, and definitely democrats. Our party does just what it says on the tin. Thanks to the fact that we're finally getting to set some of our plans and values before more people than ever before, I am actually cautiously optimistic at this point. Much moreso than I could afford to be watching the run-up to the 2005 election. Since then, I've taken the plunge and joined the good guys, the ones I knew I trusted to act on core british values of freedom and fairness. I have one eye on the horrific slurs and smears of the right-wing press, but I refuse to dignify them by reporting them and defending my party against them, because I hope they'll be seen for what they are - the desperate measures of a media/big business/state machine to blind the growing numbers of people who are realising that they all agree with Nick.

On Plaid Cymru and the Prime Ministerial Debates

2010-03-03T11:16:00.004Z

So, the BBC, ITV and Sky will be holding live televised debates in the run up to the General Election, and they are only inviting Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg to take part. This news has left Plaid Cymru (and the SNP) very cross and frustrated and you can kind of understand why.. they don't want voters in Wales and Scotland to be misled into thinking that the three main parties in the UK are the only one they have an option to vote for at a Westminster level.

Peter Black AM has already blogged about this today, and as I type is vehemently defending his point of view on Twitter against Plaid supporters who feel slighted. It can't be denied he makes a very good point; with just three MPs out of a total of six hundred and forty six, Plaid Cymru's claim to fair promotional airtime is somewhat tenuous.

It gets even worse when you consider that as much as it's a proud little nation, the population of Wales hovers somewhere above just three million, which means that only 3m/60m or 5% of the population of the UK even have the option to vote Plaid Cymru.. so anything Ieuan Wyn Jones would have to say in a debate would be completely irrelevant to 95% of people watching.

I think there's a strong argument for regional broadcasters in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to run their own televised debates in addition to these 'Prime Ministerial' ones, as audiences in these countries need to hear not only the policies of the respective nationalist parties, but also a specialised debate which leaves out devolved issues. In the same way that 95% of the target audience of Sky, ITV and the BBC's events won't be interested in what the leader of the 'Party of Wales' has to say, a massive percentage of the subject material covered in these debates is going to be irrelevant to Welsh viewers as it will focus on things like NHS spending - for which decisions made in the House of Commons will only affect English voters anyway. Indeed, there are rumours that the televised debates may not even be shown in Scotland and Wales, and as this post over at SNP Tactical Voting points out, the locations for all three debates are in England.

In the meantime, my advice to anyone who feels their options are not properly represented in the national media is this: find out who your local parliamentary candidates are for yourself. Check their credentials - you must have access to the Internet to be reading this! Ask them questions about their views and their party's policies. Read your local press. It's not actually the responsibility of the national broadcasters to tell you what your vote will do. It's down to you - with the tiny amount of power you have every few years, why not get off your backside and exercise some responsibility in using it?

Cross Party Lady Love

2010-02-25T18:28:00.002Z

I don't want to get Matt Smith *too* excited, given what he said on his Formspring profile about his political crushes, but I am full of admiration for Plaid Cymru's Bethan Jenkins this week.

This is Eating Disorders Awareness week, and as I've had a family member struggle in the past with anorexia, it's something of a pet subject for me. Bethan has been a champion in highlighting the cause. First in a guest post for the F-word blog, she set out the reasons for her dismay with the results of a Beaufort survey carried out to assess people's attitudes to eating disorders in Wales, and set out the actions she is spearheading with her cross-party group on eating disorders and new charity BEAT Cymru in order to tackle the problem. It's impressive, holistic stuff -- I'm not going to repeat it here because I'd rather you went and read it. On Tuesday she cemented her actions to raise awareness by asking a well-worded question at Business Questions in the Senedd.

Eating disorders are insidious, subconscious, and symptomatic of an underlying mental health issue. They are to be taken seriously. I am glad there is an elected representative shouting about this cause in Wales, regardless of the party colours she wears. Cheers Bethan, I'm right behind you on this one.

St David's Day

2010-02-25T12:10:00.004Z

For those of you who remember the Welsh Liberal Democrats' last Assembly Election manifesto, you may remember it included a commitment to making St David's Day a public holiday in Wales. It was also a commitment of Plaid Cymru, but as they haven't seen fit to bring it about or even bring it up thus far in almost two years of coalition government, I am going to assume they won't bother in the next two, either. I don't envy them trying to share power with the bloated carcass of fauxcialism..

Thankfully someone has at least spent a few minutes of their time putting together this petition on the Number 10 site. It's worth your signature, even though the last attempt failed. Maybe Gordon Brown will be more inclined to provide a little boost to morale in the run up to what will no doubt be a difficult election for Welsh Labour this year ;)

I've signed, with a wry smile on my face at my little fantasy that perhaps 'Iwan Llewellyn', who submitted the petition, might be a pseudonym of a miserable Ieuan Wyn Jones, resorting to any way he can think of to get Labour to listen to his ideas. Too mean?

Shocking Teen Pregnancy Figures for Wales' Labour Heartlands.

2010-02-24T17:29:00.003Z

According to the BBC, Merthyr Tydfil has the highest rate of pregnancy (73 per 1000) among 15-17-year-olds for the whole of England and Wales, with Rhondda Cynon Taf coming second. And is anyone surprised?

What really irritated me, though, was the same tired response as we always get to these stories, that wasn't even graced with a name:

Proposals to tackle teenage pregnancies in Wales were unveiled last summer with plans for better sex education to be taught.

The assembly government also aimed to cut the rates of sexually transmitted infections and highlight the dangers of unprotected sex.

The Assembly Government are missing the point. Sex education *is* crucial, but it's nothing new. It's not better sex education that's needed, teenagers know very well how contraception works and how babies are made. What's needed is a paradigm shift whereby more teenagers in Wales realise their own value.

This is about young people having such poverty of aspiration that the only thing they can imagine will give them self-worth is the dependency of a child. When you have grown up in a place that was once a proud community, but has had its heart and soul ripped out of it by generations of Tory and Labour misrule; when your chances of shaping yourself a future by going to university are dashed by the eyewatering amount of debt you have to get yourself in to even try it; when you can't get a job or even a role in training no matter how hard you try or how capable you are; when as a childless, jobless young person you are treated like scum by the jobcentre staff.. it's a fairly inevitable consequence.

Maybe that's why so many people in Merthyr are so happy to have been presented with an alternative to the status quo. Amy Kitcher grew up in Merthyr, and she's radical, progressive, and wants to bring positive change and fairness to the valleys she calls home. She's started this in her role as the town's youngest ever woman councillor, as well as in an impressive breadth of experience in charity work. In the 2008 local elections, she and five colleagues took council seats for the Liberal Democrats and formed what was arguably that council's first official opposition in a very long time. The voters in those wards must have felt that breath of fresh air that can only come when so many people have been so disenfranchised for so long. And the old order of Labour and Independent councillors with their snouts in the trough and their backs on the people is very much under threat. Good! I hope she ends up as MP for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney in a few weeks' time. Not just because she's a Liberal Democrat and I'm some kind of cheerleader for everyone with a yellow rosette, but because in common with the vast majority of our candidates nationwide, she's a real fighter for social justice and equality, with deeply held convictions and values. That sets her leagues apart from those slick-suited career politicians who are in it to make themselves look good, to get their freebies, and to earn an easy buck with their smooth talking skills with no real connection to the words that are coming out of their mouths. It's those uncaring career politicians, the snakes so prevalent in the two arrogant and interchangeable main parties, who give glib remarks about planning better teaching of sex education and assume they will be seen as doing enough. At a time like this what young people in Wales need is hope and opportunities, not a patronising teacher putting a condom on a banana.

Do I aspire to being an MP?

2010-02-14T23:33:00.001Z

Fair question I suppose, but one I find really tricky. I suppose the answer is no, but I'll elucidate.

When I was little, I used to watch Prime Minister's Questions with my grandad, my mum had given me a basic grounding in who did what in the commons before I went to school, politics was always something that was talked about around me, but at the same time, none of my family were 'joiners' of any flavour. I admired the things Paddy Ashdown said when I was what? 9? 10? and had I known then how easy it would be to be a part of politics, it would have been an ambition. As it was, I saw that there were only a limited number of people in that chamber, and just assumed it would be beyond my reach at such a subconscious level that it never occurred to me. Even though my mum has always told me I could be Prime Minister if I wanted. Mums say that stuff. She also says I could win a Nobel prize.

Right now? I don't have the time. It takes years of full-time dedication to become an MP, well unless you're in the labour or tory parties where they have safe seats and can get people on those green benches with no real effort or intention of engaging with the individuals they represent.. but I wouldn't want to be that kind of MP if I was going to be one anyway! I have my daughter to raise, I have a business to run, I have a whole life lived outside politics and my membership of the Lib Dems is more a matter of moral support and interest than it is ambition.

In the future? I can't say. I don't know how I'm going to grow in the next ten years any more than I could have told you who I was going to be now when I was 19.

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/stephm0g

That's a Harder Question Than "Which Way do Your Joists Run?"!

2010-02-11T23:03:00.002Z

How much honesty and integrity would you have as a politician-would you "toe the party line"? Name three policies of the Libdems/things that any Libdems stand for that you disagree with?

I really can't foresee any great desire to be 'a politician'. I have far more fun being a gobshite party member. That said, I'm not going to skirt the serious question..

Honesty is paramount to me. If I can't look myself in the face and know I'm ok with everything I've done and said, then I feel ill. If the party ever wanted me to lie or cover something up, I'd be the first to refuse, and to walk if I had to. I might look like a 'cheerleader', as one LDV commentor recently put it, but that's really not the case. To me, the preamble to the party constitution chimes so precisely with the way I feel politics should be, that it's a gut thing. And if policies and ideas don't match with that gut feeling, I'm very uncomfortable with them.

You want me to get out my controversial side for the lads, is it? Well, I've not got much dissent to voice, but here are your three examples, such as they are:

In common with Lembit and several others within the Lib Dems, I was against the ban on hunting. The party at the time, including then leader Charles Kennedy, was for it and I was pretty disappointed in them. They did at least allow a free vote on the issue, but I think we may be due a new debate on this one. I'd like to see it overturned. Put simply, it's illiberal.

A little further down the awkward almost-libertarian niche in my instincts, we find the voice in my head that every time I reread that policy of spending the money saved by ditching ID cards on 10,000 extra police officers responds by saying "really? REALLY?!" -- I think there's better ways to spend it. I know there are in fact. Taking away one way of recording and monitoring people and replacing it with more people to watch people and collar them for any perceived wrongdoing is um.. nonsensical in my view. But then I do come from Pembrokeshire, where the police we've got are already so bored from a lack of much to do that they seem to fill their time playing a game of "stop and search every young person in a car". Give me the evidence that 10,000 extra police officers will enrich the lives of UK citizens and make the country a better place to live, and I'll be behind it. But for now I'll stick to my view that people are a lot more likely to behave like criminals if they're treated like they're guilty until proven innocent. I'd like to scrap some of the 20% of the world's CCTV cameras that record our every daily move in this country, too. How much would that save? Can we spend it on preserving biodiversity and improving the maintenance of urban green spaces, please?

As for things individual Lib Dems stand for that make my hackles rise - here's one solid example that highlights a recurrent problem. Tom Brake and his Early Day Motion of 2008 to ban cannabis seeds (still highlighted on his own website here: http://snipurl.com/uc956). Banning things is not high on any liberal agenda, frankly. And this kind of bandwagon-jumping is what makes doorstep campaigning tough going at times for those of us who don't indulge in it. It's all very well Tom making himself more popular with his constituents in the moment, but when he's doing it by signing up to some Daily Mail worthy, kneejerk conservative action, I am not impressed. There's far more integrity in sticking to liberal principles and giving the counterarguments, even if it's hard. Even if it costs you votes. I would never want the banning brigade to vote for me anyway.

Lifted wholesale from here.

Curious?

2010-02-09T20:25:00.002Z

Live for the next half hour, and around periodically after that. Ask me anything you like, no topic off limits but no guarantees you'll get an answer either if you get too out of hand! http://formspring.me/stephm0g

Taking the Mick

2010-02-08T11:41:00.002Z

Poor Mick Bates, eh? What rotten timing, to have a night out go completely Pete Tong for an AM right at the worst possible moment, when the Welsh Lib Dems are trying to have a nice bit of upbeat conference coverage.

Oh, hang on. If you squint at this article you'll see that although it was written this morning, the incident in question happened on the 20th of January. Wonder why it wasn't considered news til over two weeks later then? I'm seething.

Blah blah who would you do a deal with blah blah blah..

2010-02-07T15:36:00.003Z

Really, really, REALLY tired of every time a Lib Dem has any airtime, the only thing the interviewer keeps asking is what the party would do in the event of a hung parliament.

Get. this. through. your. heads.

IF one was generally supportive of the Conservative party, they would join the Conservative party. IF one was generally supportive of the Labour party, they would join the Labour party. (Though why anyone would want to do either is beyond me).

The Liberal Democrats do not exist as some organisation who just wait to see who they can lend their influence and expertise to. They're a party in their own right. In case you haven't noticed, they have a fully costed manifesto based on their own guiding principles and liberal instincts. Their own agenda.

Whether the Lib Dems are the third party, the second party, the outright winners or partners in a coalition, what they will do is the same as they do in those different positions at different levels all over the country - they will push for the reforms that make taxes fairer and greener, politics more accountable and less paternalistic and corrupt, and individuals freer to make their own choices over their own lives.

It's simple enough to understand, media goons! Think of some new questions, we've had enough years of the tired rehashing of this one. Or better yet, try asking Labour and tory talking heads whether they would go into a coalition with each other. It has to be said, those patronising authoritarian stuffed shirts all have more in common with each other than they do with any of my friends...

Clunky Logic.

2009-08-01T13:15:00.003+01:00

I've lost count now of the amount of people I've had this row with. Someone will tell me again that it's good for the environment to incentivise drivers to scrap their old cars and buy brand new ones, so I might as well say what I have to say on the matter here so I can just wearily point at it.

This is not an environmental policy, it's an economic one. It's meant to kickstart the auto trade, not save the planet. Just stop and think about it for a minute and you'll see... I would love to have the figures on how long you would have to drive a cleaner car to offset the environmental cost of the manufacture of it.

It's just another sop, a near meaningless salve to our consciences while we blithely continue to destroy the planet, like the recycling industry. Actually worse. At least recycling does lead to some reduction in mining and refining, even if it is infinitely better to reduce packaging in the first place or come up with ways to reuse materials.

I'm not claiming to be blameless. I love driving, I drink pop from plastic bottles, I'm a filthy consumer just as much as anyone. I just wish everyone would be a bit more honest about it.

Tories plan to cut number of MPs.

2009-01-13T23:29:00.005Z

So it says here, and on the radio earlier today. Apparently it's going to save public money: Mr Cameron said: "I think the House of Commons could do the job that it does with 10% fewer MPs without any trouble at all." Does any of this sound familiar? Well, perhaps not. We did word it better: There are too many national politicians, and they cost too much, so we'll shrink parliament by 150 MPs. But you know, it's on page *twelve* of the Make It Happen document the Lib Dems launched three months ago, so I expect it's taken dopey call-me-Dave this long to read that far, you can't expect him to rephrase it eloquently as well.

I wonder how long it will take the tories to cotton onto the fact that using public money to underwrite loans that the banks see as too risky to take on is NOT such a good idea? Probably when they catch the news and see that we don't like it. On a side note, I'm not sure who it was from the Lib Dems that was quoted in that last link there but they're right - a stunt is precisely what this is. But then, haven't New Labour always been a selection of cunning stunts?

Glad That's Over...

2008-12-16T21:49:00.003Z

I have had a hard time with internal elections in the party this Autumn. Not as hard as Lembit, or Jenny Randerson, I'll grant you, but it's been tough finding myself necessarily pitted against people I like and respect because I'm supporting a bid by someone else I respect and like.

It's a big part of why I've been missing from the blog arena. I am a soft sod who likes everyone to be getting along, basically. And politics isn't always like that. In fact, it's much more often about backbiting and sniping - there's a reason why general workplace bitchiness has been termed 'office politics'.

I am extremely happy that both wonderful ladies I was supporting won their respective elections. Ros Scott is continuing to work in the same manner as party president as she did during her campaign, taking time to reach out to people in and out of the party via her blog and visits to all areas of the country. Kirsty Williams is an inspiring, incredible woman and has hit the ground running as the party's first female leader, and the first female leader of any political party in the Welsh Assembly, announcing a reshuffle just days after her election, and like Ros planning visits to various local parties over the next few months.

Now that we have our president and leaders in place, I just hope any resentment and hard feeling between the erstwhile candidates and their supporters melts away as we all remember that we are colleagues and friends in this party. I'm sure it will, knowing the lovely people involved. I promised Ros I wouldn't share any of the pictures I took of her and Lembit having an impromptu duel with toothpaste tubes in the Bournemouth sunshine a couple of months back when we ran into him on his way back from shopping for dental hygiene supplies, so I won't, but I do want to share this one. Altogether now: ahhhhhhhh bless!

Political Statements that Stink

2008-11-02T19:28:00.000Z

I love Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but I'm a bit concerned about a T-Shirt that a UK company is encouraging us to wear to show our support... it carries the legend:

I ♥ BO

I'm amazed, frankly, that their stocks of this design are running low. I would be too frightened of all kinds of armpit-in-face shenanigans to wear that in public!

'Non-hunting' Season and the Indomitable Spirit of the Brits

2008-11-02T14:22:00.003Z

We're a funny old people in the UK. Give us any kind of rules and we bend them to distraction with a cheeky grin, and break them when nobody is looking. Irrepressible. Watch the motorways, where they aren't completely traffic-bound, and you'll see people slow to precisely the 70mph speed limit where they know there is a speed camera, or where a police car is in sight (indeed Douglas Adams and John Lloyd coined a term - a Grimbister - for the body of vehicles around a police car, travelling at the speed limit in their book The Deeper Meaning of Liff). The rest of the time drivers will proceed at a speed they are more comfortable with, generally around 80-90mph. The 'lock-in' is a quaint pub tradition where as long as the curtains are closed and the doors are shut, a pub will continue to serve alcohol long past official last orders time to their friends and regular customers inside. I have no doubt that there are smoking landlords and ladies who get out the ashtrays once the doors are shut too. The police generally turn a blind eye because frankly, we all have a sense of proportion and some laws are more important than others. It's all part of the innate liberal mindset we're born and brought up with, or that's how I see it - "it's harming nobody, leave them to it".

Today is the start of the third annual foxhunting season since the ban on the sport. I love this piece in the Independent. It tells it how it is. We Brits carry on doing whatever it is we want to, staying mostly just within the limits of the law. I love this country. I love the two-fingers-to-the-establishment attitude of people and encourage it. If your moral compass is sound, and you know you're not going to harm anyone by doing what you want to do, then go for it. I guess that faith in humanity is what makes me someone who could never be a member of either of the other two main parties in British politics. Daddy state does not know best. The police don't have time to chase people around for such petty misdemeanours as hanging around in groups of more than three on a street corner, smoking a joint in their living rooms because vile unpleasant alcohol isn't their drug of choice, or maybe (possibly, accidentally) coming across a fox when they're on a drag hunt. I'd like to tear down some of the illiberal laws that have been created over the last ten years, but some days it's enough to know that people all over the country are ridiculing them anyway. Tally ho!

Priceless Palin Prank

2008-11-02T03:20:00.003Z

Sooner or later, if you take yourself too seriously as a public figure, you're going to come up against people who will send you up in style. I was a huge fan of The Sunday Show for this brand of humour - Dennis Pennis had it nailed.

The more ubiquitous form of the gag is the radio DJ wind-up call. Normally these are a touch on the mundane side, but BoingBoing just brought me pure gold. Two guys from a station in Montréal called Sarah Palin this morning. And she actually thought she was talking to President Sarkozy of France for a full five minutes. Even after they opened the call by telling her his special advisor was Johnny Hallyday. EVEN after they said they had seen the "documentary on her life" Hustler's 'Nailin' Palin'.

This so needs disseminating to anyone who might have thought of voting for her and the slimy creep "that one" McCain on Tuesday. It would have to be the final nail in the coffin, there's no way anyone could visualise her in a position as important as Vice President after hearing that. Hell, I even feel sorry for the people of Alaska, she has made the whole state look stupid.

E-voting machines. What a marvellous thing they're not.

2008-10-31T11:15:00.003Z

Already, there's contention.

For heaven's sake! What is so wrong with a cross on a piece of paper? Or at least getting the technology *right*. With this kind of cock-up hanging over the process before polling day even comes around, it messes with the mandate and the authority of whoever wins.

Brown is the New Black?

2008-10-26T12:04:00.002Z

When I was growing up, my mum displayed her Judas Priest and Black Sabbath LPs with pride and had fabulous liquid eyeliner and a love for the Rocky Horror Show that knew no bounds.

That sort of thing is cool, but it has its downside - what was I meant to rebel against?! Now the same feeling must be sweeping the nation with the revelation that the inhabitants of Number Ten are metal fans.

Imagine if you will, after a hard day in Prime Minister's Questions, Gordo posing with a hairbrush and screeching along to Iron Maiden in the cabinet room. It puts a smile on my face, anyway. I think he should start throwing the horns for photo ops.

The energy problem.

2008-10-09T16:06:00.003+01:00

Just a quick one - this started out as a response to Anders Hanson's latest post, but got a bit out of hand! It follows on from discussion of green issues that have been on many Lib Dem blogger's minds lately, as you'll see if you visit his blog.

I have had the nuclear-as-green spiel from a couple of Lib Dem members. The argument starts from the same page as everyone: that we do need to stop burning coal and gas to produce energy, as it's polluting the earth and galloping through limited resources. Solar and wind power are all very well, say nuclear enthusiasts, and should be used much more, but they say we would need nuclear energy as something turn-off-and-onable to ensure continuity of supply as both the sun and the wind are so variable. Of course, storing power is not an easy task - if we could just keep it in a big warehouse or reservoir when we have a surplus, and send it down the wires when we need it, that would be lovely, but we just don't have the technology.

Fair enough then. What other sources of electricity could be turned on and off at will to fill the gaps when demand is greater than a wind/solar supply? To me the obvious answer is hydro and wave power - but I'm told I'm being naive and that even if we could build the infrastructure we need to combine those sources into a reliable energy network that could provide everything we need on demand, it would take so long that more nuclear power is still needed as a medium-term interim measure.

Hrrrmmm. I don't know. I still think that ensuring security of electricity supply by building nuclear power stations around the country is about as well-advised as ensuring security of your home by sticking landmines around your garden. I grew up hearing the stories of Windscale and Chernobyl, and you can tell me it's not the same these days until you're blue in the face, I just can't see how you can guarantee that accidents won't happen.

The Big Green Irony

2008-10-08T02:14:00.003+01:00

I was one of the first wave of kids to be educated on environmental issues from primary school age in the UK. In the late eighties, I pestered my mum into spending what was a fortune out of her budget at the time on a catalytic converter for her car. I designed posters to stop people from using sprays that contained CFCs. I was the captain of my primary school's Environmental Quiz Team, and got to travel to other schools to take part in panel quizzes at assemblies and kick ass with my impressive knowledge of biodiversity and green issues.

I felt I was a typical member of my generation, as much as one analyses these things at the age of ten or eleven. So how is it that as my generation have grown up and entered the spheres of industry and politics, that in a lot of places we've lost our way so desperately? We can pat ourselves on the back for cutting out CFCs, but think about some of the ways we have moved backwards:

Doorstep deliveries of locally produced milk, fresh every morning, in bottles which were sterilised and reused, have been replaced by plastic bottles picked up in bulk weekly from the supermarket.

Instead of drinking soda from glasses, poured out of deposit bottles that could be returned to the newsagent for reuse by the drinks company, we grab plastic half-litre bottles of Coke or our sugary poison of choice, which are more likely to be thrown away than recycled.

Unnecessary packaging has increased almost everywhere you look, it's almost impossible or at least prohibitively expensive to buy vegetables by weight in paper bags as we used to, with the majority picking up their (already impervious to contamination by means of their skins) fruit in plastic trays, wrapped with more plastic. That's if people are eating fruit and vegetables at all, when processed foods with huge carbon footprints are so much more convenient and often cheaper to live on.

I don't know anyone locally to me who has a compost heap in their garden. In fact I only know one or two people who grow any food, or feed birds, rather than leave their garden as a close-cut lawn or something even more sterile featuring vast quantities of gravel.

Modern children have more toys than ever, scores of brightly coloured plastic objects which often see little use before being discarded to make room for the latest flavour of the month.

This is all more on my mind than usual recently, as on Friday I took a trip with the Housing Association panel I'm on, to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth. It was a return journey for me: I have visited once before, with my family, when I was about thirteen or so. I delighted in rediscovering the place, especially its ingenious cliff railway powered by gravity and rainwater (two things there are no shortage of in the Welsh mountains!) and astonishing engineering. You can see some pictures from my phone here, if you wish.

It was heartening to wander around with the Director and the new Manager of Pembrokeshire Housing, who have always been concerned and conscientious, on the lookout for yet more green initiatives they could incorporate into their policies, their existing stock and their new build houses.

The atmosphere at CAT is great, people there are doing positive things, from volunteering and living in a low-impact way to undertaking hugely impressive postgraduate research. You can't help but come away thinking. The idea is that you go away inspired and energise, I think, but I have to admit to feeling a little troubled.

As I said above, it's profoundly ironic that all the time we have been becoming more 'environmentally aware' this past couple of decades, we have also been consuming more, and doing so less responsibly on the whole. I am proud to be a Liberal Democrat for so many reasons, not least of which is our green credentials as a party: in the areas where government can change these things, we aim to (see the Green Tax Switch for a prime example). In many places where we lead councils you can see the difference, with better public transport and provision for pedestrians high on the agenda (try google searching for "Liberal Democrats pedestrians" and watch the number of campaigns that come up all over the country), and better, properly separated doorstep recycling facilities.

But we can't expect to come in as politicians and make everything better overnight. The mess we're in is up to all of us to take care of, and the eleven-year-old me is still in there somewhere dying to nag you so here goes...

While it is laudable that much is made of recycling up and down the country now, and almost everyone has some form of doorstep recycling scheme, I can't help but think that it is being regarded quite wrongly as a panacea. Sure, it's not entirely greenwash. I would rather see a recycled drinks can than one which is made by mining bauxite and using 95% more energy, that's not in doubt. But people seem to forget that recycling still uses energy and resources to achieve. Here are just a few things that will reduce your waste output in an even more green way than recycling:

Buying less, and buying ethically with reducing waste in mind wherever possible, ideally from places that use less packaging or biodegradable packaging - farmers' markets are an obvious example, you could see if there's a local 'box scheme' to get fresh fruit and veg delivered to you in season, and away from food I'm a particular fan of Lush (bath and beauty products) for their commitment to this ethos of minimal and degradable packaging. If you aren't frightened of looking eccentric, as it's so rare to find people doing it even now, you could try doing what Ben Bradshaw was urging two years ago and dumping excess packaging at the checkouts. If we could all do this and successfully encourage others to do it, there would come a tipping point where the retailers had to rethink their attitudes.

Swapping. Oh yes. I have actually done clothes swapping parties and it's a much greater fix than buying a new outfit, because you don't spend anything, you get rid of stuff you don't wear any more, and you get new-to-you stuff that you'll love.

Composting there was a tiny part of the vast array of displays at CAT that really impressed me and taught me something I didn't really know the extent of: they had two vegetable beds, side by side, into which they had planted precisely the same varieties of seeds. On the left, the weediest little runts of leeks, barely thicker than a pencil, struggled to survive. On the right, the beefiest, biggest leeks I have ever seen stood proud of the bed and jostled for space. The only difference between the two tiny plots was a layer of home made compost. This is an awesome way to cut down your household waste, it's really easy to get started and you can even use waste paper, especially newspaper, in your compost bin.

Selling things. You might think of eBay or Amazon marketplace immediately, but it's not all about getting the highest price for your limited edition books and music you no longer want! There are still places that will pay to take empty cans off your hands: try looking here to see if there's an alupro centre near you.

Re-using items, either for their intended purpose or any variety of new ones. Pretty craft projects are great and you don't have to be handy with that kind of thing, everyone can make a lemonade bottle bird feeder! And it's not only on this kind of small scale you should think about reuse of your junk - next time you're throwing out shelves or a microwave, don't just skip them, find out if your local authority has links with charities for such things to be repaired and resold cheaply. In Pembrokeshire, Frame perform this function, and provide work and training to disadvantaged individuals into the bargain. It's where most of my furniture came from :)

I know I sound like an idealist hippy. I know these ideas are still not mainstream. I know we're all very used to life moving quickly and everything being available and disposable to us. I'm as guilty as anyone of all the worst excesses of 21st century life. But we desperately need something politicians are hard-pressed to provide or impose, and quite probably shouldn't in some areas. We need a massive culture shift. And it's been twenty years or more coming. Let's help it gather speed.

Self-indulgent ramble, feel free to ignore...

2008-10-07T19:45:00.002+01:00

I have been avoiding this blog assiduously for some weeks. I've had a storming head cold and a mental and financial hangover from conference but that really wouldn't normally be any excuse for me to stop writing, quite the opposite. I'd like to say I don't know why I've not been around, exactly, but the truth is, I do.

Over the course of Lib Dem Conference, I got to know someone who described me as 'the most utterly sorted person' he had ever met. I was disbelieving, stunned. I may project an aura of confidence and savoir-faire, but underneath I've been a bit of a mess, if the truth be told, for about ten years.

I've faced some difficulties over that time that were not of my own making, but many more that were entirely, if unconsciously, self-constructed. I have set about transforming my life into one I could be proud of, one more fitting of my native wit and intelligence and the schooling I was so generously afforded by my family, several times. And each time I have simultaneously done things that set me up for catastrophic failure. I could go into anecdotal evidence, but it is all too painful and too private to broadcast here. Take my word for it, I have the process of taking great opportunities and spectacularly blasting them to smithereens down to a fine art.

I'm not scared of failure. I'm used to failure by now. I am deeply, deeply ashamed of living in a housing association house and working for two days a week in a job that doesn't actually stretch me one iota. It has caused untold damage to my relationships with anyone I care about who knew me before about 1999: I am seen as prickly and unapproachable - permanently on the defensive because I have become so accustomed to seeing myself as a poor, lost cause that I am convinced that that is all anyone else who knew me as a child and a teenager will see when they look at me and it makes me bitter. And that is a high price to pay for being a failure in my own eyes, but I have continued to plant seeds of destruction in my life thus far because I don't fear failure at all. What I fear is success.

So, one and a half years into my membership of this party, when I find myself unexpectedly the subject of praise and admiration, when I find myself pushed from all quarters to become a parliamentary candidate, when I am surrounded at conferences (and at the end of the phone from at other times) by a whole network of good, worthy people who see huge potential in me, when I find myself nominated for Lib Dem Blog of the Year against and over other bloggers that I don't feel like I come close to measuring up against, I feel tearful. I am actually even struggling to write this.

The truth is, I didn't join the party with any ambition in mind. I joined because I met some people who liked to talk about politics and political history, who had noble ideals and kind faces, and I wanted to spend more time around them and people like them. I laughed when my PPC said to me at the time that I would find that responsibility comes quickly in this party and I may find that things snowball, I remember saying "what, so you'll have me delivering leaflets in no time, then?". So to find that actually, this is a place where I could achieve some form of success, not only some form but a form that really appeals to me and would make me proud of myself as like anyone I want to be, deep down, TERRIFIES me.

I actually woke up this morning and swore off going to Welsh Lib Dem conference this weekend, ostensibly because of the aforementioned cold, but in reality because I'm in the grip of terror. You have my mother, who knows me well enough to know when I need an arsekicking, to thank (or address your hate-mail to!) for the fact I've changed my mind. And the fact I'm back here.

A Proper Blog Post follows shortly.

Aten't dead.

2008-09-23T17:43:00.000+01:00

I have been feeling a bit snowed under with one thing and another, and suffering the corresponding painful low that comes after being so utterly manic at conference. I have a few posts half written and saved as drafts (including the interview with Nick Clegg), will finish them and deliver them to you all when I'm feeling back up to speed. Thanks for your patience...

Return to the Status Quo in St Dogmaels

2008-09-19T13:58:00.000+01:00

Well, there's a surprise.

There was a county council by-election yesterday in the St Dogmaels ward, which falls in my county (Pembrokeshire), but not in my constituency. The local party over there have the right idea about long-term campaigning. Where they have a good candidate selected early enough, they have proved that they can win. This was a bit of a different matter as the resignation of our own Liz Campion prompted a very sudden (and technically illegally called) election. There was no chance to do what Liz had done and promote the candidate for over two years before polling day, and no real effort to involve wider support from Welsh Lib Dems who would have been happy to come and help, so I'm not entirely surprised that our candidate Elfyn Rees was pushed into second place.

As Liberal Democrats in West Wales, we have a huge challenge on our hands with local elections in general. The prevailing attitude from the electorate that there is no place for party politics in the council chamber. So they vote for anyone who claims to be 'independent'. Trouble with that is, the 'independents' who run Pembrokeshire County Council are no such thing. They operate as a party group, except with no manifesto or specific mandate, so they can basically pass whatever they like through the chamber. Often whatever provides them with the least work and the most personal benefit. Times ahead are going to be tough for the one councillor in that chamber from our side of the Cleddau. Tony Brinsden has worked hard on the committees he's involved with, and will now lose his say there unless or until another Lib Dem is elected, which may well take until 2012.

Better luck next time, Elfyn. I would have been out yesterday with you, but since every offer of help I made was roundly ignored by a certain insular and arrogant colleague of yours who was co-ordinating the campaign, I finally gave up trying about a week ago.

Bournemouth: Why Even As A Pacifist I'd Like to Congratulate Adrian Sanders.

2008-09-18T15:59:00.000+01:00

I'm back from Bournemouth, a little the worse for wear, and five days behind with my messages and the rest of my life. It is all coming back to me so slowly, and I've had so little sleep since last week... perhaps it's best if I just make another cup of tea, start from what I remember best and work from there. Mmm, tea.

So, I suppose the most attention-grabbing thing for non Lib-Dems out of conference news coverage was that fight. Mild-mannered touchy-feely 'limp demics' as my dear rabidly tory cousin calls them, getting in *fights*? Can't be right!

So, what is one of our MPs doing getting so angry with a former head of press? Well, I can't say exactly what the argument was, I'm not Adrian Sanders. But it might help to know, if you didn't already, that Mark Littlewood is considered by most people in the party who mention him to be a swivel-eyed lunatic who is hell-bent on the destruction of the Liberal Democrats. Having been to the fringe event they ran after the one where the controversial document was launched, I can understand that point of view entirely.

Mark Littlewood's Liberal Vision pressure group take the definition of liberalism and stretch it out to some pretty damn extreme conclusions for their own ends.

I have to admit, I grin with recognition at the attitude that "liberalism means allowing everyone to go to hell in their own sweet way". I believe that it is part of the task of any liberal party to attack the nanny state where it interferes with people's lifestyle choices. Bansturbation by the other two parties seems to increase all the time and I can only imagine the climax they're aiming for is some kind of classical dystopia, where any hope of a happy society and any sense of empowerment of people is crushed by illiberal law after illiberal law, and increase after increase in police power, until we all live in enough fear to behave ourselves exactly as our government wants us to. You can hear echoes of this feeling in Nick Clegg's speech (on which more later) - we despair of the pessimism rife in politics these days and instead present the alternative of a trusting, optimistic party that believes that given the choice, most people will do the right thing.

HOWEVER. The dangerous extrapolation of this theory into ultra-small-state lunacy by Liberal Vision, and the way that this faction like to ally themselves with the party as if we are naturally going to agree with their every word is, well, probably enough to make you want to shove someone rather hard over a wall on its own, even before they have personally offended you. On further questioning at their meeting on Tuesday lunchtime, members of the panel said among other things (I précis and paraphrase as it was far too busy to take notes) that we should allow people to drink and drive should they wish (yes, that was Gavin Webb, I don't think we have anyone else that crashingly extreme in their libertarianism around); that we shouldn't balance freedom of choice with the state provision of help to level the playing field for people who were born at a disadvantage, because freedom should engender greater individual responsibility; that while freedom of choice over what to do on your own property naturally meant that people who own houses and other presmises have a wider range of choices, those who don't still have the choice to say, sell their organs as their body is their property so that's ok. Gah!

I picked up a copy of the 'Cameron Effect' report that had allegedly caused all the trouble. It doesn't make pretty reading. In fact, it amounts to forty pages of "ooh, you'd better be scared, the tories are coming", followed up with a rallying cry from Liberal Vision and the Taxpayers' Alliance (more swivel-eyed lunatics then) to the Lib Dems to not stop at tax cuts for those who need them, but give tax cuts to everyone. Yay! No taxes!

*head -> desk*

Here's the thing: we are not announcing a package of tax cuts for those who need them most because we're quaking in our boots about the hollow threat of the tories (or 'Blue Labour' as Clegg aptly named them yesterday). We are merely applying the values we have always had to the conditions we face. Recognising that in the face of massive inflation and/or interest rate increases, a fairer distribution of the tax burden is absolutely crucial to the retention of a reasonable quality of life for anyone earning anything up to a middle income. I'd love to know how people can look at us as we propose a new tax rate of 50p in the pound for anyone earning over £100k and still say we're moving to the right, I really don't get it. We are NOT becoming a right wing party, we don't even WANT to become a right-wing party, and we WILL NOT bow to pressure from people Mark Littlewood and his little uber-libertarian group to become a more right wing party.

For those who weren't at the 'How Liberal Are the Liberal Democrats?' event on Tuesday, you also missed two other things:

First, Lembit won something! He came top of Liberal Vision's dubious list where they ranked all our MPs from most to least Liberal, by some very narrow criteria. I have trouble commending their methodology or the document. It looks like something that was put together in three hours by a sixth-form student, and how anyone can end up with Tom Brake (yes, the MP who used a precious ten minute rule bill to call for a ban on the sale of cannabis seeds, causing a reaction like this among the estimated two million cannabis smokers in the UK - cheers Tom!) as tenth most liberal MP in our party is definitely doing it wrong. Seems to me to be a document that was hastily slapped together in order to give an enticing title and description to a fringe meeting at conference to ensure extremely high attendance. Could that be because they had some ulterior motive for getting lots of conference reps in a room to attempt to pour honey in their ears? Let's think...

Second, a really hilarious attempt at creating drama, and thereby a story and a credible campaign for presidency of the federal party by Chandiler Fernando. Now, much as I think for the sake of democracy and a more engaging contest, I would love to see more than two entrants into this competition, I couldn't bring myself to sign a nomination paper for a) a defected tory who is no less than the director of the organisation I've spent most of this post denigrating; or b) a campaign this ludicrously launched and staged. Imagine if you will the atmosphere in the extremely packed room where the meeting I described above had taken place, some heated questions had been asked, and the clipboard with a sheet asking people to sign up for more information from the hosts was languishing at the back of the room, having picked up about five names in total from the people who had come along mostly to argue with Gavin Webb and see if they could see any bruises on Mark Littlewood. Now imagine an elderly gentleman who had been planted in the crowd standing up and shouting enthusiastically about how we were about to witness the latest entrant into the race to become party president, waving papers in the air like he thought he was Neville Chamberlain. And imagine the exchanged smirks across the room as Fernando stepped up to the front of the room and looked slightly gormless while his plant continued to rant and exhort people to sign his nomination papers. Oh boy. Good luck with that one, Chandiler. I can't see you getting very far.

Dear Betsan Powys, DROP IT. No Love, me.

2008-09-11T10:45:00.001+01:00

It's old news by now, as I live in a distant corner of Wales and by the time I got home yesterday I was too tired to do justice to the topic: yesterday, I was in Swansea to lend support as Kirsty Williams AM announced her intention to stand for leadership of the Welsh Lib Dems and of our Assembly group.

BBC Wales' political editor was there, and seemed to relish the opportunity to ask Kirsty if she wasn't a bit worried that she would still be seen by many in the party as the 'Rainbow Wrecker' (her words not mine) after last year's rather messy internal debate on whether or not to enter a rainbow coalition to keep Welsh Labour out of government. For heaven's sake. Of all people, Betsan should be familiar with the hackneyed phrase that 'a week is a long time in politics' - what does that make fourteen months?! And more importantly, why even ask the question if you're not going to report the answer?

For the record, part of what Kirsty said was that many people had been on the other side from her in that debate and supported her now. I voted FOR a rainbow deal. Yet I sat by the podium while Kirsty delivered her address yesterday, and was immensely proud to do so. Why? Because as she said, she is a conviction politician. And as Mark Williams MP said in his summation, she represents the empathy that is sadly often missing from politics these days. Kirsty is a real, powerful voice for people who feel disenfranchised by the spin and the pat messages from the other parties. She is exactly the person I want to get behind, the person I want to represent the Welsh Liberal Democrats in the public imagination.

Just because I have found myself on the opposite side from Kirsty in one debate, on one issue, doesn't mean I don't have huge amounts of respect and admiration for her position. This happens ALL THE TIME in a party like ours - we foster debate, we thrive on it, and we don't 'break friends' for good like playground children when one of our colleagues says something we disagree with. This seems like as good a time as any to point out, too, that being behind Kirsty Williams in this contest (and there had better be a contest!) should not be taken as a tacit admission that I don't -also- have huge amounts of respect and admiration for Jenny Randerson or Eleanor Burnham. Should either or both of them choose to stand in this contest, I will be rooting and campaigning for Kirsty without undermining or smearing them because they are also brilliant women who need to be heard and have their own distinct platforms.

Yes, Betsan, you did hear about "Social justice, decent public services, community empowerment, nothing you couldn't have heard from a politician from any party in Wales". The difference is, Kirsty means it. She is pathologically incapable of saying something she doesn't believe and that is the crucial difference between her and a million other politicians. It means people will recognise how genuine she is and hopefully feel that here is a politician they can trust. It makes her a magnetic presence in cross-party debates as she passionately lays waste to the lies and the bland bull that spews from the mouths of the opposition so often (oh and while we're here I might point out that it was very unfair to pick up what she said about how she first became involved in politics and then say that the tories are not the same heartless party they were under Thatcher - they are EXACTLY that party and while Cameron may look cuddly it's as much of an illusion as a fuzzy cactus, as I have written about before).

Perhaps it's not fair to pick on one hack who made my bile rise, though. It could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse. After all, what comparisons can be made? While Kirsty is looking set to take the title of first female leader of any party in Wales, who is there to look to in recent history when talking about female leaders? Yeah. One of the biggest reasons I am excited about the prospect and gunning for Kirsty as leader, is that she is the one who can change the face of female political leadership. Throughout history, there have occasionally been women who have turned their back on the rest of their gender and meekly offered their necks for the choke chain of the patriarchal establishment to get ahead. We've had Thatcher, who was enough of a misogynist that she never once had another woman in her cabinet. We've now got Palin in the states, hired pitbull of the pro-life lobby, barking frenetically for the chance to take away women's reproductive freedom and education. Kirsty is off the leash. She's a real woman, with strength and empathy and conviction I have rarely seen outside my own family. And I want her to win, and I want Ros Scott to simultaneously take the federal party presidency. Then I will feel even more at home in this party than I already do.

Jeremy Kyle to Work With Government

2008-09-09T18:14:00.001+01:00

I know what you're thinking. When I first saw this on Chicken Yoghurt I was convinced it was a hoax, too. It's worthy of Newsbiscuit. Sadly, it turns out to be true.

From the Guardian:

The government is in talks with ITV about spending almost half a million pounds on a television series aimed at getting people off benefits and back to work, fronted by Jeremy Kyle, the controversial talk show host.

A decision to approve a series presented by Kyle, Britain's chief practitioner of so-called 'car crash television', would raise questions about the government's judgment coming after several recent high-profile court cases that raised criticism of his show's confrontational style.

Raise questions about their judgment? That's a polite way of putting it! Has the Home Affairs Editor at el Grauniad ever actually *seen* the king of pitbulls in action? Judge Alan Berg didn't call the show 'human bear baiting' without due cause, you know. I am ashamed to admit that as an unemployed lemming, early last year, I watched rather a lot of daytime television, and particularly Jeremy Kyle. I found myself repulsed yet unable to look away as he tore into downtrodden, depressed people. I also found myself astonished that every weekday he managed to line up yet another two or three families (in Britain!) who were prepared not only to air their dirty laundry in public but also to take his particularly cruel brand of verbal flagellation and public humiliation for fifteen minutes or so in return for dubious favours such as free-of-charge lie detector tests for their partners and DNA tests on their children.

Yes, I can agree that the chronically unemployed need more help in accessing the assistance to return to the workplace that is available, and more information on benefits. But I cannot believe this has even been mooted as a way to do that, let alone reached the stage of talks with the television company and press reportage.

Back on November 21st 2007, I was watching Prime Minister's Questions and I wrote the following on my personal LiveJournal:

David Cameron has been watching Jeremy Kyle for tips and hints on how to conduct himself at PMQs!

"To try to blame the opposition is frankly pathetic! What the people want from their prime minister on a day like today is for him to stand up, broad shouldered, like a big man and take responsibility!"

So when the next election rolls around we now have a choice between Jeremy Kyle in partnership with government, or a Jeremy Kyle imitator in Number Ten. Never has there been a more compelling argument for everyone in the country to vote Liberal Democrat.

Cryptic, me?

2008-09-08T23:29:00.002+01:00

I have had quite a day for invitations. This blog may be quite exciting over the next week or so!

Dr, Who? Fandom meets American Politics.

2008-09-07T20:58:00.000+01:00

I have noticed over the last year or so the enormous crossover between Liberal Democrats and really hardcore fans of Doctor Who. While I'm more the sort of person who has caught the occasional episode and found it entertaining enough to leave it on and watch it, I still found this Comedy Central voting-decision guide just delicious, which means that certain other Liberal Democrats, including a particularly fluffy one and a particularly Yorksher one, are going to ADORE it if they haven't seen it already. It lists all ten doctors along with which one of the candidates for the presidency of the US (as at May 12th - yes, I'm a little late with this one) would make the best companion for them and why.

Dude, Tweet!

2008-09-07T20:56:00.000+01:00

This is beautiful. I have long loved Lib Dem Blogs as a central reference point for scores of Lib Dem member opinions and news, and now we have everyone's tweets to look at, too. Ryan Cullen, you're a genius.

Might be a bit more selective what I'm posting to Twitter from now on, though. I'm not sure how relevant the time I'm going to bed or what I'm having for dinner is to anyone who will be reading that. Good thing I still have my facebook status updates in which to be banal!

Lost Data "Has Not Fallen Into The Wrong Hands"

2008-09-07T16:36:00.000+01:00

Title from the headline of this story in the Independent.

Oh, I'm sorry, and there I was worrying about yet another massive loss of personal data. Silly me. I thought 'lost' meant that you couldn't possibly know where something was or who had it. Are this government working with a different definition of the word 'lost' to the rest of us? I couldn't really blame them, I suppose. When I look at the the entry on dictionary.com for 'lost', there are no fewer than twelve definitions. Let's see if any of them could be Jack Straw's, eh?

1. no longer possessed or retained: lost friends.

Now this is something the Labour party should know all about. They have been simply *haemorrhaging* friends since Toady Blair abandoned them, and they do know precisely where to find them: they've run away to join the party ideologically closest to New Labour, haven't they? I don't think this is what Jack means, though. Losing friends in this sense of the word is understandable, and in many cases unrectifiable, but if you find you no longer possess a disc containing the personal data of justice staff and know precisely where it is, you go and get it back. Rather than waiting over a year for the News of the World to break yet another story of your government's incompetence.

2. no longer to be found: lost articles.

See, this is what I think of when I see news stories about data losses of this kind. Memory sticks, blank passports, discs and entire laptops, when they are described as 'lost', generally cannot be found. Which means Jack Straw can't possibly know which hands the data has fallen into and shouldn't be making these kind of pronouncements to the press that suggest otherwise. But let's press on and see if we can figure out what he is talking about.

3. having gone astray or missed the way; bewildered as to place, direction, etc.: lost children.

The guy who was driving the van with this particular disc in it would have had to have been in the Guinness Book of Records for longest time lost, if this is the definition we're talking about. The last time the disc was seen was in July 2007.

4. not used to good purpose, as opportunities, time, or labor; wasted: a lost advantage.

Oh, there's every chance the data will be "not used to good purpose". And Labour are definitely "losing the advantage" when it comes to the debate on ID cards, with this record of looking after people's personal data.

5. being something that someone has failed to win: a lost prize.

I hope this isn't the definition of 'lost' they were using to describe the disc, because it's just not on to raffle off 500GB of sensitive data, now is it? Has Jack Straw been playing poker with employees' bank details on the table? The public must know!

6. ending in or attended with defeat: a lost battle.

I'm quite sure this isn't the 'lost' we're looking for in this case, even though Jack Straw and his party will no doubt become extremely well acquainted with this usage the day after the next general election.

7. destroyed or ruined: lost ships.

Getting that sinking feeling, Jack?

8. preoccupied; rapt: He seems lost in thought.

Lost in la-la land more like. I'm still not seeing how 'lost' can equate to 'not in the wrong hands' here...

9. distracted; distraught; desperate; hopeless: the lost look of a man trapped and afraid.

Another nice suggestion for how the Labour government should be feeling right now, but in no way applicable to a disc full of data. We're getting near the end now, do you think we'll find out what he meant?

10. pt. and pp. of lose.

Which kind of covers the same ground as definitions given above. If you lose something, you generally don't know where it is.

11. get lost, Slang.

I wish some people would...

12. lost to,
a. no longer belonging to.
b. no longer possible or open to: The opportunity was lost to him.
c. insensible to: lost to all sense of duty.

And the final definition is akin to my final analysis of the situation: this government *is* lost to all sense of duty, responsibility and shame. In the last year, we have seen so much of people's personal personal data lost by the government or its departments that it's staggering. 25 million child benefit claimants, 3 million learner drivers, 600 thousands applicants to the armed services, and now thousands of justice staff just have to trust in the wishy-washy statements of cabinet members.

It's an insult for ministers to say that they don't think the data has fallen into the wrong hands when they can't possibly know, and it's dangerous to assume that nothing too bad can come of personal data going astray (just ask Jeremy Clarkson).

It's an insult to the public that because of this latest breach, prison officers will need in many cases to be relocated for their own safety, at the taxpayers' expense.

It's an insult that nobody has resigned or been sacked from the cabinet over it, nor are there any plans to stop building the enormous central identity database or shelve the expensive and unnecessary ID card plans. And on that note, I'll leave the final words on this to the Liberal Democrats' Justice Spokesperson, David Howarth: The Government has shown once again that it cannot handle large amounts of data. Why it is persisting with the ID card scheme is beyond comprehension and it should be dropped immediately.

There is no Hope For Me...

2008-09-06T02:29:00.003+01:00

I went to bed over an hour ago. So what was it that caused me to throw on a long hooded cardigan in lieu of the misplaced dressing gown, leave my snoozing fiancé, and hurtle downstairs to my computer?

I am writing a speech. A speech that, given the vagaries of selection of speakers at conference, may never even be heard (though of course the benefit of being a blogger means I may an audience for the words after the fact even if I don't get to speak them). A speech - me! I am terrified of public speaking and have been variously described as "shaking like you were having a fit" and "looking as though you were about to be sick" after the two occasions I have spoken at Welsh conferences.

This is how strongly I feel about the 'Giving Citizens a Voice in Parliament' motion. It matters this much. If you are coming to Bournemouth next week, I would urge you to come to the auditorium at 2.40pm on Saturday. And if you care about me at all, I would urge you to be standing at the bottom of the steps if/when I come off that stage to catch me.

Prejudice or Different Priorities?

2008-09-05T17:15:00.001+01:00

Valleys Mam, among others, has commented on yesterday's news that there are now less women in top positions across almost half of all industries in Britain than there were in 2006.

This is universally being seen as a step backwards for women's equality, but I'd like to put a different slant on it.

If women were in more top jobs in 2006, it strikes me that there haven't been any great changes in legislation or culture since then that would lead to a decline in opportunities open to them. Indeed, I feel that my options are as wide and varied as those of a man with my background and skills. Personally though, I don't have any great desire to be top of the tree in the sphere of business or politics, right now, so I'm not really working towards that goal. If anything, I am feeling a lot of pressure and encouragement to go through the process of becoming a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the amount of work, time away from home and extra responsibility that would come with being a selected PPC is not what I want right now.

I find myself thinking of a piece by another Welsh blogger, and old acquaintance of mine, Al Iguana, a few weeks ago. He was musing on the subject of why fewer women than men have prominent blogs, and decided that women simply have a less single-minded approach to these things than men do. Women's blogs generally tend to be personal affairs, which cover all topics and events that seem important to them from day to day, and allow them to stay in touch with other friends on the internet. Indeed, my own other blog is just this sort of animal. And it reflects my attitude to life: it isn't all about work, or all about politics, or all about family, or hobbies. It is about finding a balance between all these things I care about that is right for me. I find that I have this holistic view in common with many other women, especially at my age and in my circumstances.

Don't get me wrong here, I am all for gung-ho women who want to take the business world or the military world or the politics world in their teeth and rise to the very top. I also see that prejudices still exist despite decades of work by the women's liberation movement, and with that in mind I am also all for the encouragement and empowerment of those gung-ho women I'm thinking of. But what I'm not sure of is whether equality of opportunity will ever lead to parity of representation for women, because I believe that in general there will always be fewer women with the right kind of single-minded approaches and ambitions than there are men. Equality of opportunity, yes please. But crying out that because fewer women are in top jobs that there's a "reinforced concrete ceiling"? I don't know whether that's helpful.

Now, I'm off to take my daughter to see a friend, and tomorrow will be having lunch with my mum. Got to pack in as much of the rest of my life as possible before it is eaten by Liberal Democrat Conference in Bournemouth for a few days next week!

Light Relief

2008-09-05T16:28:00.002+01:00

I have been taking a break from the old political blogs for a few days, as I am having nightmares about Sarah Palin and don't want to hear or see her name. Unfortunately, it's not worked because she is sufficiently interesting news, it seems, to intrude on the psyches of my apolitical friends. I have found myself explaining even offline why a fundamentalist nutbar who believes in the end of days shouldn't be allowed into a position where she might feasibly have her finger on the button in short order; and why women in power, especially those who would like to see the state take away all reproductive choice and education about contraception, are not always the best thing for women at large. It's heavy going, and I don't even live in the country where the outcome will be decided.

So, if you're all as tired as I am, you might crack a smile at The Register's latest competition winners, who have been deciding on a road sign to replace the horribly ageist image (they describe as a "couple of cripples hobbling down to the bingo") we currently use to denote Old People Crossing. I might warn you that some of the entries are equally as ageist, but they do at least inject some humour!

Donate to NO2ID and Have Your Money Doubled!

2008-08-31T20:42:00.004+01:00

From 1st September 2008, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd has generously agreed to match, pound for pound, any *new* income that NO2ID receives. Which means that for every pound you give from 1st September NO2ID will receive TWO pounds to spend campaigning against the ID scheme and database state.

Please send your donation by cheque to our office (please mark your envelope 'JRRT'):

The NO2ID Campaign
Box 412
19-21 Crawford Street
London W1H 1PJ

Or you can donate by credit card or via PayPal using the 'Donate' button on our website, http://www.no2id.net (left hand column)

Double your money offers like this don't come along very often so please, dig deep - encourage your friends, family and colleagues to make a donation. With your help we can stop this.

While you're at it, why not join the campaign, join a local group and take the NO2ID Pledge?

This is a direct repost (with permission) from the journal of superactivist "diffrentcolours"

The more I read about Sarah Palin...

2008-08-30T03:44:00.004+01:00

...the more I wish I'd remained in the blissful state of never having heard of her. Being pro-life is one thing, and it's something that would colour my judgment of her rather unfavourably on its own, but I accept that's not everyone's view. But to be anti-abortion and a lifetime member of the NRA and a supporter of the death penalty? I think it would be a gross misnomer to call that pro-life. That's pro-death and anti-choice.

Is her selection as McCain's running mate *really* meant to be an enticement to disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters to vote Republican? If so I'd be flabbergasted if it worked.

I find it hard to agree with Heresy Corner's fascinating opinion that there are some Clinton fans out there who may vote for this team on the slightly tasteless basis that should flabby aging skin-cancer-victim McCain die mid-term, there would be a woman at the helm.

Why?

You only need look at the On The Issues page for Sarah Palin, alongside the one for Hillary (comparisons of which, by the way, show at a glance just how inexperienced the GOP's choice of VP candidate is, too - all those comments that Obama isn't very experienced seem a bit limp now, huh?) to find a whole list of reasons she shouldn't be attractive to any of the same voters. It's hard to find a single policy area where they aren't completely opposed in their views and records.

I would love to see a good woman in charge at the White House. But if I were an American, I wouldn't vote for a ticket that included Palin any more than I would have voted for Thatcher had I been old enough to when she became Prime Minister.

Being a feminist means, among other things, believing that the quality of a person's character isn't dictated by the content of their pants. To paraphrase Elayne Boosler, Palin is only a person trapped in a woman's body. And frankly, when it comes to comparing people, not genitals, any sane Clinton voter would have to accept that Obama and Biden are much better people for them than McCain and Palin.

Perspective.

2008-08-28T21:25:00.001+01:00

It's an important thing.

Today marks the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr changing the world with what was arguably the most famous speech of the 20th century. The speech that contains the immortal words "I Have a Dream". If you've never heard the whole thing, it is on Youtube here and I urge you to watch and shiver with admiration. What a day in history. Martin Luther King Jr was just 34 years old when he delivered that speech, demanding the same rights for black men as white - I believe he is still the youngest person ever to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and it was so well-deserved.

Today also sees the publication of Total Politics/Iain Dale's list of the top 50 Liberal Democrat bloggers. It would be churlish of me not to thank the people who voted for this blog, enabling it to feature at number 19 on that list (and number 16 on the list of Welsh political blogs) but at the same time I feel sad that there is someone who evidently took the whole business so seriously that after alienating many people (including me) who previously considered her a friend with pre-emptive bitterness and spite in the weeks running up to this, she's finally deleted her blog in a fit of pique, despite reaching number 27 herself. Jo - you have so much potential, you are so bright, you could do so much. Is your dream, on today of all days, really just to win a blog award? Because to me, when you compare the two events that August 28th 2008 could signify, the popularity contest over on the tory windbox's page frankly means about as much as this list, also out today.

Are you ready for YOUR cash bribe from Labour next month?

2008-08-26T21:16:00.004+01:00

My day job involves (among other things) administrating the payroll process for a small-to-medium sized business. I'm well grumpy with it today.

I've just received (at work) my instruction from the government to raise everyone's tax threshold by £600 on the first pay date after the 7th of September.

No doubt Gordon and Alisdair will be wondering why I am so pissed about this - they has 'fixed' the 10p tax débacle, no? Er, no. No Gordon and Ali, you haven't. You have just given EVERYONE, INCLUDING the people who benefited from the shift of the taxation burden more onto the poor than the rich, a wodge of money to shut them up. I'M JUST AS BEHIND EVERYONE ELSE AS I WAS BEFORE, IDIOTS! And what's *worse* is that the public purse is now missing a great big huge amount of money to pay for this largesse. More, in fact, than you were aiming to save with your monumentally stupid plan to scrap the 10p tax band.

Bravo.

The Blue Terror

2008-08-25T13:37:00.000+01:00

Oh, if there is one thing I don't like about human nature, it is tribalism. I try to avoid it where it exists in politics: red, yellow, blue, or green; dogged loyalty and occasionally the sort of blind hate for 'the other side' that one would more usually associate with football hooligans.

And yet, and yet. I am getting the fear about David Cameron in a big way. I tell myself that anyone who goes into politics has to be doing it motivated by something good and laudable - a desire to fix something broken. After all, that is how politics has been sold to us ever since I've been old enough to take any notice - the age-old technique of creating a problem and offering a solution, from advertising geniuses to masters of spin in a generation. Maybe I'm being naive in swallowing it. Maybe not everyone in the game has altruistic motives.

Johann Hari is using his column in the Independent this week to give us some chilling pointers about the current Conservative leader's attitude, drawn from that series of interviews published recently by the editor of GQ magazine. And when you consider that this book is clearly meant to be a wholly positive portrait of a great social reformer, who in his own words "ought to be Prime Minister", it's disturbing to see that even here, if you're looking as hard as Hari is, you can see the cracks in Cameron's caring, sharing facade.

What cracks they are, too. Cameron's desired image to "be as radical a social reformer as Mrs Thatcher was an economic reformer" is like crazy paving. Most people who have seen the breaking story have noted the cynical hypocrisy in his holidaying habits this summer: inviting the media to watch him treat his family to a traditional holiday in Cornwall to show solidarity with hard-pressed 'ordinary' folks, then slyly swanning off to a luxury yachting trip on the Turkish riviera. But how many have picked up on the things he has said publicly that show what a huge sham his 'liberal Conservative' ethos really is?

Some excerpts from Johann's column:

He would stop the £40-a-week given to poor students to stay on to sixth form.

He will whittle down services largely for the children of single parents – SureStart, Family Credit – to pay for tax breaks for wealthier married couples. He is, Jones notes, a "huge fan" of the Wisconsin model of welfare reform, which cuts off single mothers from benefits for life after two years – whether they are prepared to work or not.

Hardly the model of social conscience there, David.

He tells Jones he first became alerted to the urgency of

by Margaret Thatcher in 1989. But why then was he silent about it for the next 16 years, except to mock wind farms as "giant bird-blenders" and demand "a massive road-building program?"

He delivers a Clarkson-style rant against the pedestrianisation of city centres.

What happened to "Vote Blue, Go Green"?

Almost three years ago, just two days after Cameron became leader of the Conservative party, Johann Hari wrote a compelling piece for political history buffs, in which he asserted that although David Cameron was using Disraeli's rhetoric of One Nation Conservatism, he was actually more in the mould of Lord Sainsbury, the man who "made the Conservatives into a tireless defender of the overdog". I don't think much has changed, but unfortunately I don't share Hari's optimism. This week's column is titled "Cameron is wily but he's beatable". I fear that because of the woefully unhelpful two-party mentality that this country wallows in, Cameron is destined to become Prime Minister at the next general election simply because they are seen as the people to beat the Labour party that the electorate are so tired of. And it scares me.

Shattering Sexuality Myths.

2008-08-23T17:34:00.004+01:00

Last month, Penny Red posted about her bisexuality, and how it relates to her politics. Today, Jennie Rigg has taken that ball and run with it, adding her thoughts on the lack of accurate terminology surrounding 'open' relationships.

I'm just going to give a quick précis of what my sexuality IS and IS NOT.

I am bisexual.

This DOES NOT mean:

1) That I am eyeing up you/your girlfriend/your daughter/your sister/your mum. Actually, and you may be surprised to hear this, I am only as likely to be doing that as a heterosexual man would be, perhaps less. I do not leer at people, I do not make advances to people who would clearly be uncomfortable with it, and I wish that people finding out I am not 100% heterosexual didn't lead so often to them feeling creeped out.

2) That I will join/invite you for a threesome. Group sex makes me feel really uncomfortable. The same goes for people who like to greet any two women who are introduced to them as a couple with "woah, can I watch?" - most people who come out with that little gem wouldn't *dare* say it to a woman and her boyfriend, so what makes them think that it's ok to say it to a girl they have previously identified as straight, who is stepping out with her girlfriend? Sex, for me, is a private thing and an emotional thing, and what I share with sexual partners is not for sale or show-and-tell.

3) That I am greedy/am not fussy. These things are often said to me as a joke, even by people who are very close to me. And they are more hurtful than I let on. I have in the past attempted to laugh along, and I probably will again, when it inevitably happens again. But what you're essentially saying there is that I am a slag. Cheers for that. For the record I am only ever attracted to people who are special to me in some way. And even then it's a rare, rare event. And if my completely unwarranted reputation as someone who will shag anything precedes me, there's a good chance all you jokey, having-a-laugh friends and family will cause problems for me in the relationships I build with those people who are so special to me.

4) That I am going through a phase and will grow out of it/That I am experimenting and don't know my sexuality Grrrrrr. This is the one that really makes me angry. How much more patronising can you GET than to tell someone they don't know their own hormonal urges? Seriously, if you've ever said this to anyone, you SUCK. I trust people to know their own minds and do not assume that other adults want me to patronise them with my opinion on things about them I have never experienced and do not understand. I often ask questions of people about their experiences if they are different from me in some way, so I can better understand their point of view. I do not mentally stick a big label on them saying "categorised" and "I know better than you, what you are and what you want", and reject their story. I would appreciate the same in return. I realise I'm not always going to get it, more's the pity.

5) That I am amoral. Couldn't be further from the truth. I have some very, very strict rules about how I live my life, and my moral code has absolutely sod all to do with what's in the pants of my past sexual partners.

6) That I am also polyamorous. Now here's the part where I think the word itself - 'bisexuality' - can be a bit misleading. It implies I like both, two. Twosexual. I am much more of a Onesexual person in this sense though: I've only really ever had one relationship at a time. Just as you might like tea and coffee, but not make yourself a mug of each every time you brew up so you can sit there sipping at both; I don't feel the need to have sex with men and women at the same time to be sated, nor can I particularly begin to get my head around how much more organised I would have to be to have more than one relationship on the go. So, being bisexual doesn't mean you can't stick to one relationship. Even for life. Sex is sex, as I said before it's a private and an emotional thing whoever it's with, one's desires can be sated without specific body parts being present, and I think there's something a bit suspect about the assumption I must 'miss' the other gender when I'm in a monogamous relationship. Having said all that I have quite a few polyamorous friends, who do a very good job of all the organisation, are happy, and enjoy themselves. I admire that. I think if you're finding yourself strongly attracted to other people outside the relationship you're in, it's well worth talking about some form of mutually consensual non-monogamy as an option rather than the alternatives of breaking up something that makes you happy for something else you want as well, or being dishonest and having an affair.

This DOES mean:

1) That when I am looking for a partner, I do not restrict my options to any one particular gender. That is all.

I've had to steel myself to do this, not least because I am quite a private person and talking about something so personal, when not just joshing around, is quite frightening for me somehow. Also because I don't want to become defined by my sexuality - it is just one tiny aspect of who I am, and is about as relevant as my hair colour, my height or what I had for breakfast in making any assessment of my character. I want to express my thanks to Jennie and to Penny Red for giving me the guts to get this out in the open though, because if I spell things out here, hopefully all it can do is help me. I am sick to death of running up against the same tired bullshit and I wanted to spell a couple of things out. I know that many people may think that sexuality is 'nobody else's business' and I feel some of that sentiment too, but it hasn't worked out too well for me using that attitude. It has not been helpful to let people assume that I am straight, until told otherwise - that route causes more problems than it solves, believe me. And more importantly if someone as gutsy as me can hide all of this away and let people make their own assumptions about me based on who they see me with, what hope is there for bisexuality to shake off its near-invisibility? We can't expect the broader "LGBT" lobby to fight for bisexuals that well, because frankly bisexuals come in for as much if not more vehement prejudice and ill-treatment from gay and lesbian activists than they do from the heterosexual majority. We have to do it for ourselves.

ETA:You'll find me personning the DELGA stall at Bournemouth. If you're not already a member, please consider signing up.

Rebuttal.

2008-08-22T03:05:00.004+01:00

It's not fair! Nobody ever nominates ME for ANY awards. Can't they see how brilliant I am? I have been in the Golden Dozen five times! And there are a whole heap of other posts I wrote that are far more brilliant than the ones that actually got in the Golden Dozen for those weeks. I am clearly better than anyone else who ever wrote a blog anyway, because I have a degree in creative writing and I have worked for a Lib Dem MP. Nominate me! There is nothing more important in life than blog contests, and all those other people don't even take the Lib Dem Blog of the Year awards or Iain Dale's Popularity Pantomime seriously. One of them even invented their own jokey awards to run alongside them, which is clearly blasphemous. It's not fair if they get nominated for Lib Dem Best New Blog and just have fun on the night instead of glowing with smugness like I would, if I even bothered to go to conference to pick up the award I would inevitably win. I probably won't go though, because I don't like conferences. The people getting on and having fun together there make me feel so alienated, because I'm not the centre of attention.

Everyone thinks I am being bitter and paranoid when I accuse the entire of the rest of the party of nepotism and that's not fair either. It's clearly true that the only people who get anywhere have got there by being related to or having sex with someone more important than them. I've paid my dues to this party and been in it for years. I might not get half the facts before I write blog posts but I'm a school governor and (did I mention?) I worked for an MP, and a council group. People are taking more of a shine to other new bloggers who have only been in the party five minutes. It can't be because they like their blogs better because look at me, I'm perfect, apart from accusing them all of boffing each other which they can't possibly take offense at because they are, aren't they? Yes, all of them!

While I'm here I'd like to point out that I'm really just about sick of people coming to my blog and commenting with a different point of view to mine - sometimes I allow the comments when moderating them, and then go back and delete them (though of course I leave up the ones where they are agreeing with me). Why should I answer constructive criticism? Why can't you all post nice, agreeable, sycophantic comments to my posts? After all, I'm nice to you. I write at least one post a week which basically consists of a list of questions just to get you to talk to me. I've had to resort to posting anonymous comments to my own blog just to get some of the praise I deserve. You will all be so sorry when I grow up. I'm going to be a real writer. Then you'll wish you could say "well, I was her greatest fan back when she just kept a basic blogger site".

You all suck! Love me! You disgust me, the lot of you! Talk to me! You're all having it off with each other and that's the only reason any of you get any recognition! Nominate me for an award!

apologies to anyone who may not have a clue what I am posting about here, normal service will be resumed as soon as a certain other blogger grows up.

I don't normally mark new additions to my blogroll with a post, but...

2008-08-20T13:10:00.002+01:00

... this is already shaping up to be essential reading for anyone who is even vaguely interested in the workings of the Welsh Assembly Government.

Don't bother if you don't actively like a controversial tone and a liberal peppering of swear words.

Free Prescriptions are Making Wales Sick

2008-08-19T21:45:00.002+01:00

You've got to love lazy journalism. In this piece about the news today of a 5% rise in prescriptions since they became free, on Wales Online, it is claimed that doctors said the 2007-08 increases were in line with previous year-on-year rises in prescriptions in Wales. I'd like to know who these doctors are, since a specific source isn't named. I'd like to know if they even exist, or whether they were invented by the author to avoid shrieking by Labour and make a feeble attempt to lend some balance to a story which was always going to make the government look bad.

Even if you believe that the three million extra items prescribed in the last year are only a result of an ongoing trend, there is no doubt that free prescriptions have been responsible for negligible benefits at a huge cost. I would feel differently if it had been the case that people were going untreated because they could not afford to pay for their medications before, but that was never so. Just as is still the case in England, prescription charges were means-tested, so people who could not afford to pay the charge still got their medications for free. Is it really worth thirty million pounds per year to save better-off people a few quid? It's misguided socialism at its worst.

This government is full of grand ideas that are obviously going to go horribly wrong: take free parking at hospitals, another Welsh Assembly Government ruling. The idea was to alleviate a problem for low-income people who needed to go to appointments or to visit relatives -- very laudable, if more than a bit dubious because it took away discretionary funding from hospitals. As they could have foreseen if they had just used their heads or heaven forbid listened to the concerns of the opposition, they have taken away that discretionary funding without even achieving their ideal. Over the last few months anecdotal evidence is rife that nowadays hospital parking, which was difficult to find before, has become impossible as NHS car parks fill up with people who pop next door to the retail park when they're done with the doctor.

The rise in prescription claims should come as no surprise. After all, who doesn't take something when it's free? Even for concerned and ethical people, it isn't always easy to stop and think that something is only ever free because other people are paying for it. To be honest, I am surprised the rise is only five per cent. And year on year, the cost of this policy, the cost of Welsh Labour's posturing and crowing about returning to Bevan's view of a truly free National Health Service, will only go up and up. Meanwhile, their precious free National Health Service is looking sicker and sicker: waiting lists to get a place on an NHS dentist's patient list stand at eighteen months or more in many parts of Wales. I wonder how many dentists you could buy for thirty million? And if people taking their own teeth out or relying as I do on over-the-counter temporary filling kits isn't enough to get you going, how about people who are dying of cancer? Many of them are being refused life-saving treatments with a variety of excuses, but most likely for the reason that there simply isn't the money in the budget. It's all gone on Nicorette gum and gym memberships for people who could afford to provide them for themselves, but quite humanly think "why should I pay for it when my GP will give it to me for nothing?".

I Answer to Nobody

2008-08-17T23:21:00.005+01:00

Except Jo.

1. Who has inspired you the most in the Lib Dem Party?

Really tricky to say. This might seem like a weasely preamble to an answer, but I admire different people I know (or pretend to know while looking up to) for different things: I've met diligent councillors and parliamentarians who work for such hours that in some cases their allowances put them well below the minimum wage, and they do it all with a smile and never forget to have time for anyone who speaks to them; I've met dedicated and tenacious party activists who will go for months without any meaningful form of contact from the party and then turn out to deliver leaflets for hours in stacks 1500 high without a word of complaint; in training sessions I've encountered innovative and talented people who have a knack for getting the best out of everyone.

But overall, without question, my Lib Dem hero is Jo Swinson. She's the same age as me, the youngest member of Parliament, and she has suffered some outrageous prejudice to blaze a trail for young women to follow within the party. She handles her Women and Equality portfolio with aplomb and was the founder of the Campaign for Gender Balance, which works within the party to improve the confidence and skills of female members with the aim of increasing the number of women candidates in the pool available to the party. And she didn't do all this from a position of unusual privilege, she wasn't parachuted in to a safe seat because she was a darling of the party and related to someone higher up within. No, she stood for parliament for the first time at the age of just 21, and before her eventual election in 2005 she gave up her job and lived with her parents so she could work like a donkey to bring about a Lib Dem majority of 4061 to her newly-created home constituency. She has a certain attitude which I am certain is a trait that will remain with her for decades yet and is not just a facet of her youth: she has humility and comes across as always interested to learn what a new situation or a previously unknown person will teach her. She's very special and when I grow up I want to be like her.

A special mention must go to the close runner-up, Kirsty Williams. She's got fire.

2. What has been your biggest challenge in politics?

Realising that even as a lowly local party officer in a quiet area of the country, the opposition are watching what you say and it's all too easy to find yourself the centre of an adverse news story if you don't take great care with what you say. And dealing with the fallout when it happened to me just a couple of weeks after I started this blog.

It was a double whammy, really. Thankfully I had the help of the media guy at Cardiff HQ in releasing statements to the press and to the BBC, who featured the story on their Radio Wales phone-in show. That was actually kind of fun in a way, certainly gave me something to talk about! But afterwards I had to reassess all sorts of public aspects of myself. I deleted my personal blog just in case it was found by similarly opportunist oppositionists, as with five years of my personal life and commentary on all sorts of news stories that I couldn't even remember, it was too risky to have it all there. That was hard. And I censor myself in other ways, too. I dress more conservatively and have stopped dyeing my hair bright colours, because no matter how much we liberals would love to have it any other way, the way you look, especially as a woman, plays a big part in how seriously people will take you.

3. What do you know now that you wish you had known before?

Ah, since there is no set definition of 'before' I must present you with a slightly trick answer.

I wish I had known ten years before I joined the Liberal Democrats how easy it was to really get your teeth into campaigning and feeling like a part of things once you are a member. I went out with a lad who joined the resurgent and young and trendy Labour party in 1996 under the special £1 student subs deal. All he got was a membership card. I turned my nose up at that anyway, I never have been a fan of Blairism, but it did colour my perceptions of what joining a party was all about. If I had known how much fun I could have with being a Liberal Democrat, I would have joined like a shot when I was 16 or 17.

As a matter of fact, when I was 17 and studying Government and Politics at sixth form college, I enlisted the help of my tutor in setting up a mock election for all those students who, like me, would be too young to vote in the real thing. I set up the entirely non-affiliated Ashton-Under-Lyne Sixth Form College Liberal Democrats and gleefully ran around for six weeks explaining the real Lib Dem policies of the real campaign to baffled teenagers. There were student volunteers to act as returning officers and poll station staff (sitting by the ballot box in the student centre and taking it in turns to nip outside for a cig). The turnout was immense and if I remember correctly I came second behind a socialist candidate, in part due to having some three whole ballot papers spoiled by people ticking me and writing shall we say complimentary things by my name. Hee hee.

4. Who are you jealous of and why?

Nobody. I truly feel like nobody has better or worse opportunities than I do in this party, and I can get to where anybody else is if I'm prepared to put in the work. It's a good feeling.

The closest I come to envy is when childless friends of mine in the party invite me along to things (like by-election campaigns, holidays to Latvia - cheers Mark!) that I can't possibly justify the time away from home for. I sit at home pouting because I want to be there, but I know my daughter will only be five for one year and if I'm not here she can't just bring me crudely-drawn felt-tip pictures of dinosaurs at a later date when I've got the time for her. If I'm honest it costs me a lot emotionally to go to conference. That's why I didn't make it to Liverpool in the Spring, over and above financial concerns.

5. Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?

With a much stronger membership in the local party and a correspondingly better representation on Pembrokeshire County Council. Still proud to be a Lib Dem. Less frightened of speaking into a microphone. Earning a decent bloody living. Dragging my ten-year-old to enough protests and by-elections and action days that she is put off politics for life.

The Price of Welsh Lib Dem AMs

2008-08-17T17:26:00.000+01:00

I'm not generally given to denigrating our AMs, because I'm well aware of the massive workload they have and how much they punch above their weight in the chamber.

However, this report from the BBC earlier this week makes sickening reading. The hysteria over politicians' allowances travelled quickly from London to Wales, as the view that the Assembly is a 'waste of money' is unfortunately prevalent among members of the public across the principality. Indeed, it's a telling fact that before the 2007 elections, ITV carted out that smug moo Sian Lloyd and got her to present a series of programmes entitled What Has The Assembly Ever Done For Us? - this is how much the Assembly as an institution is resented. The Beeb put in a Freedom of Information request to get the detailed expenses breakdown for each AM, and I have to say I'm shocked at the results.

Conservative AMs: Total claimed: £93,730. Average claimed: £7,810
Labour AMs: Total claimed: £121,977. Average claim: £4,691
Lib Dems AMs: Total claimed: £55,321. Average claim: £9,220
Plaid Cymru AMs: Total claim: £129,936. Average claim: £8,662
Source: Assembly Commission figures for 2007-2008

Mike German was even named as one of the highest claimants, despite the fact he lives only seventeen miles from the Senedd. For heaven's sake, Mike! How many people in the region you represent do you suppose are commuting into Cardiff and claiming at most a measly mileage allowance and more often nothing at all from their employers for doing so? You aren't doing yourself or the rest of us campaigning for the party in Wales ANY favours electorally by feathering your nest this way. We are meant to be the champions of fairness, and this is patently unfair. We're meant to be the party most in favour of devolution, but this will deepen the negative feelings toward another expensive level of government. We, the party activists, are meant to be able to go out and tell people on the doorstep in 2011 (and before) that our AMs will be the ones sticking up best for the good taxpayers of Wales, and YOU ARE RIPPING THEM OFF!

I have to say I've agonised and bitten my nails before posting this, and waited for some kind of mitigation or response to come from our people for a few days, but it won't wait any longer. There hasn't even been anything from Peter Black since his swipe at the Tories when they published their (almost as ludicrous) expenses claims in full a week before the report came out - though he as ever is the most open of our AMs and had already published a defence of his use of the allowance three weeks ago. I'm angry, and I want answers - why are our AMs claiming so much more public money than those from other parties?

edited at 17:26pm to include information submitted in the comments

The lines are getting blurred terribly, here.

2008-08-17T03:00:00.000+01:00

I have this blog, the public one, the one you're reading right now (hello mum!). And I have another one, in which I write stuff that is too personal/boring/risky to broadcast quite so publicly. Sex definitely falls into at least one of those categories. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide which.

However, I am presented with a quandary by this little boost to my ego:

Because, you know, if people might possibly be voting for me as the female blogger they would most like to do sticky body parts stuff with in a very prestigious and entirely serious blog awards, there are a couple of things I would like to point out first. Which kind of seems like talking about sex. On this blog here. (Mum, if you're still reading could you just click away to somewhere else, this is all going to be decidedly too much information for you.)

You see, the thing is, you could vote for me, but I just feel it's fair to let you know first:

1) You may want to have sexual intercourse with me on the basis of reading my inane witterings, but I will very probably not want to have it with you in return. Sorry. It's nothing personal, just that I've always worked on a highly whimsical crush-matrix based in part on the way people smell and a certain capacity to be extremely expressive and comical with facial expressions.

2) Even if you did want to have sex with me and I wanted to have sex with you right back, it's got to be at least 5000/1 against that ever actually taking place. Yeaaaahhhh, a boring old monogamist is pretty much what I am. How very 20th century of me, I know.

3) Even if you wanted to have sex with me, I wanted to have sex with you, and some bizarre sequence of events led to this happening, in real life, you would be SORELY disappointed. Honestly, you would. I am possibly the world's most selfish and lazy lover.

Stream of consciousness wittering by overexcited conference bunny who has her final agenda .pdfs

2008-08-16T16:03:00.000+01:00

Well, that's going to be a limited amount of fun... just checked out the floorplan for the exhibition at Bournemouth. DELGA (the LGBT concerned association within the party, for which I have volunteered my stall-manning services) is sandwiched between the Citizen's Advice Bureau and the Federation of Small Businesses, facing the wall, at just about the furthest point possible from the auditorium. Mind, it is also close enough to the Campaign for Gender Balance that I will have opportunities to fangirl at Jo Swinson if she makes an appearance there. One of my DELGA-mates has just pointed out - "I note we're not next to Lib Dem Christian Forum like we normally are". I dunno, I noticed that the Lib Dem Friends of Palestine aren't right next to the Lib Dem Friends of Israel either. Was someone with a less wicked sense of humour allocating stalls this year, then?

In happier news about conference:

-- I have a lift to and from Swansea courtesy of the fabulous Peter Black who made great company when he drove me to and from Llandudno, so I'm looking forward to that.

-- I am sharing a reasonably priced twin room with a friend from Manchester who has known me for about ten years, so the woes of my Brighton experience, in a cramped crash above a noisy club with five (very nice) strangers, is not to be repeated. I'm even sure to get breakfast that is significantly more nourishing than a Mars bar and a can of Red Bull!

-- The very old picture of my mate Ian Walton on p2 of the agenda is making me giggle. And the GLA bit on the inside front cover is giving me geeky favourite-font glee. Gill sans is awesome.

-- I love the 'Giving Citizens a Voice in Parliament' motion so much I could bounce on my chair. James Graham, I bow to thee for your association with this. Real petitions to parliament instead of ones that produce no further discussion than a glib response from Downing Street! A guarantee of a second reading for the favourite bills of the people, decided by petition! A people's veto where we the public can overturn really dreadful legislation if we protest in great enough numbers! The perennial please-give-us-STV slipped in there sneakily! It's a bloody masterpiece, is what it is.

-- Tim Farron (who represents where I holidayed as a teenager and is an utter sweetie besides) is hosting the rally, and there are free drinks to boot!

-- Brian Paddick's motion on crime policy. How could anyone accuse the Lib Dems of being rubbish on crime when we have such an aptly experienced and smart guy on top of it?

-- Q&A with Uncle Vince!

-- I'm really not sure what to do with my Tuesday lunchtime because I could go and see a league table of all 63 of our MPs ranked from least to most liberal at one fringe event, or a could go and bask in the warm glow of Uncle Vince talking sense about the economy. This is not the only time when I'd like to be in two places at once.

-- CGB are running a training event on building a development seat from scratch, for women only. I do hope I won't be the only person there! They're also running one in the same room, directly afterwards, on Making A Speech At Conference, with Jo Swinson in charge. That finishes an hour or two before the debate begins on that brilliant policy motion I was just squealing about a few points back. Hmmmm. I might well actually dare myself to speak. At federal conference. Apologies in advance if I make it up there and throw up on the podium from nerves à la Stan-from-South-Park.

-- I notice Winning In The Last Week training has been renamed Winning in The Last 72 Hours. Blimey. They'll have us moving quite literally at the double!

Basically.....

I'm VERY excited! Eeeeeeee!

Photography in Public Places.

2008-08-10T18:34:00.002+01:00

Bit of a dry topic, but it's one that comes up a fair bit when you have a child.

At my daughter's school, there is, as far as I know, no draconian policy banning photographs at school plays and sports days. On these occasions there are usually many camera-toting parents and relatives present. In fact, the staff regularly take photographs of the children doing the cool things that the under-tens get to do all day while the rest of us are out working, and sometimes offer copies of them to parents. This makes me and my daughter the lucky ones, because as I have found out from discussions with other parents, most schools these days have a blanket ban on all cameras within school property.

And it doesn't stop there. I've heard of various friends over the last few years being stopped and questioned by police or other public officials (wardens at events, PCSOs etc) just because they were carrying a camera. We're all so paranoid because of this climate of suspicion: one of my friends once took pictures of people celebrating the Chinese New Year and put them online, only to be quizzed by his friends as to the wisdom of doing so - what if the parents of the children who are featured in the pictures find them and ascribe sinister motives to him?

I believe the justification is some combination of fear of paedophiles (oh please! my daughter doesn't go out looking sexualised, I like it when strangers comment on how sweet she is, and it saddens me that due to media hysteria parents have become so hyperprotective) and fear of terrorists. Call me crazy, but if I was a terrorist or some other criminal kook I wouldn't be wandering about in full view with a shiny camera, I'd be using some kind of surreptitious filming.

Now, I was sure I remembered something about British law stating that you do not own your own image, in contrast to the USA where one regularly sees faces blanked out of photographs and video shot in public, because their permission hasn't been sought. Actually I must make a geeky admission: I know this because there's a scene in one of the Star Trek movies where Chekhov is asking passers-by the way to a place and I was told the producers had to track down every one of those impromptu 'extras' and ask them for their permission to be used in the final cut. Anyway...

I was getting a little concerned about this, because I have found myself censoring where I do and don't take photos, angling my camera away from other people's children despite the fact that all I am is a mum who wants a record for her daughter's memories. I keep a moblog for occasional things I see while I have my phone to hand. I publish albums on Facebook of snaps I have taken at Alex's birthday celebrations or similar. And I don't want to think I'm breaking the law by doing these innocent things. To think of the bigger picture - I don't want this country to become one where we are so cowed and restricted in our everyday activities. Our civil freedom is going backwards!

I found after a little searching that the reliable El Reg has covered the topic admirably, and quite recently too. I was right! We *are* allowed to take photographs of innocent things happening in public places! Now to print off that page and carry it with me at all times to back me up, just in case someone decides to try to pressure me into giving up my humble point-and-click box. I suggest any of my friends who are more serious photographers take note of the pointers there, too, and continue to assert their rights, rather than unwittingly lose them by not standing up to the people who assume they don't exist.

Happy snapping, everyone!

That Explains the Déjà Vu!

2008-08-08T13:18:00.002+01:00

I knew I'd heard that slogan somewhere before... How strange that a bank seemingly has the same message to get across as Nick Clegg!

Well, I wouldn't go THAT far!

2008-08-08T11:56:00.002+01:00

Hello to the person who came to my blog while searching for "Lembit's best friend". Not me, sorry! You could try asking around in the Grapes pub in Newport, allegedly.

I Love Lembit

2008-08-07T01:20:00.000+01:00

I do, he's been great to me. And I warn you now though I hope I don't have to, ANY comments along the lines of "yeah it's just because you're a young woman", either online or in person, will take you down like a lead weight in my estimation.

I can be a very stubborn and forthright girl. Some might even say arrogant and belligerent. I find it gets me taken seriously in spite of my age and gender, so I cultivate it. My deep-thinking introverted caring-sharing half is, when occasion demands it, locked in a special box until a nasty situation is dealt with. I find myself in just such a nasty situation about now.

Last week I was very pleased to be included in the Lib Dem Voice Golden Dozen. I was much LESS pleased to find I was sharing places on a list of seven most popular posts, by click-through from the Lib Dem blog aggregator, with no less than THREE posts about Lembit, and none of them particularly positive. In at number one we had a cheap dig from Martin Land. At number two, a rather more sober but still miserable post from Nich Starling, who as I recall hasn't been the only person over the last few months to moan publicly about the fact that media coverage of Lembit's personal life detracts from the party's real messages. And at number three, ironically enough it was a post from Femme de Resistance pointing readers to the latest News of the World story about the man's lovelife. The really sad thing is, this rash of popularly read Lembit blog posts aren't even all related to one specific event -- the buzz about him is constant, ever since I joined the party I've heard enough of it to last me a lifetime in any given month.

Now, call me odd if you like, but it makes me deeply uncomfortable to see someone I'm meant to be on the same side as held up as a subject for a cheap joke, a bitter moan or a point and stare session. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I don't like to see anyone receiving that kind of treatment. I'd go even further: I am exactly the sort of girl who will hear gossip and rumour about a person and rather than take it on board, will go and make a point of scratching the slate clean in her head and making her own decision about the person. I've met some of my best friends that way. I've also come to love Lembit in the handful of occasions I've spoken to him.

It might help you out, if you're wondering why I'd have occasion to get to know him at all if I tell you exactly how and when these meetings occurred. Give you some background. And I hope it will give you a different view of him if you see him through my eyes.

The first time I was in the same place as him was at the very fraught and emotionally charged Special Conference held by the Welsh Liberal Democrats last year (was it only that long ago?) to debate whether or not to go into a rainbow coalition against Labour in the Assembly. That's the thing about being in the Welsh party specifically - it's quite a tight "family" and you'll get to see Lembit, if you're a particular fan, more often than you would elsewhere because of his role in the regional party. I was in fact sitting behind him and a handful of our AMs, keeping my head down as I was very new to the whole situation and more than a little intimidated by the roomful of huge characters I've since come to regard as friends. The only time I spoke inside that room was to dress down the stranger sitting next to me (who if I remember correctly was this gentleman who I must be quick to say has been much more pleasant on every occasion since that I've seen him) whose ire got out of control and led to him leaning forward and verbally attacking Eleanor Burnham to the point where she looked quite shaken... I noticed some of the 'grandees' on the seats in front of me looked round but hardly imagined that they would register who I was or what was happening - there was a lot going on in that room and well, I *thought* I was being fairly subtle. As a brick, as it turned out.

Obviously the circumstances were not the usual ones under which large groups of Lib Dems get together in a hotel, and I didn't have time for chit-chat with anyone as it was straight home to Pembrokeshire afterwards. However, a few months later I found myself quite unexpectedly at the big party conference in Brighton. Federal conference all on my own was a huge experience and worthy of a big flashback blog post all of its own, but the bit I want to concentrate on is the part where I walked into the conference hotel on the second night. Casting my eyes nervously over the room for one of the half dozen people I knew and finding none, buzzing faintly with tiredness and the exhilaration of being at large in a seaside town full of Liberal Democrats, I spied someone beckoning me over and calling to me. Lembit was busy and surrounded by people, but he'd recognised me and wanted to know how I was getting on, expressed that he was pleased to see me there at conference. We had a nice chat. I told him about the fact that I'm terrified of public speaking, and he grinned a big warm grin and told me he knew just how to cure me of that and made me promise to come to his training session on the Tuesday.

I never made it to that training session. It's a long story but suffice it to say here, and let it serve as a warning to any first-time conference goers who may be reading, that conference is incredibly exhausting, and if you try to do everything that looks like you need to join in with, you WILL burn yourself out by the last day and be good for not much. Unless of course you're a better person than me, and my ego doubts that highly. Lembit caught me (I think in the auditorium) later on and said it was fine, and he didn't need any excuses, and not to worry about it.

I don't do starstruck. I'll talk to anyone as I would any other human being. That said, I *do* do respect for boundaries, and I quite understand that the party's parliamentarians and high profile figures may not be able to be as warm with every lowly member as they would like to be, because they are so pressured, so I won't go out of my way to talk to them unless I have something specific I want to talk to them about and don't have someone less busy to talk to about it instead. So it's nice, and really noted, when they make the time to come and find me to chat to me. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm special - it means the person has a way of making everyone feel special. Some of our AMs are really good at that. Lembit is good at it too. Even at last year's Welsh autumn conference, where I only managed to attend for a few hours, and he was insanely busy and surrounded by cameras on account of being accompanied by Gabriela, he made sure he picked me out for a mouthed greeting and friendly eye contact.

Then there was Llandudno this spring. I finally made it to the public speaking training, just nearly six months late! I understand this is a professional calling for Lembit, encouraging and teaching people to be better at presenting themselves and their ideas. In fact I understand he can command hefty fees for doing it professionally should he wish to. But for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of going to his training, he is really special at it. He makes you laugh, inspires you, and once again, makes you feel special. He not only gave me that bit more confidence I desperately need to speak into a microphone, he found me later in the day to give me specific constructive comments after I had summoned the courage to speak, and we chatted about friends of mine who had been close to his brother - he told me to set up an SAO (for the uninitiated that's an organisation within the party) called Lib Dem Friends of Goths and promised to join when I do it.

Here's the thing: Lembit is really human. And from the limited amount I know, he's also quite vulnerable as humans go. He's been through a lot over the last few years, and never once shirked his responsibilities as a result. He's also really bloody good at his job - I defy anyone not to pay attention when he's speaking, or to pick flaws in the way he handles his portfolios. We can have the tired debate about whether he asks for the negative media coverage when he courts the positive with regard to his private life. We can disagree about whether it is better to have a member of the party making the news in unusual places, connecting with people who are normally switched off by politicians, or whether we would rather have a dry policy-mad suit on our front benches in his place (I wouldn't). But you all know it's indefensible to snipe and gossip about your friends, I hope. And I hope you consider members of the party to be your friends. I do. So please, please, stop with the Lembit bashing, the News of the World devouring, and the moaning. Consider his feelings, or if you can't do that, consider mine and those of anyone else who is personally fond of him.

I'm stuck. Choose what YOU want me to post.

2008-08-06T16:26:00.003+01:00

I've not posted for a few days. I wouldn't be so self-aggrandising as to say I have writers' block, because by anybody's standards, I'm not a writer so much as someone who regularly gets things off her chest through a keyboard and onto a screen. However, I will say I'm stuck. It's not so much a case of having nothing to write about as having FAR TOO MUCH and not nearly enough time.

I have several ideas which have been bouncing around in my head for some time, and they all deserve a good bit of thinking about and phrasing. No doubt they will all come out eventually but I'd really appreciate it if someone could help me ease the current bottleneck by saying which of the following top 3 they would like to see first (the most votes by 7pm will follow later in the evening):

1. I Love Lembit - an antidote to the ubiquitous bitching about one of my favourite public figures.

2. Red Flags - a reaction to the news item I caught yesterday about the 'warning signs' of potentially abusive partners.

3. Bitch and Dogsbody - a very careful review of my current role within my own local party.

Tax Credits

2008-07-31T20:36:00.000+01:00

I'm happy today, because just as I was getting to that scary part of the month where the direct debits all go out at once, I have received an extra payment from the Tax Credits people because they underpaid me last year.

That makes me one of the lucky ones. In previous years, along with many other people, I have been asked to repay hundreds of pounds that they had overpaid me, when I could ill afford to do so. I have always rung the helpline immediately to report any changes in circumstances or income expectations, no matter how slight. I have never once had them tell me after an annual review that everything was correct and my payments would continue at the same rate. Never. And it's not only the end of year bill that the unlucky ones face - it's situations like the one I had in February of 2005 - where I was told that whoops, they had already paid me what I was entitled to for that year and I couldn't have any more payments until April - bang went a regular weekly payment that was built into all my hard budgeting. As I recall I got through that time only by borrowing heavily from family and friends, which is demeaning to say the least.

The fact is, like me, most people who receive tax credits don't have the luxury of easily absorbing changes, sometimes several of them in a year, in their income. I keep a constant eye on my bank account, and budget ruthlessly to ensure I can pay my bills and have food on the table. I get by a lot better than I did during the period when both my partner and I were unemployed, but I still have little enough coming in that I get apoplectic at times with people who think that 'broke' means 'running out of discretionary income' rather than 'can't pay the bills this month and am in a blind panic'. And I meet rather more of the former kind of people even in the Liberal Democrats than the latter, which is depressing - I know this goes to the heart of that tiresome old debate about whether one can represent people from different backgrounds, but I reckon it must be VERY hard for elected representatives who have never struggled with money to consider what reforms and policies will mean for those who have to copper up to find bus fare to work. Still, our party are better at that than the other two - they are the ones who have been raving for years about how badly tax credits fail as a support mechanism, as well as leading to massive wastage of public money through fraud and civil service incompetence.

My PPC once told me that negative income tax for the less well off was a policy that the Liberal Party played with decades ago, then abandoned because it was painfully obvious that because any kind of benefit needs to be weekly or monthly paid to work effectively for its intended purpose, and income tax is calculated annually, it WOULDN'T EVER WORK. So why on Earth did New Labour not come to this realisation before implementing their "revolutionary" plans? And more to the point, when year after year the system proves itself to be unmanageable and harmful to the very people it is supposed to help, why have they stuck with it instead of ceding defeat and scrapping it?

Knickers!

2008-07-31T12:24:00.002+01:00

The news is full of them! From the anonymous Canadian who bought Queen Victoria's old pants at auction yesterday (cor, a FIFTY inch waist? she weren't raised on salad, were she?), to the fact that Australia's Prime Minister is descended from a knicker thief. Brilliant.

I love silly season.

Good News for Alzheimer's Sufferers, but Why the Wait?

2008-07-30T15:27:00.003+01:00

From the BBC, the news that a drug has been developed which halts or slows the decline of Alzheimer's disease. I'm disappointed to note that larger trials won't start until at least next year, and the drug isn't expected to be ready for the market before 2012.

Four years is a long time to anyone with Alzheimer's disease, or to any member of their family who is close to them. In four years, my own grandmother's dementia changed her from her sparkling, witty self into a sweet but confused old lady who didn't really know who I was. On the way, she had horrible moments of realisation of just how much she had lost and was losing. For my mum, who cared for her around working full time and knew exactly what was coming with her background in home care and social services, it was devastating. So, with other families going through this all the time, why when a drug is found are we happy to put up with four years' wait before it will do those families any good? This isn't, you will note, a drug that reverses the effects of dementia, just one that rescues patients from further decline. So for many people who are beginning to suffer now, the market version of this drug will sadly come too late.

I understand that drugs need to be properly trialled before they can be prescribed or sold to the general public, in the interests of safety, but FOUR YEARS? Not even starting the next trial until next year? I have to say that if a scientist had discovered a chemical which halted the progress of cancer in a similar way, I'm pretty sure it would be available faster than this.

The truth is that Alzheimer's is not a "sexy" cause. Cancer kills young, attractive people as well as affecting elderly people. Diseases that are primarily associated with old age are under funded for research across the board compared with ones that affect young people. Worse than that, I've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that older people are treated differently and less sympathetically in hospital. What is this about? Is there some kind of voice in people's heads that says "they're old and they're going to die anyway"? How repellent.

This sort of casual second-class treatment is something that has reduced immeasurably for women over the last half century, and for ethnic minorities, too, perhaps to a lesser extent. But it seems that elderly people continue to be patronised, pushed around and put on a back burner. Every human being is just that: a human being, with no more or less rights than any other human being. And I believe one of those is the right to expect that should a cure be found to a disease you suffer from, it will be developed as fast as possible into a marketable solution and dispensed to you as a patient.

Jonnie and Steve

2008-07-29T23:43:00.005+01:00

Something is amiss in the world of Lib Dem women on the Internet. They would appear to, well, not be women at all. The rambunctious and irrepressible Ms Rigg just found out from this funky little webtool that from her online behaviour, she is 82% male. I tried it, naturally, and came out as 83% male. So now, for your entertainment, Jonnie and Steve will swap blogging functions as well as changing genders before your very eyes, as The One and Only Gob From Yorksher brings you a serious and AMAZING post about gender balance, restricted shortlists and the like and I bring you LINKSPAM! YAY!

Speaking of funky little webtools (which we were a second ago - keep paying attention!), last night I watched live on a little map as thunderstorms rolled up Britain, skirting round Pembrokeshire carefully as they did so, here. In return for that fabulous link sent to me via MSN, I gave my friend Meltie one of my old favourites, a bit of the British Geological Society's site that shows the records of all the most recent earth tremors around the British Isles. There's rarely anything very large on there, which is not surprising given that we're quite far from any major seismic hotspots here in our mellow little corner of Europe, but you do get a few eyebrow raisers from time to time. I just wonder after reading an article on man-made disasters in New Scientist today how many are caused by people.

Oh and I am so sorely tempted to use idiopathic hypersomnia as an excuse the next time I come in from work and crash out on the settee, or sleep through my alarm four times, or don't blog for a while, I really am. But I'm afraid actually I'm just a bit lazy.

Looking at all the links I've just chosen to share here.... it's really not that surprising that a perusal of my browsing history looks a bit male, is it? Hmm.

ETA: One more link before bed, I think. I am concerned, when writing in here, with making sure my language and sentence structure aren't too complex. I've just used my black blet in google-fu to find this very cool gadget that tests the readability of any web page. Apparently Dib Lemming has a Gunning-Fog index score of 10.89 (where the number represents the amount of years of schooling one would need to understand the text). Must try harder, I think. Still, I'm not the least accessible writer of a Lib Dem blog, surely... anyone do worse?

Please Shut Her UP!

2008-07-29T21:07:00.005+01:00

Anne Widdecombe is currently screeching about the 'wanton and wicked destruction of children' on BBC Parliament. The less civilised part of my nature wants to smack her in the mouth. I'm watching a repeat of the debate about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which Sky has unhelpfully listed as "The Abortion Debate". I'm extremely grateful that a majority of MPs voted to keep the current upper time limit of 24 weeks, and extremely angry that anyone who isn't a pregnant woman in trouble should think they have ANY right to tell one what to do. I'm also quite frightened that should the Tories manage an overall mojority at the next General Election, this emotive topic will rear its head once again at Westminster, and go the other way.

I went to see Anne Widdecombe in 2003, when she did a little "audience with" sort of tour. She's a wacky character and I used to just smirk about her eccentric daffy ways. But you know, these people can actually be dangerous because they catch you off guard. You think it's good to have characters in politics, give parliament a bit of colour, and in some cases (one on our own front benches springs to mind) it's true. But in others, the eccentricity is less appealing when away from the fluffy media appearances and inside the chamber, it morphs into something rabid. I realise there's a lot of heated to-and-fro in the Commons, and especially on an issue like this one, but there should be no place for this kind of scurrilous tabloid raving.

We Can Talk About Precious Things...

2008-07-27T11:58:00.004+01:00

Some days more than others, I wish Morrissey had a blog. I can't help but wonder what he makes of the news that David Cardboard Cut-out Cameron, of all people, took Obama for a walk somewhere quiet and dry, and surrounded by press, and gave him a copy of The Queen Is Dead as a gift yesterday. I've said it before, albeit not on this blog, but does Cameron not realise the sickening irony of a tory leader being a Smiths fan? Are love, law and poverty the things that kill Call-me-Dave? How can he possibly identify with anything Moz has ever sung? I really don't think it's aimed at old Etonian sons of stockbrokers. Give me strength!

Oh it's probably old hat to anyone who has ever listened to a Liberal Democrat, but I am seething with frustration at the vicissitudes of the two-party system. Even though a poll of key marginals puts Labour in third place behind the Liberal Democrats today, opinion polls are generally not reflected in election outcomes in my experience and it is hard to see how the Lib Dems can shake the image that is handed to them. My uncle has come to visit this weekend, and one of the first questions he had for me was "but.. aren't the Liberal Democrats the guy with the nice ideas who will never have to try to put them into practice because he'll never be in power? I've voted for them twice and it was a wasted vote!" We've all heard that before, am I right? And we can cry for electoral reform and our beloved Single Transferable Vote all we like, but when the First Past the Post system gets Labour and the Conservatives what they want (overall majorities with 40% or less of the vote), they're not going to change it.

I'm squirming every time David Cameron does his "look, I'm down with the progressives" bit to the media, because with Labour floundering he is securing victory for himself within the next couple of years. While I have serious issues with Labour's "nanny state" attitude, I have to grudgingly admit they are better for Britain than the Conservatives would be. If you read the piece I linked to in a recent post about feminist issues, you will know that with the Conservatives in power, we would likely see a reduction of the time limit for abortions within the next parliament, and we certainly would never have seen civil partnerships and an equal age of consent for homosexuals under the tories. The best I can hope for is a hung parliament, where the subtle politics of consensus comes into play. Of course that brings whole new frustrations about all Liberal Democrats suddenly being asked who they're making 'deals' with, but such is life, and I understand and can explain to anyone who asks me that when politicians of different colours are made to find common ground in their ambitions and a coalition works properly, the resulting legislation tends to be a lot less draconian or extreme, and that is better for everyone in the long run.

More Reasons to be Cheerful

2008-07-25T22:45:00.003+01:00

Via the wonderful Jo Christie-Smith comes this piece in the Guardian about how far women's rights, and expectations of equal treatment, are under threat in the UK today. It's titled "Now, the backlash" so I find it interesting that the title of the web page in my browser reads "Kira Cochrane on the apparent backlash against feminism". Want to distance yourself from her sentiment any more, Guardian? I know, I'm a barrel of laughs tonight, aren't I? Forgive me, I've spent much of today up to my elbows in triangle sandwiches, balloons and strange children, I'm a bit over-wrought.

It's not all doom though, is it? I mean, I feel for Jo because she read it under slightly different circumstances to me: the interior ramifications of what the article said* weren't half as hard to take with the thought of Jo's blog post (read beforehand) like a firm and comforting hand on my shoulder: This is why I am a feminist and why I am going to keep going, even when it feels like we are wading through treacle. Thanks, Jo.

*and there weren't the epiphanies there could have been- I would have been perfectly capable of writing that piece before I read it

I just had a sense of humour failure :(

2008-07-25T22:18:00.002+01:00

The Kevin Bishop Show: it's a new comedy sketch show in the slot between Big Brother shows on Channel Four on Fridays. I.. I really can't handle it.

I was already on the verge of tears when he did "Sophie's Choice, the Musical" as a skit. When he followed it up with "The Guantanamo Bay Playset", it placed me into quite a real state of emotional distress.

Is ANYONE finding that funny? I'm terrified someone will say yes, it will make me question humanity so deeply.

If the British are the Only Nation on Earth to Use the Word 'Glass' as a Verb, Why Would We Assume That Knives Are the Problem?!

2008-07-24T15:03:00.004+01:00

On Lib Dem voice at the moment, there's a post about Chris Huhne's take on the latest target of tabloid hysteria - evil knife crime. He has asked some questions in Parliament, and looked into the statistics around prosecutions for the sale of knives to minors, shifting the emphasis and the blame for the "crisis" onto shopkeepers rather than the young knife-carriers themselves.

You might think party members would be clapping their hands about the Home Affairs Spokesman's timely findings: after all, it has attracted some media coverage, and that is unfortunately all too rare for our parliamentarians (take Jo Swinson's stand against VAT on sun cream in Prime Minister's Questions last week - only picked up by The Guardian and then only in its roundup of everything that was covered in Parliament). However, the overall tone of the comments is one of disappointment.

I can't speak for everyone involved in that comment thread, but I don't want to see punitive measures against people carrying knives (many of whom would be innocent people with no intention of harming someone), OR against shopkeepers who may have sold cutlery or a father's day swiss army knife to a kid only to be reported to the authorities by some petty type with a vendetta. Knives are NOT the problem, the deep unhappiness of the kids who are killing each other with them is. Even in the unlikely scenario that we remove all access to any kind of blade from anyone under the age of 25, making them eat with plastic sporks, they would still find ways to kill each other if that is their desire. You only need to know about Maslow's heirarchy of needs to understand that if a person doesn't have love and support, or recognition and respect elsewhere, then they may well look to fulfil those needs within a gang or by notoriety, and no amount of paternalistic legislation is going to change that. Forgive me for being a bleeding heart Liberal, but I do believe I'm a member of the party where that is most indulged.

So what can we do? My own suggestion is for less use of blunt tools such as automatic sentences, and more concentration on the following: better detection rates for crime, which would tie in with a more visible police or community safety officer presence in problem areas (which from the plethora of reports and studies available online, seem to make a far better deterrent than the hazy remembrance that there's a sentence should you get caught); and better education, advice and services for young people - I'm not sure what the figures are in the rest of the UK, but in a keynote speech made by Welsh Assembly Member Peter Black at the conference of the Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services a couple of weeks ago, he pointed out that young people spend an equivalent of only nine minutes of every waking hour in school, but only £56 per head is spent on what they are doing for the remaining 51 minutes.. that's just not good enough. Does anyone else have any bright ideas?

sniff

2008-07-23T19:12:00.002+01:00

If you are a parent, there are always going to be moments when your children move you to tears. Hopefully they won't be tears of frustration, but rather more like mine:

Today my daughter (who will be five on Friday) has come to me and said she needed to ask me something. I've rarely seen such a serious expression on her face so I quietly asked her what was the matter, expecting maybe some concern about a troublesome member of her class who has been invited to her birthday party. She blew me away.

"Mum, do you know, Mrs Nicholas told me in assembly that people in Burma have had a flood, and their houses have all gone away. You need to help them. We could go and build their houses for them again. We sent food from the school, but maybe we could give them some money as well. I want you to help them, please. They haven't got any money or anywhere to live."

It's terrifying and heartening all at the same time that she believes in me this much, that she is sure I can fix the world when to me it's patently obvious I can't. But I can do what I can. I've told her when she's big enough we can go together and help people who need it wherever we can. I've also told her how proud I am of her for caring.

Can anyone tell me which of the disaster relief efforts is best to donate what little I've got to, please? I've promised her.

Whither our Liberties, Whither our Freedom Bill?

2008-07-23T17:17:00.004+01:00

When considering how much power ought to be afforded to the police, it's worth remembering that 'the police' is not one big faceless organisation, it's a sample of people who wanted to be police officers. People with prejudices and flaws as varied if not more so than any sample of the population at large. The more legislation is introduced to tighten security, the less rights we have as completely innocent citizens at the hands of the police (and often the evils the laws are introduced to deal with in the first place are at best not remotely dealt with by the legislation and at worst imaginary to start with).

I say this today because the news brings me a saddening example to highlight my point. A woman who has a mixed race, autistic son was separated from him as they crossed the English Channel to come home from France, then detained and questioned for two hours under anti-terrorism legislation powers, because the policewoman who stopped her was convinced she must be child trafficking (after all, white women couldn't possibly have brown-skinned children with them for a legitimate reason).

It's not just this one anecdote about heavy-handedness, though it is a convenient example of the problem. In my view New Labour have had more to do with creating a 'climate of fear' than any terrorist organisation. Backed up to the hilt by the tories (of course), they have spent eleven years systematically eroding our liberty and increasing the powers of the (flawed, prejudiced) police officers to do what they like with anyone they don't like the look of. The really depressing thing is, I'm not saying anything new - members of my party have been campaigning for years against measures like extended periods of detention without trial, the removal of the right to silence under arrest, the banning of peaceful protests within a mile of parliament... I could go on and on. And what is more it always seems their efforts, our efforts, are to no avail.

With all this in mind, I remembered Nick Clegg's campaign for a 'Freedom Bill' designed to repeal unnecessary and illiberal legislation, back in late 2006 when he was but a lowly home affairs spokesman. I am in fact still a member of the facebook group that was started to raise awareness of it. Whatever happened to that? Any amount of google searching is turning up no news. Am I to assume it was dismissed out of hand by the purple majority and sank without a ripple? I hope not. At the time I joined the party it was something I could point to and say "this is why I'm here".

Politicians are off the hook, it's all the musicians' fault!

2008-07-21T16:45:00.005+01:00

Fantastic piece in the Indie yesterday on the phenomenon of watered-down indie soundalike bands, which ends with this gem of a quote: "If we end up with 20 years of Tory government, it'll be The Pigeon Detectives' fault." Maybe they have a point - music reaches people, particularly young people, in a way any amount of stuffy discussion never will. And if the bands aren't making the kids angry about the things that matter, will the kids come around to realising there are important things to be angry about another way, or just become more and more apathetic?

I can't help but notice that broadly speaking the Lib Dems I've met have music taste that falls into two categories (with the exception of that lovely MP Jo Swinson who can't be said to have music taste at all judging from her facebook page but I have to let her off because other than that she's like a Scottish Mary Poppins - practically perfect in every way!): the classical music for old-school libertarian types, and the alt/indie for the adorable leftie idealist types. Me? I'll listen to *almost* anything (though I do like to think I display a modicum of taste and I wouldn't touch Scouting For Girls with someone *else's* bargepole), with Tchiakovsky cheek by jowl in my CD collection with The Smiths. Take from that what you will about my ideology!

This post brought to you whilst listening to The Crystal Lake by Grandaddy, The Masochism Tango by Tom Lehrer, Forsaken by VNV Nation, and Poor Little Rich Boy by Regina Spektor, in case you were curious...

Now in Syndicated Flavour!

2008-07-21T00:45:00.003+01:00

Yes, for anyone who is reading this and knows me better as stephmog, some genius young lib dem lass with a penchant for crazy hairdye, a quirky superbright five year old daughter, and a lovely other half with long hair, who isn't me, has created a feed so I can appear on your LiveJournal friend-page once again. Go here, add feed, never miss a post by oh-yeah-stephmog-made-that-other-blog-before-she-left-livejournal again!

Thanks to that genius, who is one of my new favourite people in the whole world.

And happy birthday to my mum, who obviously always has been one of my favourite people in the whole world.

Iain WHO, dear?

2008-07-20T00:52:00.002+01:00

You know, I'm fairly new to all this blogging business so maybe I am missing something, but you know that Iain Dale? I really don't understand what it is that is so very special about him for people to keep quoting him like his views actually matter. I'm not sure what's worse really, the fact that his opinions are considered so valuable that he is given newspaper space and actual television airtime to espouse them like some kind of 21st Century politics guru, or the fact that every other Lib Dem blog I come across has a mention of him somewhere therein!

Do you really care if some high profile tory is going to start saying the Lib Dems are trying to out-tory the tories and can't be trusted? We know better and importantly, thanks to the fact we have ace campaign teams in those marginal seats Iain mentions in his piece, we will succeed in having the majority of the electorate know better as well.

I mean, come on. This is the guy who on Wednesday posted a weak 'humour' piece entitled "you know you are a political chav when.." and on Thursday he argued that we should all stop using the word toff because it reveals "deep and revealing level of class hatred"! Clearly no sense of irony.

My comment there in response to yet another post relating to Iain Dale's comments on the Make It Happen document launched by Nick Clegg on Thursday. Sorry, Andy, wasn't arguing with your whole post there, just getting grumpy about the ubiquitous Dale!

You know, I think one of the hardest conditions I've put on myself in writing here is my aim to have this blog clear and easy to understand for the majority of people who may come across it (you know, like my aged relatives, or other people called Stephanie Ashley doing a vanity search - I'm not expecting to be a must-read writer with a cult following here). I don't want to name names that I know full well I would have had to look up before I joined the party and assume that anyone who is reading will automatically know who I am talking about. I don't want to alienate anyone who isn't a political anorak, but it's proving to be so tough!

Class Traitor.

2008-07-19T22:44:00.006+01:00

My mum's been away for a few days. She saw Hazel Blears (who for those of you who don't know rose through the ranks of the Labour Party in Salford in the 1980s and 90s as an angry young working class woman, only to turn into some kind of semi-mechanised spin redistribution outlet for them once she got into a cosy job as a Government Minister) in Kendals (which for those of you who don't know is a posh department store in the centre of Manchester, where you won't generally find too many angry working class girls from Salford)! It's certainly worthy of comment and loaded with meaning.

[*Carrie Bradshaw moment*] It makes me wonder... does being in office necessarily change people? When the higher a politician reaches in their career, the more removed from ordinary people they become, both by income bracket and in terms of how little time they have to listen to average members of the electorate any more... must their entire characters, aims and ideals morph into something equally removed from what they were when they started out?[*end Carrie Bradshaw moment*] Or is it just a grotesque metaphor for New Labour as a whole, second rate tory clones that they are?

I'm not very old. I don't remember a Labour government before 1997. But I do just about remember being able to distinguish the three main parties as very different from one another, even as a child. There were the braying, pompous people in blue who quite literally looked down their noses at the benches opposite them as they shouted about how nobody but them could run an economy or a country; opposite there were the tantrummy, sneery people in red who shouted about needing better services and opportunities for people and how the people in blue don't care about anyone; and over here were a sizable handful of those nice people in yellow who occasionally asked a sensible question, and who I properly fell in love with when I noticed in 1997 (when I was yet too young to vote) that they had costed every one of their main manifesto promises in a really transparent way. Cor, how sensible and refreshing they were, eh? I wonder what my daughter makes of watching Prime Minister's Questions now. I strongly suspect that she sees an amorphous mass of bluey purple smug people of the type who swan round posh department stores on the weekends (and get their laptops nicked by hoodies when they leave them in stupid places with sensitive information on them that shouldn't be and that sort of thing) up the top half of the house, and then down on this bottom right hand corner are a few dozen nice people in yellow who occasionally ask a sensible question, only for the amorphous bluey-purple blob to open one of its mouths and come out with some polished statement that is vaguely related to the subject but in no way answers the question. How frustrating.

Oh no!

2008-07-19T00:41:00.002+01:00

So now smoking in a pub is such an image disaster for a politician it constitutes a reason to resign?

I'm never going to make it...

Oh no, I forgot - that's me two years ago, before the ban came in. Phew, that's alright then!

Total Jerks with Jerky Knees

2008-07-18T19:47:00.002+01:00

I can't be the only one. Surely everyone must listen to or read the news these days and think "WHAT? You're going to do WHAT?" on a regular basis.

It seems that the two main parties decide policies these days by saying "ooh, there's a lot of headlines on this issue" and half-baking an idea before having one of their front benchers open their big gobs to the media and see what happens. Hot on the heels of Labour's "wheeling knife-weilders through casualty" debacle earlier this week (and I'd like to point out that the Tories' ideas on the matter were equally bloody off-the-cuff and ill-thought-through in my opinion), I can't help wondering whose mouth the Labour Party was planning to open to spout their new workfare proposals through.

If making people work for benefits was an answer to the problem of 'scroungers' then it would work in the United States, and it doesn't! Read this for a clue what will happen if the American system comes here, it's an eye-opener. Is this just a case of Labour trying desperately to win back all those people the opinion polls tell us have switched sides to support the Conservatives by, well, completely lifting their "help people into jobs and cut benefits for those who won’t work" spiel? Fine, whatever. I'm just hoping that the longer this pantomime goes on, the more people will realise that the tories haven't changed one iota despite any amount of desperate image engineering, that Labour threw any plans for real social justice out of the window in the late nineties and have spent the last twelve years or so becoming a weird plastic replica of the tories, and that if they want to vote for someone who won't defecate on the working classes from a great height next time they go to the polls, they need to vote Liberal Democrat.

Unison and Unite have certainly united a lot of people in one respect:

2008-07-18T12:52:00.002+01:00

I have spoken to a lot of people who have been affected by the public sector workers' strike this week. People who are working class, sympathetic, and would normally support anyone's right to strike if their working conditions or pay were bad enough. They're pretty much all 'united' in fury. They're furious, and not with the bosses who the unions want them to be furious with, but with the people who took part in the strike themselves.

As far as I can see they have only succeeded in creating a common view of council employees as greedy and short-sighted, which is a dreadful shame.

Why greedy? Council workers have 'only' received a pay rise of 2.45%, which is less than the galloping inflation rate. Poor dears. If they're wondering why the rest of us are having a hard time finding sympathy for them they ought to try working in the private sector, where many people haven't seen a pay rise in two years, some have even seen cuts in their pay or working hours, and on top of that don't get sick pay and many of the other benefits afforded to the strikers.

Why short-sighted? Because not only does their action affect the lives of the rest of the working population, who have had to keep hold of their stinking rubbish this week and find alternative childcare in many cases, far more than the opinions of their bosses; but if they succeed in securing a bigger pay rise, it's only going to have a negative impact on the entire community including themselves in the long run. The pay rise they have received is lower than the rate of inflation because the rise in the amount of money given to the councils by the Welsh Assembly Government was similarly low for the financial year. To raise the money for a bigger pay rise, there would have to be sweeping cuts in services or a rise in council tax, which would hurt everyone.

I just wonder how many of the union members who were out on strike this week have gone through the onerous process of filling in forms ensuring that part of their union subs don't go toward funding the Labour party... it's highly ironic that most of them are probably funding the very party whose administration is at the root of the problem.

Ticky boxes, on the Internet

2008-07-17T11:04:00.002+01:00

I would like to urge any party members who may be reading, and didn't take part in Liverpool this Spring, to go along and contribute to this survey being conducted by Ros Scott. For those too lazy to go and read why she wants your answers, she has this to say:

I’ve always believed that our members and activists are the ones who define what this party is about...I’m primarily interested in getting a snapshot of some of the internal Party issues occupying you right now. For example, what should come first: electing MPs or Councillors? How can we win more votes: canvassing or media coverage?

I'm sure we all want to feel our opinions are being heard, so the least we can do is give them when asked!

C-words

2008-07-16T23:34:00.001+01:00

No, I'm not swearing about the driving examiner who went on strike today without calling the people (including me) who had booked a test before doing so, though I must admit the urge is with me! These are clean c-words which have been bouncing around in my head for the last few days..

First of all, I must say, my conscience is bothering me. This blog doesn't have a huge readership, but I know there are some people who like to read it to keep tabs on Pembroke Liberal Democrat activity, or even on me. I suppose I ought to let you know the result of the local elections -- better two months late than never, I hope (and there will be more on why I haven't updated sooner, later). The bad news is that we didn't win a council seat in Pembroke despite our high hopes. The good news is that there are now three Liberal Democrats on Pembrokeshire County Council: Tony Brinsden held Amroth, and Liz Campion and Bob Kilminster won seats in St Dogmaels and Dinas Cross respectively due to sheer determination and hard work.

Liz and Bob have proved something that I have to grudgingly admit I already knew: that to win as a Liberal Democrat takes commitment, and consistency. There are very few places across the UK where there is a natural Lib Dem vote in the same way as there might be a natural Labour or Conservative one (hence the old grumble that in some places you could put a red - or a blue - rosette on a donkey and it would still win an election). The seats where we do well all have one thing in common: the party activists are VERY active. Our new councillors won through because they were working hard for local people and keeping in touch with them with a monthly newsletter/leaflet for three full years before election time came around. This is my aim for Pembroke, now. I don't think the working hard is an issue. All of our local party members care about their community deeply and many of them already spend huge quantities of time and effort in a great variety of (mainly voluntary) capacities. It's unbelievable how busy Gareth Jones always is in his role as mayor, but we're all doing our bits. For my own part, since the election I have been a steward at three events at the Pembroke Festival, helped a couple of people out who needed help getting in touch with bureaucrats about problems, poured coffee at the second annual Pembrokeshire Potato Festival to raise funds for a local playgroup - the list goes on. And we don't do these things for political gain, but all the same I think we're possibly a little too bashful about letting people know how much we do and how much more we want to do. It's the age-old Great British affliction I suppose: one doesn't boast. The thing is, keeping in touch is crucial. How can we expect people to take our word for it when we come around in the three months before an election and tell them we would make wonderful elected representatives, unless we have demonstrated to them how they can trust us to deliver what they need all year round? And in West Wales I think it's particularly important for a candidate to personally know a good percentage of the electorate and to have met almost all of them. I'm sure it's often said about politicians: we need to get out more! As membership secretary I am at least in a position to get in touch with the local membership and bring them together regularly. I'm hoping to be a catalyst for much-needed change.

The reasons I've been missing from the 'blogosphere' of late are manifold, but conveniently, two of the main ones are also c-words. First of all, like many young women I have certain commitments and balancing them with political life even at this comparatively low level is excruciatingly difficult, and costs me dearly when I get it wrong. I have a daughter who is nearly five (I have been writing invitations to all her friends for her birthday Dinosaur Disco this very evening), a fiancé who is a very supportive, calm and stoical sort of chap but like anyone does still have limits on his patience, two cats, a house to run, a secretarial job to hold down and many friends and family members I like to spend time with. I'm still trying to work out just how much I can do in terms of lib demming before I start hurting people by neglecting my other responsilities. It's tough. My other issue is one of confidence. To the casual observer I seem strident and articulate and generally a very confident sort of person, but that has taken years to perfect. To illustrate my problem I'll share this with you: I mentioned earlier in the post that I had a driving test booked for today. I have had well over a hundred hours of tuition over the past three years and this was the first test I had booked -- I have a morbid fear of failure and of getting things wrong. Every time I write in here I am painfully aware that it will be available for any passing member of the public to read, and that leads me to spend more time than is reasonable checking and re-checking what I have written, before eventually posting something I am less than satisfied with. It's something I need to get over if I'm to go as far as I want to in life. It's also something I need to work very hard on if while I'm working on curing it, I want to conceal it from my party colleagues: I was at a training event last Sunday, presided over by a fabulous young man of my acquaintance who was the architect of the party's change of fortunes in Merthyr Tydfil at the last election. At our break for lunch he snatched the opportunity to ask me what my problem with confidence was all about. "Is it really that obvious?" I asked. "Well," he said "at spring conference I saw you deliver one of the best speeches of the entire weekend, which demonstrated an understanding of the issues that affect your region beyond that of many of our members, and then you came off the stage and sat down looking like you were about to have some kind of fit -- yes, it's obvious." Maybe it's time I started seeing myself as others see me. I have a feeling I would relax and enjoy life a lot more if I could get the hang of that.

Steph History

2008-04-03T23:52:00.003+01:00

When I started this blog, many weeks ago, I tried to explain how I got into the whole politics thing. I've just come across something I wrote on the very earliest day, when I had been to a hospitals protest in Cardiff last March. Looking at the piece with fresh eyes and hindsight, I feel quite emotional about just how far I have come in the last year-and-a-bit. I want to share it:

NB: SWAT = Save Withybush Action Team, and FYI, I have my driving theory test next Tuesday after work and should be doing the practical one within a couple of months, all being well.

Got the weather I'd asked for (sorry to those of you in London who got Pembrokeshire's weather instead), and got to the hospitals protest ok. I am quite enamoured of shiny, glossy Cardiff Bay, and I disagreed with one of the women on the protest who said that the new Senned building was a waste of money. I said that my preference would have been for them to choose a heritage building to renovate for it, but in the circumstances and to match the surroundings they did a very good job - it's important for the parliament building to be a focal point for national pride, somewhere that is imposing enough to say "this is where the Welsh people are ruling for themselves for the very first time".

The outcome, as is often the way with these things, was quite vague. We did have some press photographers out to meet us, which is good. Brian Gibbons met with senior members of the SWAT and assured them that Options 1 and 2 of the Designed to Deliver document have definitely been scrapped, and that option 3 is under serious consideration from the planning committee. We remain sceptical and vigilant - the chances are, given that the planning committee are for the most part the selfsame people who drew up the original options, that we will be spun their original ideas cleverly represented as a third way.

I didn't go into today with expectations of getting much out of it for myself. Although the people who are interested and passionate enough to show up for the protests are pleasant to converse with, I am a fair bit younger than all of them and I have a limited amount in common with them. I hadn't actually considered the fact that I was going somewhere where politically minded people abound, though. I was taken under the wing of some of the Welsh Liberal Democrats after expressing approval of their party line on this and many other issues, have joined the party which is something I meant to do when I was 17, but reserved judgment on in case I changed my mind as I got older. It was so refreshing to get into lengthy discussions with people who knew what I was talking about on pet subjects like Lords reform, proportional representation, ID schemes; and some British history of voting reform, the formation of the welfare state and so on. The company I have tended to keep for a long time has been mainly the type that feel no interest for history or current affairs and much as I have longed at times to rant about issues of the day in real life, with real people, I have kept my mouth shut knowing that I would just be seen as a show-off :(

The downside to the whole day for me was the fact that almost every person I talked to, well-meaning and lovely though they were, at some point inevitably caused that sinking feeling in my insides when they asked "so, what do you do for a living?". It's a horrible thing, for those of you who don't know let me tell you, to watch someone's face change from being captivated and impressed to slightly scornful, then quickly frame itself into something a little more charitable right before your eyes, when you tell them that the erudite and passionate young woman they have been so enjoying talking to for the last half hour has been unemployed for twelve months, isn't a post-grad as they assume, and can't even drive.

I do think my not driving, with the various attempts to learn being thwarted by whatever personal circumstances prevailed each time, makes a neat metaphor for my whole professional life. Stalling every time I start. To be perfectly honest, when I reflect on what jobs I *have* had over the years since I left full time education, I wouldn't have been proud to name any of them as my career to these people, either. I wish, I suspect along with a fair proportion of people of my age and ability, that some opportunity to prove myself, some answer for what I should be doing with myself would present itself from the heavens, because I really don't know what it is I'm meant to do, only that at the moment, I'm really not doing it.

What I did today was a small thing in terms of effort. All I had to do was get up on time and get myself to the right place to show a little support for a cause that has a direct effect on my quality of life and that of all my local friends and family. I think that's pretty much a duty, if you have the free time. Still, my mum is proud of me and I'm a little proud of myself too, which makes a change. It's the first time I've felt proper pride in myself since I was in Samaritans (which I would do again like a shot if I had the means to get to Haverfordwest in the evenings). It's just a pity it had to come with a gruelling day of repeatedly facing up to who I am in the eyes of people I would like to impress, and not liking what I faced.

This candidate is lush, but honestly not a lush!

2008-04-03T23:09:00.002+01:00

Today was nice.

Lots of other days in the last two weeks have been not so nice - like finding out that one of the people I thought might support me on my ward has decided to stand herself, making it a tougher fight; or like having one of my nominators write their name in lower-case letters when the form asks for block capitals so I had to go out and get all ten signatures again at the eleventh hour. I'm not going to dwell on those days though, because now my name is going to be on the ballot paper and I can breathe a little easier for getting this far.

A group of five Carmarthen West and South Pembs Lib Dems descended on the Pembrokeshire County Council offices today, to drop our forms off and have them checked. It was good to spend time with some of them under less pressure than normal, we stopped in town for lunch and made each other laugh. Well, I rather suspect they did more laughing at me than laughing with me, but that's ok when it is justified.

Why would anyone want to laugh at me, eh? Maybe because I walked by the Palace Cinema at an inopportune moment and ended up wearing bird poo on my nice suit trousers (must have been one of those seagulls trained by the opposition!). Maybe it was because my usual tactic for dealing with stress was in full force and I was camp and hammy and wouldn't stop making silly comments. But more likely, it was because while we were on tenterhooks in a rather crowded waiting room at County Hall, I used a 'de-stressing' aromatherapy roll-on thing, and moments later a stranger behind me asked which one of us had been at the gin. Yes, in a futile attempt to calm myself down I had made myself smell like a drunk. Classic!

More Maudlin Than Maundy

2008-03-20T11:42:00.004Z

I'm feeling a bit low today. I generally do on Thursdays, as the pile of tasks lined up for me take on the shape of an insurmountable obstacle -- you see, I work at my regular job Monday to Wednesday, and between that and the weekend (which of course begins early this week, Happy Easter to all) I have a lot to fit in if I'm to be effective in my Liberal Democrat roles. This week is busier than others as I mentioned in my last post, but that is not all that is grinding me down. It's reading.

This article over on Liberal Conspiracy, by the fabulous Alix Mortimer, intended to highlight alternatives to the tax measures introduced by the government which would not cause the poorest workers to lose out (as of course we know this budget has done), has attracted some predictable criticism. I think Alix deals marvellously with it all, but it still makes me seethe to see people try to justify the fact that anyone who earns under £17k will be worse off this tax year. And it bothers me that every time anyone starts to put the case of low-paid workers, they are slapped with statistics about reducing child poverty. Excuse me, I really don't want to see families suffer, far from it, but there are people out there without children who seem to have no voice at the moment. My little brother finished university last year, and while he keeps one eye on the job market for anything that relates to his degree, he works in a temporary position earning just about enough to support him and his partner, who is still studying. He is not entitled to tax credits, as he falls foul of yet another inequable little quirk of that system whereby if you are under 25, you are only eligible for working tax credits if you have children. He is a model of what this country needs in so many ways, determined to pay his way, contributing to the economy, and he now has to tighten his belt somewhat to account for the drop in his net pay. Go tell him that you are only interested in lifting children out of poverty, not people in general, and he doesn't deserve a tax cut as he earns less than £17k and see what he has to say about it! And what about those families who benefit under the current system? Even if we leave aside the horror stories of tax credits going wrong as frequently as they do and leaving people with huge bills that they couldn't have prevented and can't afford, there comes a point where Mrs X who has maintained a certain lifestyle for herself and her children by using the tax credits that supplement her small income suddenly finds that she is overextended, because her children reach the age where tax credits don't apply any more and child benefit is no longer payable, and wham - just like that the family income drops like a lead weight. It's all so short sighted. Government seems to be full of people who either haven't struggled in their lives -- or if they have, much in the same way as women routinely sign themselves up to relive the searing agony and indignity of pregnancy and childbirth because the suffering has faded in their memories while the romantic and beautiful memory of having a new member of the family has only grown, their memories have blocked out the reality of their former lives of counting up coppers for bus fare and worrying on a daily basis about money because they are so smugly content about how they have risen above it and remember their climb up the greasy pole much more vividly. Preserve me from that fate, I never ever want to turn into one of those people who have no empathy and no vision of what life is like on a low income!

So, I started out a bit miserable, got very frustrated reading the above, and then went on to discover there are actually even worse examples of the prevailing I'm-alright-Jack attitude on Liberal Conspiracy this week: take the comments on this article by Kate Belgrave, a case study proving the fact that some people - heavens above - really are dependent on state benefits and need support rather than the threat of removal of their tiny income and is rewarded by narrow-minded commentors with the message that "a drug addict's sob story is not going to gain anyones sympathy". She quite rightly attacks one of the Tories' key messages: "help people into jobs and cut benefits for those who won’t work". Time limit benefits and 'workfare' are the not the right solution for people who find themselves unemployed long-term. I know. I was unemployed for over a year due to all sorts of complex issues and frankly I thank my lucky stars that I don't have too much of a tendency to addiction or I could easily have been in a whole lot worse situation. Still now, because of the people who surround me, I could give you dozens of case studies of good people, who are in no way spongers, who can't afford to work, aren't in a position to work for mental health or addiction related reasons, and telling them their benefits would be cut if they didn't get into a job would not help them change their minds and think "oh well, I think I will get off benefits then, it's been a nice few years slacking, I think I'd rather have a job and more money and a nicer lifestyle now!" It's frankly insane to think it would, or even if it did to think that a job which would lift them out of the benefit trap would fall into their laps in all areas of the country, no matter what their skillset is. I want the people who run this country to genuinely care for and work for ALL the people they represent, not just the ones who are in a comfortable enough position to shout the loudest. Cutting benefits for people who haven't found work fast enough and have no other income - it's barbaric! Why not pick on inheritance and capital gains tax instead? Yes, the idea of losing the big comfortable family home that you haven't worked to build up and will still benefit from the proceeds of to some tune may be bad, but I don't believe it's nearly as bad as ending up homeless and desperate and probably dying an early death - the tories are telling the wrong people to go out, get a job and sort themselves out.

It's probably apt that this post comes on Maundy Thursday. How much longer will we live in the post-Thatcherite consensus era before the neediest people in our society are back to being supported by charity and alms money?

So Ms Ashley, What Do You Feel You Can Bring to This Position?

2008-03-19T22:16:00.002Z

Well, the time is almost at hand. We had a strategy meeting last night to finalise what our four candidates in Pembroke are campaigning on and how we're going to do it, and I go out tomorrow to start to collect my signatures for nomination to stand as a candidate in this year's local elections. It's not a simple matter, getting your name on that ballot paper. The candidate pack is like a paper doorstep, and full of daunting warnings and guidelines.

I keep telling myself that I don't have to get so anxious about the whole process; that I am doing the best I can and that is all that anyone expects, that if I don't win it doesn't negatively impact on my life in any way, that it really isn't a matter of life and death. It doesn't calm me. The fact is, I don't want to seem arrogant but I really am the best person for the job out of the available applicants. It's just that the interview process for this particular job is much more arduous and peculiar than for any other position: having to face a panel of over a thousand people, some of whom don't care who wins and probably won't even cast a vote either way, some of whom are related to or are otherwise close to the other candidates, and some of whom vote by habit a certain way and won't change their minds.

I don't know if it's helpful to even think of an election campaign in terms of a huge job interview. It's a handy analogy but frankly, the position of county councillor is perhaps not one that many people would like if it were written out as a job description, with the benefits and responsibilities laid bare. There is a good reason why the majority of councillors are older men. Basically, being a councillor doesn't pay very much (and nor should it - public money can be better spent) but at the same time, meetings and other demands on a councillor's time tend to keep them busy in the daytimes. This means it is very difficult to find other work to supplement the meagre income and so generally speaking the people who stand for election are those who are already self-sufficient in some way. For me, it's not about the money. It's not about any sense of kudos either. So why am I doing it? There are two reasons. Firstly I am the sort of person who wants to learn constantly. My first choice of job would be to become Professor Ashley, living in a place lined with groaning bookshelves and burying myself in academic study. There are however other ways to learn and develop as a person, and this is definitely one of them. How could I learn about the way the world works in any better way than by getting involved in the running of things? Learning as I go, making sure I am the best trained and informed I possibly can be to be the most effective representative and point of contact for the electorate I possibly can be. It's an attractive prospect. And it links nicely with my second motivation, which is to help people. I want to be the best kind of councillor - one who is accessible and helpful and does everything within her power to improve the situation for the local community. Already as a campaigner I am coming across many people who are isolated and neglected, and I want to involve them in every decision I take. It's part of being a Liberal Democrat, but it's also part of who I am - I only want to get into any position of power to give that power right back to the people it belongs to - all the people.

How Flattered I Am, Mr Hughes

2008-03-04T14:45:00.002Z

But don't you think the leader of Conwy Council should have better things to do with his time than reading my internet musings?

For the three men and a dog who were reading before it happened, I probably ought to explain that my nascent blog has already been the victim of a cheap shot by the Labour Party's own Ronnie Hughes, leader of his group in Conwy council. You can read it here, along with my response. This post and that official response mark the limit to my involvement in the affair. I have turned down a bid from the Richard Evans show on BBC Radio Wales, because I don't think Mr Hughes deserves to be given airtime or credence.

Of course, I would like to offer a full apology to anyone who was genuinely offended. I'm well aware that casual figures of speech can sometimes be taken the wrong way. However, to anyone reading the full original post, it should be clear that this was a jocular way to open a blog post. In its way in fact, it is a backhanded compliment - the fact that so many people from the North-West of England choose to retire to Llandudno, along with other seaside towns in North Wales, just goes to show how attractive and pleasant the area is. I myself spent happy holidays in Llandudno and the surrounding region as a child.

As far as I am concerned though, Mr Hughes' comment is less about concern for local residents and more about blatant electioneering -- a desperate attempt to score points over my party. It is not surprising that it comes now, so close to the local elections. It is a great shame that some politicians feel the need to take part in this kind of negative campaigning. It lends credibility to the widely-held view that all politicians are no better than squabbling children, only interested in their own self-promotion. I aim to base my campaign not around my opponents' weaknesses, but around my strengths and beliefs. Last night, I was sitting next to the Labour candidate for my ward at an unrelated meeting, and we agreed that politics should be a competition, not a war, and without good competition, victory means nothing. If Mr Hughes is still making a priority of reading my blog, I would ask him to follow his colleague's shining example.

Naughty Lemming

2008-03-01T14:58:00.002Z

In my defence, parts of the reason why I still have the same amount of leaflets sitting forlornly in a box in my living room that I had on Thursday are valid. I mean, it isn't easy to prioritise your life and I did need to collect something from Pembroke yesterday. I need to spend some time with my daughter before she forgets what I looked like. I need to do some housework and get some groceries. I don't technically need to sleep until practically lunchtime and then faff about on facebook for two hours though. Naughty lemming.

Thursday was a productive day. I took out our latest leaflet to more than half of the ward with the help of the unstoppable John and Ron (who actually delivered for an hour after I had gone home, bless them). I got to speak to some of the people who had returned the survey I had taken out and got my first promises of votes from people I didn't already know - hurrah! Not resting on my laurels though, whatever it may look like today! I have plenty of weekend left, and I fully intend to go out and rain paper through everyone's letterboxes tomorrow. And prepare the membership report for Tuesday's executive meeting. And call my friends and supporters to see if they want to help out this week. For today though.. pass the coffee and the vacuum cleaner, I am staying home for a change!

Llandudno.

2008-02-29T23:44:00.002Z

That's where I was last weekend.Yep, it's where people from the North West of England go to die, but I'm not there yet by quite a few years. It's a surprisingly good place for a party conference too though - who knew?!

Some people don't like conferences. I love conferences. Love them. I like being in the room where a rousing speech is being made instead of watching it later on youtube. I like being taken seriously when I ask questions at fringe events - it makes me feel almost like a grown-up! I *really* like staying out, ummmm, "networking" with other Lib Dems from across the country until 3am. I like being accused of being a bad influence. I like feeling that network of support in close-up (though obviously not TOO close-up), and knowing that if I need help with anything, there are people there who go above and beyond the call of duty to provide it - here's where I publicly make a big point of saying thank you once again to Peter Black for driving me up and down the country just so I could attend and asking for nothing in return.

There is one tiny problem. Welsh Liberal Democrat conferences are the best place to practise my public speaking, in that it is best if I'm going to change my podium style from deeply uncomfortable, skittish bag of nerves into confident, inspiring young community leader with all the pitfalls that lie along the way exposed for all to see, it had best be among friends. But that is like saying that if you're going to have excruciating pain inflicted on you, it's best to have it done at a nice clean, fragrant dentistry practice. I find it just that appealing. And it's not even comfortable admitting it in writing - I mean, Fear Of Public Speaking - it's just such a cliché! Might as well be scared of heights and have done with it - oh yes, I am that, too. Just call me a walking cliché then I guess. Or a waffling cliché maybe. Anyway.

Last time I did any public speaking, it was with five minutes' notice because I hadn't read the agenda properly, hadn't realised that my dear colleague from North Pembs, Liz Campion, wanted speakers in support of her first conference motion calling for a review of health service provision in Wales, and felt duty bound to oblige despite having nothing prepared and despite it knocking me sick to even think about attempting it. This time, I once again spoke about local health service provision (condemning the merger of Pembrokeshire and Derwen health trust with two others), once again had only the five minutes between handing in my speakers' card and getting on stage to think about what the heck I was going to say, but there was one difference - I had spent the morning receiving specialist coaching on my public speaking skills from someone with a lot of authority on the matter (at the risk of being accused of constant namedropping, I do mean Lembit Opik). And even if I did moan afterwards until all my friends got sick of hearing it and wandered off, I have to admit the whole experience was a lot more palatable. Hurrah! Progress! The lack of preparation is still a concern - much as I know off the top of my head plenty of key facts about Pembrokeshire and exactly what my point of view is, it would be difficult for anyone to take those thoughts and condense them into a tidy three minute speech just 'on the hoof'. But I can work on that very easily, and as I looked around from that podium on Saturday, I saw people paying great attention to me, being engaged and dare I say it convinced by my words. I can see that becoming an addictive feeling if only I can get rid of the violent shaking that follows it.

Now it's time for me to tell you in the most sickeningly sweet and bordering on evangelistic terms what decisions were taken and what my favourite bits were from the conference.

The more time I spend with my party, the more proud I am to be a part of it. The buoyant mood of the conference was infectious and everything I heard about how well our councillors have been running Cardiff, Swansea, Wrexham and Bridgend made me itch to get into a position where I can make more of a difference in Pembrokeshire, even if I am some years of building capacity and support away from taking control (I know - steady, girl). I found the speeches by Nick Clegg, Roger Williams MP and Mike German, our assembly group leader, energising and enthralling. Of course the focus of the conference was on the rapidly-approaching local elections, but there was one more generalised policy motion that stood out over the weekend. I want to share the details: back in May 2007 I seethed with an indignant fury when I received this glib cut-and-paste response to the official petition to Downing Street to lift the ban on gay men donating blood. So you can probably imagine (and I hope you'll share) my delight when conference delegates voted unanimously to campaign on just this issue. There's an article here on UK Gay News with a fuller description of the motion for those who are interested.

Hard Work for Higher Purpose

2008-02-16T11:32:00.005Z

I'm sure anyone who has been involved in political campaigns is well aware of what hard work it is. There are so many jobs to be done: press releases, leaflet writing, leaflet delivering (oh the pounding of pavements in the cold), interminable hours on the telephone, letter writing, database maintenance, canvassing, fundraising... the list goes on and on. And in a place like West Wales where the population is spread all over the place, and there aren't many willing people to be found to help, that work gets harder still as it is divided between very few committed and able bodies. It does feel like something of an uphill struggle sometimes. So, what motivates me to work so hard voluntarily for the Liberal Democrats? What makes someone who is naturally really quite lazy (and I believe all human beings fall into this category) get up and out and put in, then maintain all this effort? There are a combination of factors. In this post I aim to explain, for the benefit of new members or non-members specifically, what it is that keeps me enthralled and where my motivation comes from. I warn you in advance, this is likely to be an epic post!

I can't understate the amount of support I have from the Liberal Democrat Party both locally, regionally and at large. This support comes from a variety of directions, and in a variety of ways.

Locally, I am part of a small and geographically spread but nonetheless cohesive and impressive team of active members. I make no secret of the fact that I have favourites among them - notably our PPC and his wife, John and Elizabeth Gossage, without whom I would know next to nothing and on whom I tend to lean quite heavily when I feel overwhelmed. They have decades of experience and reserves of patience that I can only assume took all those years to distill and I really don't know what I would do without them. They (particularly John) take on a lot of the necessary workload, along with other experienced local members - more than I do in fact - and do it well - better than I might in fact at this stage. So part of my motivation comes from them, both because I know they are there to support me and because I feel a desire to alleviate some of their burden. A huge part of my self-belief (such as it is) comes from the respect which I am afforded by the members of the local party. In common with the party at all levels, as a party member I have the right to contribute to any level of discussion and decision making, and every sensible suggestion I make is given equal weight and consideration as contributions from the more established and longstanding members. How wrong I was to assume when I joined the party that despite my enthusiasm and intellect I would be expected to defer completely to those who "knew what they were doing" and follow instruction. How delighted I am that I could have been so wrong.

Regionally, the Welsh party is a surprisingly strong political animal. We may only have six Assembly Members in the Cardiff Parliament, but despite this seemingly small presence the Welsh Liberal Democrats manage to spearhead some very successful campaigns, win debates (the most shining example in this parliament being the motion not to allow ID cards to be used as a requirement for access to public services in Wales which are within the remit of the Assembly) and achieve things that I as part of the same organisation can feel some pride in. As well as this more abstract stirring of my positive inclinations, the Welsh party endeavour to provide as much training and as many opportunities to have a say in policy matters as possible for all members. Three weeks ago, I attended a Kickstart training weekend in Llandrindod Wells organised by the ALDC, which gave me some really valuable insights and help for my new role as my own local party's membership secretary and for my own election campaign. Next weekend, I will be attending my third regional conference in the space of ten months. I am looking forward to seeing friends I have made over that time and kept in touch with online and by telephone - Cllr Mike Powell of Pontypridd, cllr Mark Cole of Ceredigion, Peter Black AM and party manager Ian Walton all deserve mentions for keeping me sane and providing me with experienced advice and some practical help at times, though they are by no means the only ones. I am also looking forward to some sparkling debates, to voting on motions which go on to form regional policy, and generally to coming home feeling more optimistic than ever, if a little tired!

Nationally too, my humble opinions count and whatever the grand titles of people I meet or converse with, I have yet to find anyone who is aloof or cold. On the contrary, though there are inevitably people with whom I disagree on some level, I found almost everyone to be warm, welcoming and pleased to share ideas and give advice. I attended my first federal conference in Brighton last Autumn (with financial support from my local party, who recognised that I was serious about becoming a candidate and wished me to benefit from training events there) and it was simultaneously the most draining and the most inspiring weekend of my life, with no exaggeration. I would recommend a party conference to anyone as an experience, regardless of how small an interest they think they would have in it. I came home with raised confidence in myself, a sheaf of notes from training sessions, a wallet full of business cards from new friends in high places, and a head full of ideas. Ever since then, when I have heard our MPs on the radio saying what I had been grumbling under my breath already about the news before they were interviewed, or read about their campaigns and comments on issues of the day in newspapers, I have felt a sense of pride only surpassed by that I have in my family members. I am part of this

Outside the party, I am lucky to find support too.

My partner, RJ, is a stoical, steadfast type and ideally matched to me. While I am fretting and stressing about how much I have to do, he is calmly taking control of mundane household affairs for me without so much as a word. Without him, I would not say this whole venture were impossible, but it would be highly improbable. The party provides creche facilities at conferences, but my four-year-old daughter is far happier to stay at home when I am halfway across the country for a couple of days at a time, and RJ has never once complained aloud about the amount of time he is forced to take on extra responsibility while I am away doing something which may be important to me, but doesn't bring the family anything tangible. I am not sure I could be so selfless. My mother is also a source of support and inspiration for me. She instilled in me from my earliest youth a sense of how important politics was, and has always been most proud of me when I am expressing myself, whether or not she necessarily agrees with my viewpoint. She has that special, indomitable spirit common to women of Northern stock throughout history, and my inheritance of that is perhaps her greatest gift to me. Since I joined the party, she has also been at the receiving end of more than a few telephone calls where her job is to talk me down from top-note can't-cope back to I-can-do-anything. My friends are a mixed bag - they are mostly puzzled by my interest in politics in general, but so supportive that I have even had a handful of them out leafleting for me when I've been under pressure. So, my family and friends back me up and that is invaluable.

Finally but by no means least important, a lot of my strength of conviction, and my motivation to put work into Liberal Democrat ventures, comes from my own values and lifelong interests. These also spell out why it is the Liberal democrats I fell for a long, long time ago and not any other party.

Put simply, the Liberal Democrats' ideas fit with my own. Having lived on the edge of what is considered poverty in the Western World for more of my life than I care to admit, how can I fail to be attracted by a party which is genuinely concerned with creating a fairer society, eradicating poverty and increasing social mobility? Why would I support anyone else when the Liberal Democrats are fighting for a local income tax to replace council tax, for example - lifting many people out of poverty by ensuring that they only need pay what they can actually afford for local services. As someone who has suffered ill health, and dental problems, and relied on the National Health Service in its current guise to get better, how could I not support the policy of a patients charter which spell out minimum rights and standards of access to care, and an extension of the individual budgets system so that patients can choose to some extent how they are treated, rather than getting what they are given? With a bright four-year-old daughter to bring up, I believe the Liberal Democrats have all the right ideas about education, with aims to bring funding in the most needy schools up to private education levels, ensuring that the next generation are well equipped to lead the world into the future.

Finally, since I was very young, I have been aware of global problems. The news as I grew up in the eighties was dominated by issues such as the hole in the ozone layer and famine in Ethiopia - it occurred to me even as a child that these problems should not be the responsibility of charities to solve, that they should be eradicated at source if the world worked the way it should, if
resources were used ethically and shared responsibly. This may seem remote from Liberal Democrat policy at first glance, but there is an important link: the Liberal Democrats have had green issues at the heart of their policies and agenda since long before it was fashionable. the Liberal Democrats are and always have been in favour of Britain's integration into Europe. If we could put aside our notions that national sovereignty is more important than the survival of the planet and the human race as a whole, we would see that a federal Europe is an important step in establishing a more global view of the biggest problems that face us all. Look at the power and influence of the United States - that didn't come overnight. The states within the union have differing characters and if history had taken another course, they may be as distinct and subject to infighting now as the nations within Europe. It was only because of the threat of rule from Britain that they banded together so tightly, under one government, but even then it was not done lightly, and the constitution was met with considerable social resistance - but I don't think you would find many Americans now who would argue that generations later they do not benefit from the arrangement. And, importantly, generations later, those individual states have retained dispersed powers and their individual characters have been largely retained - a model if ever one were needed to prove that integration under a larger government need not mean a loss of identity. With two such superpowers co-operating with one another and working for the benefit of the planet rather than their individual gain, it is conceivable that we could achieve world peace and enough food to go around. A lofty aim indeed and you may call me an idealist for it, but if some of us don't work for it and believe in it, it will never happen

Where to start?

2008-02-15T12:18:00.000Z

I gather it's always the problem, when writing anything. And the perennial answer is "start at the beginning". It's not quite as simple as all that, though, is it? Do I start from the beginning of my interest in politics? Best not really, or you will get the last twenty-four years of my life, from the three-year-old who could tell you the name of the prime minister and leader of the opposition on up.

No, I think it might be best to begin by explain what caused me to join the Liberal Democrats, after a good ten years of following them, knowing more than is healthy about their history, and agreeing with more than nine tenths of their policies. That particular story commences, rather unusually, with a life-threatening illness.

Last January, I was unfortunate enough to suffer a tubo-ovarian abscess. Look it up if you must, and if you have a strong stomach, but here it suffices to say that I was literally at death's door for some time, and my life was saved by a timely emergency operation in my local hospital, Withybush General. During my recovery, which was long and boring, I discovered during my long hours on the Internet that the aforementioned hospital was under threat from Welsh Assembly Government proposals which might have seen it reduced to a mere clinic and many of its vital functions moved to Carmarthen. My alarm and concern was sufficient to see me board a bus to a protest in Cardiff, where I met John Gossage, our local PPC (Prospective Parliamentary Candidate) and Bill Powell, another candidate and a councillor in Powys.

I filled in my form to join the party there and then, and was warned that promotion comes quickly. I raised an eyebrow and said "oh yeah, so you'll have me posting leaflets in no time then?" Little did I know..

You know, the difference between involvement and commitment is best explained in terms of a bacon and egg breakfast: the hen was involved, the pig committed. Over the course of the last twelve months I have definitely moved on from being the hen to the sacrificial pig in this equation! On the first of May there are local elections across Wales. I am most concerned with a small town called Pembroke, where my name will be on the ballot paper.