Author Archives: Tom Wood

Opinion: The Government should act decisively on unpaid internships

By Tom Wood | Fri 8th June 2012 - 3:23 pm

Last week Alan Milburn’s report Fair Access to Professional Careers was published, with some particularly interesting points about internships. But what’s important on this issue isn’t that he reached the inevitable conclusion that a system – based on who you know, not what you know, and requires people to work essentially full time jobs without being paid – is a bad thing shouldn’t surprise anyone, and the campaign group Intern Aware has been making these points for over a year. What’s important is how the Government responds: with tepid agreement, or decisive action.

The Government has shouted from the …

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Posted in News | 6 Comments

Liberal Youth : Reporting Back From Feltham

By Tom Wood | Thu 5th January 2012 - 3:53 pm

In recent years the festive season seems more likely to bring a byelection than it does a white Christmas. With Christmas shopping, horrible weather, and the prospect of a few short days where politics stands still, Liberal Democrat activists could be forgiven for not prioritising a byelection in the safe Labour seat of Feltham and Heston.

With the writ moved for before Christmas, and the Eurozone crisis boosting UKIP’s support, the local party and campaign team, led by Dan Purchese, had a fight on their hands. In an election where we needed to at least retain our deposit, we needed …

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Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | 4 Comments

Opinion: Why Liberal Youth is worth funding

By Tom Wood | Fri 25th November 2011 - 4:53 pm

On Saturday morning the English Council will debate their budget for the year ahead which, for the first time in at least ten years, will not include a rebate for Liberal Youth membership.
 
The English party is the Youth party’s single largest source of funding. Immediately cutting off this funding with such short notice will leave our organisations unable to meet its most basic operating costs and permanently cripple our youth party.
 
I know, like everyone else, these are tough times financially for our party; however Liberal Youth performs a vital role for young people and for the party

…

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , , , and | 16 Comments

Opinion: ‘Activate’ – Liberal Youth’s annual renewal

By Tom Wood | Thu 7th July 2011 - 6:52 pm

This weekend was Liberal Youth’s Activate event which, as the new chair of Liberal Youth, meant a weekend of hard work and no sleep; but one stuffed full of inspiration.

Although on paper Activate is our simply our annual training event for young Lib Dems in actuality it’s much more than that.

I see Activate as the annual renewal of our movement, firstly because it’s when our newly elected executive will meet face-to-face and begin setting priorities for the year ahead, and secondly (and most importantly) because this is when we welcome all our newly recruited members to the organisation and give them the skills to become real activists for the party.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 5 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Youth promote intergenerational fairness for Bank Shares

By Tom Wood | Thu 23rd June 2011 - 3:52 pm

Nick Clegg’s innovative proposal to give the public shares in Lloyds and RBS is enthusiastically welcomed by Liberal Youth: but we believe that these reforms can go even further. Young people are bearing the brunt of the recession caused by the banks both in a lack of jobs and lost funding for education, and because it is the next generation that will be paying off the government’s debt for years to come. It is only right the government should give something back to them.

While Nick’s proposal represents exactly the kind of fairness that Liberal Democrats seek to bring to …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 22 Comments
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  • David Evans
    It's an interesting article, which gives us more to think about, but when it ends with "Government and politics can strive toward this platform ... giving ind...
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    This one of a series of articles recently published in the Liberal Democrat Voice that defines our social liberal values . Frequently the hot house of Westminst...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    This is the right problem to be working on, and I think the answer may be less about the words than about the moments. In my experience people learn what we sta...
  • Simon Robinson
    It's good to have an MP putting herself forward for this. The manifesto seems a bit vague though. All good thoughts and nothing you can really disagree with, b...
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    I am sure Alan will have the sympathies of all of us. The situation is sad and frustrating. Forgive me for making one small point, Alan: you said that 40 Ho...