We will be doing our best to take a Christmas break this year. We have all had a tough year, including the LDV team, so we need some down time.
We will be taking a festive break between 23 and 27 December.
Of course, there are things that may crop up that will inspire us to put digital pen to paper. After all, who knows what the situation will be with the Brexit trade deal?
If you are inspired to send us pieces, please do, and we will deal with them from 28th December. Mark Valladares would be delighted to come back to a full inbox.
To be honest, my plans for Christmas have not been changed at all, nor have they been affected by Scotland’s national lockdown. We continue to avoid as much human contact as possible until we can get vaccinated. I am fortunate though, to be able to spend it with people I love and a massive pile of unread books. And an even more massive pile of beautiful new Focus leaflets to deliver, so long as the guidance permits it.
My heart breaks for those who are stuck on their own when they didn’t want to be, who have been trapped by circumstance in the middle of a Tier 4 area or who can’t have the guests that they had hoped. Let’s all look after each other by picking up the phone and making sure our loved ones are ok.
Thankfully, this is happening at a time when it is relatively easy to stay connected online. We had our work Christmas party by Zoom on Friday night. Usually, we head to the utterly wonderful pub across the road from our office, drink and eat incredibly well and laugh until we drop. This year, the boss provided us all with gingerbread houses which we decorated together on Zoom. Believe me, I am terrible at this kind of thing, but it was fun. One of the highlights was my husband coming into the room and expressing surprise at how presentable mine looked. We also had takeaway vouchers so we all ordered the food of our choice. We ate and drank well and laughed till we dropped – just differently.
These moments of virtual connection will keep us going until we can all properly get together again. One of my highlights of this week was receiving a handmade card from a friend with a polaroid inside of a night out we’d had earlier in the year. I was mid health scare and the night before a worrying procedure, he distracted me from the stress by taking me to see Nina West, my favourite queen from the 2019 series of Ru Paul’s Drag Race. We had such a laugh then and the joy of that night came tumbling back when I opened the card.
But even in the most benign of circumstances, this isolation can be bloody awful at times. If you are feeling overwhelmed by it all, there is some useful advice on how to cope on this Healthier Scotland site. One of the things I have discovered is the restorative power of a walk in the sunshine, looking at the reflection of leaves in the reservoir across the road.
Whatever you are doing over the next week or so, I hope that you have a healthy and peaceful time.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Good news on political donations?
Conference booked
New chair of North Northamptonshire Council stands down over social media posts
Are Labour going to cross another red line?
Tristan Ward
Nick Baird
Tara Foster
Sarah
Simon McGrath
11 Comments
And Santa has brought us a small Present – a Poll showing us at 10%. Of course its only one Poll but we have been stuck in the range of 5-9% since late spring, the last 10% was in June.
I am not sure if we have seen the last Polls of 2020 yet, if we have then we will have to wait a Month to see if that 10% is just a blip or not.
Many thanks to you all. Have a good Christmas – take it as it comes and keep smiling!
Thanks, Caron. You, Mark and the team have done a superb job in keeping debate alive and letting us know what’s going on. Lib Dem Voice is a must read every morning. Bestest for the Season.
I am a new member to the Liberal Democrats who joined before the last election in the hopes that the party could be the middle ground of sanity between the Tories who are intent on wrecking the country and a Labour Party that was busy wrecking the Labour party.
I have to say that I was appalled that the Lib Dems ‘switched off’ for the first half of the year in order to give time before electing a new leader. In the meantime a pandemic raged and was badly managed by the government.
I do hope that the Lib Dems are not now going to ‘turn off’ for Xmas/New Year whilst a pandemic rages and the population begins to panic about real shortages of food and medicine. The nation is entering an appalling crisis period made worse by both the actions and lack thereof of this government. The Lib Dems should be front and centre, shouting LOUDLY that this is all unnecessary and wrong.
Politics is ultimately about caring for the nation. This is not a time for a happy holiday.
Can only echo Graham’s comments.
Make it a good time and thanks for all the LDV work.
Rory – Read Marks posts on Press Releases. HQ is doing its damnedest, but the media are only interested in the two other parties. I know from social media and emails that we’re making a lot of noise on the pandemic and have done for 9 months, but the main media aren’t interested.
Rory. We’ve made a lot of noise on the pandemic for 9 months, but the mainstream media are rarely interested.
The Government are clearly so concerned about the influence of LDV that they kept the talks on the trade deal with the EU going until today 🙂
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/24/uk-eu-agree-brexit-trade-deal-agreement
I hope that soon, once one of your distinguished columnists has had time to plough through the 2000 pages of the agreement, we can read a detailed dissection of it and what it will mean for the UK.
The Erasmus scheme has gone……… So sad.
David Raw 24th Dec ’20 – 5:26pm
The Erasmus scheme has gone…
SO PUT IT BACK
Try a trip to Canada, ask about winning and their views on the USA which may soon have some more states, thereby enfranchising Washington DC as Senator Harris promised in the VP debate with Mike Pence.