Tag Archives: diversity

Lindsay Northover

Baroness Lindsay Northover writes…As time goes by

By Lindsay Northover | Sun 6th March 2016 - 8:55 am

At the Spring conference we will debate a topic which has spanned my whole political lifetime.  We will be debating a motion on increasing the diversity among our future MPs.

In that election night in May 2015 we not only lost wonderful male MPs, we also lost all of our wonderful women MPs.

One of the things we must do as we rebuild our Party is to ensure that we have a more diverse group of MPs.  Like the other major parties in Britain.

I joined the SDP, new to politics, back in 1981.  I was excited by the new party, the realignment of politics – but especially its emphasis on women being as prominent in the party as men.  How could it not do so, with one leader being my beloved Shirley Williams?  Its equivalent of the Federal Executive was gender balanced – each region elected one man and one woman.  We were the first political party in the UK to insist that women must be included on parliamentary shortlists. I was selected from such a shortlist to fight Welwyn Hatfield in 1983 and 1987.  (The more winnable seats close by – Stevenage and St Albans – were of course fought by men.)

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David Buxton

Our failure to improve diversity has driven people away

By David Buxton | Fri 4th March 2016 - 9:26 am

Should I support the diversity motion at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in York next week? My initial reaction is, yes, this is right, but it will be a hard decision to support something that will probably hurt many within the party.

I suspect some will argue the motion is not legal. I remember at conference many years ago when an all women shortlist motion was debated and lost. I saw highly respected women speaking against the motion because they believed local party members should choose the right candidate based on skills and experience. It seems things haven’t changed and we are still a long way from being a truly diverse party.

On a personal level, I had very high hopes for a good friend who is black, a very experienced community campaigner and politician and a strong supporter of diverse communities. However he was not selected in spite of having lived in the area for some time. It is people like him who have the potential to be a future leader who are not being given a chance. They selected a candidate who barely knew the area.

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Tad Jones

More carrot, less stick in improving diversity

By Tad Jones | Wed 2nd March 2016 - 1:45 pm

I’m generally supportive of the diversity motion introducing all women shortlists (AWS) at the next federal conference in York, (this argument is particularly persuasive), but will AWS permanently solve the problem of our party being too male and pale? If the proposals are passed and are successful, we might look in the Westminster bubble like we have addressed the gender disparity, however, as a party that relies on its local activists and councillors we ought to embed this cultural change more broadly. As Mark Pack has pointed out, we don’t have enough women councillors, council candidates and local party officers (all about a third of total). And, as noted in one of the reports to conference, the percentage of female approved candidates is 27%.

The motion doesn’t address this except to say-

Conference acknowledges that: 

d) Proposals will be coming forward on wider party diversity, including in party structures and local government, as part of the Federal Executive-led Governance Review to the Autumn Federal Conference

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The Voice

Jo Swinson: Why I now back all women shortlists

By The Voice | Sun 28th February 2016 - 1:18 pm

12496325_10207909151261642_614223791405517749_oBelow are the two speeches Jo Swinson made to Scottish Conference yesterday. The Diversity Debate took place in two halves. The first was on a constitutional amendment which would allow the Scottish Party to implement arrangements on gender balance which had been approved by conference. One amendment to that was submitted, and supported by the movers, changing gender balance to the much wider “diversity”. The risk of such an approach was that a 2/3 majority was needed for it to pass, but the working group had been advised that a constitutional amendment was vital to enable any new arrangements to be implemented.

It’s worth pointing out that in the intervening period, Jo has done so much to encourage and support women candidates, running training events and supporting so many as they embarked on selection campaigns.

Here is her speech proposing the constitutional amendment:

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Jonan Boto

What is at stake: A photo of a young boy and the US President

By Jonan Boto | Wed 24th February 2016 - 9:34 am

Obama hand

Clark Reynolds, 3 years old, greeted by President Obama, Feb 18 2016 at the White House. (Pete Souza/Washington Post)

We have been struggling with the representation issue for years. Our party leaders strongly believe in broadening the look and feel of our MPs. Our members instinctively seek parity between men, women and other backgrounds: a desire to open up opportunity should be in our blood. But we aren’t quite sure how to achieve that and so far, as Josh Dixon sets out, our success has not been much to write home about. The Elect Diverse MPs motion to be debated at Spring Conference gives us a critical chance to retake the initiative.

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Henry Foulds

We need a Lib Dem role model for disabled people

By Henry Foulds | Thu 18th February 2016 - 1:25 pm

 

A couple of days ago, I found myself in quite an unusual situation. As a candidate for May’s local elections, I was campaigning in my ward’s town centre when someone flung their arms around me and gave me a great hug.

She told me she’d been watching me and was gobsmacked to see me doing what I was doing. As a visually impaired candidate, people are frequently a bit shocked to see me knocking on their doors. But this was different. She introduced me to her five-year-old daughter, who had just started learning how to use a white cane.

We had a lovely chat. The girl told me her cane was named Dora, after Dora the Explorer, and I explained that my cane had an orange handle, because that’s my favourite colour.

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Caron Lindsay

Do you have questions about the Electing Diverse MPs motion?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 14th February 2016 - 6:00 pm

100% of LD MPs are white menThere’s been a lot of discussion online about the Electing Diverse MPs motion that’s coming to Federal Conference in just four weeks’ time.

A lot of the discussion has centred on All Women Shortlists – but the motion is about so much more than that.

Its supporters have set up a Facebook page to answer any questions people have about the proposal in the motion and to make the case for its acceptance. Already over 200 people are taking part.

Here’s a flavour of the issues being discussed:

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS THIS MOTION IS TRYING TO SOLVE?

– SUPPLY: we don’t have enough approved candidates full-stop, let alone from underrepresented groups. So we want to set up a Task Force to co-ordinate efforts to pro-actively recruit more.

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Sal Brinton

Baroness Sal Brinton writes…Electing diverse MPs

By Sal Brinton | Sun 7th February 2016 - 11:20 am

One of the most shocking events of the 2015 General Election night was the loss of our top held and target seats with women and BAME candidates, which resulted in an entirely pale and male parliamentary party. Members were rightly upset by this, and there has been much discussion about what steps the party needs to take to ensure that in 2020 and beyond our party looks like the countries and communities we represent. Top seats are already beginning the process of selecting Westminster candidates for 2020. We can’t afford to delay any arrangement, hence the motion coming to York Conference.

Under our current constitution, these arrangements are the responsibility of the three state parties. We hope members will let their state party officers know their views as well as responding to the Federal consultation and debate in York.

In the governance consultation response last autumn the Federal Executive received many comments and proposals saying that ‘something must be done – doing nothing is not an option’. In fact it was one of the top topics members wrote in about. FE and the Joint States Candidates Committee has investigated possible options, and the resulting motion that will be debated at York Spring Conference sets out a wide range of proposals, including limited application of All Women Shortlists (AWS). We know members have divided views on the issue of AWS, but it is important that the debate before and at conference is much broader, because it includes support for other under-represented groups. Indeed, not every member of FE supports all the details in the motion, but there was broad acceptance that it was right for members to debate and vote on this. You can see the full motion here.

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The Voice

Willie Rennie: Why I need you to back me on diversity

By The Voice | Thu 4th February 2016 - 4:47 pm

Willie Rennie has made clear that he wants to see a more diverse team of parliamentarians elected at all levels over the next 5 years. Today, he has emailed Scottish Party members to set out the case for them to back his plans at Scottish Party Conference in three weeks’ time.

His email is copied below:

In periods of adversity organisations have opportunities to renew, refresh and reorganise to prepare for future successes. For the Scottish Liberal Democrats that opportunity is to build a team of candidates in winnable seats that is more reflective of society.

It cannot be a mark of a system of equality and opportunity that only five of the thirty six new parliamentarians in the last twenty years were women. Yet that is what our current system has produced and I am determined to change it.

Our conference in Edinburgh later this month will have a choice. We can try, yet again, to achieve more balance amongst our future parliamentarians with the same system that has delivered white, male dominated parliamentary groups since the war (No, I’m wrong. It’s forever).

Or we can back the proposals that I have developed with a group of wise and experienced campaigners. These campaigners were sceptical but have now developed a package that will get results. Sheila Ritchie, Sophie Bridger, Fred Macintosh and Jo Swinson were all against such action in the past. In fact many spoke up at conferences against such measures. The motion we will debate has been crafted by them and has their endorsement.

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Caron Lindsay

Tim Farron talks Wogan, refugees, EU and diversity on Murnaghan

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 31st January 2016 - 2:58 pm

Tim Farron was on Sky News Murnaghan this morning. It was quite refreshing to hear him introduced as “leading the charge” on the refugee crisis. It is actually blindingly obvious that we have been, but it’s not so often acknowledged.

The Murnaghan programme provides very helpful transcripts of their interviews, for which I am very grateful.

Terry Wogan

He was interviewed only an hour or so after the news that Terry Wogan had died and was asked for his reaction:

I am genuinely very, very upset. He formed an enormous part of my childhood, interviewing all sorts of people on his TV show but also the radio programmes, he was a peculiar and unique individual who appeals both to me – somebody who is obsessed with pop music – and my grandparents at the same time and I think that was his great strength, he spoke without arrogance or pomposity and he was a kind of warm and genuine figure in your living room and around the breakfast table and we’ll all very much miss him.

Refugee crisis

On refugees, he was asked if we should avoid creating a “pull factor:. He was clear that the way to do this was by creating safe and legal routes for refugees.

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Lindsay Northover

Baroness Lindsay Northover writes…Our MPs must include women as well as men

By Lindsay Northover | Sun 17th January 2016 - 8:57 am

We are an internationalist party.  We believe in human rights.  Our constitution commits us to equality, as well as liberty and community.

So how can it be that we, the Lib Dems of all parties, have absolutely no women MPs?  Zero.  0.0%.

Round the world, countries and parties have addressed the paucity of women in elected positions. Our sister parties have done so. We have a history of trying to do so – but trying is not the same as succeeding.  That must change now. I am extremely glad that our Party President, Sal Brinton, and our party leader, Tim Farron, are making clear that change must happen.

The SDP and then the Lib Dems led with affirmative action until the late 1990s.  Then Labour sailed past us with women-only shortlists.  They transformed their party – and the UK Parliament. Now their Commons party is 44% women.  Even the Conservatives are almost 21%.

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Joe Richards

Let’s all make conference more financially diverse.

By Joe Richards | Wed 23rd December 2015 - 12:30 pm

Tackling inequality is one of my greatest passions, it quite literally gets me out of bed in the morning.

It’s also quite well established now that the more representative decisions making bodies are, the more all of us benefit, no matter if we belong to an underrepresented group or not. The past decade has been a historical time in politics for minorities and activist groups have many proud achievements to celebrate in the name of diversity (yet of course, we still have so very far to go), but there’s one spectrum of diversity that’s not doing so well lately, and we don’t really appear to be tackling it head on, and that’s financial diversity.

Politics favours the rich. Not just because we aren’t doing enough to create a more fair society, but because Parliament is the most unrepresentative forum you could imagine, and by design: unless you’ve got a spare £34k knocking about, as Isabel Hardman estimated in the Spectator last year, you’d better be prepared to work 50 hours a week and volunteer maybe 20 on top of that if you want a chance of ever standing as a parliamentary candidate.

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Zack Polanski

We need to make internal selections affordable for all

By Zack Polanski | Mon 19th October 2015 - 11:55 am

What makes a great candidate? It can be an incredibly demanding job and I imagine it’s lots of things. A strong ability to communicate, to listen, to represent people effectively. To demonstrate generous leadership, to inspire and to continually learn. These are all what I’d consider the headlines.

What about fundraising? It’s certainly vital – but I’d argue that not only is it not the single *biggest* priority.  It’s certainly not more important than the above qualities. It’s one of the skills that can most often be generated truly as a team effort whilst potentially being most successful when lead by the candidate themselves.

I learnt so much during the recent GLA London List Election. As a first timer I was clearly delighted with the result and I loved the opportunity to speak to literally thousands of members. Having phone canvassed for lots of candidates as part of the Team 2015 efforts in the General Election, it was a really interesting next step to be phoning and listening to people’s concerns as the potential candidate myself.

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Daniel Laycock

How can we support candidates who can’t afford to stand for office?

By Daniel Laycock | Wed 2nd September 2015 - 12:55 pm

With the #LibDemFightback still continuing after the announcement of our new Leader and by-elections happening almost every week across the country and the party making net gains, campaigners are now planning for next year’s local elections up and down the country. We may be under 5 years away from 2020, with a new vision and a path for the party to be decided, but what about candidates who want to stand for election but can’t  because they can’t afford to?

I write in response to last week’s article by Mark Argent regarding the financial exclusion of candidates. I thought about standing in the last election, but I didn’t feel it was the right time and I thought I didn’t have the finances I would need. There may be many prospective candidates wishing to stand for parliamentary seats, but feel they could not because they couldn’t afford to run a campaign for several months.

We as a party do need to look at the wider members within the party, especially the 17,000+ new members who could potentially be the next parliamentary candidate for their constituency. But what if they couldn’t financially contribute to the campaign? How should the party help them?

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Jo Swinson MP

Jo Swinson writes…Dissolution honours make the contribution of women look invisible

By Jo Swinson MP | Thu 27th August 2015 - 5:20 pm

Congratulations to all of the new Liberal Democrat Peers announced today.  They will strengthen our existing excellent team in the Lords, fighting for a democratically elected second chamber while in the meantime using their power to provide a check on the government and its worrying assaults on the poor, on our civil liberties, and on the environment.

It’s also good to see recognition for those in our party who have served our communities and our country so well – Sir Vince Cable, Dame Annette Brooke, Ben Williams OBE and others.

What is depressing and wearily familiar, however, is the missing women.

But surely our Lords list is balanced?  5 out of the 11 nominations (45%) for the peerage go to women, which is progress I suppose – of the 40 people nominated to the Lords under Nick Clegg’s leadership, just 17 (43%) were women.

And 45% women wouldn’t be so bad if the existing Lords group was well-balanced, but of our 101 Peers, just 35% are women – so we’re still far from equality.

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Mark Argent

Candidates and financial exclusion

By Mark Argent | Thu 27th August 2015 - 11:53 am

I’ve seen a number of comments recently about the financial cost of being a candidate. That is particularly sharp with people standing for parliament, but not limited to them.

As a party, we try to take diversity seriously. This is about justice and Liberal Democrat values. It’s pragmatic, in that we’re all diminished if we casually discard the talents of people from disadvantaged groups. There is also a bigger challenge: the changes we push for in society have to be made within the party and in our choice of candidates. Addressing problems this creates may not be easy, but is a first step to bringing change more widely. Addressing any problems this creates also helps us find ways to address barriers to change more widely.

One of the knotty points is around wealth.

The targeting of seats is unavoidable under our present electoral system, so there is no way round the fact that a high proportion of party’s resources has to be directed to winnable seats.

Away from target seats, the financial situation on candidates can be really difficult, especially when local parties are small and have limited resources. Yet it is also important to fight these seats, both to build up the party where it is presently less strong, and to be serious about being a potential party of government. I’ve seen guidance that potential candidates should not be asked what they can contribute financially to their campaign, as this discriminates against the less wealthy. But most parliamentary candidates work very hard in an election campaign and the pressure to end up putting more personal resources into the campaign can be intense — even if that pressure begins with them rather than anyone else. Anecdotes include someone saying they hoped there wouldn’t be another election soon as they had been self-funding and were more-or-less wiped out, and an agent asking the candidate to provide the deposit two days before the nomination form was to go in as if this was a perfectly reasonable request (and failing to register for their regional party’s deposit guarantee scheme).

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Caron Lindsay

Two appalling examples of lack of diversity in our public services

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 7th August 2015 - 3:55 pm

Before anyone mentions it, yes, I do know that the Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary gender balance is horrendous everywhere except Wales and Europe,the latter being because we only have one MEP. Stuff must be done to resolve this, but that’s not the point of this post.

This week, two examples of lack of diversity in our public services have come to light. The first has been revealed by the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Only 1% of Scotland’s Police Officers identify as coming from a BAME background – and none make it to the highest grades in the force.

Figures obtained using freedom of information laws found that – despite 7.6 percent of Scotland’s population being BAME – there are no BAME officers in the top two ranks and only two across the top four ranks held by the 446 most senior officers in Scotland.

In total, there are only 175 BAME officers out of a total 17,515 police officers.

Figures for police staff showed that there are no BAME in the top five grades, and only 69 out of 5963 staff overall.

Commenting, Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Alison McInnes MSP said:

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Dominic Mathon

New access fund for London candidates – how you can help

By Dominic Mathon | Thu 6th August 2015 - 8:55 am

We all know standing as a candidate involves huge personal and financial sacrifices. I’m always grateful to everyone who puts themselves forward – whether as a “paper” candidate flying the flag for the party, or even as a target seat candidate dedicating all hours of the day to the party.

For next year’s elections in London we will shortly be selecting our Mayoral candidate and 25 candidates for the London Assembly. Those candidates’ ability to lead and motivate our activists and to promote our messages is going to be critical to our performance at these elections. And the high profile London elections are an early opportunity to show the Lib Dem fightback in action.

But it is also critical that our field of candidates reflects the diversity of London in all its aspects.

We know our ability to communicate with all Londoners will be strengthened by presenting a field of candidates who reflect the city’s diversity. But we also understand the costs and sacrifices involved in attending hustings, community events, and local party campaign days.

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Zack Polanski

Opinion: Getting diverse in the arts

By Zack Polanski | Thu 2nd July 2015 - 3:15 pm

Last month, I was invited by my friend Danny Lee  Wynter to an event he had organised at the National Theatre called Act for Change. It’s a movement that was set up in response to a TV Advert in 2014 which trailed the upcoming season of TV but failed to feature a single BAME performer or disabled artist. AfC campaigns on a platform that the arts are for everyone, regardless of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, age or disability, and they should reflect the societies we live in. Sound familiar to problems in any other places of work?

The event at the National was wonderful, eye opening and angry all in different measures. Chaired by Shami Chakrabati with a host of interesting voices on the panel including the actor Adrian Lester who told a wonderful story about his daughter commenting on the lack of diversity among Hobbits whilst they watched together the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He tried to reason with her until she pointed out an exact passage in Tolkein’s books in which the hobbits are described as being dark skinned which had just been ignored in the casting process.

I think Phyllida Lloyd summed the situation up best in the event when she answered a question by saying:

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Jade O'Neil

Lib Dem Leadership: Farron and Lamb in diversity hustings

By Jade O'Neil | Wed 1st July 2015 - 3:00 pm

Diversity Hustings GlasgowIn a normal election, hustings can be a great place to spot key differences between candidates and find where they stand on various areas of policy. Internally, however, there’s often a lot of overlap between the candidates’ values and hustings can become a little ‘same old, same old’. For this reason, Scottish Lib Dem Women teamed up with Ethnic Minorities Liberal Democrats, Liberal Youth Scotland, and LGBT+ to organise an event in Scotland that wasn’t about policy but was about one specific area instead: diversity, both within and outwith the party.

This is a topic seen far too often as a fringe issue or a minor problem, so it was great to have a full two-hour discussion that allowed us to touch on a great number of areas under the umbrella of diversity. There was a lot of interest in the event so we streamed it online and also took questions through Google Hangouts, Facebook, and Twitter.

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Daisy Cooper MP

Daisy Cooper writes… Building a diverse party: my challenge to leadership candidates

By Daisy Cooper MP | Sun 17th May 2015 - 8:54 am

Last year, I ran for Party President on a platform of party reform, with a focus on diversity. Now that all eight of our remaining MPs are white, middle-aged, middle class men, that reform agenda is even more important than before.

I’m asking both declared leadership candidates – Tim Farron and Norman Lamb – whether and to what extent they will commit to these achievable measures.

1. Will you promise to take a zero tolerance approach to inappropriate behaviour, insisting that all elected representatives and everyone in your team has a “responsibility to act” on any and all anecdotal and substantive evidence that reaches them?

2. Will you promise to appoint at least one recognised senior Disability Activist, as a spokesperson for the party (possibly as a Peer)? This person may well be required to speak out against Tory cuts that could impact disproportionately on disabled people.

3. Will you promise to support a motion to Conference to ring-fence money to support the election of at least one BAME candidate to Parliament in 2020, or similar ideas towards the same goal?

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Lester Holloway

Opinion: An embarrassing lack of diversity

By Lester Holloway | Thu 9th October 2014 - 4:52 pm

The lack of Black and Asian members at federal conference was depressing and embarrassing.

Glasgow was the most racially undiverse Lib Dem conference since I joined in 2006. Every TV scan of the audience showed a sea of white faces, even for equality debates. The day I went was no different.

The message it sent Britain was that we are not a party that reflects modern multicultural society, and therefore probably don’t care much for it.

To add insult, the Federal Executive (FE) proposed committee quotas for women while ignoring BAME and other under-represented groups.

Under this system the three BAME men would all have lost their places to, in all probability, white women. The only ethnic minority left would be Pauline Pearce on Federal Conference Committee (FCC).

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Caron Lindsay

The big difference between what Olly Grender said and what the Mirror said she said

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 4th October 2014 - 10:00 am

The Mirror ran a big splash yesterday saying that Liberal Democrat peer Olly Grender was complaining that her House of Lords allowance is insufficient. “We struggle to get by on £300 per day tax free allowance” screams the headline.

If you actually look at the substance of the story, there is absolutely nothing to substantiate  that total misrepresentation of what she was saying. They even run a little poll asking if you could get by on £300 tax free.

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Stuart Bonar

Opinion: Kippers’ squeals show we are a more liberal country

By Stuart Bonar | Tue 19th August 2014 - 4:25 pm

UKIP logoPoor judgment: that’s the reason UKIP MEP Janice Atkinson has given for referring to a Thai-born supporter as “ting tong from somewhere”. I was “completely tired out”: that’s how Farage explained his statement during the European election campaign that he’d be concerned if Romanians moved in next door. Excuses, excuses.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever consider whether or not to use a racial epithet. I don’t think to myself, on balance I judge it right to refer to that person as …

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Jess Key

Cambridge Liberal Democrat Sarah Brown up for a National Diversity Award

By Jess Key | Mon 26th May 2014 - 8:44 am

Sarah_Brown_(politician)Voting is currently underway for the National Diversity Awards 2014. These annual awards, whose headline sponsors are Microsoft and The Guardian, are a celebration of those in the UK who have shown an outstanding devotion to enhancing equality, diversity and inclusion.

This year I nominated fellow Lib Dem Sarah Brown for the LGBT Positive Role Model Award. Sarah has just ended a term as a Cambridge City Councillor and headed up their leisure and community services as the councillor in charge. She was one of the only openly trans elected …

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Caron Lindsay

Farron calls for better sex education to protect children from inappropriate material

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 11th January 2014 - 6:46 pm

It’s not often these days that the comments underneath a newspaper’s online article are supportive of the Liberal Democrats. However, virtually every commenter in this Independent article backed the party’s stand on filters which are aimed at restricting access to content deemed in appropriate for children but in reality block a great deal more. Since they were activated, we’ve reported that they’ve blocked access to the LGBT+ Lib  Dems’ section of the Liberal Democrats’ website and the site of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow.

Tim Farron’s and Julian Huppert’s motion to Spring Conference on a Digital Bill of …

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Caron Lindsay

Porn filters block cathedral website, including invite to crib service

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 27th December 2013 - 2:28 pm

Since BT activated its porn filters, we’ve seen many examples of perfectly acceptable sites being blocked. Alisdair Calder McGregor reported last week that the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats site, hardly a den of debauchery, had fallen victim to BT’s algorithims.

The latest, and best example to date in my view is the blocking of Glasgow’s St Mary’s Cathedral website and the personal blog of its Provost, the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, as he told us on Twitter.

…

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Alisdair Calder McGregor

Porn blocking comes in… and blocks the LGBT+LD website as porn

By Alisdair Calder McGregor | Fri 20th December 2013 - 1:46 pm

As many readers will remember, during the debate on motion F17 at Autumn Conference many speeches were made by technically inclined LibDem members describing how the proposed porn blocks would not work, and in particular would misclassify and block legitimate websites as containing pornographic content.

Just in case we needed confirmation that we were right, TalkTalk have provided it… by classifying the LGBT+LD portion of the party website as porn. In addition, the website of LGBT charity “London Friend” has been blocked. These are not isolated incidents. Wired has a more in-depth …

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Ruth Bright

Opinion: Clegg’s big fat gypsy blunder

By Ruth Bright | Fri 15th November 2013 - 11:50 am

Once a week I stay with a relative in South London. I am not talking here about Nick Clegg’s South London (a Putney, Wimbledon or Clapham) but about a very different South London – the border between Camberwell and Peckham. The Guardian-reading euphemism would be that Camberwell and Peckham are “vibrant and diverse” places. The upshot of some of that diversity is that at all times of the night people hang around chatting in the street, especially in the summer. In a ground floor flat late at night it sometimes feels a bit intimidating. I have never talked about this …

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NewsHound

Candidate news for those with disabilities

By NewsHound | Fri 19th April 2013 - 9:22 am

As some of our readers may already be aware, the Government has set up the Access to Elected Office Fund, as part of its Access to Elected Office Strategy, to help pay the disability-related costs that disabled people standing for elected office might face. The fund is open to all disabled people who wish to be selected as a candidate in an election, or who have already been selected and are standing in an election.

Candidates may apply for money from the fund to meet the costs of disability-related support needed to stand for elected office, e.g. costs related to …

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