Tag Archives: lewisham deptford

Tam Langley

Opinion: Can pregnant women stand for Parliament?

By Tam Langley | Fri 3rd September 2010 - 2:23 pm

Standing in the crypt of St Mary’s Church Lewisham asking local Lib Dem members to select me as their parliamentary candidate last summer I did wonder if my very pregnant stomach would put them off. During the selection campaign only one had asked me how I was going to do it with a new baby. “With the help of my partner, several doting grandparents and how about you too?”, was my reply.

Having fought an election campaign while pregnant, then through the first eight months of my baby daughter’s life, I want to let other women thinking of doing the same know that it is possible. It even has some advantages provided you get the help you need to do it.

Why should other Lib Dem Voice readers care? Because as Dinti Batstone highlighted in her research for the party into the under-representation of women among our MPs, ‘too many experienced female candidates self-select out just as their male contemporaries are fighting winnable seats’. And the main reason for that is the perceived incompatibility of the task with family life.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 12 Comments
Helen Duffett

Joan Ruddock MP submits wholly notional expenses return

By Helen Duffett | Mon 26th July 2010 - 6:50 pm

Election expenses from the Joan Ruddock (Labour) campaign in Lewisham Deptford 2010
The Londonist reports that Joan Ruddock, the Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford, has taken the unusual step of submitting her election expenses return without attaching any invoices or receipts, instead listing all expenses as “notional”:

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Posted in Election law | Also tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
NewsHound

LibLink: Joan Ruddock isn’t telling the whole truth

By NewsHound | Sat 24th April 2010 - 2:20 pm

Here on The Voice, Mark Pack previously wrote about how Labour MP Joan Ruddock is claiming to have been more opposed to the Iraq war than she actually was. Now one of the Lib Dem local council candidates, Max Calo, has returned to the story on Comment is Free:

Questions have to be asked about what has moved Joan Ruddock to write a letter to voters trumpeting her record on the Iraq war. In a personally addressed letter to electors, she wrote:

“I have always acted with integrity and stuck to my principles – voting against the government going to war

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Joan Ruddock and the Iraq war: an unusual self-description

By Mark Pack | Sun 11th April 2010 - 7:50 pm

Joan Ruddock didn’t vote in four of the six key Parliamentary votes on going to war in Iraq used by the independent Public Whip website (which sorts and reformats the official Parliamentary voting records) to analyse MPs’ voting records on the war.

So how do you think Joan Ruddock describes this two-thirds absent record in a target letter to voters?

This is how:

I have always acted with integrity and stuck to my principles – voting against the government going to war in Iraq.

As local Liberal Democrat blogger Max puts it:

So, I don’t think she’s being straight at all by saying

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
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