Tag Archives: liberal youth scotland

Lib Dem Leadership: Farron and Lamb in diversity hustings

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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Opinion: Liberal Youth Scotland campaigns against SNP cuts to student bursary cuts and college places

Student finance. Mention those two words to most students and you’ll either get people moaning about the amount of forms they have to fill in, or excited about how rich they are at the beginning of the month.

However, at the end of the day, you have to pay it back. Unless you vote SNP. That was the message they gave graduates in 2007. Strangely enough, I still seem to have a student loan and quite a substantial amount of money to pay back. They knew they couldn’t afford it and scrapped the pledge in their first budget. It was a …

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Opinion: Back Liberal Youth Scotland’s campaign to end gay conversion therapies in the UK

This year Liberal Youth Scotland decided to choose an issue which is relatively unknown  or underestimated in British public life for one of its campaigns. Gay cure therapies (or to give them their proper name reparative therapies) are when a psychiatrist attempts to alter a patients sexuality. This can be incredibly damaging to the “patient” as many are either pressured by family members into accepting “treatment” or see it as a last resort. When it becomes obvious that no “cure” is possible many become depressed and even suicidal. Substance abuse, self harming, depression and homelessness are all far more prevalent …

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Vote up, share of vote up and up to 3rd place – good result for Team Christine in Aberdeen Donside

aberdeen donside hqChristine Jardine and her team delivered an excellent result for the Liberal Democrats in the Aberdeen Donside Scottish Parliament by-election. Bearing in mind that we had come 4th in the seat 2 years ago, many pundits thought we would lose our deposit and might even come behind UKIP. In the end, we leapfrogged the Tories to grab 3rd place, with a vote share up from 6% to 8.3%. All that on a fraction of the budget enjoyed by Labour and the SNP.

The seat was won by the SNP’s Mark …

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Liberal Youth Scotland’s new team for 2013

LYS 2013At their AGM in Dundee recently, Liberal Youth Scotland gave me the gift of eternal youth. Seriously. They actually changed their constitution to make me their first honorary life member. I always said they were a lovely bunch of people.

I was also their Returning Officer in their annual elections, which ended yesterday.  Their team for the year ahead, taking office next month, are as follows:

President: Jenny Marr and David Green

VP Communications: Daniel O’Malley

VP Campaigns: Joe Setch

Membership Secretary: Eilidh Dickson, she of the famous Puppet Show Incident

Executive Members: Bobbi White …

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Opinion: Ban barbaric, unnecessary snaring

One of Liberal Youth Scotland’s campaigns this year has concentrated on encouraging the Scottish Liberal Democrats to adopt a policy to ban snaring. We believe that this practice is barbaric, cruel, indiscriminate and unnecessary.

On Saturday 16th March, Scottish Liberal Democrat conference will debate an LYS motion calling for a ban on snaring. Scotland has led the way on this issue with the Scottish Government adopting new guidelines in 2008. However research undertaken by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) has shown that 85% of the public are in favour of an outright ban.

One Aberdeenshire Vet …

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Willie Rennie backs plans to give 16/17 year olds vote for Independence Referendum

One of the many good things, as I wrote last year, that Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore delivered in the Edinburgh Agreement was a provision to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in the referendum on independence. He was pleased to be able to persuade the Coalition Government to agree something which had long been Liberal Democrat policy. To be fair, it had also been SNP policy.

Yesterday, the SNP Government, whose responsibility it is to legislate for the referendum, introduced their Bill to extend the franchise to include 16 and 17 year olds. …

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LibLink…Stephen Williams MP: The time has come for votes at 16

On Saturday, Hannah Bettsworth and Jenny Marr of Liberal Youth Scotland encouraged us all to lobby our MPs to vote for a motion tabled by Liberal Democrat MP for Bristol West Stephen Williams calling for the voting age to be reduced at 16.

Stephen himself has now written a post on his own blog outlining why this issue is so important to him.

I have long believed that 16 year olds are mature enough to vote, if they want to. Years of experience of talking and listening to sixth form and college students has convinced me that enough of them have the

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Opinion: Lobby MPs on votes at 16 ahead of Commons debate this week

Liberal Youth Votes at 16 banner

Stephen Williams MP has recently brought forward a motion about extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds: this means that the House of Commons will debate the issue on 24th January. In 2005 his motion on the topic failed by just 8 votes. As such, it’s exceedingly important that as many MPs who support votes at 16 attend the debate and vote if possible.

Liberal Youth Scotland has been strongly pushing for votes at 16 for all referendums and elections this …

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Opinion: Liberal Youth Scotland campaigns for honest lets

Brace yourself — you’re about the hear the SNP getting some praise.

Are you sitting down? Good.

Over the summer, the SNP announced something that student groups like the NUS and groups such as Shelter and the CAB had been calling for a long time. They announced that they would issue a clarification on the illegality of any fees that tenants were being

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What’s on at Scottish Liberal Democrat conference this weekend?

This weekend, Scottish Liberal Democrats gather in Inverness for their annual conference. This is the second most important event to take place in the city this year, next to  my sister’s wedding in the Highland Capital on 8 April.

Every Council seat in Scotland is up for election in May so the Conference will be a good launch pad for the campaign. It’s also new leader Willie Rennie’s first Spring Conference speech, a chance for him to map out where he wants to take the party over the next year and remind us of how the small but strong Liberal Democrat …

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Liberal Youth Scotland’s Sophie Bridger to fight Inverclyde for the Liberal Democrats


Liberal Youth Scotland President Sophie Bridger has been selected as the Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate to fight the Inverclyde by-election, caused by the sad death of Labour MP David Cairns last month. The by-election takes place on 30th June.

Sophie, who’s 20, is studying Psychology at Glasgow University. Sophie has campaigned with Liberal Youth Scotland on issues such as equal marriage, a fair deal for students and increased powers for the Scottish parliament.

Sophie was a key member of Katy Gordon’s campaign team in Glasgow North last year and stood herself in Glasgow …

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Liberal Youth Scotland Launch Campaigns for 2010/11: From Ideas to Actions

Today in Edinburgh, Liberal Youth Scotland launched their campaigns for the following year: Freedom and Fairness, and Making Scotland Stronger.

LYS President Kristian Chapman said: “It’s been a painstaking process, taking the initial campaign ideas from the members through to these fully formed campaigns, but it’s very rewarding. I’m really looking forward to seeing these campaigns through, and continuing our fight for all young people across Scotland.”

Liberal Youth Scotland

With the General Election over and the new Liberal Democrat-Conservative Government firmly bedded in, LYS and the Scottish Liberal Democrats have …

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Opinion: the challenges facing Liberal Youth are not of policy, but of delivery

The following article is written by Martin Shapland who is a Candidate for Chair of Liberal Youth.

In an article on Wednesday, Richard Heinrich and Phil Jarvest – two of my competitors for the Chair of Liberal Youth – sought to open up a policy discussion about our Higher Education funding policy.

For the record I do fully support our current policy to abolish fees. I believe that education is the great driver of social change and individual liberty. I believe that widening access to quality education is fundamentally important, not just at higher education, but at Primary and …

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Recent Comments

  • Martin Gray
    A first rate speaker, & parliamentary performer.. What she says on Immigration & women's issues - does resonate with a considerable number of voters ......
  • Katharine Pindar
    No, Chris Moore, you are mistaken. (And will you please stop misspelling my name!) It is not certain that the social liberal wing of the party is dominant, tho...
  • David Le Grice
    @Chris Moore The title makes it clear that the author at least likes the idea of being centrist/moderate/in the middle. It is not unreasonable to casually ref...
  • Steve Trevethan
    Thank you for an interesting and timely article. Can a nation or an international organisation be truly/validly democratic when they are so cemented to Auste...
  • David Raw
    It could have been a lot worse, Cassie. They could have taken away the concession on red diesel (first introduced by Tom Williams in the Attlee Government in 19...