As I write, my friend and LDHQ Members and Supporters Manager Austin Rathe is heading off on a 26 mile run around London. It sounds so easy to write it like that, but it will be about 4.5 hours of real pain. As I said when I first wrote about his plan to run the marathon, we must be working him too hard if he thinks that a 26 mile run is something to do for a rest.

Let’s just remind ourselves why he’s doing it – for a very worthy cause:

Austin will be running to raise funds for Special Effect, a small charity which helps people with disabilities to enjoy playing video games. You can see some of the good work that they do in this video.

So, if you are suitably impressed by Austin’s effort, there are two things you can do to help him.

First and most importantly, sponsor him to raise money for Special Effect. He’s not far away from £1000. If everyone reading this could maybe give the price of even a coffee, that would make a big difference. I know we are all supposed to be giving all our money to the party at the moment, but we all still have enough left over for that cake to take to campaign HQ or the coffee to have afterwards. So if you could give up today’s snacking money for Austin, that would be brilliant.

And, second there’s an email going out around now from someone you might know encouraging you to make 20 calls to target seats. Here it is:

In a few minutes the party’s Head of Members and Supporters, Austin Rathe, is going to be crossing the start line of the London Marathon. He’s raising money for a charity that’s very close to his heart.

Now, taking even a few hours out of the campaign at this stage is difficult. If Austin wasn’t running today he’d be at work, trying to mobilise as many people as possible to help their nearest target seat.  He was obviously worried about taking even a few hours out from the campaign, but I told him not to worry, because we’ve got his back.

I want to see if we can get 500 people to commit to making just twenty phone calls from home this week before Austin finishes the marathon today.

I reckon it’ll take him about four and a half hours, so we don’t have long. Will you sign up to make twenty calls from home this week?

If we get 500 people to make just twenty calls, we’ll be reaching out to over 10,000 voters in target seats – and that will make a big difference. Even if you’ve never done it before, it couldn’t be easier – if you sign up now then one of our fantastic Team 2015 volunteers will be in touch with you. They’ll give you everything you need to start making calls to a target seat from home.

Austin isn’t going to be able to check in during the run, but he will be back at work afterwards, and it would be fantastic to finish the race and find out that we came though and got 500 people signed up.

I’m relying on you  so sign up now!

Thank you,

Caron Lindsay

Editor – Lib Dem Voice

There’s another not so noble reason I’d like you to sign up. Just how imagine how stupid I’ll look if nobody does – so if you could do so to spare me from humiliation, I’d be ever so grateful. Just fill in your information here and the amazing Team 2015 will do the rest.

Note that Austin intends to run 26 miles and then go to work. That deserves an hour of your time, surely?

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social