A parish notice from the team here at The Voice. Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a new person has recently joined the team in the LDV Towers – Iain Roberts.
Iain was elected a councillor earlier this year for Cheadle & Gately, in north west England. You can follow his local work as a councillor here, but he’s been active in the party for many years prior to this election. Indeed, back in 1992 he founded Hairnet, an email discussion list for the then Liberal Democrat Youth and Students (LDYS, the forerunner to Liberal Youth). That makes him one of the party’s internet pioneers – and quite possibly the creator of the party’s first national internet tool.
We’re particularly looking forward to Iain extending our coverage of local government which, after all, is where Liberal Democrats most often can make an impact on their communities and most often face the day to day challenge of turning beliefs and policies into decisions and actions.
Welcome to the team Iain.
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4 Comments
Iain’s a lovely bloke to boot, and a good advocate of free software, an issue where I wish the Lib Dems could match up to the Greens policy-wise…
Welcome to Iain, who will, I’m sure, turn out to be a very talented blogger.
The first national internet tool I was aware of was in the late eighties when there was a group of Lib Dem who used a bulletin board on what I think was called ‘telnet’ or something? I think it was based on an academic network of some kind and was accessed via a dial-up telephone connection and a very primitive modem. On screen it looked something like Ceefax.
I had access to it via the then Leicester councillor Bob Pritchard who was in contact with several other Lib Dem councillors round the country through it.
Welcome Iain – although the references to Hairnet are taking me back and making me feel old, Rob is sitting on the sofa feeling smug as apparantly you ran a competition to name it and he suggested Hairnet .
Dave–I’ll be working on a Pubs motion for Birmingham, but I do think the party needs to update its policy on such issues, d’you think you could get a motion drafted? Pretty sure I can get enough reps and LPs to back it if it’s all done? Neil–
Turn out to be? Already is, if you know where to look…