That was the title of my writing competition for local democracy week. Alexandra Park and Highgate Wood schools entered whole-heartedly into the whole spirit and submitted a huge amount of entries (and there were a few from other schools too).
I read every single one – and have to say that many, many of them were utterly brilliant. It was very heartening to see how much our children cared about poverty, pollution, homelessness, knife crime, drugs, poor children in Africa and of course – world peace above all
However, when it came to choosing a winner, I couldn’t help but be totally engaged by the entry from Roela who is at Alexandra Park School. Roela has written a beautiful and inspiring piece that really pulls your heartstrings. It tells of such a fundamental and essential thing as the need for people to have families who love and support them, and how more love in our society would mend many of its ills.
Roela will now come and shadow me for the day at Parliament. But I also am giving very high commendations to eight other entries – and want to say – what a very difficult time the high quality of the entries gave me. And to congratulate all who took part.
Lynne Featherstone 
A very thoughtful piece from Roela – and a reminder of how important this most fundmental aspect of life is.
Not sure if it is worrying or a good thing that such a young child is so vastly more aware of the real issues facing our society than most politicians (it’s both I suppose really). Some quite excellent points:
1. The recognition of how important all members of the family are and the awful consequences of family breakdown. This is an issue totally ignored by the government, and if anything they’re keen to deny decent fathers (and increasingly even sometimes mothers) access to their children.
2. A very matured and well-rounded view of the importance of children having a mother and a father (the attitude of many in the Labour party is that there is no ideal family unit and two parents are no better than one).
3. A recognition of the the main causes of teen pregnancies. This government has failed miserably in this area, and even opponents generally blame the benefits system when that is clearly a lesser problem compared to fatherlessness.
4. A recognition of the strong links between substance abuse and domestic violence, and fatherlessness resulting in violent children. Such links are largely ignored by the government and certainly by the domestic violence charities.
5. A recognition that family breakdown should be just as much a priority as the government’s pet issues such as climate change. That’s not to belittle such an issue, but quite frankly it won’t matter if the sea covers the whole country if there’ no recognisable society left and everyone’s life is hellish.
I would like to congratulate Lynne on choosing such a worthy winner. However, given she obviously agrees with such sentiments then it begs the question why does she never discuss such issues, either here on in Parliament?
I’m sure Roela would want to know an answer to that more than anyone, especially given that Lynne is supposedly responsible for BOTH equality and children’s issues.
Thank you all for your comments i really!! apreciate yes i am very VERY happy that i won i just did it as homework for english but when my form teacher anounced who won i was looking at a good friend of mine to win but when she said ROELA i was SHOCKED but at the same time proud to win and to know my work is apreshated thank you all and thank you Lynne featherstone for choosing me THANK YOU
Roela – you definitely deserved to win! Well done – and I look forward to you spending the day with me at Parliament soon. Lynne
I am intrigued by Lynne’s choice of this beautiful piece as the winner. It does not chime at all well with the Liberal Democrats’ low view of what are often described as ‘traditional family values’. I would be interested to hear from Lynne what she intends to do, as the party’s Equality spokesperson, to ensure that the Lib Dems give proper respect to the nuclear family unit, the need for which is so clearly expressed by Roela’s essay.
To be fair it’s not just about the nuclear family unit or traditional family values. The clear issue highlighted and proved by countless studies is that children need both parents. Ideally this should be as part of a traditional family unit, but lets be realistic – divorce happens, but that’s no reason to deny children access to their fathers (or even mothers in rare cases).
We need shared parenting introducing immediately, and about time the Lib Dems stopped messing around and were more vocal on the issue.
Thank you again for the comments but the reason i did this essay is to show how much pain there is in this WORLD,familys are dying of no love and care because of something that happend in there family but noone knowing about it but knowing about the credit crunch.You might have a family, you might be a mum or a dad.To lovely children but they wont understand why you argue so dont leave the children to pick up the pieces and im not talking in expirence but happening to people i love and care about so i think we should look at the love we show to our familys because it make a BIG problem after (maybe you should talk about this more in the parlient hehe)so thank you again and i cant wait to see you again lyyne featherstone and oh yh when is the pichure of me and you going to be in the newspaper (my family wants to know hehe)
Harm Man – try reading our policies – which are all about parental sharing. You clearly know nothing about our policy – and simply rant regardless.
I said you needed to be more vocal, not that you had the wrong policy.
A few Lib Dems are great on promoting the issue,but as a whole Id say it really isn’t given anything like the attention it deserves.
It’s all very well having sensible polices, but if people rarely speak about them, let alone explain their importance to the electorate then there really isn’t much point in having them.