Category Archives: Blog

Would a youth civic service fix Britain's teenagers?

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Here’s my speech to a meeting organised by Demos and the Private Equity Foundation at the Lib Dem Bournemouth conference:

Well – we are in the process of producing a youth policy paper for the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference next year.

Youth policy is a well-travelled area: there isn’t exactly a shortage of groups coming up with ideas, many of which are awfully similar to each other.

It’s a real challenge for a party to come up with a policy that is more than warmed-over “me too” comments, echoing what everyone else in the area of youth policy says. Everyone nods in agreement – and nothing changes.

And our thinking is that there is a role for a national civic service scheme – and this debate today is very timely. So for this policy paper we’re looking at taking a bundle of existing areas and bringing them together with a new policy idea – that of the “universal gap year” – a gap year for everyone, not just some lucky university-bound people.

W see it as a possible extra step to beating three challenges.

First, the challenge of raising some young people’s aspirations and widening their horizons – not just their views of the world around them but the sorts of people they mix with.

We are living in a more and more divided society. If you are born poor – you will almost certainly die poor – and in some parts of London young people never even get out of their post code.

Sometimes the difference in horizons can be frightening. For many kids, Starbucks is just another place on the high street – somewhere they think nothing of popping in to – if it isn’t too un-cool for them, that is.

But only recently I met someone who was mentoring a young kid, who for a year was too frightened to go out of his home because of threats from the gang he used to be in. When – finally, after three murders – the gang was broken up, his mentor offered him a trip anywhere in London – and the kid picked as his treat a visit to the local Starbucks. That was the horizon to which his imagination and desire and aspiration extended.

The second challenge is that of giving people a sense of self-worth – and one that isn’t measured in knives or tags or gangs. For those lucky enough to go on a gap year – the volunteering opportunities so often help build exactly that – self worth. But tragically – those opportunities are frequently unavailable to those most in need of them.

The third challenge is that of providing young people with the right sense of self-sufficiency – and an understanding of what is, and isn’t, acceptable behaviour.

That is the lesson we should learn from the armed forces – not the clichés about national service, but the way in which they force people
to learn how to cope with situations, to keep their cool and their judgement, to sort themselves out – and to learn the practical skills to get by day by day.

Indeed two of my favourite boyfriends from the past served in the forces and so learnt the cooking, the sewing, the ironing and the washing skills – they have left their mothers and it’s bliss.

Well, nearly bliss – they had other problems too, given I’m not married to either of them!

And so the idea of a universal gap year – most likely not a year, but of varying length – to mix everyone up, take them out of the comfort zone with their peers, learn life’s skills and learn about themselves.

It raises a myriad of questions about scope and resources – but that’s the way the thinking is going. A polished version will be produced for Spring – so now is the time to speak up with your views and suggestions.

Equality in a cold climate

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Here’s my speech to the Stonewall/DELGA fringe meeting at the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth:

When we talk about gay rights in a cold climate – a chill wind is blowing. And I suspect that the temperature is in danger of dropping sharply –in terms of what will happen to the funding both in terms of outreach, support and gay health

LGBT organisations rely on three main sources of income:

– government grants
– private donations
– corporate sponsorship

I don’t have to tell people in the room who are involving in local Government about the bleak funding future ahead of us. As basic services get squeezed the axe will most certainly turn to external funding where cuts will not be so immediately felt.

If you stop collecting rubbish people notice pretty quickly, but this is not the case when it comes LGBT support groups.

Private individuals have inevitably become less generous as household finances become shakier. Even the pink purse isn’t recession proof.

And as companies’ profit margins have evaporated, so does their benevolence.

So what can we do about it?

It is a point I make time and time again – you must spend to save.

A difficult argument when the economy is in dire straits, but now more than ever should this case be made.

Where any of us have a seat at a table where financial decisions are made we must make the case for continued funding. We must make the case for well-targeted projects that support the gay community.

Providing condoms and lube in every gay pub, club and sauna makes HIV/AIDS less likely to be spread.

Spending money to promote clear public sexual health messages saves money on treatment.

Creating safe places for confused teenagers to come to terms with his or her sexuality makes for productive and well-adjusted adults.

I salute the work Stonewall has done in making sexuality an issue of good business. Going out there and making the business case for companies to take the issues of gay people seriously and also dealing with business perceptions.

But further afield one real protection against any roll back to gay rights is by enshrining them in law.

As the Equality Bill currently wends it’s way through Parliament, as Liberal Democrats I sometime feel we have been a bit of a lone voice in arguing for what I believe is full LGBT equality.

I won’t bore you with commentary on the whole 205 clauses, but there have been two main bones of contention, transgender issues and second class treatment of gay discrimination rights.

The transgender community continues to be ostracised. Even some parts of the gay community can be a bit snooty about transgender issues.

Maybe this is partly this is because some gay people see their issues been unfairly lumped into one basket, but sometimes I wonder if there is simply lack of empathy.

The Government, however, displayed complete ignorance of transgender issues. They showed relentless and ill-informed determination to keep as one of the protected strands ‘gender reassignment.

They seemingly did not understand or even wish to understand the complexities of the range of the spectrum of gender identity.

They had no awareness that many, many trans people never change sex nor even ultimately pass for the other gender nor even go on that journey nor that some people are just intersex in some form and that those who have gender identity issues will experience discrimination and need protection because they don’t fit gender stereotypes at all.

The current case of 800 metres world champion, Caster Semanya of South Africa highlights just one of the complexities. But the Government completely refused to change the title of that protected characteristic to ‘gender identity’ thereby leaving swathes of people unprotected by the soon to be new laws.

The second point, one that I know I don’t share with Stonewall – and I know this because I questioned Ben when he gave Evidence to the bill committee and he told me so! – is to do with what I call the second class treatment of gay protection.

I think lots of gay people would be surprised to learn that harassing a pupil because of their sexuality is not explicitly outlawed in schools. And just so we understand – harassment in this context means intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive behaviour.

It is rightly explicitly illegal to harass a pupil because of their race, their gender or if they have a disability, but it is not explicitly illegal to harass a pupil because of his or her sexuality.

Direct discrimination is banned and it is thought this will give sufficient protection, but for me a question mark remains as why you wouldn’t put something as important as this in big letters on the face of the Bill – young gay people should not bullied in school. End of!

There should not be a hierarchy between different types of discrimination and we shouldn’t want to slip gay rights in the Bill through the backdoor, no pun intended.

I’ve lost a few skirmishes on these issues in Parliament, but the battle is not over until the fat lady sings, more correctly until Her Majesty gives royal assent.

Then we come to blood.

If any of you were here last year you may remember that I raised the issue of the blanket ban on gay men giving blood and that this as an issue that we needed to campaign on. I am delighted to say that Stonewall changed its position to support our view which is that individuals should be banned according to their actual behaviour, not according to crude categories.

Currently there would be a lifetime ban on a gay man who had had protected sex once. There is no equivalent on a straight man – who may have had more partners. So to me the argument is clear – judgements should be based on people’s actual behaviour and the risks that arise from that. Stonewall agree with me and recently the Anthony Nolan bone marrow transplant trust removed their ban on gay donors. Other countries have a risk-based approach.

Sadly – the government disagrees. Perhaps Stonewall can use their influence behind the front lines on this one.

I hope that give you all a brief assessment what I think the key issues are, I look forward to hearing from the rest of the panel and answering your questions.

Conference diary – Tuesday

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  • 7.30 Keynote speech practise
  • 9.15 Training aspiring candidates / ‘Secrets of a winning campaign’
  • 10.40 Attend debate ‘Fresh Start’
  • 13.00 ‘Trust in Politics’ / Total Politics / fringe / speaking (speech)
  • 14.20 Child Protection Debate / speaking / hopefully (speech)
  • 18.00 ‘The Equality Bill: Will it deliver for Women?’/ Fawcett / Unison / fringe / speaking (speech)
  • 20.30 Dinner

The future of the party's campaigning

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Yesterday I gave a speech at a fringe meeting organised by Liberal Democrat Voice looking at the future of the party’s campaigning now our campaigns guru, Chris Rennard, has stepped down:

Well – it is hard to imagine campaigning after Chris Rennard as he has been such a major force and eminence – nee God – in our trajectory upward – and in my own trajectory upward

And we would be insane if we were to throw the baby out with the successful bathwater. So campaigning after Rennard is about using what was best and successful from those years and improving on that.

And it’s about moving forward to take that same benefit by capitalising on new tools available to us through the internet and new techniques for quote Obama ‘building the machine’.

Looking back – the number of votes I won in 2001 didn’t matter that much. What mattered, in terms of my mega win in 2005, was the number of deliverers, supporters, helpers, blue envelope writers, members, donors and email addresses I had gained.

As the Obama campaign proved – it’s building the machine that counts. And it’s about progress on the campaigns and it’s about the things that matter to local people – that really counts.

In Hornsey & Wood Green in 8 years – from when I started to when I won – we went from 150 members to over 400 members – and more importantly – my supporters and members now number around 2000. And we went from 0% delivery network to 85% delivery network. And of course – from no emails to around 7000 emails.

Those are the stats that deliver winning seats.

But wherever you are on the trajectory from black hole to held seat – the same is true.

So we must build machine – it is so often the case that we meet someone who displays an interest – however vague – in the Liberal Democrats and so we do one of two, no three things – we ask them to join, to deliver leaflets and to be on the executive – and if they’re really lucky – it’s because we can’t find anyway to be the local party secretary.

No – campaigning has got to be different, less using people as fodder – both those who might be active and those who might vote for us.

We have to be inclusive, make tasks fun, remember politics has a point but for many its light and social and we have to not be so dogmatic about how people would be involved.

An example – I met a guy at the Highgate drinks for deliverers evening – another good example of valuing people and making it fun. And one of the blokes there that I was talking to about funding said he’d like to get involved by helping as a fund-raiser.

So – I could have said can you come to the next exec. But what I said is that is fantastic – I’ll deal with the formalities and we’ll get together for a chat about how to take this forward. Thank you – you are a star!
He’d had been Labour before, I’d phoned him about delivery and having just retired from the City and wanting to lose weight he said he would deliver his road.
Now he is offering to fund raise for us. I don’t care if he’s a member. I don’t care if he was Labour – I care that he wants to help.

We will, for the foreseeable future, still be sticking what we do on a piece of paper and shoving it through peoples’ doors. But – campaigns need to be real and need to progress. People need to believe and to see progress.

I can give you two examples – both six or seven year campaigns – one for a new bus route and one to reopen the Muswell Hill Police front counter. Both started by residents whom I joined to help.

And over those six years – I built up the address lists snail and e – but I did things. I advanced the cause and campaign and fed back the next action to each person in the campaign – and over the years the numbers increased and both these campaigns delivered a few months before the election.

So I would say the lesson there is that campaigning has to be real and has to deliver progress.

My heart withers at the thought sometimes – when we start a different campaign for something new every couple of months – as if being seen to be against or for something is enough.

Because to campaign for something that is really important locally takes years and effort and constancy.
Keep the faith on a campaign – move it forward – and whatever level of success you have achieved in the cause – you will have a built a huge and real relationship with local people.

On our leaflets – it is probably the instant message from our bar charts that is the most significant of messages. So –bar charts will continue to be an important part of campaigning – that graphic is vital.

However – they are only one part of the message because if what the bar chart is telling people is not backed by the reality of local peoples’ experience of the party – we look like charlatans. Substance is important.

And that brings me onto emails. It is undoubtedly one of the most powerful communication and campaigning tools of our day. As I said – I have collected around 7000 emails and it takes years to collect – but well worth it – as overnight and for free I can reach around one quarter of my constituents.

But I am very careful how I use those emails and what I send out.

Yes – a fabulous tool – but again it is about using it to bring people into contact, engagement, and activism and voting for us. It is not a tool for hectoring and lecturing and hoping the people will come or for sending out meaningless party messages.

But on emails and using them – every single local party should be doing this as routinely as it tries to collect voter ID.

And we are coming to an interesting time, where as Chair of the Technology Advisory Board one of my missions is to help everyone collect and use their emails for genuine campaigning and contact purposes.

The leadership has observed, as have we all – that Obama used email very heavily.

Those of us here, activists, may well already receive Nick Clegg’s emails. And rightly the leadership now wants to make better use of our local email lists – with proper opt ins of course. There has to be a protocol about how often and who uses such a centralised list.

We know that Obama’s reach and the outlets for his message were an incredibly important part of his campaign.

So the challenge is – collect emails and use emails.

And of course – the use of twitter, YouTube and social networking is still in its infancy – but growing and developing as we widen our potential for campaigning on the internet.

There are some great examples of the best uses at the blogging awards tomorrow night – fantastic campaigns.

No politician going into the future can afford not to build an email list.

So – campaigning after Rennard – will be about building on that legacy – a system of campaigning that has given us a route into people’s lives and homes when the political system and the media coverage have kept us out.

Because in the end – it’s all about communicating with people – and drawing them in. It always was – and it always will be.

Conference diary – Monday

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  • 7.30 Roundtable discussion ‘positive portrayal’ of young people / key speaker
  • 9.00 Visiting school with Equality and Human Rights Commission
  • 11.30 Meeting Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
  • 18.00 ‘Equality in a Cold Climate’ / Stonewall / Delga / Fringe / speaking (speech)
  • 20.00 ‘Restorative Justice’ / Women Liberal Democrat / fringe / chairing

My speech in the Real Women policy debate

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I see Alex Folkes filmed and uploaded my speech from yesterday’s debate – so you can watch it on YouTube:

You can find out more about the policy ideas at www.realwomen.org.uk and here’s the written version of the speech (not quite as delivered – due to changes to respond to points in debate!):

Well – it’s been a great debate!

We’ve had excellent contributions on all aspects of the policy paper.

But as there is agreement on the vast majority of the paper – I must focus on the two key areas where there is some difference of view – just a bit.

And it wouldn’t be a good Liberal Democrat paper – if it didn’t cause a bit of a ruck.

We’ve had a good debate on the amendments – but I am going to urge you to vote against both.

Name blank job applications – such a simple idea.

And it doesn’t cost anything. And it removes barriers And it widens opportunity

We give children numbers to eliminate bias from examiners marking. This is the same thing.

Our constitution says that none shall be enslaved by prejudice.

This removes prejudice in its fullest sense.

Pre – judice
Pre – judging

It won’t solve everything – but it will make a step change to women and indeed, as we have heard, ethnic minorities as to who gets through to interview – after that – it’s up to you.

Based on our proposals the Department of Work and Pensions has been experimenting with some early survey work and initial results show – and I quote – there is significant discrimination.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development support out proposal on name blank employment.

As to retouching – we Liberal Democrats are more radical, braver and bolder than the warm words and good intentions of this amendment.

The preamble to our constitution says none shall be enslaved by conformity.

But if this amendment succeeds then we are condoning conformity and we are saying to the global giants
– of the food,
– the diet,
– the beauty
– and the fashion industry

we accept your values … unconditionally

It is they who have changed out culture – to the cult of thin, and the perfect and the consumer.

These industries don’t spend the billions of pounds for altruistic reasons.

And to say that we should not tackle retouching because it doesn’t solve all the problems of enhanced presentations – like breast enhancement or lighting – is like saying we shouldn’t tackle anything.

How do you eat an elephant – one step at a time?

We have to begin to push back – right here – right now.

This is a small step but a good step.

And let’s not get this out of proportion – we are talking about labelling.

The movers want cultural change – so do I – we both agree that is the answer – but how does cultural change start?

Well it’s about timing – when something reaches the point at which we have to recognise that something we thought was relatively innocent is causing so much damage we have to act

It happened with drink driving. It happened with compulsory wearing of seatbelts.

The culture changed. But it didn’t happen because of lessons in school. It took a whole package, four elements to effect that culture change: a change in regulation, a massive media campaign, education and timing.

We have the timing – because as we have heard so forcefully – so many young people are now being affected.

We have the campaign and – thanks to this proposal in this women’s policy paper – the issues around retouching are now on the agenda and have been taken up both by adult media, with articles in almost every paper in the land about the effects of retouching – and in teen mags. This is an article in a teen mag informing its young readers about airbrushing – it would never have happened if not for us.

This motion gives us the full package – that will begin to change our culture. And it does it in such a very liberal way. In a free, open and liberal society it is absolutely vital that the operations of the media and corporations are fully transparent and honest – which is currently not the case.

Lastly – the B word! – “banning”.

Conference we are not banning young people from looking at retouched ads. We are banning the global commercial giants from making millions out of targeting our under 16s with fake – fake images.

I wish the movers of the amendments were right – that developing age-appropriate lessons on body-image in schools was enough – but sadly it isn’t.

The most successful ads feed off insecurity – and what a target audience under 16s make – vulnerable to almost every bodily insecurity there is.

Today we have to decide whose side we are on?

Reject the amendments. Support the motion.

Hello to the new……

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Well here we are – on my new website!

As you can see – I am in trial mode – and would welcome all comments.

As I said in my farewell to my old site last blog post – hopefully what you’ll notice is that the site brings together my blog and website content into one place, whilst you can also now easily find information related to the particular areas within the constituency.

For the more techie amongst my readers – it’s a one WordPress site, which brings many benefits in itself, but also has some bells and whistles – such as the Creative Commons license for the content – that I hope makes the site fit how the online world increasingly expects sites to behave.

And the “big idea” of the site is the lifestream. Lifestreaming – i.e. pulling all sorts of content from different online places together in one flow of information – is the current buzzy idea. So – as I’ve got lots of online content in different places – I thought I’d give it a go!

I want to give huge credit to the team that put this together:

Please tell us what you like and don’t like about the new site, preferably by leaving a comment below. And if you’re a Facebook user, do try signing into the site using your Facebook ID, to connect your comments back to your Facebook account.

Lap Off!

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So – finally – the licensing meeting to decide the fate of the lap-dancing club application at the Music Palace in Tottenham Lane, Crouch End, happened last Thursday evening.

The gallery was packed, literally packed, with those who had come to support those objectors who were presenting their case to the licensing committee to try and get this application refused.

The Chair started by asking the applicant’s representative to distinguish between lap and table dancing – which in the end it transpired was not hugely different – other than lap dancing was direct to the client’s lap (sort of obvious) and table dancing was at a table.

And then to the presentations by objectors. First up Cllr Dave Winskill (LibDem) who gave the background to the campaign, described the location (and in the end it is the location that makes this application ungrantable – if that’s a word) and put the application in context of the high level strategies that are meant to guide councillors and officers in how to achieve the sort of borough we want for ourselves and our children.

Local parent Lindsay Wright, who lives a stones throw from the proposed site (and who is two weeks short of giving birth to a baby) gave the most brilliant rational for refusal around Haringey’s own licensing policy – and showed that the application would run a coach and horses through it. When the Council’s own licensing policy says that there is a duty to promote safety and wellbeing etc……… She also, despite the difficulty, described explicitly what lap-dancing was (unlike the applicant’s answer above) with precise detail about proximity and touching – too explicit for me to put on blog.

Four further objectors the addressed the key licensing objectives: avoidance of public nuisance, protection of children, prevention of crime and disorder – and told us about the effects that the granting of this license would have on their neighbourhood, their schools, their town centre and their children.

Then the Head of Hornsey Girls School gave a fluent and effective argument against granting the application for the well being and safety of the 1400 girls at Hornsey High – just around the corner.

This was not a moral crusade – but an outpouring of the real worries about the damage that the local community would suffer if this lap dancing club were to open its doors at that location. And that was the real point – the scale of opposition was all to do with the location – near six schools, two churches, Action for Kids (vulnerable people with learning difficulties), the YMCA and right, slap, bang in the middle of a normal shopping high street in a highly residential area.

The law itself is changing. Currently, a lap-dancing club only needs the same license as a pub or ordinary club. The new law, which has gone through parliament, and which will soon be enacted – changes that. Lap dancing clubs will be counted as ‘sex encounter establishments’ which is exactly what they are. And that new law has come about because of the particular trouble and disorder etc that occurs around such places.

However, even under the old law, together with Haringey’s strategies and licensing objectives – this application can easily be thrown out. Only four months earlier the same licensing committee refused an application from Bar 22 – a similar establishment – on the grounds of proximity to residential areas.

If the committee refused that application – then how much more reason they have to throw this one out too.

However, after two hours – the hearing was adjourned because there would not have been time for the applicant to present their case properly and take questions etc. So now we have to wait for the whole thing to be reconvened.

It was very disappointing because the presentations were so overwhelmingly forceful – I have no doubt that the committee would have rejected the application – and am not totally happy that the applicant (having heard all the residents’ arguments) will now have a few weeks to prepare before the next session. However – quite frankly – the arguments against were so strong it is hard to envisage what on earth the applicants would be able to say or do to make their case.

Well done to Alison Lillystone, whose Fairfield Road home backs onto the site, and to Lindsay and Carol and Stuart – and all who made such a brilliant case.

To be continued…