The EU treaty is dead. Long live the reformation!

Browsing facebook this evening I came across the new president of the European Liberal Youth, Aloys Rigaut’s post, on the European Liberals and Democrat Reform Party Leaders and Ministers meeting held yesterday.

In this post he claimed that the Lisbon treaty is still alive, however I am of the position that if it is, it should be left to die along with the type of approach that European leaders have adopted first in the constitution, then in the treaty.

I do agree with a lot of what Aloys says on the matter, and I am passionately pro - European, but I disagree with some of the analysis that he presents, for instance: “Intervening in the roundtable debate, I have stressed that citizens are simply tired of endless institutional discussions and that we need to go ahead.” Does seem a tad bit arrogant at best, in effect saying that we should bore people to the point of capitulation with a tired argument and then do what they don’t want anyway.

The EU will only work and can only be reformed with the explicit support of the people of Europe - and that’s besides the point that every nation must say yes for this to come into force, Ireland is required to hold a public ballot on matter on soveringty, but if the same vote was held in France, the UK or a dozen other countries it would be rejected out of hand.

If the powers that be, the socialist block, the European Peoples Party and the Liberal grouping, all of whom are in favour of the treaty, take the people for granted, then the European level parties will suffer the same backlash that the left, right and centre parties, all in favour of the treaty, suffered in Ireland.

When the political class tries to force something on people that they do not understand nor feel passionate for, it will be doomed to failure.

Instead we should move away from grand constitutional discourse and focus, in this election year, on how the EU affects people’s lives for the better. Put to bed grand schemes and talk on a grassroots level about everyday issues, free movement of people, goods and services, improved attitudes between European nations and a great diversity of cultural links, the big stuff, climate change, energy security and economic globalisation and win people over.

Before we can reform Europe and her institutions we need the people on side and we need to energise them rather than bore them. W need to demonstrate why engaging in Europe and reforming it for the better is worthwhile and right. Until then the democratic deficit will only widen.

Woeful self pitying? The doomed economy of the 20 something’s

My name is Martin Shapland, I am a 22 year old graduate earning just over £13,000 in my first job as staff for a Member of Parliament and I am being royally screwed by the government.

Unlike my parent’s generation, I cannot get a house: After a decade of unrestricted individualism and mountains of might-as-well-be-free credit, I am priced out of the housing market.

Unlike our political masters, I didn’t have grants for my university education and was subject to tuition fees. When I left higher education I left with the anchor of £15,000 of debt, which, until I get a much better paid job – I can’t even begin to imagine servicing. My sister, at Uni now will pay £9000 of fees alone… I was lucky.

I cannot really afford to rent near to where I work, yet I can’t really afford to commute, rail and petrol costs take up a full quarter of my wage – just to get to work, food costs are going up, and now I pay twice as much tax as I did last month now the 10p rate had gone, people earning twice what I earn, have just had a tax cut, where’s the fairness in that?

I, and people like me, around my age, are the future of this country, and our world beating economy. I can’t put money down in savings, I can’t afford to buy the stuff which drives economic growth, and I have a huge amount of debt to my name.

I’m worried for our future. I can barely afford to go to work and I get told by the government that, because I’m under 25 I’m not entitled to get tax credits. I am one of the 5.2 million people ripped off by the abolishment of the 10p tax rate. One of the 5.2 million young people who are actually motivated to go into work, to get out of bed in the morning and contribute something to this country. One of the 5.2 million young people now paying for a tax cut for bankers, hedge fund owners, politicians and rich people receiving an inheritance.

I haven’t done the calculation to be sure… but I reckon that if I didn’t work, got a girl pregnant, got myself a council house and claimed benefits for the rest of my life I would somehow be better off. They say that mine is the inspirational generation… all I’m inspired to do is slap the government in the mouth.

I think that Labour are doing this to young people because they don’t vote. There are local elections coming up in a few weeks and mayoral elections in London. I don’t care who you vote for; as long as it’s not Labour, just make sure you vote to hurt the government in your area in the way they are hurting you.

Bad Blood

“Whatever they say, These people are torn, Wild and bereft, Assassin is born: Oppose and disagree, Destroy Demonocracy”

This week is panning out to be bad for my wallet, bad for my sanity and bad for my general opinion of people.

I’ve just journeyed to Blackpool for 48 hours to support Liberal Youth’s candidate, Tom Stubbs, in his re-election to the NUS NEC. Tom will now serve students for a second term and he deserves our congratulations.

But I’ve had so little sleep that I feel dead: There is constant partisan sniping, with the winter gardens substituting for Stalingrad in the depths of winter: The quasi bombed out state of that venerable old institution, with peeling walls and rusty iron twisted precariously above, columns felled aeons ago by the treads of a panther tank and the odd respect party member buried beneath rubble in the corner after a blast from a NOLS mouth cannon (aka whip or delegation lead) all add to the simmering under torrent of hatred and dread on all factional sides.

Trading insults is as commonplace between warring factions within NUS as are pints of Stella; As one of the guys running the Liberal Youth Stall I suffered the indignity in being told that I am evil, morally corrupt and as right wing as the BNP (admittedly by a communist) I’ve had labourites try to convince me that my party does not believe in equality of opportunity or minority rights and that individual liberty is the cause of all of this nations ills.

I was even attacked personally by an ex Birmingham president who told me that I am ‘anti trade union’ rights, because I agree that individuals should have the right to choose where their contribution to the political fund goes.

I am apparently a ‘soulless bastard using people for my own ends’ and ‘anti the rights of the mentally impaired’ for, in my capacity as an MP’s caseworker and after a request from a constituent, asking the council planning department if a home for the mentally ill had gone through the proper planning process. I’ve never been so personally insulted on such a baseless, disgraceful lie, the man is an arse who needs to get his facts straight, little wonder he slagged off his executive at his leaving speech, he is as insufferable as the stories say.

I didn’t stick around to tell him about the deportation myself and my colleagues are trying to halt of a women from Iran found guilty of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning, or the families I’ve had in my office we have helped facing massive demands for repayments on benefits because Tax Credits lost their data, or the hundreds of cases we have on our books of people living in squalid council houses who can’t be re-housed because no investment has gone into building new stock. All failings of his party, the Labour government, and there are plenty more horror stories caused by their failings I can bring to the table without attacking him personally.

Last year I was a voting delegate under siege, A sole Lib Dem in open warfare with a 14 strong NOLS delegation from the same uni where steering had to intervene, this, is the great meeting of the democratic collectivist soviet student union, inclusive as it is.

The atmosphere was such this year that I started addressing a friend of a friend, jokingly, as Labour Scum, something that deeply shames me, and I apologise to them unreservedly because I know now, and had I thought about it before I said it, should have known, given my experience last year and how uncomfortable being called liberal scum made me at university when I ran my lib dem branch.

But it is this warped spectacle and sham of a conference that raises peoples porcupine defences and causes people to launch pre-emptive strikes against others based on their faction, not factoring their feelings or individuality. It is the very worst of ironies that the organisation which shouts loudest about liberation has such a poor track record of enforcing it on their own conference floor. It is a dirty irony that stains everyone involved, myself included.

 

Political activism is something to be commended even if you don’t agree with their views, I don’t agree with NOLS, but I will defend to the death their right to be insufferable bastards.

The Lib Dems have at least 100 members at conference in any one year, but when you ‘come out’ as a liberal in Blackpool at NUS, the reaction you can expect and others see is somewhat akin to the ritual sacrifice of a very public, very loud execution.

I don’t like saying it, but we need to organise in NUS, we are doing our own Liberal Democrat members a dis-service by failing to give them the support they deserve as members, we need to organise to change the way that the NUS does business. Liberal Youth doesn’t like NUS because it is so top down, so undemocratic and a playground for NOLS.

Perhaps, but I have news for you guys, NOLS hasn’t stood up for students against their mother party’s policy on fee’s only education, it hasn’t rallied to condemn Labours desire to force students to have a ID card by making a loan available only if you have one, and I saw no public condemnation of the Labour Early Day Motion to ghettoise students by forcing affordable housing in the form of HMO’s out of towns and cities.

Labour won’t stand up for students, the OI’s are respectable in their outlook but constrained by their nature, the trots are too busy slagging off Israel and the US to give a damn, and the Tories are too busy getting drunk to notice that students need representation. It falls to the Liberals to take on the establishment and take on the mantle of Student representation.

It is time to hold our noses, wade into the sewer which has become student politics and drag it back to higher ground, at our conference in Durham this weekend, we need to look at what we can do to make that happen.

Martin Shapland
Liberal Youth Executive Member Elect

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Now playing: Muse - Assassin
via FoxyTunes

“Britain’s Liberal Future - Britain’s Liberal Youth”

Thoughts pondering and the beats moved on. Change, as always, in the air, my politics is having a re-brand, I will no longer be allowed to wear it on my sleeve, as this new hip image wears an attractive T – shirt, I am, however, copywriting the phrase “Britain’s Liberal Future - Britain’s Liberal Youth” Have it! 

I’m hearing lots of Bitching about the re- brand, and some frankly weak arguments; ‘oh no! You’ve dropped the democrats and students! What about the social democrats and students?!?! I’m going to join respect!’ 

What’s in a name anyway? Liberal Youth (LIBERAL YOUTH ed) is far superior to LDYS, instead of a meaningless acronym we have a name which can relate to people, rather than a secret code only the initiated and could care more type ™ could care more about, and as a social democrat who believes in social justice, and helping those who can’t help themselves, I understand that modern Liberalism in the UK is essentially just that, giving people the leg up they need, ensuring choice and freedom and protecting our freedoms. It also helps that we’ve got by far the best policies on health, education, the economy and for students, that we get it right on the big issues, Northern Rock, Iraq, Free education and that our principled opposition to this government isn’t as much a matter of underlying difference in mission statement, but that New Labour are a bunch of shits who’s sold out on that mission. 

I’ve always said that our parties’ problem isn’t the message, the message is great, the policies are well thought out, our ideas are clear: It’s the delivery. It’s who we put out to talk to those outside the party (I admire the Lord Rennard, but dear god do not put that man out on a podcast) Its how we present it (Lib Dem Voice, for example is nowhere near as presentable as Tory Home, and don’t get me started on those prefab websites) and it’s the bloody over complication of a simply concept (as Vince recently discovered, don’t talk millions of pounds, talk 52 Millennium domes, or pink elephants.

Anyway, stop moaning, this re-brand thing might be the only big think the youth party does all year…  

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Now playing: Various Artists - Smells Like Teen Spirit - Warp Brothers
via FoxyTunes

Into The Fourth Dimension

“It’s certainly an enormous cloud complex, roughly the size of the Earth”

I don’t do many late nights anymore, the demands of work, and more work, simply do not permit it anymore. Though I can dream, and I do dream, of closing my eyes and feeling the huge expanse and winter chill of a chapel dimply lit by candles, I can tell by the flickering of light through my eyelids, the signature of a place as stuck in the past as I am at this moment. It is night, and there is no one around me, yet I can hear the dim sound of choral music filling the air, before the beat moves on to the next phase of the song, and metaphorically, the movement in a few chords of ten years of my life.

I can’t live my life this way.

I am intrigued by the young people at my, now old, university, it’s weird to take a step back, and leave familiar faces and surroundings for 6 months, to come back a little less naive, a little more mature, and a little less phased by it all. It’s also gratifying to know that very little changes, though I have a cunning plan for that, as always.

I am no longer blindly bumbling through life, though I am still, purposefully, bumbling, pushing limits and testing people. In the last few weeks I’ve found people who I thought I liked, but now find pathetic, people I detested, who I still do, and people who I mocked, who I do less so now, a creeping amount of respect has returned. I’m also aware, at these sobering times screaming at the darkness, that I can be a class act twat. Morbid as it is to dwell, I need to fasten my tongue and not to quicken it, if only for my sake, though I could care less for the thoughts of others on that.

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Now playing: The Orb - Into the Fourth Dimension
via FoxyTunes

In Praise of Obama

 

 

“I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.” Barack Obama

 

 

 

 

 

Across the pond the map is being redrawn and history is being written. America will have its first Black or Female president by years end. I am watching this contest with the customary enthusiasm of any political hack, if for no other reason than the imagery and dynamic discourse pumping from the pulpits of politics stateside. It transcends the dull nose - to – the – grindstone machine politics of the UK of late. Its not that America doesn’t do sound bites and spin, but that they do it so much better.

What has caught my imagination, however, is the burning flame of Obama, and he is burning bright; encompassing a message for change which positively betrays his conviction for it. A refreshing change from the Bush years, a fresh broom compared to Clinton and polls apart from the change Gordon Brown mutes about in his unique Scots monotone.

He embodies the realisation of the aims of the civil rights movement of the 60’s, and the rationalisation of the liberal hope of the human condition – that no one will be held back by their race, their gender, their sexuality, or their beliefs. He is the first politician in the Anglo-sphere who personifies inspiration in a very long time. He does what no other politician does these days, inspires young people and the disinterested, gets them engaged, and gets out their vote – a concept no politician seems capable of replicating in today’s Britain and something I would love to witness first hand.

 

It’s something I’m watching intently, and something we need to learn from. We are in the middle of a great race debate in the UK. The debate is about positive discrimination and under representation of Black and Ethnic Minorities, of which I have an obvious vested interest.

 

Obama represents something more profound than an artificially imposed settlement… that a Black man can make it, and shape the debate so that his colour isn’t the definitive aspect of his leadership bid. He demonstrates the truth in his candidacy more eloquently by his presence that I could put into words: - that we are all human, and the only thing that divides us is our own perception of prejudice, and that prejudice can be overcome. We will find out on Tuesday if it will be.

 

 

 

 

On the murmurings of someone in too deep.

Come to be, How did it come to be, Tied to a railroad, No love to set us free, Watch our souls fade away, And our bodies crumbling, Don’t be afraid, I will take the Cold for you

Politics is a funny old game; it consumes you, sucking in all facets of your social life, love life and work life, and gorging itself on your time and energies.

For instance, this Thursday I’ll be going back to my old Uni haunts for the return of Birmingham Lib Dems and LGBTQ’s Homophobia is Gay Barcrawl, and hopefully catch up on some gossip from some of my mates, this Saturday I’ll be chairing a meeting between students at Keele University, Staffordshire University and Stoke Local party on an action plan for improving our youth presence in the city, Sunday I’ll be chairing the youth party’s International Committee in London, ahead of the roll out of our Darfur Campaign to the branches, and to begin organising the seminar we are running with our Irish Sister parties next year, as well as plan another (well I think it’s) exciting media driven campaign which should get us a lot of coverage, and generally plot about how we intend to take over the world, then a week on Sunday (My Birthday… yayness!) I’ll be on a plane to meet hundreds of our fellow youth party sisters and brothers in Sarajevo for the International Liberal Youth World conference.

Somewhere in between all this I also have to find time to do the day Job – case working and researching in Yardley for the Lib Dem MP, put together documents for the various meetings I have to attend, put together a training document for Sarajevo on community politics, and send off individual letters to all the BME councillors in Birmingham to canvass more support for the BME network I’ve got planned to begin co-ordinating BME officers and students in the regions universities, which currently doesn’t happen – I think I might skip the regional party executive meeting on Saturday mind.

The point of this rambling isn’t particularly clear, which is the particular point of a ramble.

Perhaps I’m trying to retrospectively warn myself of the dangers of taking up politics as a way of life. I could have had it so easy with some graduate recruitment job in the city raking in dough by the thousands – but where’s the fun in that? Where’s the stress, and hours stretching from 8 – 11, and demanding constituents, and big ideas, and grand projects? Where’s the grass roots activism, and passion filled anger? Where’s the demonstrations in the square mile, and pickets on shop floors? Where’s the running around trying to whip people to an event, or demonstration or vote at the odd conference, or random excursion at 2 hours notice to a conference in a completely different part of the country, or grand plots, and gin, and ideological debates, and more gin?

And where else would I meet such interesting people, who care dearly for the society they live in, and want it improved being such honest, decent and drink prone folk? It’s something that causes you to continually make new friends, and strive to build up the existing ones, for what other perspective is more poignant than that viewed from the roof terrace of the grandest parliament in the world in the centre of the most important city on the planet with new and trusted friends?

I can see why politics can be so passionate. How it drives people together and forces them apart, kindles relationships and smothers them like a bear hug; its such an intense experience and way of life, dashing off from meeting to meeting, calling people in a mad panic with the few seconds you have before the lift reaches the ground floor, trying to do some work and that damn landline blasts its ringtone with yet another constituent trying to catch your ear. Tempers are short and patience thin in a climate like this; no wonder it drives people to affairs, ministers to do daft things, party leaders to drink, and men and women to question their morale code time and again.

What it has made me appreciate is where I’ve come from, certain people at Birmingham University, friend and rival alike, and they know who they are; continue to impact upon my life in a very positive way. My successor as leader of the student branch in particular continues to impress me, as does the rest of what is and was the committee which helped sustain what began as the ramblings of a naive undergraduate in up to his neck, and is growing into something altogether far more important and far reaching than that. Those Labourites who turned me off the Labour party by their incoherent arguments and support for a leadership which continues to prove its ineptness which taught me the importance of opposition, and more importantly those Labourites who I have a massive amount of respect for their sensibility in their personal outlook, and who taught me that dialogue is not futile. It is a shame however that the better the talk, the deeper you go.

 

 

 

 

I’m disappointed… and excited

 

I know, I know, everything that brown says would taste like chicken, but instead leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Nothing much really to say from me, only that now that we know Brown is a coward and we’ve stopped panicking for another two years, I’ll be back to focusing on Lib Dem Youth stuff and finally find some time to start work on west midlands area NUS stuff.Its actually quite an exciting couple of weeks and months coming up for me, first off this week, LDYS will finally start taking NUS seriously, as we draw up a battle plan for the next NUS conference and start the long and ardous journey of making the student friendly party the party of the NUS. In the west midlands we’ve seen strong showings for us, in a region where we have little presence. We’ve got 40 names to a new society at Keele University, a branch at Coventry is popping up, Birmingham have continued to impress me, and Warwick are having theres this week, I’m hearing new noises from Solihull, and I’ve still got Rugby on my to do list, next will be a strenghting of our position in Birmingham, I’m hoping that we can break into Aston and UCE with the Birmingham parties help - and set up a city branch which wil lbe the lynchpin of my vision for the region.

We’ve also started to get International stuff of the ground as well, I’m making plans to hold summit talks with our sister parties in Ireland, the Proggresive Democrats of Ireland, and Alliance of Northen Ireland over co-operation, and repairing relations with the benelux and french liberals and proggresives by sending a member of intercomm to hold talks with them, we also managed large demonstrations, and media cover, of our campagin on Darfur, and (eventually due to predicatable liberal related fecklessness, love you guys) got some photos and a press release back to the DPP of Taiwan supporting their bid for UN membership

I think this is a defining moment for us, though small inital steps, I have hope that they can turn into something much bigger, building links, hosting events, and making waves in our Darufr Campaign - the issue will come to a head in the next few months, and frankly if Brown has’nt got the bottle to hold an election, then he needs young people constantly pushing him to have the bottle to do something about Darfur.

Also coming up is developmets in the day job; I’m now caseworking for the extremley hard working Hemming in Yardley, and now that we’ve recruited a fourth team member, and the election is off, will start rotating reasearching in Parliament every couple of weeks which is tres exciting for me, yes, its no quick route to riches, but it is what I want to do, fighting the ‘man’ representing ordianary people, and helping them to solve their problems, many and varied the good people of Birmingham’s problems are! Its what I like to think politics should be about, solveing problems, and its gaining me valuable experiance and insight at the same time, which is no bad thing.

Finally a word WMANUS way, I’ve simply not had time this summer to commit to it thus far, but I was disgusted that the ethnic minority caucus which got me elected numbered less people than my left hand has fingers. Now that the students are back, and I’m running around the region like a headless chicken something can be done to rectify this, I’m going to start at Stafford where I’ll be undertaking a part time qualification in law, with a view at some dim distant point in the future in doing a conversion course in the subject, (its not like my time is too stretched just yet :p) but there are significant asian, african, caribbian and islamic populations right through the region, from sandwell to stoke, my job is to try and get them engaged, a difficult task no doubt, but then I like to think I have more substance to me than Brown has demonstrated this week so it should be a simple enough matter… I hope.

Signing off for now x

Butterflies and Hurricanes

Thoughts and Lyrics from Muse to the Liberal Democrats in this rumoured General Election that’s got everyone’s knickers in a twist… a thank you…

Change,
everything you are
and everything you were
your number has been called
fights, battles have begun
revenge will surely come
your hard times are ahead

best,
you’ve got to be the best
you’ve got to change the world
and you use this chance to be heard
your time is now

don’t,
let yourself down
don’t let yourself go
your last chance has arrived

best,
you’ve got to be the best
you’ve got to change the world
and you use this chance to be heard
your time is now

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Now playing: Muse - Butterflies and Hurricanes
via FoxyTunes

We are the Angry Mob

Fantasising about your desires is never going to make them happen: Action might.

So my youth party needs to show leadership, and pursue the course of action, and not merely bemoan the problems of today, pontificating in lecture theatres about liberal interventionism and throwing our collective arms up in the air about the injustices of today.

The Conservative party is known as the nasty party, vicious and brutally effective to an end. We need to be the angry party: The party of old women and sandal wearing muesli eaters, but old women sandal wearing muesli eaters who do something! Being nice is a quirk rare in politics, but it doesn’t create the necessary drive nor invigorate the right sort of energy for us to do something with vigour.

The situation is Darfur infuriates me, enough, anyway, to get out of bed today, go 300 miles return to London to persuade our delegates to the European Liberal and Democrat Reform party congress in October to sponsor a LDYS motion on Darfur and submit it as policy to the European party, enough to ring around gathering support for a youth party emergency motion to Federal Conference next month.

Government inaction on this, especially under Blair, has been infuriating, enough for Brown to actually pull his finger out and get a UN resolution passed on this in his first 2 months at the top; and I tell you what, if he chickens out of his promise it’ll infuriate me even more.

It’s infuriated the youth party enough to make it our active campaign for the year, starting with freshers it will be the campaign we’re asking all our branches to focus on, demonstrate on, and campaign on.

I want to see angry mobs in the streets and meeting places of our universities, petitions and sit ins on university chancellors who condone investment in arms companies and have economic interests in the Sudanese government. I want to see young people rallying outside the Sudanese embassy and harass their MP’s. I want to see our MP’s spit vitriol in parliament over this, and our MEP’s convince Europe that it must act to bring an end to Genocide.

I might be able to sleep softly in my bed tonight, safe in the knowledge that my house isn’t going to get torched by Sudanese bomber aircraft disguised as UN peacekeeping forces. I wonder how many people tonight will be able to sleep softly in their beds knowing that genocide is being committed just one continent away from me, a few hours away on a plane. Still our generation has so much to be worried about, Iraq, paradigm shift, the collapse of belief in civil liberties, global warming, energy security, world religions hijacked by fundamentalist charged terrorism: Like something out of sim city, I expect the aliens to come and lay waste to Chicago next, but if your understandably overworked and numbed conscious can still be pricked, and if that will make you angry, then join our mob, and help bring an end to genocide on our watch.

It’s a start.

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Now playing: Kaiser Chiefs - Angry Mob
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