CAMPAIGN FOR GENDER BALANCE
Bringing Balance through Support
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CAMPAIGN FOR GENDER BALANCE Bringing Balance through Support |
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| CAMPAIGN FOR GENDER BALANCE | <info@genderbalance.org.uk> | 20th March 2010 |
Don't know what blogging is? Check out the BBC's webwise website. Campaign for Gender Balance Blog AwardsThe Campaign for Gender Balance has announced the shortlists for its Blog Awards, to be announced at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference. The shortlists are as follows: 
Best Blog by a Woman Liberal DemocratThis shortlist will form the basis of two awards - the Judge's Choice and the Peoples' Choice. To vote in the People's Choice category, follow this link: http://cgbblog.notlong.com/ 
Best Blog Post by a Woman Liberal Democrat
Best Blog by a Woman Non-Liberal DemocratWe are sad to report that Rose Hacker died on 4 February, one month before her 102nd birthday. Her remaining columns are continuing to be published by the Camden New Journal. Congratulations to everyone who has been shortlisted and commiserations to everyone who was not. The final results will be announced at the Campaign for Gender Balance Blog Awards' Drinks Reception, taking place on Saturday 8th March 2008, between 8.00pm and 9.30pm, at Canada Suite, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Liverpool. The awards will be decided by a prestigious team of judges:
To read blogs by Liberal Democrats (women and men), see the Lib Dem Blogs website (http://www.libdemblogs.co.uk). Latest Lib Dem BlogsSat 20th Mar 2010: Last year, for Comic Relief, the Lib Dem group on the County Council were all pictured wearing red noses and we had a whip round to support this very good cause. This year, the County Council's call centre in St Ives got 160(ish) of us together to man the phone lines until from 19:00 Friday evening until 02:00 this morning taking donations as part of a nationwide team of call centres. I can only express my extreme thanks and admiration to all those who worked so hard to raise over £100,000. Some (including myself) took donation calls, some kept us ... Dismay at decision to close St Peter's School at South Bank. News that St. Peters school on Normanby Road, South Bank, will definitely close has been greeted with dismay by local Liberal Democrat prospective MP Ian Swales. Ian Swales said: "The St Peters school closure is a devastating blow to the local community in South Bank. I was at the public meeting on 23 February and was very moved by the passion shown by pupils, former pupils, teachers, parents and others over the future of the school. So many people attended that the oriignal venue at Eston Learning Centre was far too small. The adjudicator seemed to be listening but in ... I have written about Morecambe Town Council in previous blogs. It is dominated by a party of 'independents' who all happen to vote the same way. They were elected in June last year when party politicians were not doing well and my problem with the council then (and now) is firstly that there is no effective opposition and secondly that this party is based on putting Morecambe first. However when the debates only concern Morecambe it is hard to know which way they are going to vote. I couldn't find a preamble to their constitution, and for that matter I ... Not so "Blaydon born" as was thought. The Tory from Tunbridge Wells who is standing for the Tyneside constituency of Blaydon, where I live, is battling from a distant 3rd place under the banner "Blaydon Born and Bred". After so many years away from our area it is always enjoyable to see those who have abandoned the North East return for at least a momentary stay back on the patch. Whether or not this Tory candidate stays around after Fri 19th Mar 2010: Tom Miller doesn't care about you... .....He cares about himself and has a total disregard for the three party system in UK politics. His video on the South East Party candidates website is nothing more than an attack video on the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. There is nothing in here that could possible make anyone want to vote for him. Click on ... A non-Party Political Message for Oxford East CLP. ...and in particular for whoever is dreaming up your sad, tawdry bits of so called election "literature" to bombard the poor beleaguered people of this city with. A whisper in my ear this evening from a source I believe should be accurate suggested that you have been thinking of running again with some of the drugs stuff from this blog that you got Harperson and others to deliver on the weekend before polling in May 2008 when I was standing in Headington Hill and Northway ward. I can still recall having what I thought was an exchange of pleasantries that ... Councillor Ian Haszeldine, the combative and respected Labour Councillor for Lingfield ward, former mayor and proud lifelong citizen of Darlington, has started a blog. It's called Lingfield Matters and promises to be a ward-based blog dealing with local community matters. Check it out. Lee Green Lives - first meeting on Wednesday. [IMG: Lee Green Lives] Lee Green Lives is the campaign group that's grown out of the Local Assembly decision to make the state of the Leegate Centre one of our priority issues. The group will be holding its first meeting this Wednesday, 24th March, at 7.30pm at the New Testament Church of God on Lee High Road. Everyone's invited to come along and discuss how we can work together to breathe life into the Centre and develop a community vision for the longer term. We've drafted a constitution for the new group (which was discussed at the last assembly meeting ... A League of Ordinary Gentlemen on Blond. Interesting to read: Polite, but for me confirms the basic problem: the airy concepts all sound fine, but where is the real content, the substance, the policy? It seems to be a speaking tour not a policy programme, so far. Despite my nasty libertarian streak, I found a lot to like in Blond's talk, particularly in his ... Other Reckonings - 19th March 2010. A bit late this one but Alix Mortimer in a post she wrote last month showing why we all wish she would post more often. A brilliant piece analysing the real reasons for young people's political apathy.Roll-up, roll-up! It's the Stuart Sharpe's Opinion Draft Sale. A real snip.Mark Pack reports on a cock-up by a Tory candidate in the Hebrides. Am I the only one who feels a bit sorry for her?Liberal Conspiracy says teenage girls have sex, get over it! Indeed. So do teenage boys.Jonathan Calder has a review of Lib Dem Spring Conference. Friday bonus is one of ... East Lothian Labour Party in complete disarray as Anne Moffat MP deselected. Anne Moffat MP has been de-selected this evening losing a vote 130 votes to 59. Given this is the constituency where Labour's Scottish Leader, Iain Gray is the MSP, this is very bad news. Labour in East Lothian are in tatters and with the Liberal Democrats being in second place is this the seat where a shock result could happen at the general election? Labour members in East Lothian attended a special meeting in Haddington this evening where they decided by more than two to one that Anne Moffat should not be the party's candidate in the general election. However, ... News of the day is that Norfolk Blogger is now a member of Broadland District Council. Nich Starling gained the Taverham North ward from the Conservatives in a by-election yesterday. Congratulations. Martin's View writes about the Say No to Trident group on Lib Dem Act website. There is only one way to travel to Shropshire these days. Liberal Bureaucracy samples the delights of the Wrexham & Shropshire. The Bureau of Sabotage mourns the passing of Alex Chilton, whose "gift to the world was a whole set of perfect pop songs that nobody bought at the time, but which have proved ... I was filled with trepidation when I inched down towards the junction at the bottom of the hill. So far, and a week later very little has happened. The digger seems to be concentrating on the green by the side of the road. I hope it stays that way! The thought of a gridlock of traffic by that spot was leaving me a little anxious. Previous flooding has been a bit patchy. The odd flash flood from the drain. Lets hope this does the trick Are you raising the level of debate Iain ? Today Iain Dale wrote one of his daily Lib Dem attack stories and sadly (again) totally misses the point. The story Iain is trying to push is that "Lib Dem MPs are just like the Tories" when it comes to having dodgy MPs. Of course Iain would love this to be true, but with dozens of Tories standing down after expenses allegations involving heli pads, duck houses and numerous other spurious expense claims, Iain somehow wishes to link this to four Lib Dem MPs who took it upon themselves to raise an issue affecting their expenses and claims. No credit ... Public said "NO" and right you were. FOUR years ago the Tories spent £4m - against your wishes - on the Guildhall scheme. Your doubts at the outset, recorded in a LibDem survey, are now confirmed as correct - it is a white elephant. The Tories' risky and reckless scheme has failed to work out. The building, which the district owned, didn't sell. Massive business rates were incurred. Energy projections on the new scheme were not Tom Miller - the face of New (Old) Labour in Woking. As a voter in Woking I have been looking at the other candidates from the other parties to see what they are up to in these early stages of the general election campaign. My disdain for the Conservatives parachuting Jonathan Lord into Woking and expecting him to be shoe horned in as MP off the ... Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms... Groucho Marx. I don't know whether to be angry or bloody angry by the crassly stupid comments made by US General John Sheehan. This eejit, who rather than blaming tens of thousands of Bosniak Serb forces for the massacre of 8,000 male civilians in Srebrenica, chose to focus his condemnation on unionisation and gays in the Dutch military. Srebrenica is a stain on the conscience of post-war Europe, the EU's response to the break-up of Yugoslavia was woefully inadequate, and the Dutch forces "guarding" the safe area were understrength, but for General Sheehan to blame gays is ridiculous and he should apologise ... Man of the Day: Cecil Beresford Ramage MC. Many thanks to the always interesting Birkdale Focus for alerting me to Mr Ramage, who the Liberal Candidate for Southport in 1929 and appeared in one of my favourite films: Kind Hearts and Coronets. In fact it gets better than that, because it turns out that Cecil Beresford Ramage was briefly a Liberal MP. He fought the Newcastle West three times, losing in 1922, winning in 1923, then losing again in 1924. Incidentally, Ramage did not play the defence counsel in Kind Hearts, as Birkdale Focus suggests, but the Crown counsel whose powerful prosecution did much to secure Louis Mazzini's ... Lord Bonkers' Diary: Driving around Eastleigh with Chris Huhne. Friday I have fond memories of Eastleigh; it was here at the Southern Railway works that I received help in building the prototype of the Bonkers Patent Shuttleworth Press - an invention which was to revolutionise committee room practice in the years before the Second World War. So when the town's MP, our own Chris Huhne, invited me to tour his constituency I was happy to accept. As we drive through the Hampshire countryside this morning he is full of the virtues of his Toyata Prius (apparently no polar bears are harmed in its manufacture), but as we near a ... House Points: Lib Dem Spring Conference. Today's House Points from Liberal Democrat News. You can tell an election is near: I am turning into a party loyalist. Conference conversion I have never been one for spring conferences, reasoning that there is too much travel and not enough conference. But this year's event was a great success and Nick Clegg was reported everywhere. In the Guardian Michael White said: "The lucky charm that the Lib Dem leader inherited from Charles Kennedy ... is still working for Clegg as the long-awaited Westminster grand prix starts. Team Labour has serious engine trouble, the Tory alternative has blown two tyres ... HuffPo on a crucial matter of our times. 53.61% say "yes". Taegan Goddard's Political Wire runs down the likely historic legislative events in the USA this weekend: With assistance from David Waldman and Sarah Binder — and the caveat that we don't know many details yet — here's a very rough guide to what will happen with the health care reform bill this weekend: The House Rules Committee will likely meet on Saturday morning to draft a special rule that allows the House to pass a bill by approving the rule and not necessarily the bill itself. By all indications, this rule will be the now famous "self-executing" rule which "deems" ... UKIP's nonsensical self-contradiction. On the one hand, the leader of UKIP, Lord Pearson doesn't want his party to be seen as a "one issue party" based on Euroscepticism. On the other hand he says he wants his party not to stand candidates against Euro-sceptic candidates from other parties. So, the latter proves that all his party are indeed a single issue party. All they judge an MP on is their attitude to Europe despite the multitude of other issues there are at stake! Neither Appropriate or Suitable, in fact it is Irresponsible Denis. Under the heading Unite and Labour working together to bring down British Business, Denis Knowles latest blog shows a British Airways passenger plane about to be hit with a Cruise missile; the missile has the Unite slogan printed on the side. If Denis intended the post to be humourous then he has failed abysmally. In the ... No planes, trains or automobiles. Not a good week for the Labour Party or Unions, especially Unions funding the Labour Party. Unite force planes to stay on the ground in dispute with British Airways. RMT force trains to stay in sidings in dispute with Network Rail. Labour force car owners to stay at home with increase in petrol duty - £1.20 per litre. Unite is one of the major funders of the Labour Party. With Ashcroft's millions funding the Conservatives and Unions funding Labour, it is time for real change. The Liberal Democrats are offering real change with four steps to a fairer Britain, fate of Sefton Tory councillors: First the naughty step and then the blackspot. The Porter Parry Tory leaderenes on Sefton Council are at it again. What was it that Lord Acton said about power. Like some dragon in a tale from the dark ages the Tory Leadership is being placated by sacrifices. Cllr Roberts has the 'blackspot' and is standing down and it is being whispered that a former Tory Leader-Eric Storey-is also in line for a visit. Cllr Roberts is not a man I cannot recall ever having ever heard speak on the council-not even to ask to have the window open. He has done sterling work for the Tories propping up ... Hague worst election since 1832 so why are we surprised............................ I'm not one of those who think that the electorate always get it right-as Dr Owen asserted last week. I can think of quite a few governments that Britain could have done without! But when they rejected William Hague I think that broadly the electors had summed him up quite well. Therefore I am not surprised by his subsequent behavior. I guess like many Tories he starts with the premise that if you can avoid paying tax then that is perfectly ok. He sees no issue with the growing inequality in our society. We are not all in this together ... Booklist 2010, part 8: The Margarets. 15) Sheri S. Tepper, The Margarets (New York: HarperCollins, 2007, ISBN 9780061170690). Science fiction with some fantasy elements. The child Margaret lives in a dystopian future where humanity has almost destroyed Earth and several colony planets and is being subjected to increasingly authoritarian attempts to reduce the population in order to stop a wider interstellar federation from exterminating all humans for the wider good - a measure which would be popular with some alien races who have a grudge against humanity that is so old they have forgotten the cause. Margaret copes with her surroundings by developing six imaginary selves, ... Parrs Wood comes out of special measures. I was pleased to learn that Parrs Wood High School in East Didsbury has now been removed from special measures after the latest inspection of the school by Ofsted. All the staff and pupils at the school should be congratulated on their good work in this regard, and hopefully can now build on this progress further. I ... Free activities for young coming soon. Cornwall Council will be funding free activities for a range of young people from the beginning of April. The activities will include events at Council leisure centres as well a range of private providers. The Activity Pass will be provided free of charge to families with school aged children who are in receipt of free school meals or the higher rate of working families tax credit and to children in care. The value of each pass will be £195 and they will last for a year. Each time a child uses the pass, the cost of the activity will be ... Sad news has reached us here at Lib Dem Voice that Islington Councillor Donna Boffa died today after a long illness. From the Islington Tribune: Cllr Boffa, 43, was first elected to represent Bunhill ward in 2003, in a by-election following the death of Lib Dem Cllr Rose Wooding. She leaves behind five children. Islington Council leader Lib Dem Cllr Terry Stacy said: "Donna was a fighter right through to the end. From the day she was elected a councillor, Donna never forgot where she came from or who she was there to represent. Donna was all about helping the ... Will UKIP be standing aside for Eustice? In a speech today, new UKIP leader Lord Pearson announced that UKIP will not be fielding a candidate against hardline Conservatives who favour the UK's withdrawal from the EU. I wonder whether this will include George Eustice, the former UKIPper now standing for the Tories in Camborne, Redruth and Hayle? A new report from Shelter makes challenging reading. My thanks to Roy Connell for bringing it to my attention. The headlines from the report assert that Sefton is 278 out of 323 councils for supplying affordable housing.You would have to earn £40,761 to afford to buy an average-priced house in your Sefton. (this average is significantly reduced by taking the Borough as a whole. If you were living in Southport then the cost would be much higher).Independent experts say our area needs to build 2,398 homes per year. Our council planned for 180 new affordable homes to be provided in ... Former West Lothian Candidate Dies. When I first moved to West Lothian there were two names outwith my own party that the political activists held in awe. One result may have determined the paths of their political careers, but both were held high. For Labour there was Tam Dalyell for the SNP there was Billy Wolfe. The two went head to head when this was just one West Lothian seat, before there was 'The Question', in the 1962 by election that was the start of the former Father of the House's career. The latter a former leader of the SNP has passed away aged 86 ... At Government office in Newcastle this am meet with all region big shots to talk about dealing with it. My point is we need to stop wasting money and sort it out firmly whilst supporting familes to improve their own lives. its called hope We are working on it already in Lib Dem Northumberland @stephentall's weekly Twitter updates for 2010-03-19. RT @ caronmlindsay Am very sad that I'm not going to be at the @libdemvoice fringe chaired by @helenduffett. #ldconf I was watching the BBC South Today local evening news yesterday and during the programme there were two similar news reports that were reported in quite different ways. Firstly there was the tragic story of a man in his mid-forties from Hove in Sussex who had taken the legal drug mephedrone and had subsequently died of a heart attack. The report started by outlining the circumstances surrounding what had happened. It then moved on to a telephone interview with the brother of the man who had died who insisted that the drug should be made illegal. Next up was a ... Proud to pledge my support to the NSPCC. Earlier this week, I was pleased to pledge my support to the NSPCC and their General Election campaign. The NSPCC is an important ally of social workers in protecting vulnerable children and I am delighted to back them. The Campaign's focus is ... Answers - three sons of famous fathers. Here are the answers of the trivia quiz I've set over the last couple of days. Whatever happened to the Interim Peers List? (part 4). With an increasing fall in the level of interest - it was becoming apparent that election to the list guaranteed very little - the 2006 contest for places on the Interim Peers List was rather more gentle than even the 2004 contest was. The result was; Michael Steed - stage 1 Dee Doocey - stage 1 Kate Parminter - stage 1 Philip Goldenberg - stage 1 Gerald Vernon-Jackson - stage 1 Steve Hitchins - stage 1 Sue Garden - stage 1 (12 September 2007) Paul Marshall - stage 1 Olly Grender - stage 1 Stan Collins - stage 1 John ... Tourist attraction under threat. I had a very enjoyable holiday in a rented cottage at the Hill of Tarvit in Fife many years ago. I was very pleased to read that the Lib Dems there Ming Campbell and Iain Smith have been actively involved in the campaign to keep that and another National Trust for Scotland property-Kellie Castle -open. We visited Kellie during our stay and they were just embarking on restoring the walled kitchen garden on organic lines that Lawrence Hills would have approved of. I recall that whilst we were there we also went to a performance of the Pirates of Penzance ... Thank you Taverham North and Thorpe Marriott. As many of you will know, I won the Taverham North local council by-election held yesterday by 159 votes. The result was Conservative John Griffin 471 - 41% Green Party Jennifer Parkhouse 54 - 4.5% Liberal Democrats Nich Starling 630 - 54.5% I just want to say a massive thank you to all those people who voted for me and all those people who offered kind words verbally, through emails, twitter and on the phone before and since. People in Taverham North were obviously keen to vote and are enthusiastic about the idea of having a councillor that will be ... The LDV Friday Five 19 March 2010. It's Friday. It's five o'clock. Here's a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week: 5 most-read stories on LDV this week 1. Will £66,000 expenses claim sink Dawn Butler? (4) by Mark Pack. 2. New Lib Dem song - Hit, Miss or Maybe? (20) by Helen Duffett. 3. Colin Firth on why he's stopped voting Labour and now supports the Lib Dems (5) by Stephen Tall. 4. The 39 Labour MPs who are 100% authoritarian (0) by Stephen Tall. 5. Election purdah period: what can and can't be done? (0) by Mark Pack. 5 active LDV Members' Forum ... If you're going to make a gaffe, you may as well make it a big one, I suppose. From Multimap, here's an aerial picture showing Achmore (ringed), on the Isle of Lewis. Miles from the sea, you will notice. So when asked to list important issues for local islanders, why did the (not so-) local Tory candidate single out the need for "the building of the harbour wall at Achmore"? It is baffling. It reminds me of a campaign a long time ago when we hoped to get a non-local Tory candidate to pontificate on the future of Donnington Hospital (which he wouldn't have known is not a hospital, but almshouses). Sadly, it remained an unfulfilled campaigners' fantasy. ... West Country Campaign songs from yesteryear............ Like many other people I got an email this week with a campaign song. Southport has had many campaign songs and most of them are recorded in Michael Braham's History of Southport Liberals. The practice has died out and the last one that seems to have had widespread use was for C.B. Ramage in the 1929 election. He has an unusual man being a barrister and an actor. His most remembered role was as the barrister in Kind Hearts and Coronets where he defended Louis in front of his peers in the House of Lords. Anyway when I got the ... The council has started work on tidying up Sulis Meadows, following the adoption by Crest. There have been a few concerns, this is what the council has to say."As you may be aware work has started on site to cut back the overgrown hedge and litterpick. I am receiving a few complaints regarding this about cutting hedges when birds nesting season so I will clarify a few things. It is not illegal We have ask the executive councillor what is going on with the roads in Kngsway1. Question from Councillor Nigel RobertsWith the announcement of extra money for road repairs could the Executive Councillor give an assurance that Kingsway's Roads will be repaired, as he knows I have raised this several times, and although repairs have been made after a few months the pot holes return?Answer from Empty homes - why is the council not doing more ? This isn't the fault of the officers, there is a policy vacuum we asked the following question at the recent council meeting.There are plenty of empty houses, but the proposals are to build 2000 more houses on green fields.3. Question from Councillor Nigel Roberts Please could the Executive Councillor answer, how many empty houses are there in Bath and North East Somerset ?How many basements Iain Dale goes into bovine scatology overdrive. Dear old Iain Dale. He never abandons his "old one-two" does he? You know – the one where he invents something that somebody has said, and then attacks it with all the venom he can muster. Take this classic. You will notice that not a single one of the quotes, in inverted commas or not, are actually real quotes from LibDem Voice, Chris Huhne or Nick Clegg. (A typical LibDem Voice expenses article ends "I wouldn't reckon on printing "we're not as bad as the other two" too large on your Focus leaflets.") I think the post tells us more ... Councillors take action to reduce traffic speeds in Odd Down. Odd Down Councillors Steve Hedges and Nigel Roberts will be using part of 'their' share of B&NES Council's Ward Councillor's Initiative Fund to help cut traffic speeds through Odd Down.The Ward Councillor's Initiative Fund is a pilot scheme which allows local Councillors to respond quickly to local needs with small amounts of financial support. All B&NES Councillors will have the chance to Stop cock cover missing in Cranmore Place. The stop cock cover outside of 92 Cranmore place in the pavement has been reported to the council Earlier Stories Complete archive on the official site.
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