The Lib Dems

Here is a copy of some detailed thoughts the Lib Dems had for us:

“Some quick answers on behalf of the Lib Dems -

1] Do you believe people should be taught about politics at a younger age?

Politics is of fundamental importance to our society. Any process that leads to greater understanding and engagement with the political process is seen as a positive thing by the Liberal Democrats. It makes sense for children to have political and social (lifeskills) education, to the appropriate level, throughout their time in school.

It is long-standing Liberal Democrat policy to lower the age at which people can vote to 16. We would hope that this would go some way to engaging young people with politics. With this power, comes responsibility though. Education is an important way in which this message can be delivered.

2] Do you believe voter apathy and disillusionment is linked to a lack of understanding of the system and how it works?

Partly. Though politicians have let themselves down with things such as dodgy expenses claims. However, Liberal Democrats believe that the problem of disillusionment with politics does not stem primarily from revelations concerning moat-cleaning or servants’ quarters, but from something much more fundamental. In the 2005 election, the government was returned to power despite the fact that less than one third of the electorate actually voted for them. Currently, people do not have the constitutional power to sack their own MPs, even if they are guilty of serious misconduct. Both of these facts seem wrong and unfair. No wonder anger, apathy and disillusionment seem to be growing. While greater understanding of the current system is important and laudable, root and branch reform is necessary for people’s votes to mean more, and for people to feel more engaged – in other words, for people to become more powerful.

3] What arguments would you give to those who choose not to make use of their vote [particularly those aged 18-24]?

It is no exaggeration to say that people have died in this country for the right to vote. Democracy is something to be proud of, and the ability to select our representatives is a privilege. It is a privilege that is not available to everyone in the world. As the electorate, we have real power as well as responsibility. The way we vote profoundly effects all aspects of the country we live in – from what is taught in schools, to how the sick are cared for. Even spoiling a ballot paper is engaging with democracy and registers your vote as a protest. Many political parties exist, some covering single issues, and others with a wider portfolio of policies. Although it may not be possible to find a party that represents your views 100%, it is very likely that there will be a party you can identify with, which shares many of your values.

You may also want to use some of the quotes from Nick Clegg at http://www.takebackpower.org/100_days_to_save_democracy.html or http://www.libdems.org.uk/news/clegg-lets-take-the-dirty-money-out-of-politics-and-have-a-battle-of-ideas-271860747;show

I hope this is helpful.

Regards

George Crozier
Liberal Democrat Political Information and Communications Section”

1 week until we meet channel 4

It’s only 1 week until we pitch our campaign to channel 4. Us imp’s our strapped to our computer screens and the filmers are stuck in the edit suite and the sun is shining!  We’ve added a weekly question on our website, a count down to the local election and are currently setting up a forum. The script writers have pretty much done all the education section and are currently working on european elections. We should be live by the end of the weekend!

Taster

This is the first OFFICIAL Knowvote approved party summary. Think of it as a taster for ya’ll whilst the website’s still offline..

The Liberal Democratic Party.

The Lib Dems are the third largest political party within the UK Parliament, but are yet to have been given the chance to govern the country. The Lib Dems are a ‘liberal’ party, which means they promote personal freedom and equality and less state intervention within peoples’ lives. For example, they are strongly opposed to the introduction of National Identity cards and want to change many of the current ‘anti-terror’ laws such as the ability to hold a suspect without trial for 28 days.

Nick Clegg [the Lib Dem leader] had previously attempted to repeal [try and change] many laws within the Human Rights Act, such as the banning of protests outside Westminster. In fact, the Lib Dems strongly promote equality for religious, racial, gender and sexual groups, for example, they were the leading party on the campaign for civil-partnerships.

Although opposed to state intervention, the Lib Dems are highly supportive of the NHS and the welfare state. They would also like to lower taxes on the poorer people in the UK and raise them on the wealthier people. They have also claimed that they will scrap tuition fees for Universities, but recently this policy has come under scrutiny.

In terms of foreign policy, the Lib Dems were heavily critical of the Iraq War [though some Lib Dem MP’s did support it] and are highly opposed to the use of military intervention in international affairs. They are also the most pro-European out of the main parties in the UK.

The Lib Dems are very supportive of political reform as well. They want the current system to be changed to be proportionally representative [i.e. you get the amount of seats for the amount of votes you get] and for the House of Lords to be democratically elected.

The Lib Dems are also the greenest party out of the main parties and are strongly supportive of environmental issues. They are currently trying to convince the government to increase their desired 60% emission cut to an 80% emission cut.

In terms of crime, the Lib Dems are more focussed on introducing more police onto the streets. They also want to halve Britain’s prison population, using prisons only for serious criminals. In terms of recreational drug use, the Lib Dems have promoted the use of a new system which may involve less stigma around certain drugs such as Cannabis.

Party Policy: http://www.libdems.org.uk/policies

Richard

The Mystery Ballot…

Today we began our mystery ballot, where we request that people vote for one of six random names… but what are they voting FOR? Stay tuned to find out….

These are the result of the ballot so far, although the election will continue for another week! A breakdown of the statistics then: 

62 ballots have been cast so far, with 

2 for Gordon Brown Spots

15 for Alejandro 

20 for Winston 

9 for Edwina

9 for Destruktor and

9 for Jiraf Obama 

Who will win!? YOU DECIDE! cast your vote by leaving a comment with the name you like best on this post. If you want your vote to be anonymous then just type “anon” after the name! You can only vote for the names shown, though.

 

We’re all really exited about the flashmob tomorrow! We were even mentioned in a newspaper today!

More from us soon… including a super-cool video blog! Not to mention a couple of other treats which we’ll keep under wraps for now…

And remember, the mystery ballot closes at 12 midday on Friday 22nd, so get voting people!

Pushing ahed with things

Hi everyone, it’s Ed again. Realized that I haven’t posted a blog for a while so I thought that I would.

Firstly I’d like to say that the draft party outlines have been slightly altered to appease those of you who felt that ‘libertarian’ wasn’t an appropriate description of UKIP. It’s understandable. You have to bare in mind with this sort of thing that we are by no means experts on politics ourselves – due to the very lack of education which we are campaigning to prevent. We’re media students. But we are doing our best. 

There’s going to be a Know Vote stall in uni tomorrow outside Waterstones incase anybody wants to stop by. It should be interesting to see how much interest we can create with something so simple. In addition we’ll be reshooting a few bits and pieces for the campaign videos on Monday.  

In the mean time I’ve been taken off party outlining duty – Richard’s going to be covering all of the parties instead. In the mean time I’ll be producing all of the stuff on first-past-the-post. Fascinating. 

We’re coming up to the final stretch now. The website should be online by saturday, to accommodate the flashmob!

Thanks 

Ed

Branding, Promoting and gaining awareness

I’ve put up posters all over halls and uni and created 4 huge banners to use at our flashmob so people know our website around town. We have 81 confirmed guests for our flashmob so are doing well. We have literally been throwing this campaign down everyone who will listens throat, i even made all the uni ladies football team pre drinking come to a halt the other day to remind them about our flashmob for the 100th time, but it all appears to be paying off. From what ive heard from other groups it seems our group are really ahead and going well.

The Conservative Party

This is an unfinished summary of the Tory party. As Ed seems keen on educating ASAP, I shall indeed grab his torch and carry on whilst he’s gone. Here is my work so far on David Cameron’s goonies. Like I said, it’s not finished and not perfect yet, but still has educational purpose to it…

The Conservative Party.

The Conservative Party [aka the Tories] are not the same as Labour. In fact, they have some quite significant differences.

The Conservative party is the second largest political party within the UK parliament, and has been the most successful party of the previous century. Whilst historically being a ‘right-wing’[1] party, under David Cameron the party has moved more towards the centre [largely to regain lost support].

The party is by nature ‘conservative’ and thus maintains a traditional view of Britain [for instance, support for the Monarchy] and has always regarded itself as being patriotic.

Prior to David Cameron the party was very ‘Europsceptic’ [meaning it wasn’t too keen on being part of the European Union e.g. refusing to accept the Euro] but it has recently tried to shake this reputation off. The current Tory party aims to renegotiate EU treaties to help regain more power within the UK, but are not outright against the idea of the EU.

Conservative policy is more focussed on reducing government involvement in the economic aspects of society [such as reducing taxes, furthering public investment, and promoting the privatisation of companies] but increasing control in the social aspects of society [for instance, promoting ‘traditional’ family values and heavier restrictions on immigration and criminal punishment]. This has lead the party to want to repair what they call “broken” British society.

However, in the past, the Conservative party has often lost liberal support because of the more controversial aspects of its social policy [for example ‘Section 28 of the Local Government Act of 1998’ which banned the teaching of homosexuality as an acceptable family structure in schools, or their ‘war’ on single parents]. The party is currently, however, trying to drop this reputation to regain support.

In terms of foreign policy, the Tories have previously favoured the close tie with America and institutions such as NATO.

There are three distinct branches of the Conservative Party, but members are in no way limited to these ideologies:

-One Nation Conservatives: they promote social cohesion between difference classes, and recently between races and religions as well. These Tories tend to be more tolerant of different groups within UK society.

-Thatcherites: named after the previous Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher. They tend to focus on reducing government economic control [for instance with tax cuts and the privatisation of public services]. They are still Europsceptic in most cases and far more supportive of traditional roles and structures than the official stance of the modern Cameron lead party.

-Cornerstone [Faith ,Flag and Family] Tories: these guys are very supportive of Britain’s Protestant church, patriotism for a unified British state, and traditional family roles – criticising heavily homosexuals, single parents and all ‘non-traditional’ family types. They are also strongly opposed to immigration and in past situations have been regarded as being ‘racist’.

Useful Tory Links:

Party Policy

Crime

Immigration

Welfare

Environment

Economy

[1] “those who support political or social or economic conservatism; those who believe that things are better left unchanged”

Richard

Video update!

Hello everyone!

Ed & Rich have both been posting, so I thought it was about time I posted something to update you lovely people on the video side of things!

During our meeting yesterday, I (Zoe) was elected (see what I did there?) as director for our video content which Ed has discussed in previous posts.

To skip out on all the boring bits, it’s coming along.

We have a great script which has just undergone its third draft and I shall now be getting on to working out how to transform it into the visual masterpiece (well, hopefully) that you will all get to see in the near future!

Shooting begins on the forthcoming Tuesday and will continue through to Thursday afternoon.

If you have any opinions that you want to voice in our videos, get yourselves down to either of the following:

Tuesday 5th May, 3pm-5pm – Bournemouth Town Centre
Wednesday 6th May, 2:45pm-4pm – Poole Town Centre

Look out for us and be interviewed!

Other than that, there isn’t much I can update you on currently.

I’ll make another appearance when I have more to update you all with!

Zoe.

One and All

Whilst Ed may be off to research the SNP and parties of Scotland, I shall be discovering the wonder of Irish politics.

Our aim is to get a breif summary of the basic ideology that the parties stand for to use on our kNow Vote website. This will be combined with links to the parties own explanations of their policies so people can delve further into the minefield that is the British Political system. The journey towards education and awareness is taking its first steps.

We are also currently gaining exposure around the University and University accomodation via some outstanding poster work by our Chloe and her workshop of elves [though not so much in certain buildings due to certain security guards]. The ‘Mass March‘ is preparing itself to outstand some innocent bystanders, gaining new followers every day. If you haven’t heard of kNOw Vote, you will have come May 16th. Ready to rock B’mouth town centre?

And if we’re lucky, some exposure from the B’mouth Echo [as well as a local Journalist student] should help expand our campaign’s following even further.

With members from all over the country participating in constant political debate on the facebook and an ever growing membership [at 274 now - wow, at this growth rate we'll be shoving our ideas down Brown's throat in no time] the campaign is really starting to gain some steady feet.

So, come one, come all, and prepare to shake things up for the sake of our future. “Education, education, education?” – we bloody well think so!

Richard

The Balls are Rolling

We had another meeting today. 

Today was the first day when we’ve really struggled to find space in the library or the Media School. We ended up crammed into a small, sweaty editing room on the fourth floor. But despite the humidity of the room, and the fact that at least half of us had absolutely bitching hangovers, we were still happy. You know why? 

Because of the feeling. 

The feeling that we’ve started something. 

Fifty people joined the Facebook group in just 24 hours, yesterday. Posters are appearing all around the university. On Twitter we’re being followed by the Labour Party and Conservative Future. Lizzie Sykes told us that we ‘really have something’. There are whisperings, fair readers, of a revolution in political awareness. 

The campaign is picking up a pace and life that none of us dared hope to foresee. I personally believe that the flashmob will be the tipping point in terms of public awareness. But what did we discuss today?

Well, as you may have seen on Twitter we have the website waiting to go ahead, as soon as it’s finished. You can see the page at http://www.knowvote.org, although there’s not a lot there just yet! 

We also chatted about the visual productions. Locations, actors, who’s directing, what are we going to to about lighting. All very dull but necessary stuff. We also want to try and get you guys more involved, with the possibility of free poster packages being sent to anyone who requests them, and an online video campaign where you could film yourself (on your phone, digital camera, whatever) and upload it onto our website or the facebook group.  

In any case our next meeting is on Friday, so tomorrow you might be in for a slightly different blog. In the mean time I’m off to research the SNP. 

 

Ed