THAT'S not what you said in the Jeffries' Tube

You may have noticed that the previous two posts were somewhat light on my usual "we debated this motion, and I voted this way on it" details. That's mostly because after I had done the reporting-back-from-FCC bits (which I pledged to do upon my candidacy for FCC - I keep my promises, me. Mostly...) the posts were already stupidly long, but also in part because my lovely friend Andrew has done an excellent summary of the salient points here, and given that I am his evil twin (or he is mine - honestly, basically the only difference between us is that I really like beards and he merely has one) I don't feel the need to reiterate his points.

For the avoidance of doubt, though, here is how I voted:

• Emergency Motions Ballot: can't actually remember, except that I put the second Scottish referendum motion bottom (we can't mandate our MPs how to vote so it was utterly pointless, AND it's not up to English MPs to tell Scotland what to do anyway IMHO) and the Trump one next to bottom (he's not coming till October. Put a (better drafted) motion in for Autumn conference, when it will be a live and salient issue). The others I was happy to see a debate on.


• A Rational Approach to Harm Reduction (aka the Sex Work Motion): I voted against the (mildly wrecking) amendment and for the unamended motion


• Tackling Overcrowding in the Prison System: I voted for the amendment and the motion.


• Britain in the EU: I went for lunch during this motion as hell would freeze over before anyone voted against it, and during the scheduled lunch break I would be prepping to aide in the health and social care debate.


• Crisis in health and social care: I voted for the amendment, and then for the motion as amended, from my shiny shiny "seat reserved for FCC Hall Aide" seat.


• The Biennial Trident Fudge: I Paired with Alisdair and went to the pub since we would have voted exactly oppositely on both the motion and amendment and thus cancelled each other out. The England/Ireland match was nailbiting.


• Emergency motion: Unaccompanied Child Asylum Seekers: I voted in favour of us taking in more of them.


• Faith Schools: We had to vote between three options, then for the amendment, then for the motion as amended or not with whichever option we voted for. I'm going to use Andrew's characterisations here: I voted against "YAY faith schools" & for "Faith schools should be restricted as much as humanly possible without actually banning them". Then I voted for "Faith schools should be restricted as much as humanly possible without actually banning them" and against the horrible and nonsensical fudge which tried to split the difference between the first two. Then I voted for the "ban all faith schools" amendment, but not enough other people did, so it fell. Then I voted for the motion unamended with the option "Faith schools should be restricted as much as humanly possible without actually banning them" being the winning option. And I am not ashamed to admit to shedding a tear during Sarah Brown (Cambridge)'s very moving speech. I am glad Julian and Zoe were there to give her hugs when she had finished.
  
  As you can tell, this was quite a complicated vote. Small FCC note: I am glad Geoff Payne was chairing it. Although I have had my disagreements with him, he has just the right sort of forensic, nitpicky, legal mind for this kind of thing, and is a very clear and non-waffly chair. He's one of only about four people I would trust with such a contentious debate with so many options, and two of them are no longer on FCC.


• Associated Membership of the EU: I voted in favour.

I think that covers everything. So... after three long posts... Any questions?

The short version of What I Did At Lib Dem Conference is:

Attended lots of FCC meetings and training; co-hosted Glee for the second time; hall-aided my first debate as a member of FCC; "organised" Not The Leader's Speech.

( click here for more detail on the first three )

Coming soon: What I Did At Lib Dem Conference part two: structuring an actual debate: this time it's personal PLUS Not The Leader's Speech.

I know that sometimes people wish to complain about having their comments moderated on Lib Dem Voice, because they feel they are being treated unfairly. I also know that moderating comments is a tough job, and you can never please everybody, no matter how hard you try. So! I thought I would devise a nice form letter for people who have had their comments moderated to fill in, to make their complaints easier for all sides to deal with.

To:
LDHQ
Gt George St
London

From:
(type your name and address here, for example:
IB Whiny
Twatt
Orkney)

Date:________________

Dear Person In Charge of Internet Lib Demmery,

I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about my treatment at the hands of your minions who moderate the comments on the Lib Dem Voice Website. This is because (please tick all that apply):

◻ I wanted to call the person who wrote the article names and they wouldn't let me.
◻ I wanted to call other commentors names and they wouldn't let me.
◻ I wanted to call the maintainers of the site names and they wouldn't let me.
◻ I was trying to drag the thread off into a discussion of my pet topic, rather than the topic the thread was on, which I find frankly boring. My pet topic is much better.
◻ I was pretending to be Nick Clegg for a laugh. They just can't handle hilarious banter!
◻ I hate the Lib Dems and I should be able to say so repeatedly on a Lib Dem website because that's what liberalism means!
◻ While I have no problem with most of the people who run Lib Dem Voice I have this weird aversion to Caron and Mary; I can't explain it. I'm definitely not a misogynist though!
◻ While I have no problem with most of the people who run Lib Dem Voice I have this weird aversion to Mark; I can't explain it. I'm definitely not a racist though!
◻ I don't understand the concept of a privately-owned unofficial website, and actually believe there IS a person in charge of all Internet Lib Demmery who can crack down on people
◻ Frankly I am just butthurt about somebody not catering to my every entitled whim.

I hope that you will give this matter your fullest attention, and if I have not heard back from you within 24 hours of me sending this letter, I reserve the right to piss and moan all over twitter and/or facebook.

yours sincerely,

IB Whiny

As a special extra service, I shall even include a form reply for whichever poor bugger at head office gets to open these letters

To:
IB Whiny
Twatt
Orkney

From:
LDHQ
Gt George St
London

Date:________________

Dear IB Whiny,

I refer you to the answer given in the case of Arkell vs Pressdram;

love from

The Person In Charge of Internet Lib Demmery

... And I think we can all now see why I do not get involved with modding on LDV.

We won Warley. Not only did we win Warley, but we won it with a stonking majority.
We held Elland. Not only did we hold Elland, but Pat's majority is something to warm the cockles of any lib dem heart.
We held G&S;, despite the tories throwing everything they had at it, and despite the much beloved sitting lib dem councillor standing down.

We lost Calder. We lost Janet. We lost Janet at least partly due to blatant lies from a Labour candidate I had previously believed to be honourable - no more.

But: where we work we win... well, where we work more than any reasonable person can be expected to, and for several years, we win three times out of four.

We have Ashley on the council, and he is a man who knows his policy onions. We have Pat Allen still, and she is a lady who has more principles than you can shake a stick at. And we have a new mover and shaker in Paul Bellenger, who has the enthusiasm of ten men. We'll miss Janet, the hardest working councillor the Calder Ward has ever seen, but we'll survive, despite mourning her loss.

Outside of Calderdale: Wales is very depressing. Scotland is actually quite cheery. Rotherham is legitimately terrifying. Eastleigh is glorious. Watford? Oh Watford. I love you so much. And London? London has rejected the blatant racism of Lynton Crosby as passed through the prism of Zac Goldsmith and has elected its first muslim mayor. I don't approve of everything Sadiq Khan stands for, but he's at least competent, and London has a muslim mayor. I'll accept that. I'll accept that because it will make the racist arseholes REALLY ANGRY, and we're going to be seeing a lot of racist arseholes given the Labour>UKIP shifts.

My party hasn't made Justin Trudeau gains, but it's made gains, and it's made gains in council seats (albeit from a low base) for the first time since I joined the party. The tories are up for electoral fraud in a whole lot of tory/Lib Dem marginals, and I am ITCHING for the bye elections...

For the first time in a long time, it feels GOOD to be a lib dem. There's a lot of reasons for that; some of it is regression to the mean and some of it is us not being in coalition any more, but I actually credit a lot of it to having a steady, yet reliably liberal, hand on the tiller. So thank you to Our Glorious Leader, Timothy of Farron. And thank you to all the footsoldiers who pounded the streets for little thanks: I thank you all here, every last one of you. You're awesome.

Onwards and upwards, my fellow lib dems. And, despite the sad blight of the loss of Janet Battye (which will hurt the people of the Calder Ward more than they yet realise), it genuinely does feel like we've turned a corner.

Team Cockroach FTW.

I suspect that in certain quarters this is not going to win me any friends. I don't rightly care. Those of you of a nervous disposition might want to scroll on past right now...


Hello those who are still here. You may or may not have noticed that sexual harrassment is something of a hot button topic in the lib dems, and indeed politics in general, at the moment. This is because, despite years and years of being told over and over again, some people (mainly, but not exclusively, men) refuse to get it. I am therefore going to put this in very simple terms.

The worst thing about sexual harrassment is the absolute, wearying, relentless inevitability of it. If you present as female, wherever you go there will be some arsehole, normally a man, and I'm afraid the rest of this post is going to be entirely in gendered terms because that's my experience*, who views you as nothing more than a receptacle for his knob and treats you accordingly.

And yes, #NotAllMen. But enough men. Enough men for it to be a hazard in every single public place. Enough men that other, nicer, men don't stop from sexually harrassing because they don't even notice it happening, or if they do notice they brush it off, dismiss it, or even think it's funny.

And yes, women don't always tell such men that their advances are unwanted. Because we know what happens if we do.

I can hear the cry building up right now:

But waaaaaaaaah what is a man who wants a shag and fancies a woman supposed to do! We're not even allowed to talk to women any more! It's so unfair! Our entitlement to consequence-free sex is being taken away! etc. etc et bloody cetera.

You know how I know that cry is building up from the men who view women as nothing more than pieces of meat? Because on every single fucking article some poor woman writes about this, that's what the comment section looks like. Waaaaah not allowed to be friendly. Waaaaaah not allowed to give people a hug. Waaaaaaaah not allowed to flirt. Waaaaaaaaaaaaah not allowed to grope somebody and then pretend it was just an affectionate gesture. The species will die out if we can't conduct mating rituals without paying any attention to one party's feelings on whether or not mating should occur!

Boys, when you say shit like that, you are fooling nobody. Right out of your own mouth comes the evidence that you think of women as sperm receptacles first and human beings second, because you know what? Nobody who wasn't worried they are a sexual harrasser would talk such utter bollocks. You are not entitled to a shag just because you want one, go and have a wank just like everybody else does when they fancy someone who doesn't fancy them back, and stop bloody whining like Kevin the teenager because you can't get your end away.

You are absolutely allowed to talk to women. I speak to men all the time. I spoke to several only this morning. Quite a lot of the men I spoke to, we were both in a state of undress (I went to the gym and swimming). Only one man sexually harrassed me today (today was a quiet day for entitled arseholes, I guess). Most of them were lovely. But that one man is enough to make me keep my distance a little bit more from all men, because who knows if any of them is Scroedinger's Rapist. So if you want women to feel safer and easier talking to you? You, as a man, need to notice, call out, and stop sexual harrassment.

You are absolutely allowed to be friendly to women. "Being friendly" and "trying to get into the pants of" are not synonyms though. I have lots of friends that I don't have sex with.

You are absolutely allowed to hug or have other affectionate contact with women if they are your friends, and you know for a damn straight fact they are enthusiastically consenting. If you've just met someone in a bar, putting your arm around them marks you out as a creeper, guys. And just because nobody has said anything does not mean you are not being marked as a creeper. You put your arm around someone and they immediately tense up? You take your arm away. Not rocket science.

You are absolutely allowed to flirt with women. The trick to this is: is she flirting back? If she's got a genuine, open smile, if she's responding to you in kind, then flirt away! If she's backing away, answering in monosyllables, looking at the door, giving you a glassy smile rather than a genuine one... You need to back the fuck off and shut the fuck up because she is not interested in you. She may not outright say "Look, mate, I'm not interested", because as the links above show, that can get you beaten, raped, or killed. Learn to read body language, and you will be fine. Guys who master this skill are way more attractive to women, because when a guy treats us with respect we feel such relief that he's not One of Them...

Ah yes, Them.

You see, the thing is, the research shows that actually, pretty much all men understand this. But the sexual harrassers, assaulters and rapists are the ones who trot out the shit about grey areas and being confused by it because that's how they get away with it. So I'm sorry to break it to you, boys, but every time I see one of you coming out with some of these gems, I think to myself "that dude is an uncaught rapist". Quite a lot of you are, you know. Many of you will cheerfully admit to it, so long as nobody uses the 'r' word.

And as long as nice men, normal men, men who aren't sexual harrassers, assaulters and rapists, keep letting this shit get trotted out again and again by their mates because "Simon** wouldn't do that, he's a good guy" or "David***'s such a gentleman, though" then this situation is going to continue.

And we're going to keep having the "but whyyyyyyy don't more women want to join our club?" discussion for years and years to come. Frankly, AWS isn't even a sticking plaster on this.

---

*I know sexual assault, harrassment, and rape happens to men too. I know survivors of male rape have it extra difficult in terms of not being believed, and not getting justice. I rage about that too, just not in this post. OK?
**Not all Simons
***Not all Davids
I just picked those names randomly. Sorry.

I think after the last few days there are a few of us who need hugs, but also a few of us who are feeling like we've had our space invaded once too often, so I thought I'd draw up terms of reference for the AO I jokingly coined on twitter this evening:

1, lib dem friends of cuddles exists to further the idea of comforting contact between sentient beings. Cuddles, hugs and cwtching are all within our remit.
2, a cuddle without consent is not a cuddle, it is assault. Asking for consent does not need to be verbal but it needs to happen. Opening your arms and inclining your head so the other person can lap into your arms is fine. Grabbing them is not*.
3, lib dem friends of cuddles are absolutely encouraged to proselytise the cause of cuddles within and without the party, but must never pressure or guilt trip anyone for not wanting cuddles.
4, We are happy to work with sister AOs in the cause of furthering happiness within the party, especially Lib Dem Friends of Gin, and also LDFO Cake, pie, biscuits & tarts.

---

*actually one of my favourite moments of lib dem conference was when I was having a weepy moment and someone said "is it OK if I pat your knee". This does not "ruin the moment" or take away spontenaity, you guys. It was really sweet and thoughtful and nice.

... having baronesses soft soap me. I blame sassyscot for this.

I'm not going to lie. I'm weakening.

... Anyone got space for a little one Friday the 19th and Saturday the 20th of this month? I'll bring my own toothpaste...

The nearer to Westminster the better, FYI. Got a lib demmy thing to go to.

(may be a while answering comments as work is concentratey this morning, but don't worry, I will get there)

ETA: now have offer, thanks folks :)

... I think we've just done the worst.

I remain to be convinced that airstrikes will help to defeat Daesh, because you can't blow up an idea. I remain to be convinced that NOT blowing up bit of Syria would help either. I'm in a paralysis of indecision about the whole thing. One thing I am sure of, though, is that from the point of view of gaining an electoral advantage we've just done the worst possible thing.

- Our glorious leader announces, after much handwringing, that we're going to whip our 8 MPs to support airstrikes, pissing off a good 40% of our activists just before a by election;
- Cameron, intentionally or not, pisses of half his Labour sycophants by talking about terrorist sympathisers so he now has much weaker support from the red team;
- The foreign affairs select committee, despite the best efforts of Uncle Crispin, announce that they think airstrikes are a really bad idea;
- we now look like the rump that's left of us is still supporting the tories even though we don't have to, and even though nobody else thinks it's a good idea.

Still, on the plus side it's taken a good five and a half months for our new leader to make such a monumental tactical fuckup, and further on the plus side so few people are paying attention to us these days nobody is going to notice or care, and if they do they'll just shrug because supporting the tories needlessly is what we're for, right?

I think the time has come for me to see if I can find Dave Page's Patented Desk made of human hands so that I can headdesk and facepalm at the same time.

UPDATE: quote from my twitter feed: "sad but unsurprising to see the rump lib dems being lickspittles"

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

UPDATE 2: and another, as pointed out by Andrew in the comments below: "It's easier to have contempt for the Lib Dems than Tories in the same way it's easier to have contempt for Grima Wormtongue than Saruman."

Several people I really respect are considering their party membership this morning, including one who has been a member for 20+ years and served on a lot of Federal committees. I am just really really depressed.

This is what I said:

You're probably drowning under a tsunami of emails about this, so I'll keep it short. I'm not going to trawl through the ins and outs and the rights and wrongs because that's been done ad nauseam, and is probably being done elsewhere in the tsunami. However, I am going to point out a political reality: somebody needs to tell Lord Rennard that if he loves the party as much as he professes to do he needs to stop trying his damnedest to destroy it, and the tiny amount of remaining credibility it has. I think that message could possibly do with being hammered home to the forty unelected fools who thought they were being clever by voting him onto FE too.

That is as much as I can say while remaining civil. I really am incredibly angry about this.

I hope others manage to remain civil too.

I am posting this publicly because I am a liberal, and I believe in openness and transparency. I am dead set certain there are people reading this who will disagree with my stance on this matter and think that Lord Grabbyhands deserves to be allowed full privileges because of what Webster said. I haven't seen him comply with Webster's conclusions* and so I don't think that he can be said to have done everything required of him to make amends. I'm broadly sympathetic to the idea that he should be allowed full privileges IF he apologises and commits to changing his ways. I see no evidence whatsoever that this has happened, or is likely to in the future.

But honestly, Lib Dem Lords, we have a big by election to fight. We're trying to recover from a rout at the general election. What on Cthulhu's green earth made you think that slashing open this festering wound was a remotely good idea? Idiots.

---

* not only that he should apologise - as opposed to giving a half-arsed mealy-mouthed faupology - but that he should commit to changing his ways.

This gets quite long and involved, guys. There were a lot of questions in the governance review paper, and I've answered every one of them. As such, my answers are ( under the cut )

OMOV is going to come up again at conference, and it's one of those ideas that superficially seductive, and, to be honest, I lean in favour of just from a simplicity point of view. However*, there are some arguments against which I think need to be answered before I'll consider voting for it. I'll outline them below, along with some ideas which could mitigate (although not necessarily solve) each one:

1, Entryism. Yeah, I know, we're the Lib Dems, who's going to bother? But the current system of conference reps does at least mean that someone who comes to conference with a voting pass has at least been given a cursory glance over by their local party. This could be mitigated by having a length of service clause (you can't vote till you've been a member for a given amount of time) but that wouldn't deter really determined entryists, and would mean that the one person you've thought of as a natural lib dem, who your local party has been courting for years, would also be denied a vote when under the current system they aren't. Also people who continually let their memberships lapse due to forgetfulness would be perpetually unable to vote. This could be mitigated by people signing up for direct debits.

2, Geographic concentration. This is already an issue - wherever conference is closest to supplies the majority of voting reps for that conference. I can't see OMOV making this any better, and I can see it potentially getting worse. A lot of policies we vote on have different applications in different regions. This could be mitigated by allowing online voting, but that opens up whole new vistas of cans of worms.

3, Tyranny of the Majority. Y'all just knew I was going to bring up John Stuart Mill at some point, didn't you? Dear old JS. If you have OMOV, and geographic concentration, and entryism, you run the risk of packing of policy votes. Now, arguably, this already happens. We've all** been in the hall for Julian and Evan's traditional "get rid of faith schools" motion/amendment, which it's quite clear the hall is going to vote for, and then the payroll vote come rolling in and vote it down. The payroll vote is smaller now, but that doesn't mean other packing factions won't emerge, and OMOV would make it lots easier for them. Packing of votes necessarily means smaller local parties/AOs/SAOs get less says, and I, for one, am in favour of diversity of opinion. This could be mitigated by retaining the current conference rep system.

4, Single Issue Pressure Groups. People would turn up en masse to vote on one motion. Can you imagine what 38 degrees would do to conference? This could be mitigated by retaining the current voting rep system, or by the long service requirement

5, Doesn't solve the problems it claims to solve. Becoming a conference rep is touted as a major barrier to participation in conference by proponents of OMOV. I have never known of a local party that does not have difficulty filling up all their available conference rep slots, even the ones that believe the emails that come from head office telling you you're entitled to less than you actually are. If turning up to your local party AGM and putting your hand up when the chair says "Who's going to conference, then?" is an insurmountable barrier to participation for a particular individual, I don't think that OMOV will make them more likely to participate. Maybe it will for a few, but not the majority. And yes, there IS a problem with moribund local parties in some areas, but OMOV doesn't suddenly invigorate them. No, the major thing that prevents people participating in conference is that it costs a small fortune, and again, OMOV does not solve this. This could be mitigated by not telling people a system is going to do something it demonstrably isn't and can't? IDK.

Now, I'm not actually dead set against OMOV. As I said at the beginning, it has a beguiling simplicity. But I would like to see genuine solutions to the problems I have with it before I vote for an unknown system over one that I know, and know works.

---

* up yours, Govey
** for a given definition of all

50/50 sounds so seductive, doesn't it? It sounds so fair. But it's not fair, and in fact makes marginalisation worse.

I have a lot of friends who are genderqueer, or intersex, or otherwise outside of the narrow gender binary represented by 50/50 campaigns. You probably have friends who fall outside the gender binary - it's nothing like a rare as we are traditionally led to think. If you follow a 50/50 gender campaign you are reinforcing the false gender binary, and locking out of power anyone who does not adhere to that false gender binary. That's not just illiberal, it's morally wrong, and discriminatory against a group of people whom our society already treats like crap.

Please stop doing it, fellow lib dems. Please? Because every time you do your lack n of consideration for those who do not conform to an extremely narrow view of what humanity is becomes painfully obvious, and I for one thought we were better than that.