Reflecting Britain
I am a natural skeptic of measures to try and create equality, sometimes the problem is not there, at least in the way that the measures are designed to combat and secondly schemes sometimes have a negative effect on other groups (or sometimes the group they are designed to help).
Having said this, I have decided I support the Reflecting Britain campaign. There is a clear imbalance in the party which needs to be addressed just as the gender imbalance is being redressed. There is no reason why we should not have a party which is representative of the entire population.
The campaign is also not campaigning for all- shortlists. Such measures are detrimental to other groups and create a hostile atmosphere for the group which is meant to be helped.
Supporting those who wish to become candidates who feel unable to pursue this desire for whatever reason is a different matter. Such support will increase participation and allow them to compete on that great liberal favourite, the level playing field. That is the reason action is justified, and I hope that in the near future the party will be able to dispense with help for any group because they do not need it, but until then it is quite right to address the issue in this way.
The other things that this campaign, and the reforms it promotes, does are to create some soul searching within the party and also to show the outside world that we are indeed trying to redress this imbalance, hopefully persuading a more diverse section of the public to join and support us, thus redressing the balance further. Image matters, we unfortunately have an image which is at odds with our core beliefs or pluralism and equality, this should help us project an image more consistent with those beliefs.
I will be putting the link graphics on this blog at some point in the near future (I hope) when I get round to sorting out the links.
Having said this, I have decided I support the Reflecting Britain campaign. There is a clear imbalance in the party which needs to be addressed just as the gender imbalance is being redressed. There is no reason why we should not have a party which is representative of the entire population.
The campaign is also not campaigning for all-
Supporting those who wish to become candidates who feel unable to pursue this desire for whatever reason is a different matter. Such support will increase participation and allow them to compete on that great liberal favourite, the level playing field. That is the reason action is justified, and I hope that in the near future the party will be able to dispense with help for any group because they do not need it, but until then it is quite right to address the issue in this way.
The other things that this campaign, and the reforms it promotes, does are to create some soul searching within the party and also to show the outside world that we are indeed trying to redress this imbalance, hopefully persuading a more diverse section of the public to join and support us, thus redressing the balance further. Image matters, we unfortunately have an image which is at odds with our core beliefs or pluralism and equality, this should help us project an image more consistent with those beliefs.
I will be putting the link graphics on this blog at some point in the near future (I hope) when I get round to sorting out the links.
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