The Liberal Youth Thread

[timomouse]

http://rwftw.webs.com/apps/blog/show/1715124-accountability

I hope this goes some way to summing up how I feel about where Liberal Youth is going right now. We need somewhere to discuss what's going on and, in the absence of closed forums, I hope this thread becomes it.

[chrisk]

Not quite sure that comparing Liberal Youth to Zimbabwe or the Night of the Long Knives is conducive to a productive discussion in a public forum.

[timomouse]

To be quite honest Chris, I know where you're coming from, but the lack of openness and honesty in the running of the organisation at the moment. If you disagree with the validity of my comments, I'd be very willing to hear your views. With regards to how it's put across, then all I can say is that that is my linguistic style, and I'm sure that were my name not on the top of it, it would still be recognisably myself.

Finally, if it's not condusive to a public forum, where do you suggest I take my comparisons for I don't see a non-public outlet. This is certainly a hell of a lot less public than facebook.

[chrisk]

Well the Exec are accountable in the same way they always have been - to Conference and the members who elected them. No exec member has ever been accountable anywhere else.

I have long thought that forums are a useful way to communicate with our members. They certainly were in 2005. They haven't been very useful since. Their brief reappearance and disappearance was less than ideal but compared to the way the Freshers campaign is going and the new website, this is of mammoth unimportance.

The accounts are probably in a better state than they have been for years.

And the new website sensibly focuses on what the organisation is trying to communicate. Reams of executive minutes and pages of (often obsolete) policy aren't important for the vast majority of the people LY is trying to talk to.

I've been involved with Liberal Youth and LDYS since 1999. It's currently doing better than it has done since 2005 at least and compares favourably with many of the years before that...

[cockneyjohn]

That may well be the case Chris...but where is the proof of this?

The closed forums gave your membership a chance to see the proof, in some shape or form, for themseleves. Without them, they can only take the Exec's word for it....................................................

Anything that undermines communication between the centre and the grassroots member must be a bad thing.

[timomouse]

That may well be the case Chris...but where is the proof of this?

Thank you John, a point made in far fewer words than I attempted to. Whether you believe things to be going well or otherwise, no-one outside the exec and a couple of others knows for sure. And when you simply don't know and can't know how things are going, it's often safe to assume that all is not going well.

[snuggleskunk]

As a casual observer it seems that the more "professional" and high powered your organisation gets, the more ordinary members become marginalised and the wannabe MP's take over.

[chrisk]

As a casual observer it seems that the more "professional" and high powered your organisation gets, the more ordinary members become marginalised and the wannabe MP's take over.

The are no more wannabe MPs in Liberal Youth now than there have been in the past few years.

If you want I can give you the number of wannabe MPs in each Executive since about 2002. But not in public.

[happy_liberal]

If you want I can give you the number of wannabe MPs in each Executive since about 2002. But not in public.

[timomouse]

As a casual observer it seems that the more "professional" and high powered your organisation gets, the more ordinary members become marginalised and the wannabe MP's take over.

The are no more wannabe MPs in Liberal Youth now than there have been in the past few years.

If anything, I'd say there's fewer. I'd say the discussions that go on and the exec's actions, be they of misdirection or naivety, aren't conducive to wanting to be a MP