World Toilet Day

Today is World Toilet Day. A day which most people won’t have heard of and fewer would understand. Let me explain. Today almost two fifths of the world’s population does not have access to even a basic toilet. That’s 2.6 billion people.

A combination of a lack of safe water and sanitation means that people are forced to live in conditions which are unhygienic at best and life-threatening at worst. Diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation is the biggest killer of children in Africa.  That is more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. It is entirely preventable. We can, and must do our bit to change this.

To really deal with poverty we have to understand two things: one, that all issues are interconnected, and two, that the role of women is crucial. There are few things we can do that cut across health, education, economics and social mobility like water and sanitation.

It is women who bear the brunt of a lack of safe water and sanitation. When there is no easy access to water women and children, mainly the girls, are tasked with the drudgery water collection. This can involve walking for hours in the baking heat to collect water which can be muddy, polluted or contaminated with parasites and animal waste. This is not only physically demanding, but also takes up time which could be spent earning an income, at school or looking after the family. A lack of separate toilets for girls in schools is also a hugely overlooked issue which reduces the number of girls going to school. When girls reach the age of puberty they need somewhere private and clean to manage this. Many girls simply drop out of getting a vital education for something as simple as a toilet.

Women and girls suffer the most when communities don’t have basic sanitation, facing the indignity of having to go to the toilet in the open and, in many cultures, having to wait until after dark to do so, risking sexual assault or animal attacks.

Further to this poor water and sanitation costs Sub-Saharan Africa around 5% of its GDP each year, equivalent to the amount of aid the continent currently receives from donor nations.

Yet all this can be prevented. With good sanitation facilities and safe water available close to home, precious hours that were once spent recovering from illness or walking to find water can be spent in more productive ways, from working to earn a living to looking after children or going to school and getting an education. This is what makes water and sanitation such a good investment – for every £1 spent £8 is generated in increased productivity.

We can and must stop this crisis. The scale of the problem may seem vast, but there are proven, cost effective solutions available that can not only save lives but transform them, providing the first, crucial steps out of poverty. The UK Government has already achieved much through its own investment in water and sanitation, and the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of its national income on aid is going to save and transform more lives in years to come.

Sadly, there is still a long way to go. At the current rate of progress, the UN Millennium Development Goal to halve the proportion of people living without basic sanitation by 2015 will be missed by a billion people. This simply isn’t good enough, and shows that thus far political will hasn’t been strong enough to push this issue forward. We will not succeed in a more if we do not invest in water and sanitation.

To mark World Toilet Day, international charity WaterAid is launching a campaign, Water Works, to highlight the life changing impact of sanitation and safe water ahead of next April’s High Level Meeting on water and sanitation in Washington DC. High level involvement from the UK Government is critical to the success of this meeting. I’ll be putting my support behind the campaign, and you can too at www.wateraid.org/waterworks. 

Project Umubano: Conservative Party volunteers in Sierra Leone

By Theodora Clarke, Conservative Future Liaison for CWO

This summer I was lucky enough to take part in Project Umubano, the Conservative Party’s social action project in Africa. Set up back in 2007 by the Rt Hon David Cameron MP and Andrew Mitchell MP the initiative has highlighted the party’s commitment to international development. For the last few years volunteers have visited Rwanda to provide valuable expertise in the fields of education, justice, health, community and business. More recently a sister project was launched in Sierra Leone, led by David Mundell MP, as a mark of the close ties between the West African country and our own.

This was an exciting year to take part in Umubano as we were launching a new education project. Our team consisted of teachers, students and professionals who were based in Makeni, several hours drive inland from the capital. Makeni is a quiet, tree-filled town which was the headquarters of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the Sierra Leonean rebel forces, during the civil war. The region is now dominated by the mining industry which has concessions for diamonds, gold, bauxite and granite.

We were partnered with a local organisation called Street Child of Sierra Leone which is working to take children of the streets, provide them with a good education and where possible to re-integrate them back into their families and homes. It was quite an experience turning up at the centre on the Monday morning to be welcomed by 120 students and the local headmaster. The pupils were thrilled that we were there and performed a welcome song when we arrived.

The first day was not at all what I expected. Instead of merely assisting a Sierra Leonean teacher, a fellow volunteer and I were introduced to a class of nearly fifty boys and girls and left to get on with teaching them English grammar, maths and science armed with just a blackboard and chalk. Teaching is little more tricky without any textbooks or the ability to quickly google an exercise or answer! However, we embraced the challenge and ended up having a great two weeks with our students.

Every morning after a breakfast of cassava or rice, we taught three hours of core subjects and in the afternoon we played sports, sang songs or did arts and crafts. I was responsible for the latter every day which was enormous fun. The children were so excited to have so many different materials to play with ranging from coloured pens and paper to stickers and tracing paper. They all made beautiful pictures but it was sad to see how memories of the war still haunted them; a large number of children started drawing UN helicopters and stickmen armed with guns. We wanted Project Umubano to leave a lasting reminder of our stay so towards the end we painted a white wall on the side of one of the central buildings and got each child enrolled our classes to plant their handprints on the wall.

During the first week we had a special visit from Stephen O’Brien MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, who came to the school to see all the work the Umubano volunteers were doing. The children in my class were very excited to meet a Minister and asked him many questions about the differences between the UK and Sierra Leonean Parliaments. My class became so interested that we later taught a special lesson on Government and Politics to explain about the role of MPs and Peers and the differences between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Sierra Leone is a beautiful country which was ravaged by civil war up until 2002 and it still ranks the highest in terms of poverty in the world. July is the rainy season and the weather was extremely hot and humid. It was heart-breaking at the end of each day to see my students who had been so eager to learn and worked so hard to have nowhere to go to after class. All of them slept outside at night in the pouring rain in the streets wherever they could. It is clear that Street Child of Sierra Leone is doing invaluable work in the country helping the most needy children to get an education and showing them love and care. One of the highlights of the project was when, on the penultimate day, we organised an inaugural sports day for the school. The children loved competing in traditional races such as the 100metres, relay and even more so when we introduced them to English games such as stone and spoon races and rounders!

Two weeks is a short time but the difference in our students by the end was noticeable in their increased confidence and their ability to read and write and do basic arithmetic. On our last day one of my youngest pupils, a ten year old girl, came up to me and gave me a hug saying that she could not believe that we had come all the way from England just to teach her. It was a moving day when we had to finally say goodbye.

Next year we hope to expand the project to Maburaka, a nearby school, and to have several satellite education projects based near Makeni. I hope that many CWO members will take the opportunity next year to come on Project Umubano and to do something a bit different with their summer. It has been a life-changing opportunity for many of the volunteers and I for one hope to be back.

For more information and to register your interest in joining Project Umubano 2011, please contact Abigail Green at abi.projectumubano@live.co.uk and visit http://www.conservatives.com/Get_involved/Project_Umubano.aspx

Details on Street Child of Sierra Leone can be found here http://www.street-child.co.uk/

Abortion Amendments to the Health & Social Care Bill

The entire bill has been wrapped in controversy and is expected to reach the Report Stage in the House of Commons on the 6th of September.

Nadine Dorries MP has sponsored 3 amendments. These say that a women who is looking to have a termination must be counselled independently by an organisation that either does not provide abortions or is a statutory body, stripping abortion providers of the ability to give advice.

She wrote in the Guardian in July: "At present, the only place a woman can receive pre- or post-abortion counselling paid for by the state is from an abortion provider – who has a clear financial interest in the ultimate decision the woman makes. Often women have to return to the abortion clinic where the procedure took place to receive their distress counselling. What caring person can believe that to be right?".

For "abortion provider" list the NHS for one, and "return to the abortion clinic" read NHS hospital, where many terminations take place.

As "an abortion provider" the NHS, as a statutory body, would be allowed to continue to give advice, carry out terminations and give post-abortion advice - but they do so for many institutions who have got the time and specialist counsellors to help women.

But even those will a financial interest, such as BPAS, give independent advice and do research into family planning - but if a woman decides to go through with a termination, they overwhelmingly do not charge: They have no financial incentive to encourage terminations but will be banned from giving out advice. BPAS state on their website that "Over 93% of the women we see don’t have to pay for their treatment as it's funded by the NHS". Either the NHS pay directly or indirectly. If clinics can't be counsellors then it will fall to the NHS - a strain that could overwhelm departments - any other solution would cost millions we can't afford.

Google "abortion advice uk" and you'll see a list of counsellors, which give women information on all the options on their websites and through advice lines - none of which charge for the information.

The vast majority of unwanted pregnancies are classed as "lifestyle" abortions. Around 90% of terminations take place before 13 weeks and 80% before 8 weeks. These amendments would lengthen that time and would force women to go through yet another hoop, which only increases anxiety. Delaying abortions can lead to infertility and psychological problems - so why heap more pressure on a woman if she feels she's done all her research and considered all the options?

You still need two doctors to authorise a termination. Both of them weigh up the patient's decision and will only sign if they believe that she has come to the decision independently and has considered all other choices - they would be negligent if they didn't.

Instead of making abortion physically and mentally harder for women in the UK, we should be looking at prevention and education - and by this I do not mean we need to teach graphic details to 13 year olds and give lessons with condoms and bananas. Parents need to take a bigger part in the education of their children and talking about sex appropriately when they're young is the best way to de-stigmatise it.

The fact is that the health and welfare of women would be affected in a bill that doesn't mention termination once in its 420 pages.

I urge every MP, woman or man, on whatever bench, to allow women to choose for themselves. I urge every constituent to contact your MP to get your voice heard.

VOTE AGAINST the 3 amendments and do not allow the government to introduce any other comparable legislation.

UPDATE 29-Aug-2011: The subject has been discussed in both The Telegraph and the Mail - with a quote from the above being included.

Journalist Deficit NIMBY's

Sandra Parsons in yesterday’s Daily Mail did an excellent job at regurgitating the themes of Melanie McDonagh’s piece in this week’s Spectator (not online) with both writers feeling that the Conservative Party is either desperate (McDonagh) or frantic (Parsons) in its efforts to regain the support of women.

With regard to child benefits, McDonagh explains how the higher tax bracket child benefit cut was “one of the few times when you felt you were getting something back from the state, just by virtue of the fact you had children.”

So, parts of yours and my hard-earned taxes have been used for McDonagh and her friends to celebrate their fertility. And all this time I’ve thought the privilege of having children was actually having children and not a handout.

But McDonagh doesn’t see the loss of benefits to be a problem in itself as they “aren’t much, in the great scheme of things”. Instead, she infers that women aren’t able to lower their expenditure by “an extra 10 or 20 quid a week”. If it’s true that expenditure rises to meet income, then I am living proof that the opposite can also be achieved.

On the same subject, Parsons, though, just becomes hysterical: “Ill thought through and frankly disgraceful” and how it showed “how little Dave and George Osborne understand the real world”. That would be the “real world” where Osborne is trying to get the deficit under control. Yes, it is frankly disgraceful that he considered the country as a whole, rather than Parsons personally.

Most private sector employees have endured years of pay-freezes, so they already know what it’s like to lose out. They have done this because they preferred to have a job at the end of the year - not because of some God-given right.

Let’s hope these two aren’t the start of a plague of Deficit NIMBY commentators. We want no more women journalists deciding that all this cost-cutting is fine, except if it affects them.

Another thing they both agree on is that fewer women are supporting the Conservatives than in December last year, which is true. According to McDonagh, this “has created something like consternation right at the top of the government”. Parsons, instead, read this as a personal aversion to David Cameron by the women of Britain – although she only evidences her own change of heart towards him.

A tad of research would have shown Parsons that Cameron remains, by far, the most favoured party leader with women, which makes a joke of the title of her article: “We women are falling out of love with Dave”. Not when you’ve got Ed and Nick to choose from, they’re not.

I’m not going to deny that the party has lost favour with women since the election, but rather than be hysterical about it, the party is getting on and doing what any good party does: identify where your support is waning and adjust campaigning efforts to improve it. I’m afraid it’s not hysterical, frantic or even frenzied.

But wait. They both have proof of the Tory histrionics in regaining the support of women. Apparently “Cameron is ditching just about any policy that he thinks women might not like.” (McDonagh) and “In a panic, they've executed more U-turns than a dog chasing its tail” (Parsons).

Ignoring the difference in literary style, have they both forgotten that the Government is made up of a coalition of centre-left and centre-right parties? The union negotiations must be a doddle compared to what goes on in Number 10 every day. The country didn’t vote for one party to govern on its own, but maybe next time, it’ll realise what an idiotic way of running a country it is.

But Parsons isn’t finished with Cameron yet. She thinks that DC is “patronising” towards women. (McDonagh also calls the Conservatives patronising but never fully explains why.) Parsons' proof comes from Cameron starting some of his sentences with “Now, look…”

“Now, look” is not patronising to women. The phrase is in all politicians' vocabularies as a way of avoiding saying “That’s a bloody idiotic question” in answer to a journalist - but after writing recent highbrow pieces on the Duchess of Cambridge and Cheryl Cole, I will forgive her for not knowing this.

The premise of both articles, however eerily similar, is that we’re losing the support of women and I mind that a great deal – although, as McDonagh points out, women are the “major consumers of public services… and the major providers of them”, so of course women will be disproportionately affected by any reduction in public services and public sector jobs in the short term. This hasn’t come as any big surprise to me, the party or David Cameron. Just as it wasn’t a surprise when men came off 475 times worse during the recession because of all the financial services and manufacturing jobs lost.

They say that a day is a long time in politics; well, if the only poll that matters is the one on 7th May 2015, we have 1,407 long days to regain the support of women – but without the dramatics please.

Slut Walking Around the World

The first time I heard the phrase "Slut Walking", I've got to admit, I was taken aback. Had women, seriously, set up a new protest movement to highlight sluts?

But it wasn't the movement that named themselves, it was a Toronto police officer by the name of Michael Sanguinetti, who, when giving advice to women students, said that they should "avoid dressing like sluts" to stay safe on the streets.

Everyone knows what he was trying to say - but it came out all wrong. Of course, women have to do everything they can to protect themselves but does it follow that just because a woman wears skimpy clothes she can be described as a slut and be "asking for it"? No.

Although it is sometimes used by young women (usually relating to another girl who's just started dating their ex-boyfriend), it's at its most derogatory when used by men, as there is no correlative response.

Even in the 21st century, a woman who has multiple partners is labelled a tart or a slut, whereas a man is sowing his seed; doing what comes naturally; scoring another notch on his bedpost; a hero with his mates; has had a good Friday night (or all of the above). But women have bigger problems in the world than name calling.

Do I feel uncomfortable about the name Slut Walk? Yes. But if they had called it Women Against Victim Blaming, the viral nature of the campaign - needed for it to be a worldwide Internet and media success - would have failed. What the inclusion of the word slut does, is to get people talking about Violence Against Women again. This is one of the cases when the end does justify the means.

No matter how a woman dresses, she has no right to be sexually assaulted. Indeed, there is no correlation between the two: In repressive countries such as Saudi Arabia, rape is just as prevalent. Children are raped. Older people are raped. Men are raped. One in five women in the UK will be sexually assaulted at some point in their life. They are victims, not procurers.

But women also don't want double standards. All women wish we had the Diet Coke break window cleaners to look at every day, so we can't (or shouldn't) complain if men give women a wolf-whistle or a friendly Cor blimey luv! if they're looking particularly good on a night out. It's a healthy appreciation for the opposite sex.

Hopefully, a defence lawyer arguing that it was how the woman was dressed that enticed their client to rape them, is confined to the annals of history. You don't hear many lawyers defending a client who's accused of stealing a Lamborghini Gallardo saying: "It was the car's fault for looking so good".

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After starting as a Toronto campaign, the Slut Walkers are now a global movement and the Sluts and Allies include both women and men. They're marching in Scotland this Saturday and in London (@slutwalklondon) on June 4th.

AV Referendum: why you should vote NO

Theodora Clarke is the London Youth Organiser for the cross-party NO to AV campaign.

There are less than ten weeks to go until the referendum on a change to the voting system for Westminster Parliamentary elections. On May 5th the public will be asked whether they wish to replace the current system of First Past the Post with the 'Alternative Vote' (AV).

Only last week the Prime Minister spoke out against the dangers inherent in replacing our current, tried and tested voting system with one that was “unfair, expensive and discredited". AV, he said, "allows candidates who finish third to steal elections".

So first of all what is it? Under AV the voters get to rank candidates in order of preference and anyone getting more than 50 per cent in the first round is elected. If that doesn't happen, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second choices are allocated to the remaining candidates. If no candidate at the second stage has a majority of votes, the next lowest candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed. This process keeps on occurring until a winner emerges.

What this means is that if you vote for a fringe party who gets knocked out, your other preferences will be counted. In other words, you get another bite of the cherry. However, if you vote for a mainstream candidate who is top of the ballot in the first round, your other preferences will never be counted.

This would cause election results to be based on passive approval rather than active acceptance. As the PM says, it would lead to "a parliament of second choices".

The Liberal Democrats demanded this referendum as part of the Coalition agreement - but the Conservative Party are actively campaigning for a 'No' vote. It is not clear that the Liberal Democrats even want this change. Just two weeks before the last election, Nick Clegg dismissed AV as a “miserable little compromise”.

Connor Burns MP (Bournemouth West) has joined the campaign just this week as a spokesman. Here are his reasons for voting NO to AV:

“Under First Past the Post, a winning party can implement the manifesto on which they were returned without recourse to backroom deals, leading to programmes never endorsed at the ballot box. The Alternative Vote is the compromise that no one genuinely wants. Britain is better by sticking to a system that we know, we trust and that works."

David Cameron said this is a referendum that will determine Britain's future. A Yes vote would be bad for democracy, politics and accountability.
I would like to appeal to all CWO members to vote no in the referendum and to lend their support to the campaign. Together, we can win this referendum and save our voting system.
Without your help, Britain's traditional voting system could be ditched for something that is unfair, expensive and allows candidates that finish third to win elections.

REASONS TO VOTE NO

• AV is unfair. With First Past the Post, everybody gets one vote. But under AV, supporters of extreme parties like the BNP would get their vote counted many times, while other people's vote would only be counted once.


• AV doesn't work. Rather than the candidate with the most votes winning, the person who finishes third could be declared the winner.


• AV is expensive. Calculating the results is a long, complicated process, which would cost the taxpayer millions.


• No-one wants AV. Even the 'Yes' campaigners don't actually want AV - they see it as a convenient stepping stone to yet more changes to how we vote.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

• Go to the No to AV website and sign up to receive emails http://www.no2av.org/


• Ask your local Conservative Association how you can help their campaign against AV


• Join the NO to AV group on Facebook or follow them on Twitter

David Cameron explains why he is voting NO to AV

Graduate Recruitment - Report from the Forum

On February 15th the CWO along with Conservative Future (CF) held a successful Forum on "Graduate Recruitment" in Committee Room 5 of the House of Commons. A panel of four speakers including Andrew Stephenson MP, two recruiters from leading UK firms and a current student led the discussion.

More than fifty members of the public attended to hear the difficulties that young people face in the jobs' market today. The panel discussed the problems that graduates face in an increasingly difficult market where there are nearly 70 applicants for every job. During 2010 one in five students left university without a job as graduate unemployment soared to its highest level since the mid-90s.

Official figures published January 2011 showed 20% of ex-students were without work in the third quarter of 2010, with graduate unemployment increasing faster than the jobless rate among the UK as a whole. The Office of National Statistics' data suggests graduates have been hit harder by the economic downturn than the UK as a whole. These recent shocking statistics were the impetus being CWO and CF joining forces to discuss the pressing issue of graduate recruitment.

Pauline Lucas, CWO Chairman, welcomed everyone to the evening on behalf of the CWO and explained to those attending, that the Forums were established to give women the opportunity to debate topical subjects and challenging issues that affect women and their families every day.

Serene Richards, a current student at UCL spoke of the challenges she faced in finding a job and the gruelling application process. She spoke of a new generation of disillusioned graduates who believed that having a degree entitled them to a job. Many graduates, she said, found this to be false when after leaving university they struggled to find employment. Ms. Richards raised the question of the importance of internships and said that the reality was that many students could not afford to do unpaid work experience to climb the jobs' ladder.

The next speaker was Lucy Chamberlain, recruiter and director at Angela Mortimer Plc. She spoke of the increasingly competitive marketplace for graduates. Academic achievements, she suggested, were no longer enough with only 5% of CVs getting through to the interview stage. Ms. Chamberlain argued that graduates needed to learn to market themselves more effectively to employers and learn to use recruiters to find them a job.

Another headhunter, Tim King, the founder of Matchking, highlighted the importance of networking and online media. Many firms advertise opportunities online and use social networking sites to recruit and select candidates such as Linkedin. Mr King stressed the need for a professional online profile and the importance of a CV. Too many graduates, he said, had basic spelling mistakes in their CVs and failed to target their applications to the job or firm.

Finally, Andrew Stephenson, the Member of Parliament for Pendle and Vice Chairman of Conservative Future, spoke on the challenges facing graduates today. He explained that the Government was working hard to help get young people into jobs with schemes such as mentoring and the Job Centre Plus. He talked about his own experiences and difficulties in finding work that people face in his own constituency. He recommended that graduates should consider other paths to employment such as setting up your own business and called on those present to become the next generation of young entrepreneurs.

It was a lively discussion with contributions from current students, recent graduates, employers, parents, careers advisors and recruiters. Questions from the floor included concerns about the lack of careers guidance at schools and universities. There was a general consensus about the importance of work experience and the need to develop skills in addition to having a degree. The audience voiced concerns about the lack of opportunities for graduates and debated whose responsibility it was to tackle youth unemployment.

After an energetic discussion Pauline thanked everyone for participating and the speakers for their valuable contributions.

[You can read the complete minutes on the CWO Website at http://bit.ly/ghdMPg

Theodora Clarke, February 2011

Minority X-Factor Winner

Interesting voting results from the finals of the X-Factor:

Matt - 45%

Rebecca - 39%

One Direction - 13%

Cher - 4%

Shock! Horror! Matt wins with less than 50% of the vote and the country accepts it? Does this mean that the UK is happy that the person with the most votes wins..?

I suppose it's just another reason to say No2AV

Protesting for Dummies

Keep to the planned route

DO NOT follow other people like sheep - you are an intelligent student. If you start walking over broken-down barriers, it should give you an inkling that you're going in the wrong direction. Turn around and ask a policeman where you're supposed to be.

Parliament Square was not the planned route of #dayx3 and after continuous violence against the police and property, the Square became a crime scene.

Whenever this happens, you cease being a protester and become either a witness or perpetrator and are part of an official crime investigation. Think of it as CSI London.

From here on in, you will find you're not in Kansas anymore. Don't bother complaining as you should have been somewhere else.

Don't get involved

If you see a gang of people wearing hoodies and balaclavas starting to rush towards a police line or smashing their way into a building, DO NOT follow them to see what's up and then complain when you get hit by a police baton.

Getting cool photos to upload to your Facebook page is a really silly reason to be anywhere near trouble - even if you have got a new mobile you want to show off.

The police will have restricted vision because they're covered in paint; have had continuous verbal abuse thrown at them; along with sharpened posts (which are better known as spears), steel cages, concrete blocks and snooker balls. They will not be happy-chappies. Keep away from them.

Similarly, if you see a line of police horses, they are not out on a hack - they are there to scare the bejesus out of you. If a thin line of police are being attacked by thugs, they will charge only as a last resort to protect the line.

You may not see the reason for the charge, but there will be one - and they don't tend to give out warnings. So if you find yourself nose to nosebag with a police horse, you are in the wrong place - move to the edge of the crowd and find somewhere else to sit it out.

Bring your Common Sense

If someone is injured, accompany or carry them towards a police line (that isn't being attacked at the time) and ask for medical help. DO NOT ring 999 because you're missing your last train home (or someone nicked your snowman).

Follow @CO11MetPolice on Twitter so you don't miss any instructions. They will tell you where they will set up toilet and water facilities if the containment will be in force for some time.

There is no excuse for urinating against statues of figures that fought to protect your right to protest. Your face - or builder's bum - will be in all the next day's papers and you will be arrested because your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend will shop you in (if you've ever had a partner that is).

Be prepared for the long haul

Boredom, being chilly or becoming peckish are not excuses for leaving a containment. You're the one that didn't follow the planned route, so you're not going anywhere now. It was your choice. Stop whingeing.

The police are not information desks and are only doing what they're ordered to do. You'll probably know more about what's happening than them because they tend not to check their email while they're avoiding a barrage of missiles.

They won't think about letting you go until the children have stopped their tantrums, so keep warm but don't start burning national monuments or other people's property to do so - burn your own banners. Hopefully, you were sensible enough to bring warm clothing and gloves. I would advise against bringing a balaclava unless you want to be targeted by a police baton.

Containment is a way for the police to get all of you into a single, secure area. It is likely that if you are contained, it means that there is either trouble elsewhere that requires more immediate attention, or that a slow release is being planned. This is for your own benefit, to weed out the thugs, so they don't end up on your next protest. Be patient - it will takes hours and hours and hours... and you will miss your last train. Sorry about that.

While you're waiting, keep in mind that everyone who kept to the planned route is now watching you freeze your proverbials off from the comfort of their sofa with a steaming Pot Noodle, so it's probably best not to be there in the first place, eh?

Do students know what they're protesting about?

I admire the student protesters. It's great to see young people having an interest in politics. This will hopefully spark an increase in voter turnout of 18-24 year olds, which has been pretty dismal to say the least.

The only problem I have (apart from the violence) is that many of the demonstrators seemed to be so misinformed. Even this morning - one day before the vote - I was contacted by someone calling himself a "students' union professional" who had no idea that £9,000 was only going to be charged in exceptional circumstances.

If I were a student, I would make sure I knew all the facts and was protesting for the right reasons. So here's a few fallacies the student union keep bleating about and the truth behind them:

Everyone's tuition fees are going up to £9,000 per year

No. Universities wanting to charge more than £6,000 will have to undertake measures, such as offering bursaries, summer schools and outreach programmes, to encourage students from poorer backgrounds to apply.

Universities Minister David Willetts says universities will only be allowed to charge fees of £9,000 in "exceptional circumstances", which he said might mean if they had high teaching costs, or if a university was offering an intensive two-year course.

Students will have a lifetime of debt

No. If the loan hasn't been paid off within 30 years, it's automatically written off.

If students are being charged more, they will pay back more each month

No. The total amount paid off will of course be higher, but the repayment per month will drop considerably.

The threshold at which graduates have to start paying their loans back would be raised from £15,000 to £21,000.

Graduates would pay back 9% of their income each month above that threshold. So at £21,000 this would equate to around £7 per month.

Students from poorer families will be priced out from going to university

No. Maintenance grants will rise from £2,906 to £3,250 for students from households earning less than £25,000 and pupils who have been eligible for school meals could get up to two years' worth of fees paid by the government under plans being considered.

In most cases, this means they would only have to take out tuition fee loans for their third and final year of study.

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UPDATE: CCHQ have just released this website http://factsonfees.com/

Students v Suffragettes

The 18th November 2010 was the centenary of Black Friday.

In the summer of 1910, an all-party group of MPs devised the Conciliation Bill, which would extend the right to vote to around one million wealthy, property-owning women, and it passed its second reading by 299 votes to 189 but on Friday 18th November 1910 the PM, Herbert Henry Asquith, refused it further parliamentary time.

In response, Mrs Pankhurst led a deputation of 300 to the Houses of Parliament. The police obstructed them and a violent skirmish ensued. Over 100 were arrested and many were injured. The event has ever since been referred to as Black Friday.

During the 3 days of violence, 285 arrests were made, 75 women imprisoned, many were injured and 3 later died from their injuries. As the Government continued to break promises, so women's fury and impatience increased, and the WSPU [Women's Social and Political Union] resorted to damaging property including window-smashing raids and arson. Altogether, over a thousand women went to prison.

Read more about the suffragettes on the CWO website www.conservativewomen.org.uk

The events of Black Friday were a public relations disaster for the government, including the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. The press took the side of the suffragettes, printing pictures of police assaulting unarmed female protesters and the actions of the police were greatly criticised.

Women were taking a stand against a male-dominated world, protesting the Victorian belief that men were more intelligent than women and that a woman couldn't possibly be trusted to sensibly choose a candidate in an election (or, even worse, stand for election herself).

Step forward 100 years.

School children and students rampage through the streets of London. Most are on a jolly so they can say that they were there; some are out to cause as much trouble and damage as possible; and the rest believe that they are being hard-done by and want to protect further education for the future.

The latter, I have no problem with. The first I encourage to stay at home and study instead. But it's the minority that are misunderstood.

They are not anarchists; they are not communists; nor are they revolutionaries. They are angry because they're teenagers and their hormones are overwhelming them. Bless.

As every parent of two different sexed children will tell you, girls go through the "I hate you!" phase a lot earlier than boys do. Boys tend to wait until they get a sniff of independence, then go overboard, getting wrapped up in anything that sparks an interest. Give these "anarchists" a couple of years and their first sexual experience and they'll wonder what all the fuss was about.

So, other than hormones, what's the difference between the violence on the streets 100 years ago and the violence on the streets today? The answer is support. The suffragettes had it - the students don't.

Had they sent a deputation to parliament, had Aaron Porter schmoozed the media (rather than just want to be interviewed), had Nelson's Column remained untouched, then more people would listen to them. But instead their support dropped faster than a fire extinguisher off 30 Millbank.

I'm also not entirely sure that they know what they're protesting about. All they hear is £9000 and it's off for a sit-in at the local council chambers.

Children, it's cold outside and burning a bus shelter isn't going to keep the fight warm. If you want to learn how to campaign and lobby properly then do some research and read a book or two...

Oops. Sorry. My mistake.

LibDem's Amnesty Under Scrutiny

Daniel Finkelstein has echoed my Reason #4 that the LibDems are plain wrong.

In yesterday's Times Online, he writes:

How does the amnesty work?

A question.

How exactly does Nick Clegg's amnesty work?

The central argument he advances for it is that we can't deport these illegals because we don't know who they are or where they are.

He gets pretty impatient if pressed on this.

But if we don't know who they are and where they are, then how do we know that applicants have been here for 10 years and therefore qualify for amnesty?

Add to this that he keeps on going on about how most/some/all illegal immigrants are being kept as slave labour by gangs (his spin on why this daft policy is a good idea) - but again it's impossible for him to say how many.

We know that some are slave labour because of the deaths of the cockle-pickers of Morecambe Bay in 2004.

More frightening by far, though, is the horrendous sex-trafficking industry in the UK - worse in numbers than any slavery in our embarrassing past. The CWO has researched this and neither the police nor the many NGOs involved know where the victims are or how long they've been here.

What we do know is that those forced into prostitution and the slave labour are kept locked up and far away from the police & immigration. The locks aren't necessary though as the victims stay there from fear that their families back home would be tortured and killed if they told anyone.

Of course we need to find the gangs and release their victims. We need to give the victims both mental and physical help, possibly for years.

This isn't something new and a misinformed amnesty is not going to help - it will only send a signal to the desperate that if you get to the UK, you'll get citizenship: I doubt many will read the small print first.

10 Reasons why the LibDems are Plain Wrong

Ignoring the fact that Vince Cable flip-flops more than casual beach footwear, it is now time to put the LibDems under scrutiny because they cannot and should not be allowed to hoodwink the British electorate. (I apologise for the length in advance - this could have gone on for pages.)

Getting Labour back for another 5 years would be disastrous for this country, however, having Nick Clegg as kingmaker, or God-forbid as PM, would be simply frightening. So here's 10 reasons why they think they should hold power - and why they absolutely shouldn't:

1. The LibDems think that they're a credible opposition party
   
   LibDem 2010 Budget Response: "The increase in National Insurance Contributions is a damaging tax on jobs and unfair to employees; however with a structural deficit of almost £70bn no party can credibly say they are going to reverse it."
   
   LibDem 2010 manifesto (p97): "We would seek to reverse it."


2. Nick Clegg believes in British jobs for foreign workers
   
   Nick Clegg's interview with Jeremy Paxman (25m40s):
   

   Paxman: Anywhere in England need more immigrants?
   
   Clegg: Well, I think if you speak to some farmers, for instance, in parts of Lincolnshire - we know there's already a shortage of immigrant labour in fruit-picking and vegetable-picking.

   Things that Nick Clegg apparently doesn't know #1: There is 20% youth unemployment in the UK. Might Nick not want to encourage people already in the UK to do these jobs?


3. The LibDems think that the UK is just like Australia
   
   It's not just immigrants that Nick Clegg wants to corral into regions of the UK "like Australia", it's a "rural fuel discount scheme" (Manifesto p80). In rural areas they want to keep fuel duty lower than in urban areas, er... a bit like Australia.
   
   Things that Nick Clegg doesn't know #2: Australia is a tad bigger than the UK. You could fit Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland into Australia 31 times and still have a bit left over. It takes 2 hours alone to drive from the Western Sydney city limits to the Harbour Bridge. In the UK, is there any city that you can't reach in under 2 hours (Highlands, islands & traffic jams excepting)?
   
   To give certain places in the UK a fuel discount scheme would mean limiting the programme to petrol stations in extreme rural areas, and there aren't that many. Wouldn't it be better to plan for something like, I don't know, how about a Fair Fuel Stabiliser? (Conservative manifesto p24)


4. Nick Clegg has a secret database (allegedly)
   
   Nick Clegg apparently has a secret database of illegal immigrants as he wants to give an amnesty to all those who have been here for over 10 years (keep watching Paxman interview above).
   
   Things that Nick Clegg doesn't know #3: Because they're illegal immigrants, we actually don't have a record of when they entered the country. So what's to stop people who have been here 6 months saying they've lived here for 10 years?


5. LibDems are cancelling Eurofighter - they're just not sure which bit
   
   LibDem Manifesto (p16) cost savings - "Cancelling Eurofighter Tranche 3b".
   
   In the Ask the Chancellors debate (9m10s), Vince Cable said that he wanted to scrap "Eurofighters in the short run". I didn't know what he meant by this but apparently he meant tranche 2. This was picked up by the Shadow Treasury Minister, Philip Hammond the next day in the budget debate - and Vince Cable didn't disagree (Hansard 30 Mar 2010: Column 682):

   Mr. Philip Hammond (Conservative): The hon. Gentleman talks about the credibility of plans to cut spending and he has announced his £15 billion plan. Will he confirm something that he said last night during the television debate-that the £15 billion includes scrapping tranche 2 of the Eurofighter project? Perhaps he has seen a different contract from the one I have seen, but my understanding is that the cancellation charge for tranche 2 exceeds the cost of taking delivery of tranche 2. Can he explain to the House how he would make a saving there?
   
   Dr. Cable: That is not the information that we have received. We have repeatedly checked our understanding of the charges involved in such a decision. There are two different components to the end of the Eurofighter contract, as the hon. Gentleman knows. We believe on the basis of what we have been told - of course, we are not told everything, because some of this is supposedly commercially confidential - and on the basis of our information that some savings could be made.

   ("Some savings" is apparently £1.5bn - manifesto p103.) Actually, the rest of the Hansard page is well worth a read as Vince Cable was clearing up a whole load that evening. But then Vince Cable seems to "mispronounce" and give the "wrong impression" quite a lot for someone who is supposed to be an economic guru.
   
   So 2 weeks before the LibDem manifesto is launched, the LibDems were still planning on cancelling tranche 2. After this was shown to be economic drivel, they suddenly swap over to tranche 3b in their manifesto.
   
   What they haven't mentioned is how many thousands of jobs in the UK will be lost because of cancellation; whether cancelling 3b has any associated compensation fees; and how many 3b Eurofighters might be sold to the Middle East, just like Oman is buying up a load of our tranche 3a fighters.


6. They're also cancelling Trident to make their sums look better
   
   On page 17 of the LibDem manifesto, it states that Trident "could" cost £100 billion, however, on p65 it suddenly changes to a definitive "at a cost of £100 billion". Assumption to fact in 48 pages. Worrying.
   
   The LibDems want to cancel Trident then have a "full defence review". What happens if the review concludes that our best defence is to have Trident - and we've cancelled it and spent the money? Frightening.
   
   No-one knows what the state of the world will be in a year, 10 years or 30 years from now. There are LibDems that argue that having nuclear weapons didn't stop the Falklands War or 7/7, which is possibly the most ridiculous argument ever.
   
   I'd prefer to have nuclear weapon free world but I'm also a realist. I do think the amount of warheads we have is ridiculous though (how many times can you blow up the world?) but dismissing Trident out of hand is even more dangerous.


7. Vince Cable believes that crossing your fingers is a good way to raise money
   
   When the manifesto talks about job creation, he says that the UK Infrastructure Bank seed funding "could" be raised from the sell-off of the student loan book or the Tote (p25), and that further seed funding "could" be secured against or raised from government-owned assets such as the Dartford Crossing (p25).
   
   Vince Cable might also see whether the sale of the Post Office "could" raise even more money - assuming of course someone actually wants to buy all of this right now. Yes, they all "could" get sold - but be realistic.
   
   I'll keep my fingers crossed for you though.


8. Vice Cable knows more than HMRC
   
   Revenue from "Anti-avoidance measures" in the manifesto (p101) include £2.4bn saved from Income Tax and NIC contributions, £1.46bn from Corporation Tax and £750m from Stamp Duty, totalling £4.63bn.
   
   This is a major part of the LibDems cost savings.
   
   Small problem is that those lovely people at Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs estimate that NI, income tax and capital gains tax avoidance is only between £0.8n and £1.6bn.


9. Vince Cable thinks his budget is costed
   
   Without the delayed spending review, it's impossible for any "credible" party to specifically say where cuts will be made or exactly where money will be saved.
   
   Credible means getting the real data first - not pulling figures out of thin air and passing it off as costed.


10. The LibDems love Europe.. (well some of them do)
    
    Both this year and in 2008, there has been revolt on the LibDem benches over European referendums. In 2008, Nick Clegg was humiliated when 13 LidDem MPs voted with the Conservatives for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, when Nick had ordered them to sit on the fence abstain.
    
    In January of this year, they were split again with LibDems going against Nick Clegg to vote with the Conservatives on an amendment to block any further powers going to Europe without a referendum.
    
    Only problem is that Nick Clegg proposed a motion at their 2005 conference to block any further powers going to Europe without a referendum.
    
    (h/t Jon Craig)
    
    And the Euro? "We believe that it is in Britain's long-term interest to be part of the Euro" (LibDem Manifesto p67). 'Nuff said.

The Liberal Democrats really don't stand up to any scrutiny and I've only scratched the surface here. So maybe the last word should go to the Channel 4 Fact Check website on the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which has dug out a few more:

"Their oft-repeated mantra on the poorest fifth paying proportionally more tax fails to offset it against benefits; and their statistics on a reoffending pilot scheme are very impressive until you realise that these “petty criminals” are not worthy of a police caution."

Going Green, Mate

Australia is a country of contradictions: It has both the cuddliest and deadliest animals in the world; it can be 40C one day and 15C the next; and while the rest of the world think of the average Aussie as a healthy, outdoor-living type, they are up there with the worst offending carbon polluters (per capita) in the world.

While most of the developed nations worry about dwindling energy supplies leading to blackouts in the next decade, Australia is sitting on enough brown coal to last them 300 years. Brown coal is bad - much worse than black coal for spewing carbon into the atmosphere - and although energy prices have risen in Oz, they are still relatively cheap compared to the exorbitant prices that residents pay in the UK.

Even their petrol is around half the price of the UK, so there's no incentive to get people onto public transport. And why would they? As the saying goes, "Australia is a bloody big country" and unless you live in a city suburb with a tram or train stop within walking distance, you have to use a car.

Australia isn't just a country, it's all but a continent, made up of people who don't want to live anywhere else and are generally very happy with their lives. They want to protect their status quo and they don't want America or Europe telling them they've got to change, so I'm not surprised that the country is dissolving into a political and social battle that revolves entirely around climate change.

I was in Sydney last week while COP15 was on and for the snail pace drive back to the airport which took an hour (usually 15 minutes), my taxi driver gave me an impromptu lecture on his theories surrounding the treaty that was never to be. Ask a London cabbie about Copenhagen and he'll probably be able to tell you that it's in Denmark - I doubt he'll be able to give you an opinion on the summit, let alone a lecture.

I don't know whether it's scaremongering; media reporting; or the haste at which Tony Abbott (the new Liberal leader who has described climate change as crap) has risen up the political ranks, but many Australians - and not just my taxi driver - feel that a binding treaty would have made them relinquish sovereignty while taxing them to the point of bankruptcy. Ask them how both these would come about and they don't really know - "I heard it somewhere" (probably from my taxi driver).

Kevin Rudd (the Labor PM) wants to introduce the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) - which is being dubbed the "giant new tax" by Abbott... Introduce the words giant, new and tax into the public psyche and Rudd will have a tough fight come election time - he may even be forced to call it sooner that planned just to draw a line under this rather hot potato.

Abbott only won the leadership election by a single vote and was close to pulling out of the race days before. But rather than a new leader fixing the cracks, his election has horrified moderate Liberals and has split the party more than it was already.

There will be an Australian election in 2010 before the next climate summit and it's already being dubbed the Climate Change Election. It goes against all my political principles to want a Labor victory but an Abbott victory (rather than a Liberal one) would not be the best option for this planet. I may not agree politically with much of what Rudd believes in but unlike Gordon Brown, Rudd didn't fly into Copenhagen with a self-mandate to save the world - he went there to make it work and you can see the utter disappointment in his eyes, once you get past the dark shadows giving away the lack of sleep.

It's great that climate change will be discussed over the turkey or barbied snags this Friday but Australia has to be careful that it doesn't go the for Abbott easy option and just ignore it. I don't think they will and when the election comes around, I think Rudd will still come out the winner. It'll be an election worth watching though.

Thank you!

I didn't want to tag this onto another post as the CWO is so grateful to so many people for their trip to Brussels.

Huge thanks are due to Marina Yannakoudakis for inviting us to visit and giving us so much of her extremely precious time; to Timothy Kirkhope MEP (the leader of the Conservative MEPs in Europe), Vicky Ford MEP and all the other MEPs we met and talked to. An honour too to have sat down with Eva Svensson, the Chair of the FEMM Committee.

Special thanks must go to Mark Walker, Marina's Head of Office, and to Caroline Healy (the Conservative FEMM Committee Advisor) for their help in guiding us around and patiently explaining how everything worked. We would literally have been lost without Mark and still quite ignorant with Caroline!

Victory for voiceless women

A two-year campaign to give a voice to voiceless women forced into prostitution ended victoriously earlier this week. Late on Tuesday night members of the House of Lords voted in favour of a clause designed to protect people forced into prostitution. Clause 14 passed through the Report Stage of the Policing and Crime bill un-amended.

The clause, which is supported by over 60 charities and organisations, shifts the focus of the law onto those who create the demand for prostitution by making it an offence to pay for sex with someone who is subjected to force, deception or threats.

This is good. There would be no need for forced prostitution if there were not so many men out there looking to buy sex. I've heard a lot of the pro and anti /legalise and not legalise prostitution, but I always come back to the point of why do so many men buy sex? They can't all be misunderstood. Part of it is 'because they can' - and they are not taught otherwise.

I cannot help but recall a conversation with women at the UN Commission for Women who were all mainly from the USA. I asked if they talked to their sons about paying for sex, and the plight of some prostitutes. They said 'its not men like our sons'.

Yes it is ladies. It's always someones son, brother, husband, lover. They need to be told its not acceptable. This is a great step forward. Stopping the market would be another.

Harriet Harman's idea of Women's Rights

After John Prescott warned Harriet Harman to keep quiet about women's rights yesterday, I tuned in to see what the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party would say.

Admittedly I only caught the end of her speech, but what I did catch was incredulous, even for a Government on its last legs. I don't think my anger levels will survive watching the whole thing.

I caught the speech as she was talking about prostitution (which she obviously has never fully researched) but then went onto rambling about Labour's Diversity Evening:

"If the Tories had a Diversity Evening at their conference...Theresa May wouldn't be allowed to be there, because she's a woman. But she could serve the drinks."

I don't even know where to begin to understand why Harman said what she did.

Thankfully, the 10 people that have stayed for the last day of the conference didn't give Harman the reaction she must have been after. Other than one raucous laugh (probably from her speech writer), the rest of the delegates gave it a very quiet, embarrassed laugh.

May I remind Ms Harman that no Conservative Shadow Cabinet member has ever resigned from office telling their leader that they "have been treated ... as little more than female window dressing"!!

If the Conservatives achieve a majority of just one at the next election, then we will have 55+ women MPs in the next parliament. This will only have come about because of the hard work of the CWO and because of David Cameron's determination to increase the number of women MPs on the Conservative benches - and all without the NuLabour sexist, all-women shortlists.

Conservative women do well because they're damned good and will NEVER describe themselves as window dressing.

The BNP: Motivation against Voter Apathy

The vast majority of CWO members have been out canvassing, delivering leaflets, telling and knocking-up for the past weeks and months. Certainly in the County Council elections it was all worth the sore feet, slammed doors in faces, close escapes from dogs and scraped knuckles from unfriendly letterboxes.

Taking Devon and Somerset from the Lib Dems and the outstanding results in the North showed how successful Conservatives are at local level and just how much the population wants a change in Government.

It was all going so well - until Sunday evening - when the results came in from the North West and Yorkshire.

I don't know anybody in this country who wouldn't have had a lump in their throat watching the wonderful WWII veterans tell their stories at the D-Day celebrations. I just wish the elections had happened the day after the 65th anniversary - it might have stopped people believing that voting for the odious BNP was in some way a protest vote.

For Griffin to even align himself with Churchill and the heroes of the two world wars is sickening. In some twisted re-writing of history, the BNP believe that these same veterans fought to protect Britain for the British.

Every man and woman who defended Britain - be it on the front, working in factories, digging in the fields, or keeping the home fires burning - were all heroes and they worked, fought and died to defend our freedom from Fascism - from people like Nick Griffin.

If there was ever a reason for the electorate to participate in democracy - that most precious commodity saved by those heroes - then the shame of having two BNP MEPs is that reason.

For the 26 million of you who did not vote in the European elections because of political mistrust, boredom, couldn't be bothered or because parliament is going through much-needed reform, then you only have yourself to blame when you wake up this morning and are disgusted by the news. Remember that feeling at the next election and go and vote.

You might not like mainstream politicians at the moment but giving the BNP a foothold in British politics would be a far worse disaster than the times we are living through now.

The Telegraph has done a Disservice to Democracy

Enough is enough. For every day that new revelations are dripped out to the media and electorate, I can see another 500 votes for UKIP (or worse) in the June elections.

The day this broke, I wrote to the Telegraph to tell them that they had done a disservice to democracy by releasing this information before the June elections. My letter, unsurprisingly, didn't get published.

County Council and European candidates are getting thrown to the wolves. I forget the number of times I've had to remind voters on the doorstep that these are local and European elections and not parliamentary.  

Not voting goes against everything I believe in a democracy but for once I'd prefer people not to vote than give a protest vote to a party whose MEPs are embroiled in their own scandals, or to the loathsome BNP.

The Telegraph have had this information for weeks and possibly months. They would have had to, given the time it would have taken them to go through the million or so receipts.

Publish the rest in one go then publish another 10 editions highlighting the vast majority of our MPs who work hard and don't have any "accounting errors that were within the rules".

It is not the fault of all the County Council and Euro candidates that parliament has got itself into this mess - so why does a national newspaper believe that it has the right to interfere with democracy at such a basic level? I'm not saying they shouldn't have published the information - only that they should have started it after the 4th June.

What a day this has been....

Some 26 years ago I had the fortune to marry a young man who was destined to be an MP. As it happens, just 6 weeks after our wedding he was an MP, and decisions for my callow 23 year self had to be made. Stay in my job (administrator in the racing industry) or follow my hobby into work - 8 years service as a volunteer in the Conservative Party had me well bitten by the bug, so heading after my man to become his PA seemed reasonable, sensible, and a good way to not blow this fresh young marriage. We worked hard, we rented a small flat on the allowances, and we lived sensibly. In that respect nothing has changed. 26 years on; we rent a small flat, we live sensibly, we only claim what is appropriate.

To say we were stunned by some of the revelations this week is an understatement. I wrote in a recent article that I believed 99% of MPs were doing it correctly and it would be 'the few' that muddied the waters. I was wrong.

So what do we do? David Cameron has shown true grit and leadership today. Clean up or get out is his message, and that is one all must follow.

What I really hope is that for the prospective young things out there who have been bitten by the bug will not be put off. The honour of representing people cannot be underestimated, and is worth fighting for.