"no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity"

[miss_s_b]

Those are the words that persuaded me to join up to the Lib Dems. They mean a lot to me. They clearly mean a lot to whoever designed the membership card too, since they are on it. Of course, the lawyer in me points out that it could be argued that it only means not being enslaved by your own ignorance, and not the ignorance of others...

Yesterday, despite direct and personal evidence given by members of LGBT+ Lib Dems that the process was directly discriminatory, and evidence given by lots of people that the process would not make anyone safer, and may well in fact be counterproductive and induce a false sense of security, the alphabet soup of federal committees decided to adopt security theatre accreditation for autumn conference again.

"no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity"

Those words aren't just an empty platitude to me. They are a statement of principle. An aim. I want to live in a society where those words are taken as read, as a base to work from.

Yesterday, someone I care about a lot told me that while this decision was deplorable, the other stuff I was posting about yesterday, the economic stuff, was more important, and I should "get a sense of perspective". The fact that the adoption of this process means that people I care about will literally be risking their lives if they want to come to conference apparently needs to be put in perspective with the fact that Vince Cable said a thing... I feel very depressed today, and still not sure what to do about all this.

Comments

[andrewhickey.info]

VERY much agreed here. We need to make this party liberal and democratic again.

[gwenhwyfaer]

I really hope you can, but I fear that the illusion and promise of power has done its tainty thing.

[andrewhickey.info]

We'll be out of power in three years or less. Those who put power above principle will jump ship at that point...

[purplecat]

Yes but unless you can demonstrate that, as a party, you can hold on to your principles when in power, or perhaps more importantly keep control of the party in the hands of those who will make a reasonable attempt not to compromise principle too far in the face of the realities of government then... I don't know, why should I vote for your party in a general election even if I agree with your principles?

[andrewhickey.info]

"keep control of the party in the hands of those who will make a reasonable attempt not to compromise principle too far in the face of the realities of government"

That's precisely what we have to do, yes...

[ggreig.livejournal.com]

You are right to be concerned. "More important" here really means "more likely to be of immediate concern to a member of the voting public", and while that's true and worth bearing in mind, it's not actually the same thing as "more important". Issues of freedom can have a long term effect that's frequently undervalued by people focussing too much on the here and now.

Good luck in opposing this.

[redbird]

Or it means "of more concern to [whoever is speaking]." My issues are always going to be more important to me than yours; that doesn't mean I can or should expect them to be more important to you, for the exact same reason.

[ggreig.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[bagpuss]

Reading the link you posted to earlier http://www.libdemvoice.org/federal-committees-approve-conference-accreditation-28627.html

It does read awfully like to not do this we have to go against the Man and well we now are the Man so sucks boo to anyone who doesnt like it its really to difficult to fight so we aren't going to bother

[miss_s_b]

There is an element of that. There are a reasonable number of people fighting against it too. I don't know which way it's going to fall yet; certainly that post on LDV is not the final say on the matter.

[bagpuss]

as an interested outsider having watched this happen at least once if not twice already I can't help but feel the outcome is a foregone conclusion and it isn't a positive one

[http://www.nickbarlow.com/blog/]

Fully agree with this, and getting very hacked off with the condescending 'why are you worrying about this when you should be concerned about X?' crowd. So much so, what started as a response here ended up turning into a whole post: http://www.nickbarlow.com/blog/?p=1771

[daweaver]

Here's why this is an important question for the Lib Dems as a party: it is likely to cost them members. Specifically, I'm casting around for a jolly good reason why I should not prepare a principled resignation letter, ready to send when my membership's up for renewal in a few weeks. (Especially if that comes after the count of LGBT+ members for SAO status.)