pseudomonas

The Liberal Democrats have a leadership election going on. Anyone who's joined by the close of nominations - 4pm on the 3rd of June (tomorrow) is entitled to vote.¹ Since the election, over 15,000 members have already joined.²

Whenever you join, you can help make Liberal Democrat policy in a number of ways - through your local parties, you can propose policy motions to national and regional conference; you can vote on policy at conference — this is how policy gets decided; and there are many settings, formal and informal, in which you have a chance to persuade others in the party of your point of view. New members with no formal role in the party can and do address the conference in debates.

This post might be aimed at you if:

■ You think that the party is the closest aligned to your political outlook
or
■ You think the party is good, but not perfect on all things, and would like to move it closer to your ideal. Internal disagreement is a feature, not a bug, and it makes internal democracy more robust.
or especially
■ You think the party was good up until 2010 and then lost its way in coalition — this is my view and, as far as I can tell subjectively, the majority view within the party too. Change is now inevitable. As a member, you can help shape that change.

■ You feel the statement of values that forms the preamble to the constitution is something worth signing up to.

■ You'd like to help campaign for keeping the Human Rights Act, for staying in the EU, against the Snooper's Charter and other security overintrusion, and for constitutional, economic, and political reform.

If you already have decided that there's another political party that you'd rather work within - good luck, and fight the good fight there, this isn't where I'm going to try and convince you to quit.

If you think that the party is nowhere near your views or unredeemable after coalition: consider this post not to be addressed to you. TL;DR: the post is "if you support the Lib Dems, this is where I tell you why you should consider joining", not "this is where I tell you why you should support the Lib Dems"

If you are interested in joining the party, you can do so at http://www.libdems.org.uk/join




¹ So far it's a choice between Tim Farron and Norman Lamb, both of whom I think are people of integrity, and both of whom I trust to take the party to a position much more representative of its ideological and historical roots than the last five years of coalition.

² Most are new to the party; about 20% have been members before and are re-joining.


Comments: this is basically a post for people who are more-or-less aligned with the party who may want to discuss reasons to join or not to join, the way the party works internally, and maybe the leadership election. It's not the space to argue that the party is terrible, that the coalition was terrible, that another party is terrible, that the UK's electoral system is terrible, or that I am terrible. Really.

The Conservative party have some nasty policies, and have made some nasty promises, and a lot of changes could happen in the next parliament that are pretty grim — and certainly there are a lot of positive changes that are much needed and will not happen.

But we should remember that they have a majority (even before a single by-election) that makes Major's in 1992 look generous¹. And this is a party that still contains David Davis, Ken Clarke, Sarah Wollaston, Nadine Dorries, Peter Bone — all flavours of awkward squad, left and right (relatively speaking, anyway), authoritarian and libertarian, europhile and europhobe. A lot of the policies are going to end up watered down, or defeated, or quietly swept into a disused filing-cabinet. Putting the right pressure² on the right MPs to convince them might well help. Campaigning in whatever opposition party you're a member of³ to help the Conservatives see they can't count on their majority next time will certainly help. Joining organised pressure groups like the Open Rights Group, Shelter, and Liberty will certainly help.



¹ There's a chance that on some issues the DUP / UUP / UKIP might come to their aid, yes. But all these parties are small, UKIP sees them as the enemy on a lot of things, and having to rely on the DUP may well require of them some unpalatable quid-pro-quos. There's also a chance that on some things - the Snooper's Charter, for instance, some Labour MPs will support them. This just means that there's a broader target that needs pressure (from within and without that party).

² I personally believe that the right pressure is often more "I'd be more likely to vote for you if you do X than if you do Y" rather than "OMG all Tories are evil scum" even if the latter fits the facts better. But y'know, maybe there's a good-cop-bad-cop routine in there or something.

³ As I've said in a previous post, I'm in the Lib Dems and I think you should consider joining and making the party better and stronger — but if you're better suited to another party, please help make that party better and more effective instead.


ETA: and there's always the House of Lords there as well…

(http://adambernard.net/img/tineyhipoes_coloured.png if the embedding doesn't work)
Another one based on http://www.terbildraems.com/

Does anyone else use (or want to use) this Scrabble clone? I'd like to see about playing against a human one day. It's unofficial, FOSS, non-geofenced, and doesn't need Facebook.

Take this list, remove a thing, sort it by how much you like the things, add a thing at the top, a thing in the middle, and a thing at the bottom (preserving the sortedness, pedants):

(most liked)
Thermal underwear
Nessie Ladle
Steam locomotives
Maths
Twitter
Porridge
Undercooked Aubergine
Eating paper
Running away from zombies
Getting up early
Tidying
(most disliked)

(from http://damerell.dreamwidth.org/87540.html)

ETA: I have tried to add things which are not *universally* loved/hated; I feel putting "Orgasms" and "Genocide" on there would be kinda boring...

(this is all at-your-own-risk, but it seemed to work for me.)

⁂ Create empty list. (go to https://www.facebook.com/bookmarks/lists and click "Create List"; then give the list a name but not any members and click "create".)
⁂ View list.
⁂ Click "Add friends to list" button. A popover will appear listing all your friends.
⁂ Paste:
javascript:elms=document.getElementsByClassName('checkableListItem');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){elms[fid].click();}}
into the address bar. The browser might strip the "javascript:" at the beginning; type it back in manually if so.
⁂ Press Enter.
⁂ Click the "Finish" button at the bottom of the popover.


(the purpose of this is that by looking at the list, no entries will be filtered away, and it will always be most-recent-first)

Copied from a rantlet I made in a comment elsenet, agreeing with the proposition that the "tomatoes aren't really vegetables" is just silly

I get really^* cross about the fruit/veg thing

a) Clearly (to my eyes) the botanic definition of a fruit is only tangentially relevant to the culinary definition. We can do this. We have polysemy, we have shades of meaning. It's OK.

b) Even if the botanic definition were useful, why would "fruit" not then be a subset of "vegetable" (which would presumably be defined as something like "all edible plant (or plant-and-fungal) matter")?

c) Even if fruit were not a subset of vegetables, why on earth would you assume that fruit and vegetables have got to be disjoint? Just a miserably narrow gastronomic outlook?

d) Why do people always go on about tomatoes, and not cucumbers, mange-tout, pumpkins, courgettes, aubergines, rhubarb, and so forth?


^* for a small value of "really"