New Chair for Liberal Youth

The manifestos for all the candidates standing in the Liberal Youth elections are now online. Assuming your membership is up to date you should be receiving your ballot papers from today onwards.

I Agree with Nick Campaign

During the general election campaign Leeds Liberal Youth ran an 'I agree with Nick' campaign. Following Nick's surge in popularity, particularly amongst young people, after the first Leader's debate we took our life size cut out of Nick round the student parts of Leeds to see what people really thought outside of the media bubble.

The response was really amazing, as you can see from all the photos on the facebook group.

Greg Mulholland, who is the Lib Dem MP for most of the student areas of Leeds, won with a majority of over 9,000.

Deputy Leader Poll

So Simon Hughes won our poll to be Deputy Leader of the party with 62% of the vote. This mirrored the results of the actual vote amongst MPs.

Leeds Liberal Youth wish Simon every success in his new role.

Please fill in our new poll: Should there be a BBQ area on Woodhouse Moor?

BBQs on Woodhouse Moor

This article was today published in the Yorkshire Evening Post.

The Labour/Green administration in Leeds have cancelled plans for a BBQ area on Woodhouse Moor despite overwhelming public support in the consultation process.

This seems like a ridiculous way of ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away. Students will still have BBQs on the Moor (as indeed they have been doing already this year). We need a solution that solves the problem, not one that ignores it. It is also a costly way of solving the problem. The two park wardens and the golf buggy currently used to patrol the Moor cost £26,000 a year. In the current economic climate it cannot be right that the Labour/Green council in Leeds is wasting so much money on this scheme.

Leeds Liberal Youth will continue to call for a designated BBQ area on the Moor so people who live in the Hyde Park and Headingley area can continue to enjoy the only bit of green space that many of them have access to.

Please take a look at our latest poll on the BBQ area.

Complaint to Punch Taverns

Following Leeds Liberal Youth's complaint to Punch Taverns regarding this incident we have received this reply from the company:

Dear Chris

Thank you for your email regarding the incident at the Greencoat Boy on Saturday night.

I would like to take this opportunity to reassure you that Punch Taverns seeks to provide open and welcoming venues to everyone. We are shocked and saddened that the Labour LGBT did not experience this at The Greencoat Boy and have apologised unreservedly.

Across our estate, diversity and inclusion are a core part of our ethics and are clearly referenced in our recruitment process, our equal opportunities policy and training. We would like to stress that this is an isolated incident; we have a strong track record on equal opportunities and do not tolerate homophobia in our pubs, whether from guests to other guests, or involving our employees.

We are currently conducting a full investigation of the incident and are cooperating with the police. We have also arranged to meet with members of the LGBT Labour group this week to discuss how we can work together to further improve our policies and procedures.

In addition, we have contacted all of our general managers and pub teams to remind them of our equal opportunity policy and our no tolerance approach to discrimination. We will also seek to work with external partners to further enhance our training to ensure that inclusion remains at the heart of it.

Please be assured that we take this incident seriously and we remain committed to ensuring that all of our guests are welcome at our pubs.

Regards,

Giles Thorley
CEO

Social Housing should be given to local people?

Councillor Penny Ewens, the Lib Dem Councillor in Hyde Park and Woodhouse, has said that she believes that the priority for social housing should go to longer term local residents. According to this article in the Guardian she said:

"For too long the council has ignored the effect that large numbers of residents with no local ties can have on a community.

"This is will help us build stronger and more durable local communities in Leeds.

"There is a lot of social housing in Hyde Park and Woodhouse and these proposals could have a big impact many of our local estates. This makes it very important that as many people as possible take part in the consultation and make sure their views are heard."

Do you think this is fair or will this have the effect of unfairly discriminating against young people and students who need social housing and wish to stay in Hyde Park and Woodhouse?

Let us know your thoughts.

New Website

So finally we have a website that actualy looks quite good! Yay!

We're going to be using this a lot from now on to post details of all our events and campaigning from now on so please bookmark it and tell all your friends.

If you haven't already then please subscribe to our email list to keep up with all our latest news by emailing leedsliberalyouth@gmail.com and if you wnat to subscribe to our text alerts then please also include a mobile number.

Green Streets

For those of you that haven't heard of Green Streets it's a great project run by students in Leeds to help tidy up after and during the student housing changeover. They collect lots of unwanted items from students and then hold a large free shop at Leeds University Union, donate some of the goods to charity and recycle as much of what's left as possible.

It's a really great environmentally aware project. If you're interested in finding out more or helping out you can follow them on twitter here or join their facebook group here.

I Predict a Riot!

Leeds Uni Liberal Democrats are holding a joint event with LUU LGBT assembly on the 27th of February from 21.00-2.00 at Mine in Leeds University Union. The event will be raising the profile of the LDYS campaign, 'Homophobia is Gay' as well as raising money for a charity fighting against homophobia in schools and universities (EACH). It's £3 in, all of which will go to the charity and it should be a really fun night! Bring your friends!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Leeds LDYS!