What do you mean you’ve never heard of Thomas Hare?

If you’re a hard up student with an interest in politics and have always liked the idea of getting paid for writing essays then The Electoral Reform Society is running a competition that might interest you.

They have just launched the Thomas Hare Essay Competition to promote thought and discussion about issues of democracy and political participation.

The competition is open to anyone in full time education and the topics range from the future of local democracy to diversity and equality in politics. The winning essays will not only be published, but there is a cash prize of £1000 for the winner and £500 for two runners up.

For more info, check out www.thomashare.org.uk. You’ve got until the 30th of March to get you essays in. Good luck.

Anticipations Winter 2008/9 – MDGs

The Winter edition of Anticipations was finally sent to print this week, and should be with members within the next fortnight or so.

The focus is on the MDGs, including a special contribution from Save The Children.

Thanks to all contributors. Feel free to continue the debate online, or in future editions of the journal. The Spring 2009 edition will focus on life after Kyoto. If you would like to contribute, then read this and get in touch.

Anticipations Winter 2008/9 Cover

Change-makers and the lessons from the US

Before heading off to Davos, Douglas Alexander MP kindly took an hour out of his hectic schedule on Monday evening to join a roundtable on the lessons learnt on the Young Fabian delegation to Ohio last October/November. He heard what ideas Young Fabians felt could be translated from Barack Obama’s incredible campaign to Labour campaigning in the UK.

Amongst the things discussed were trust and best utilising a campaign’s biggest resource – volunteers. Obama’s campaign, similar to other Democrat campaigns before it but differing to most Labour campaigns, did not exclude on the basis of not being a party member. Instead, volunteers had access to masses of information about both the logistics and the strategy of the campaign as well as policy. The idea that direction, but not control, should come from the centre is an important part of the process of empowering those of similar values who want to fight your corner.

Taking this on board is a massive culture change for the Labour Party. But Douglas was of the view that the best change in Labour organising has come in times of adversity. We are probably at that point right now. And there are some signs that the right ideas are being taken on board. But we have a fight on our hands. Douglas, in highlighting the important role of young people in our movement, challenged us to “be the change-makers we want to see”.

In his role as general election coordinator, he wants the concrete recommendations; our top fives; to know what the ‘war room’ of the Obama generation is.

It’d be good to hear what you think …

Food for thought

Next time you’re on a night out, think carefully about indulging in that end-of-night ritual: the doner kebab.

New research from the Local Authority Coordinators of Regulatory Services (Lacors) suggests that the trusty doner may contain a number of surprises. The average doner contains around 1000 calories (about half of the total number you’re supposed to ingest each day); 60g of fat (of which around 30g are saturates); and 6g of salt (100% of your RDA). Some ‘small’ doners were found to be less healthy than ‘large’ ones. And there were found to be large regional variations – doners in London, for instance, are on average less harmful to your health than those in the East Midlands. 

Of most interest is the fact that the meat content of the doner was often found to be different from that advertised – some lamb doners were found to contain pork AND were labelled as ‘halal’ on the packaging.

This research is published just a couple of weeks after the Food Standards Agency announced a voluntary scheme for restaurants to publish nutritional information on menus. 

So should food outlets publish these data and be open and honest with the contents of the food they serve? Or, as Charlie Brooker suggests, will this ruin the fun of eating out?

Certainly an issue to chew over…

Anticipating Anticipations

Whoever said editing Anticipations was an easy task?

The Winter 2008 edition is coming on well, but it’s quarter to midnight and I’m still working on the design. It’s possible there will be some more late nights before we finally go to print…

The next edition should be with you in early February – do look out for it (it’s on the MDGs). And don’t forget it’s your journal, so please provide feedback on how we’re doing. And why not give writing an article a go? Details for how to go about it are on the Young Fabian website here.

Inauguration Celebration – tomorrow

A quick post to remind you to RSVP for tomorrow’s YF celebration of the inauguration of Barack Obama.

It’s from 4.15pm to late in The Abbey pub in Westminster. Full details here or contact Adrian for more information.

Exciting new blog, exciting year ahead

I feel very privileged to be the first person ever to blog for the Young Fabians. Thanks must go to Sam Strudwick, the YF’s excellent web editor, for bringing our blog into existence. It’s not the only new blog on the left this week, as you may have noticed …

I thought I’d use this first post just to say a bit about what the Young Fabians are up to at the moment. On Sunday, in the slightly cold basement seminar room of the Fabian Society HQ, we held our co-options meeting. I’ll speak on behalf of the whole Executive Committee in saying that we were hugely impressed by the high standard of YF members who put themselves forward and we had some difficult discussions in deciding who to co-opt. We are delighted with the 5 choices we made though, and on a personal level I’m really excited about us now having an Equalities Officer. I’m sure you’ll hear more soon as these 5 new members of the Exec get to work.

We followed this up with our first Exec meeting of 2009. There are exciting plans afoot. After taking 80 YF and Labour Staff Network members over to Ohio for the final few days of Obama’s campaign, I’m now leading on the follow-up work around the lessons we learnt and how we can bring these back into Labour campaigns around the UK. And – you heard it here first – watch out for details soon of our inauguration celebration. There’s a new edition of Anticipations not too far away, a speech from James Purnell and the schools project is going from strength to strength. Vice-Chair, David Chaplin, presented a paper on how we can move forward our excellent policy work from last year.

Exciting stuff. Hopefully this blog will prove a good way for you to let us know your ideas for what you’d like to see the Young Fabians doing in the coming months.

Young Fabains Blog – Coming Soon!

The first ever Young Fabians blog is on its way to give you the best views, opinion and debate on the web. We’re going to be discusing everything from the latest developments in the news to projects we’re working on and issues we think are being over looked.

Watch this space!