Monthly Archives: January 2010

Resolve to communicate better with your members

One of the many interesting and challenging jobs I am tasked with as a member of the exec of Nottingham Lib Dems is to produce a members newsletter five times a year. We have a big events programme built up of lots of easy-to-organise events, and so much of the content is taken up with the details and information about those.

But a recent training event with staff from Members Services at Lib Dem HQ set me thinking about what better could be in our members newsletter. Thinking back to how and why I joined the Lib Dems it was principally on political issues. Gay rights. Europe. Student finance. But none of these things ever gets a mention in our newsletter, and only rarely are our events issue-driven.

So I resolved to improve our local newsletter this year with more information about party thinking on key events. And yet… I’m no policy wonk. Where will I find all that information? Where might there be a ready source of information about key issues facing Lib Dems? Then I remembered “Our place to talk!” a handy little website you may have heard of, called Lib Dem Voice!

I’m a big fan of doing as little work as possible, and it strikes me we can meet several valuable objectives with one handy little newsletter. First, we can reach out to new readers for LDV amongst the Lib Dem membership. Second, we can help local parties around the country include a little more policy and links to the wider party in their members’ newsletters. Third, and best of all, since I’m artworking stuff for Nottingham, there’s no reason I can’t share that with a grateful nation.

And so today, I bring you a two-sided A4 sheet you can print out and distribute to your own members if you are producing a newsletter in the next month or so. You can download the PDF right here, right now.

A decade is a long ole time, no?

With this change of decade as well as a change in year, the friends I see the new year in with both in person and on Twitter have been meditating about what they were doing in decades past and in decades future.

I can only really remember celebrating one decade before, and that was 1999. I was only one in 1979.

1989, the year I started secondary school, I have no recollection of New Year’s Eve. I would doubtless have been in bed before midnight. It might have been the year when we all went to my Grandad’s, and the parents promised to wake me when the clock struck 12. In the end, they weren’t able to, because Grandad had a drink or two and dropped off, blocking the door out of the sitting room.

1999 was a different ball game. I was a less happy person back then, and I was not in a good mood. I partied with a big bunch of people, and made a huge jug of margarita cocktails out of half of bottle of Cointreau and half of tequila, plus the juice of 15 limes. Then didn’t share it.

By midnight, we all walked into Nottingham’s Market Square to hear the Council House strike midnight, and the square was heaving. I was drunk, and unpleasant, and not really prepared to talk niceties to similarly drunk strangers. My friends got me out of there and my memories really end. New Year’s Day was spent horribly hangover sitting in a sleeping bag on a sofa with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon on DVD… and the decade just got better from there.

I’ve had New Year’s Eve with broadly the same group of friends since then. The parties have grown more sedate into dinner parties and murder mystery parties, and we no longer make the journey into the centre of town at all. Three years into, my partner, and now fiancé, P joined the crowd and felt much at home. This year we heated up a raclette and played boardgames and tried to keep small children and babies happy as well. Next year there will be still more children to entertain.

But the next time we change decades is a really scary prospect. One of those tiny toddlers will be in secondary school, as will my nephew. Some of us will even be worrying about turning 50.

Still, that’s a long way off. For now, let’s just celebrate the new year!