I’m not being facetious here, I am merely pointing to the difficulty of defining terms like “ethnic minority” and deciding which of these is more deserving that another.

If you had read the posting on Allan Beddow’s Blog ‘Reflecting Britain - I knew this would provoke some comment’, you would understand why BME candidates don’t get selected.
In most cases, it has nothing to do with their capabilities but the make up of the membership

YAWN! Okay, okay, I get the fact you won’t be signing, you don’t have to drown me in pedantry. But in brief…

Why two task forces and not one? Because they both specialise in different things. We have individuals who are motivated and specialise in supporting and mentoring women candidates and we have individuals who are motivated and specialise in supporting and mentoring BME candidates. Yes, there is a great deal of cross-over, and the two work closely together. But the two require distinct approaches.

And if you think the Equalities Commission is just going to bundle the two issues together in the way you suggest, you clearly haven’t been paying attention.

The goals (except for the BME one) are already party policy. The way in which the leader will help achieve them will be by lending their political support for the GBTF and EMETF. He can help by giving leadership on the issue, which is their job after all.

Ultimately, we’ve demonstrated that this approach works and gets results; what it has lacked in recent years is financial and political support. There isn’t an awful lot of time for debate with target seat selections already well underway. The time to pick holes was September.

Don’t let me do anything to reduce your energy and output north of the Forth…

And thanks for working out the populations.

(And I did mention Somerset - promise).

Martin

Point 3 is motherhood and apple-pie, although I sincerely hope you mean the best of British society, as it stands it comes across a little as regarding quantity more important than quality, which isn’t going to help attract good candidates.

On point 2 how would the leader of the party meet this target when they don’t control local selection?

On point 1 why do we need two sperately funded task-forces if both are in the same business of giving extra candidate support and our national policy on equality bodies is to merge them into one Equalities Commission. Would it not be better, more consistent and more likely to succeed to expand the remit and funding of the GBTF rather than push for two seperate quangos?

And I was just going by the list you Blogged as a rebuttal.

I’m off to bed now to try and sleep.

The position of Reflecting Britain is quite clear. The goal of the campaign is precisely that as outlined in the statement that the three candidates have been asked to sign. The questions are there to enable the candidates to go into a bit more detail about their position - it’s then up to individual members to judge.

Personally, I’m amazed that the Huhne campaign posted it in the first place. Simon’s website had already called out seven council leaders a few days ago. The story could only have been true if Ming’s campaign had absolutely no council group leaders backing it at all. And as it turned out, we had ten.

By the way Stephen, I think you missed Somerset County Council from your comparison vs Ming (check the size at http://www.constructaregion.org.uk) - bigger than Newcastle City Council, Milton Keynes Council and Manchester City Council - even bigger than Wiltshire County Council (which you also inexplicably missed out). You also omitted the group leaders of Sheffield, Cheshire, Shropshire, and Leicestershire from your comparisons.

And Graham Tope is the leader of the Lib Dem group on the London Assembly - and he’s backing Chris - so I don’t know what you mean by Simon having the group leader for London.

Martin