Bit rich of a man like Iain Dale, who is not exactly tolerant of difference (unless its sexuality, in which he is, purely because he is gay), and in the racist Tory party, to lambast others for not doing enough to get BME candidates. Iain Dale himself has complained on numerous times of BME candidates being given any help in getting selected – the usual tripe about “we pick the best candidate regardless of colour”, which means it’s just a coincedence all the best candidates are white.

So what your saying is sod ability lets get the morons in so long as they tick all the pc boxes. We are well and truely f*****d then.

What does BME stand for?

Black, middle-class and educated?

So why DPS “black, middle-class and educated”?

note: (DPS= don’t people say)

Actually its black, minority , ethnic I think. I just thought the middle-class thing would be funny.

I’ll get me coat…

You could try not saying that membership of the LibDems is confined to those who support illegal wars, racial genocide & child rape. That might allow a little more diversity.

When’s the last time you got laid, Neil Craig?

Be careful of valuing diversity above all else, it can be fatal.

Yes, people dying – 13 in one case.

The Fort Hood killer – came to attention for his islamist views well in advance. But the ‘diversity’ value of having a muslim was valued above normal practise.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/02/22/ft_hood_suspect_was_army_dilemma/

“Army superiors were warned about the radicalization of Major Nidal Malik Hasan years before he allegedly massacred 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, but did not act in part because they valued the rare diversity of having a Muslim psychiatrist, military investigators wrote in previously undisclosed reports.

“An obvious “problem child” spouting extremist views, Hasan made numerous statements that were not protected by the First Amendment and were grounds for discharge by violating his military oath, investigators found.

“Examples of Hasan’s radical behavior have previously been disclosed in press accounts based on interviews with unnamed Army officials, including his defense of suicide bombings and assertions that Islamic law took priority over his allegiance to the United States.

@4 Yurrzem!: “Black, middle-class and educated?”

A smart alec comment, Yurrzem!, but bang on the button.

Traditionally in the UK, people who become parliamentary candidates are educated middle class folks or working class trades unionists. We can assume that the latter route is more or less closed in our current environment. A further factor is that parliamentary candidates have to give up their life for a couple of years. Thus, candidates are likely to be young (no major responsibilities) or middle aged (established career, kids growing up). People in their thirties and early forties are going to be more modest in their short term political aspirations. Exceptions include the independently wealthy.

The reality is that there aren’t a lot of eloquent, middle aged, non-white people who can suspend their home life and career for a couple of years to pursue parliamentary candidacy. That applies to all parties. In fifteen years time, the demographics will have changed such that it would be unusual for any candidate short list to be white only.

The list of winnable Lib Dem seats is interesting. I’ll scoot off to find a betting site that will take my money for the Tories to win Leicester South (where I live) and the Lib Dems to win Manchester Gorton.

“@4 Yurrzem!: “Black, middle-class and educated?”

A smart alec comment, Yurrzem!, but bang on the button.”

Thank yew, thank yew!

I try to be pithy, with humour of possible. (Except when I’m angry at righties and their smug arrogance.)

There’s too much blah! in politics and not enough humour.

CO, HAGN, EB

Actually [BME is] black, minority , ethnic I think.

Almost – it’s Black and Minority Ethnic (no commas, ‘minority ethnic’ is one group, black another).

/pedant

A repeat of the comment I’ve made at Sunder’s post, with little editing for context:
my problem with the analysis of this is the actual practicality.

To win a seat, the typical Lib Dem candidate needs to have strong local connections, and campaign hard for a number of years before success. This even applies to seats where the sitting MP is a retiring Lib Dem, you absolutely positively need to work the seat both before and after selection.

Overwhelmingly, Lib Dem MPs have strong local connections to their constituency. This isn’t because the LD members are discriminating against non-locals.

It’s because there isn’t a single guaranteed win for the Lib Dems as a seat, anywhere in the country. To get selected, you have to apply, and then demonstrate to the local members that you’re going to work and work and work locally, and preferably live in the seat.

Many succesfull MPs have a long involvement in local politics within or near their constituency as well.

I was doing the number on this awhileback, but it’s far more important to try and get my local candidate through in the 3-way marginal I live (where the succesful white female PPC narrowly beat the asian male candidate, who’s now PPC in a far less winnable seat next door).

MArk’s main point is sound–a huge chunk of LD MPs come from the fringes, the SW, Scottish H&Is, Wales. The overwhelmingly white areas.

But the LDs get votes all over the country.

Yes, there may be problems with STV and voters voting against asian looking names, and that study is one I read soon after it came out, but regardless, STV would move the LD MPs to many other parts of the country–they wouldn’t have all the Cornish MPs, but would have some North London MPs, and more in the midlands and the northern cities.

Regardless, I want as many liberal, pro-reform MPs as possible, so in a single member seat, which I’d rather get rid of, we need the absolutely best candidate for the job, the one with the best chance of winning, the one that’ll work the hardest.

That’s almost certainly going to be someone living in the area, working the community already, someone known to local people already. Which, unfortunately, reduces the chances of a BME candidate for as long as BME populations are concentrated in certain areas.

However, while the OBV likely wins are fairly obvious, there’s a less likely win that isn’t listed. Having met the candidate, I strongly suggest looking out for PErry Barr on results night, and if she doesn’t win this time, she almost certainly will next.

It is a very difficult, complex issue, but it’s significantly harder for the LDs to make headway due to how much harder it is for them (us) to win any seat, anywhere, at all. Thw workload causes many a committed PPC to resign, even in winnable seats, and even more to not even put themselves forward.

I’d rather see more MPs committed to STV as a priority, as multi-member seats will make a massive difference regardless of party.

That Bernie, represents the level of discussion to which LibDems aspire.

(& more recently than you by a 99:1 bet)

I’ve never supported a Lib Dem, I remember the SDP and the Alliance and I thought they were cunts. At the Euro elections I voted NO2EU and before that I voted Labour until I got sick of them betraying the workers.

And if you want someone who uses fucking silly arguments, look in the mirror for someone who talks bollocks about “illegal wars, racial genocide & child rape” on a thread that has nothing to do with anything.

Bernard, you get used to Neil, it’s best not to respond to him, he’s absolutely convinced that, because the Lib Dems weren’t particularly keen on the wonderful Slobodan Milosevic, that every single member is a supporter of every nasty thing that happened in the places he tried to conquer/control by force.

There’s never anything new in the argument- and he was expelled for publicly calling the then leader of the party a war criminal, which, y’know, falls under the “bringing the party into disrepute” part of the rules, something he seems to not understand.

Mat I accept that as the highest standard of honesty of which you are capable. You are, of course, lying. I called Nazi Ashdown Nazi Ashdown after the decision to expel me & I await your apology for this lie.

. If you have evidence Milosevic tried to conquer anywhere why did you not give it to the NATO funded court whose inability to convict him was caused by their inabiklity to fibnd any evidence against him. If you haven’t you are simply an obscene Nazi liar producing a fake story to justifyb the undeniable fact that you are a reacist murdering cannibalistic child raping Nazi war criminal. No offence.

Perhaps you could explain why it should be necesary for me to have “anything new” in what i say about your openly racist party when nobody in your party can dispute the factual accuracy of the charges. Presumably you also believe your pal Hitler did nothing wrong since he has not been found to have murdered any Jews in the last 10 years.

Actually Neil, I think the court was unable to convict him because he died.

You should clearly be sectioned.

I called Nazi Ashdown Nazi Ashdown after the decision to expel me & I await your apology for this lie.

Incorrect. You have a post still extant on your site using this phrase dated Dec 15th 2005, you were not expelled until after the exec meeting held 21st January 2006. I wasn’t a member of the party at the time, I joined subsequently.

http://not-little-england.blogspot.com/2005/12/libdem-expulsion-brief-little-fisking.html

I didn’t lie, you did. Now stop trying to derail every thread on the internet that mentions the party you were kicked out from following a democratic process. It’s pathetic and aggravating.

Matt GB, I don’t wish to sound patronising but it’s not always a good idea to respond to the incoherent ramblings of the mentally ill with reasoned argument. Their psychosis induced perception of the world tends to distort logical argument in such a way that it ends up reinforcing their delusions.

Neil should not be reasoned with. He should be medicated. Heavily.

Oh, I suspect you’re right RWF, I made the response with link primarily for the benefit of others who might possibly have been taken in by his ramblings.

@22 seems unlikely that people other than the criminally insane, Daily Mail readers and similar types would be taken in. I’m not a great fan of Paddy Ashdown but “Nazi Ashdown” doesn’t seem to be an entirely reasonable description. I also have no idea who you are but I doubt that, even though you’re a Lib Dem, you’re a child – raping cannibal and I’m pretty sure you’ll be too young to have been a Nazi war criminal.

Neil – you haven’t spoken any inconvenient facts. You haven’t, as far as I can see, spoken anything that could really be considered a fact. For example:

a. Paddy Ashdown is not, and this is pretty obvious to anyone who isn’t seriously deluded, a Nazi.

b. The Lib Dems aren’t (once again, this is obvious to the non – deluded) a Nazi party.

c. I’m not a Nazi – since no one here has ever met me, I’m the only person on the site who knows this but it is, nevertheless, a fact.

d. Milosevic’s blood test didn’t show he’d been poisoned. Blood tests can’t show that. They can show the presence of chemicals and one of Milosevic’s showed traces of an antibiotic called rifampicin. This is not the same as showing he’d been poisoned. If NATO/The UN/ZOG/The Illuminati/The Masons (feel free to insert whichever group your illness is telling you is responsible) wanted to kill him they did a fairly crappy job, didn’t they? Using an easily detectable substance which was not guaranteed to be successful and then allowing a medical test which showed it’s presence. You’d expect large, well resourced organisations which engage in assassination to demonstrate some basic competence, wouldn’t you?

e. Matt GB’s post (20) indicates that you can’t even be accurate about what you’ve actually said in the past and when you said it.

Now, you could go on with the “Neil’s a victim of an evil conspiracy led by the Lib Dems because he spoke a truth noone wants to hear” fantasy or you can accept that calling people child rapists and Nazis simply because they’ve pointed out you’re an idiot (now THAT is a fact, which you HAVE demonstrated) is a fairly clear indication of psychotic delusion (or just that you’re, basically, a twat). I’d recommend that you take the latter course of action and go away and take your pills.