So here we are, 23 days into the Homes For Ukraine process.

I applied in good faith and a good mood, thinking that *for once* our government was doing something for good humanitarian reasons. (Stop laughing at the back). @ukhomeoffice I don’t need to spell out how extraordinarily vulnerable a destitute young mum with three young daughters is in humanitarian crisis like this. There is no question of them spending any length of time on the streets or in temporary shelters. @pritipatel

I’ve thought of a really good way of easing the pressure on housing in London and the South-East of England.

It’s called developing the economy of the North. Genuine levelling up would encourage people to move North for a good job. Maybe it’s time for more decentralisation? Do you know what’s really problematic? It’s items from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs being turned into commodities. We live in a cold, damp island in the North Atlantic. Shelter that is warm and dry is a basic need for survival here.

A house is shelter, it is not an investment.

What is liberalism?

Well the trite answer is that it’s about working to build a fairer world for all. It’s a movement that’s been fighting against the unrestrained power of kings and unelected rules for 4 centuries in the UK. Liberals and their predecessors have been working to hand power to the people, standing up against the excesses of those try to make us do what they want in order to benefit themselves, and combating injustice at their own risk for hundreds of years.

Back in the olden days, profit which was handed to the investors/shareholders as dividends, was what was *left* after a company had fulfilled its mission AND put some money aside for R&D AND budgeted for future projects.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned. It’s not just me, is it? I mean, a water company that is paid by customers to produce drinking water and take away and treat effluent should at the barest minimum do those things *before* it hands out cash to shareholders?

48 years ago, my father’s business went belly up during a large geopolitical event, and as we lost our U.K. house, he moved his young family to an unrenovated 15th C French farmhouse he’d just bought for a song. I grew up with a foot on each side of the Channel, fighting incomprehension about my national identity on both sides from early childhood.

Brexit has picked at a deep scab. Nationalism wounds me anew every time I see it.

So, having weighed up all the pros and cons of the thing, and bearing in mind my post-operative elderly mother-in-law and my 11 yo school child, I have regretfully declined my first face-to-face parish council meeting in 16 months- in a small room. I just don’t feel it’s sensible MIL is staying with us, and is in and out of hospital. Child is at school every day (albeit Covid testing 2x weekly).

A few words about political campaigning.

1) *None* of us gets paid to stand for election. Not independents, not party members.
2) Most of us have day jobs, families, caring responsibilities or an abiding interest in matchstick modelling. 3) leaflets cost money. Money is very thin on the ground, whether you are a local party or an independent.
4) campaigning takes up a lot of time (did I mention we none of us are paid?)
5) People stand to give you a choice of values.

This is being done on our behalf- a Spanish 25 year old on her way to stay with her sister in London with a view to getting a job, was in fact detained without her mobile telephone or passport in Yarlswood detention centre for 5 days. elconfidencial.com/mundo/europa/2… According to the article, on arrival at the airport, and discovering there was a problem, she offered to go straight back to Spain on the next flight but this was refused. Why? On what grounds was she deprived of her freedom?

Don’t own a passport? Don’t have a driving license?

You soon won’t be able to vote either, if the Tories get their law on voter ID through.

Register for a permanent postal vote now, while you still can!

gov.uk/government/pub… This is not a liberal law. I doubt many conservatives would support it. It only appeals to authoritarians and people who have got a distorted impression of how much voter fraud there is vs voter disenfranchisement.

The reason I did not stand for election this time (despite having done creditably in 2017) is that on the heels of a pandemic I simply could not afford to take the 4 months off work that I did then. I went out every single day across the division from the end of January 2017. Every single day, come rain or shine.

I still did not win- I came 3rd in a 2 seat division.

My Tory opponents did a tiny fraction of this, and both won.

Don’t even begin to pretend that politics is a level playing field. Tories are not playing on the same field.

I became politically active 3.5 years ago, straight after the referendum, not just because i was devastated by the result (although I see it as the biggest act of national self-harm in the last few hundred years), but because of *how* and *why* it happened. 1/ I wasn’t an assiduous law student, but I was well-schooled in constitutional law during my degree. I could see from November 2015 that our country was heading to a very dark place, and being used as a pawn by a political party that ought instead to be looking after it.