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Donal Blaney has embarked upon internet-based talk radio for his blog, Blaney’s Blarney.
Introducing the show thus, you know you’re in for a treat:
“Over the coming days and weeks I will be highlighting the real stories that the mainstream media, in its bias, chose to ignore. Stories that affect ordinary people in Britain and around the world. Blaney’s Blarney will also feature live and pre-recorded interviews, features and broadcasts.
Blaney’s Blarney will be provocative, controversial and, yes, at times even offensive to leftists, liberals, jihadists, feminazis, politically correct hippies, extremists and cretins. It will be talk radio the way it should be – not the way it has been made to be by the British government’s media regulator, Ofcom.”
Young Britons’ Foundation Chief Executive Donal Blaney has come up with this fantastic poster in support of Damian Green and against the ever greater erosion of British civil liberties under Labour.
Show your suppport for Damian Green and our cherished freedoms – change your facebook picture today.
Over at Blaney’s Blarney Donal has an memo for the Conservative Future National Management Executive, following the recent Extraordinary gathering in Wolverhampton.
The debate as to whether CF should remain involved with the NUS, or withdraw, was given new life after the CF NME published a piece earlier this month claiming an staunch majority of “student leaders” support remaining engaged with the NUS. This is in contrast to a poll on this site which found 84% of our readers in favour of leaving the £48,000-a-year ‘Club Socialism 18-21‘.
Donal’s stance is one of Better Off Out, and he suggests a compelling alternative approach for conservative students to make an impact locallly and nationally. Certainly, all the time and treasure expended wrangling with the NUS to ultimately achieve nothing of significance could be better employed taking back our campuses:
“Rather than focusing their efforts on fighting (and in all probability losing) NUS elections in the Spring, it would surely make far more sense for CF activists on our campuses to focus on taking power in their own students’ unions and using that position to deliver real and valuable change to their fellow students. Many universities are, of course, in key marginal constituencies. Were overtly Conservative sabbaticals and officers to manage their own students’ unions effectively and on budget, the Conservative Party stands to reap the rewards locally and nationally.”
Lately the Young Britons’ Foundation has been interviewing – and interviewed.
Conservative Future National Chairman Michael Rock has given a brief interview to YBF, as has Will Bickford-Smith, chairman of Nottingham University CF.
Both gave some sound responses.
Rock calls on Cameron to institute tax cuts; and we’re pleased to hear Will’s answer to this question:
If you could repeal a law, which would it be?
EU Human Rights Act- I think each state should have their own Bill of Rights.
Later, though, the tables were turned on Blaney, YBF’s Chief Executive, who was given a lengthy yet brief interview by Total Politics. Blaney hits the nail on the head here:
Complete this sentence: The thing I hate about politics is…
The way the BBC distorts debate and that Brits lack the opinionated discourse of our American cousins.
So true.
As you are well aware, here at TYC we’re big on seeing young people actively engaged in the political process. But it seems Labour’s PPC for Skipton and Ripon, 19 year old University of York Claire Hazelgrove, has shown a bit too much zeal for her socialist comrade B. Hussein Obama by trying to set up a proxy donation system, funnelling British donations to his campaign. Under US Law it’s illegal for foreign donors to give money – and rightly so, no one wants to see elections being bought by alien interests.
Miss Hazelgrove has actually had the audacity (another Obama-ism), on a Facebook group for which she is the only admin, to explain how a forthcoming fundraising event she’s co-hosting will enact the scam by later handing over the proceeds to an American citizen who will in turn donate them to the Obama campaign.
Donal Blaney broke this story yesterday, and has done us the service of adducing the relevant US electoral law to make his case. Have a read of his postings over at Blaney’s Blarney now.
It’s all the more ironic given that, according to the Craven Herald and Pioneer, Miss Hazelgrove was selected for the seat because “The University of York student impressed members with her grasp of key issues”. Clearly Sleaze: A triptych by David Abrahams isn’t on her politics degree’s reading list…
UPDATE: It seems Miss Hazelgrove has been forced to cancel the fundraiser…
Donal Blaney’s blog draws our attention to the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a Virginia-based organisation that “mentors and trains young women for effective leadership on their campuses, at their workplaces, and in their communities and homes”.
As Donal puts it, “the Luce Institute is wonderfully politically incorrect too. The Institute’s 2009 calendar – entitled Pretty in Mink – includes 11 female leaders of the American conservative movement (along with Clare Boothe Luce herself) all bedecked in fur.”
The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute do some fantastic work in training activists. We had the priviledge of being addressed on their behalf by Star Parker this summer at the Young America’s Foundation conference.
Both Clare Boothe Lucy herself and Star Parker are excellent role models. If you’re not familiar with them then they really deserve wiki’ing. Luce was the epitome of an empowered woman, staunchly conservative and amongst the first to warn of the growing threat from Communism, elected to the House of Representatives, and finally US ambassador to Italy under Reagan. Parker was for many years a victim of welfarism but took her life back, turned it around, and now tried to help others do the same.
For more on the work of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute see here.
Conservative Party Conference was a busy time for activists, but amongst the training and debates a little time was found to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Conservative Future, the Party’s youth wing.
It was during the reign of William Hague that CF was founded, replacing and unifying the various youth wings of the Party that hitherto existed. Hague returned, flanked by current National Chairman Michael Rock and first National Chairman Donal Blaney, plus other past chairmen, to address the party, celebrating all the successes of Britain’s largest political youth organisation.
In one of the most passionate actual debates of the conference, a panel comprising CF National Chairman Michael Rock and YBF Chief Executive Donal Blaney defeated the motion supported by Oliver Rowlinson (UK Youth Party member) and Paul Carter (head of Kent County Council) calling for the age of voting to be lowered to 16.
It was an example of politics at its best – focused on issues, not party lines. It might sound perverse at first blush for me to adopt the Rock/Blaney ticket, given that the stated aim of this site is to promote youth involvement in politics, but the idea that increasingly the size of the electorate would increase the percentage of electors participating is nonsense. Issues are what bring people into politics, and addressing them is undoubtedly the way to engage the electorate. People don’t vote for many reasons, but one of the commonest is that they feel they can’t change anything. In that respect, issues driven campaigning – such as pressure groups – and not party politics, is the way to enfranchise people.
