You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Young Britons’ Foundation' tag.
Today is the final day for purchasing tickets to the Young Britons’ Foundation Summer Party.
This year’s centre-piece YBF Summer Party is, thanks to the generous support of Peter Stringfellow, being held at Stringfellows Angels, 201 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1F 8ZH on Wednesday, 22 July 2009 from 9pm.
The evening is set to be the largest gathering of serious, committed young conservatives ahead of the YBF6 Conference in October – can you afford not to attend?!
Entry is by ticket only – prices are £20 (£10 for students in full-time education) including wine, beer and canapes and YBF has the exclusive use of the downstairs area of the club from 9pm until 11pm.
Pay for Tickets Online: you can pay for tickets using PayPal at http://www.ybf.org.uk/events-conferences/summer-party-2009/. The process is quick and straightforward and you don’t need a PayPal account. Most debit/credit cards are accepted.
This year’s centre-piece YBF Summer Party is, thanks to the generous support of Peter Stringfellow, being held at Stringfellows Angels, 201 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1F 8ZH on Wednesday, 22 July 2009 from 9pm.
The evening is set to be the largest gathering of serious, committed young conservatives ahead of the YBF6 Conference in October – can you afford not to attend?!
Entry is by ticket only – prices are £20 (£10 for students in full-time education) including wine, beer and canapes and YBF has the exclusive use of the downstairs area of the club from 9pm until 11pm.
Pay for Tickets By Post: you may apply for a ticket by sending a cheque made payable to “YBF” to YBF, 50 Churchill Square, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent ME19 4YU.
Pay for Tickets Online: you can now pay for tickets using PayPal at http://www.ybf.org.uk/events-conferences/summer-party-2009/. The process is quick and straightforward and you don’t need a PayPal account. Most debit/credit cards are accepted.
The Young Britons’ Foundation campaigns tirelessly against campus bias and extreme left wing protests that disrupt the university experience – which students pay for. To that effect YBF maintain the Sound Intelligence Service, a facility for students to anonymously report political bias on their campus.
Recent examples of tip-offs include:
- Alerting us that a lecturer at one university was urging his students not to attend a TaxPayers’ Alliance event – citing Polly Toynbee as a source.
- Reports that the Secretary of the Politics Department at a leading university was sending emails encouraging students to attend a pro Gaza rally in the face of “brutal Israeli aggression” – with no effort to appear balanced.
- Informing us of a university tutor who made a Political Ideologies class watch An Inconvenient Truth - with no coverage of the other side.
- Highlighting a university tutor who is paid £200,000 of taxpayers’ money to research “left wing theories of animal welfare protection, and an ethical approach to climate change.”
YBF can respond quickly to such tip offs, as shown by their successful Support Our Troops campaign, which was in response to a tip off about the group Kick ‘em Off Campus. Anti-military bias at UCL has been defeated, and Kingston University students are tackling their Student Union’s bias, too, with council-level backing.
Don’t forget, that such information can also lead to YBF’s Grand Committee points – which can win you a bounty of prizes. So do your bit for the Sound Intelligence Service, and email your campus tip-offs to christian@ybf.org.uk. All emails can be treated anonymously.
At the invitation of the Young Britons’ Foundation, I’ve written a guest post over at YBF.org.uk. Given a free rein as to topic, I took my inspiration from a bumper sticker I found at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February. In the article I argue that Britain doesn’t need change, it needs liberty.
“In the wake of recent events, and for as long as politicians have sought votes, the buzz words have been ‘reform’, ‘change’, ad nausea. But all this is just so much window-dressing. Brown can fiddle with how they’re elected, and Cameron can fiddle with their roll call, but none of this gets close to the heart of the problem: Government is the problem.”
Continue reading the full article over at the Young Britons’ Foundation website
Steven Dent, the Young Britons’ Foundation’s Director of New Media, and alumnus of the 2008 Programme, has produced this fantastic video showcasing what your can expect on the 2009 programme. The deadline to apply is Tuesday, 19th May – so either email Donal, or visit this page for more details.
YBF will be in America for four weeks this summer, and activists can pick’n'mix the weeks most relevant and beneficial to them. YBF generously underwrites almost ever expenditure associated with the Programme – you just need to make your own way to America, and there’s even some help with that, too. The video includes segments with the directors of several major US Conservative Movement organisations who you could be learning from in just a few weeks.
The Summer Conference Programme is an unforgettable, invaluable experience, and the generosity of YBF’s donors makes it accessible to conservative activists every year. As an alumnus of the 2008 Programme – Tarasyn and I founded this blog as a direct result of our inspirational time in the US with YBF – I wish I could be joining the lucky team who will fly out this summer.
Apply today – getting involved with YBF, and experiencing the American Conservative Movement, is the smartest political decision you’ll ever make.
- Do you want to learn how to beat stage fright and deliver memorable, powerful, persuasive speeches?
- Would you like to develop the oratory and rhetoric of Winston Churchill or Ronald Reagan?
- Are you interested in learning the latest techniques in public speaking?
Led by former Reagan Administration speechwriter Dr John Shosky, the YBF Public Speaking Workshop is a one-day specialist training programme that will equip you to be the best public speaker you can be. Conservatives owe it to their philosophy to study how to win.
Held at the London Guildhall between 10 am and 5pm, the YBF Public Speaking Workshop covers:
- The Fundamentals of Communication
- The Keys to Dynamic Delivery
- Organising and Building a Speech
- Speech Delivery
- Speaking Under Special Circumstances
- Dealing with Nerves
The £35 course fee (£20 for students in full-time education) includes:
- Tuition fee and printed course materials
- Tea, coffee, water and refreshments
- Buffet lunch
To reserve your place on a Young Britons’ Foundation Public Speaking Training Workshop please email info@ybf.org.uk, call (01732) 525923 or book online at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/344161396.
For those activists lucky enough to be heading to America this summer with the Young Britons’ Foundation, here’s a taster. Last summer TYC was lucky enough to be in California with YBF to mark the 25th Anniversary of Reagan’s epic tax cuts (would that Gordon wasn’t historically illiterate as well as economically). Here’s a flavour of Reagan’s idyllic ranch in the Californian hills, via the Young America’s Foundation.
by Byron York
Originally appeared in the Washington Examiner
Santa Barbara, California — You drive up a steep, rough and winding road to reach Ronald Reagan’s ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains. For eight years, from 1981 to 1989, this place north of Santa Barbara was the Western White House; Reagan spent nearly a year of his time in office here. Now, what he called Rancho del Cielo is pretty much deserted.
But the ranch, tended by a lone caretaker, is still much like it was when Reagan was alive. It’s not open to the public; these days, the old adobe house and 688 surrounding acres are owned and carefully maintained by the conservative Young America’s Foundation. The group doesn’t have the staff or resources to conduct public tours, but they were kind enough to take me on a visit one afternoon last week.
The first thing that strikes you as you approach the house is how modest it is. The main part of the building was constructed in 1871. Even after Reagan added a couple of rooms when he bought it in 1975, the whole house only measured about 1,500 square feet.
The floors are covered in a brick-pattern linoleum. (”He laid it himself,” my guide tells me.) The furniture is plain and comfortable; there are a couple of chairs upholstered in an orange-and-brown patchwork pattern that could have come out of any middle-class American den of the 1970s. There is western art on the walls.
The bedroom is small and plain, with what looks like an old Ethan Allen chest and two bedside tables that had to be turned sideways because the room wasn’t wide enough to fit them. Reagan’s nearby bathroom has a modular shower and a toilet squeezed in a tiny nook.
Any budget hotel down the road has more comfortable accommodations. Reagan, who with his wife was pilloried for having a plutocrat’s taste, in fact enjoyed a level of simplicity beyond what most vacationing Americans would accept.
The house is nestled on the edge of a mountainside meadow. It’s idyllic, but if you drive about five minutes away, you’ll find another spot on the property, at the top of a hill, where the president could have built a new home, perhaps an impressive monument to himself, with fabulous views of the Pacific to the west and the valley to the east. Instead, Reagan preferred the little house by the meadow.
Walking around the ranch, you can’t help thinking about the current Republican party and its relationship to Reagan. One feeling the ranch produces — nearly forces on you — is the realization that the 1980s were a long time ago. When Reagan took office, the top income tax rate was 70 percent. The Cold War was in one of its most dangerous phases.
By the end of his administration, Reagan had reduced that confiscatory 70 percent tax rate to 28 percent. And he won the Cold War. Most presidents don’t leave much for us to remember them by. Reagan has two great legacies.
But what does it mean for us today? Certainly low taxes and a strong national defense remain bedrock principles for conservative Republicans. And when Democrats argue, as Sen. Charles Schumer did recently, that the Reaganite “traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over” — well, someday he might discover otherwise.
But what specific policy proposal would Reagan embrace today to deal with skyrocketing health-care costs? The credit crunch? Immigration? No one can really say.
Perhaps it would be more instructive to look at the man himself. Over a lifetime of thought and study — he was 69 when he became president — Reagan developed a set of core principles that guided whatever he did. To those core principles — liberty, free enterprise, American exceptionalism — he added his own personal qualities. He was a serious reader, a self-improver, decidedly non-cynical, temperamentally non-Washington, and deeply patriotic. A gift for communicating made those qualities instantly recognizable to the American public.
As you walk around the old ranch, and see the private spaces where he spent so much time, you realize perhaps more than ever before that it was Reagan’s character that made his triumphs possible. For Republicans, coherent positions on today’s policy debates will emerge in time. The tougher question is where they will find a man like Ronald Reagan again.
Kingston University students received fresh support today in their campaign to overturn their Union’s military ban with prevents the Territorial Army from visiting and recruiting at freshers fayres.
Councillor Robert Tasker, a former Kingston student, criticised his alma mata, saying “I think this decision is wholly regretful and an utter insult to those serving abroad currently. What is interesting is that the British armed forces play a key role in peace keeping efforts around the world – including Sierra Leone, Liberia and Serbia.”
He added: “We rely on the TA recruiting at fresher fairs so that our armed forces are able to protect innocents in other countries.”
At March’s full council meeting Councillor Tasker challenged Liberal Democrat leader of the council Derek Osbourne, who is also on the university’s board of governors, to join him in condemning the Union’s ban. However Osbourne refused, stating that he did not have “any background (or indeed view) on the University Student’s Union decision”.
Whilst not commenting on specifics until fully equipped with the facts is understandable, Osbourne’s inability to stand up for the principle that the TA have a right to be on campus, and that students have the right to choose whom they want to involve themselves with – rather than those rights being taken away - is highly questionable. He cannot have no view or opinion, surely, and thus only a reluctance to express it, from which one can fairly draw inferences as to what it may be.
Kingston students, however, find the issue much less taxing. Chris Dingle who is organising the pro-freedom effort to repeal the ban said, “The ban takes away a massive amount of freedom and choice and determines what students can and can’t join. As a campaign, we do support the military because they do a lot more than gets publicized. We have a comment on our website from an officer in the regional army who talks about the effect a ban like this has on the army, it demoralizes the troops.”
The action to overturn the ban comes on the back of the recent success at UCL which saw their military ban scrapped.
Jo Casserly of the far-left group Stop the War, commenting at the time of UCL’s ban, said that, “our aim, as always, is to give support to those resisting Britain and the US, whether they be in Iraq, in Afghanistan, or in the armed forces.” Make of that what you will.
Tom Parkinson, who organised UCL’s student movement to overturn that ban, commented: “The proponents of so called “military bans” at various campuses consistently claim that they are pursued to register opposition to the conflicts the British military is engaged in abroad. This is deeply misguided. The military is an operational tool of the executive. Any legitimate resentment should be aimed toward the government who make policy, not at our brave men and women on the ground who conduct it.”
Students at Birmingham University also recently gave their support to British troops.
Kingston students should join the effort to repeal the ban and contact Chris Dingle via Facebook.
If your campus is threatened by a ban, or if you’re fighting to overturn one, let us know so that we can publicise your cause.
Make sure, also, that you’re in touch with the Young Britons’ Foundation who can furnish you with FREE advice, resources and support in your fight. YBF has produced a FREE pack to get your campaign started – just ask for one.
TheYoungConservative features in several articles as part of the Easter edition of YBF’s newsletter. In particular, we wrote the review of their Parliamentary Freedom Rally. Also in the current edition are:
- YBF in The Times
- News of the US Summer Conference Programme
- New appointments at YBF
- Activist interviews
- and much more
This is the second YBF newsletter to be made available online. It’s a great way to keep up to date with all the YBF news, and surely the must-read publication for anyone on the young centre-right.
As exams loom and coursework mounts, turn your attention to the Summer Term, and which sound speakers you’re going to invite to join in the end of exam celebrations. It may seem a long way off, but you need to begin planning your next term’s events now. Many speakers will requires several months notice if they’re to attend your event.
The Young Britons’ Foundation can help you with hosting speakers. Their Speaker Panel contains big names in the conservative movement – politicians, thinkers and advocates. So, if you want Dan Hannan MEP, Douglas Murray or Guido Fawkes on your campus, you need to be talking to YBF now.
Email christian@ybf.org.uk if you’d like help in arranging a guest speaker for the Summer Term.
