When I arrived in London as a teenager, Sir John Major was Prime Minister. I felt a connection with the City. My political views formed, firstly at university, and later whilst living in Islington. I joined the Liberal Democrats.

I was honoured to be elected as the Lead London Regional Diversity Champion. I continuously help to increase participation and engagement within our inclusion and diversity teams. I am vocal within Liberal Democrats Members to help represent those underrepresented in the UK Politics. In 2020 I founded the national BLAC Liberal Democrats (Blac Lives Action Committee) with the mission to make heard the voice of Black members within the Party.

Dear Lib Dem friends,

I know already you are as keen as I am to improve the experience of people from under-represented groups within the party, particularly people who are not White. May I
thank you now for your excellent attitude, for listening closely to my suggestions on what to do. The improvements are immediately noticeable. Please keep going.

Vision

My goals for this role are:

• I want to help provide a platform for better training and promote a programme that supports ethnic minority members to develop their potential, so they are competently able to stand for external and internal elections of office;
• I want to see established an attractive and resilient message that helps to build a strong foundation for the Liberal Democrats to engage in Ethnic Minority communities;
• Within the party, I want to establish a better understanding of Ethnic minority issues on housing, education, LGBT+, heath, crime, etc. This will allow us to better serve the ethnic minority communities at a national and local level.

As a former Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate, I have seen prejudice close-up, within British politics and, sadly, within our party. And I know that I'm not the only one. My experience led me to take time to reflect and then, at Harvard, I learnt from world leaders on race equality, collaborative working, and leadership. I want to translate my experience and learning into change for our party in the UK. As a starting point, we must implement the Alderdice Review recommendations.

I was a 100/200m Sprinter. Catastrophe struck in my early 20's when my achilles tendon ruptured. For 20 months I was in a wheelchair. I needed wheelchair-friendly public transport to hospital and the inadequacy of it shocked me. It made me realise that everyone has a choice. When you see something that's wrong, do you leave it for someone else, or do you fight for change?

I decided to fight for change. I set up a transport company and, eventually, was transporting 5,000 vulnerable children and adults in wheelchair accessible vehicles. I got involved in drafting the Private Hire Vehicles Act and helped lead the campaign for cab safety. I delivered contracts to the 2012 London Paralympics. I was named in the Black Power List.

The Federal Policy Committee has had a busy autumn, kicking off our next programme of policy development work.

We have spent some time over the last few months trying to understand the party's key political priorities to win over the voters we need, and the right messages and supporting policies needed to achieve that (recognising that detailed policy is not usually the thing that swings most voters). This has been the starting point for our latest programme of work.

The Rich get Richer
Long before being adopted as a song lyric, it was actually the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
who first penned the line "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer".

Back in the summer the independent think-tank The Resolution Foundation reported that during the
pandemic the richest 10% of households had seen their wealth grow by £50,000 to a whopping
£1.4m, while a third of the population gained just £86 per adult. The poorest 50% of the population
own just 9% of national wealth. Much recent media criticism has understandably focused on how
lucrative PPE supply contracts have been handed out, but the scandal that affects far more people is
the way in which the wealth gap has continued to grow under this Government.

We have booked our usual third Wednesday slot in December (the 15th) for the Bexhill Lib Dems Christmas Meal, from 7pm. This event has been a lot of fun in the past, so it's great to be able to hold it again, after missing last year. You don't even have to be from Bexhill;-)

If you have not received an email with details of this event contact Thomas Taylor thomastaylor464@gmail.com .

The Liberal Democrats have today called for urgent measures to support the Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (CEV), including a formal return and improvement of the shielding programme.

The Government has so far failed to announce any specific measures for those who were classed as CEV in spite of their increased risk of serious illness from Covid. It comes after two cases of the newly discovered 'Omicron' variant of Covid were reported in the UK.

Today is Carers Rights Day, and the Liberal Democrats are continuing to stand up for carers.

The Covid pandemic has shown that we are a nation of carers. But it's also shown how, for this Conservative Government carers are nothing more than an afterthought.

From Ministers' abject failure to protect people in care homes, to their refusal to raise Carer's Allowance when they put up Universal Credit, carers have been forgotten and ignored again and again.