Painting The Red Rose County Yellow

This is my first ever blog, so I assume it would only be polite to apologise in advance for any spelling mistakes or inaccuracies in grammar. I hope that you enjoy reading my blog and that you take many insightful things from it. I suppose I should start by introducing myself. My name is Paul Hindley, I’m 20 years old and I’m a student at Lancaster University who is studying politics. In my blog I intend to express my opinions and comments on contemporary current affairs issues locally, nationally and globally.

As no doubt you will have realised by now I intend to blog about social liberalism especially from the perspective of the British Liberal Democrats. I suppose my liberal use of the colour yellow (forgive the pun) in the title header and the words centre-left Liberalism would have been quite a giveaway. I first became interested in politics at the age of 12 in 2003, this was during the most controversial period of Tony Blair's New Labour government, when this country was taken to war illegally against Iraq in a neoconservative mission topple Saddam Hussein by means that were unlawful according to the international community. My outrage at the war in Iraq was swiftly followed by my outrage towards the Labour Party's authoritarian stance toward civil liberties embodied by nothing more symbolic than the identity card. I subsequently gained a deep scepticism for the authoritarianism embodied by New Labour and the Thatcherite economics espoused by the Conservatives.

 All things considered, it is little wonder that ended up supporting the party that I did and in 2008 merely one month after my 18th birthday and in the middle of an A-level politics course I finally joined that party. Much has happened since I joined the party, I have been to 2 party conferences, I have become the Treasurer in my University’s Liberal Democrat society, I have stood for a council seat for Lancaster City Council and most of all I have watched my party transcend from opposition to Coalition government. Even after everything that has happened to the Liberal Democrats over the past years some good, some bad I am still a very proud supporter of my party and its centre-left roofs. It is essential, especially in these times of coalition that centre-left social liberals such as myself can convey thoughts and opinions about politics in general from a liberal left perspective. This is my main reason for wanting to start this blog.

I am Lancashire born and bred, I have lived here all my life from my hometown of Blackpool to my current studying in Lancaster at Lancaster University. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading the thoughts and opinions of at least this centre-left Liberal Democrat over the blog entries to come and together perhaps we can do our bit to paint the ‘red rose county’ yellow.