London Citizens, a grassroots civil society organisation, have this evening announced that all three party leaders will appear at their assembly in London on Monday. Newsnight’s Paul Mason, who got the scoop, tweeted, “4th debate by proxy?”
Citizens UK Executive Director, Neil Jameson, speaking exclusively to Left Foot Forward said:
“I’m delighted that civil society in the form of London Citizens has been given the chance to respond during the election. We hope that all three party leaders will be engaging with us on our issues in a respectful way. On Monday, we’ll be meeting with 2,500 representatives of the most informed and organised citizens in the UK.”
It is understood that Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg have been invited to speak for 10 minutes explaining why their party is the best for civil society. A senior cabinet Minister has also agreed to attend. They are expected to respond to six questions during their remarks.
London Citizens are looking for a response to the following demands:
• build the living wage into all government contracts
• a 20 per cent cap on commercial lending and massive investment in third sector, mutual forms of banking like credit unions
• action to regularise the plight of irregular workers
• pledge to no longer put children and families into detention centres
• pioneer radical forms of affordable housing including community land trusts
• a commitment to work with London Citizens during their time in office, seen by Mr Jameson as the “most important”
The Labour party manifesto is the only to contain pledges on the living wage in the public sector while the Liberal Democrats are committed to an amnesty for immigrants. The Conservative party last month announced the creation of 5,000 new community organisers.
29 Responses to “Party leaders to face civil society in “fourth debate””
John Ringer
Excited to be attending the London Citizens "fourth debate" tomorrow. Last time all three leaders will appear together. http://bit.ly/95kgSh
CitizensUK 4th debate in the news « CITIZENS UK Blog
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John Ritchie
Where can I get a ticket for this evening?
The one thing that’s united the country is MPs’ expenses and sadly nothing has been done to drag this issue into the 21st century. We in the commercial world have been submitting expense sheets and time sheets for decades and it’s about time MPs were asked to do the same with each MP submitting on the same formatted expense sheets with month-end, year-to-date and year-end totals highlighted – similarly for time sheets
Everybody in the constituencies could keep tabs and check against other MPs up and down the country and let’s face it, the tax payers pay for assistants etc who could submit these monthly sheets with copies of receipts to the constituency office for those who have any queries
The people are indeed boss so let’s have some decisive action where we can at least vote more than one every four years – where’s the democracy in that?
We can sit at home and arm-chair vote for garbage programmes such as “Big brother” yet those in power cannot be bothered to give us a chance to “monitor” important local issues where millions can be squandered and given the drastic outcome of the Iraq war, the billions spent and thousands of lives lost we should at least have a chance to vote for such issues in the future also
MP’s have asked us to trust them – it’s about time they put their trust in the public and certainly more than only once every four years!
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