From left to right: James Harvey, Mark Hunter, Lord Paul Scriven, Jennie Coggles, Peter Thompson, Leon Duveen & Stephen Ware

At their AGM, held at The White Hart in Ollerton on Friday 27^th November, Bassetlaw & Sherwood elected their new Executive or 2016.

Leon Duveen, who was previously Vice-Chair of the local party and the Parliamentary candidate for Bassetlaw in May 2015, will be the new Chair with Stephen Ware taking over as Vice Chair. Mark Hunter, the outgoing Chair, takes over the vacant Secretary role while Peter Thompson continues as Treasurer. James Harvey becomes the Data Officer for the local Party.

After the formal proceedings, Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, spoke to the meeting about recent events in Westminster. He explained how it is the Lords that are providing the real opposition to the Tory Government rather that the Labour party, which seems more interested in opposing itself. Lord Scriven went on to describe the recent Autumn Statement as a symbol of current politics in that it was a very political Statement that instead of “helping make work pay, it will make the working poor pay for bring down the deficit”.

In a wide ranging Q&A after his talk, Lord Scriven answered questions on the situation in Syria & the EU Referendum amongst other topics. On Syria, Lord Scriven said that we should work together for our common humanity. We should us our Liberal values to be radical in demanding international action. On Europe, we need to get out there to knock on doors and counter the anti-EU propaganda (much of which is untrue). We need to show the people of North Nottinghamshire the benefits of being in the EU are and how it helps them.

All present agreed that it was a great evening and the best AGM the local party had had for a long time. We were grateful for Lord Scriven giving up his time to make the evening both informative & enjoyable.