You Know What, I Like Nick Clegg

Today I met Nick Clegg. I'm not joking. Thanks to the amazing UpRising programme I was invited to take part in a presentation on said programme to the Deputy Prime Minister.

When I was told I was going to be doing this I assumed that the venue would be some massive conference hall and the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board would just shuffle on stage, say our bit, be vaguely acknowledged, get a brief round of applause and shuffle off again before a representative from another programme took the floor and the discourse moved on.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

The event took place in the intimately small Nomad Room at the Custard factory and a relatively entourage free Nick Clegg sat front and centre, mere feet from those presenting. On top of this Nick, who has been a patron of the UpRising programme for the last three years, revealed that not only was this the first event he's attended in Birmingham this visit (before even his own party conference) but in fact the only non party related event he's going to be going to. And that's not for want of invitations. It was also being filmed and beamed out live to BBC and Sky News 24.

There was a brief introduction from Zehra Zaidi, the brilliant Birmingham UpRising co-ordinator followed by the UAAB presentations in which I took part (and sneakily managed to promote the gender equality project I'm working on). At this point I should probably explain what the UAAB is: it's the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board: the board is made up of committed UpRisers who were selected out of a range of applicants for their dedication to the programme, we now work with the organisers to act as a sounding board for the programme and represent UpRisers at amazing events like this.

The UAAB presentations took the form of each of us talking for 2minutes about what the programme means to us and what our best moments from it were. Each did ourselves proud (if I do say so myself) but the highlights for me were Michael Olajide talking about his journey from Nigeria, to innercity London to Birmingham and the UpRising programme, Jessica Woodley talking about the programmes dedication to diversity and how coming from a mixed race, working class, innercity background it's helped her believe in herself and her own potential and Daniel Bridgewater talking about how its helped him gain the confidence, know-how and networks to set up his own company/social enterprise: the North Wall Theatre Company before he's even started uni. Their stories really summed up what UpRising is all about.

Then it was Nick's turn; he offered his response to the programme and, after a couple of pre-selected questions from chair and UAAB member Mobeen Amin, he opened the Q&A session up to the floor. Prior to the event we'd been told that all questions had to be cleared by his office first. In fact just before he arrived we were given a sheet of paper with said questions on and told to hand them out to other non-UAAB UpRisers to ask. So you can imagine my surprise when, instead of merely taking questions from the designated people he just picked whoever had their hand up, including me. I wont bore you with the details of all that was asked and said (I believe the event went out live on BBC and Sky News 24 so if you're interested I'm sure you can dig out the whole thing somewhere) but I will give you some edited highlights:

In response to my question of 'the latest statistics show 3/4 of those convicted in the recent riots already had numerous criminal convictions, what do you think the government can do to identify wayward individuals, preferably after their first offence, and educate them and help get them out of that lifestyle and involved in their communities before they become habitual offenders?' (originally even more poorly phrased and in a nervous manner of course) Nick told us about his views, some of which are already being made into policy:
- He agreed with the need to educate, not just condemn and abandon convicts calling the current prison system 'university for criminals...all it does is churn out better more hardened criminals'
- Stated that 'all prisoners are now met on release by someone whose job it is to keep them on the straight and narrow, the coalition government pays for them'
- And talked about wanting to implement 'restorative justice' whereby criminals are forced to meet their victims, apologise and help rebuild their lives. He also talked about putting criminals to work, paying them a wage and teaching them skills but having a portion of their wage go into a 'victims fund'
- He stated that whilst it is important to help criminals so they don't repeat offend, you can't overlook the fact that they have committed a crime and should be punished accordingly, and you can't ignore those who come from tough backgrounds and don't commit crimes; they should get just as much, if not more extra help.

In response to questions about how to improve the diversity of political parties, both ethnically and in gender terms, he stated:
- He couldn't agree more, the major political parties are too much like him 'pale and male' and he's implementing programmes within the Lib Dems to try and address this issue within his own party

And of course there were the inevitable questions about education and tuition fees:
-Whilst he didn't necessarily defend the obscene hike in tuition fees he did say that he hoped it would do some good to the country; he believes that we place far too much importance on academic qualifications and we should also be focusing on sorting out vocational qualifications which he referred to as currently being a 'spaghetti' like 'mess' and 'mistrusted by employers'.
- He brought up a new coalition policy which provides all very young children 15 hours free pre-schooling a week to help take some of the strain off working parents and give them a better start in life. (In my opinion it's a damn good policy and, bless him, he clearly thought so too saying 'I wish the people would talk about some of our other policies like this one sometimes')

Overall Nick Clegg came across as a really nice guy. During the speeches he was attentive and I know that during mine whenever I made eye-contact with him he smiled encouragingly, which was much appreciated given the pre-presentation nerves I'd been suffering from! He even made jokes about his own and the lib dem's reputation commenting 'Up Rising would a be good slogan for my party given what's happening to us at the moment!'. And even without all that, he took an hour out of his obscenely busy schedule just to come and talk to us. After the event he made no attempt to network with prominent individuals, promote his own policies or anything like that he just posed for some photos with us UpRisers and left. Admittedly, having some nice soft press about how Nick cares about young people may of been part of his motive for coming, but it certainly didn't come across like that. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself and eager to meet and help inspire young people, as well as support the UpRising programme as a whole.

So in short, whatever his successes and failures in parliament, when it comes to personality I like Nick Clegg. And regardless of his motives, the media coverage he's afforded the UpRising programme just by meeting with us will do a heck of a lot of good when it comes to recruitment and finding funding. Ta Nick!

H.B.
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Oh for a brief bit of news footage covering the event check this out:

Coffee with a Lord, as you do

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to meet Lord Digby Jones for coffee with a few of my fellow UpRisers.

I was very excited about this event. I've been organising it for months. So you can imagine my self-directed annoyance when I managed to cock up the time of the meeting, telling two of my fellow UpRisers that the meeting was to begin at 3pm...when actually it was 2pm (with the relative chaos I returned to from Europe at home and uni I suppose something had to give, but that was a pretty big mistake to make :s ). Fortunately I like to be early, a whole hour early in fact so I managed to contact everyone and disaster was averted. 

From that less then promising start the meeting turned out to be a total success. For those who don't know Lord Digby Jones is a very successful businessman, originally hailing from Alvechurch just outside of Birmingham. He's proven his mettle, and business know how, in a variety of fields starting in law with Edge&Ellison (1980-2000), moving on to public affairs as Director General of CBI (2000-2006) and leaping into politics as Minister of State for UK Trade & Investment  (2007-2008). He was knighted for services to business in 2005 and made a life peer in 2007. He's also a surprisingly down to earth and friendly guy with a passion for socially inclusive business and a palpable love for his country and its business sector.

The conversation flowed easily and after giving a brief introduction to what the UpRising programme is, does and what it aims to achieve we moved on to a general chat about how to set up a business before a question and answer session on a wide range of topics. So much was discussed, in fact, that picking out a few key points and interesting responses is pretty tough, but for me the most memorable moments were:

1) Fellow UpRiser Brook Simons-Akwah is in the process of setting up a brand new business/social enterprise aimed at helping young entrepreneurs set up their own businesses by working with the council to utilise empty shops and offices. UpRiser Daniel Blyden also runs his own business (YEP Media http://yepmedia.co.uk/). They wanted advice on what it takes to make a start-up business a success. Over the course of the discussion Lord Jones provided some very clear and to the point advice:

-         'It takes bloody hard work. I've worked my balls off every day of my life and I still do’

-         ‘The people who make things look easy work harder, prepare more, and leave nothing to chance'

-         ‘You’ve got to have confidence …every day I look in the mirror and think “my god I love you” …the inappropriately named ‘soft’ skills are important, nobody likes a limp handshake’

2) Given Lord Jones's experience as a leader in a variety of fields I was interested in what he thought about free leadership programmes, such as UpRising and what skills he thought they should be teaching. His response was very interesting, not least because of the very precise and technical nature of the skills he thought were important:

- ‘[programmes like UpRising are] extremely worthwhile, but they are only worthwhile if they operate on three levels: the first is if they get young people talking and understanding risk in business, the second is that they bring bright minds together and the third is if they have clearly stated aims and know what they want to achieve’

- ‘[they need to teach young people] how to write a business plan, get them understanding capital and cash flow…they need to understand that they have to deliver and have discipline’

3) Earlier this year Lord Jones published a book entitled ‘Fixing Britain’ detailing his views on what Britain needs to do to improve its economy and skill up its work force (I recommend giving it a read, it’s surprisingly interesting and easy to absorb). Whilst certain sections talk a lot of sense I had to query a few – namely one section where he proposes increasing the number of male primary school teachers by offering them higher wages than women and another where he proposes freely encouraging trade with countries that, shall we say, don’t exactly have the best human rights track records – so I asked: how far should businesses take into account moral and social problems in their actions? And I again received a typically candid response:

-         ‘I believe in social inclusive wealth creation…Businesses can take all of society with them’

-          ‘Business is the most important part of our society…Only businesses create revenue for the government in the form of taxes paid on their profits and employees’ wages…the taxes they pay pays for the NHS and the public sector. But business has a responsibility to train its people…The bankers had it wrong, business has got to take those at the bottom with them’

-          ‘23% of single mothers have never lived with a man…85% of primary school teachers are female…boys need strong male role models because if they don’t when an older boy asks them to join his gang he becomes the role model, you may disagree with it but we need more men in teaching and one incentive that works is money.’

-          ‘Business encourages human rights…if the Western World hadn’t been trading with China, if we hadn’t let them host the Olympics its citizens would have even less freedom…It’s different for different nations: where they need us more than we need them we can impose sanctions but if we need them as much if not more, realistically we can’t limit trade’

4) Lord Jones also had some strong views on what was the primary cause of the August riots:

- ‘Enhanced, disgusting criminality…look at the locations; in London it was organised and planned to stretch the metropolitan police to their limits.’

What to do about the illiteracy problem amongst Britain’s youth:

-          ‘Fire teachers if too many of their mentally and physically healthy pupils over 11 can’t read, write, count and use a computer…[and] stop parents benefits and replace them with food stamps if their kids can’t read, write, count and use a computer’

And a whole host of other interesting issues (many of which appear in his book if you fancy finding out more).

We then rounded up the discussion, said our thank-yous and left Lord Jones in the company of UpRising Director Alveena Malik, who was delighted to inform us that he had agreed to become an UpRising ambassador. So I’m guessing the programme organisers and us UpRisers impressed him almost as much as he impressed us.

In short, whilst some of Lord Jones’s personal views may be, shall we say, somewhat divisive, there is no denying his belief in the potential of the youth of today and his social conscience. Here’s a final quote from the discussion which, I think, aptly illustrates this dedication to practising the socially inclusive attitude he preaches:

-         ‘Young people are the future – that’s why I’m here on my lunch break giving you pointers…I can’t afford to just give young entrepreneurs money, but I can try and give my time’

He may be blunt and opinionated but he certainly believes in the future of our nation’s business. And his positive attitude is very infectious.


H.B.