Election mailout - Deadline for Post or by Hand: noon on Friday 18th May

There was a general call for any member to come to Cowley street and give a hand in the elections mail out - the worthy but intimidating task of collating around 3,000 manifestos, ballot papers and membership surveys, stuffing them into envelopes, labelling them and sending them out to you. A great thank you to Paul Pettinger, and all those members who came into the office to contribute their time.

The best way of rewarding those efforts and having your say is by filling in your ballot papers and surveys and getting them back to us - so please do. There is a large range of candidates to consider, and the membership survey is as important in its own way. Return both and we know not only who you want to do the job, but what you consider that job to be over the next coming year…

So please vote, and look out for announcements of the election results in the next edition of Yell! on Thursday 31st of May.

LDYS socials in London

London liberal democrats have been meeting up in various curry houses, noodle bars and pubs all over the city to try and improve our face to face interaction in an effort to, shock horror, replace the habit of merely ranting at each other over the long outmoded forums. A few old and familiar faces, including those who had done the same as me and decided after a fun curry night in Brick Lane on Thursday 5th of April to come to the drinks in Greenwich the following Wednesday.

Such things are easy enough to arrange, in these cases it was merely a case of a few local LDYS people setting up a Facebook group and inviting those on the London LDYS group. If your branch doesn't have a group then this could be the right moment to get one set up around a social - email comms@ldys.org.uk for advice, or even to set up the group and linking it with the main LDYS group on your behalf. It's a good time of year to stagger home from an unknown quarter of your city after having drunk with a group of strangers; it's staying lighter for longer…

Lib Dem action day in Surrey

In the last four weeks young liberal democrats have been coming from up and down the country to contribute to the Guilford campaign in which one of our members is running for local council. Ming Campbell met with some of our activists on one of the Onslow Action Days, and on many other occasions members were present to contribute and work with the federal party membership. For further information on particular campaigns, or if you would like to contribute before Thursday (!) see the website or contact Chris Ward.

Alternatively, find him on Facebook, which experience has shown is a particularly useful tool for organising action days with members up and down the country. Also, the success of particular groups on Guilford issues such as the Save the Royal Surrey Hospital attracted the interest of over 1,300 individuals. So, please contact ourselves or Chris for information on how to set up such campaigns with LDYS members in future. Congratulations to Guilford Lib Dems, and best of luck on Thursday 3rd of May!

LDYS in the NUS

Just as the last issue of Yell was winging its way to your inboxes Tom Stubbs, another LDYS member and President of Swansea Students Union, was elected to the 'Block of 12' at NUS conference.

For those of you that aren't up to date with the internal structures of the NUS the block of 12 is their executive, made up of 12 people from universities around the country. Tom stood as an LDYS representative from Swansea, and came 6th in terms of first preference votes. This has made him the first LDYS candidate to be on the NUS exec in years.

The NUS has been a Labour stomping ground for years and is very important to most student unions in the UK, if you'd like to join Tom and others by standing as an LDYS candidate in your student union email the office.

Five Things you didn't know last month:

1. Blair is due to announce when he will step down within a week - just what Gordon wanted for their ten-year anniversary.
2. Bristol Labour Council Candidate Basharat Ali's photo album is really coming on, check it out here!
3. A court case is looking into whether Nat West was "egregiously invidious" in charging huge rates on unauthorised overdrafts - in other words, they were being a wunch of bankers…
4. Which leads us neatly to the fact that personal debt is up 160% since 1997, and British Citizens are in more than 1.3 trillion pounds of debt. Yell! would hate to see Nat West charge interest on that…
5. Stressed is Desserts spelled backwards (Coming up with five facts is a lot harder than we originally thought…)

Road Trip

Would you like to come to the Dallas Democrats working convention in July? The "29th Extraordinary General Assembly and Executive Committee in Dallas, Texas" (What a mouthful!) is being held between the 20th and 22nd of July in conjunction with the Young Democrats of America's national conference.

All that adds up to a load of young people with a similar perspective from all over the world getting together to discuss just that, along with some "big names" in American politics.

If this sounds like your thing, have a look at IFLRY's website and contact Paul at our office to put yourself forward for an interview to join our international team.