On Saturday 29th November 10am to 12noon Moray Women For Indepence will host hustings for the upcoming Elgin City North by-election at The Drouthy Cobbler in Elgin. To date four candidates have accepted the invitation to take part; the SNPs Kirsty Reid, Alex Griffiths from the Conservatives, Morvern Rennie for the Green Party and Ramsay Urqhart of UKIP. Moray Women For Independence are particularly keen to extend the invitation to attend this public meeting to women from the Elgin area, regardless of their stance on independence, as the presentations and debate between candidates will concentrate on local issues and what matters most to people from this area of the city, with opportunities to ask candidates questions from the audience being an important feature of the event. Diane Smith will act as an independent chair, and the meeting will finish with a song performed by Kim Sheed, written the day after the referendum, that captures both the disappointment of defeat and the spirit to carry on campaigning for a fairer and more socially just Scotland. One of the event organisers, Elidh Brown, is delighted that plans are on track to fulfil one of the groups actions agreed at their last meeting to invite the candidates from Elgin City North by-election to their next. She is also very grateful to Diane Smith for accepting the invitation to act as an independent chair, and to Kim Sheed who has agreed to perform her song (that has now gone viral on social media) to close the upcoming meeting, which left several group members with tears in their eyes and full of hope in their hearts, after the closing moments of their last meeting. Moray Women for Independence are a non-party political group that meet regularly in venues across Moray to discuss, debate - and sometimes disagree on - the possibilities that independence offers. Several supporters from Moray were amongst the thousand strong conference of Women For Independence crowd that met earlier this year in Perth in October, and returned to Moray inspired and re-invigorated to harness the momentum for a newer fairer style of politics that they perceived the referendum to have unleashed. It does not look likely at this stage that the Labour candidate will participate, as a Labour councillors suggestion of finding a womens unionist group (or other Moray based womens organisation) who may wish to co-host the event (which they felt necessary to enable them to participate) proved challenging to fulfill in the time left to organise the event. MWFI were also informed that Labours candidate has a prior working commitment during the day on that date. Whilst the organisers considered moving the time to an evening, it had been originally set at 10am to 12noon on the suggestion of MWFI members who felt it may be easier for some women to get childcare to enable them to attend on a Saturday morning. Taking all views into consideration: including the fact that four candidates have accepted the invite to attend at this date and time without querying participating in a hustings event hosted by MWFI; the kind offer of a venue from the Drouthy Cobbler; and the limited time left to the organisers to firm up the details; the organisers have decided to progress their plans with the orignal date and time. However they are keen to stress that the door remains open to the Labour candidate to participate if Labour were to have a change of heart about their misgivings or their candidate to his working commitments.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 22:19:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015