The basic aim of our Science and Technology policy is to encourage and promote research, development and application of science and technology which will:

• Increase knowledge and understanding
• Help to understand and address the major environmental threats such as climate change, pollution and biodiversity losses.
• Contribute to a better quality of life for all the peoples of the world.

So now reads the introduction to the Green Party of England and Wales’ science and technology policy.

At Spring conference last year we re-worked much of our health policy, removing references to homoeopathy and other ‘alternative medicines’, reversing the, frankly bizarre, opposition to embryonic stem-cell research and supporting an evidence-based approach to funding for treatments on the NHS. Somewhat under the radar, perhaps, we also required all medicines (real or imaginary) to clearly state their effects and ingredients. So that’ll be homoeopathy – ingredients: water. And, of course, we supported a free and properly funded national health service, publicly owned and publicly provided.

This year it was the turn of our science and technology policy section to face review and we made some, really quite substantial, progress, stripping out unnecessary detail and bluster and adding in policy which I think will actually attract us votes from the scientific community.

Long sections of policy on environmental and technology commissions were scrapped where those sections were felt to be too constraining and of too much detail to be of much use to use at this time. Similarly, specific lists of areas of research we support and the working of ethics boards were stripped back revealing a much clearer and leaner explanation of our beliefs. Much of the problem with the old policy was a tendency to give specific details that were often impractical and unnecessary, when the PSS (Policies for a Sustainable Society) should carry principles. (When we enter government we will have civil servants and advice from professional bodies to guide how best to formulate the precise structure of how those principles can be implemented, trying to pre-empt that process is often simply counter-productive.)

The tone of our policy has changed too, focussing on the positive things we belief science adds to our society and the ways government policy can help, rather than the constraints we need on put on the misuse of science, that we previously emphasised.

We recognise the value of science to society, and not just in terms of the narrow economic viewpoint that some other politicians seem to view it.

Research is a worthwhile activity in its own right. Scientific study must not be restricted to only that which is deemed likely to result in narrow short term economic benefit.
We value basic research and will ensure it is properly funded.
We will increase public spending on R&D to at least 1% of GDP.

Funding for science R&D is shockingly low in this country. We spend around .5% of GDP on public research and around 1.8% in total spending. Our total spending is 15th globally and well below both the government’s target of 2.5% and the EU target of 3%. Yet while other countries are investing in science we’re actually going backwards with cuts to revenue and capital spending. If anyone doubted that we are a party that values science and recognises its importance, I think our commitment to nearly double public spending should reassure them where we stand.

In fact, so committed to the importance of scientific knowledge are we, we’re passing policy to free that knowledge and make it available to as wide an audience as possible. Privately funded research at public institutions should be subject to freedom of information just as publicly funded research already is and we’ll encourage publicly funded research to be published in open access journals and offer additional funding to cover any additional costs to do so, so everyone has access to the latest research, not just those at institutions that can afford the subscriptions for the journals in which it is published.

On a similar theme, we’ll require professional bodies to put in place programmes to ensure equal participation from under-represented groups and a correction of any imbalances in their make-up. But unlike before, we no longer talk about “male-dominated hierarchies” and “closed sub-cultures”, taking a more open and positive approach. We’ll encourage the development of educational or promotional resources and activities for young people, and accept that current imbalances, however damaging, cannot be immediately altered by diktat. In the tutorials I teach (in physics), for example, it is normal for only around 30% of the class to be female, until that improves we cannot expect equal gender balance in staff and management.

Finally, we affirmed our support for the Haldane principle (that government can set strategic objectives but should leave which projects are funded to qualified research councils) and independent scientific advice. “We will ensure that scientific advisors to the government work in an environment of academic freedom and are able to always make recommendations free of political interference.” Not for us would be sacking academics because they didn’t tell us what we wanted to hear about drug policy, for example.

Our policy has come a long way, but there are still improvements we can make. Amazingly we have no policy on libel reform anywhere in our policy documents, clearly an oversight which needs addressing. Sadly it was felt that policy proposed to conference this year was not sufficiently clear or well enough written and it was referred back to policy committee for improvement prior to adoption. Hopefully that will be addressed at our next conference in the Autumn.

Policy continues to support “a moratorium on the release of GMOs into the environment and on importation of food and feed containing GMOs” pending further research into the effects on the environment, health and animal welfare. Green party policy does not, however, oppose the use of GM technology in principle or ban lab based research and development. Indeed policy explicitly states that “genetic engineering may be benign and may lead to enhanced quality of life”. While an amendment removing our call for a blanket moratorium on field trials did not pass, our current policy is actually more considered than is sometimes recognised and I’m sure this is a section of policy that will be revisited in future.

But overall, I think we’ve turned a corner, we now have a science policy I’m not scared to show to my friends. In fact it’s yet another area of policy I’ll be actively advertising to them come the next election.

This was my second time at conference and when arriving, even in my somewhat dazed state having come direct from the Norwich Election count, I had this sudden moment of panic, what on earth was I doing coming back to this hugely complex unstoppable juggernaut that is conference, which is not going to make any no more sense to me now that it did last time.
But with the haunting specter of my earlier discontent and fighting the urge to secrete myself into the nearest broom closet and wait for all this lot to go away. I found myself slowly being dragged into the processes of conference, from championing a Emergency Motion calling for us to Campaign against the Privatization of Royal Mail, to speaking in numerous workshops and somehow ending up chairing a hustings, conference seems to finally be coming together. With your second conference the strangeness of procedure, its peculiarities and regular denizens all come to threaten and confuse less and slowly you end up actually managing to do something, even though you didn’t expect to.
But all to soon, its over, and again somewhat dazed and slowly coming down with the invertible post conference sniffles, I come away having met more more people, having ended up more involved and more aware than ever of the contribution that we can make to the party and the country, but also a tinge of regret that it is unfortunately so difficult for so many to be involved.
But for all of us that can I hope to see as many people again at YG convention, where I’m sure you can find me continuing to avoid broom cupboards, dealing with my first convention, and if not Swansea awaits.

Those of you who remember your schooldays will probably be familiar with the concept of Model United Nations, Mock General Elections and other events, set up to try and attract young people to politics by showing them its not like BBC Parliament all the time. You go to them acting as if you’re a big shot politician or diplomat, argue for your side like the world really does depend on it and go away feeling as if you have achieved something, whether it is because you’ve persuaded the world to sign up to your directive legalising drugs, or you’ve managed to achieve 20% of the vote for the Greens in a Lib Dem stronghold (just some of my experiences of these events). However, lurking in the back of my mind was always the fact that this was just a bit of fun, and that there wasn’t much chance of me actually being able to change anything in the real world.

And then I came to Conference.

I seem to be part of the ever growing number of people in the ‘This is my first conference’ club, and I was amazed at how a regular member like myself could have such an influence over the policy we adopted. Of course, sometimes chairs of meetings can have a slight bias towards picking people they know, but they try as hard as possible to not give them any preferential treatment (which can be humorous as ‘the woman in beige’ is picked to speak and reminded to start with her name and local party, to which she replied ‘Caroline Lucas, Brighton Pavilion’ before making her point). It is a shame that other parties leave all the policy making to those at the top of their party, and that the regular members are slaves to the big shots opinions.

And though there are large personalities who have more influence in what they say, access to those people is unparalleled in other parties. From just being in the right place at the right time, I managed to have dinner with the leader of the Welsh Green Party, get bought a drink by a Scottish MSP Patrick Harvie and talk with Caroline Lucas about electronic voting in Parliament.

This level of openness is not present in any other Westminster political party, and makes being a member of the Green Party more exciting than any of the others.

My conference experience began at 12pm on Friday, when I wandered in tired and confused after the Norwich local election counts. My first impression was one of organised chaos, which ended up summing up most of the weekend.

As a first-timer, I was amazed by how friendly everyone was. Well, that and how many things were going on. I tried to sample a selection of things, but felt like I wasn’t even scratching the surface of what was happening. However, there’s always next time to see the others!

The overall highlight for me was the chance to meet so many people from all across the country, and hear all their stories. The low points were few, although being asked to chair a hustings on Sunday was absolutely terrifying. That said, it was also good fun and I’d do it again if asked.

My advice for other conference newbies is to attach yourself to someone who’s been before; I had so much more fun that I would have without having a clue. In addition, get a decent map of both the venue and the area, and don’t be afraid to ask questions!

Would I go again? Yes, and you should to.

It’s a nice change to be able to promote something positive about science for once at Green Party conference, after years of defensive action on homoeopathy and stem cells, we’re finally at a stage where I’m proud of the emergency motion we passed, where we’re beginning to put together a position that will attract votes rather than losing them and funding cuts are almost certainly the issue facing the UK’s science community today.

Science isn’t something you can cut in bad times and pick up again in a few years when times are easier; if funding is cut we lose the whole infrastructure on which our success is based. We lose departments, institutions, students, teachers, post-docs. At every level there will be damage from which it will take years, if not decades to recover. People will go abroad, businesses will invest elsewhere.

Science cuts are a false economy, Imran told us, for every £1 we invest we get back 30p per year in perpetuity. Other countries are investing now, they understand that investing in education is a way out of recession. That now is exactly the time we need more, not less, public investment. If we cut now businesses and researchers will see the trajectory we are taking and go elsewhere.

And we need good science to build the economy we want to see. If we want a zero-carbon economy, a genuinely sustainable economy we’re going to need huge changes to the way we organise everything from transport, to energy, to planning, to agriculture. All across the economy we need to change how we work, and that will require investment and it’ll require knowledge. But more than that, the society we want to live in should be one where we value not just materialistic gains but more esoteric pursuits. A Green economy will have more time for learning, more esteem for basic knowledge, for the fun of investigating the world around us and trying to understand how it works, whether that creates economic benefits or not.

The current government are intent of pursuing policies that show a barbaric disregard for knowledge. On Monday I’m pleased to say the Green Party passed an emergency motion, after a speech from my co-editor Adam even more hyperbolic than this, in defence of universities, opposing all science cuts and pledging to support the union led demonstration on the 10th of November.

Full text of the Emergency Motion

Synopsis

This motion call on conference to defend science funding condemn the coalition’s plans to cut 25% of funding into scientific research, and support the NUS and UCU’s National Demonstration “Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts” on Wednesday 10 November 2010 in Central London.

Motion

Science is vital to the Green Party’s values in terms of the environment, sustainability for future generations, and expanding human knowledge and understanding. Vince Cable has this week now outlined plans to cut investment in science research by 25% claiming the government will only fund research that is “commercially useful or theoretically outstanding”, a statement that belies the coalition’s obsession with profit, and misunderstanding of the processes and outcomes of science. A 2010 OECD report stated that: “Governments must continue to invest in future sources of growth, such as education , infrastructure and research. Cutting back public investment in support of innovation may provide short-term fiscal relief, but will damage the foundations of long-term growth”.Under these proposals, the great breakthroughs of the 20th century would never have happened. The Green Party should oppose any cuts in science funding, and support the National Demonstration against cuts in education, organised by NUS and UCU.

Proposed by: Dawn Foster, Alasdair Thompson, Kit Jones, Adam Ramsay.

At the Green Party autumn conference last weekend we passed a motion to commit the Party to supporting the proposed referendum on AV next May, as a step towards implementing PR at Westminster.

The debate was pretty divided – resulting in me being less and less sure on my position as conference went on – yet finally being swayed by Peter Cranie’s speech on the failings of the pro-devolution movement in Scotland’s ’79 referendum.

The main point of consensus was that the party’s long term commitment to PR must be maintained and that throughout the campaign the point will be reiterated that AV is not where our commitment ends. Many arguments were simultaneously used for and against. For example, it was argued that a ‘no’ vote would set the movement back a generation (Scottish devolution), while at the same time many considered that a ‘yes’ vote would leave us stuck with AV for a similar period (Australia).

The main argument against us supporting the referendum was that it is not what we believe in. That it was the crumbs from the ConDem table designed to placate the Lib Dem voters while not really changing anything – yet retain their party’s support for the most ideologically concerted attack on the public sector since before I was born. We don’t want to be seen to be supporting the Coalition or a failed referendum given that we are finally getting somewhere.

The main benefit of AV to the Greens is that it allows our core vote to be clearly shown – since many of our potential supporters won’t vote for us in a general election due to the need to ‘keep the Tories out’. AV will allow us to be ranked first, while that goal still being achieved.

However, we thankfully moved away from partisan politics and agreed to get our hands dirty.

Politics happens in the real world, in day to day struggles. It is important to maintain our progressive ideals, but if all we do is wait until the day that they can be implemented without compromise then they are useless.

Caroline Lucas MP has tabled a motion to put both AMS and STV as options on the ballot paper,

while conference has voted in support of a campaign on AV. It is this fusion of long term ideals and short term pragmatism that will allow us all to progress.

we already have mechanisms throughout our research system in this country to try and ensure this doesn’t happen. QR funding already is tightly focused on departments that have proved themselves to be those things in the RAE. Every grant that is awarded by a research council gets its funding because it meets those criteria better than the competing proposals. Heads of department and vice chancellors are constantly assessing the performance of researchers to see whether they are producing work that meets these sorts of criteria.

What Vince’s speech is really about is softening up universities for yet more cuts. Talk of cuts of 35% may well prove to be an overstatement but it’s worth bearing in mind that the last crisis in funding in my field, physics, just a few years ago, resulted from an £80m shortfall due to mismanagement. If government research funding is hit equally with all other departments we should expect a cut of around 25%, nearly £1bn. Even if we are not hit that badly the effects could be devastating. Departments will almost certainly have to close across many universities and whole fields of research may have to be virtually given up in this country.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, whilst government funding to universities is being cut we also face the prospect of cuts in foreign student numbers. Immigration minister Damian Green intends to clamp down on the scandal of international students coming to this country, paying thousands a year in fees and visas an then having the audacity to stay here and use those skills in our country. UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said:

The UK remains one of the most popular destinations for foreign students because of our proud international reputation for excellence. We need to be able to offer places to the world’s best and brightest students. The last thing we want to do is send a message that those students are not welcome here.

Populist policies on immigration might play well domestically, but on the global stage we risk looking foolish. Damian Green is making his speech today after returning from a trip to India where he encouraged students to come to the UK.

So we’re going to have no money to do any research, but don’t worry, there’ll be no students either.

This weekend I’ll be at the English and Welsh Green Party conference in Birmingham where, amongst many other hopefully interesting sessions, I’ll be attending the science group fringe “Science Funding in an Age of Austerity”. It seems clear the Liberals and Tories have no intention of protecting and fostering science and non-commercial research, so if any of you are at conference on Monday I hope you can join us to debate what we can do to argue for the importance of proper funding.

The geographical distribution of our editorial team is one factor, and for my own part the festival is never my most productive period. But there’s more to it than that I think. We carried a lot of pieces from GPEW members because we’ve had a lot of offers from GPEW members. There seems more of a willingness amid the English and Welsh party to talk about politics. There’s an increasingly vibrant blogging (and tweeting) scene that’s debating the future of the party and the direction it wants to take, and I don’t see the same engagement with politics up here. There’s a willingness to accept that not everyone has the same idea of how to take the party forward and that there are important issues which need to be debated and need to be debated publicly.

It would be nice if we all got along and everyone always agreed with each other. It would be simpler if we all agreed on strategy, if we all had the same priorities and all had the same prescriptions to improve society. We’d only ever have to meet to discuss how to distribute the various tasks required to run a party and run campaigns and elections. You’ll arrange the placarding runs, you’ll coordinate volunteers, I’ll do this hustings, can you do the next one?

Unfortunately, we don’t all agree all the time. That makes things harder to organise but it’s also inevitable and trying to pretend that we do all fundamentally agree and get on only makes it that much harder. So here’s a radical idea. Let’s stop pretending. Let’s accept that we have different visions of our party’s future and debate them publicly. Some people will think we should focus on our traditional vote of environmental protection and climate change, some will think we need to focus more on core Green issues of social justice, on cuts and the economy, some will be more liberal and some more left but perhaps that pluralism is a good thing. Perhaps, if we stop trying to hide our disagreements and talk openly about where we’re all coming from and where we want the party to go we’ll actually come to a better position.

That very act of debating can allow us to hone our policy, to understand where other people with different backgrounds, who we will inevitably meet when out campaigning, are coming from and make it easier to relate to them and to best explain our positions. Most people we meet aren’t going to be environmentalists, many of them will come from a very different background to ourselves, but that shouldn’t dissuade us from trying to persuade them of our policies. Knowing why another Green with different politics to you still supports the same programme you do can be invaluable to making that connection and knowing how best to make your case.

Accepting that we don’t all agree and that that is no bad thing can help protect a plurality within the party that is beneficial to us all. It stops us becoming too single minded, forgetting our core vote or the need to expand, it shows those outside the party there is a place for them even if they don’t agree with the official line on some issue of the day.

So, members of the Scottish Green Party (and interested outsiders) this is our site, but, as with GPEW, we want it to be a platform to debate the future of our party and our movement. Let’s hear where you want us to go. We’re a political party, let’s all talk a little more about politics.

This September, when the Green Party of England and Wales meets for the first time as a party represented at Westminster, members will be asked to vote on a proposal to elect a Green Shadow Cabinet.

In some ways it’s a significant step, just as it was a big step to elect a ‘leader’ rather than two ‘principal speakers’.

There has been a lot of sympathetic support, some scepticism and some opposition. But let me, briefly, set out why I believe this is the right step to take and why this is the right time.

In some ways the Green Party set out from its inception in the early 70s as ‘People’ to be an ‘anti-party’ – hence the steadfast opposition to the style of leadership and organisation shared by the big UK parties.

But after thirty odd years of clinging to the fringes a new generation emerged, a pragmatically minded and ambitious generation, that sees green politics as more than a gesture or a protest. We see it as a framework of principles by which our society can become happier, healthier and sustainable. However we have come to accept that it will be none of those things if we indulge our penchant for opposition and yell impotently from the sidelines.

The Green Party faces a challenge – to continue to professionalise whilst keeping its soul. I believe our soul is hardwired into our commitment to the rights of the individual, to empowering communities to take control of their own futures and to the belief that power should flow upwards. It’s indivisible from our desire to have a country and a planet that we can leave our grandchildren and they theirs.

Green thinking emanates from these core beliefs and colours our approach to every area of government and life. Yet for too long we’ve largely been heard on issues that the media and the wider world consider to be ‘green’ – primarily the environment and peace.

However any serious Green Party needs to communicate its thinking in every area and nothing signals our intention to do that more seriously than our electing a Green Shadow Cabinet.

Let me say at this juncture that I’m not irrevocably wedded to the name. There is a touch of hubris about it. However as a descriptive term it leaves us with the least room for misinterpretation. The Green Shadow Cabinet’s purpose would be to shadow the main cabinet portfolios – though with only 13 members (including our leader and deputy) some briefs, for instance Foreign and International Development, might need to be combined.

By choosing to establish such a body we do a number of key things:

We widen the franchise within the party. The Greens are more than the Caroline Lucas fan club (though while I’m about it I’ll squeeze in a quick ‘Yay Caroline!’). We have talent in depth. Our leader and deputy are not islands of sanity in a quirky and unelectable party; they’re merely the two considered most able from a considerable pool of talent and ability. The GSC (one can never have too many acronyms) rather than detracting from the lustre of the leader will surely add to it. Furthermore by electing the shadow cabinet as a single list we maximise the opportunities for people of diverse views, from every region, of different races, both genders and a multiplicity of sexual preferences to be represented.

We make the party more democratic. Presently the External Communications Coordinator recommends candidates to GPEx. If Alistair Campbell or Andy Coulson had played such a role under Tony Blair or David Cameron we would have heaped ridicule upon them. To those who say you can have too much democracy in the Green Party I would say this; trust the members. Their choice of leader and deputy showed they have common sense aplenty and they’ll soon sort the wheat from the chaff amongst the GSC candidates.

We shift the elected centre of gravity of the party decisively away from administration and towards policy and towards the voter. The Green Shadow Cabinet would be as outward looking as GPEx and GPRC are, necessarily, for the most part inward looking.

We ensure the making and communication of policy are brought more closely together. Each shadow cabinet member will handle one or more key briefs and will coordinate policy development in that area with members from each region contributing to the process. The Green Shadow Cabinet and shadow spokespeople will be better placed to respond to the 24 hour news cycle to communicate our wider agenda when opportunities come up. We have a panel of clearly identified policy spokespeople, with a mandate and who meet regularly as a body to discuss policy and the way we apply it and put it across.

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, as we start to mirror the activity of government in other ways we stop thinking about governing in an abstract and sometimes idealised environment and become more disciplined about considering the real world implication of the policies we suggest.

If we do choose to establish a Green Shadow Cabinet I believe it will be another step on a journey towards our becoming a serious force in British politics with various emphases on ‘serious’.

It may be a while before we are ready to participate in government. Indeed it may yet be a generation. However if we start acting now as we mean to go on not only is that time likely to be nearer but when it comes we might be better prepared to decide who we best do that.

The role of Deputy Leader is to build and maintain grassroots support for the Green Party, and to engage and activate local parties, whilst also providing a lucid, coherent and powerful national voice in the media. The Deputy needs to be strong, amusing, engaging and complementary to the Leader. The Deputy needs to be in touch with international events too, and be a welcoming port-of-call for all new members. For my money, Derek Wall encapsulates these aspects brilliantly, with more to offer us as a Party too.

When I re-joined the party, one of the first people I contacted for help, information and solidarity was Derek. I had heard of him because of his media coverage and TV interviews from when he was Joint Principal Speaker in 2007-9. To say that I was greatly impressed by his arguments, personable nature and relaxed, easy and calm manner in which he presented his views, is an understatement. This is why I turned to him for advice and assistance.

Derek was very forthcoming in offering guidance to a new member, keen to get involved in Green politics. He helpfully pointed me to books he (and others) had written which are engaging and accessible to people from all walks of life. This is just the sort of person our Party needs to get new members involved in the party’s structures and policies. He also kindly came to Cambridge for the 2010 General Election Campaign, to speak to the students of the University, to engage them in radical green politics. Derek is a committed individual, and perfect for the role of Deputy. He teaches A Level economics, so is well-suited to interacting with the young people in society, and this is crucial to moving forward as a party.

But the bigger picture cannot be ignored: the world is still undergoing a massive extinctive phase; global inequalities, as well as domestic ones, are growing ever greater; consumerism is not waning. Combating ecological and social injustices is what the Green Party stands for. It is what our membership stands for. With 30 years presence within our party, fighting these corners globally and locally, it is what Derek Wall stands for.

We need a Deputy who personifies these goals. Caroline Lucas does this in an exemplary manner as our Leader; Derek Wall will do equally as well as our Deputy, and the two will complement each other perfectly. Derek is involved in fighting for indigenous people’s rights to land and ways of living, working with the renowned Hugo Blanco to fight this injustice. Derek travelled to the Isle of Wight to protest with other Green colleagues at the closure of Vestas. Derek has been extraordinarily active around the UK helping local parties get Greens elected, and helped out in Caroline’s election in 2010. The local, and the global, is seen in Derek’s activism.

Derek’s publications underline the core Green philosophy of economic localism and the promotion of people and planet living in unison. His work speaks of the imperative of reaching out to the workers of this country, calling for unity and pushing through the economic and social changes to bring equality about. Derek is a very human person; he can speak with, listen to, and laugh alongside anyone. That certainly is one of the outstanding qualities I have seen in him. Really activating the majority of the UK’s electorate is vital to the Party’s success, and the man best placed to do this is Derek. A move away from consumerism will not happen unless the Green Party leads people in our country away from it, and the destructive influence and practice of big business. If anyone in our party understands the need to do this, Derek Wall is definitely one of them.

Our Party is at a crossroads. We finally have an MP, yet we were battered in local elections this year. The grassroots support needs to be built on, and this is a matter of urgency if we seek to implement our political philosophy. We need a Deputy Leader who represents the majority of Party members. We need a Deputy who has the time to be totally involved in building this grassroots movement throughout England and Wales, not just in the South of England, where most electoral success has happened. We’ll need a Deputy Leader who can travel all over the country at short notice to do this. Derek is not an elected official of the party, and consequently has the time and dedication to carry out this role. He is also a national media presence, and this goes some way to helping disseminate our message. To give our members the voice they need, with the time to lead the party whilst not concentrating on being an MP or a Councillor, Derek has to be the logical choice. Our members need a voice for them, all of the time.

Derek, to my mind, embodies the party’s eco-socialist philosophy. He has tirelessly spent years building the party, representing the party and getting new people, like myself, fully involved. I don’t think I would have been elected this year, at my young age, if it were not for Derek’s views and kindness shown. The passion that Derek has is overwhelming, and he is a true inspiration to many, not just me. For a Deputy with time to dedicate to the position, for a deputy who is a fantastic public speaker and is able to engage with young and old alike, for a deputy who possesses the Green philosophy in abundance, vote Derek Wall for Deputy Leader.