By Alex Clarke
First thing to say is that blogs are not scary literary mountains to climb; they are in fact possibly the easiest of writing as they are so personal and as yet so open. In my other life the moment I bring up writing I bring up planning…and it is the same with writing a blog, it is divided into roughly 4 sections:
Introduction – scene setting, this is usually depending on your topic either a quick sentence, or might end up being rather longer. If you are running a …

This might seem like a slight obvious question, but many branches do not have a website. Tools like Facebook mean that some branches have not bothered with an independent online presence – and you must!
We need to be much more professional in the work we do and a good website is a very easy way to do this.
For over 18 months we’ve had CFBranch.com – a free website hosting offer for branches. Thanks to the kind support of Politicos Online any branch can setup a free website in seconds.
We’ve also …

The official Conservative Future Twitter account, @ConsFuture, has just broken the 2,000 mark for supporters – is your branch one of them?
Twitter is one of the leading names in new/social media (although Facebook is trying very hard to stop it) and provides an easy way for CF branches to spread their message. You can setup an account for free in a few minutes, and it allows you to share a short simple message with people across the country.
Not sure what Twitter is all about? The website Mashable has put a …

Today sees the launch of a newsletter specifically for our branch chairmen, with an invite to all branch chairman to sign up to a mailing list within Google Groups.

They will receive a monthly newsletter from us – at the same time as the main newsletter that goes to all CF members – but theirs will be much more detailed.

We hope this list will be another step forward in improving communications in the organisation.

The Conservative Councillors’ Association has produced a new document: Involving young people in Local Democracy.

I commend the willingness of the CCA Board to embrace and encourage young people to get involved in the democratic process in local communities.

From the Blue Blog: Richard Jackson looks at some of the ways Google Maps are being used by the Party’s youth wing.
The great strength of Conservative Future is not primarily in the national organisation, but in the CF branches located across the country.
The work that CF branches do is varied and worthwhile. Examples include the Exeter City & East Devon branch that helped clean up local flood damage and the Cities of London & Westminster branch that raised £3,800 selling Remembrance Day poppies. CF branches also all make a huge …

I hope you will have noticed the launch of our Youtube channel: Conservative Future TV.

Making videos is another great way to show a particular message in politics, as seen by the success of WebCameron. We want CF branches to promote themselves as much as possible and this is why we have launched our Youtube channel.

We want CF members across the country to be able to record their own videos and then send them to us so that we can get them online for all to see.

The cold evenings of last November seem distant, what with all this Spring sunshine, but it’s only a few months since Conservative Future activists from my own branch, the Cities of London & Westminster CF (CLWCF), were out on the streets every night for two weeks and weekends, collecting for the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal 2008.

This is the second year that the branch has taken part in the Poppy Appeal. Last year we raised over £3,100.

This year we beat that total – raising an astonishing £3,796!

Today in Manchester Labour’s expensive, unworkable ID Card scheme was rolled out. The government is oblivious to the illiberal nature of requiring people to carry ID Cards, their own incompetence at securely holding our data, or the fact that any and all ID documents have been forged by those with sufficient impetus to do so. ID Cards will be no different.

They’re an expensive imposition on every Briton’s liberty which won’t make our nation safer.

On a grey misty morning, twelve young and rather drowsy conservatives roll up on the 05.42 from Penzance carrying with them not just a hangover, but an important petition.

This petition contains hundreds of names collected from the Combined Universities in Cornwall, demanding the government drop the outlandish, exorbitant, and worryingly invasive ID card system and its database.