Straight Faced Support - First Posted 9 May 2024

 Since I confirmed my candidacy for the coming General Election, every word of encouragement and every testimony to my character has helped me to bear up to the challenge ahead. I am grateful for, and humbled by each of them, and those which have come from my serving brothers and sisters carry a special weight. In the Armed Forces, support generally comes dressed as varying degrees of banter, so when the message comes 'straight-faced', you know it's sincere.

The expeditionary lifestyle of the Armed Forces isn't for everybody, but it throws up a great many fleeting friendships, some lifelong friendships, and many of those people you're grateful to cross paths with down the years.

I met 'M' while living in Cyprus around 2006 or 2007. On a Venn diagram of our social groups, we just about overlapped.

I left Cyprus in 2008 and the next time we met, M and I were deployed together in the Falkland Islands for a few months in 2011. As an Acting Sergeant, he was senior to me, and I came to know him as supremely professional, up-front, humble but resolute. We worked and socialised in small groups for those few months and though we weren't exactly 'close', I liked and respected him.

After I left the Falkland Islands, we lost contact until a chance meeting in 2023, when M attended a Focus Group I led with the RAF Climate Assessment Support Team. He offered me back to his office later to catch up, so I went to find him, and we did. Amongst other chatter, I told him about my plan to stand at the General Election.

M got back in touch yesterday. He told me that I'd started him thinking about politics. Like me, he recognised that the country needs change. He'd done some research and had then voted for the Liberal Democrats in the recent local elections... and will do so again at the General Election. He signed off telling me I'll "do great" for my community "and hopefully, the country", and that he was proud to have served with me. Honestly, I've always thought him to be the better of us.

If you're reading this M: it means a great deal to me, and it was an honour to have served with you too.

To a better future.

Cam.

The Opportunity of Neurodiversity - First Posted 26 Feb 2024

 The concept of Social Mobility is now well recognised, across both society and industry. It is defined by the UK Government as:

“… the link between a person’s occupation or income and the occupation or income of their parents. Where there is a strong link, there is a lower level of social mobility. Where there is a weak link, there is a higher level of social mobility.”

It is driven by the need for diversity of thought and experience in order for enterprises and even states to achieve an advantage over their rivals. It appeals to me personally, because it is also a reflection of a fairer society.

If diversity of thought and experience is the desired outcome here, then it’s time we began to consider how to harness neurodiversity in a similar manner... Neuro-mobility, if you will. A societal system which embraces and values neurodiversity, and is supported by a curriculum and education system which enables neurodiverse children to achieve their potential. Our current UK curriculum and education system is failing neurodiverse children and their teachers terribly, but if we in the UK can implement these systems now, then within a decade we can harness the diversity of skills and thought we will nurture.

This morning I had the privilege of addressing and speaking with members of Neurodiversi-TEA Natters, a social group facilitated by local Tutor Kate Morris and Drama Teacher Emily Hastings, for the parents of neurodiverse children. I shared my own experience of neurodiversity, from my complex childhood and throughout my military career, and I learned of the experiences of some residents whose own children are being let down in a society built by and for neurologically uniform people. Many of these parents are themselves neurodiverse, and have had to overcome their own battles with organisations and establishments which ought to be more open-minded with regards to neurodiversity; a member of my family was diagnosed with dyslexia back in 1990, yet there are educators who refuse to acknowledge its existence even in 2024.

I want to see a government which leads from the front on neurodiversity and recognises it for the opportunity that it is, which is why I am standing with the Liberal Democrats for election to the House of Commons.

Holocaust Memorial Day - First Posted 27 Jan 2024

 Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

I want to mark down a few of my thoughts, but in doing so I risk a disservice to a monumental human event; an indelible stain on our species.

As survivors and witnesses diminish with time, I worry that referring simply to ‘The Holocaust’ risks undermining its severity, so I’ll expand here on what it was: Industrial Genocide – the extermination of groups of people seen as “less worthy” than their oppressors, by such means as to remove all dignity, empathy and emotion. The mechanism of extermination was so inhumanely engineered that its executors sanity was spared burden – this was not murder, this was a logical solution to a problem. These were not frightened children, they were Jews.

For those 6,000,000 victims of the holocaust: Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, disabled and black people, political opponents, the horror of the Holocaust was fully realised at concentration camps such as Auschwitz, but Auschwitz was only ‘The Final Solution’ - the terminal point on a decades-long scale of dehumanisation which had begun with ignorance, fear and divisive rhetoric. 

The type of rhetoric we continue to hear on a daily basis.

There is also a risk I fear, that in contemplating The Holocaust in its sheer scale, we neglect the individual human tragedy. A social media account connected to the Auschwitz Memorial does an excellent job of remembering individual victims daily. I also thank Italian author Primo Levi who remained an emotional prisoner of Auschwitz until his sudden death, many years after he was physically liberated. His book ‘The Drowned and the Saved’ makes for depressing, but crucial reading.

In 2017 and 2019 respectively, I had the privilege (I struggle to find an appropriate synonym – the experiences were sobering to my very core, yet gratefully received) to visit Dachau and Sachsenhausen camps.

Their legacies must not be forgotten.