Christian Walker: It's good to talk

The county email addresses for each area chair have always been sporadic in working. Yesterday I discovered that the addresses on the main Conservative Future website are still not working nearly seven months after it was first raised as an issue.

This of course creates problems for NME candidates wishing to communicate with area chairs but my concern more importantly as an area chair – is how long this has been the case and the impression this gives to prospective members wanting to make contact?

Central Office yesterday acknowledged there was a problem and were helpful in trying to find a solution apparently hotmail addresses are being set up for area chairs (I must of missed the email informing us of that – surprisingly!). However what kind of impression are we aiming to portray?

The Conservative Party keeps no central database of members and therefore never knows how many members it has – this creates serious problems in terms of communication especially within conservative future with young members moving about for example between college and jobs.

In summary we have a situation where CF does not know how many members they have and has no way for prospective and existing members to contact them. While the word ‘crisis’ is perhaps a little strong – the elected NME have a make or break year in terms of getting the CF house in order.