The winner of the 2011 ‘Sports Award of the Year’  was Anton Hysén, a 21-year-old Swedish footballer who is one of the only openly gay professional football players in the world.

But he wasn’t the first to come out.

I’d like to share with you the story of Justin Fashanu. The last name might sounds vaguely familiar to some – he was the brother of Wimbledon legend John Fashanu.

Justin’s not as well known as his brother is, but he should be.

You see, not only was he the first million-pound black player? He was the first – ever – openly gay professional football player.

He came out 1990 – managers refused to let him train with his teammates; fellow professionals told him gays had no place in sport. His brother? Disowned him.

And in 1998, he committed suicide.

Every year, I see the LGBT sections of political parties speak out loudly and proudly – and rightly so – when people are refused entry to pubs, or B&Bs, or narrow-minded MPs of public figures say marriage is not for the queer community.

But they never make a big deal of this.

And this saddens me.

Sport, in general, is a widely neglected area when it comes to gay rights. Having LGBT versions of events such as the World Cup & Olympics is all well and good, but why do we act as if this is simply enough?

Why are we more willing to ignore this divide in sport, when we campaign so vigorously in other arenas?

Simply signing the Sports Charter is not enough. We need to do more.

The most popular sport amongst the children of the UK is football. Globally, it’s a multi-billion pound industry.

And yet we seem quite content to ignore the issues of homophobia (and transphobia), allowing kids to grow up thinking that to be a professional footballer you have to be straight or closeted, indirectly implying the homophobic abuse is merely just part of the game.

Yes, it’s true that simply holding events on these days won’t do much to change things in the short-term, but people need to be more aware of it. And the more people who are aware, the more we are able to help educate and, eventually, break the pattern of behaviour.

When Feb 19th came round last year, I was genuinely saddened by the complete lack of coverage LGBT sites and groups gave to the Football v Homophobia campaign – an international effort to bring to the front the very real issues people are presented with.

Where were the events? The marches? The talks? The kick-a-bouts between local LGBT groups in parks?

I was hoping this year might be different – that, after the exposure given to the problem of racism in football, other groups would up their visibility and join the debate, pointing out there are many, many other problems we should address alongside those already mentioned.

But it looks like I’m going to be disappointed this year, too.

Not because of our leader, who I support, or based on policies which I broadly agree with (no person could or should ever support 100% of a manifesto, unless they are a party of one).

It is the sheer sense of entitlement that emanates from every faction within.

You only need to look at the reactionary comments to Ed Balls’ speech to the Fabians to see this in all it’s glory.

If we are a party of all – which I think we are – why are we incapable of having a grown-up discussion about anything? Why do we immediately go to the default bag of tricks, muttering “sell-out” or “Tory”; “sack the leader” or “___ for leader”? It isn’t a competition, to see which pseudo-intellectual bollocks wins the idealogical-battle-of-the-week award.

Because the world outside of the activist bubble? Where people don’t really give a toss about which little nook of the big red canvas you’ve carved for yourself? Want answers.

And here’s a little secret for you – they can deal with tough answers. They aren’t children, like us; they appreciate facts and figures and the truth.

So, if we say to them Osborne’s plans are so bad that the economy will be awful in 2015? They’ll get it.

And if we say we will spend the next three years doing our best to get them to change course so this damage is limited? They’ll get it.

And if, at the end of all this, they elect us? When we say “we can fix this, but not this”, they will get it.

In fact, the only people that don’t seem to get this pragmatic, realistic telling of what has to be is … well … the Labour party.

Being credible is about being honest and – sometimes – the truth hurts.

The truth is, we aren’t in Government – all we can do is keep telling the country and the Govt they are wrong. We don’t want to be proved right re: the state of the economy (nobody wants to gloat at people’s suffering), but we probably will be.

The truth is, there will be no surplus money (in any country, courtesy of the Eurozone) to magically erase the cuts.

And the truth is, right now, that there are those more concerned with battling for internal, ideological dominance than listening to what is being said.

Listening costs nothing, but it is the key to everything.

*I won’t leave and I’m not a Lib Dem, so hush with your comments before you start!

What I don’t do is spend it angered by the fact politicians wear poppies, or reject the tradition of remembering the trials and tribulations of war – the good and the bad aspects – because people who work for companies whose work I don’t support like to wear them also.

It’s not show-business in any sense of the word; what’s glitzy and appealing in watching hundreds of service personnel and family marching to remember their comrades? What’s uplifting and cheery about a religious service that carries the solemn tones of a mass funeral reading?

Each person has the right to remember the dead in the way they see fit – red poppy, white poppy or even no poppy – respect it, allow it, but never, ever play politics with it.

Remembrance Sunday has no link to the budget decisions of past and present governments, it’s a tradition that has and will continue to outlive many of those in power – and I, as a young, working-class person, object to the way in which Laurie Penny has chosen to use our name to enter the ‘show business’ world of crass political point scoring.

There was been much shouting and flailing across political cyberspace yesterday, based on the substance of an article in the Independent talking of a ‘women-only’ event at Labour conference.

Firstly, I think it is only fair to point out that the majority of people debating this – both male and female – have no objection to women-only events; you only have to look back throughout the last few years to see that other gatherings and conferences have gone without a hitch. What is different this time, however, can be captured in the following line:

“There will be formal resolutions based on suggestions from female members who are being invited to the platform to put their case on education, childcare, the economy and the NHS, as well as party rules.”

I don’t want to get into the debate of whether men should be allowed to attend women-only events – I think there is a need for individual minority groups to have their own space for debate, discussion and whatnot – but if decisions are to be made on key issues, should we not all have a say? Will these ‘formal resolutions’ have input from all other groups, or just this one?

People’s queries are valid, and it’s right we question what this means and ask for clarification (it is, after all, a newspaper article and should be treated with some scepticism) – but that doesn’t mean anyone annoyed is sexist or has a deep-seated urge to suppress women.

Indeed, the best summation of the situation has come not from a party stalwart, but a 13-year-old girl.

But, in all of the finger-pointing and voice raising, people seem to be over-looking a more worrying statement. Because, for me? This is the biggest problem with the article:

“One demand that is expected to be passed is the proposal by Ms Harman for there always to be a woman in Labour’s leadership, either as deputy or as leader”

This line, of course, is referring to proposals in the latest draft of the Refounding Labour report* to be leaked:

It has been suggested that this could be guaranteed by insisting that whenever a leadership election took place, each leadership candidate would run on a joint ticket with their favoured deputy.

- Each candidate for Leader should be required, during the PLP nomination period, to declare a Deputy Leader running mate of the opposite gender

- The nominations would be for the Leadership candidate but would be made in the knowledge of the candidate’s running mate.

- The Electoral College ballot would be between Leadership candidates only, but the Deputy Leader running mate would be declared on the ballot paper.

(Section D, Part 2: Gender balance within the Leadership Team)

Whilst I appreciate the genuine sentiments behind these proposals I could not, in good conscience, support them as they stand or be a member of any party that did so.

I am all for greater representation of women in the Labour Party, but this? This is the wrong solution.

On a purely basic level, I’m not quite sure anyone has thought through the impracticalities of this – for either gender.

This doesn’t empower those women already elected, it makes them more reliant on men – they must seek the endorsement of one to stand as leader, or they must wait to be asked to become a running mate. And if, in the latter situation, the male decides not to run any more? The running mate must step down.

And what if two women want to stand together? Or nobody wants to stand? What if – and I hope this never happens – we don’t have any female members? What if you like one half of a duo but not the other? If an elected leader stands down, is it right that their counterpart has to resign – yet if a deputy steps down, the leader can simply pick another?

Of course it isn’t – and that’s why we should not allow this to happen.

If we want a female leader, if we want to increase the number of female MPs, we simply can’t choose a gimmicky proposal we profess is radical when, in reality, it’s regressive. What we need is to start from the very bottom – encourage local women to stand as councillors and encourage current councillors to stand as parliamentary candidates.

Yes, it will take time, but I would rather wait than create artificial gender equality where there is no need. Johanna Baxter – the party’s best asset these last few months – has said these are just drafts, and that many issues have been discussed and progress has been made.

Personally, I can only hope that this particular proposal never sees the light of day again.

(*The report can be found and downloaded from Johanna Baxter’s blog.)

How many of you have ever tried to undertake a task of this size? How many of you understand not just the theory, but the technicalities behind the entire process?

And when you have all of this information, how do you present it?

After nearly five years of working in a position where you have to be on the ball technically, legally, editorially and many other things beside, I can tell you even I forget the little things sometimes – so are we really surprised that, as a party who can’t claim to be anywhere near technologically advanced, that people maybe went about this whole process in the wrong way?

And so it’s easy to understand why Ed himself stated the submissions would be published; if that was the plan, you – rightly or wrongly – assume that those building and creating the site and structures involved in the consultation have put into place the correct mechanisms to make this easy.

But, for whatever reason, they didn’t. You may be annoyed, furious, confused or any of the many other adjectives found in the vocabularies of seasoned members of any party. But – and this is key point I think many people are casually ignoring in favour of their own conspiracy theories – procedure comes first.

The law comes first.

How many of you ignored the the check box on the online forms, saying you didn’t wish your comments to appear on the site, yet publishing them onto your own blog? How many CLPs explicitly stated they would be/would not be happy with their comments being published online for all to see in their written/email submissions? The truth is, we simply don’t know.

Data Protection is not something to take lightly and so, if it takes months to ensure all the permissions are in place? It takes months.

And we shouldn’t forget, this is the first exercise of this kind the party has undertaken, and there were obviously going to be unforeseen problems; nobody ever gets anything right first time round, and you can be absolutely certain that this particular mistake won’t be made again.

I’m normally not the most optimistic or forgiving person when it comes to things our own party gets wrong, but on this? Experience tells me they should be given time.

We are all accepting of mistakes, since we all make them, but we should wait to see how these problems are (or aren’t) resolved before we dole out the criticisms and declare the whole process a massive failure.

Over an hour later, I got a call from my boss: “Just a heads up,” he said, “but the News of the World is closing on Sunday.”

There aren’t really any words to describe the feeling I experienced at that moment – I don’t work for NotW, I’m not a journalist, but I do work for the company. And I know how much the majority of the people who work there – innocent, hard working people, getting all their information about the alleged past times of our predecessors from the TV along with the rest of the public – are hurting.

Hurting because they are as affected as the rest of us by these actions, but also because they are carrying the burden of accusation and guilt. They don’t deserve it, but they go on anyway – they have never condoned or defended the indefensible; they know the stigma that comes with being associated with a company that gains a reputation (for whatever reason) but, undeterred, they carry on with their jobs knowing they and the people around them are not responsible for the sins of the past.

So I can’t look at twitter, or Facebook, or the news, and see the joy and rapture of those who think that innocent people losing their jobs is a cause for celebration.

Those hurt today simply don’t deserve it.

One mention of the dreaded ‘B’ word has people reaching for their statistical play-books, marching forth on twitter like political evangelists taking on the might of the non-believers.

I have the same feeling towards Blair as I do Marmite – indifferent. Although, I’m not sure I’d want to put Blair on my toast.

I neither love him for his supposed messianic qualities, nor loathe him for his apparent systematic destruction of the world via ‘illegal’ means. He’s just … OK.

I know, right? How could it be *possible* for a Labour Party member to hold no strong, polarising opinion on their most divisive figure? Maybe we’ll (yes, we, there are quite a few of us!) donate our bodies to medical science in years to come).

Perhaps I should start yet *another* faction within our ranks: The Blair Indifference Society.

Has quite a ring to it, doesn’t it? The BIS.

Unlike many of you reading this, I didn’t really get into politics until very recently – and why would I? I grew up in an area where, although we’ve had a Labour MP for as long as I remember, nobody knocked on our door – in fact, they still haven’t to this day. Nobody really cared about the fact the local kids had nowhere to go, had difficult home lives, needed some encouragement, they just ignored it. Why would a fairly intelligent kid like me want to get involved when nobody was listening?

And then, Tony Blair came along.

He didn’t make me pick up a Bevan biography or rush out to devour Erskine and May, but he did make me think. There was a man on the TV, who seemed to think everybody mattered; who had a young family (I take no shame in admitting I found his son quite fit!); who promised things would be different.

And for some, they were. To dismiss the good things Labour achieved would be absurd, and we should never, ever do that.

But I still wasn’t convinced – he was just a face on the TV, smiling for the cameras.

When I saw how the schools around ours suffered from lack of resources and crumbling buildings, and how parents started their own youth projects because nobody else came to our estate, I didn’t think “oh, the Government will fix this for us!” – I’d think it was sad, but normal, and carry on with my schoolwork.

Exit Tony, enter Gordon. Now, I liked Gordon. I still do.

He didn’t come along and magically fix all of the problems Tony didn’t, but he appealed to me – a quiet, hard-working man who wasn’t about smiling for photo opportunities or holding babies, but getting on with the job. Against the preppy arrogance of Cameron, the contrast was startling – there was no doubt in my mind which of these two men represented the people I grew up with more, at least in attitude.

But? We lost.

You can blame the war, you can blame Gordon for not being the media luvvy you missed in Blair but – the truth is – they were both at fault. Neither of them caught on that Labour were no longer listening to those that mattered; the public.

A problem that started, really, as early as 1998/9 and continued. Both were in Government, both missed it – arguably the damage was so severe by the time Gordon became PM that no person would have been able to reverse it, and I tend to agree with this assumption.

And what’s the point of all of this?

We are still not listening.

There are people out there who want to talk and be listened to; people who aren’t really happy with the current government but so far they see no alternative – they see an opposition obsessed with winning old arguments, wallowing in the past instead of looking to the future.

So how about we drop the old and new Labour tags, we refrain from mentioning Blair or Brown or, more recently, which Miliband is our favourite?

How about we stop talking altogether and just listen.

Most people are indifferent to Marmite – let’s not make them indifferent to our party, too.

The party has pockets of well-structured and competent campaigning – but this is not visible everywhere.

In fact, in areas where we have few (or no) councillors, the party presence is almost non-existent. We need to treat all areas equally, regardless of expectation to win. Why should a young, budding candidate in Liverpool get more support than one in Dartmouth? Why does a win in Liverpool over ‘big names’ get more coverage than Labour gaining a seat in the hard-to-win South?

A regional – or even national network – could be set up, with CLPs ‘partnering’ up to help each other campaign, share advice and resources or generally act as a support network for those who want to increase their presence and visibility.

Target seats and soundbites are not the way forward – as a party, we need to be working in every area to help improve conditions – if we don’t, then what’s the point? Are we a party of the people, or just the party of the people whose votes benefit us most?

The website is useless, irrelevant and out-of-date: impossible to search, dull, and the information people want to find – namely details of local campaigns and events – are obscured by the illogical way in which membersnet was set up.

For many, the first port of call in the modern age is the internet; we should provide all CLPs – and MPs – with the tools to set up their own website and/or blog.

We should have an in-house team that can provide expertise, or even a network of members willing to help out, not a series of disjointed, outsourced sites that not only cost more but give off an air of confusion, non-conformity and the illusion we have a hierarchy amongst our own regions.

Just because an MP has twitter, it doesn’t mean they have a grasp of online communications…

David Miliband was right to say the party does not reflect society. Of the current PLP, a shockingly low number of those under 45 have been elected without having been researcher/SpAd/speech writer. Whilst this doesn’t in any way reflect on their competence, it does give the world at large – and to some extent, myself included – the impression that in order for the party to deem you worthy of joining the ‘elite’, you must have towed the line or known the right people. I could count on one hand the number of MPs within our own party who I personally feel understand what real life is like for people who don’t fit into their carefully controlled focus groups.

For this reason, I would say that open primaries are a good option when it comes to selecting PPCs. Or, at the very least, rules which clearly state any person who wishes to run in an area must have lived in or around for a certain period of time – why is a former Westminster researcher any better for a community than a long-serving local councillor or activist? Who will know their potential constituents better?

And we need to be more democratic. Members should have a say in policy; think-tanks and MPs are not the way to win back public confidence.

Activists know what the problems local communities face are, and so should be consulted. CLPs should be able to submit ideas for debate at conference – if these proposals get get approved by, say, 20% of other CLPs, then the debate should be had and votes should be cast. Although we are a much larger party than the Liberal Democrats, I do believe we can adapt their policy-making structure for conference to fit us.

All seeking to represent the real views of the people.

Well, you know what?

This real person would like you all to kindly shut up.

I am sick of all the posturing and shouting amongst the Labour Party at the moment – no real person gives a damn who the ‘go-to’ think tank or group of the party is, or whether you’re to the left, right or north-east of the rest of them.

Do you know what they see? A bunch of political nerds trying to oust each other as nerd overlord – and they hate it.

I hate it.

They don’t care about factions or fractures, colours or collaborations – they care about life. You know, that rather important thing we are all finding rather difficult at the moment.

So – here’s an idea for you all – how about we all go knocking on doors or picking up phones, and ask the people what the problems are. How about we ask them what they’d like to see, and not each other.

That’s why I joined – why did you join?

It’s crazy I know, but hey … if everyone else can spend their time hypothesizing and bigging themselves up at the expense of the lost electorate, then why can’t I?

But, I deleted it all.

Because no matter how much I tried to avoid the personal, it kept lingering in the background, finding its way into an otherwise factual (and rather good, if I’m honest!) post.

Besides, people have made up their own minds on whether he’s guilty/unfortunate/the Devil incarnate by now, and I’m hardly going to change that.

So I’m going to throw this out there instead.

The first line is how I was hoping to start the last section of the essay/post, and what led to the rethink.

Do you know what the most depressing thing about this whole saga is? The hatred and prejudice I have witnessed – because that is what it is – from within the LGBT community aimed at David Laws.

The man didn’t want to come out. Yes, it’s sad he felt like this – but it was HIS choice. His personal life, his choice. Just because you found it easy, and think the world should follow your view of how the LGBT community should act, doesn’t mean it’s right.

Ivan Massow’s column in the Evening Standard – which I won’t link, because quite frankly it’s horrific – talks of how he still hates Stephen Fry for not coming out sooner, and includes the absurd line:

“…what the point is of being a Lib-Dem at all if you can’t be open about being gay?”

Oh, I’m sorry Mr Massow, I didn’t realise that your political party controlled every aspect of your life. Once you sign up, it doesn’t immediately override your ability to think or change your emotional responses. If we’re going on pure stereotypes alone, fancy telling all openly gay Conservative MPs that, actually, would they mind awfully getting back into the closet as they aren’t conforming to aforementioned stereotype?

Because, you know what? Not everyone is comfortable with their sexuality or aspects thereof. I’m not. There, I said it. Do I want to talk about it? No. My reasons are my own and no amount of people saying I can or I should are going to change that in the foreseeable future.

But, just because that is my decision, I wouldn’t presume to force this upon anyone else.

What people fail to understand is that emotions? Aren’t rational. What you feel and what you think are not always related, and telling people they are wrong/stupid/it’s easy is hardly going to help.

The feeling of wanting to do or say something but being unable to is stressful enough, dealing with your own hypocrisy is painful enough, without having to add the pressure and weight of disappointment complete strangers throw at you because they think they know best.

I believe everyone has the right to be treated equally – and this everyone also happens to include those who don’t want to come out. You don’t tell heterosexuals they simply must be open and embrace their straightness publicly, at all times – so why so different with those who identify as other?

This ridiculous notion that if everyone came out there’d be a better more accepting community is absolute bullshit. Did abolishing slavery get rid of racism? Has decriminalising homosexuality stopped vicious – sometimes even fatal – homophobic attacks? Like hell it has.

You are happy and comfortable to talk about your life. Good for you; that’s encouraging and I applaud you for it.

But.

It’s actually (a bit) reassuring to know that you aren’t wrong, or alone, in not wanting to share your experiences with the world. That not everybody is this perfect little example of how people think you should be in this day and age.

In my mind – emotionally and, more importantly, logically – David Laws did the wrong thing for the right reasons.

You don’t have to agree, and I suspect most of you won’t, but just remember that we are not all the same.