Chatting with MPs

With World AIDS Day just around the corner there couldn’t be a better time to meet with your MP. You could invite them to the parliamentary event on Thurs 29th Nov or an event of your own, enjoy a good natter about the campaign demands and ask them to sign the new Early Day Motion (183). If you don’t hear back from emails or letters, it could be well worth giving them a ring.

There’s a new campaign briefing sheet to help you feel fully updated on the issues (it even has a list to tick off for MP meetings at the end in-case you get carried away with your nattering). Find it here.

The least an MP can do is sign the Early Day Motion. It includes all the important stuff and will show that parliamentarians haven’t forgotten about HIV/AIDS. You can check if they’ve signed it here.

EDM No.183: Universal Access to HIV Services
That this House welcomes the global commitment to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services by 2010; further welcomes the Prime Minister’s speech to the UN General Assembly calling on all nations to keep their promises on tackling poverty and disease; notes the current formulation of a new three-year Government strategy to tackle HIV and AIDS in the developing world; believes that the UK Government should use this strategy to outline how it will keep its part of the promise to achieve universal access by 2010; including effectively providing its fair share of funding needed to keep the universal access commitment, proportionate to the UK’s wealth, while also outlining concrete plans to promote affordable generic medicines and strengthen developing country health systems.

Pre-World AIDS Day exhibition and MP lobby, 29th November, Parliament Sq- please arrange to meet your MP there
MPs can drop in from 10am-3pm.

Parliament Square will be transformed with a giant AIDS awareness ribbon made from 8,000 red carnations, marking the number of people dying every day from AIDS-related illnesses. It will be a visually stunning centre-piece for MP lobbying, which will focus on the AIDS Strategy, and media opportunities.

The event will be opened at 10am with speeches by Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, Siphiwe Hlophe, founder of Swaziland Positive Living, and a senior representative of the Stop AIDS Campaign. Please RSVP if you would like to attend the opening.

Please support this event by arranging to meet your MP at the exhibition at some point between 10 am and 3pm. If the opportunity to meet with your good selves, or to support a good cause is not enough to tempt them down you can try the offer of a photo opportunity and a press release they can take for their local media. It might just be enough to get them down.

If you can’t attend, meeting with them where you are would be really worthwhile and still invite them, we can try to meet them on your behalf.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.