** APRIL UPDATE **  I've been keeping this relatively quiet until now, but I'm not just running the London Marathon on the 25th April this year, but also the Brighton Marathon on the 18th. 

It's the inaugural race in my adopted home city, so it was difficult to resist for that reason, but also why keep things simple when I could really hurt myself by attempting two marathons in a week?  Of course, if you feel obliged to donate twice as much in light of this news, then do be my guest...  Thanks to everyone's generosity so far, I've passed £500 a lot sooner than I thought, so have now doubled my target to £1,000.  Thanks all!

** 

I'm incredibly proud to work for Liberty: the UK's oldest and, let's be frank, most effective human rights campaign. 

In the two and a half years I've been here, my talented colleagues have (amongst other things) made forced labour a criminal offence, opposed ID Cards, fought against Control Orders, challenged the UK Government on its part in torture and extraordinary rendition, and, most impressively of all, defeated an outrageous proposal to extend the time any of us could be held without charge to 42 days.

There's just one problem.  For now, my colleagues achieve all the above from a cramped and run-down converted shopfront off the Borough High Street.  There's just one meeting room, there are desks tucked into every nook and cranny, and yet there's still nowhere near enough space to host the hundreds of volunteers who would like to help us out.

Sponsoring me to run the London Marathon (26.2 miles of blisteringly hard slog) will help us move to an office that matches the professionalism of the organisation.  It won't be grand, but it will enable us to do everything that we do now - lobbying MPs, influencing journalists, providing human rights advice and taking cases through the courts - much, much more effectively.  Which, ultimately, is the greatest investment you could make in protecting the UK's proud history of rights and freedoms.

Liberty is far from a new organisation - 76 years old and counting! - and neither are the challenges we face.  With your support though there can be many more decades of defending rights and freedoms to come...

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/