Tomorrow it’s a year since Willie Rennie became Scottish Liberal Democrat Leader. What have been the highlights of that first year?
Well, on his first day, I interviewed him for Liberal Democrat Voice and you can still listen to that here. He said that his priorities for his first hundred days were to work out what our message was, to sort out our organisation and to get out there and meet people, members and ordinary people on their doorsteps. So how has he done with these things and more?
David Cameron’s adviser Steve Hilton heads off for a sabbatical in California, where he will be learning more about governance.
However, he is reported in several newspapers to have left a wee parting present, a paper calling for a further £25 billion cut in welfare spending. He wants to see people, particularly single parents, encouraged into full time rather than part time work. No mention is made of how the resulting child care costs would be met, of course. Maybe he hadn’t thought of that.
The Times (£) reported that these plans had not been shared with the Liberal Democrats but, …
MPs’ offices get stacks and stacks of mail. Every day all manner of things arrive, from invitations, to big glossy brochures from various organisations, to letters from constituents, to replies from letters written to various Government bodies on behalf of local residents, to thank you cards when problems have been resolved.
Today, Lynne Featherstone’s constituency office received a special surprise in the post. Ben and Jerry’s, in conjunction with Stonewall, had produced a specially designed ice cream tub, complete with the Equality Minister’s photograph and the title Lynne Honeycomb, to show the company’s support for Equal Marriage. Sadly for her office …
The Independent reports that Liberal Democrat MPs are trying to change the new assessment process for the Personal Independence Payments which will replace Disability Living Allowance. They believe that they may lead to blind people being denied the help that they need. This is a measure introduced by the Welfare Reform Act. The MPs are concerned that the new assessment process focuses on mobility and does not sufficiently take into account the ways in which being blind or partially sighted can affect everyday life.
People who have sight loss need the extra help to, for example, help with cleaning, ironing …
I was wondering how I could amuse readers on my own blog yesterday and I came up with this amazing idea of going back and finding out what I was writing about around this time in previous years. It was only later that I realised that Helen Duffett does this for Liberal Democrat Voice every Friday in the Friday Five . I hope she doesn’t mind me borrowing her idea and adding in a little extra spot.
What was good about my post yesterday is that a few other Liberal Democrat bloggers got in on the act and I spent …
Every week Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland writes a column for local newspapers in his Borders constituency. Here is this week’s edition.
Last week, we saw the State Opening of Parliament by the Queen. Her Majesty set out the legislation planned for the second session of Parliament following the formation of the Coalition. The legislation outlined in the speech supports our efforts to reduce the deficit, rebalance the economy and put the country on the path to sustainable growth. It also sets out our commitment to provide families, businesses and communities across the country with the support they …
Milton Keynes Liberal Democrats are asking the police to investigate campaign leaflets put out during this year’s council elections which attacked both Lib Dem and Labour councillors for their views on providing space for Travellers.
A series of leaflets were put out during the election attacking named candidates from the two parties, accusing them of putting too much effort into housing Travellers compared to “the homeless, OAPs, and the disabled”. Although the leaflets contained a name and phone number, they did not contain the election imprint information required by …
The Pupil Premium is one of our biggest achievement in government, and helps the poorest children in our country bridge the gap when it comes to the quality of education they receive. Manchester has had an extra £19 million this year, and the overall spend is some £1.25 billion this year, increasing to £2.5 billion by 2014/15.
The Pupil Premium ticks all the boxes for the Party. It is designed to help the most disadvantaged, it allows schools to spend the extra money flexibly, and it is new money on top of the school budget.
So why are we not shouting about …
If you missed it, it is worth watching the first episode of 56 Up on ITV Player. Aired last night, it is the latest in Michael Apted’s Seven Up series, which filmed a group of seven year olds in 1964 and has since caught up with them every seven years.
One of the group is Liberal Democrat Councillor Neil Hughes, who represents Shap ward on Eden District Council in Cumbria. Neil was previously one of our councillors in Hackney and is also a lay preacher. As you can see from last night’s film, the Seven Up series has …
The following is the text of an email that I sent to a constituent earlier today. He wrote to me to ask about my views of the government’s proposals “to re-define marriage”, which he believes “will have far-reaching consequences…[that] will have an adverse effect on the stability and flourishing of our local community.” I beg to differ.
Dear sir,
Thank you for your email regarding the government’s proposals to change the law on marriage in the United Kingdom. This is not a local authority matter, and so has no relevance to my role as a local councillor. However, as you have asked to know my views on this matter, I am happy to oblige.
Back in September 1999 Paddy Ashdown gave his farewell speech to the Liberal Democrats’ Federal Conference. The speech set out some challenges for Liberal Democrats as we approached a new century. What is interesting to note, reading it almost 13 years later, is how prescient his speech is when looking at the credit crunch and the current Eurozone crisis:
Here is the inescapable fact. Power is now moving, increasingly, beyond the confines of the nation state and is rapidly making many of its institutions irrelevant.
He continued,
We must start taking global governance seriously. The nation states, their governments and their politicians are
…
I have spent the day clutching at a couple of straws.
Last week in the tractor factory Nick Clegg appeared to confuse the ‘deficit’ with the National Debt when he said, “We have a moral duty to the next generation to wipe the slate clean for them of debt. We have set out a plan – it lasts about six or seven years – to wipe the slate clean to rid people of the deadweight of debt that has been built up over time.”
It sounded like a fail in GCSE Economics. But suppose he wasn’t mistaking the policy to eliminate the structural deficit by 2017 for a moral crusade to wipe the slate clean by removing the deadweight of the National Debt, all £1,300 billion of it.
At the other end of my straw was the realisation that Nick Clegg might have become an extreme Market Monetarist and was revealing his plan to re-establish Nominal GDP back to its trend line, even if that meant buying in the whole of the National Debt in the mother of all quantitative easing exercises.
Keen to move on from the poor headlines of the last few weeks, Nick Clegg has sought to re-focus attention on his flagship social mobility agenda with a speech on the Pupil Premium.
The Pupil Premium is the government’s main policy for reducing educational inequality in schools, meaning that schools get extra funding for every child on Free School Meals (£488 this year, £600 next year). IPPR has always welcomed the Pupil Premium but have expressed concerns that it will not be spent directly on providing extra support for the children who need it. Under the current model, schools are free to spend it on whatever they like – and the majority of heads say they are using it to plug gaps in existing budgets.
The Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday. This is an issue which the Liberal Democrats in general, and Andrew George in particular, have campaigned on for many years. I can remember meeting with farmers shortly after I was first elected back in 2001, and hearing from them the difficulties they faced as suppliers for the biggest supermarkets. A commitment to introduce “a powerful independent regulator of Britain’s food market” featured in our last manifesto (in fact, …
The UK is more corrupt than Qatar. That’s not my judgement, but that of the World Bank and their Control of Corruption Index. This places the UK 18th in the world, behind not only Qatar but Iceland, Chile and Liechtenstein.
It’s easy to sound jingoistic with this sort of comparison, and I really don’t mean to. So here’s an even more worrying comparison. In 2010, the latest year the World Bank has collated its figures for, the UK received a control of corruption score of +1.48 (on a …
Five scenarios for your delectation:
The drastic, dramatic and painful option. Clegg says the Liberal Democrats need David Laws’s expertise and media savvy at the heart of economic decision making, restoring him to Chief Secretary to the Treasury and expressing tearful regret that Danny Alexander is off out of the Cabinet, with a resting place as a new Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Cabinet Office where he will not have to handle quite so many tricky TV interviews.
Too problematic to bring back Laws in a tax and cut role? Bring him …
The Lancashire Telegraph reports:
POLICE have launched an investigation into voting at this month’s local elections.
Labour officials have made a complaint about irregularities concerning proxy votes in Hyndburn.
A proxy vote is when votes are placed at the polling station on somebody’s behalf, usually when they are unable to leave the house or are on holiday and have chosen not to vote via post.
Police said they had also launched an investigation into claims constituency MP Graham Jones [Labour, Hyndburn] had intimidated voters.
They said this was not connected with the proxy votes allegations.
In three wards in Hyndburn there were more than fifty …
At Spring Conference we passed a tax motion that confirmed our manifesto pledge for support for a global Financial Transaction Tax (FTT).
The implication was that we supported the FTT but only if the entire world agreed. The usual reasoning for this stance is that if we, or Europe, unilaterally institute an FTT it would disadvantage banks within the EU and encourage them to move their operations outside our borders, losing us jobs and …
Co-operative Energy emerged yesterday as winner of the much-heralded Big Switch campaign launched by Which? and 38 Degrees.
The collective bargaining scheme aimed to find cheaper energy deals for more than 280,000 people who signed up. But the Co-op – which won the auction by offering the lowest tariff – will offer its deals to 30,000 people on a first come, first served basis.
The new edition of House magazine features an extended interview with Norman Lamb, written by Sam Macrory.
Norman features on the cover, with the strapline “The business minister on why ‘flunking’ the coalition is not an option”.
The interview took place on election day, so Norman had thoughts for those facing tough polling fights, while defending the coaltion:
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 273rd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (6-12 May, 2012), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.
Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.
As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:
Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days…
Lord Owen attacks coalition over Lords reform ‘farce’ (Telegraph)
Lord Owen was one of 43 of the peers polled who said the Upper House needs to be reformed, even though he disagreed with the changes devised by Nick Clegg and other senior Liberal Democrats. “There does need to be change,” said Lord Owen. “You look around the chamber and you can see the person who is a friend of George Osborne. You can see the person who was a big donor. And you
…
The Queen’s Speech mentioned a Bill to introduce individual electoral registration (see this post if you’re not sure why individual electoral registration is a good thing). It also made vague reference to other electoral administration reforms. Now I’ve read the proposed Bill and seen what they are, I’m rather pleased – as they include three things I’ve often raised in previous election law consultations and on this blog.
First, extending the timetable for Parliamentary by-elections. As I’ve written before about this …
At this rate the Daily Mail will soon become Lib Dems’ favourite reading… A few days after its front page proclaiming David Cameron’s lament ‘I’d govern like a true Tory if it wasn’t for the Lib Dems’, the paper reports:
Two Ministers in the Coalition clashed last night over David Cameron’s plan to allow gay marriages.
Tim Loughton, Tory Minister for Children and Families, came under fire from Liberal Democrat partners after he said he was totally opposed to same-sex marriage and that the Prime Minister would do better
…
A couple of days ago Mary Reid, one of LibDemVoice’s day editors, reported the news of the fake election leaflets distributed in Richmond with the seeming intent of misleading voters about the views of local Lib Dems:
A number of local voters have admitted that they were taken in by the leaflets, decided not to vote Lib Dem as a result and voted Conservative in protest. This was a seat that we were hoping to take back from the Conservatives, but Jane Dodds lost by 146 votes.
The BBC now reports that the police are investigating the allegations of electoral …
Nick Clegg has long championed the pupil premium, new money allocated to schools to help boost the educational chances of children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Today’s Guardian reports how he plans in a major speech on Monday to emphasise its importance in improving social mobility in the UK:
Nick Clegg will next week set out long-term plans to break the grip of private schools on the British establishment when he publishes proposals for a surge in social mobility based on the “pupil premium”. … Clegg, launching a two-week drive on social mobility, which he sees as one of the
…
So, here it is in the Guardian, the paper that’s been so critical of the Coalition in general and the Lib Dems in particular, these past two years. The announcement that many of us have wanted to see for as long as we’ve been politically active. That women who take time out of the labour market to care for children or sick relatives will not be penalised in their old age.
This is an example of the Coalition delivering a major benefit to mainly women. And although it’s Iain Duncan Smith who’s quoted in the article, make no mistake, it’s Liberal …
Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
The Liberal Democrat 1997 manifesto said the following:
We will turn the Bank of England into a UK Reserve Bank, free from political interference. We will charge the Bank with keeping inflation low and make it accountable to Parliament for achieving this goal.
Of course after Labour’s landslide victory in that election, one of Gordon Brown’s first decisions as chancellor was to borrow this Lib Dem policy and essentially transfer responsibility for monetary policy to the Bank of England.
Most Labour politicians look back on …
It has been a year since I first joined the Liberal Democrats. In that time, I’ve slowly learnt but a few of the ropes of a Liberal Democrat member and campaigner; time-limited by my studies, I’ve only been able to savour the joys of leafleting and a couple hours of telling last week. Yet the reasons I joined – my personal Liberal beliefs and a feeling that this party is by far and away the best vehicle for Liberals in Britain to carry their beliefs into action – remain as strong as ever.
I firmly believe this party has managed to …
Let's face it, we all need a pick-me-up. And what better way to raise our spirits than free food, lots of time to chat, and, of course, some invigorating campaigning?
This May and June, you're spoilt for choice. We've not one, not two, but three Regional Action Days coming up, in Brent, North Norfolk and Berwick-upon-Tweed.
The days will follow the successful formula followed earlier this year in Colchester, Carshalton and Wallington, and Cambridge. We will meet in the morning for hot drinks, with a morning campaigning session, a simple free lunch, and an afternoon session. Then, as a thank you, the local ...
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Willie Rennie’s first year as Scottish Liberal Democrat Leader (Caron Lindsay)
John Leech MP writes… It is not just the Leader’s job to sell the Pupil Premium (John Leech MP)
Opinion: A letter to a constituent regarding equal marriage (Tom Papworth)
Opinion: A message from Paddy over a decade later (Chris Richards)
Opinion: Clutching at straws (Bill le Breton)
IDAHO - International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia
Market Harborough gets a Star Wars makeover
Urlay Nook Plans
I have my cup final ticket...
BUPA Great Manchester Run 2012
Reform Section 5
George Monbiot ducks the question on the dominance of private schools
Willie Rennie's first year as Scottish Liberal Democrat Leader
The Kinks' Music: Percy
Hot Coalition Politics: how it went
Elliot Bidgood 17th May - 1:42am
alistair 17th May - 12:37am
Richard Dean 16th May - 11:49pm
Nicola Prigg 16th May - 11:21pm
Henry Law 16th May - 10:46pm
…
Opinion: Land Value Tax - an old idea with lots of modern supporters
Mystery of fake leaflets in North Richmond
Which of the five Lib Dem reshuffle options will Nick Clegg pick?
In praise of Councillor Neil Hughes - 56 Up
Opinion: A letter to a constituent regarding equal marriage