Author Archives: Alex Paul

Opinion: A commitment to Trident diverts resources from the real threats to the UK

The ratcheting up of tensions in the last Cold War conflict in recent days has got David Cameron reminiscing about Britain’s own Cold War relic. Writing in the Daily Telegraph this Wednesday, the Prime Minister argues North Korea’s threats of nuclear war demonstrate that “it would be foolish to leave Britain defenceless against a continuing, and growing, nuclear threat.”

When I first heard this it struck me how out-of-date this view seems. As the world has watched the North Korea issue increasingly apocalyptic threats and the U.S. Government respond almost daily by deploying more military hardware

Posted in News | Tagged | 58 Comments

Opinion: Jury duty: in need of some government assistance?

When the trial of Chris Huhne’s ex-wife Vicky Pryce collapsed on Wednesday, the judge felt moved to declare that the jury had, in his opinion, demonstrated “a fundamental deficit in understanding” in the task that was required of them, an occurrence which “in 30 years of criminal trials (he) had never come across”. He was, of course, referring to a list of 10 questions submitted to him by the jury, a list which is now quickly gaining notoriety across the blogosphere and which has prompted one commentator to even label the jury as the worst “in the history of …

Posted in News | 26 Comments

Press regulation – something a liberal party can support?

My reaction to the report of the Leveson Inquiry today was mixed to say the least. On the one hand, any intrusion of Parliament into our free press seems fundamentally illiberal to me – the heavy weight of bureaucracy coming smashing down to dampen our fiercely independent media, which has shown itself more than capable of exposing the very worst excesses in recent times. After all, it was Nick Davies at the Guardian whose reporting exposed the phone-hacking scandal that led to the Leveson Inquiry in the first place. And it was the Daily Telegraph that reported on the …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 19 Comments

Opinion: Lib Dems need to wake up to drastic implications of legal aid cuts

Lib Dem Voice last week featured a brief post on the Coalition’s plans for legal aid reform. But this is an important change that’s been passed with barely a murmur from any Lib Dem MPs, when in fact it strikes at a principle at the heart of the party – civil liberties.

The bill in which this change is contained, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, is currently making its way through the House of Commons. For something that will have fairly drastic effects on many people’s access to justice there has been relatively little talk …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 11 Comments

Opinion: our growing military impotency is restricting our foreign policy

Recent events in the Middle East have demonstrated how the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) is cutting the British military back to the barest of bare bones. In doing so, we risk losing our position as a leading world player, as befits a nation with a veto on the UN Security Council. Instead we are becoming a two-bit regional player, all diplomatic swagger but militarily impotent.

Amidst the criticism of the Government’s evacuation of British citizens from Egypt and Libya, one success story was the deployment of HMS Cumberland, a Royal Navy frigate, to Benghazi in February. Whilst other countries were having …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 28 Comments



Recent Comments

  • User Avatarbcrombie 18th Jun - 4:21am
    Matthew Fair point
  • User AvatarDavid 18th Jun - 2:47am
    Universality of benefits is a political strategy, not an economic one and certainly not one about moral principal. The idea is that if you can...
  • User AvatarJeremy Davis 18th Jun - 12:46am
    All benefits should be taxed, some are and some aren't. Unless all means tested benefits are restricted to one level, with the inevitable cliff-edge, the...
  • User AvatarDavid Allen 18th Jun - 12:31am
    Matthew, I think you are offering an alternative strategy for May - June 2010. You are arguing that we should then have said something like:...
  • User AvatarMatthew Huntbach 17th Jun - 11:54pm
    Simon Hebditch I think this campaign illustrates a problem that I have written about before. The so-called “differentiation” strategy won’t work. As far as the...
  • User AvatarStephen Donnelly 17th Jun - 11:54pm
    The depressing thing about this list is that the criteria for selection seems to be membership of the political - media establishment . The present...
Tue 18th Jun 2013
Wed 19th Jun 2013
Thu 20th Jun 2013
Fri 21st Jun 2013
Sat 22nd Jun 2013
Sun 23rd Jun 2013
Wed 26th Jun 2013
Thu 27th Jun 2013
Sat 29th Jun 2013
17:00
Sun 30th Jun 2013
Mon 1st Jul 2013
Wed 3rd Jul 2013
19:30
Thu 4th Jul 2013
Sat 6th Jul 2013
Sun 7th Jul 2013
Mon 8th Jul 2013
Thu 11th Jul 2013
Sat 13th Jul 2013
Sun 14th Jul 2013