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Tag Archives: jo shaw
Project: Lib Dems coming together, to make politics better
Everyone in politics likes to talk about change, none more so than the Lib Dems (who can forget that fabulous piece of election music…) but do we really practise what we preach? In areas such as diversity, campaigning, and our overall political role, we are frequently found to be behind the times. Our party can still say one thing at one end of a road, and another thing at the other end. Shamefully, we also still have woefully few female MPs, and not a single BME MP.
It’s all well and good discussing our failings, but it is much more …
Opinion: “I don’t like them, you don’t like them… We have to have them”
This Saturday, Conference has the opportunity to show that Liberal Democrats are genuinely committed to achieving gender balance in our own distinctively liberal and democratic way.
Conference will debate an amendment which Jo Shaw and I have put forward to Mark Pack and Paul Tyler’s Lords reform motion. Our amendment builds on the approach taken by our party in the late 1990s, when one-off zipping was used to deliver a gender-balanced cohort of Lib Dem MEPs in the first PR elections to the European Parliament.
In an ideal world we wouldn’t need these kinds of measures. But with just 12% women …
Control orders: ineffective but a blow to freedom
“Ineffective in the fight on terror – but a devastating blow to freedom” – that’s the pithy and accurate summary of control orders by Mary Riddell over in the Daily Telegraph. And the newspaper in which the piece appeared is are reminder of how civil liberty issues cut across the political spectrum in not always expected or neat ways.
Riddell points out,
Within the next few days, Mr Cameron and his deputy must reach agreement on the future of security in Britain and, in particular, on control orders and how long to hold terror suspects without charge. The “car crash” foreseen
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John Kampfner backs the Lib Dems – your LDV reader
As LDV reported early yesterday, former New Statesman editor John Kampfner – author of the fantastic Blair’s Wars – has declared his intention to vote for the Lib Dems at the coming general election, and called on all fellow progressives who might once have voted Labour to join him.
Later in the day, the party issued an email from John to all members and supporters explaining his decision:
Today I launched my pamphlet, Lost labours, with Nick Clegg.
As somebody who has a long involvement with the Labour party, including editing the New Statesman magazine, I have been
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Daily View 2×2: 18 September 2009
2 big stories
Star Wars – the end?
The Guardian and the Times both lead with the news that President Barack Obama has decided to scrap US plans to build missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is seen by Republicans as an attempt to “appease” the Kremlin, which had objected that a missile shield so close to Russia’s borders would threaten its own defences.
President Obama justified the change of plan by citing new intelligence that shows Iran’s long-range missile programme to be far less advanced than previously thought. Instead of being close to developing missiles capable of
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Children added to DNA database daily
Figures uncovered by Jo Shaw, Lib Dem PPC for Holborn and St Pancras, show that DNA samples are being taken from children in Camden at the rate of nearly one a day.
From the BBC:
A freedom of information (FOI) request by the Liberal Democrats showed DNA has been taken from an average of 360 young people in Camden every year since 2000.
The samples, from children as young as 10, have been kept regardless of whether charges were ever brought…
Ms Shaw, Lib Dem parliamentary campaigner for Holborn & St Pancras, made the FOI request to the government’s DNA database
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