It’s three months since Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams first proposed the privatisation of its 83% stake in RBS and 41% in Lloyds by distributing shares to the public. Here’s what my co-editor Mark Pack said about the idea at the time:

Giving everyone shares in the banks: Stephen Williams’s proposals examined (7th March, 2011)
Stephen Williams’s plan is to give shares owned by the government in the banks to everyone on the electoral register. A floor would be set so the shares could not be sold until they had passed the price paid by the government and individuals would only keep any gains made above that floor price. In other words, as the shares rise in price and get sold the government gets back the funds it put into the banks and, if the banks do well, the public gets to profit from that. … there are plenty of questions that the scheme raises, but as this is a proposal designed to help set the political agenda rather than a finely worked out imminent piece of legislation, that is as much a compliment as anything else. It’s a good contribution to the debate. The Facebook page to support this proposal is at www.facebook.com/supportpublicshares.

Toby Fenwick of Portman Capital Partners LLP explained the technical aspects of the scheme further here:

The Independent View: How the Stephen Williams plans for the banks would work (11th March, 2011)

The proposal to distribute the shares to the UK people is innovative, and as the British people will participate without having to provide cash up front, it has fairness at its core. Over time, the scheme is likely to deliver a profit for recipients, over and above the repayment of the £66bn that was spent to rescue the banks in the first place. The press has understandably been focussing on the individual’s profit, with some critics suggesting that the Government should simply sell the stakes to fund additional debt reduction, tax cuts or additional public spending. This is based on the assumption that the amount of money generated by the share sales would be equal under both scenarios. We think this is inaccurate. We believe the act of distributing the shares will significantly increase the total receipts to the taxpayer.

It’s been quite amusing to see the Cleggphobic right-wing press work out how to attack the Lib Dem leader without appearing to be wanting to deprive their readers of the shares the taxpayer has paid for.

As a result, the Telegraph and Mail have largely played the story pretty neutrally. To add to Tory confusions, John Redwood has enthusiastically backed the proposal.

The Guardian has had fewer compunctions in dismissing the idea out-of-hand, instead advocating that the state ‘hold on to these banks and use them to foster a sustainable recovery’: because of course governments can be trusted so much better than individuals. Though even the Grauniad has hedged its bets by opening a poll to ask readers whether they back the plan: so far, there’s a slim 53%-47% majority in favour.

What do Voice readers think of the propoal to give away shares in the state-owned banks? Feel free to show your working in the comments thread, below…

Every Christmas Eve throughout my childhood, a mystery visitor came to the doorstep of our council flat and deposited a bag of children’s books before disappearing into the darkness. S/he never stopped to be recognised or thanked, and we never found out who s/he was, but I still remember the thrill of opening up another consignment of new reading every Christmas.

Even without our mystery benefactor, however, I and my three siblings would have been brought up with books. My father left school at 14 to be apprenticed, and my mother’s formal education was severely damaged by the Nazi occupation of Jersey while she was a young teenager. But they were determined that their children would succeed academically; our noses were kept firmly in our homework, and we managed without a TV until I was in my mid-teens.

My parents had books at home, though a small and somewhat eclectic collection. A 1930’s Enquire Within encyclopaedia contained pictures of steatopygic Hottentots, and athletic German girls exercising with medicine balls. A collected works of Shakespeare brought me to grief when writing A-Level English essays; I hadn’t realised it was a nine-shilling Czechoslovakian print with whole sections of the Bard’s iambic pentameters in the wrong places, possibly even the wrong plays. And there was a copy of Engels’ Anti-Dühring (my parents were members of the Communist Party) which I confess I never found the will to open.

It would have been a bizarre literary menu if it hadn’t been for our public library. All four Perkins children had library cards, and exchanging our library books was a regular and frequent routine.

In short, I was exactly one of those “children from homes living on low incomes developing a passion for reading serious books borrowed from the local library” whose existence Conservative MP John Redwood recently chose to doubt.

A report from Oxford suggests that reading books is the only out-of-school activity for 16-year-olds that is linked to getting a managerial or professional job in later life. If every child is to have equal access to professional opportunities, that means equal access to books, and to public libraries. Redwood’s suggestion that school and university facilities could fill gaps created by public library closures would achieve the exact opposite, depriving students of study materials, while reducing the availability to the public of books to browse and borrow – a recipe for social immobility.

Lorna Spenceley blogs here.

I’d already highlighted how (ex) Conservative Town Councillor Robin Smith was standing against John Redwood (see more details in the Reading Chronicle).

As pointed out in the comments, there is in fact a second Conservative running against John Redwood – Mark Ashwell, who has criticised John Redwood for being too right wing.

The Lib Dem candidate is Prue Bray.

That was one of two key votes where Parliament had had the chance to clean up its act before media stories and public outcry forced it to do so. The other was about whether or not MPs’ expenses should be susceptible to Freedom of Information requests. There was an attempt to change the law to keep them secret, via a Bill introduced by former Conservative whip David Maclean. As with the other vote, the bulk of the blame for the outcome rests with Labour MPs, but given David Cameron’s very strident and personal rhetoric, it’s worth taking a look at quite what his own party’s record is beyond just David Maclean’s role.

This time there were 19 Conservative MPs who supported keeping their expense claims secret (18 who voted plus 1 teller).

And what’s been the fate of those 19?

Not done some of their careers any harm as 7 out of 19 are now Conservative frontbenchers, including four whips:

• Peter Atkinson (Conservative Whip)
• Simon Burns (Conservative Whip)
• James Duddridge (Conservative Whip)
• Julian Lewis (Shadow Defence Minister)
• Bob Neill (Shadow Local Government Minister)
• John Randall (Conservative Assistant Chief Whip)
• David Ruffley (Shadow Home Affairs Minister)

By the way, praise should be given where it’s due and whilst I’m not normally a fan of John Redwood, he along with James Clappison, Philip Hollobone, John Maples and Richard Shepherd, should be congratulated for having joined Liberal Democrat MPs and a handful of Labour rebels in voting to have freedom of information rules apply to MPs’ expenses in that vote.