Tag Archives: meral ece

Opinion: What price democracy in the Lib Dems?

Over the past 21 months I have had many moments when I have felt close to despair about the behaviour of our parliamentarians. Sometimes, like voting in favour of tuition fees, they can rightly point to the Coalition Agreement – endorsed overwhelmingly – as Nick Clegg observed at the time – by a North Korean like Special Conference. Other times, like voting against party policy on Legal Aid and Welfare Reform – there is no such defence. Last night calls into question the fundamental values and principles of our party, not just in terms of flying in the face of …

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Lord John Sharkey’s maiden speech

LDV has been bringing you the words of our new representatives as they speak for the first time in the Houses of Parliament. We bring you maiden speeches from new MPs and new members of the House of Lords. You can find an archive of all maiden speeches we’ve published by clicking this link. If you think we’ve missed someone, do please .

Lord Sharkey: My Lords, it is a great privilege and a great honour to join your Lordships’ House. It has also been a great pleasure because of the immense kindness shown …

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Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece’s maiden speech

In recent weeks, LDV has been bringing its readers copies of our new MPs’ first words in the House of Commons, so that we can read what is being said and respond. You can find all of the speeches in this category with this link. Alert LDV reader and bureaucratic blogger Mark Valladares, himself a husband to a Lib Dem Peer, our party’s president Ros Scott, has drawn to our attention that we have more new parliamentarians in the Other Place, who are also making maiden speeches. So today, Baroness Hussein-Ece’s words are reproduced below.

Baroness Hussein-Ece: My …

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Meral Ece appointed to Equality and Human Rights Commission

Congratulations to Cllr Meral Ece (Islington) on her appointment as a commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Operation Black Vote reports:

A race advisor to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, Ece has her hands full having been handed special responsibility for race, gender and religion on the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

Speaking to OBV Blog, Ece said: “I’m really happy to be appointed. It’s a great opportunity and challenge. It’s important to put party politics aside and work to have a strong, healthy organisation.

“We need a strong regulatory body, to work towards a society that is

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Daily View 2×2: 19 November 2009

Good morning, and welcome to Daily View. Today, in 1990, Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy. It’s the birthday of American President and pizza-loving cat James Garfield.

Today is also both International Men’s Day and International Toilet Day.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here’s are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

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Cometh the hour, cometh PR?

It’s quiet in LDV Towers this afternoon as all the responsible editors have day job responsibilties.

We can always tell when we’re not talking about something our readers want to have their say on, because you kindly have your say on it anyway on whatever was the top post.

And today’s topic is clearly Call Me Dave’s speech on parliamentary reform, in which he sets out a series of Lib Dem policy proposals and pretends they’re new.  There’s no zealot like a recently converted zealot, but hang on a minute, Dave?  Power to the people?  Small government?  All of that is Liberalism 101, the first chapter from An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalism.  We’ve long held it dear, and we simply don’t believe you when we hear it from your lips.

As Lynne Featherstone said earlier today on her blog

There is stuff that Cameron’s said which I agree with – as you would expect given that many of the ‘ideas’ he puts forward in today’s Guardian are long-standing Liberal Democrat policies! Fixed-term parliaments, reducing of the power of the executive, cutting the number of MPs, devolving power to councils and empowering individuals. Transparency and accountability – definitely. Shame Cameron has had to be dragged kicking and screaming on these. But – to be fair – at least he is going out there.

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