Tag Archives: theresa may

Opinion: Stop the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer

By Richard Clare | Published 18th January 2012 - 1:55 pm

Recently Sheffield Hallam student Richard O’Dwyer lost his court case against extradition to the USA for running a website that provided links to websites where users could illegally pirate copyrighted TV material. He will be lodging an appeal with the High Court and he cannot be extradited without the specific permission of the Home Secretary Theresa May.

Richard’s actions were not a crime in the UK because his website did not host the files but rather hosted links to the websites that did host the files, like Google does. Quite simply, it goes against the terms of the Extradition Treaty …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged civil liberties, extradition, nick clegg, richard o'dwyer, usa | 8 Comments

Lynne Featherstone vs Steve Hilton on maternity pay

By Mark Pack | Published 17th October 2011 - 7:25 am

From yesterday’s Observer:

In a wide-ranging interview with the Observer, Featherstone said it was vital the coalition delivered on its family-friendly rhetoric … In a forthright attack on some of the advisers shaping government policy, she criticised the role of Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist tasked with reporting to the prime minister on how to cut regulation on business. Beecroft is understood to have recommended a U-turn on government policies on shared parental leave and flexible working.

The proposals, outlined in a white paper, would allow couples greater freedom to co-ordinate maternity and paternity leave. A separate proposal would make it

…

Posted in News | Also tagged adrian beecroft, eric pickles, george osborne, lynne featherstone, maternity pay, michael gove, nick clegg, olive letwin, paternity leave, rob blackie, steve hilton | 1 Comment

Opinion: Labour’s problem

By George Kendall | Published 13th October 2011 - 2:25 pm

There’s been nothing dramatic about this conference season apart from a few gaffes, but under the surface, I think the Labour conference was significant.

While I enjoyed the Lib Dem conference, I don’t think the journalists did. Whenever I passed a well-known TV presenter, they had a face like thunder. They were looking for factionalism and controversy, but all they found was Lib Dems facing up to a difficult situation with determination and loyalty. That makes dull TV, so they must have been tearing their hair out.

The Tory conference was more entertaining.

Theresa May’s remark about cats, and the more recent

Posted in Conference, Op-eds | Also tagged ed balls, ed miliband, gordon brown, ken clarke, liam fox, tony blair | 35 Comments

Opinion: Theresa May’s cat – why we should be proud of our conference

By Nick Tyrone | Published 8th October 2011 - 2:50 pm

The vast majority of Lib Dems who attended autumn conference would agree with me in saying that it was a success. The mood surrounding the ICC Birmingham was unmistakably positive. The feared factionalism that had been predicted by some never materialised. But what really makes our conference seem amazing, in retrospect, is just how badly the respective Labour and Conservative gatherings have played out.

Labour conference was up first. As the only major party of opposition this should have been a conference to remember for them. A year of riots, phone hacking and a poor economy gave them more ammunition than …

Posted in Conference, Op-eds | Also tagged andrew neil, ed miliband, polly toynbee | 11 Comments

The cat, Theresa May and what the courts really said

By Mark Pack | Published 6th October 2011 - 7:29 pm

Lots has been written about the cat that did, didn’t, did, didn’t help stop someone being deported. The best analysis and summary I’ve seen of what the legal system really decided in the case and on what basis is the one over on the UK Human Rights blog. Well worth a read.

But if you want a short version: the Home Office messed up by failing to follow its own rules. A cynic might suggest the cat provides a rather convenient alibi…

Posted in News | 29 Comments

Theresa May succeeds where Nadine Dorries failed

By Mark Pack | Published 2nd October 2011 - 5:36 pm

As I quipped during Liberal Democrat conference, one of the most popular Conservative MPs with party activists is Nadine Dorries, courtesy of that question at PMQs.

Today Home Secretary Theresa May has shown rather more political skill in making a very similar point. Talking to the Sunday Telegraph, she’s said that “personally” she would “like” to see the Human Rights Act go.

It’s a skilful move because by using that phrasing she isn’t triggering any stories of coalition meltdown. Liberal Democrats saying the Human Rights Act won’t go and Tories saying they personally would like it to go aren’t contradictory …

Posted in News | Also tagged human rights act, nadine dorries | 4 Comments

The Independent View: Social media – no longer an easy target

By Peter Bradwell | Published 26th August 2011 - 11:08 am

Open Rights Group, alongside 9 other human right groups including Amnesty UK, Liberty and Index on Censorship, yesterday wrote to the Home Secretary, Rt Hon Theresa May MP. We were responding to the Prime Minister’s comments that the Government will “look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”.

The letter was written to coincide with a meeting that took place at lunchtime yesterday between the Home Secretary and Twitter, Facebook and Research in Motion, to discuss what that …

Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged amnesty uk, communications capabilities development programme, index on censorship, intercept modernisation programme, liberty, open rights group | Leave a comment

Cross-party smackdown for Home Secretary

By Alex Foster | Published 18th August 2011 - 5:32 pm

A tweet crosses my desk from Cllr Kemp, itself a retweet from LGCPlus journalist Ruth Keeling. It contains a link to the Association of Police Authorities – not a body I am overly familiar with, but it has a fairly self-explanatory title.

The link is directly to a fairly draw-dropping cross-party letter from chairs of Police Authorities around the country who have a fairly serious beef with the Home Secretary’s accuracy in a recent speech.

Theresa May appears to have tried to shore up support for the Conservative policy of elected police commissioners by insinuating that in London, taxpayers got a better service from the elected police chief (and Mayor) Boris Johnson, than in other parts of the country where there are indirectly elected Chairs of Police Authorities instead.

Posted in News | Also tagged british transport police authority, civil nuclear police authority, elected police commissioners, metropolitan police authority, police authority, policing, richard kemp, ruth keeling | 3 Comments

PMQs: Bits start to fall off Cameron’s wagon

By Paul Walter | Published 22nd June 2011 - 7:53 pm

After last week’s Miliband success at Prime Minister’s Questions, this time we started off with Ed Miliband in softly softly mode. He asked about Libya and the service chiefs’ concern about an extended campaign. Displaying a becoming measure of gravitas, he also asked whether the defence review should be revisited in the light of the “Arab Spring” which William Hague has described as more important than 9-11. That’s a good question given that the review didn’t mention Libya, Tunisia or Egypt.

David Cameron said he has been assured by the military grand fromage that we could keep the campaign going as …

Posted in Parliament, PMQs | Also tagged andrew george, angie bray, david cameron, dna samples, ed balls, ed miliband, greg mulholland, iainstewart, john thurso, libya, the speaker | 9 Comments

The Huhne – Oakeshott two-step

By Mark Pack | Published 1st November 2010 - 10:51 pm

Over the weekend we saw two stories, two prominent Liberal Democrats, two public staking out of positions on issues that are the subject of much debate within the coalition in Whitehall:

David Cameron was warned yesterday by a senior Lib Dem not to delay the introduction of legislation banning non-doms from making donations to political parties in Britain. In a sign of strains within the coalition, Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said there was “absolutely no reason” to delay the legislation. (The Guardian)

and

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat energy secretary, reiterated his party’s strong opposition to retaining a policy that he had previously

…

Posted in News | Also tagged chris huhne, matthew oakeshott | 3 Comments

Criminal records regime to be reviewed

By Mark Pack | Published 22nd October 2010 - 1:25 pm

The headlines have been caught by the Home Office’s formal annoucement today of a review into the vetting and barring system:

The review will examine whether the scheme is the best way to protect children and vulnerable people and, if so, how many roles it should cover.

Home Secretary Theresa May suspended the “draconian” scheme in June.

Launched in 2009, critics said it cast too wide a net and risked poisoning the relationship between generations.

Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone said: “While it is vital that we protect the vulnerable, this scheme as it stands is not a proportionate response.

“There should be a presumption

…

Posted in News | Also tagged lynne featherstone, sunita mason, vetting and barring scheme | Leave a comment

The coalition agreement: equalities and Europe

By Mark Pack | Published 28th May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the ninth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

The equalities section continues a theme common throughout the coalition document: if this section was presented to Liberal Democrat conference as the party’s policy in this area, people would be generally pretty happy with it. It doesn’t include everything the party wants, but that is balanced out by it being a list of policies which the government is actually going to put into practice rather than being just a policy motion wish list. Added …

Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged coalition agreement, lynne featherstone | 5 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 28 May 2010

By Helen Duffett | Published 28th May 2010 - 7:00 am

As Big Ben chimes seven, it’s time to celebrate the day 151 years ago, that the famous bell was drawn on a carriage pulled by 16 horses from Whitechapel Bell Foundry to the Palace of Westminster.

To show that cuts in Westminster are nothing new, the cost of the bell was reduced by recycling the metal from the previous, faulty bell:

George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, undertook the casting. According to foundry records, Mears originally quoted a price of £2401 for casting the bell, but this was offset to the sum of £1829 by the metal he was able to reclaim from the first bell so that the actual invoice tendered, on 28th May 1858, was in the sum of £572.

If you’d like to know what Big Ben itself has to say today, you can follow it [him?] on Twitter: @big_ben_clock.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

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

David Laws knows the last digit of Pi and Simon Kaye knows it. Read his (and the broadsheets’) review of David’s defence of Government cuts.
My First Lib-Dem meeting: Boris Pomroy describes his first time – do you still remember yours?

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

Posted in Daily View | Also tagged big ben, boris pomroy, david laws, higher education, id cards, ming campbell, simon kaye, tuition fees, universities | 3 Comments

The coalition agreement: consumers and crime

By Mark Pack | Published 25th May 2010 - 3:31 pm

Welcome to the fourth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

A brief section on consumer protection offers a handful of positive policies – such as strong consumer protection, more pressure on credit card companies to keep their customers fully informed and clearer food labelling – which could have featured in any party’s manifesto. There is also the well meaning but fantastically vague promise to “take forward measures to enhance customer service in the private and public sectors”. Make of that what you will…

The crime …

Posted in News | Also tagged coalition agreement | 9 Comments

Opinon: Equality and the new Coalition

By Alan Pomroy | Published 15th May 2010 - 9:48 am

A glance at the make-up of the new cabinet does not make great reading for equality campaigners. 86% male, 97% white, 59% privately educated and 69% oxbridge educated – hardly a great advert for our diverse and multicultural society, or indeed a state education. In their defence the Lib-Dems and Tories can point to Labour’s final years in office which shows a broadly similar pattern, with the exception of eductional background, in which there has been a definite backward step. Nick Clegg and David Cameron yesterday talking about aspiring to a new way of doing politics – a noble statement …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged coalition, equalities | 26 Comments

Tag Archives: theresa may

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

2 Big Stories

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