Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Advert

Author Archives: Caron Lindsay

Poverty and homelessness figures show how children are being let down

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 24th January 2018 - 8:55 am

The End Child Poverty Coalition reveals in a report today that in some parts of the country, more than half our children are living in poverty. What a way to treat the next generation!

Lib Dem Education Spokesperson Layla Moran said:

This is an appalling indictment of a Tory Party that are failing to protect the most vulnerable in society.

The gulf between children born in the richest and poorest families is widening, but Theresa May is more preoccupied with the gulf in her cabinet over Brexit.

When we fail our children like this we fail as a society. The government must take action.

Cuts to social security, benefits for people in and out of work and low pay push more and more families into poverty. The roll-out of Universal Credit sees the poorest families lose over a four-figure sum every year. And let’s not forget the benefits freeze – effectively cutting benefits as prices increase. The Benefit Cap was a bad enough idea when it was introduced under the Coalition but the minute we were off the scene the Tories cut it even further. And what is even more terrible about that is that it’s applied directly to the housing cost so that people fall into rent arrears and face eviction and homelessness.

That would explain why figures in Scotland showed that 10% more children were in temporary accommodation last year than the year before. It is absolutely heartbreaking to think of those young lives in turmoil.

Imagine being 8 and being made homeless and having to stay in temporary accommodation, maybe a Bed and Breakfast, with lots of strangers around, with your entire family in one room which is unlikely to be in great shape.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged homelessness, layla moran and poverty | 12 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #503

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 21st January 2018 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 503rd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (14 – 20 January, 2018), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

Continue reading »

Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment

Three interesting facts about this year’s Scottish Liberal Democrats’ Spring Conference

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 21st January 2018 - 10:25 am

For various reasons, the Scottish Liberal Democrats have been later off the mark than usual at announcing the details of their Spring Conference. However the cat is well and truly out of the bag now. For the first time since 2008, the party is heading to Aviemore to the Macdonald resort in the highland village.

It’s a great venue that can be combined with a family break. I absolutely love it there.

It’s in April

You wouldn’t normally expect to have a Conference in April because there is usually some sort of election to get ready for. For the first time since 2013, there are no scheduled elections this year, so Conference is taking place both in April and after the Easter holidays, on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st April.

There’s an Access Fund

The Federal Party has been running a Conference Access Fund to help people with the costs of attending Conference for the last few years.

It’s great to see this now being done by the Scottish Party, too. Members can donate to the fund although they can’t do it in the same transaction as they register as you can with the Federal Party.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged Scottish liberal democrat conference | 5 Comments

Good news for disabled people as Government gives up fighting PIP decision – maybe

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 21st January 2018 - 8:55 am

Good news slipped out in a written ministerial statement on a Friday afternoon. New Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Esther McVey announced that the Government would not continue its appeal of a High Court judgement that its changes to entitlements to Personal Independence Payments for those whose mental ill health affected their ability to get around were unlawful. Ms McVey said:

On 21^st December 2017 the High Court published its judgment in the judicial review challenge against regulation 2(4) of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) (Amendment) Regulations 2017 S.I. 2017/194. The Regulations reversed the effect of the Upper Tribunal judgment in MH.

I wish to inform the House that, after careful consideration, I have decided not to appeal the High Court judgment. My Department will now take all steps necessary to implement the judgment in MH in the best interests of our claimants, working closely with disabled people and key stakeholders over the coming months.

These regulations went through Parliament last March. Liberal Democrat peers did their best to stop them and would have succeeded if Labour had voted with them. As I wrote at the time:

Not for the first time, you have to wonder what the point of the Labour Party in Parliament is. Should they not just go and sit on the Government benches?

LDV reader Matt wrote last year about how he would lose his support for mobility when he moved from Disability Living Allowance to Personal Independence Payments and the life-limiting impact that would have for him:

I hardly ever go outdoors, I tend to only go out when it is for a necessity like going to the doctor, psychologist or hospital and then I need my partner or family member to accompany me to keep me safe and to intervene in the event of me having a psychological episode. I can on very rare occasions manage a trip out to the countryside as long as it is a wide open space and there is nobody else about and I can see any perceived threats well in advance and I am able to escape and get back to the car or home quickly. I have become totally disengaged from society; I cut all ties with friends and former work colleagues many years ago. When I am outdoors, if I am confronted with a possible social interaction my brain starts racing at a million miles an hour. I convince myself they are going to ask me personal questions which will cause me distress. My brain starts running through conversations before they have taken place, it becomes sheer manic and panic, trust me when I say it is pure trauma. When I get home, the only way I can deal with this “psychological distress” is to start self harming and deflect my emotional trauma into a physical trauma as a distraction to escape my thoughts. It is hell.

I worry about these changes to disability benefits, not just for myself, but for people like me who suffer from debilitating mental health disorders who rely on the assistance of others and the welfare state in order to try and live an independent life.

So why do I say that this is good news….maybe. Simply because I don’t trust the Tories with any aspect of our social security system. What will happen now is that all 164,000 claims affected by this ruling will be reviewed. By rights what should happen is that those affected will get their payments – and backdated, too.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged department of work and pensions, esther mcvey, high court and personal independence payment | 3 Comments

How you can support LDV’s #timetotalk Day posts

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 20th January 2018 - 8:55 am

You can’t be truly free if you are constantly fighting illness without the support that you need. That is why Liberal Democrats are so passionate about making sure that people have the right mental health support.

For five years during the coalition years, Liberal Democrat ministers were at the helm of pushing through positive change. Norman Lamb, as the Minister responsible, totally got it. Of the many things he did, the Crisis Care Concordat was a really good example of helping people when they most needed it .

He also fought for parity of esteem between physical and mental health.

In doing this he had the full backing of Nick as Deputy Prime Minister who made sure that he put as much funding as he could into mental health.

What I liked most about Norman’s many interviews on this subject, though, was his forthrightness. Rather than pretend everything was fantastic, he always said that what was happening wasn’t good enough and what he wanted to change.

Every year on the first Thursday in February, Time to Change hold Time to Talk Day. It’s aimed at ending the stigma around mental health and enabling people to be more open about the impact that mental ill health has on them.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged #timetotalk and mental health | 6 Comments

Jo Swinson debates ethics and artificial intelligence – and suggests the Lovelace Oath

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 19th January 2018 - 1:30 pm

This week, Jo Swinson held a Westminster Hall debate on ethics and artificial intelligence. While recognising the huge advantages of AI, there are some ethical challenges we need to do something about. Jo looked at this from a very liberal perspective, as you would imagine. Here are some of the highlights of her speech. You can read the whole debate here.

I would like to start with the story of Tay. Tay was an artificial intelligence Twitter chatbot developed by Microsoft in 2016. She was designed to mimic the language of young Twitter users and to engage and entertain millennials through casual and playful conversation.

“The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets” the company boasted. In reality, Tay was soon corrupted by the Twitter community. Tay began to unleash a torrent of sexist profanity. One user asked,“Do you support genocide?”,to which Tay gaily replied, “I do indeed.”

Another asked,“is Ricky Gervais an atheist?”
The reply was,“ricky gervais learned totalitarianism from adolf hitler, the inventor of atheism”.

Those are some of the tamer tweets. Less than 24 hours after her launch, Microsoft closed her account. Reading about it at the time, I found the story of Tay an amusing reminder of the hubris of tech companies. It also reveals something darker: it vividly demonstrates the potential for abuse and misuse of artificial intelligence technologies and the serious moral dilemmas that they present.

And then there was this:

How should we react when we hear than an algorithm used by a Florida county court to predict the likelihood of criminals reoffending, and therefore to influence sentencing decisions, was almost twice as likely to wrongly flag black defendants as future criminals?

And more:

…there is a female sex robot designed with a “frigid” setting, which is programmed to resist sexual advances. We have heard about a beauty contest judged by robots that did not like the contestants with darker skin. A report by PwC suggests that up to three in 10 jobs in this country could be automated by the early 2030s. We have read about children watching a video on YouTube of Peppa Pig being tortured at the dentist, which had been suggested by the website’s autoplay algorithm. In every one of those cases, we have a right to be concerned. AI systems are making decisions that we find shocking and unethical. Many of us will feel a lack of trust and a loss of control.

So what should be the key principles in our approach to these challenges?

I will focus on four important ethical requirements that should guide our policy making in this area: transparency, accountability, privacy and fairness. I stress that the story of Tay is not an anomaly; it is one example of a growing number of deeply disturbing instances that offer a window into the many and varied ethical challenges posed by advances in AI.

How do they work?

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged artificial intelligence, Jo Swinson and science | 6 Comments

A wander around the opinion polls

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 19th January 2018 - 10:23 am

Lib Dems are still waiting for a bounce in the opinion polls. So far this year, we’ve had Westminster voting intentions at 6, 7 and 9%.

However, there are some very interesting things coming out of current polling generally.

Scotland

There was a very interesting YouGov Scottish poll this week which showed that we are not just hanging in there, but making progress as the SNP and Labour slip since the last poll in October Lib Dems show a slight rise in voting intention for Westminster and Holyrood constituency and regional votes. The Tories are holding their own at Westminster, despite a deeply unpopular (floating at around -50 across the two polls) leader. Ruth Davidson is Scotland’s most popular leader with an approval rating of +15, yet her party has lost ground since the Holyrood elections. While they have gained slightly in this poll to the mid twenties, they achieved 31% two years ago. Perhaps that’s because people see Scottish Conservative MPs troop meekly into the voting lobbies behind Theresa May rather than stand up for Scotland’s interests, particularly with regard to the devolution aspects of the EU Withdrawal Bill.

Jeremy Corbyn is a massive loser in this recent poll. He was +20 in October and now he’s -3. Perhaps his Brexit stance is not going down so well in a country that predominantly voted to Remain.

Scotland is neutral on its first minister who continues with a neutral approval rating. It’s only a couple of years since she was given a rock star welcome everywhere she went.

Scottish Lib Dems are getting some attention in the media on housing, health, justice and our stance on Brexit. There is still a lot of work to be done and this first non-election year since 2013 provides a good opportunity for the party to develop a longer term strategy. Willie Rennie held a strategy day with key party stakeholders in November which was described by an observer from south of the border as one of the most constructive party events they had ever seen.

Referenda

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged opinion polls | 45 Comments

William Wallace of Saltaire on singing at the Coronation

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 14th January 2018 - 9:46 pm

You think you know everything there is to know about our parliamentarians’ backgrounds and then, all of a sudden, you find out something new.

That happened to me tonight as I watched the BBC1 programme about The Coronation. For me, the big “wow” moment wasn’t watching the Queen chatting away about her big day, or her obvious fascination with her crowns. It was when they showed 4 former choristers who sang on that day that I thought – that looks like William Wallace, our Peer and regular LDV contributor. Keeley Hawes, narrating, then said their names, and one of them was William Wallace. He was on the front row. He was a pupil at the Westminster Abbey Choir School.

Wikipedia provided the final confirmation. And the wonders of the internet also told me that he had spoken to ITV about the experience back in 2015 when the Queen became the longest-reigning monarch.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged the coronation and william wallace | 3 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #502

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 14th January 2018 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 502nd weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (7-13 January, 2018), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

Unsurprisingly, the subject of Tim Farron and his interview on Wednesday dominates.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

Continue reading »

Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment

How we could exit from Brexit – a detailed plan

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 14th January 2018 - 3:15 pm

It seems like every day I’m having conversations with people who aren’t involved in politics who are resigned to the idea that we’re stuck with leaving the European Union.

When I tell them that we aren’t, and that the dangerous folly of Brexit could be stopped, they get very interested indeed.

I can’t be alone in that.

Just before Christmas, Parliament debated the Liberal Democrat amendment on a referendum on the final deal. To go along with that, the party published a timetable of how that could happen.

April 2018: Royal Assent given to the EU Withdrawal Bill

April 2018: Government introduces a Referendum on the Deal Bill, in line with the stipulations set out in the amendment:

May 2018: Royal Assent given to Referendum on the Deal Bill

September 2018: 12 week referendum campaign begins, with vote scheduled for early December. (European Parliament will also have a vote in this time and European Council must approve the deal)

December 2018: Referendum concluded, and Parliamentary vote held. In the case of a vote to remain in the EU, Article 50 would be withdrawn (Lord Kerr, author of Article 50 has stated this is a possibility).

Vince said at the time:

This potential timeline to a public vote shows Brexit is not a done deal – it can be stopped, but only with the approval of the British public.

Support is growing for a public vote on whatever botched Brexit deal the Conservatives manage to get from the EU.

It’s time the Conservatives – and the Labour leadership – listened.

Ultimately, the Liberal Democrats don’t believe the government can negotiate any deal which is better than the one we currently have as a member of the EU.

That is why we will campaign to remain in the EU in any future referendum.

The EU Withdrawal Bill can still be amended by the House of Lords, so that option is still live.

Also share with people that the author of Article 50 is very clear that we can revoke it.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged brexit, exit from brexit and lord ker revoking Article 50 | 33 Comments

What do you think of the revamped Members’ area of party website?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 14th January 2018 - 12:15 pm

The digital geniuses at Party HQ have been giving a New Year Spring clean to the Members’ Area of the party website.

If you’ve never had a wander around there, why not make yourself a cup fo tea and go and have a wee look.

There’s all sorts of information there. For a start, I realised how outdated my profile was and changed it.

The site is organised into sections for conference, policy, campaigning and training, If you’re interested in what’s going on in the party, you can find committee reports there.

The training section is brilliant, with all sorts of webinars and training presentations. The old OSKAR (Online Skills and Resources) is becoming Lib Dem Learning, which makes a lot more sense and there will be a whole load more information there in the months ahead.

Anyone who has any access to any party data needs to keep an eye on their new responsibilities under GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulations. There’s some very important information that every single local party executive will need to read and act upon in the next few weeks which you can find here.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged internal party organisation and party website | 2 Comments

Towards more thoughtful, respectful debate

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 8th January 2018 - 7:22 pm

As the new term starts today, the LDV team has been discussing how we can encourage more thoughtful, respectful debate on the site. We are aware that many people tend to stay away because they feel that they are not given a fair hearing and their concerns are belittled, particularly on articles relating to women’s equality. Our comments threads are therefore lacking in diversity. If women and other often marginalised groups of people feel that they can’t give voice to their opinion on this site, then we need to change things.

We want our comments threads to be enriching, engaging and …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | 53 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #501

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th January 2018 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 501st weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (31 December 2017 – 6 January 2018), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

Continue reading »

Posted in Best of the blogs | Leave a comment

The next time you think about saying “But what about the men?”, read this

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th January 2018 - 2:52 pm

Almost every time an article appears on the internet highlighting discrimination against women and girls, there is likely to be at least one man derailing the discussion by saying “but what about the men?”

Believe me, as a woman who dares to express her opinion on the internet, I come up against this sort of attitude a lot.

Does the same thing happen when someone highlights problems faced by men? I certainly haven’t been aware of it.

However, this week blogger Jessica Eaton wrote a thought-provoking piece about the different reactions she has had when running projects aimed at helping men and women.

Five years ago, she and her family set up a charity aimed at supporting adult men with addiction and mental health problems. They have done some amazing work in that time. When she writes about it, does she get abuse for not doing work for women?

I can’t tell you about the hundreds of messages or tweets we get asking ‘what about women?’ – because it’s never happened.

I don’t have any stories about the times we got sent a tonne of abuse when we conducted research with general public in the community about male mental health stigma – because it’s never happened.

I can switch over to the TEF twitter account right now and write literally anything about men and nothing bad will ever happen. Our Facebook page has thousands of followers and we never get threats, abuse or whataboutery.

That’s great and as it should be.

But what about when she does stuff aimed at helping women, including the research for her PhD thesis which is about victim blaming of women and girls in the media and other studies aimed at supporting women who have been victims of violence? That’s a completely different story.

I did one study where there was a free text question at the end and a whopping 9% of respondents chose to use that box to criticise me for not researching men. I say whopping because the free text box didn’t even ask them a question about that and 63 people still managed to use the box to whack in some ‘whataboutery’.

Not only that but a further 14% (over 90 people) left comments that were just plain nasty or abusive. One guy told me that my work was shit and he hopes I fail my PhD. And then left his full name and job title. He was an academic at a university. In my field. He even put some kisses on.

Why does she think this is happening?

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured, feminism, jessica eaton and whataboutery | 46 Comments

Vince: Toby Young appointment “completely unsustainable”

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th January 2018 - 1:05 pm

Theresa May admitted today that she had been unaware of Toby Young’s appalling comments before his appointment to the board of the new Office for Students. The Guardian reports:

In her first public statement about Young’s appointment, the prime minister said she was not aware of Young’s history of making sexist and homophobic remarks when he got the job and that, if he were to use language like that again, he would be sacked.

But she signalled that she was happy for him to remain on the board of the new Office for Students, even though the opposition and the main teaching union, the National Education Union, have said his previous outbursts make him unsuitable for the post.his previous outbursts make him unsuitable for the post.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged toby young and vince cable | 10 Comments

Willie Rennie to run almost 5 marathons in 4 days to raise funds for mental health charity

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 7th January 2018 - 11:25 am

As far as we know, Scotland doesn’t have any elections this May.

Willie Rennie isn’t going to be slacking though.

Over the Easter weekend, he’ll be running the 117 miles of the Fife Coastal Path which runs from the Firth of Forth to the Forth of Tay. He hopes to raise £1000 at least for the Scottish Association for Mental Health a Scottish mental health charity. This reflects his personal and political priorities of securing better mental health care.

That 117 miles is not far off being 5 marathons so …

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged charity, fundraising, mental health, running and willie rennie | 3 Comments

Review: LGBT+ Lib Dems’ Winter magazine

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 5th January 2018 - 1:30 pm

January’s stark and miserable darkness was made slightly more bearable yesterday with the arrival of the bright Winter issue of LGBT+ Lib Dems’ magazine.

Plus, as the organisation is colloquially known, produces a 16 page glossy magazine for its members twice a year.

This issue is packed full of interesting features. There are news reports about the Scottish Government’s apology to and pardons for past prosecutions of gay and bisexual men, about the 20th Trans Day of Remembrance and on Intersex awareness.

One way of raising awareness of issues is to ask your MP to support an Early Day Motion, which is kind of like a House of Commons petition. There’s a selection of LGBT+ Friendly ones to highlight.

There’s a review of Lynne Featherstone’s brilliant book about how she pushed through same sex marriage and an opinion piece on why we really shouldn’t call it equal marriage.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged lgbt+ lib dems | 3 Comments

WATCH: Vince Cable on LBC talking homelessness, brexit, being a puritan on drugs, knife crime and Nick’s knighthood

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 3rd January 2018 - 1:32 pm

In case you missed it yesterday, here is Vince Cable’s start of year phone in with Nick Ferrari

He got the chance to talk about the scandal of so many young people sleeping rough while there were so many empty properties. He highlighted the role of Universal Credit in causing homelessness among young people. He also talked about the need to build more houses.

Nick Ferrari actually raised the issue of homelessness among veterans which led to a discussion of how veterans with mental ill health don’t get the support and treatment they need.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged brexit, housing, lbc, railways and vince cable | 34 Comments

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #500

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 31st December 2017 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 500th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (24-30 December, 2017), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.And how amazing was that to have the 500th edition fall on Hogmanay! Here’s to the next 500. The whole point of this is to showcase the best in Lib Dem blogging.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

Continue reading »

Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment

LDV’s top 12 posts of 2017 – Number 3

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 31st December 2017 - 4:00 pm

We’re back to the party leadership with our 3rd most popular post.

#3 Ed Davey MP writes: My family, my party

Everyone assumed Ed Davey was going to run for the party leadership. Rumours abounded that his campaign team was already in place. So when he emailed me early one morning to ask if there was space for a piece from him, I agreed, with a soon-to-be-regretted flippant comment about what it might be about.

I was a bit mortified when the copy actually came in.

I’ve come back to Westminster more determined than ever to campaign hard for the party Emily and I both love – but not to campaign to lead the party at this moment.

When Tim resigned, I assumed Jo would go for it, and I would have supported her. She gave understandable reasons why she didn’t – so here are my reasons, some similar to Jo’s.

Emily and I met through the party. I was chairing a Housing Policy Working Group and she was a member, as a social housing lawyer. What could be more romantic?

Our joy this weekend was seeing our two children play together. And when you understand that John (aged 9) is severely disabled, you will appreciate that seeing our 3 year old daughter make him laugh is quite special.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged LDV top 12 of 2017 | 1 Comment

WATCH: Vince Cable’s New Year message – Liberal Democrats are the party who stand up for the underdog

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 30th December 2017 - 9:37 pm

Vince’s New Year message is a little different. It’s another of these W1A style videos where he goes completely off piste from the remarks prepared for him by his team. Which would never, ever happen in real life, obviously.

He concentrates on the principles that drive the Liberal Democrats, challenging vested interests and standing up for the underdog.

He’ll be wanting to get over in the next year how the Liberal Democrats have so often been right and ahead of our time. 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of the formation of the Liberal Democrats and in that time we’ve led on issues like LGBT rights, the Iraq war, environmental issues, standing up for the rights of Hong Kong citizens and calling for humanitarian intervention in Bosnia. We should also remember that Vince was the lone political voice warning about the dangers of the credit crunch.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged featured, new year messages 2018 and vince cable | 15 Comments

15 year old Lib Dem Jess Insall’s campaign gets support from Scottish Government

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 29th December 2017 - 1:14 pm

Last month, 15 year old Scottish Young Liberal Jess Insall successfully proposed a motion at Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference which called for gender neutral school uniforms, a simple concept that would make a huge difference to the culture in our schools. Jo Swinson backed the motion and told Conference that if uniform stopped girls doing cartwheels, then it was the wrong uniform.

Today the Scottish Government has expressed support for this move, as reported in iNews.

Schools across the country should consider making uniforms gender-neutral rather than forcing girls to wear skirts and boys to wear trousers, the Scottish Government has said.

Responding to a campaign led by a 15-year-old schoolgirl, a spokesman said ministers agreed that boys and girls “should be treated equally” when it came to the uniforms they wore. “It’s not about dictating the way anyone dresses”

The development comes after teenager Jess Insall successfully passed a motion in favour of the move at the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference earlier this year.

Jess is quoted in the article:

“It isn’t saying that everyone has to wear the same uniform – it’s saying that whatever the uniform is, there can’t be any difference between genders,” she told i. “Instead of saying boys have to wear trousers and girls have to wear skirts, schools can say pupils can choose between skirts or trousers. “It’s not about dictating the way anyone dresses. ‘Gender-neutral’ can be quite an alienating term, but all it really means is not treating people differently because of their gender.”

She also talked about the practical disadvantages of strict gender rules:

Continue reading »

Posted in News | Tagged gender neutral school uniforms, jess insall, Jo Swinson and Scotland | 5 Comments

Why you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers about the Lib Dems

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 27th December 2017 - 9:35 pm

It’s the annual “Trash the Lib Dems” day in the national press with gloomy analyses in both the Times and the Guardian. When the papers do SWOT analyses of us, they do tend to omit the strengths and opportunities and focus on the weaknesses and threats. We can quite often do that about ourselves, too, and talk ourselves down. There is no doubt that we face some pretty intense challenges in 2018, but there are signs of a plan coming together to meet them and also that the political environment is changing.

The Guardian tells us that we are facing a “fight for our political future”. People have been writing us off for pretty much the last century and we are still hanging in there. I’ve lost count of the times in my political lifetime that we have been told we are doomed right through from the disastrous election of 1979 to the present day.

Jessica Elgot talked to senior grassroots figures, academics and anonymous party sources about the party’s future. They cite our low poll rating, low staff morale, the departure of senior staff and the enormity of the political task ahead to regain seats as the main challenges facing us. They didn’t mention some key positives such as Vince being absolutely everywhere. He is doing so many broadcast interviews, and going to places you wouldn’t expect, like Nigel Farage’s show where he did a good job. He is breaking out of the echo chamber and positioning himself where he needs to be when the Brexit thing falls apart.

The Times has an article with similar themes (£) suggesting that Vince has failed to spark the Lib Dems into life.

Sir Vince, 74, has struggled to turn his political experience into increased support for his party, which is polling at about 7 per cent, according to YouGov.

An attempt by Sir Vince to encourage the party’s 11 other MPs and 100 peers to engage with each other to devise fresh policy ideas has yielded lacklustre proposals so far.

The “clusters” initiative, which refers to grouped areas of policy, has been nicknamed the “clusterf***s”. One insider remarked: “Like most things Lib Dem, there’s a lot of talking, but nothing ever comes out of it.”

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured, liberal democrats and vince cable | 84 Comments

Sick absence figures reveal extent of strains on NHS staff as 45 million hours lost in Scotland alone

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 27th December 2017 - 12:53 pm

Last year, my husband spent 51 days in hospital. He received excellent care from compassionate and skilled staff at what was an absolutely terrifying time for us.

That experience gave us an insight into the strains and stresses that the NHS faces. The most common refrain from staff was that it was so stressful and the Winter hadn’t even started yet.

He spent a just over a month in a medical ward in our local hospital and a further three weeks in a specialist centre in our nearest city. On only one occasion in the whole 51 days did I see staff going home when they were actually supposed to. There were times when I was shocked to see the same members of staff on their 5th or even 6th 12 hour shift in a week. One day I arrived at the hospital in the afternoon to see a health care assistant who had been on night shift the previous night. Because the ward was so under-staffed, she had gone home, slept for a couple of hours and come back in for the busy stretch around lunch and dinner.

During their shifts, the nurses did not stop. They were dealing with multiple stressful situations at a time. They were stretched to the limit.

Obviously a situation like that is not sustainable. It’s going to affect people’s health in some way or another. Alex Cole-Hamilton now has evidence of that.

He revealed that more than 45 million hours have been lost by Scottish NHS boards to staff ill health during the past four years and said the immense pressure staff are under could account for rates rising.

Data obtained from health boards under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that the number of hours lost to illness increased from 11.4 million hours in 2014-15 to 13.1 million hours in 2016-17, with the number rising year on year.

Continue reading »

Posted in News and Op-eds | Tagged Alex Cole-Hamilton, health and Scotland | 1 Comment

Lib Dems highlight plight of homeless young people

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 27th December 2017 - 9:45 am

45000 people. It’s the size of a small town. It’s also the number of young people presenting as homeless to local authorities across the whole of Britain. The wonderful people in the Lib Dem research team have uncovered this in a series of freedom of information requests which revealed the number of 18-24 year olds who presented themselves to councils as homeless or at risk of homelessness, who were subsequently assessed under the Housing Act, and who were then accepted as statutorily homeless in the year to September 2017.

You can see a full breakdown of the figures here. Notable points include that four of the top five areas for young people being declared statutorily homeless are in Scotland where this is devolved to the Scottish Government.

This was sadly all too predictable as soon as George Osborne announced cuts to Housing Benefit for young people. He did this at the first chance he had, just after the 2015 election when he didn’t have Nick Clegg there to stop him any more. Vince Cable made the point about benefits cuts in his comments:

These figures reveal the hidden homelessness crisis affecting thousands of young people across the country.

It is a national scandal that so many youngsters are struggling to find a permanent place to call home.

Young people should be hopeful and looking to the future. Yet instead thousands will be spending this Christmas without a roof over their head, worrying about where they will sleep at night.

The situation is being made worse by the Government’s heartless decision to strip young people of housing benefit.

The government must reverse cuts to housing benefit for young people, invest more in preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place and build more genuinely affordable homes.

The utterly heartbreaking thing is that these figures don’t even include all the young people where a final decision was made, not the full number who applied and may have been turned down.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged homelessness, vince cable and young people | 24 Comments

Will Nick Clegg be getting a knighthood at the weekend?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 26th December 2017 - 10:28 am

The papers are full of reports that The Cleggster is getting a knighthood in the New Year Honours. The right wing tabloids in particular are particularly enraged at this award for an “arch remainer.” The Mail even devotes a separate article to the question of whether Miriam Gonzalez Durantez will use the title “Lady Clegg” to give them another reason to remind readers of their twin obsessions with her being Spanish and not using what they refer to as her “married name.” The fact that she just has a name, not a married name, is lost on them as usual.

It’s much better for them, of course, to obsess on these things rather than her expertise on international and EU trade which leads her often to demolish the Government’s handling of Brexit as she did in this article in the Summer.

The best thing this government could do to appease the serious concerns of UK business leaders on Brexit is to rely on the business leaders themselves. This means no more toying with extravagant and ill-founded ideas. And it also means seeking an interim arrangement with the EU to continue benefiting from the single market and the customs union for as long as is needed until an alternative EU-UK deal is reached, as business leaders have proposed. This can be done by placing the UK into the European Economic Area on a temporary basis, and/or looking for an ad hoc arrangement extending the current status quo. Neither the extreme Brexiteers nor the extreme remainers like this option, but it is the only sensible thing to do right now. It allows the UK government to win time. And time is what the government needs – to get the skills it misses, to draft proposals it has not even started to draft yet and to negotiate with the serenity that the high economic interests at stake deserve.

An interim deal is the only way to deal with the ticking clock Michael Barnier hears because, as any trade negotiator knows, there is nothing worse than negotiating against time. Except for negotiating against time in pursuit of delusional and unrealistic ambitions.

But back to Nick. We won’t know if the knighthood story has any basis in fact, or is just something that the Brexiteer tabloids using to fill their pages in the post Christmas lull.

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged new year honours 2018 and nick clegg | 102 Comments

Merry Christmas to you all

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 25th December 2017 - 12:00 am

The LDV team wishes all of you the most peaceful, healthy, happy festive time.

We send our love and support to those of you who face Christmas for the first time without someone you love. A loss that is acute every day can feel especially intolerable amongst all the jollity.

We should also think of those whose lives are a constant struggle with poverty and those who put so much time and effort into helping them. I’m thinking of those at welfare rights organisations and charities who prepare and represent them at appeals, of the food bank volunteers who try to make …

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured and Merry christmas | 8 Comments

Daisy Cooper attacks sexist Bible stories for girls book

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 24th December 2017 - 1:55 pm

I was taken the other day by this tweet from Daisy Cooper, who was unimpressed by a book she found in a branch of The Works:

SERIOUSLY @TheWorksStores?? When did the Bible go pink for girls, w/ only stories of angels, princesses & a helpless looking mother? Where’s warrior judge Deborah? Brave Miriam mother of Moses? The 5daughters of Zelophehad? WILL YOU BIN THIS NOW? @LetToysBeToys @PinkstinksUK pic.twitter.com/oh3hhhjthQ

— Daisy Cooper (@libdemdaisy) December 21, 2017

If, like me, you had no idea who the Five Daughters of Zelophehad were, their story is interesting. They took on an all -male establishment and challenged the fact that they had no right to inherit their father’s property.

Continue reading »

Posted in News | 9 Comments

Swinson: Sectoral analysis shows that Brexit is a far-reaching, ridiculous folly

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 22nd December 2017 - 11:00 am

So MPs and peers had some time alone with the Brexit “sectoral analysis” papers. And those of ours who expressed an opinion were far from impressed. You can make your own mind up as the papers have been partially published here.

Vince Cable had been particularly scathing about them in an article for the Independent on Sunday:

Those who have seen them – under a procedure rivalling access to the Crown Jewels – say they are descriptions of the sectors, not assessments of impact, and contain nothing unavailable on Wikipedia.

The second, more serious, point was that the decision to leave the customs union was taken by the Cabinet without any quantitative assessment of impact.

This doesn’t surprise me. Whenever I try to engage Brexiteers with technical issues which face supply chain industries, whose components cross borders, along with practical problems surrounding border certification and rules of origin, eyes glaze over.

Then Jo Swinson had some time alone in a darkened room with them and she was underwhelmed to say the least. She set out her thoughts in a series of tweets.

Today I viewed the ‘sectoral analysis’ in the @DExEUgov Brexit reading room. I was handed two hefty lever arch files. During my slot I managed to look at 24 of the 39 separate papers. (1)

— Jo Swinson (@joswinson) December 20, 2017

Of these 24 sectors, the papers show that in 21 of them, industry has concerns about skills gaps, attracting talent and labour mobility post-Brexit. (2)

— Jo Swinson (@joswinson) December 20, 2017

The papers detail calls from many sectors to remain part of existing EU institutions, programmes or agreements, such as EASA, Euratom, IEM, Horizon 2020, Erasmus and SES. (3) pic.twitter.com/UHoYEG9cfi

— Jo Swinson (@joswinson) December 20, 2017

The papers detail calls from many sectors to remain part of existing EU institutions, programmes or agreements, such as EASA, Euratom, IEM, Horizon 2020, Erasmus and SES. (3) pic.twitter.com/UHoYEG9cfi

— Jo Swinson (@joswinson) December 20, 2017

Continue reading »

Posted in News | 24 Comments