David Cameron’s comments over the weekend that he wants to cut tax but now is not the time gives a very strong indication as to what the overall impact will be of any new measures in next month’s Budget – no net tax cuts. But no net tax cuts is not the same as no tax cuts.
Two different ideas were also floated over the weekend, from credible looking sources even if they were also both formally denied by the government. They were to move even further towards the planned £10,000 basic income tax allowance and also to tax non-doms …
We’ve previously covered Labour-run Knowsley Council’s controversial payments of over £250,000 during the last dozen years for official presences at the Labour Party conference. During that period the council never paid for presences at other party conferences saying that, “Knowsley does not attend any other party political conference, it attends the Labour Party Annual Conference as the party in power.”
However, despite the change of government last autumn Knowsley Council continued with its payments for Labour’s autumn 2010 conference and did not make any appearance at the conferences of either of the two parties in power.
Over on the Open Rights Group blog, Jason Kitcat has recounted the recent meeting hosted by the Cabinet Office about the government’s plans to improve data sharing across the public sector in order to improve electoral registration, particularly as we shift to individual registration (the benefits of which I’ve blogged about here).
These plans could range from the helpful (such as giving people the option when, say, telling the TV Licensing Authority that they have moved also to have the information sent to update their electoral register entry) through to the very different (such as linking up tax records …
After an all-night sitting in the Lords, Chris Rennard tells Third Sector how his group hopes to pin down some practical measures for building the big society…
The Liberal Democrat peer pours a strong coffee, sips it and perks up. He says electoral reform is one of his big interests because it is an important way of getting people to take an active interest in the issues that affect their local area.
He believes the same is true of the voluntary sector’s work, which is why he agreed to chair the Commission on the Big Society, set up by Acevo, the
Sharon Bowles, Liberal Democrat Euro-MP for South East England, is the highest placed British person in the GFS Power 50 list of the most influential figures in global financial regulation.
The list is voted on by readers of Global Financial Strategy, and Sharon Bowles came out twentieth due to her role as Chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. This committee of MEPs has an important role in debating and amending European-wide financial regulation, including new rules on bank capital and bankers’ bonuses.
Barclays was tonight accused of making a mockery of attempts to call a truce with the government over “banker bashing” amid fresh expectations that its chief executive Bob Diamond would be awarded a bonus of at least £8m.
After months of talking with the banks, the coalition is yet to announce a deal, codenamed Merlin, under which the industry would to agree lending targets of up to £190bn and show restraint on bonuses in return for less criticism from the government.
The talks with the banks have been led by Diamond’s predecessor John Varley and tonight Lord Oakeshott, a Liberal
In a speech yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg outlined the government’s four-pronged approach to economic growth, setting out the measures that are being taken whilst also admitting that no government has an effective magic lever it can pull to guarantee growth.
The four prongs are a switch from deficit-fuelled growth to investment-fuelled growth, developing the nation’s ‘hard’ infrastructure such as transport links, supporting the ‘soft’ infrastructure such as a workforce with the skills business needs and achieving a better balance across the different regions of the country and sectors of the economy.
Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
Here’s an issue which often comes up when tax avoidance and evasion is talked about on this site. Is tax avoidance acceptable, i.e. is it morally acceptable to follow any and every legal means to avoid paying tax? And why (or why not)?
In the run-up to the general election, I wrote about Havering Council’s stated public policy of rejecting applications to join the electoral register from people if they were made on forms downloaded from the Electoral Commission’s own dedicated website. It was a policy that caused complaints from residents as well as raising questions about why a council would blanket reject applications from people using the Electoral Commission’s own nationally advertised website.
This policy arose from Havering Council’s reaction to a previous set of attempts to make false electoral register entries, which led it to decide that it would not accept …
As of yesterday, the total in unpaid Congestion Charges and penalties run by embassies in London was £49.4m and at the current rate of growth that figure will break the £50m barrier later this month.
Liberal Democrat London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon has said, “The amount in unpaid Congestion Charges and Penalty Charge Notices owed by embassies is now so large that it could pay for more than 260 new buses on London’s streets, or fund the significant expansion of the cycle hire scheme, or alternatively reduce fare rises.”
Or, as she didn’t say, £50m could pay for one Fernando Torres.
It’s become a bit of an urban myth in some (Labour) circles that Labour’s 2010 general election manifesto only promised a referendum on the alternative vote, but didn’t say anything about committing Labour MPs or the Labour Party to a yes vote. But that’s not actually what the manifesto said:
To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons.
To ensure means not only holding a referendum, but also voting Yes.
December 2010 is the first month in – probably – history where the UK’s manufacturing sector had more money on deposit than it borrowed from the banks. Or, to put it another way, industry is lending money to the banks, rather than the other way around. Bizarre.
Here’s the main part of the ruling against the East Kilbride News:
The complaint was made by the MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, Michael McCann. The article related to his Parliamentary expenses, which had been published following the release of the figures by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). Mr McCann argued that a claim made in the article – that his expenses “include £1150 in hotel bills to fund his trips to Westminster, while he also claims for a rented property in central London” – was misleading because it suggested that he had claimed for hotel rooms at
Here’s the official booklet from the Electoral Commission explaining what next month’s Welsh referendum is about and which is being sent to every household in Wales:
Salmon investigates and illustrates how usually over-looked provisions, such as the introduction of electoral registers, encouraged the formation of semi-permanent political organisations at a local level with resulting frequent party conflict over electoral registration as people tried to get their supporters on the register and their opponents knocked off it.
With attention understandably focusing on events in the Lords, the actual progress of the campaigns for the electoral reform referendum has had less coverage in the last few weeks. So here’s a quick score-card:
Funding: the No campaign has taken to the media to protest about “big money” funding the Yes campaign. Even as reported by the Telegraph the attacks are pretty thin going, but revealing in one respect. Many expected the No campaign to be well-funded by the sort of large donors who have heavily funded the Tories in the past (not to mention, possibly, trade union funding). However,
Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence starts with certainty and ends with doubt. “Affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines well-being”, states Offer at the start of Chapter 1. That theme runs through the book to his conclusion, but the lessons he draws from it are not as simple or confidently stated: “Well-being is more than having more. It is a balance between our own needs, and those of others, on whose goodwill and approbation our own well-being depends … I present these findings in the hope that they will make our choices appear not simpler and easier, but as …
Tory and Labour peers have reached a deal ending the deadlock which threatened to block a 5 May referendum on changing the Westminster voting system, Lords leader Lord Strathclyde has said…
The government accepted in principle an amendment tabled by the convenor of crossbench peers, Baroness D’Souza, which reinstates public inquiries in the boundary review process in certain circumstances.
The crossbench peers’ amendment would allow, but not compel, the Boundary Commission to hold a local inquiry where an objection raised “substantive issues”. Inquiries would take no more than six months…
Lady D’Souza withdrew her amendment, telling peers she was encouraged
The media coverage however has been to latch onto the second half of that headline and bury the first part a long way down the story. Take The Independent, with its headline Teachers and nurses dragged into top-rate bracket. It goes on to point out how some tube drivers also will end up …
Welcome to the latest in our series giving the human face behind some of the blogs you can find on the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator.
Today it is David Boyle, who blogs at The Real Blog.
1. What’s your formative political memory?
I don’t know when I became a Liberal, but found myself cheering the party on during the Sutton & Cheam and Isle of Ely by-elections while I was studying for my O Levels. In 1979, I interviewed the local Liberal candidate (Dermot Roaf) for a student mag and went straight off and joined the party afterwards.
2. When did you start blogging?
2007 I think.
3. Why did you start blogging?
Partly because I seemed to be bursting with things to say; partly because, when I said them, people seemed to have a confused look on their faces. I also wanted to think out loud about the political implications of a book I wrote called Authenticity. (I also have an incredibly small publishing outfit called The Real Press.)
4. What five words would you use to describe your blog?
Liberal, human-scale and optimistic.
5. What five words would you use to describe your political views?
Radical, green, localist, humane, naive.
6. Which post have you most liked writing in the last year (and why)?
A post I wrote for Lib Dem Voice which, rather inadequately, tried to set out why I wasn’t as outraged as the Guardian thinks I should be about the spending review.
7. Which post have you most liked reading in the last year (and why)? Neal Lawson’s Comment is Free blog about using ‘human’ as the yardstick for a new politics. I was fascinated to read it because I had been thinking along parallel lines myself.
8. What’s your favourite YouTube clip?
I think it has to be my wife Sarah’s film about our curtain pattern Kandahar.
Back in 1995 the Liberal Democrats under Paddy Ashdown made a video explaining what the party stands for and why people should back it. If you’ve been around in the party a few years you can have some fun spotting familiar faces from 15 years ago (including a young Danny Alexander), and even if not it’s striking how well some of the points have aged:
The country’s most senior civil servant … said the cabinet should have been told of the attorney general’s doubts about the legality of invading Iraq before Tony Blair went to war.
“The ministerial code is very clear about the need, when the attorney general gives written advice, the full text of that advice should be attached “, Sir Gus O’Donnell told the Iraq inquiry.
The clear implication of his evidence is that Blair breached the code of conduct ministers have a duty to uphold.
Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…
Though he is often thought of as the father of the modern welfare state in this country, William Beveridge in fact had other views on the matter. As he said of the Beveridge report, the aim, “was not security through a welfare state but security by cooperation between the state and the individual”. In other words, the state should assist people in achieving self-reliance (and so the contributory principle in the report) rather than being simply a benevolent charity writ large (and …
Labour’s filibustering in the House of Lords in many ways echoes the current tactics of Republicans in the Senate: using delaying tactics to avoid issues coming to a vote when they know they will almost certainly lose a vote when it comes.
Senate leaders announced on Thursday a package of rule changes that seek to reduce the stalemate and gridlock that has characterized the chamber in recent years.
But lawmakers failed to agree on a limitation to the use of the filibuster—the right of any senator to hold up any
The coalition agreement’s commitment to devolve more powers from Westminster to Scotland was one aspect that helped it win strong support from Scottish Liberal Democrats as further devolution has been a long-running Lib Dem demand. Now the Scotland Bill is moving through Parliament to turn those commitments into action.
The BBC reports:
Scottish Secretary Michael Moore said the Scotland Bill, giving Holyrood increased responsibility for borrowing, would bring a new phase in devolution.
Mr Moore said the legislation contained the right balance of powers and would give Holyrood greater accountability…
The most eye-catching proposals in the Scotland Bill are plans to give Holyrood
You see, when I write about topics such as election law and psephology, I frequently check to see what is said in peer-reviewed academic papers. Particularly when I’m disagreeing with what people have claimed in such academic papers because, after all, saying something is wrong without actually taking a look at it is a bit of a risky leap of faith isn’t it?
But seeing what James Delingpole says, I can see where I’ve been going wrong. Clearly if I want to be a serious proper writer who gets published regularly by the Daily Telegraph or the Spectator the thing to remember is that criticising peer-reviewed papers (and indeed accusing authors of being in a conspiracy) is most properly done by never actually looking at them yourself:
Looks like some welcome changes in the government plans for our forests according to the papers today:
The government is to make a partial climbdown tomorrow over proposals to sell off England’s woodlands, following pressure from campaigners and Liberal Democrats. The environment department is expected to announce that up to 80,000 hectares of England’s most cherished woodlands, such as the Forest of Dean and Cannock Chase, will be put into charitable trusts with the requirement that their current goals are maintained.
We’re once again running a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrat spring conference. This time we’re looking at the internet and who is allowed to control whom:
Who runs the internet? Wikileaks, piracy and censorship
Libel law reform campaigner and former MP Evan Harris, website pioneer Mary Reid, James Blessing of the Internet Service Providers’ Assoication (ISPA) and Jim Killock of the digital rights champions Open Rights Group debate recent issues about free speech and the internet with chair Mark Pack.
Here’s a round-up of responses from Liberal Democrat figures and blogs:
Tom Brake MP (Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs and Justice)
Sanity and justice have been restored to British life.
Today is a victory for those who have campaigned to restore the historic freedoms that Labour spent 13 years destroying.
Control orders are gone, 28 days detention without charge is gone, indiscriminate stop and search is gone and the abuse of anti-terror powers by councils to pursue petty offences is over.
There will always be a balance to be struck between freedom and security and these proposals
Peter Martin @ Kira,
The words you quoted were from Peter Davies'. Not me. I wouldn't agree with raising VAT on energy to 15% right now. I'd leave it as is.
The point ...
Peter Martin “‘why can’t social care and NHS spending be treated as ‘investment’’. Of course, that wont wash”.
I'd agree if were talking about re...
Peter Martin There's really only two fiscal rules that make any sense:
1) If inflation caused by an overheating economy is the main issue, then governments should tax mor...
Peter Davies @Kira Collins You seem to have missed the bit about raising tax allowances. That primarily helps those on low wages....
David Wright According to this well-argued article (by Lib Dem councillor Mark Ellis), a simple wealth tax wouldn't work, but tax on TRANSFER of wealth could, if current tax...
The list is voted on by readers of Global Financial Strategy, and Sharon Bowles came out twentieth due to her role as Chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. This committee of MEPs has an important role in debating and amending European-wide financial regulation, including new rules on bank capital and bankers’ bonuses.
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Are Labour going to cross another red line?
Martin Wainwright's Guardian obituary of Michael Meadowcroft
Evaluating different electoral systems for the House of Commons
Peter Martin 
Peter Davies 
David Wright 