Much food for thought this week.
There is a great deal about our party, but I want to start with a piece in the Observer by Barbara Frost, Chief Executive of Water Aid, and others, who point out that the two teenage girls in India might be alive today if they had access to a toilet in their own homes. They are far from alone in facing that daily risk.
A report in the Times of India in February this year quoted the police in another district of Uttar Pradesh as saying that 95% of cases of rape and molestation took place when women and girls had left their homes to “answer a call of nature”.
But this is certainly not just an Indian problem. One in three people around the world lack access to basic sanitation, while 1 billion of those – that is, 15% of the global population – currently practise open defecation.
A WaterAid study in the slums of Lagos in Nigeria showed that a quarter of women who lacked access to sanitation had first- or second-hand experience of harassment, threats of violence or actual assault linked to their lack of a safe, private toilet in the last year.
From behind the paywall: that “Clegg most unpopular leader ever” poll which doesn’t take into account that Liberal Democrat leaders have more people to dislike us, especially when we are in Government. To compare with Brown’s unpopularity is ridiculous.
Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer says Clegg is lucky. Yes, really.
Nick Clegg has been lucky in his enemies. He was particularly fortunate that a scheme to depose him revolved aroundMatthew Oakeshott, the Lib Dem peer and friend of Vince Cable, who is now an ex-Lib Dem peer after his self-destructive scheming. Naked plotting has the virtue of being honest. It looked shabbily underhand to commission “private” opinion polls to prove that the Lib Dems face oblivion, the findings of which then mysteriously materialise in theGuardian.
The Tory peer Michael Ashcroft lavishes a lot of cash on polling that often sends messages David Cameron doesn’t want to hear, but they don’t get into the public domain by a “leak”. He sticks them up on his website. Lord Oakeshott might have looked a little more noble in his intentions had he taken his stab openly rather than try to play murder in the dark. Presumably, he did so because he was conscious that he was a poor standard bearer for any coup because he was already so well known as an implacable critic of Mr Clegg.
The Sunday Times reports that an SNP MP has asked police to investigate cash for peerages claims in Matthew Oakeshott’s parting billet doux. They also suggest that up to 190 Liberal Democrat local parties may be “starting the process” to hold no confidence motions in the leader. Actually, this could be as simple as one member emailing their local executive to suggest it. Those Executive Committees have to agree those requests and then hold the meeting. There’s a long way to go. We know that EGMs have been scheduled in about 15 areas so far, a good deal less than 190.
Think feminists are men-hating and illiberal? Eva Wiseman writes in the Observer that attitudes of men’s rights activists costs lives.
We know that these misogynists, who sneer online or grope on trains or kill, do not exist in vacuums. They are formed by cultures that glorify violence against women, that tell men they’re owed sex, that contribute to that background hum every woman learns to block out – every woman learns, early, to be at least a little bit terrified.
Did you wonder what on earth was going on in Tower Hamlets, why it took them an age to count their votes last week. Andrew Gilligan outlines some possible reasons in the Telegraph.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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18 Comments
Caron, despite being a nice fellah, he is very, very unpopular and you cannot disguise that fact. Roll on change, a different leader, strategy and target.
Nick Clegg is irretrievably damaged goods. He is leading the party over a cliff. He should show real leadership and stand aside: an honourable act. If he has to be pushed his place in history will be yet more damaged than it is now.
libdems4change.org
If the MPs do not have the guts to act then 75 constituency parties will have to.
This is not a thread to discuss Nick’s leadership, though. It’ s to discuss the articles in the papers. Can we keep to that, please?
Odd that Caron has seen the front page of the Sunday Telegraph – Steve Webb is a Liberal Democrat MP and THE pensions expert who yet again has spearheaded a major reform of the pensions system with his suggestion of the Dutch collective system that is now being predicted as being centrepiece of the forthcoming Queens Speech for the forthcoming parliamentary programme. A great chunk of positive news and a Government achievement – ignored because presumably Caron doesn’t read the Telegraph, but its been picked up in the BBC radio news programmes all morning.
What is the LibDem proposal for solving the problem of sanitation and safety in the developing world?
Philip,
I hadn’t seen that – this must be the link you mean. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10867600/Ministers-prepare-radical-pension-reforms.html
I don’t have enough money to physically go out and buy all the papers. I look at the website, This might have been on the front page of the print edition, but it was some way down the website. Maybe I should have seen it but I’d almost finished and then lost the entire article so had to re-do it.
Richard, Lynne is doing loads on that at DFID and while I don’t know if we have specific policy, I would expect that sanitation would be something we’d consider a basic right.
Caron, this website is useful – shows the front pages of the daily papers.
http://www.thepaperboy.com/uk/front-pages.cfm
Teach us all to copy stuff para by para, Caron!
Tony
Don’t rub it in, Tony:-)
Richard Dean 1st Jun ’14 – 12:53pm
What is the LibDem proposal for solving the problem of sanitation and safety in the developing world?
Richard Dean — you have not been listening to Clegg — his policy is half way between the Labour Policy and the Conservative Policy. It is in the centre. Does that help you understand his policy on this issue?
No it does not help me either.
It does not help the voters, which is why they reject Clegg more so than any other leader who has now broken all records in the You Gov poll ratings scoring the worst ever result. Politics most unpopular man ever.
This is why Paddy Ashdown is being dragged into the TV studios to defend him. Poor old Paddy – I am sure he would sooner spend his Sunday mornings doing other than responding to some of the press stories listed above by Caron.
This comment is being posted at 14.55 on Sunday 1st June 2014.
@Caron Lindsay
Agreed. But there’s more. The need in India represents a great commercial opportunity for British and European companies who are skilled in the design and construction planning and management of water and sewage systems.
What is BIS doing in the way of helping UK companies realise this opportunity, which could potentially have a significant beneficial effect on UK employment given the size of the problem, and which could potentially massively reverse the flow of money out of the UK associated with call centres and other outsourced services?
And what are the LibDems doing in terms of setting out principles to allow assistance to be provided in a commercial context while avoiding turning it into a modern-day exploitative version of colonialisation?
@John Tilley. Do you have any policy proposals yourself, apart from criticizing others?
Hi, Caron. Thanks for interesting contribution and thanks also for yesterday’s posting on Edinburgh trams. Well
done for riding them on Day One – hope to take my first run this week The photos were excellent. I’ve every
confidence that they will become hugely popular, but it still troubles me that so many still believe that if the council
hadn’t spent money on trams we could somehow have had more schools, more carers and better pavements. The
money for the trams came very largely from Transport for Scotland and, had the project been cancelled, the City
would have had to refund the money which, with all the penalties that entailed, would have been disastrous for
council finances.
However, on the main issue people are writing about, I go along with those who want a frontal attack on
inequality. In that regard, one of the policies we should resurrect is industrial democracy – co-ownership and
co-partnership (employee directors, works councils etc.) and some means of reducing the power of institutional
shareholdings, so that real shareholders can make their views count. (Good old Grimond-era stuff!)
Incidentally, Paddy Ashdown’s appearance on “Andrew Marr” was a morale booster.
Philip Young, can you tell me which liberal principle collective pensions are based on? The only way individuals will “pool risk” is if the taxpayer also funds them or the government forces them. In my opinion it is an example of the state taking over a big chunk of the private sector industry and is illiberal. We are not talking about a public service here.
I will keep an eye on these, but in my opinion the state running private businesses is a clear line between liberals and socialists that shouldn’t be crossed.
Another example to make them work would be to lie about how they are likely to perform and then ask the taxpayer to step in in the next generation.
I also wouldn’t smear men’s rights activism as “costing lives”. Those who abuse women and threaten women online are not men’s rights activists, but simply trolls, most of the time.
Eddie – why should there be such a ‘clear line between liberalism and socialism’? Are you one of those ‘liberals’ who would disband the NHS and the BBC? And state schools, too? I hope most Liberal Democrats can (still) see the huge benefit that accrues to ordinary people from some forms of collective provision of essential services. Otherwise the party I’ve belonged to for 31 years really is doomed.
Terry, I think there should be a clear line between liberalism and conservatism too. I don’t even think we necessarily need to re-privatise the bank shares, so I’m not a neo-liberal ideologue.
I’ll check out the details for collective pensions, but I’m not hopeful given the state needs to intervene to set them up and Holland want to get rid of them. The state’s involvement in company pensions should be regulation, not take over. If it is not going to be the state managing this mega fund then I see it being a big business, either way I can’t see it being liberal.