By Antony Hook
| Fri 17th September 2010 - 6:39 pm
On 29 November 2003, a woman’s body was discovered near a farm by her husband and other people from her village. She was 20 years of age and her name was Naang Sa. She and her husband Zaai Leng had been approached, three days before, by 40 soldiers from the Burmese Army. Zaai Leng was tied up and Naang Sa was gang raped. The soldiers took her back to their base and her dead body was left at an unknown time during those three days, completely unconcealed, to be found by those who loved her.
Delivering a Digital Economy is a critical test for the new government. A pledge in the Coalition Government Agreement, the Departments of Business and Culture, Media & Sport now face the challenging task of ensuring broadband is rolled out across the UK by end of this Parliament. But why is access to broadband—and next generation broadband– so crucial?
There are two crucial econ-political reasons for the government to support the expansion of broadband. The coalition has emphasised repeatedly that broadband infrastructure and access to services, particularly for the UK’s business community, will drive the UK economy …
It’s a fair bet that much of the media coverage of Liberal Democrat conference will be of the form ‘THEY’RE DOOMED!’, with the more subtle coverage for the more discerning journalists being ‘Are they doomed?’.
That has, after all, been the standard media fare since long before the Coalition, since before Nick Clegg became an MP, since before David Cameron became an MP, since before Tony Blair become Labour leader and since before John Major became Prime Minister. My money isn’t on the old standard formula changing this time round for …
By Ben Johnson
| Thu 16th September 2010 - 4:01 pm
We are unique amongst the main political parties in having a democratic internal structure. This weekend is our opportunity, denied to both Labour and Tory members, to decide the future of our party and proclaim what it means to be a Liberal Democrat.
In addition to major policy announcements, there are six possible emergency motions listed in Conference Extra. Only one of these will be chosen for debate on Wednesday morning, following a ballot of conference attendees on Sunday.
Bermondsey and Old Southwark have submitted one of these emergency motions, and it is not without controversy. It is in direct response …
By Gareth Epps
| Thu 16th September 2010 - 1:57 pm
In just five days the Liberal Democrat Conference will be gearing up to what for some is the highlight of their week. The tradition will again be honoured of singing songs from the history of Liberalism as well as more recent topical and light-hearted offerings. There will be a brand new edition of the Liberator Songbook with new songs, and I’m sure some offerings to mark the return of Liberals to Government.
A further tradition of the Glee Club is that new MPs ‘do a turn’; we know some of them are regular members of the Glee Club, …
By Kate Heywood
| Thu 16th September 2010 - 9:55 am
What’s the idea?
Help support Phones4Zimbabwe by giving us your old, neglected and unused mobile phones (ideally with chargers). We will send them over to Zimbabwe to schools and health clinics.
Why?
You get a warm fuzzy feeling from helping a community in Zimbabwe to improve communications and information flow in an often forgotten part of the country.
The health clinics and schools receiving the phones can use them for emergencies, for every day use, to share and coordinate information and make life a little easier.
We are focussing on Binga, a remote and neglected area of North West Zimbabwe, to ensure the are has …
By Hannah Bird
| Wed 15th September 2010 - 4:14 pm
Like so many Lib Dems, I’m really pleased our participation in the Coalition is leading to the end of child detention. But the crisis in the detention system goes much deeper and wider than locking up children. There is an urgent need to consider how we can use our influence to reform the detention system. To make this happen I’ve helped to organise a fringe meeting with London Detainee Support Group (LDSG), a charity that supports and advises detainees.
Every week I see this crisis when I visit Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre as an LDSG volunteer. My …
The Lib Dems are proud of their internationalism. It was one thing to oppose the intervention in Iraq and to continue as mistakes after the fall of Saddam were laid bare, but Iraqis like myself are keen to see your party develop its policy seven years later towards Iraq and Kurdistan, the region where I come from which is the stable, secure, commercial gateway to Iraq and Britain’s ally. The key question now is how can the LibDems support the Iraqi political process and ensure that Britain isn’t left behind other European countries in business, cultural and educational exchange with …
It’s been a big task, and a fun one, to distil so many excellent examples of Lib Dem blogging and e-campaigning into lists of the five best.
Congratulations if you’ve been shortlisted, but if you haven’t: remember that the shortlists are based on the judges’ subjective opinions. The awards are intended to be a fun way to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere, whilst introducing you to some blogs you might not have read before.
First, a reminder that the winner of the Best non-Liberal Democrat politics blog category will be decided by a public vote here on Liberal Democrat Voice, so please have a read of the nominated blogs and then head on over to the sidebar to cast your vote.
Next, a plug for the awards ceremony itself. If you’re coming to party conference in Liverpool, do come along to Grace Suite 1 at the Hilton Liverpool from 9.45pm on Saturday 18th September.
Now, without further ado, here are the shortlists: (Drumroll, please)
By Helen Duffett
| Tue 14th September 2010 - 9:20 am
Just a short, teaser post to let you know that the shortlists for the Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year awards 2010 will be published this afternoon at 1pm.
Nick Clegg has told his ministers to “mingle” at the Liberal Democrat conference next week, to avoid the impression that being in government has gone to their heads.
On Friday, the Deputy Prime Minister hosted a meeting of all Lib Dem members of government at Chevening, his official residence. Mr Clegg cautioned his colleagues against being seen as “too distant” since moving seamlessly into government. For some of the grass roots, working with the Tories has been a little too seamless, some complaining that the
Come and pitch your idea for political reform to our “dragons’ den” style panelists, Lynne Featherstone MP, Baroness Ros Scott and Alice Delemare (Electoral Reform Society), moderated by Katie Razzall from Channel 4 News.
This fringe event is at 1-2pm on Wednesday, 22nd September at ACC Liverpool , Hall 11C.
In the coming year we have a once in a generation opportunity to change politics for good: getting rid of the first past the post system and reforming the House of Lords. With Nick Clegg in charge of political reform, Liberal Democrats have a unique opportunity to shape the reform …
As Ed Maxfield wrote about last month, the LibDem conference in Liverpool will see a consultation session on the party’s strategy and priorities. Penned by Gordon Lishman, the paper is a good starting point for debate and goes through the obvious yet important questions, such as how does being in government change the party’s approach. Being a paper from Gordon it also places many of the questions in a broader context, with nods towards history, community politics and the variations in political perspective across the UK.
Reading through it, there was one section I found particularly welcome, and one rather too conventional.
The particularly welcome section was this:
How can we create a liberal movement?
The liberal movement goes beyond party, asserting our leadership on a wide range of issues and themes, including climate change; civil liberty, equality and human rights; political reform; rural affairs; and many more. This is partly a matter of working with other campaigning organisations, think‐tanks and popular movements where our goals coincide; it should also involve Liberal Democrats in leadership of such organisations: what better role for Parliamentarians outside government and other competent members of the Party? For instance, how do we build on Liberal Democrat overall responsibility for human rights: in the Foreign Office, Home Office and Ministry of Justice?
Gordon’s absolutely right about the need to place our electoral campaigning and our work as a political party in a wider campaigning context. The debate we will be having at conference about marriage being open to same-sex couples illustrates this. It’s a cause dear to many liberal hearts, but is by no means exclusive to Liberal Democrats. Cross-party support is often a key ingredient in securing legislative change. Moreover, the issue is not just about what Parliament does or doesn’t legislate. Parliament decides whether same-sex marriages result in the same legal entitlements as traditional marriage. What Parliament cannot directly do is make society hold same-sex marriages in the same esteem. The emotional and cultural parts of equality come from how we all feel and behave. That requires broader change and campaigning than the MPs of one party trooping through the right lobby in Parliament.
The part of the document that struck as me as far too conventional is about regional parties in England:
The English Regional Parties should have a key leadership role in supporting and motivating activists, representing the Party publicly, influencing the UK Party and ensuring that we have the right candidates in place at the right time.
Those are roles that regional parties have had for a long time and overall they have a very mixed record in many respects. The context in which regional parties operate has changed significantly. It used to be rare in most regions for there to be significant elected Liberal Democrats outside of local government. Now we have MPs and MEPs right across England, with GLA members in London too. Our membership and its perspectives has also changed, along with society more generally, with people often having looser geographic roots and interests and instead placing themselves more firmly in non-geographic communities which share particular interests. At a time too when many councils are looking to share large amounts of their back office organisation with neighbouring councils, to simply restate those roles for regional parties misses out the bigger questions of what they should be for.
Do regional parties really have a role in representing the party publicly? When there are Lib Dem MPs and MEPs in their patch could they ever hope to do so effectively? Are regional conferences best organised by many separate teams working independently in each region? How effective really are regions at maximising the number of local council candidates (a very important question in my view)? The list of questions goes on and a good review should address the role of regions rather than work on the basis that the old model is still the right one to try to make work.
Nick Clegg is facing a growing grassroots revolt as Liberal Democrat councillors quit the party in protest at the decision to form the Coalition with the Conservatives.
This follows the news that three Lib Dem councillors in Cheshire have resigned, apparently in protest at the cuts being introduced by the Coalition Government.
This brings to a grand total of eight (8) councillors who have defected from the Lib Dems since the special conference in Birmingham, where activists voted by an overwhelming margin to approve the Coalition deal. Or to put it another way, 99.8% of …
The council’s tourism arm VisitBrighton has said the party is expected to bring around 8,000 delegates to the event, injecting around £10m into the local economy.
The party last held its autumn conference in the city in 2007.
Council bosses say the news justifies recently spending £1m on refurbishments to the Brighton Conference Centre. They expect the event to attract extensive media coverage for the city, given the Lib Dems’ role in the coalition government.
On Friday, the Daily Mail splashed with a story headined “England Star’s Gagging Order”. The story concerned an unnamed member of the England football team who had used the courts to stop a story about him from being published.
It was the second such injunction granted in a week, the Mail reported. The injunctions were granted by a High Court judge on the grounds that the stories would breach the players’ right to a private life.
For Liberal Democrats, such injunctions will be seen as a worrying development.
Our party’s constitution emphasises that we must “defend the right to speak, …
Now is an exciting time for Liberal Democrats. We have the chance to implement ideas in Government – an opportunity denied our predecessors for many decades. For the next five years, instead of contributing ideas from the national sidelines with no real prospect of them ever being adopted, we have a real chance to realise key elements of our agenda. We have all come into politics to make a difference, to be effective. Liberal Democrat Ministers know that they carry the weight of the party’s principles and expectations as they work in coalition with Conservatives.
Once again, Lib Dem Voice have a varied and exciting programme at the Lib Dem federal conference planned for Liverpool next month.
Some of our events are still taking form; others are now so well established they are almost traditional.
And don’t worry if you are unable to join us in person at conference – we will be making recordings of the events and making them available right here on the blog, so that you can get the conference feel coming in your ears wherever you are in the nation.
For your delight and delectation, here are some details.
Time’s ticking till close of nominations for the Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards, so here’s a reminder of the categories and an exhortation to vote early!
Nominate in any or all of these:
Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st September 2009)
Best blog from a Liberal Democrat holding public office (The Tim Garden Award)
Best use of blogging / social networking / e-campaigning by a Liberal Democrat
Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st September 2009)
Move along please, nothing to see here. Just a body of ideas that died a natural death some time in the 1990s.
I have just read Gordon Lishman’s Federal Executive paper on future party strategy. It is encouragingly clear and geared towards future action and it contains a number of interesting proposals. But is it undermined by its insistence on tying future party strategy to the ideology of community politics?
Questioning the relevance of community politics in a Lib Dem forum feels a bit like trying to sell Richard Dawkins in a seminary but there are a number of reasons …
Next year there will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to get rid of the first past the post system and replace it with the Alternative Vote system; The House of Lords is about to be reformed; the number of parliamentary constituencies is about to be reduced.
As Liberal Democrats we have a once in a generation opportunity to shape the discussion about the kind politics which will best serve the British people. Our autumn conference fringe event will explore that – but not in the normal way, with the normal suspects. We want to do this in a “new …
The future of the Press Complaints Commission is up for debate at the party’s autumn conference in Liverpool. A motion from Truro & Falmouth echoes many of the criticisms made of the PCC by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in its recent report. The motion calls for a fully independent regulator to take the place of the current structure which is heavily staffed by people holding current senior newspaper roles.
The motion also supports a shift in the PCC’s role from handling individual complaints towards upholding and improving press standards more generally. That’s a question I wrote about …
Monday, 20th September: nuclear power, free schools and Nick Clegg’s conference speech. Drama, protest and dissension or quiet compromise, careful management and enthusiastic standing ovation?
It’s no coincidence that both potential controversies are scheduled for the same day as Clegg’s speech: in the worst case situation, all the bad news would be be concentrated on the one day and Clegg will still get the final word (or rather, many words) on the day with his speech coming after the possible flashpoints*.
However, it’s unlikely to come to that as the two motions are carefully worded. Nuclear power gets a mention in the …
All the papers for next month’s Liberal Democrat Conference in Liverpool are now available online at the party’s website.
These include the agenda, which contains details and times of speeches, debates and consultative sessions. There’s also an introduction from the new Federal Conference Committee chair, Andrew Wiseman, and an article by party leader Nick Clegg: “Delivering in Government.”
The training programme, reports to conference, “Accountability to the poor” policy paper and consultation papers on health, IT and volunteering are all …
According to today’s Daily Mail, the Foreign Secretary William Hague is being lined up to speak at the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference in Liverpool next month. The paper describes Hague’s participation as ‘a move designed to cement relations between the coalition partners’.
The Foreign Secretary, widely seen as one of the best orators in the Commons, is expected to lead a Conservative charm offensive at the gathering in Liverpool in the hope of winning over disaffected LibDem activists. Tory sources suggest Mr Hague will give a ‘witty’ address, rather than focusing heavily on policy.
One thousand extra pass applications are being processed for next month’s conference in Liverpool. Security controls are being tightened and hotels in the city have experienced a rush in bookings.
More than 7,000 delegates, members of the media and commercial attendees are expected to travel to the conference, compared with its usual attendance of about 6,000. The number of journalists attending is likely to leap from 1,000 last year to more than 1,500.
The number of organisations, including firms, unions and charities,
Michael Crick reported for BBC2’s Newsnight on a potentially controversial debate at this September’s Lib Dem conference:
September’s Lib Dem conference in Liverpool will be a pretty tame affair, I predict, since most Liberal Democrats are still on cloud nine over the fact they are now in government for the first time in 65 years.
The biggest controversy, I reckon, could well be over a motion denouncing Michael Gove’s radical policies on free schools and academies. The resolution has been specifically picked by Lib Dem conference organisers for a substantial debate.
First, it calls for local councils to keep their role in the “oversight” of the provision of state schools. This is quite contrary to Gove’s strategy of greatly reducing local authority involvement in education. And second, the resolution urges Liberal Democrats not to get involved in Michael Gove’s cherished new policy of free schools.
Given how important local councillors are in the structure of the Liberal Democrat Party and the prevalence of teachers in the party, there must be a pretty good chance that the motion will be passed.
Party conference rumour season is well underway, with more special guest speculation than last month’s Glastonbury. But whoever’s doing the briefing, it doesn’t seem to be coming from the Liberal Democrat side.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg are drawing up plans for closer links between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and senior figures from the two parties will address each other’s party conference this autumn.
The two leaders are keen to cement the coalition and a special meeting of the Cabinet next month will discuss a joint approach to the party conference season, including co-ordinated policy announcements. One option is for Mr Cameron to address the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool and Mr Clegg the Tories in Birmingham. More likely, at present, is that other Cabinet ministers will “change places” and speak at their coalition partner’s event.
The Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year Awards, run by Lib Dem Voice, are back for their fifth year. As usual, they’ll be awarded in a budget lavish ceremony at the party’s autumn conference in Liverpool. (There’s further information on the event over at the Lib Dems’ Flock Together site). Click on the following links to see last year’s Shortlist and the Winners.
Kira Collins @Peter Martin
“ We should be encouraging them to use less energy. To do that, you should put standard rate VAT on energy and use the money to raise pensions,...
Simon Banks Why are we on the other side from the Tories? Because they stand for every kind of inequality, the gutting of local government and a narrow nationalism. We stan...
expats Vince Cable....Gordon Brown introduced formal fiscal rules in 1997 alongside the operational independence of the Bank of England: essentially, a commitment to b...
Nonconformistradical @Tristan Ward
Instead of posting such a long link may I recommend the use of https://tinyurl.com/ ?
Which reduced your huge link to https://tinyurl.com/eejs...
Tristan Ward "‘why can’t social care and NHS spending be treated as ‘investment’’. Of course, that wont wash".
It might wash if such spending can wash its face....
Gordon’s absolutely right about the need to place our electoral campaigning and our work as a political party in a wider campaigning context. The debate we will be having at conference about marriage being open to same-sex couples illustrates this. It’s a cause dear to many liberal hearts, but is by no means exclusive to Liberal Democrats. Cross-party support is often a key ingredient in securing legislative change. Moreover, the issue is not just about what Parliament does or doesn’t legislate. Parliament decides whether same-sex marriages result in the same legal entitlements as traditional marriage. What Parliament cannot directly do is make society hold same-sex marriages in the same esteem. The emotional and cultural parts of equality come from how we all feel and behave. That requires broader change and campaigning than the MPs of one party trooping through the right lobby in Parliament.
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Lib Dem Rutland plans cycle-path from Oakham to Rutland Water
Brexit and summer holidays
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
Kira Collins 
Simon Banks 
expats 
Nonconformistradical 
Tristan Ward 