Earth Hour 2011, WWF’s global event is coming up again this Saturday, March 26th.
Across the UK and world people, businesses and iconic buildings will switch off their lights for an hour at 8.30pm local time.
Last year Earth Hour saw hundreds of millions of people across 3,000 cities and towns in 83 countries take part and send a clear message to governments worldwide that climate change needs to be tackled urgently.
But, this will only be possible with enough support and so WWF are calling on everyone to do their part, to get involved and to tell as many …
In the coming weeks, the coalition government will unveil its much-heralded strategy for improving social mobility. Nick Clegg has sought to make this the central tenet of the government’s social policy platform for the remainder of the parliament. He therefore has a great personal stake in ensuring its success.
An essential part of that will be ensuring that the strategy tackles the right issues – the causes of low social mobility. Here, there is some reason for concern because the dominant media (and political) narrative on social mobility suggests a misunderstanding of the current evidence.
I was a little surprised to be invited to be guest speaker at the Liberal Democrat spring conference last week. But the surprise was not because I’m supporting the AV Yes Vote. After all, I am vice-chair of the campaign.
It was rather because party bosses are well aware of my criticism after the main conference last September. My beef with them, expressed in the Guardian and other places, was a result of the party’s failure to do something positive about its lack of BME political representation.
Of course, I wasn’t there to talk about representation. But I did anyway. …
Portman Capital, an independent corporate advisory firm, has been asked to comment upon the technical issues raised by Mark Pack’s column on Stephen Williams’ proposal to privatise RBS and Lloyds by distributing the shares to the public. Portman Capital is not politically aligned and its comments are intended to explain the technical feasibility of the proposal rather than its political aspects.
The proposal to distribute the shares to the UK people is innovative, and as the British people will participate without having to provide cash up front, it has fairness at its core. Over time, the scheme is likely to …
For all the face time that health secretary Andrew Lansley gets, Lib Dems can’t forget that come election time, they’ll be judged by the success or failure of the NHS reform package too.
This isn’t a reality that many members of the party are warming to. After almost a year of being cast by both the public and media in the role of scapegoat or political cover for their coalition partners, nobody can blame them for being wary.
But the Health and Social Care Bill doesn’t have to be a poisoned chalice. The Lib Dems have succeeded in securing compromises in other …
NO2ID appreciates why some people have concerns regarding the involvement of an arms company in the census. However as a single issue campaign our concern is with the immediate privacy threat the census poses to everyone. We have therefore taken it upon …
By Terry Ryall
| Mon 21st February 2011 - 11:57 am
We at v believe that the idea of a Big Society is a good one. However it needs to be properly resourced. Not just financially with the Big Society Bank, but with input and ideas from the people on the ground who will make it a reality.
What is really important to all charities and to the vision of the Big Society is having an active and growing base of volunteers. We support the Big Society in principal but agree that it’s the implementation that needs to be developed.
At v, we are experts at inspiring and mobilising young people to take action. …
Now that the UK’s 1400 top scientists have spoken (“Climate Change, A summary of the science” from the Royal Society), there’s no longer any doubt that human activity is a significant cause of the steady warming of the planet over the last hundred years. So, unless we change our habits, we face an increasingly unstable climate, with rising sea levels and worsening floods and droughts leading to major disruption to food production. With the predicted rise in world population from six to ten billion by 2050, it is clear that humanity is in serious trouble.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day and the national event in London will bring together survivors from the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, politicians, religious leaders and dignitaries. In addition hundreds of local events will be held across the UK giving everyone the opportunity to get involved in some way.
The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust took over responsibility for delivering HMD from the Home Office in 2005 and six years on our aims remain the same as they did then – to ensure that we remember the victims and honour the survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution and those from subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and during the ongoing atrocities in Darfur.
This year’s theme
This year’s theme for HMD is Untold Stories and builds on the success of HMD 2010 which focused on The Legacy of Hope. In 2010 tens of thousands of people signed up and pledged to become part of this ‘legacy’, ensuring that the experiences of Holocaust and genocide survivors were never forgotten, and that we can all learn from the lessons of the past.
The Untold Stories theme ensures that these pledges become a reality. This year we have focused on listening to stories of suffering, persecution, but also hope. Importantly we heard many stories that have never been told before. Already we’ve lost millions of stories through acts of hatred and this year’s theme sends out a clear message that we cannot allow this to continue. Just some of the Untold Stories that we’ve heard can be seen in our film:
These are confusing, exciting and terrifying times for those on the liberal left. By the liberal left I mean those of us who want to see people flourish, to make the world as they see fit – to do it individually but also collectively and therefore democratically and all that requires in terms of greater equality of power and resources.
The confusion is that few of us saw the Conservative-dominated Coalition coming and even fewer are aware yet of its effect on each party and British politics. But it will be profound.
Looking back I find it incredible that my Party, Labour, …
Rightly or wrongly, the Liberal Democrats are as seen as the most pro-European of the three main political parties. The UK debate on the European Union is often framed in terms of “Europhiles v Eurosceptics”. However, it’s my experience, after 2 and a half years as the European Commission’s head of media in the UK, that most people don’t really have much of an opinion either way. They care about things that affect them personally, and probably don’t see the EU very present in their daily lives. European debates, either in the UK or at EU level, have a tendency …
The VAT rise will mean tighter purse strings for everyone, with the poorest being hardest hit. But there is an alternative which some sections of the media and certain politicians seem reluctant to talk about, let alone act on.
The £120bn tax gap is more than the NHS budget and over three times the budget for education. It dwarfs the £13bn brought in by the VAT increase. At a time when George Osborne is telling the British public that we’re all in this together, 38 Degrees members are calling on him to do more to make sure everyone plays by the …
One of the key arguments made by defenders of First Past the Post is that it produces clear outcomes on which strong and stable government is based. New analysis published today by the ippr (Worst of Both worlds: Why First Past the Post no longer works) shows why this claim no longer stacks up. It shows that the last general election result was not an aberration but a reflection of long-term changes in voting patterns across the UK which significantly increase the likelihood of more hung parliaments in the future.
Britain has evolved into a multi-party system, but it still has an electoral …
‘Today marks a big culture shift within our immigration system,’ said Nick Clegg two weeks ago, announcing plans purporting to end child detention. ‘That practice, the practice we inherited, ends here,’ he said.
Sadly, it didn’t end there.
Liberal Democrats interested in these matters might take a look at two dossiers of evidence compiled by End Child Detention Now and published on openDemocracy.
Christmas is the time for parties and fun – a last blast before turning over a new leaf in the New Year. Stopping smoking is the classic New Year’s resolution for good reason: those who give up can gain up to 10 years’ life expectancy and quitting is always worthwhile at any age.
Smoking is an addiction most smokers will come to bitterly regret. No one wants to be lectured or nannied but we cannot simply sit back and hope things will get better. The Liberal Democrat consultation on health, drawn up by Paul Burstow in the autumn, puts the argument …
Watching the Liberal Democrat angst over tuition fees takes me back to 1989, when I was a young, considerably trimmer and clean shaven young Progressive Democrat activist. There had just been an Irish general election, and we had been devastated, dropping from 14 seats to just 6, which in Westminster terms would be like dropping from 50 odd seats to the early twenties, so you can imagine the howls of anguish. But that wasn’t even the worst bit: we were now faced with the nightmare scenario of entering coalition with Charles Haughey’s Fianna Fail, which in British terms was like …
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a regular lurker around the blogosphere and the longer, cleverer articles on media websites. You may even go further than that and comment occasionally, “Digg”, share or “like” postings on Facebook. And if you’re very clever with your RSS reader, you may have found a way of getting some of the better quality content to come to you …
Dr. Richard Meyer served on the Government Consultative Panel for three years, wrote The Fate of the Badger (Batsford 1986) and worked for a year with WWF. This post is adapted from his submission to Defra as part of the public consultation process on bovine tuberculosis.
The background is briefly that the majority of farmers have long believed that badgers give TB to cattle. I will try to show in plain English why the planned ex-officio cull of badgers by farmers is misguided, uncivilised and dangerous.
Misguided? The most telling evidence is simply historic. On-farm intradermal tuberculin testing (‘Test & Slaughter’) reduced …
This month there has been an earthquake in the Wikio Political Blog Rankings Top 50; almost a third of the sites have moved by more than 20 places, and roughly another fifth by more than 10 places. There are plenty of new entrants, and quite a number of sites seem to have simply “tanked” in this list.
Mark Pack asked if there had been a change in the algorithm this month, so I’ve done this guest post. The answer is that yes, the algorithm has been “tweaked”, in Wikio’s words. The main tweak seems to …
One of the lasting legacies of the Liberal Democrats in power will be the efforts to push through what has been named the ‘Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill’.
Returning to conference as Deputy Prime Minister in 2010, Clegg triumphantly declared that “In November, we will publish a Freedom Bill to roll back a generation of illiberal and intrusive legislation.”
The Liberal Democrat draft addresses some of the most obvious anti-campaigning laws. For example it proposes …
Two awesome opportunities for a crushing blow to the dictatorial and oppressive policies set in place by the previous Labour government are approaching. The question remains, however, whether our present Conservative-led Government will rise to the challenge, and this makes the historic influence of the Liberal Democrats vital in the next few months.
The two opportunities are thus: the completion of the review into counter-terrorism measures; and the publication of the Freedom Bill, an important Liberal Democrat gain in the Coalition Agreement.
The Freedom Bill is due to be published in draft form any day now, and it is, as yet, …
Mark has invited me to write (yet another!) guest-post on Lib-Dem Voice about the Political Innovation project. Specifically, this one is to promote the events that we’re doing in Edinburgh and Belfast over the next few weeks – details can be found here.
The agenda? Well, these are ‘unconference’ events – largely bereft of big-name speakers or tied-down timetables. It’s a good deal more democratic than that, and anyone who hasn’t been to one of these type of conferences is particularly welcome. It’s a very democratic way of organising a day, and one that, ironically, works very well in …
The Vice Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University writes…
I am opposed to what are commonly called ‘top up’ fees in higher education and would resist any move to impose upfront fees for higher education. But, this is not what the Browne recommendations propose.
The weekend before Browne reported I was in despair and angry. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the Coalition government was going to impose a 75-80% cut on the teaching budget for higher education and expect the shortfall to be recovered through an increase in fees.
I am the Vice-Chancellor of a large metropolitan university, with just under 35,000 students. …
The next 12 months will be crucial to the coalition’s promise to reform party funding and ‘take big money out of politics’. An inquiry, to be conducted under the auspices of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, is already underway and will report in spring 2011, to be followed by inter-party talks.
It could be asked whether we need yet another review. Between 2005 and 2007, three separate reviews highlighted the need for reform, with the inter-party talks which followed the Hayden Phillips review in late 2007 coming close to securing agreement. Some, including Phillips himself, have argued …
If the big political innovation of the moment is to give power back to people, then a good place to do it is with personal data.
Whose data is it anyway? Whose health, whose education, whose identity, whose shopping history, bank details, travel plans, creditworthiness? Yet all these personal details, which affect us, are stored on hundreds of state and private-sector databases.
Asylum is a human rights issue. Given the tone of public debate in the last few years, you could be forgiven for not realising that, or having forgotten it. Asylum policy is about ensuring that people who have suffered appalling persecution are given the protection they’re entitled to. That’s not mentioned very often either. So it was heartening to see a room full of people at the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool for a discussion organised by the Refugee Council and UNHCR on ‘Asylum Policy: Honouring Our Refugee Protection Commitments’.
The meeting brought together Tom Brake MP, Roland Schilling (UNHCR UK …
Back in April, in those heady days after the first televised leaders debate, as news of the remarkable Liberal Democrat poll surge began to come through, Nick Clegg spoke to the members of his campaign team on the phone. None of them could quite believe what was happening, but they agreed on one thing: ‘They’re going to come for us.’
As everyone will recall, ‘they’ did – with a string of lurid newspaper stories, reaching a peak on 22 April, the morning of the second leaders’ debate. Most Lib Dem Voice readers will remember: ‘Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem donors and payments into his private account’ (Daily Telegraph); ‘Clegg’s crazy immigration policies’ (Daily Express); ‘Wobble Democrat’ (Sun); and ‘Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain’ (Daily Mail).
At our fringe event at last week’s Lib Dem party conference in Liverpool we were pleased to hear fulsome support for the work of charitable and voluntary organisations, and encouragement for them to get more involved in public life and in public service delivery.
And both Sarah Teather and Simon Hughes emphasised something very important in their remarks – David Cameron may have coined the phrase ‘Big Society’ but it’s a concept that chimes with beliefs about responsibility and community held by all parties.
Simon Hughes reminded us the UK had a long history of charitable organisations …
David Allen A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change.
Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
Simon McGrath so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
Peter Davies @Kira CollinsThat assumes we want to help people more with their energy bills than with all the other bills they may be struggling with. There is no reason why ...
Rob Heale Agree that we need to focus on strategy and have clearer messaging:-
1. We MUST prioritise membership recruitment in all we do, including PPB's, most leaflets...
Kira Collins Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
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Brexit and summer holidays
The pine martens of Shropshire
The shame of Liverpool Labour councillors taking their allowances but not turning up to do the work
David Allen 
Simon McGrath 
Peter Davies 
Rob Heale 
Kira Collins 