The Lib Dems’ very own sleazebusting terrier Norman Baker (who daylights as our shadow transport secretary) has three – count ’em – articles on MPs’ expenses in the papers. Excerpts as follows:
Little did I know, when I submitted a Freedom of Information request back in 2005, what a Pandora’s Box was opening up. That modest request, simply asking for a breakdown of MPs’ travel costs by mode of transport, was fought tooth and nail by the senior MPs who comprise the House
Caroline Pidgeon, Liberal Democrat Transport spokesperson on the London Assembly, writes in today’s Guardian on Boris Johnson’s first year as Mayor of London.
She says that although Johnson has promised much, he has failed to deliver on most of it:
On transport alone there has been a long list of broken promises.
Johnson pledged to establish a new express bus service that would orbit outer London. A year after being elected, not one orbital bus route has even been planned.
The mayor promised to convene an “emergency summit” of the train operating companies to tackle overcrowding and exorbitant fares. A year on,
Over at the Daily Mail, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable reflects on what the House of Commons achieved last week, as well as on what it fails to do. Here’s an excerpt:
Parliament was at its best last week – in the vote defeating the Government over the Gurkhas – and at its worst in another messy wrangle over MPs’ expenses.
But much bigger questions have to be asked: what does Parliament actually do? And why has Parliament no role approving or overseeing the vast amount of taxpayers’ money spent by the Government, well over £1billion a day? Unlike the
Over at the Daily Mail, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable delivers his robust verdict on Alistair Darling’s 2009 budget. Here’s an excerpt:
I argued the main requirement was an honest statement, without spin, of the country’s problems. Darling was candid enough about the scale of the budget deficit – which will be a staggering 12 per cent of GDP this year and next, forcing the Government to borrow unprecedented sums to cover the collapse of revenue from financial services and the falling housing market. …
Darling was less honest about the prospects for recovery. He cheerfully assumed growth will return soon.
Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, former Lib Dem leader Ming Campbell explains how today’s Commons defeat of the policy to restrict Gurkhas’ right to settle in the UK is another crack in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s authority:
What the government failed to appreciate was the extent of feeling within the Commons and the enormous public affection outside. The Gurkhas hold a special place in British hearts and, for once, public opinion was in favour of immigration rather than against it. …
It is wise to remember the government hasn’t fallen. But this defeat adds to the woes of a
This is a time for grown-up debate. The deficit is too big and the public is too cynical of politicians to be taken in by vague, unspecific, promises. The only way forward is to identify, explicitly, areas of government activity which will have to be cut right back. My party has already identified several specific cuts – like the ID card scheme; the NHS IT project; “baby bonds”; refusing unlimited taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power. We believe that there now has to be a serious debate about how to scale
Over at the Daily Mail, Lib Dem deputy leader and shadow chancellor Vince Cable oultines his plans to get the British economy back on track. Here’s an excerpt:
What can the Government do in the Budget to help avert an unemployment crisis? The panicky VAT cut, designed to get consumers spending again, was not a success and very expensive for the Government.
It would be better now to redirect the remaining £8.5billion set aside to public works projects which provide jobs and leave taxpayers with a useful asset at the end of it.
The obvious priority is affordable housing. Private house building has
Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Lib Dem shadow justice secretary David Howarth asks if police interference in the right to protest is designed only to protect the political and economic status quo. Here’s an excerpt:
The arrest of more than one hundred climate protesters alleged to have been planning to disrupt the operation of the Ratcliffe coal-fired power station is, I am glad to see, raising questions about undue interference in the right to protest. Prior restraint of protest, especially in the form of preventive arrest, is difficult to justify. Adding restrictive conditions to the protesters’ bail makes the
Over at Society Today, Lib Dem blogger and London candidate for the European Parliament Jonathan Fryer examines the prospects for peace in the troubled region. Here’s an excerpt:
… the prognosis for the future need not necessarily be as grim as the pessimists fear. First and foremost, the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House should provide a whole new dynamic to the Washington-Tel Aviv axis. In the past, US administrations – including that of George W Bush – have allowed Israel to get away with murder, literally and figuratively. That has included the ongoing expansion of Jewish settlements in
Over at The Guardian, Nick Clegg highlights that expense abuses are just one symptom of a bankrupt political culture, and argues that Britain deserves real change. Here’s an excerpt:
Britain’s MPs are facing a summer of reckoning. All 700,000 pages of their expense claims are going to be published in July. It’s an investigative journalist’s dream – reams of fodder to mock and hound the political establishment.
Many of the revelations will be relatively minor, but taken together they are significant. Last year I began publishing my expense claims voluntarily. People wrote to me asking questions about individual domestic items. Quite right
Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne answers these questions – and many more besides – in today’s Independent:
On police violence:
The officer who lashed out at Ian Tomlinson is not typical. But any constable who betrays the public’s trust to use force responsibly should be disciplined and, if appropriate, charged. It is lamentably unfair to the vast majority of self-controlled officers if a thug tars the whole force.
On his property portfolio:
My wife and I have no more homes for our own use than any other MP’s family – one in my Eastleigh constituency and another in London. My other properties
Over at the Daily Mail, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable delivers his Easter message, examining the vexed issue of MPs’ expenses. Here’s an excerpt:
This may be a time of national economic peril, but the Home Secretary’s patio heater and the Transport Secretary’s three homes dominate the news. It is now essential that this running sore is dealt with. MPs have to move quickly and decisively to introduce a system that is clear and clean and gives taxpayers value for money.
I was pulled up short when I saw a newspaper headline ‘MPs: They’re all at it’. My first reaction was
Over at The Independent, former Lib Dem London mayoral candidate Brian Paddick, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the Metroplitan Police, examines the force’s mounting problems. Here’s an excerpt:
Seeing the video of Ian Tomlinson being assaulted by a police officer during the G20 protests – an apparently innocent man being subjected to what appeared to be an unjustified assault by a police officer – provoked in me an immediate desire for the perpetrator to be suspended, tried and punished.
On the other hand, having been the victim of “trial by media” myself, I realised the need for an independent investigation, the outcome
Over at The Times, Lib Dem MP Tom Brake reflects on his experiences as an independent observer on behalf of Parliament at last week’s G20 protests. Here’s an excerpt:
There is a minority in some protests that does not mind causing trouble, and a smaller number that will actively seek violence, vandalism and aggression, thus stealing the headlines away from issues such as climate change, Third World debt, employment or the world economy. Anyone who has been to a protest, music festival or a football match accepts and understands that crowd control cannot be the easiest of jobs. It is a thankless task, with little praise when things pass off peacefully, but dominating headlines when tragic and appalling incidents such as that of Ian Tomlinson’s death occur.
On the day itself, I was rooted in one of the police “kettles” for five hours. I witnessed the professionalism of many police officers, as well as their final failure to tackle the situation properly and instead fan the flames. … “Kettling” is a tactic that should come under review. At the first sign of difficulty, the police present a wall of riot shields and batons around protesters — the peaceful alongside the problematic — and slowly squeeze them into a tighter space. People are allowed in, but absolutely no one is allowed to leave.
Slowly the number of inmates increases. No access to food. No water. Young trapped with the old. Journalists trapped with anarchists. People, like an elderly couple I spoke to, who simply did not want to be there at all. It is not surprising that under such conditions an otherwise overwhelmingly relaxed and peaceful crowd can become agitated, then angry, and then violent. The tactic proved misguided and counter-productive. It served to alienate a whole mass of peaceful protesters. …
There is now a different public mood to contain — one that wants to know why a man died. And the public will not be silenced this time by backing them into a corner.
You can read the article in full HERE. And you can watch Tom’s 2-minute video from inside the ‘kettle’ here:
If only The Voice more regularly perused the pages of the Daily Mail, we would not have missed Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable’s most recent two articles for the paper. (Then again, if The Voice more regularly perused the pages of the Daily Mail we would most likely end up supporting flogging for immigrants, worrying about Facebook giving us cancer, and cheering on the Blackshirts). Anyway, Vince has penned two articles for the paper examining the impact of the economic crisis. Excerpts below – clcik on the headline to read in full:
Over at The Times, Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne notes that a cosmetic surgeon helped to cut knife violence by 40 per cent in Cardiff, and asks: why isn’t his no-brainer idea being copied across Britain? Here’s an excerpt:
Nearly 50,000 people have been treated in hospital for knifings since the Government came to power. The toll of knife crime has rightly gripped the media, since there can be few more horrifying thoughts for any parent than to think of their child being attacked by knife- wielding thugs. …
Effective action is about stop-and- search, particularly working from intelligence.
Over at the Daily Mail, former Liberal party leader Lord (David) Steel recalls the dramatic evening of 28 March 1979, when the Labour Government lost a confidence motion by one vote, and the then Prime Minister James Callaghan was forced to call an early General Election. It was this election that swept Margaret Thatcher to victory. Here’s an excerpt:
The tension was palpable, politicians from all parties talking and arguing with one another, all speculating about what was going to happen next.
I had never seen the chamber so packed before. Not one of us had the slightest idea what the
Over at The Independent today, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg explains why an Iraq inquiry should examine every detail the Government would like ignored. Here’s an excerpt:
We had the whitewash Hutton inquiry, then the Butler inquiry, but the real truth about the political decision-making that led us into this war has never yet been exposed.
Labour and the Conservatives came together to drag our country into an illegal war: we need to know how that happened so that we make sure it never happens again. The government has finally accepted that it can no longer duck an inquiry. The question now
Lib Dem MP Norman Baker has a letter published in today’s Guardian demanding an immediate and full inquiry into the Iraq war, which the Government has said will happen ‘as soon as possible’ after 31st July:
It is welcome that Carne Ross reminds us (March 20) that intelligence available to the government before the invasion of Iraq made it “very clear” that Saddam was not a threat, but it’s hardly a revelation. The confidential Downing Street minute from 23 July 2002 records Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, telling the meeting of senior ministers and officials that the case for
Over at the Guardian today, there’s a lengthy extract from Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable’s about-to-be-published book, The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What It Means. Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt:
Escaping this crisis will require a combination of approaches, and the mix will vary from country to country. In each case, however, the price for restoring stability will be a greatly increased role for the state in the banking sector. Beyond that, the challenge will be to build a regulatory regime that provides greater protection against systemic risk. After the calamities of the past year, few now
Over at the New Statesman, Michael Moore, the Lib Dems’ shadow international development secretary, argues that the G20 summit offers a key opportunity to revitalise the international community’s commitment to development at this difficult economic time. Here’s an excerpt:
The Liberal Democrats believe that the G20 summit offers a key opportunity to revitalise the international community’s commitment to development at this difficult economic time. In an interconnected world tackling the impacts of the crisis on the developing world is not just a moral imperative, but in our own self-interest.
If we do nothing it will not be long before humanitarian crises,
Yesterday The Guardian ran a piece from Nick Clegg on Barclays and its attempts to keep secret details of how it goes about reducing the amount of tax it pays:
Yesterday Barclays may have won on a point of law. But it cannot run away from the wider point of principle: now our whole banking system relies on the support of British taxpayers, how the banks run their business is our business, too.
So long as these banks are sustained by explicit or implicit Treasury guarantees, they have no right to deprive the Treasury of money by running circles round the taxman.
Over at the Yorkshire Post, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg argues that, after a decade when British banks have been allowed to get away with far too much, it’s high time for real reform of the banking industry. Here’s an excerpt:
I want a return to old-style high street banks so people’s savings are protected from bankers who are obsessed with taking high risk gambles with other people’s money. I propose that banks are given a choice: they can do ordinary consumer business like current accounts, mortgages, business loans, savings, they can even make sensible low-risk investments and we will protect
Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Liberal England’s Jonathan Calder argues ‘of course policy on faith schools is a compromise – that’s how social institutions are most often made to work’. Here’s an excerpt:
… if, in a surge of Jacobin purity, the party had voted for an outright ban on faith schools, it would have been only a gesture. Few Liberal Democrats would have campaigned on a policy that threatened to alienate every church and disrupt a third of the schools in the country.
Besides, it’s not faith schools that are the problem: it is the conventional state schools.
With apologies for missing this yesterday – that’ll teach me not to pay my daily homage to that fount of reactionary, fact-free unpleasantness, the Daily Mail website – but the Lib Dems’ deputy leader Vince Cable was performing the remarkable feat of inserting some common sense perspective into the paper, writing about the growing importance of China to the world’s financial affairs. Here’s an excerpt:
China now has the second biggest economy in the world, based on purchasing power, and India the fourth (Britain is battling it out for sixth place with France). This new industrial revolution is not a pretty
Over at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog, Quaequam Blog!’s James Graham argues that the Lib Dems’ spring conference ‘revealed Nick Clegg’s sense of purpose as he delivered a message of hope amid the economic gloom’. Here’s an extract:
Nick Clegg’s early weakness for attention-grabbing gimmicks has been superceded by a new seriousness of purpose by a leader finally finding his voice. He has been rewarded by a small but perceptible shift in the polls. The talk a few months ago was of a Tory landslide and a Lib Dem wipeout, yet it has become increasingly apparent that Clegg may find
Over at the Mirror’s website, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has an article (submitted, the Voice assumes, before his paternity leave started!) calling on politicians from all parties ‘to get together and give politics a proper Spring-clean.’ Here’s an excerpt:
Politicians are the least trusted people in the country, and restoring people’s faith will be a big task. So we can’t do it like a succession of governments have always wanted – bit by bit, issue by issue, crisis by crisis. We need to think big on the way politics works.
If we have flimsy rules for expenses, people will always
Over at the Mail on Sunday, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable ponders the question he is asked every day: why are profligate borrowers being rewarded by lower interest rates while thrifty savers suffer? Here’s an excerpt:
Interest rate cuts were unavoidable, though they have reached their limit and other policies are now more important – especially getting credit flowing to sound companies. Of course, it is necessary for the economy that people should spend, sensibly, since this also creates production and employment for others. There is a danger that fear is leading many people, and companies, to hoard excessive cash
Over at the Yorkshire Post, Lib Dem deputy leader and shadow chancellor Vince Cable marks the first anniversary of the nationalisation of Northern Rock with his account of ‘one of the most tumultuous years in the history of the financial sector and the British economy.’ Here’s an excerpt:
Eighteen months into the credit crunch and six months into a recession, the Conservatives and the Labour Party are still rehearsing the same arguments. The Conservatives have one message: “It’s all your fault, Gordon.” The Government, on the other hand, endlessly repeats its claim: “It’s nothing to do with us; it is a
Over at the Mirror, crusading Lib Dem MP Norman Baker writes (briefly) about the damage that the ‘drip, drip, drip of stories about MPs’ expenses’ is doing to Parliament. Here’s an excerpt (actually, it’s pretty much the whole piece):
We can’t continue to have revelations that the public find so shocking. Jacqui Smith’s homes are a prime example. It’s not acceptable that she can claim her main home is her sister’s spare room. Saying it is within the rules is not good enough. House of Commons officials must be able to veto MPs’ declarations. They need to ask questions like where
David Allen Tristan,
You're right in the sense that you didn't specifically call for PFI. But you did say "if you can persuade private money to provide the funding on t...
David Garlick Touted as bringing power to people.
Power brought down from Govt sounds good but power still not reaching the lowest possible levels in our Communities....
Tristan Ward @ David Allen
"PFI won’t help stop the planet burning"
Who said anything about PFI - I didn't.
The private money that is building (not enough) house...
Joey Vimsante I think the EU and UK needs to support not for profit, social media platforms that put the interest of the public, vulnerable people, young people, and nation a...
Nick Baird With regard to client-side image scanning, the danger of mission creep are real, but I have other concerns. One is whether this is truly a practical and effecti...
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Brechtian television: Leo McKern in Galileo (1964)
Good news on political donations?
Conference booked
Are Labour going to cross another red line?
David Allen 
David Garlick 
Tristan Ward 
Joey Vimsante 
Nick Baird 