Category Archives: Op-eds

Caron Lindsay

For Remembrance Sunday

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 11th November 2018 - 7:00 am

Charles Homer Bosworth was my great grandfather. He lived in Codford in Wiltshire. Born in 1888, he served in the First World War and gets a mention in the Codford Roll of Honour:

Charles Homer Bosworth served in the British Army during World War 1 and spent time in Russia as part of his service.

Until a couple of months ago, that was as much as my sister and I and our cousins knew about his first World War Service. Then we got in touch with our Dad’s cousin in the US and he was able to tell us some more details. Apparently, Charles’ time in Russia involved being captured by the Bolsheviks and held in a cattle train car. Thankfully, he and his colleagues managed to escape, otherwise I would not be here today.

Charles Homer Bosworth continued to serve this country, joining the RAF. By the time World War 2 broke out, he was 51 years old and could have retired. Just two weeks in, he was one of 519 people killed after HMS Courageous was torpedoed off the course of Ireland.

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Celia Thomas

Baroness Celia Thomas writes….The disabled man in the airport

By Celia Thomas | Sat 10th November 2018 - 8:55 am

A few days ago, it was reported that last year a paraplegic athlete, Justin Levene, shuffled through Luton Airport on his bottom because his own self-propelled wheelchair was stuck on the plane. He didn’t want to accept Luton Airport’s offer of a different non-self-propelled wheelchair, not least because of the danger of pressure sores, but also the indignity of losing his independence that had been so hard-won.

I have seen various accusations; that it was churlish, offensive, arrogant, publicity seeking – the list goes on.  However others, notably disabled people themselves, have applauded him for drawing attention to the difficulties people with disabilities face if they travel, particularly the inadequate facilities at airports. Some people have accused him of making a fuss but, until you have experienced how little people seem to consider accessibility issues, making a fuss often becomes the only thing you can do to ensure people take notice. The news coverage of Justin Levene is case in point.

This comes at the end of a week when I attended a meeting about disabled access and inclusion, with two Ministers, civil servants and disabled Peers. We were told about the new cross-departmental committee on disability, and its consultation with the Disability Charities Committee – a group I’d barely heard of.  After a bit, one of the Government-supporting Peers let fly.  He told about attending a VIP dinner at a high-end hotel in central London, only to discover that there was no accessible toilet there, but that he could be led to a bedroom some way away which had an accessible bathroom attached to it. He said he felt worthless and demeaned by that, and made sure he was dehydrated.

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Flo Clucas

The invisible women

By Flo Clucas | Fri 9th November 2018 - 11:55 am

Women have always played a significant role in the life of our villages, towns and cities. The shame is, that their role is largely forgotten and consigned to history.

As a Liverpool councillor, I had the opportunity to redress the balance a little and give ordinary women, who had made a real difference, both a face and a place in our lives.

In Liverpool, the Blitz Memorial Statue depicted a woman and a child. It was based on the true story of a survivor of the Durning Road shelter bombing in the Blitz. Women worked in munitions factories, as nurses, taking the place of men who were called up for service. They kept going when bombs dropped around them and often, as in the case of this survivor, when war robbed them of their children.

Kitty Wilkinson was a woman who landed as a child on the Liverpool shoreline. Her story was passed down from mother to daughter, from generation to generation. She was a working class women whose ideas changed her world, and ours.

Kitty believed that cleanliness was essential to being healthy. During the great cholera epidemic that killed thousands in the city, not one person in her street died. Kitty allowed them to use her copper to keep bedding and clothing clean.

Doctors thought she was mad, but then some realised what was happening. That she was right. Eventually they supported her and Liverpool Corporation, as it then was, built public launderies and provided clean water. Even Queen Victoria knew of her and sent her a silver tea service.

She saved thousands of lives and affected public health and medicine across the globe. But, as a lowly working class woman, didn’t deserve a piece of commemorative art.

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Kirsten Johnson

God Speed The Plough

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 8th November 2018 - 12:30 pm

One of the pleasures of being a PPC is the opportunity to visit many venues in the run up to Remembrance Day on Sunday.

Last week I had a look around the Flower Festival at St Sabinus’ Church, Woolacombe. Many of the exhibits struck a chord – I, after all, grew up on military bases and appreciate from the inside out the sacrifices women, men and children make in service to their country. The embroidered cards with faded handwritten messages, sent back and forth (yes, some French ones sent home to girlfriends from the front line) were especially poignant.

However, one flower display stood out, and that was the tribute to the Women’s Land Army. “God Speed the Plough” honoured the vital work of women undertaken whilst the nation was at war.

The Women’s Land Army was originally set up in 1917 but then dissolved after the First World War. It was reinstated in 1939 as a voluntary service, and then conscripted women from December 1941. “Land girls” did a variety of jobs on grain, stock and dairy farms, including deployment in an anti-vermin squad (‘rat-catchers’).

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Paul Walter

I don’t think we’ve heard the last from this guy….

By Paul Walter | Thu 8th November 2018 - 11:40 am

Beto O’Rourke gave Ted Cruz a run for his money in the recent race for the Texan US Senate seat. He comes from the border town of El Paso.



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Robert Johnston

Open Energy: information and the market

By Robert Johnston | Thu 8th November 2018 - 9:30 am

Information comes in many forms with various claims to ownership. The volume of data and the variety of contexts that transform it into information and knowledge has evolved beyond recognition since Hayek’s seminal work on “The use of knowledge in society”.  However, the importance of the availability of knowledge to the individual, whether person or business, has, if anything, increased and reinforced Hayek’s point that free but informed decisions and economic effectiveness go hand in hand. It is therefore important for policy to address the ownership and access to information to tackle the ensuing asymmetries in decision making and power as exemplified by the energy market.

This topic relates to the important work done by Jo Swinson and Ed Davey during the Coalition to make getting a better utilities deal easier. The current energy market in the UK is a morass of poorly thought out regulation, awkward implementation and skewed market mechanisms.  A move towards nationalisation is not the answer. The situation and elements of a solution have recently been set out clearly in a report sponsored by the Federation of Small Businesses. The report, “Open Energy: Using Data to create a smarter, cheaper and fairer energy market”, compiled by Fingleton Associates, covers the needs of individuals and service providers as well as businesses.

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Tahir Maher

HS2 – Is it worth it?

By Tahir Maher | Wed 7th November 2018 - 1:35 pm

I have been ambivalent about HS2 and working in the rail industry was somewhat biased towards the idea of building a high-speed rail link. I am not always convinced with the arguments when people say we can spend funds better elsewhere as I find such arguments lack a follow through or a wider perspective (yet I propose to do precisely that in this article). However, the astronomical costs of HS2 are making me question if there is a viable business plan anymore. The drive for its build now seems to be political rather than economic.

The Department for Transport (DfT) says there will be almost 15,000 seats an hour on trains between London and the cities of Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, trebling the current capacity. The plan was HS2 would connect London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and the East Midlands.

The first phase timing was considered ambitious by the Public Accounts Committee which is due to be opened by the end of 2026 for high-speed travel between London and Birmingham. Subsequent phase to Manchester and Leeds could start being built in the middle of the next decade, with the line to be opened by 2032-33. The cost of phase one (London to Birmingham) has already increased from £16bn to £22bn (an increase of 38 percent) due to the amount of tunneling required and purchase of land. The total cost of HS2 at the moment is expected to be £52bn. Although an article in the Sunday Times quoted one of the people who work at DfT, who made the estimates, who now says that the full cost could be well over £100bn.

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Tom King

UK democracy is a rotten borough – Liberal Democrats must act like it

By Tom King | Wed 7th November 2018 - 7:35 am

Results from the largest opinion poll since that slightly odd one in 2016 are in, and what a surprise: Brexit negotiations have not convinced people that the sunny uplands are just over the brow of this particular Everest.

Instead, there is a definite shift in public views: an eight-point majority for Remain in Survation’s 20,000-person poll (54-46). More interesting was the map showing the extent of the change; Leave-loving Wales is now Remain, while ‘Labour Leave’ constituencies in the north of England have also seen the light – or the lights going out.

As is so often the case, there were immediate redoubled calls for a People’s Vote from Remainer politicians.

I am technically in favour of a new vote. I marched for one in London two weeks ago. The last time I marched, it was against the Iraq war; a simple choice. However, this time, I marched not because I thought another referendum was the right policy, but because nothing better is on offer.

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The Voice

Vince: The Commonwealth wants us to stay in the EU

By The Voice | Tue 6th November 2018 - 12:30 pm

Last month Vince gave a lecture to the Institute of Commonwealth Studies on the subject of Brexit and how it would affect the Commonwealth.

You know how you get Tory Brexiteers looking to the Commonwealth as a whole new opportunity for us? Well, the commonwealth leaders themselves would prefer we stayed in. Vince pointed out:

The first thing that struck me as I started looking through some of the comments on BREXIT and the Commonwealth was the enormous contrast between the tone of the comments coming from the UK, and particularly from the advocates of BREXIT, and those coming from the Commonwealth governments themselves. I think Patricia Scotland summarised the debate on this subject by saying that most of the Commonwealth leaders were hoping that Britain would stay in. It was very clear, that statement. I suspect she understated the argument but there was a very clear preference that most Commonwealth countries have more influence as a result of being in the European Union than being outside. I contrast that with a strangely, almost euphoric attitude of a lot of people in the UK who see the Commonwealth in terms of a big new opportunity opening up.

So why are commonwealth countries so anxious?

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Caron Lindsay

Jane Bonham Carter reviews biography of Marie Colvin

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 6th November 2018 - 9:55 am

I always liked reading Marie Colvin’s reports from war zones. She brought the stories of people whose lives were constrained or ruined by war to our breakfast tables. She made you understand the dilemmas and dangers people faced just to get through the day.

Colvin died in Syria in 2012. Her friend, Lib Dem Peer Jane Bonham-Carter, reviewed a new biography of her written by Channel 4’s Lindsey Hillsum in this week’s Sunday Times.

She was extraordinarily brave. The stories of Marie’s courage are legion, but the one that stands out for me was East Timor. There, holed up in 1999 in a UN compound with 1,500 women and children, she and two other heroic female reporters, Minka Nijhuis and Irena Cristalis, refused to go when an evacuation of international and national staff and the press was announced. She stayed, reported on the plight of those left trapped via her satellite phone, and after four tense days was able to leave for safety. Not an outcome she expected — her sister Cat remembers her calling “to say goodbye as she was likely to be killed”. Marie later wrote that “staying in the East Timor compound was one of the moments in my life of which I am most proud”.

As Hilsum notes, Marie was hopeless with technology, frequently erasing stories by accident and needing help to send copy from her computer. But, as I saw countless times, she had an extraordinary ability to get people to open up to her. What she wanted to do was tell people’s stories, and relay their words to the outside world.

Despite her apparent addiction to danger, she did not court death. She loved life, absolutely loved it — loved young people, too, and was loved in return by them. But she had her own horrors to deal with, in particular in Sri Lanka in 2001, where, despite clearly identifying herself as a journalist, yelling it, in fact, she was fired on by a government soldier.

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Caron Lindsay

So Remain’s ahead – but is it enough?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 6th November 2018 - 6:55 am

Remaining in the EU has the support of a majority of those asked in a Channel 4 super-poll. Normally polls ask 1000 or so people what they think or who they would vote for. This one was more the size of your Exit Poll on election day.

The Survation poll had 54% of people say they wanted to remain in the EU. In addition to that, over a hundred areas that voted to leave the EU in 2016 would now choose to remain.

Whatever deal May comes back with within the next few weeks is going to be imperfect. A tonne of stuff will be kicked into the long grass. There will be no permanent solution to the Northern Ireland border because there isn’t one that doesn’t involve us staying in a customs union indefinitely. Brexiteer Tory extremists will not wear that for a minute.

It looks like British people are surveying the options available to them and saying “no, thanks.”

To proceed with Brexit without going back to them and asking them what they want to do would be undemocratic and irresponsible.

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Tim Pickstone

Is austerity ending?

By Tim Pickstone | Mon 5th November 2018 - 1:28 pm

Cllr Tim Pickstone, Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigners (ALDC) Chief Executive, provides the local government perspective.

For the Prime Minister, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to announce, as they both have in recent weeks, that austerity is ending is an insult to everyone involved in local government.

As all ALDC members will be too painfully aware, funding for local government has been cut by almost 60% since 2010 and there’s further reductions to come too (and let us not forget that local government cuts were happening pre-2010 too).

The reality of this squeeze on local services is …

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Callum Robertson

LASPO, the worst piece of legislation you’ve probably never heard of

By Callum Robertson | Mon 5th November 2018 - 11:22 am

LASPO, unless you have some sort of involvement with the law, probably comes across as some sort of quango that doesn’t have much meaning. However, it is probably the most crucial piece of justice related legislation since the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (which established the Supreme Court).

The Government’s consultation on the effects of LASPO has just concluded and every organisation who has submitted evidence to the Ministry of Justice consultation has broadly said the same thing. It has not worked.

What the Legal Aid, Sentencing & Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) did was bring about a wide range of …

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Caron Lindsay

Looking ahead to the US mid-terms

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th November 2018 - 5:30 pm

Two years ago, I was a bit worried that everyone seemed to assume that Hillary Clinton would win the US Presidency. The lesson from the Brexit vote is that you can’t assume anything and that you need to fight for every vote in every seat right up till the last minute. I just wish Hillary’s campaign had done that.

Never again do I want to feel the sense of horror and grief I felt on both June 24th and November 9th 2016.

Trump’s election, though, wasn’t the scariest thing that happened to me that week. But then my husband having open heart surgery was, understandably, the most terrifying thing that has ever happened in my life – except that two hours in the middle of the night following the operation when he was rushed back into theatre to deal with a complication.

I do have something to thank Trump for, though. My husband’s blood pressure remained stubbornly low after all the drama, extending his stay in Intensive Care. It didn’t start to rise again until just after he had been told the election result. Coincidence? I think not.

The midterm elections happen this Tuesday. The 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs along with a third of the seats in the Senate, both of which are controlled by Trump’s Republicans at the moment. All Trump has to offer is a platform of fear and lies about a mythical caravan of terrorists coming to take over the US or warnings to young men that they aren’t safe from false allegations of sexual harassment. But as we know, that sort of fear could turn his base out. Will the Democrats’ messages on bread and butter issues such as healthcare be sufficient?

Again, most pollsters agree that it’s likely that the Democrats will take back the House. It is vital that they do because if the Republicans retain it, Obama’s health reforms will be dead, leaving millions of poorer, sicker Americans without any health insurance.

A Democrat House will also be able to investigate the hell out of Trump and his associates.

The most likely outcome for the Senate is a hold for the Republicans who may even gain some seats from the Democrats. This is simply because 23/33 seats up this year are held by Democrats and some of them in quite tight races. Claire Macaskill in Missouri is one of them. Five Thirty Eight gives her a 5 in 8 chance of retaining her seat but that’s a bit close for comfort.

The one gain everyone of a liberal nature would like to see but is unlikely to happen is Beto O’Rourke beating the appalling Ted Cruz in Texas. Beto has got closer than most Democrats. His championing of key liberal issues like support for abortion and gun control has not held him back. A lesson, perhaps, for those who want to turn this party into some sort of centrist mush. It’s not impossible for Beto to win, so keep everything crossed.

In addition to this, governors are up for election in 36 states. Out of all the elections, the person I want to win most is Stacey Abrahams in Georgia. She is in a very tight race with a Republican whose attempts at suppressing voter registrations amongst likely Democrat voters have just been ruled against by a Judge.

I heard Stacey on Crooked Media’s Pod Save America podcast earlier this year and thought she was brilliant. She’s had Obama and Oprah Winfrey campaigning with her this week as the Guardian reports:

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Caron Lindsay

Report highlights barriers to women’s participation in politics at every level

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th November 2018 - 11:30 am

This week, a report by the Fawcett Society highlighted barriers impeding women’s progress at every stage of the political proces.

Strategies for Success, Women’s experiences of selection and election in UK Parliament has details of things that work – most notably initiatives like the Ask her to stand campaign – and depressing experiences of discrimination at every level. The report concludes:

Significant challenges to increasing women’s representation remain at every stage of the process to becoming an MP. While a common argument is that political progression is based on merit, in practice, getting selected depends on a number of other factors which may inhibit diversity amongst political candidates and discourage women from standing for election. However, we have found indicators of possible strategies for success. In some cases, the simple act of a political leader making a call for more women to participate played an important part in individuals embarking on the process of selection. There is support too for party programmes intended to support women in this process. Importantly asking women to stand, encouraging them to see themselves as “MP material” and demonstrating that they are seen this way by their party makes a real difference. These interventions are likely to increase the number of women candidates and help equip them for the process. But a change in representation is likely to require tackling the underlying resistance to women in power, the processes that disadvantage them and other underrepresented groups, and our political culture more widely.

It contains experiences of council candidates being deselected while pregnant.

The first steps of getting involved in a political party can be difficult for women if there is no-one like them in their local party as one woman explained:

I do think it’s intimidating if you are a BME woman who isn’t very used to kind of establishment places to come into a room where there’s a lot of old white middle-class men, it can be quite intimidating.

That is why it is important for local parties to have a diverse executive – we need to walk the walk on diversity at every single level of the organisation.

This experience will be familiar to many women:

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Vince Cable: Brexit’s real life impacts are already hitting the UK hard

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th November 2018 - 10:28 am

Vince was up in Edinburgh this week (not, contrary to some reports, flying business class and staying in luxury). After an early start to do budget media stuff, he voted on the budget at 6:30 or so and caught a flight an hour later. He and Christine Jardine got to the Edinburgh West dinner at about 9:45 and both were in sparkling form.

In fact, I think that the speech Vince gave was better than his Conference speech. There was none of the schoolboy, carry-on style humour, and just a very simple, effective liberal message. He talked about needing to be honest with people about the future funding of public services – we will need to pay more tax. He talked about Brexit and our desire to stop it too, but he had plenty of vision about helping those who need it most – putting more money into Universal Credit and stopping its rollout until the problems with it are sorted out. He talked of his surprise that Labour had abstained on he Tory tax cut for better off people as he led our MPs to oppose it.

Timed to coincide with his visit was an op-ed in the Scotsman which he used to describe the detrimental impact that Brexit is already having on us:

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Sarah Brown

Challenges for liberalism 3: Is liberalism under threat, and how should its values be promoted?

By Sarah Brown | Sun 4th November 2018 - 9:27 am

Editor’s Note: These posts are based on a speech given by the author at an event organised by York  University Liberal Democrats.

It’s certainly a difficult time for those who share our values. There’s a song we sing at Glee Club at conference, and it includes the line, “Peace, reform and liberation be our triune aspiration”. I think those are fantastic values –
promote a world in which nations and peoples live together in harmony, in which borders are dismantled, have an agenda of constantly reforming society so that we are constantly ahead of the curve in promoting a more open and fair society, and look to end oppression wherever we see it.

But those values aren’t in fashion at the moment. What’s very much in fashion is xenophobia, knee-jerk conservatism and oppression.

I think we spend too much time apologising about our values, of being embarrassed by them. Take immigration – the guy who says he has “genuine concerns” that all people who look a bit foreign are job stealing rapists is obviously not going to vote for us, but the people who might be persuaded about our values are also not going to vote for us if our message is, “the bigots have legitimate concerns, but don’t vote for them”.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Cllr Robert Aldridge: Whatever happened to joined up thinking?

By NewsHound | Sat 3rd November 2018 - 9:52 am

This Budget has meant that local government is going to be taking even more of a hit in England. In Scotland, too, councils bear the brunt of SNP cuts.

A Lib Dem Councillor in Edinburgh, Robert Aldridge, who, for five years from 2007-12 was the city’s finance convener, has written an article for the Edinburgh Evening News about what a total mess the Labour/SNP coalition is making of running Scotland’s capital.

Their cuts have not been done in a  strategic way and, in fact, generate more costs in the future:

He set out the problems:

As the scale of council cuts grows we are seeing fewer and fewer staff struggling to try to provide the same level of service with smaller and smaller budgets. More and more we see staff having to focus on their part of a task rather than the best way of achieving the best service for the citizen.

And the impact they have on people’s lives:

For the want of a janitor in a community centre we are likely to see more people having to move to residential care, at enormous expense. We are focusing limited resources on those with highest needs, but at the expense of low-level support which prevents problems becoming acute. We are facing an obesity crisis amongst our young people. But we are increasing the costs for voluntary groups to use council facilities in the evening, making it likely that they will either have to increase charges (excluding young people from poorer families) or meet less frequently, or for a shorter period.

And what’s the solution?

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Nick Harvey

Nick Harvey writes…Reorganisation at Lib Dem HQ

By Nick Harvey | Fri 2nd November 2018 - 8:03 pm

Party members may have read on political websites that Lib Dem HQ is in the process of carrying out a reorganisation, which sadly will see a reduction in the number of staff at our headquarters. 

In common with both other parties we have seen a dip in our income in the year after an election, made all the more acute after two elections (and a referendum) in two years. Donation fatigue and lower revenues are understandable at this point.

This is a phenomenon we have seen many times before.  Politics is a cyclical business, with parties consolidating after elections and …

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Sarah Brown

Challenges for liberalism 2: How should liberalism respond to the prevalence of social media?

By Sarah Brown | Fri 2nd November 2018 - 11:55 am

Editor’s Note: These posts are based on a speech given by the author at an event organised by York University Liberal Democrats.

I’m not sure if social media is something we’ve invented or, like refined sugar, something we discovered by accident that superficially hits pleasure centres in the body to deliver a highly addictive, but ultimately unhealthy experience.

Liberals generally want to see drugs treated as a public health issue, rather than a criminal law issue, and I think there is possibly a lot of mileage in seeing social media in the same way.

However, I think there’s a bigger problem specifically for us, and that relates to the Paradox of Tolerance.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with that, but just in case the paradox of tolerance is that if you tolerate everything, including intolerance specifically aimed at ending tolerance, you destroy that environment of tolerance you were inhabiting in the first place.

This is why we don’t tolerate nazis.

And social media is an accidental Christmas gift to those guys.

Facebook has huge problems with being used by powerful people, in complete anonymity, to subvert democracy.

It is trying to address that, and some of the stuff it’s been doing recently shows some promise. Twitter though, oh dear…

Because of the complacency and social ineptitude of the people who run it, Twitter has evolved into a highly refined tool to spread lies and hate. It’s not even a case of putting lies and the truth on an equal footing. Twitter actively promotes and rewards liars and bigots, while punishing groups, such as those of us invested in liberal democracy, who are invested in telling the truth.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Mobilising anger

By Tom Arms | Fri 2nd November 2018 - 8:55 am

Anger is a powerful mobiliser. It is also dangerous to control when turned loose on the body politic.

At the moment this raw rage is being drawn out of the American spleen by both the left and right, by Democrats and Republicans.

It is the mid-term elections.  It is the first opportunity US voters have had for passing their  verdict on the Trump Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. It is a chance to elect national legislators who will block the president and more.

If, as expected, the Democrats, gain control of the House of Representatives, Donald Trump’s hopes for new legislation to further his right-wing, anti-immigrant, unilateralist agenda will be dashed against a Congressional brick wall.

Furthermore, the president can expect a flurry of fresh investigations to be initiated by the lower house.  They will demand to see his tax returns; investigate the conflicts of interest between the White House and his business interests; probe the president’s  environmental and immigration policies; demand inquiries into the multiple sexual harassment claims that he has successfully stalled and breathe new life into the Mueller Inquiry.

It is little wonder that Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence have been criss-crossing the country to attend rallies in support of right-wing Republican candidates.  It is no surprise that the presidential rhetoric has become shriller and more extreme as the first Tuesday in November approaches.

Five thousand American troops are needed to protect US citizens from the Central American immigrant “invasion force” infected with “Middle East terrorists”.  The President promises to override the constitution and decree the end of citizenship for those born in the US of foreign parents. The pipe bombs sent to Democrats was a plot by Democrats.  And the divisive atmosphere of vitriolic hate that led to the death of 11 Jewish worshippers in Pittsburgh had nothing to do with Trump. It was the fault of the Democrats and their allies in the fake news media.

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Caron Lindsay

Can you help John Barrett raise money to support an Ethiopian family?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 1st November 2018 - 11:40 am

I caught up with John Barrett, former Lib Dem MP for Edinburgh West, the other day. He told me about his recent trip to Ethiopia. He first visited the country as an MP 15 years ago and has had a particular interest in international development ever since.

He talked about how he and his wife Carol have been supporting a family in recent years. As a result of a conversation on their trip, he is now trying to raise £2000 to get them a fridge, a water purifier, a cooker and a washing machine.

He explains why on his Just Giving page:

Ten years ago I met Gimacho Ermias, a tailor, and his daughter Sarah in Ethiopia ,in the small town of Hosanna. Seeing how little they had of everyday things we take for granted, Carol and I have helped them out in a small way for the last 10 years and will continue to do so. Last month we visited them in their home town to see how they were.

He is still working as a tailor, earning a few pounds a day, and his wife, who suffers from asthma, has a full time job 25 miles away to make ends meet, so she can only return to be with her family at weekends. When I asked them what would change their lives, the answer came quickly. “Something to filter our drinking water, a fridge to keep food fresh, a cooker to replace their single electric ring and to make bread, and a washing machine.

I have decided to set up this page in the run up to Christmas to see what can be done to help them out. If you can help in any way, they would really appreciate it.

Why do we need to raise so much? These items, in Ethiopia, cost two to three times what we would pay for them here. I have contacted various places to see if we can get them at a more reasonable cost and if so we will be able to do more with any money we raise.

Two grand seemed like quite a lot for these items. John told me that this was because of massive import duties charged by the Ethiopian Government:

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Caron Lindsay

Unlike Labour, Lib Dem MPs will oppose Budget tax cut for better off

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 1st November 2018 - 10:59 am

As I said on Monday, the bit that annoyed me most about the Budget was that better off people were getting  a tax cut when the benefit freeze continued and only a third of what was needed was put back into Universal Credit. Add to that the people who have their much-needed disability benefits cut back for the most arbitrary of reasons after deeply flawed assessments and you can maybe see why I am so fuming.

Astonishingly, Labour is backing the Tory plans – although some may revolt.

So it’s good to see that Vince Cable will lead Liberal Democrats in voting against the tax cuts and asking for the £1.3 billion to be spent on reversing the cuts to social security. The press release actually says welfare, but I really wish they wouldn’t call it that. Social security is important for everyone. There needs to be a safety net to help those in the most difficult situations at any time. It’s what a civilised society does. It should be enabling and freely given, not grudgingly given with unreasonable expectations written into its heart as it is at the moment.

Vince said:

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Edwin Black

The Liberal Plan for Worker Co-Ownership

By Edwin Black | Thu 1st November 2018 - 9:00 am

During the 2018 Labour Conference delegates passed a policy motion in which the workers of any given company would be entitled to own 10% of its stock. This, on the face of it, is not something that liberals would be entirely against. Indeed, it was David Lloyd George who, in 1908, settled a rail strike by creating boards which were formed between worker groups and the bosses on an equal parity – 50% worker, 50% bosses. The whole idea of worker cooperatives is also something which we in the Liberal Democrats are in full support, with Nick Clegg saying that he wished to create a “John Lewis economy” as late as 2012. If we look a little deeper, but not by much, we see what Labour’s plan truly is.

There is an insidious proviso in that policy. The stock dividend is capped at £500 per annum. This means that if a stock pays over this dividend, say £600, the state is then entitled to take £100 straight from the pocket of the worker. That money will then be used, presumably, for whatever this new government wishes, be that rail nationalisation or lost to the financial black hole that is the current NHS. Additionally, these stocks cannot be bought and sold. This, of course, means that the worker cannot expand their portfolio to include a wide range of investments in other newly formed cooperatives and, instead, simply leads to the creation of closed shops on a scale heretofore unseen. In short – this plan is nothing short of state mandated theft.

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Callum Robertson

A sector on its knees, but no one seems to notice

By Callum Robertson | Wed 31st October 2018 - 3:35 pm

As a nation we are famous for a good number of things, fish and chips on a Friday, being a nation of dog lovers and a legal system that is the envy of civilised nations worldwide. So, the question is, when we talk about government cuts hurting poorest, why is justice never mentioned?

In the budget on Monday, there were new “efficiency savings” announced for government departments, including a further 300 million cut to the Ministry of Justice but people don’t seem to care that Conservative maladministration has brought an industry to its knees.

We can all find ourselves at the mercy of the English justice system, whether that be as a victim of a crime or being in rent arrears with your landlord and at risk of being evicted yet there is no help available because legal aid has disappeared.

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Phil Hall

The Independent View: Prompt action needed to deal with late business payments

By Phil Hall | Wed 31st October 2018 - 1:30 pm

Almost a quarter of insolvencies (23%) are caused by late payment issues. That’s a staggering figure that equates to tens of thousands of businesses collapsing every year.

Many other small companies just about manage to absorb late payment, but the loss of income can stop them from investing and growing, it can also damage productivity and generally has a very negative impact. This negative impact isn’t just on the small business, its owners and employees but obviously has a knock-on effect on the wider economy too.

In response to this growing problem, the well intentioned and entirely voluntary Prompt Payment Code was introduced in 2012.

The Code simply requires large companies to pay their suppliers within a maximum of 60 days. Only 2,000 companies have signed it and some of these still pay people beyond 60 days because they know there is very little enforcement and no financial penalty for breaches.

As Liberal Democrat Baroness Burt recently said,

Late payment is a huge threat to British businesses and bitter experience has shown it’s not going to be eradicated by a voluntary Prompt Payment Code especially without any possibility of fines for persistent non-compliance.

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy is currently holding a call for evidence on the subject. Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), which has 140,000 members including thousands of licensed accountants who provide tax and accountancy services to over 400,000 British businesses, has responded by making three key recommendations for change:

    1. that the Prompt Payment Code be made compulsory for companies with more than 250 staff
    2. that payment terms should be halved from a maximum of 60 days to a maximum of 30 days
    3. that a clear, simple financial penalty regime for persistent late payment should be introduced and enforced by the Small Business Commissioner

These recommendations have gained widespread backing from small businesses, business groups and politicians including several senior Liberal Democrats. Lord Fox, the Liberal Democrat Business spokesperson, said

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Sarah Brown

Challenges for liberalism 1: How should liberalism respond to inequality and inequity in the UK?

By Sarah Brown | Wed 31st October 2018 - 11:55 am

Editor’s Note: These posts are based on a speech given by the author at an event organised by York University Liberal Democrats.

It seems to me that inequity is a huge problem right now. We have some of the richest and poorest parts of the EU within the country, and an increasingly polarised society. That polarisation is not only writing off millions of people, but it’s also creating the conditions in which authoritarianism, intolerance and violence thrive. We need some big ideas because what is clear is that we cannot keep going on the way we have been doing. We sold the country’s family silver and lived on unsustainable debt in the 80s creating a boom that ultimately had nothing propping it up, but our addiction to economic quick fixes met the cold light of day in 2008.

Sadly it seems we as a society haven’t learned our lesson. We’re just trying to get back to what we had before, and in trying to do that we are using austerity, and that’s both promoting the spread of poverty and systematically dismantling the structures and institutions we as a society have built to mitigate poverty.

So we are in a mess.

As I said, we need big ideas. The last time we faced a crisis on this scale it was liberalism that did provide the big ideas. The NHS, workers’ rights, the trade union movement, the welfare state. Labour may try to claim ownership of these ideas but we were there at their inception.

Let’s be clear – despite our government’s committed attempt to impose economic sanctions on ourselves with Brexit we are still one of the richest countries in the world. People sleep rough on the street, or have to go hungry to feed their children because we have decided, as a country, that these are OK. Two whole generations will work their backsides off to enrich landlords their entire lives because we have decided, as a country, that that’s OK.

And quite apart from the social consequences of this, our pursuit of a model of capitalism that has clearly had its day, at all costs, is destroying the ecosystem. Not the planet, the planet will be fine. It’s just that we might not be around to enjoy it.

Now I don’t claim to have the answers. There’s a lot of talk about moving to a post scarcity economy, of universal basic income, and other ideas and maybe they will coalesce around a single ideological framework, and I hope they will. It seems to me though that we need to start valuing people, and valuing the idea that we need to structure our society so that everyone lives in safety, warmth and dignity.

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Robert Johnston

The candidates for London Mayor – in their own words

By Robert Johnston | Wed 31st October 2018 - 8:55 am

With the selection of the party’s London Mayoral candidate imminent, the team at Liberal Reform want to ensure party members are able to make an informed choice.  So, we invited each of the candidates to discuss their experience, campaigning priorities, and policies.  Liberal Reform is not backing any one candidate and the purpose of the interviews is to allow people to compare the responses they give to a set of questions on liberal issues affecting the people of London. The topic is obviously focussed on London but as the UK’s capital city the issues have a wider significance as many are shared by other metropolitan areas and decisions in London can set a national precedent. In alphabetical order, you can find each candidate interview below:

Although neutral on the candidates Liberal Reform is committed to London as a liberal city and therefore it is important to get the candidates’ views on the same list of issues. The topics discussed with all candidates are:

  • The candidate’s own background and experience
  • Their campaign strategy
  • How they would address housing & homelessness
  • Their views on transport: both public and privately-run services (including the often controversial subject of Uber and private hire services)
  • Their views on crime in London and what needs to be done
  • How they see Brexit impacting on London and its international status
  • The environment and how they would tackle issues such as air quality and waste as well as London’s impact.

While letting the candidates speak for themselves, it’s interesting to see many of them taking a more pro-competition angle when it comes to ride-sharing and private hire than the Lib Dems have been known for previously. The scale of London’s housing crisis, and the resulting need to take-up new approaches to finding space to build new homes was also a theme across most, but not all, interviews. All agreed on the need to tackle crime, and make Brexit central to our campaign. What’s also noteworthy is the mix of experience among the candidates.

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Humphrey Hawksley

Clegg and Alexander are pioneers for global Liberal Democracy

By Humphrey Hawksley | Mon 29th October 2018 - 8:15 am

Let us put aside for a moment the cries of greed, hypocrisy and astonishment at Nick Clegg’s decision to take his job at Facebook and examine what it means for the cause of liberal democracy.

Facebook, together with other social media outlets, is one of two new forces upending the world order and the way we think.
The other is authoritarianism, led by China, where many countries now see government not accountable to an electorate as preferable to the muddled unpredictability of Western-style democracy.

The Liberal Democrats have two of their most senior figures in each of those camps.

Two years before Nick Clegg …

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems could double Holyrood seats according to new poll

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 28th October 2018 - 6:02 pm

Well, this looks interesting…

I know, I know, it’s only a poll, but an almost doubling of support for us should encourage Scottish Lib Dems to get campaigning.

The Survation poll for the Daily Record shows what could be on offer for the Scottish Liberal Democrats and should give the party confidence. The findings echo what people are finding on the doorsteps.

For a few fraught years, …

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