Category Archives: Op-eds

The Voice

Lib Dem Job watch – lots of campaigning jobs going across the country

By The Voice | Sun 24th January 2016 - 12:10 pm

There are some excellent jobs going in the Liberal Democrats at the moment. The most prestigious is the Head of Press. The party is seeking someone to:

lead a small but effective media team to promote the Liberal Democrats and the party Leader Tim Farron in regional and national media. You will be expected to lead the party’s mission to secure daily coverage in national and regional print, broadcast and online news media.

As a key player in the wider Liberal Democrat team, the Head of Press will take a significant role in the rebuilding and fightback of Liberal Democrats, offering creative and engaging ideas, and take a leading role in interacting with journalists and key influencers on social media.

This role will be focused on delivering positive coverage for the party and for candidates of all levels across the United Kingdom, as well as be able to inspire best practice to help volunteers support the party’s media operation.

The Head of Press will also take a lead in managing crisis communications, and have a clear ability to work well under pressure.

The master of understatement, don’t you think?

If you are good at design and political messaging, you might be interested in the content designer post based at LDHQ in London:

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Caron Lindsay

Embrace feminism, says Justin Trudeau. Lib Dems could learn from that.

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd January 2016 - 5:55 pm

It seems that every day there’s a new reason to admire Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Guardian has a report of a panel session in Davos where he said that everyone should embrace feminism. He said that a more diverse team makes better decisions in both politics and business.

I particularly liked the clip in the video in which he said that his wife had reminded him that he not only had to encourage his daughter into taking leadership roles, but also to talk to his sons about treating women properly.

He also said that he thinks there will be as big changes in attitudes to equality in the next 20 years as there has been in the last 40.

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Will Wilshere

Be careful with home education registration

By Will Wilshere | Sat 23rd January 2016 - 1:55 pm

The media reporting of the tragic death of Dylan Seabridge, blaming the fact that he was home educated, is bringing back bad memories of 2009. Then Ed Balls commissioned the “Badman Review” into whether Home Education could be used to hide child abuse. Whilst the review found no evidence to link the two, it felt very much like Labour was out to get us, like the government was looking for a reason to attack home education in an illiberal way as only Labour could. More often than not, home education is seen as the problem, not the local authority’s failure to act with the powers they already had, or the parents’ failure to seek help. These cases, whilst tragic, are very much the exception and do not reflect the reality of home education.

I was home educated between the ages of 11 – 17 and remember this being discussed by both students and parents. The approach felt like a witch hunt, with the government demanding access to your homes to privately question children. People were worried that the questions would be leading, and due to the number of children who were young or special needs the gut feeling was they wouldn’t realise the severity of the questions being asked.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favour of registration, but it would need to be done in a way that didn’t feel like an attack on home education.

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The Voice

Farron: Don’t train people from countries with bad human rights records at Sandhurst

By The Voice | Sat 23rd January 2016 - 12:30 pm

Tim Farron has called on the Government to stop taking money from states with poor human rights records to train their military officers at the elite Sandhurst training college. He said to the Guardian:

These Sandhurst sheikhs are sitting in our military academies, learning from our best and then taking these things back to regimes that repress their population and trample all over human rights. People will look at this and think why are we selling weapons to Saudi, training Bahrainis and then sitting there while they oppress their population.

Shared military training with our allies is a fantastic resource, but it is time to stand up for the values we talk about so much – democracy and human rights. British forces provide some of the best military training in the world, but the privilege to train with our top class troops should be reserved to those foreign armed forces who share our values and our strict adherence to humanitarian law in combat. I believe we need to end to the training of overseas royals from regimes with terrible human rights records at Sandhurst.

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NewsHound

Photo of the week: Alex Cole-Hamilton in a gas mask to highlight air pollution

By NewsHound | Thu 21st January 2016 - 3:45 pm

ACH gas mask

Edinburgh Western and Lothian List candidate Alex Cole-Hamilton took to the most polluted street in Edinburgh this week. St John’s Road in Corstorphine, where he has his campaign office, is the most polluted road in Scotland. It’s one of the main routes from the west into Edinburgh.

Pollution levels in Corstorphine and Queensferry Road are a national disgrace. They represent a clear and present threat to public health, yet the SNP, who have been in charge of this City and this country for nearly a decade, continue to drag their heels.

Almost 2,000 Scots die prematurely each year as a result of vehicle emissions and nowhere is this risk more present than in communities that span the arterial routes into Edinburgh. Investment in my 5 point action plan will actually save our country money in the future in terms of reduced demand on health services and days lost to work through illness.

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Steve Coltman

Labour and Trident

By Steve Coltman | Thu 21st January 2016 - 9:58 am

I would have thought it almost impossible to come up with a Trident policy dafter than the one the Liberal Democrats were saddled with at the last general election, but Jeremy Corbyn and his trade union colleagues seem to have done just that. They are seriously proposing buying the submarines but no warheads. The submarines are to be a job-creation scheme to satisfy unions who care more about their members’ jobs than about the overall national interest. These giant submarines are the main cost of the Trident renewal program, £16bn for the four of them? Who knows exactly?

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Alistair Carmichael MP

Alistair Carmichael MP writes…Suzanne Fletcher reminds us how one person can make a difference for vulnerable people

By Alistair Carmichael MP | Wed 20th January 2016 - 5:55 pm

Today in Parliament the Minister for Immigration was forced to explain why G4S were housing asylum seekers behind red doors, leaving them open to targeted attacks. The Minister, who said he was “deeply concerned”, in response sprang into action announcing an audit of asylum seeker accommodation in the North East. Good to see the Minister reacting so quickly to something that was only in the papers that morning you might think. Not so.

Suzanne Fletcher, former Liberal Democrat Councillor and now Chair for Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary, has been campaigning on this issue doggedly for years. In fact, it is predominantly down to her campaign work that this became a news story today.

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Caron Lindsay

SNP “talk left but act right” says Willie Rennie in first leaders’ debate

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th January 2016 - 1:32 pm

The first leaders’ debate of the Scottish election campaign took place in Dundee this week. Liberal Democrat Willie Rennie faced SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Labour’s Kezia Dugdale, Conservative Alex Johnstone (standing in for leader Ruth Davidson) and Patrick Harvie.

He strongly attacked the SNP’s record, saying, according to the Evening Telegraph:

Nicola presents herself as an anti-austerity party but look at her record in comparison with George Osborne.

She wants to match him on the income tax, she wants to undercut him on air passenger duty and she is undercutting him on the council tax.

This is not an anti-austerity party, they talk left but act right. They need to match up their record with their rhetoric.

This is consistent with what he’s been saying for some time. In December, the SNP Government were forced into yet another humiliating freedom of information climbdown as they had to release a memo from Nicola Sturgeon’s poverty advisor which highlighted that the SNP’s universal benefits disproportionately helped the better off. At that time, Willie said:

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Caron Lindsay

Do you know your other half’s National Insurance Number?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th January 2016 - 10:15 am

I am a bit of a swot, but I do actually know my husband’s NiNo, but that’s because, for many years, the form-filling in our house has been my job, not least because his writing would make most doctors look like great calligraphers. Similarly, I am fairly well acquainted with his clothing and its size because I do most of the washing.

Why, I can hear you asking, is this even relevant? Well, the Daily Mirror covered Alistair Carmichael’s reaction to a particular paragraph in Stephen Shaw’s review into the treatment of vulnerable people in immigration detention.

Shaw visited Dungavel House, in Scotland, where he was told by detainees of some of the ridiculous questions they were asked (page 52, paragraph 3.71) in order to prove that their marriages were genuine:

The questions they said they had been asked by caseworkers to ascertain whether their marriage was a sham included their knowledge of their wife’s National Insurance number, the colour of her underwear, and her bra size. If this was indeed the case, it is questionable whether such questions were either appropriate or useful.

Of course, the Mirror used this as an excuse to print a photo of women in underwear. That’s so 20th century.

Our Home Affairs spokesperson’s response was vintage Alistair:

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Global thinking, Local vision – What the Liberal Democrats can learn from how Coca-Cola operates in Africa

By Ian Thomas | Wed 20th January 2016 - 8:55 am

With the exception of Cuba and North Korea Coca-Cola is sold in every country on earth. Altogether, 1.7 billion servings of their products (the group has a portfolio of around 500) are sold every day, and that number is increasing year on year. While Africa produces around 10% of the company’s total revenue and volume the group expects this to double in less than six years, meaning that by 2020 the continent will boast more Coca-Cola consumers than the US and Europe combined.

While the comparison of a political party and the sales strategy of a multi-national corporation on another continent may seem poles apart, Coca-Cola’s success story provides some valuable lessons for an organisation needing to re-launch its brand to overcome a number of barriers to reconnect with a disillusioned electorate. 

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Caron Lindsay

What do you do when you see a disastrous exit poll? Eat your hat, of course

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 19th January 2016 - 9:00 pm

Paddy Ashdown has been talking to the Guardian about that moment when he first saw the exit poll on Election Night.

rally paddy 01

To be honest I saw the poll at the bottom of the screen about 10 seconds before Andrew Neil turned to me and I thought to myself ‘oh shit’,” he said.

“Then I had an option. I could either say ‘that’s very interesting and wouldn’t it be troublesome for us’, in which case the entire Liberal Democrat night would fall apart from thereon … or I could brave it out and say ‘I’ll eat my hat’.

“I have in fact eaten five hats altogether , including one that was a proper hat, although pretty miniature, the rest made of more edible substances, which people keep presenting me with.

He discussed the impact of the polls and suggested that they had a big impact on the result of the election.

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Joe Otten

Margaret Beckett reports on reasons for Labour’s defeat

By Joe Otten | Tue 19th January 2016 - 4:39 pm

Dame Margaret Beckett a former deputy and acting leader of the Labour Party has reported her findings on the reasons behind Labour’s loss of the election in 2015. We need to understand this dispassionately, alongside the reasons for our great losses, some of which will overlap.

Firstly, five reasons that Beckett doubts.

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Tod Sullivan

A long slow goodbye… a warm hello

By Tod Sullivan | Tue 19th January 2016 - 12:01 pm

I have a simple approach to politics, at heart I am pragmatic and try not to place ideology in the way of the best possible outcome.

New Labour in the late 1990’s was perfect for me and so I joined the party and I became a local councillor the day after Labour lost the 2010 election, became a Labour Group leader, and remained a councillor until the 2015 election. By then, I was feeling less connected to the party politically and I stood down.

The Ed Miliband era was tortuous for me. I found pockets of policy I agreed with, but I never believed that he would become Prime Minister. I found the sycophancy permeating from his inner circle, especially on social media, nauseating.

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33 Comments
George Kendall

When is the right time to reduce the deficit?

By George Kendall | Tue 19th January 2016 - 10:48 am

Liberal Democrats and Social Democrats have a very wide range of opinions, including economics. However, despite our differences, it’s possible to discuss them in a good-natured, honest way, without polemic.

The time to reduce the deficit has been a matter of huge controversy over the last six years. Paul Krugman is, perhaps, the best known advocate of continuing stimulus. In 2012, he attacked the UK deficit reduction programme as ‘deeply destructive’. He said, “Give me a stronger economy and I’ll turn into a fiscal hawk. But not now”.

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Joe Zammit-Lucia

Liberals Must Have A Comprehensive Policy On Immigration

By Joe Zammit-Lucia | Tue 19th January 2016 - 8:34 am

They say that there is no war that is more difficult and emotionally draining than a civil war. So it is with ideas. When liberals and progressives fight conservatives, the battles are easy. Each is convinced of their own righteousness and, when they run out of arguments, can simply dismiss the other side as being either Neanderthal or degenerate and therefore not worthy of much consideration. Everyone can go to bed enveloped in their own warm glow of self-belief.

Much more difficult are conflicting ideas that spring from the same ideology. Because resolution is difficult, these issues tend to get quietly …

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17 Comments

The Greatest Show On Earth

By Ian Thomas | Mon 18th January 2016 - 6:25 pm

 

From the great theatrical showman in Las Vegas to the street-hustlers on trestle tables asking tourists to watch the cups; misdirection, the foremost requirement of magic, is a deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another.

No matter in what forum they perform, from street magicians to TV illusionists, magicians have the ability to use their skills to create something out of nothing, of reordering the universe to defy the rules of logic before our very eyes – and who knew that the Conservative government was creating the greatest show on earth.

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Kevin Mahoney

Time is ripe for Church of England disestablishment

By Kevin Mahoney | Mon 18th January 2016 - 12:35 pm

 

Now that the Anglican Communion has ruled that the US Episcopalian Church will not be able to take part in its decision making for three years’ following their support for same sex marriage and their appointment of a gay bishop in 2003, it is time for us to put Church of England disestablishment back on the agenda.

Like many in the party, I had misgivings about Tim Farron’s Christian faith when he was elected leader. As a liberal Christian who campaigns for same sex marriage within church, I perceived Tim to be a conservative Christian that would be opposed to this. However, the controversy about Tim’s interview with Cathy Newman last year has rather changed my mind on this, especially when I read his May 2015 interview in Pink News. Tim called for the disestablishment of the CofE in this interview, and I think that we should make this official policy to finally dispel the view that his Christianity is a problem for his leadership. Having had a closer look at Tim Farron’s reasons for his voting record on same sex marriage, I think the problem is not that he’s a fundamentalist Christian, but that he’s a fundamentalist Liberal.

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George Potter

Farron’s strategy to tackle Corbyn is all wrong

By George Potter | Mon 18th January 2016 - 10:10 am

 

Recently Tim Farron responded to Jeremy Corbyn’s economic strategy by saying “Unfortunately Corbyn’s anti-business policies will ensure that no company has the budget to pay the wages their employees deserve”.

Now this is absolutely true and it’s very much Tim Farron’s approach to Corbyn and Labour at the moment. But it’s also absolutely the wrong approach to take.

The thing is, the public already thinks Labour aren’t economically competent and the Tories keep on ramming home that message. But since the public think that the Tories are economically competent then any attacks we make on Labour’s economic competence will just drive voters to the Tories.

In a nutshell, attacking Labour on the economy does nothing more than to annoy Labour voters who we want to win over while helping to turn undecided voters to the Tories.

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Caron Lindsay

Take part in #timetotalk day on Lib Dem Voice

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 17th January 2016 - 8:30 pm

Every year, the first Thursday in February sees Time to Talk Day, run by Time to Change. The idea is to get people talking about mental health and share their experiences with the aim of ending the stigma that people face.

For the last two years, we at LDV have taken part in the event and our readers have produced some outstanding pieces. You can read them all here.

Two years ago, Eleanor Draycott wrote about her experience of living with BiPolar:

Many people don’t understand what being Bi-polar actually means, I guess this is why I’m putting this down on paper. The most basic knowledge the population has is that someone with this illness “suffers from” extreme highs and lows and this is certainly true. One day I can be the life and soul of the party, extremely talkative, wanting to go out and embrace the world with open arms. But the next I can be so down that getting out of bed seems like an insurmountable task. There has never been any pattern to my highs and lows, either can last for days, weeks or months. Before I was on the right combination of medication, in my manic stages I wouldn’t sleep for as long as they lasted. I was always out partying, dancing, drinking, behaving recklessly, spending money I didn’t have on ridiculous items I would never need if I lived to be one hundred. I would sit up for hours writing pages and pages of rambling thoughts in notebooks, that made no sense when I came down and my mind wasn’t racing, but which at the time of writing I was convinced contained the answer to world peace.

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Caron Lindsay

Amendment written by Paul Tyler may defeat Government on Trade Union Bill

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 17th January 2016 - 5:58 pm

The Independent has an interesting story about the Liberal Democrats and Labour working together to defeat the Government on the party funding aspect of the Trade Union Bill. When you read the story, it’s a real collaboration, with Paul Tyler drafting the amendment now in the name of the Labour leader in the Lords, but the headline makes it look like we are simply supporting the Labour effort.

Liberal Democrat peers are to help Labour water down the Trade Union Bill, which will dramatically reduce the party’s funding, in an amendment on Wednesday.

The support should give Labour enough votes to pass an amendment that would mean parts of the Bill that relate to political funding will be separated out and examined by a cross-party committee of peers. This was originally drafted by Lord Tyler, the Liberal Democrat constitutional reform spokesman, who wants the committee to examine broader political funding…

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Lindsay Northover

Baroness Lindsay Northover writes…Our MPs must include women as well as men

By Lindsay Northover | Sun 17th January 2016 - 8:57 am

We are an internationalist party.  We believe in human rights.  Our constitution commits us to equality, as well as liberty and community.

So how can it be that we, the Lib Dems of all parties, have absolutely no women MPs?  Zero.  0.0%.

Round the world, countries and parties have addressed the paucity of women in elected positions. Our sister parties have done so. We have a history of trying to do so – but trying is not the same as succeeding.  That must change now. I am extremely glad that our Party President, Sal Brinton, and our party leader, Tim Farron, are making clear that change must happen.

The SDP and then the Lib Dems led with affirmative action until the late 1990s.  Then Labour sailed past us with women-only shortlists.  They transformed their party – and the UK Parliament. Now their Commons party is 44% women.  Even the Conservatives are almost 21%.

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Caron Lindsay

Nice work if you can get it, Nick

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 16th January 2016 - 8:41 pm

The papers have been full of Nick Clegg, recently. Various papers, including the Guardian,  got pretty exercised about him receiving £22,500 for a speech and 2 hours’ work at an event for Goldman Sachs:

The former deputy prime minister, who condemned the global investment bank in 2010 for alleged “recklessness and greed”, listed the payment in the latest entry for the Commons register of members’ interests.

The entry said that his agent, News Presenters Ltd, arranged for him to be paid £22,500 for delivering a keynote speech and moderating a question and answer session over dinner for Goldman Sachs in London on 2 December 2015. The speech examined Britain’s place in the EU.

Sure, it’s a massive amount of money, even if you factor in the time it takes to actually write the speech. It’s eye-watering, even, that someone can get not far off the national average wage for a couple of hours’ work. 

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Caron Lindsay

The Lib Dem week in Scotland

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 16th January 2016 - 10:27 am

st Andrews flag saltire scotland Some rights reserved by Fulla TWelcome to our weekly roundup of what the Scottish Liberal Democrats, led by Willie Rennie, have been getting up to. They’ve covered a pretty extensive array of issues from health to housing to police spying to local services to cuts to college places.

McInnes says there are still questions to answer on police spying

After a senior Police Officer gave evidence on the police spying scandal to a Holyrood Committee, Alison McInnes says that his answers were not satisfactory:

The guidance on accessing communications data is very straightforward. Police Scotland’s account of how this came about is nowhere near as clear. We were told this morning that senior officers had raised concerns over applications to access communications data but they seem to have gone through regardless.

These were serious breaches and we need understand what went wrong here. Months after the first reports that Police Scotland had hacked communications data unlawfully, we are still no closer to a full account of how we got here.

NHS in crisis

Jim Hume has been highlighting many issues where the NHS in Scotland is falling short. First, his research showed that Scotland was facing an acute GP shortage as GP training places were not being taken up:

The fear must be that the extra training places announced by the First Minister last year will not help encourage more students to enter primary care or relieve the huge pressure on local GP practices. With dozens of training posts left vacant this year, SNP ministers must explain how they will ensure uptake of these and the 100 extra places they have announced. Welcome though they are, more training places will do no good at all unless there are doctors to fill them.

The SNP Government have not published a key review of mental health services. Jim said:

First we were told that the report would be published in the summer. Then that it would be published before Christmas but still we have seen nothing. What on earth is going on?

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Robbie Simpson

Postcard from Tblisi: Visiting our liberal colleagues in Georgia

By Robbie Simpson | Fri 15th January 2016 - 3:44 pm

International Office_with textLast month I travelled with the Liberal Democrat International Office to visit our liberal colleagues, the Republican Party of Georgia (RPG), in Tbilisi – nestled between Russia and Turkey. The occasion was the Republican Party’s bi-annual Party Congress, and the Liberal Democrats had been invited to send a speaker for their discussions on the economy.

Politics in Georgia is a difficult to sum up in a few words. It is East meets West both politically and geographically; a country with a strong European identity but with Soviet overhangs. The Patriarch can condemn homosexuality and hold an open-air mass for the EU in the same week.

The RPG are a junior party in the Georgian Dream coalition government, with relatively few seats but a good chunk of influence. The rest of Georgian Dream leans a bit more populist and at times socially conservative. Fellow liberals the Free Democrats fell out of the coalition in 2014 in a bitter and personal dispute that ended in dubious corruption charges, while former governing party the UNM remain tainted by their corruption and abuses of power during their final term. And in the wings perhaps lies the spectre of pro-Russian political elements – often feared, but rarely seen.

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Mike Biden

Let’s talk about peace

By Mike Biden | Fri 15th January 2016 - 1:25 pm

Almost all Liberal Democrats agree on the EU.  A remarkably high number give the same reason for their support – Peace. Securing peace was the primary goal of the Founding Fathers of the European Union. Making war unthinkable and impossible through economic integration and prosperity were the means to the end.  Peace and Prosperity.

The debate so far has focused on the economic arguments.  After years of political debate and endless studies it’s no surprise that the impact on the economy and our jobs is the top concern of most voters.

But polling shows peace is a decisive argument in favour of remaining in the EU.

It does not rate as highly and is mentioned only by those who are already supporters and some therefore draw the conclusion it is not useful to talk about it. I disagree. 

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Phil Aisthorpe

Failed flooding policy finds a scapegoat

By Phil Aisthorpe | Fri 15th January 2016 - 11:55 am

Whenever a government loses control of the situation there has to be a scapegoat, and on the issue of flooding it’s not Sir Philip Dilley the Environment Agency chairman who resigned on Monday.  After his PR blunder of refusing to interrupt his holiday to visit the flooded areas he gave up his £100k position on the grounds that what had started out as a part-time non-executive post was now looking suspiciously like actual work. No, this winter’s devastating floods we are asked to believe, weren’t so much the result of government failings, but of an over concern for the protection of wildlife! “If we have to choose between people and wildlife, we will always, of course, choose people,” Sir James Bevan Chief Exec of the Environment Agency told the BBC at the turn of the year.

Like me, you may have been puzzled by this message and couldn’t quite see its relevance to what was happening across the North on that day, and the plot thickened to Bisto consistency a few days later when Liz Truss announced in a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference that Defra will be allowing farmers to dredge ‘ditches’ without seeking permission from the Environment Agency because they ‘know their land best’. Her own experts say that dredging is useful for improving navigation and land drainage, but has little value in flood prevention. So again, what was going on?

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Lucy Nethsingha

George Osborne’s austerity policies put economic growth under threat.

By Lucy Nethsingha | Fri 15th January 2016 - 10:25 am

On 6th January George Osborne made a speech emphasising the threats to the UK economy in the coming year. His emphasis on the weakness of the economic situation might have come as a surprise to anyone who had listened to his autumn statement, where he was keen to trumpet how well the economy is doing, but Mr Osborne is a spin master above all else, and he clearly feels that the time has come for a different spin on our economy. The spin yesterday was all about the impact of the global economy on the UK.

The UK and US economies are growing at the moment, but growth in the rest of the world is looking very shaky. A down-turn in the global economy is bound to have an impact at home, and George Osborne’s austerity policies are not helping the UK to weather any potential global economic storm.

The biggest threat to the UK economy at the moment is not inflation, but deflation. Deflation means that any debt held by individuals or companies increases in value rather than decreasing over time. As a result deflation discourages spending and investment by individuals and companies, particularly the type of long term investment our country desperately needs.

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Caron Lindsay

Oates and Scriven show why Britain needs the Liberal Democrats

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 14th January 2016 - 10:15 pm

Jonny Oates on ID cards
The Palace of Westminster is quite disorientating. There’s an escalator that goes from the bright modern Portcullis House into Westminster that I always call the Time Machine because it really feels like you go back 300 years in 30 feet. This afternoon, if you’d wandered into the House of Lords, you might be forgiven for thinking you’d gone to sleep and woken up in 2005, because here were Labour and Tory peers trying to bring back ID cards. And just like 2005 (who remembers Police, not Plastic), it was Liberal Democrat peers cutting their way throughout the authoritarian smog like Mr Muscle on a greasy kitchen worktop.

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Caron Lindsay

Liberal Democrats react to Transgender Equality Report

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 14th January 2016 - 9:23 pm

Today’s publication of the Transgender Equality Report by the Commons Women and Equality Committee should lead to some big improvements to services and better rights for transgender people. It has some useful recommendations around health services – ensuring, for example, that GPs have sufficient training in how they should treat transgender people. The Committee certainly seems to have listened to many of the concerns put to them.

Their approach to the spousal veto question was more cautious than I would have liked. They basically said that it needed more consideration but didn’t recommend doing away with it, even though they accepted that a spouse could stand in the way of a transgender person getting their legal recognition. However, if the law is changed to abolish that cumbersome process, as the Committee. This is a big step forward:

In place of the present medicalised, quasi-judicial application process, an administrative process must be developed, centred on the wishes of the individual applicant, rather than on intensive analysis by doctors and lawyers.

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Caron Lindsay

Carmichael calls for time limit on immigration detention

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 14th January 2016 - 4:52 pm

The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto last year called for an end to indefinite detention for immigration purposes, building on the end to child detention that Nick Clegg insisted upon as part of the coalition agreement. Today, a review of welfare in detention of vulnerable people conducted for the Home Office by Stephen Shaw has been published. In it he makes 64 recommendations, including that alternatives to detention be sought. Some of the changes he wants to see are so basic that you are shocked that they are not done already – the provision of even basic mental health treatment, for a start.

This one is quite chilling:

Recommendation 33: I recommend that the Home Office review detainees’ access to natural light and to the open air, and invite contractors to bring forward proposals to increase the time that detainees can spend outside.

And as for this one, you mean we don’t already?

Recommendation 35: I recommend that the service provider at Yarl’s Wood should only conduct searches of women and of women’s rooms in the presence of men in the most extreme and pressing circumstances, and that there should be monitoring and reporting of these cases.

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