Category Archives: Op-eds

Hugh Dykes

Lord Hugh Dykes writes: Chilcot delay is an utter disgrace

By Hugh Dykes | Thu 22nd January 2015 - 6:00 pm

We have waited too long for the Chilcot Inquiry. I do not have to tell you this, the Lib Dems were after all the only one of the three major parties (despite the Tories fuss now) to disagree with going to war in Iraq.

I am proud to say that it was the Liberal Democrat party who marched officially as a party to protest against the war. The estimated 1.5 million marchers going along Piccadilly were subsequently all disappointed that the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, completely ignored their representations on the biggest march that had taken place in Britain in recent times.

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Opinion: Some thoughts on preventing suicide

By John Lawrie | Thu 22nd January 2015 - 4:30 pm

Nick Clegg has been quoted this week as calling for the NHS “to commit to a new ambition for zero suicides”. That is an aspiration that nobody could argue with, but it is unrealistic to believe that it can quite be achieved. Throughout human history and in every kind of society people have died by their own hand, and it would be naïve to believe that a government initiative can single-handedly change that. Nevertheless, he is right to identify suicide as a “massive taboo”. He is also right to raise awareness of the risk. He was speaking particularly in relation to mental health, but we should not infer from that that everybody who contemplates suicide is mentally ill, even though many people suffering from mental illness may indeed see suicide as an escape from an unbearable life.

He was also speaking in relation to the NHS’s role. To be fair, doctors and psychiatrists do routinely ask patients who are depressed or otherwise at risk whether they are suicidal, and many involved in the medical profession are trained to recognise indications of suicidal thought. And everybody who arrives in A&E departments after a suicide attempt is supposed to be seen by a psychiatrist before being discharged, but inevitably many people will simply be returning to the situation from which they were trying to get away. We should also recognise that, among all those in the care of a government-funded organisation, the risk of suicide is rather greater among people sentenced to prison or remanded in custody than it is among those cared for by the health services. Sadly, calling for better emotional support of prisoners does not have the same electoral appeal as concern about the NHS.

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David Cooper

Opinion: TTIP: a taxpayer funded safety net for the super-rich

By David Cooper | Thu 22nd January 2015 - 2:54 pm

Few things are more complicated and opaque than the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a trade deal being hammered out between the EU and the USA. It has been criticized by activists and journalists such as George Monbiot, but Vince Cable asserts there is nothing to worry about. Who is right?

When things get complicated, follow the money. Fortunately we now have a money bloodhound. The economist Thomas Piketty has spent a decade or more producing a huge scholarly work which reveals where the money is. His answer is simple: unless active measures are taken an ever larger proportion ends up in the hands of the already very rich. TTIP will make this even worse.

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Alistair Carmichael MP

Alistair Carmichael MP writes…A proud day as we move nearer to Liberal Democrat vision of home rule for Scotland

By Alistair Carmichael MP | Thu 22nd January 2015 - 11:55 am

Saltire - St Andrews Flag - Scotland - Some rights reserved by byronv2One of my first political campaigns was the 1979 referendum on a Scottish Assembly, as it was then styled.

The failure of that campaign was formative in my political thinking.  We all learned the hard way some simple political truths. Constitutional change is only achieved by working with people from other parties and of no party and that our liberal vision of Home Rule for Scotland within a strong federal United Kingdom is more relevant today than it has ever been.

As a teenager growing up in a small tight-knit island community I also quickly realised that local communities were best placed to make the decisions that affect them. We also understood that Government in Edinburgh was just as capable of getting things wrong for us as government in London.

Fast forward thirty five years and it was a proud day for me as Secretary of State for Scotland when we won decisively the vote to keep our 300 year old family of nations together with a promise of extensive new powers for our Scottish Parliament.

We set up the cross-party Smith Commission to bring people together and build consensus on what these new powers should be.

No party got everything they wanted but we owed it to the majority of Scotland who made the democratic decision to reject independence to see through their desire for more powers – a desire shared by our party.

I was pleased the Smith Commission aimed high.

The draft clauses I have published today will mean our Scottish Parliament will raise over half of what it spends. It will create a new Scottish Welfare State System with a starting budget of more than £2.5 billion.

And it will introduce votes for 16 and 17 years olds for Holyrood and local government elections.

Smith also made another important point that has not received the attention that it deserves, namely that the process of devolution should not stop in Edinburgh but should be driven to local communities across Scotland.

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Helen Flynn

Securing a future for sustained government investment in cycling and walking

By Helen Flynn | Thu 22nd January 2015 - 8:56 am

Frankly, this is one of the main reasons I went into politics and am now seeking to become an MP. It’s  amendments to legislation such as this that can mark a step change in how we travel around the places we live on a daily basis and the knock-on effects on health, wellbeing, pollution and congestion.

The Infrastructure Bill, which will dictate the future direction and spending commitments for infrastructure once it becomes an Act, is nearing its conclusion. CTC, the national cycling charity, along with a number of leading transport groups, is demanding a change from the old ways of looking at transport infrastructure, as set out in the following statement:

One of the most important bills going through Parliament this year is approaching its conclusion. The Infrastructure Bill proposes a five year Roads Investment Strategy, but currently makes no similar commitment to long-term funding to vitally increase cycling and walking.

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert writes…We need a strategy to promote walking and cycling

By Julian Huppert | Wed 21st January 2015 - 5:07 pm

We have a huge problem in this country with physical inactivity. Most people do nothing like enough to stay healthy, and as a result problems like obesity and being overweight are very common.

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes… Carbon and fracking

By Julian Huppert | Wed 21st January 2015 - 4:15 pm

Climate change is one of the most, if not the most, dangerous threat facing the world today. The evidence could hardly be any clearer – unless we curtail greenhouse gas emissions sharply, the results will be massively detrimental to us all and put the lives of future generations at enormous risk.

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Adam Corlett

Opinion: Should Britain copy Obama’s capital gains proposals?

By Adam Corlett | Wed 21st January 2015 - 3:43 pm

President Obama has announced proposals to increase taxes on the wealthy and help those on lower incomes (such as by boosting tax credits). The plans include reforms to capital gains tax (CGT): increasing its rate and ending a loophole. Should we do the same in the UK, and how do the Lib Dems’ proposals compare?

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Jim Murray

Opinion: Tuition fees – grasping the nettle

By Jim Murray | Wed 21st January 2015 - 1:40 pm

We have not sold Joe Public the idea that ‘equality of opportunity’ is in the soul, in the very DNA of Liberalism, and the Liberal Democrats, and that was why we pledged free higher education.

Ordinary people do not credit us with Scottish zero tuition fees. They do not realise our non-negotiable condition of joining with the Scottish Labour Party was our policy and that it flew in the face of national Labour Party manifesto then, and since.

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John Tilley

Opinion: Deliberately offensive cartoons did not begin in Paris in the last few weeks

By John Tilley | Wed 21st January 2015 - 10:43 am

george iv a voluptary gillray
James Gillray: “A voluptuary under the horrors of Digestion”, 1792, depicts the Prince of Wales at the time.

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Paul Walter

The Green party – should we be panicking?

By Paul Walter | Wed 21st January 2015 - 9:25 am

This post is reserved for new and infrequent commenters. “Infrequent” is defined as having post less than five comments in the last month.

Yesterday, a poll showed the Green party ahead of the Liberal Democrats by two points. Last week, figures showed that the Green party overtook the LibDems (and UKIP) in terms of membership numbers.

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Caron Lindsay

Lynne Featherstone: Good riddance to Page 3

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 20th January 2015 - 4:32 pm

There’s some interesting discussion on my social media timeline about  the Sun’s decision to stop printing clothes of topless women on Page 3. On one hand you have the male dominated group of people who think this is a dreadful infringement of liberty enacted by sinister feminists with An Agenda. Just you wait, they’ll be after your porn yet, they warn. They don’t like the fact that the No More Page 3 campaign started by Lucy-Anne Holmes and backed by more than 200,000 people has got what it wanted. It’s illiberal, they scream, for one group of people to interfere with the freedoms of others. That’s interesting. Presumably they would also be in favour of continuing to use the deeply racist language that was deemed acceptable when I was a child. Perhaps they’d oppose interfering in employers’ rights to send children up chimneys.

I just wonder how some of the men complaining about this decision if, every single day, there were pictures of naked men in a newspaper in a society where most of the positions of power were occupied by women who were never depicted in such a way. I don’t think they’d like it very much.

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Paul Tyler

Lord Paul Tyler writes…Devolution Dialogue on Democracy Day

By Paul Tyler | Tue 20th January 2015 - 1:39 pm

Today is “Democracy Day”, a project running across BBC TV and Radio.  It’s fitting that in this same week, Nick Harvey and I have published proposals to bring decisions closer to those whom they affect: a prerequisite for real democracy in Britain.

Here on Liberal Democrat Voice, we have already had considerable debate over the merit of “devolution on demand” as compared to a big-bang, devolution-everywhere-now solution.  My views are well rehearsed!

However, the benefit of the CentreForum Devolution Dialogue in which Nick and I set out our alternative positions is that it brought us together in a greater measure of consensus than we …

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Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb MP writes… We need to talk openly about suicide and work to prevent it

By Norman Lamb MP | Tue 20th January 2015 - 11:55 am

Yesterday was supposedly “blue Monday” – the most depressing day of the year.  The idea was dreamed up in 2005 by a TV marketing campaign to sell holidays and the myth persists.

But yesterday, Nick Clegg and I were talking about something really serious.  Almost 4,700 people took their own lives in 2013 in England alone, and suicide remains one of the biggest killers for men under the age of 50.  We hosted a conference bringing together leading figures in the mental health world to call for an ambition for ‘zero suicides’ across the NHS.

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Anuja Prashar

Opinion: Why I choose to stand in a seat I cannot win, this time

By Anuja Prashar | Mon 19th January 2015 - 3:34 pm

Beckenham_Junction_stn_main_entrance

There are two key reasons I have chosen to stand for a seat in my home constituency of Beckenham.  One reason focuses on achievements of Lib Dems in government and the second focuses on meeting the challenge of extreme voices in UK society today.

As a liberal and democratic thinker I believe that people should always be given a choice. It is ‘choice’ that symbolises freedom, which is at the heart of all free societies and civilizations. During this General Election it is vital for a Lib Dem voice that is unafraid to shout about what we have achieved within the coalition, because there are so many voices raised to suggest that Lib Dems have failed to be effective in government. The Lib Dem policies, listed by Mark Pack in a very clear infographic, would never have seen the light of day in a Tory majority government.

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Simon Oliver

Opinion: Britain’s Greenest Party, the Green Party and Environmentalism

By Simon Oliver | Mon 19th January 2015 - 12:58 pm

Green Lib DemsThe Green Party, which I was a member of briefly in the late 80s, has hard left socialist roots and is widely considered both anti-capitalist and paradoxically authoritarian and localist. It has a wide range of policies, all of which take note of environmental concerns (which do not begin and end with climate change, any more than ours do) but only reference those concerns where necessary. Lately it has been adopting a less hard line approach and on many matters, such as human rights, is decidedly liberal.

However in many cases their authoritarian command economy habit overrides any nascent liberal instinct, and their antipathy to technological and/or market solutions means that they throw away over half the toolbox before they even start. Dogma comes before evidence, and articles of faith remain unchallenged and therefore unproven.

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Caron Lindsay

Willie Rennie makes fair student finance a Scottish budget priority

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 18th January 2015 - 4:56 pm

There is no doubt that Willie Rennie is being brave in his choice of priorities for this year’s Scottish budget. In truth, the SNP have an overall majority at Holyrood so they don’t need to give any sort of ground.They have done the last few years, though. Last year, they gave extra money for childcare and free school meals in response to Willie Rennie’s persistent pestering. The year before it was college places.

This year, he’s taking a bigger risk. There’s an issue which in the context of the Holyrood parliament represents one of our finest hours and in the context of Westminster our worst. It’s tuition fees. Way back in 1999, Liberal Democrats fought an election saying tuition fees would be dead if they were in government and they kept that promise. We know what happened in 2010. We shouldn’t have done what we did, but, as I wrote at the time, Vince had actually managed to create a system that was fairer than the one it replaced:

However, if there were a way to get it wrong well, he’s probably done that.

Imagine for a moment if the Tories had been in power alone. I very much doubt that their Business Secretary would have tracked down Lord Browne and bent his ear about the importance of the recommendations being fair and progressive. And they are to a point. To play Devil’s Advocate a bit here, if we can’t have no tuition fees (and I’m not conceding that we can’t), then isn’t this a better option than anything else? Nobody has to pay out anything to actually go to university so access isn’t denied to those from less affluent backgrounds in the way it would be today.

And Labour? Would they, still in Government, be talking about a Graduate Tax? Of course they wouldn’t. They’d bung on the fees – although I’m not so convinced that they would have necessarily covered all the angles.  I mean, it’s coming to something when it takes a Tory to bring up the issue I blogged about earlier about interest accruing if someone takes time out to look after children. He confirmed in the House today that interest would not accrue under these circumstances.

Annoyed though I might be with him, I have to at least give some credit to Vince for taking an hour’s worth of utter tripe from the Labour benches with patience and humour. I’d rate him above just about any Labour minister you might care to mention and definitely any Tory. I loved his line about the road to Westminster having the skid marks of unenacted pledges all over it.

Y

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Kirsten Johnson

Opinion: We need to enshrine children’s rights in law

By Kirsten Johnson | Sun 18th January 2015 - 9:32 am

Our pre-manifesto calls for lowering the voting age to 16, increasing provision for children’s mental health, ring-fencing education budgets from pre-school through to college and committing to end child poverty.  What I’d also like to see is a vision to incorporate the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child into U.K. law.

Why?  We need to empower and enable children.  We need to enshrine their rights in our law.   The Human Rights Act does not mention child-specific rights as set out in the UNCRC: the right to education, the right to protection from violence and abuse, the right to play (wouldn’t it be nice if we all had the right to play?).

I remember being a 9-year old, expressing my point of view and not being taken seriously.  I was furious.  I felt I had a better answer than the adult engaging with me, but I was not listened to because I was a child.

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Caron Lindsay

What do you listen to while leafletting?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 17th January 2015 - 4:03 pm

Today Liberal Democrat campaigners will have been out doing what they do most weeks – getting out and about on the doorsteps or with the leaflets. By now, I expect they’ll be thawing out with a nice cup of tea.

Make sure, by the way, that you send us your pictures from the campaign trail as many of you trudge out in snowy conditions. Tweet them to @libdemvoice or email to [email protected].

Smartphone or iPod and headphones are as common a part of  leafletters’ attire these days as the cloth bag with the bird on it and the spatula to help negotiate stubborn letterboxes with dogs on the other side of them.

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Caron Lindsay

Asylum system continues to fail LGBT people

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 17th January 2015 - 11:26 am
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Caron Lindsay

The Greens: the Lib Dem fightback begins

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 16th January 2015 - 7:35 pm

Yesterday’s news that the Greens had overtaken the Liberal Democrats in terms of membership – their 44713, compared to our 44680 – has, from what I’ve seen on my social media, galvanised our activists rather than demoralised them. And so we should be proud of ourselves. For a party in government in the most trying economic circumstances since the 30s to have grown for 6 quarters in a row is nothing short of miraculous. The Labour party couldn’t manage that and they had the most benign economic circumstances in years.

The Green’s figures include Northern Ireland which ours don’t so like for like it’s more neck and neck.  (Update: Adam Ramsay on Twitter assures me that the Greens figures do not include Northern Ireland).  I’ve also seen some people say that it’s not fair because the Scottish Greens and the Green Party of England and Wales are two separate organisations. There’s no point in splitting hairs, though.

The Party has been making a bit of a concerted effort to make sure that the Greens don’t have the stage for themselves. Tim Farron has written an article of the New Statesman in which he emphasises what the Liberal Democrats have done in government to protect the environment:

The Conservatives’ approach to the environment in Europe shows what sort of approach they would take if they are allowed to govern alone. In coalition, Liberal Democrats have fought to make sure that the environment has stayed at the top of the agenda. We’ve doubled the amount of energy generated from offshore wind and stopped the Tories from slashing support for renewable energy. And while senior Conservative politicians voice their doubts about man-made climate change, Energy Secretary Ed Davey has been busy paving the way for a global deal to cut carbon emissions. Without the Lib Dems, there would be nothing to stop the Tories from lurching to the right on the environment. The truth is, the only way to make blue go green is by adding yellow.

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Jim Hume MSP

Jim Hume MSP writes…No room for complacency on mental health

By Jim Hume MSP | Fri 16th January 2015 - 11:45 am

With 2015 seeing the end of the current Mental Health Strategy we have a real opportunity to look at the successes and failure of the approach we take to tackling mental ill health in Scotland.

Our health professionals do fantastic work to help people suffering from mental ill health. But a lack of resources means that we are often asking medical staff to work with one hand tied behind their back.

Liberal Democrats in government have helped ensure that the NHS in other parts of the UK prioritise mental and physical ill health equally. But this is not yet the case in Scotland.

The Royal College of Nursing and other groups have been clear that mental health is often the poor relation to physical health when it comes to funding within the Scottish NHS. The impact of underinvestment in these crucial services is damaging for patients and medical professionals alike.

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Caron Lindsay

Friday fun: what’s your pet hate?

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 16th January 2015 - 10:18 am

I woke up this morning to see two grown men griping and groaning about, wait for it, Comic Sans, on social media. Really, font geekery before breakfast is going too far. If that makes me not a proper Lib Dem for saying that, then so be it. I will not be enslaved by this conformity.

I have to say I don’t really get the problem with Comic Sans, particularly as it’s supposed to be good for people with Dyslexia to read. Clearly I am not the cool kid on the block as my Teenager also has severe issues with that font.

Getting wound up about fonts when there are misplaced apostrophes and your/you’re and its/it’s mix-ups in the world is just silly.

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The Voice

Should the SNP and Greens be included in leaders’ debates?

By The Voice | Thu 15th January 2015 - 1:15 pm

Welcome to another of our occasional series of posts where two writers offer an alternative view to one of the issues of the day. Today, it’s whether the SNP, Plaid and Greens should be invited to take part in leaders’  debates. 

Jonathan Waddell says there is a case for the Greens to be included on a UK basis but not the SNP and Plaid:

Earlier this week, Wings Over Scotland claimed that to exclude the SNP from UK-wide election debates would be to subjugate Scots to second-class citizens. Website owner and frequent contributor, Stuart Campbell, argued:

the only reason to bar them is that they’re Scottish. In other words, Scotland’s MPs are worth less than MPs from other parts of the UK, and therefore by extension Scottish votes are worth less than other people’s votes.

Speaking as a Scot who believes in giving a platform to a plurality of parties at any given election to encourage a representative debate of the issues and views affecting the country, surely the more obvious reason is that over 90% of the electorate can’t vote for them; or at least a question of electoral logistics rather than anti-Scottish sentiment?

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Iain Roberts

Opinion: The case for a mayor for Greater Manchester  

By Iain Roberts | Thu 15th January 2015 - 11:42 am

In this article I’m going to make the case for a Mayor for Greater Manchester. I realise this isn’t going to be a popular position, particularly in Lib Dem circles. Our mayors – Dorothy in Watford and Dave in Bedford – are great of course. But what about Boris in London or that monkey in Hartlepool (twice re-elected) and don’t even get me started on Tower Hamlets. In the conversations I’ve had with Lib Dems, the word “mayor” is generally met with a look of horror.

But here’s the thing. About all those mayors have in common with what’s proposed for Greater Manchester is the name “mayor”. London, along with those councils who have opted for mayors, have “strong mayor” models. In these, the mayor is able to act alone. Typically they appoint their own cabinets with councillors or assembly members having little power to stop the mayor doing what he or she wants.

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Caron Lindsay

Playground, panto and poultry – a day in the life of a debate about a debate

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 14th January 2015 - 9:34 pm

I have to say I’m completely over this debate talk. I’m starting to think that we should just lock every party leader in the country in the Big Brother house after the current occupants have departed and leave them there till they start behaving like adults rather than 9 year olds in the playground.

We have Dave who doesn’t want to take on Nige who’s wooing his more prejudiced voters. And wasn’t he talking about “green crap” not so long ago. More opportunistic posturing than repenting sinner, though.

We have Nige who thinks he can come across as the man of the people and wipe the floor with everyone, except his stats are dodgy and his views based on misinformation and prejudice.

We have Ed who must know he’s more cut out for writing worthy books in a dusty attic than slugging it out in a tv studio where he’s going to look as uncomfortable as hell. He has something to fear from everyone. Nige and Nicola are after his vote, Dave can give him a pasting on the economy, Nick has done more for disadvantaged kids in 5 years than his party did in 13 and he knows his vote is vulnerable to the Greens on the left. He must be very grateful to Dave for giving him a get out of jail free card. All he needs to do is utter the magic words “let the Greens in” and Dave will have no choice but to find another excuse to avoid debating.

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Nick Perry

Opinion: A south coast main line railway

By Nick Perry | Wed 14th January 2015 - 1:35 pm

The deadline for policy motions to the party’s Spring Conference in Liverpool has now passed.

As always, it will be up to the Federal Conference Committee (newly elected at the end of last year), to select the motions to be debated on the Conference floor, and no doubt the imperative of the General Election will focus minds as to which motions to pick; and there may even be a little direction from HQ as to which motions best suit the messaging!

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Matthew Campbell

Opinion: Election debates must be based on clear criteria

By Matthew Campbell | Wed 14th January 2015 - 10:52 am

In among much more important events this past week, David Cameron’s statement that the Conservative Party will not participate in UK-wide election TV debates without a Green presence is … interesting. Also stirring the pot are Ofcom, who have announced they do not consider the Greens a ‘major’ party in UK terms.

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Caron Lindsay

Some personal perspectives on non binary gender identity

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 13th January 2015 - 7:00 pm

I’ve read a couple of really interesting and illuminating articles recently in which people who don’t identify as either male or female talk about what that means for them. In yesterday’s Daily Record, there was an interview with NUS Scotland’s transgender representative Drew O’Donnell.

And while Drew says they know many people may find their ever-changing gender difficult to understand, they say people need to learn to be more understanding.

Drew, 23, of Paisley, said: “I’ve been told there are 37 different types of gender – a lot more than simply male and female.

“Even I can’t remember them all but when people ask me about it, I try to explain to them that sex and gender are two different things.

“The singer Cher has a transgender son who said, ‘Gender is between your ears, not between your legs’ and for me that describes it well. Gender is what you feel – and sometimes I might feel two thirds male and only one third female while the next day, I might feel two thirds female and only one third male.

“Some days I feel absolutely gender neutral – neither more male nor more female and that is totally fine too. I have three genders – the more feminine me, the more masculine me and the gender neutral me – but I am still the same one person.

“When I am feeling more feminine I will wear more feminine clothes – not skirts or dresses but clothes that have a more feminine than masculine look to them.

“I will wear make-up – I like eye shadow, eye liner and nail polish. And I have even coached my voice to sound more feminine.

“On days where I feel more masculine, my clothes are much more boyish and I won’t wear make-up. On gender neutral days, I’m somewhere in the middle.”

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Caron Lindsay

Simon Hughes and Nick Clegg oppose Cameron’s Snoopers’ Charter plans – or do they?

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 13th January 2015 - 12:08 pm

Last night, Liberal Democrat Justice Minister Simon Hughes expressed his opposition to David Cameron’s plans to legislate to give security services the right to intercept the internet communications of suspected terrorists.

He said:

It is vital that the police and intelligence agencies are able to investigate and prosecute terrorists, including surveillance of communications. The Liberal Democrats have moved quickly in Government to plug the gaps in existing legislation to bolster these abilities.

Future security measures must be proportionate, justified and necessary – and not trample on our civil liberties. The so-called Snoopers’ Charter, which would see the internet browsing of every single citizen stored for a year, fails these very reasonable precautions.

The idea that you protect free speech by spying on every law-abiding person in this country is a contradiction in terms. You can’t have an open society if you are constantly worried that the state is prying into your daily life.

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