Category Archives: Op-eds

Mark Pack

Opinion: Yes, Labour really has given up on winning votes from the Conservatives

By Mark Pack | Sun 11th May 2014 - 12:00 pm

Labour Party logoI’m not fully signed up to the mockery for Labour’s recent TV and online films mocking Nick Clegg. Why? Because for all the naff content themselves, the broad message of them has been massively reported in the media, reaching a much wider audience than the films themselves.

I doubt that was a deliberate strategy as you can’t count on calibrating something to be just bad enough to get lots of coverage but not so bad as to sink under it. It’s a handy silver lining, however, especially as it diverted …

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Ed Stradling

Opinion: The irony of Labour’s “shrinking man” Party Election Broadcast

By Ed Stradling | Sat 10th May 2014 - 3:05 pm

Labour broadcast Shrinking manLabour’s Party Election Broadcast has attracted plenty of attention since its launch on Wednesday, with its comedy portrayal of Nick “Claggy” as the un-credible shrinking man.

Much has already been made of the PEB’s negativity, and its silence on the question of Labour’s actual policy relating the EU (or indeed anything else) which, since the party receives public funding to develop such policy, might be considered unfortunate.

All might have been forgiven if viewers had dissolved into laughter upon watching the film, but aside from “can we hunt him?” …

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Libby Local

Libby Local Episode 18: Standing up for Demsbury

By Libby Local | Sat 10th May 2014 - 10:56 am

"Demsbury" - Bekonscot Model Village and Railway - London - Some rights reserved by bortescristian“Hey Libby. Are you standing? I’ll vote for you!”

I was puzzled by the shout and thought I had not heard it correctly. I was struggling to concentrate on anything after the events of the morning, else. I waved and walked on.

I was angry, almost in tears as I dragged my way up Crow Hill. I was very grateful when the bus stopped and the driver invited me on board his overcrowded bus.

“You look exhausted, Libby,” he said …

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Stephen Tall

“Label the behaviour not the person”: why we shouldn’t call Ukip a racist party

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th May 2014 - 8:15 am

ukip-poster-manchesterFor once I’m going to agree with Nigel Farage. Speaking at a rally this week, he pleaded with the media and public, “from this moment on please do not ever call us a racist party. We are not a racist party.”

As rallying cries go, it’s not the most ambitious. But, then, Ukip’s not an ambitious party. As Farage himself happily boasts, it has just two policies: withdrawal from the EU and bringing back grammar schools. It doesn’t really matter, though. Ukip is defined by what it’s against, not …

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Linda Jack

Opinion: The Debt Trap

By Linda Jack | Fri 9th May 2014 - 5:20 pm

3D Shackled DebtYesterday I attended the launch of the Children’s Society‘s ‘The Debt Trap’ campaign, coinciding with the publication of their accompanying report, produced with Step Change, the free debt charity. Some of its findings are truly shocking and should give us all pause for thought. In one of the richest countries in the world 2.4 million of our children are living in homes with problem debt with an additional 2.9 million families with dependent children having struggled to pay their bills over the past 12 months. …

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18 Comments
Mike Biden

Opinion: Why do UKIP and the ONS ignore my son?

By Mike Biden | Fri 9th May 2014 - 2:55 pm

UKIP logoAbsolutely fed up with UKIP quoting only one side of the story – they have done it for years over the cost of the EU without taking into account the cash returns through the CAP, research grants etc.- I decided last night to check the immigration statistics.

Latest figures appear to be 27th February 2014 from the ONS. The ONS, like UKIP, conveniently forgets that Britain is IN the EU. British migrants, such as my son who went to work in Paris two and half years ago …

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Toby Fenwick

Opinion: Getting a better deal for consumers from nuclear power

By Toby Fenwick | Thu 8th May 2014 - 12:56 pm

Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant - Some rights reserved by John O DyerFollowing the vote at last September’s conference, the party now supports new-build nuclear power. This has been a hard road for many, but ultimately the UK needs to replace the 82% of UK nuclear generation capacity that is due to decommission by 2023. This is fully 51% of all UK low-carbon generating capacity, and unlike renewables today, nuclear can provide baseload generation.

It is this combination of baseload capability, capacity at lower cost than the cheapest renewables means that nuclear …

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Gareth Wilson

Opinion: Scrap Sunday trading laws to boost the high street and the economy

By Gareth Wilson | Thu 8th May 2014 - 10:41 am

SundaysAfter yet another mad dash with the family around the shops last Sunday afternoon I read with great interest that members of the All Party Parliamentary Retail Group have recently tabled amendments to the Deregulation Bill currently going through Parliament to remove restrictions on Sunday trading and the launch of a new consumer-led campaign group to lobby MP’s to support these proposals.

Introduced in 1994, the limited Sunday opening hours for shops over 280 square metres were designed to protect local convenience shops from the bigger supermarkets. Fast forward 20 …

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Caron Lindsay

Why people vote for Liberal Democrat Councillors

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 7th May 2014 - 1:38 pm

Cllr Phil Knowles and winning teamFollowing on from yesterday’s launch of the Liberal Democrat campaign for the local government elections, I thought I’d offer a few reflections on why people vote for Liberal Democrat councillors. Why is it that in places like Three Rivers in Hertfordshire and Oadby and Wigston that the Liberal Democrats have been in power for years on end?

Big hearts and hard work

Our councillors are embedded in their communities. They know what’s going on, they keep themselves in touch with what people are thinking and they  listen to …

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Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb MP writes: I am determined everyone should be able to get good quality care

By Norman Lamb MP | Wed 7th May 2014 - 11:56 am

James Terry Court, Croydon - License Some rights reserved by sjr60If you watched Panorama last week, you will have been as horrified as I was by some of the footage.  The treatment portrayed was disgraceful and a very clear illustration of the need for the changes that we are currently introducing in the health and care sector. As Liberal Democrat Care Minister, I am determined that everyone should be able to get good quality care, and to be treated with dignity.

As minister, I want to make sure that we are able to …

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Alice Thomas

Opinion: The Gender Agenda: What Liberal Democrat Women can do for women candidates

By Alice Thomas | Wed 7th May 2014 - 10:31 am

Campaigning on the doorstep - Lynne FeatherstoneOn May 22nd I’m fighting my first local election as a candidate. I’ve been stuffing envelopes and knocking on doors for other people for 8 years, but with a seat on Islington Council in the balance, this time it seems a little more real.

But I’m lucky. I’m fighting – and fighting hard – alongside a councillor with 8 years experience, and an experienced campaigner who’s already fought a by-election. The ward has two Lib Dem councillors out of three, and if we all get elected, …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes…Let’s bring the “polluter pays” principle to government decision making

By Julian Huppert | Tue 6th May 2014 - 5:49 pm

imageAll too often Government departments get decisions wrong. Most notorious are the Home Office and the Department of Work and Pensions. Many people will be well aware of the anguish faced by those awaiting Employment and Support Allowance appeals, and the same is true for those waiting to see if they can stay in the country, or bring in a spouse.

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Stuart Bonar

Opinion: 485 million, 26 million or 4,000? UKIP’s immigration confusion

By Stuart Bonar | Tue 6th May 2014 - 10:26 am

Nigel Farage, Leader, UK Independence Party (UKIP)So, Mr Farage, which is it? In the debates with Nick Clegg, you claimed 485 million of our fellow Europeans could come to Britain. On your wretched billboards, you claimed 26 million are eyeing up our jobs. Now, on leaflets that are dropping through letterboxes, you claim 4,000 EU migrants are landing on our shores each week. These are very different numbers.

I guess the 485 million figure is simply the total number of people who could legally come to the UK. But how is this different from pointing out that the 64 million people who live in the UK are all perfectly free to move to, say, Totnes? Should Totnes Town Council leave the UK so it can impose border controls? Should National Rail blow up the railway line at Dawlish to slow their arrival? Should the Government impose restrictions on internal movement within the UK just in case? Of course not, because 64m people aren’t about to move to Totnes, even though they’re free to do so, just as 485 million Europeans are not going to come here to Britain.

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Mike Biden

Opinion: Astra-Zeneca and a Fairer Society

By Mike Biden | Tue 6th May 2014 - 8:46 am

PfizerThe approach by Pfizer to acquire Astra-Zeneca raises yet again the question of what criteria should be used to evaluate the merits of large international corporate acquisitions.  I would argue that too often the real issues are lost in xenophobic arguments about the loss of national champions – though that is a legitimate concern in this instance.

No compelling rationale for this merger has been put forward.  The Directors of Astra-Zeneca do not see one. Straight forward commercial agreements between the companies to buy and sell individual assets, drugs patents or to …

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Caron Lindsay

Could Labour and Tories unite to pass tougher knife crime sentencing? How should Liberal Democrats react?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 5th May 2014 - 11:30 am

FSI working at crime sceneLast Friday, Joe Otten wrote about the leak of letters  revealing that the Liberal Democrats were opposing Tory plans to introduce a six month mandatory sentence for those convicted a second time for carrying a knife.

Today’s Daily Mail makes two claims. The first is that Labour is getting ready to “humiliate” the Liberal Democrats by siding with the Tories and they could pass this together. Secondly, they say that Nick Clegg was “bouncing off the walls” when he discovered the leak.

We know from the feature on …

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Caron Lindsay

35 years since Thatcher: A trip down Memory Lane

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th May 2014 - 3:22 pm

THE IRON LADY, MARGARET THATCHEROn 4 May 1979, Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street for the first time. The sun that shone down on her on the steps cast a decade long shadow. The culture of selfishness, instilling a belief that there was something wrong with paying taxes for good public services, pervades today. In recent years, only the Liberal Democrats of the major parties have gone into an election advocating a rise in Income Tax, albeit a tiny one, to invest in education.

We seem to be embroiled in this cycle of underfunding our services, complaining about them and then underfunding them some more.

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Caron Lindsay

Caron’s Sunday Selection: must-read articles from today’s papers

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 4th May 2014 - 9:42 am

Selection of British newspapersHere are a few stories from today’s press to challenge, infuriate and inform:

John Rentoul’s General Election Preview in the Independent describes Paddy Ashdown’s role as providing “romping gravitas”:

The South African Ryan Coetzee, a former MP in South Africa for the opposition Democratic Alliance, is Nick Clegg’s head of strategy. There was a bit of a synthetic fuss recently when journalists noticed that his £110,000 salary as a special adviser is paid by the taxpayer. It was his idea to raise Clegg’s profile by challenging Nigel Farage to public

…

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Paul Reynolds

Opinion: An open letter to UKIP voters

By Paul Reynolds | Sat 3rd May 2014 - 9:28 am

Letters Play Important Roles in our LivesDear UKIP voter

Although you are probably not an avid reader of the Lib Dem Voice website, this letter may get to you through the usual ‘viral’ internet ‘system.

The opinion surveys suggest that there are three main reasons for people like yourself voting UKIP.

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Joe Otten

…or you could vote for not having an opinion

By Joe Otten | Fri 2nd May 2014 - 6:41 pm

imageOn Wednesday I went to my first hustings as a European Parliament candidate (number 3 on the Yorkshire and the Humber list). When the Green candidate announced that he supported staying in the EU, I had a quiet conversation with the Labour candidate sitting next to me.

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Ben Nicholls

Opinion: Get your hands off my pint, Nigel

By Ben Nicholls | Fri 2nd May 2014 - 4:53 pm

BeerDespite some of the quite appalling statements they’ve provided us with in recent weeks, I’m getting fed up of hearing UKIP supporters described as nutters. I’m no psychiatrist: it’s hardly my place, or that of anybody else, to decry someone as a nutter. But more importantly than that, I’m fed up of it because it’s insulting to everyone who supports UKIP, and it gives them a cast-iron reason not to place their cross elsewhere.

As a recently-selected Lib Dem PPC, I obviously don’t agree with UKIP. I’m pro-Europe, primarily because I’m …

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Joe Bourke

Opinion: the biggest threat to global security

By Joe Bourke | Fri 2nd May 2014 - 1:55 pm

Free Syrian Army rebels fighting against Assad militias on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Maraat al-Numan, Idlib - SyriaThe Arab spring has receded into the nightmare that is Syria today; continuing instability in Libya and Yemen and death penalties by the hundreds in Egypt. We have been shocked by the atrocities of Boko Haram in Nigeria; Al Shabab in Somalia; conflict in the Central African Republic, Mali and Chad.

Tony Blair, in a recent speech reminded us Why the Middle East matters

What is presently happening there, still

…

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53 Comments
Iain Donaldson

Opinion: Licensing the private sector housing market would be more effective than 3 year tenancies and a rent fix

By Iain Donaldson | Fri 2nd May 2014 - 10:05 am

Matilda HouseMuch has been said about Ed Miliband’s latest proposal to grant 3 year tenancies and cap rent rises over the three years but it’s not that bad an idea as a part of a package of measures to tackle the housing crisis. The key problem is that Mr Miliband’s solution would have to be regulated and yet Labour has consistently blocked the introduction of regulation for the private sector housing market.

We need to ensure that all rented accommodation (private, social, co-operative, lodging or council) meets standards of service …

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Stephen Williams

Stephen Williams MP writes… Giving councils more power over betting shops

By Stephen Williams | Thu 1st May 2014 - 12:58 pm

fixed-odd-betting-machinesThe remit of the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is huge. Ministers are responsible for housing, local economic development, planning policy, parking, local government finance, localism and community integration. Often these issues spark controversy. But all CLG ministers are in complete agreement that there is an urgent need to revitalise the Great British High Street, to bring back the bustling centres of retail and leisure which served their communities so well prior to the financial crash. We want high streets and town centres that encourage people to spend a …

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Adam Corlett

Opinion: Of driverless cars and passengerless trains

By Adam Corlett | Thu 1st May 2014 - 11:19 am

"Driverless Car in Bonita Springs" by Chris Griffith

Driverless cars may not be quite as revolutionary as the 19th century spread of the railway, but there are huge benefits coming into view. The sooner we can deliver them, and the sooner policymakers can take them into account, the better – with mixed results for railways.

To be conservative, let’s imagine it’s 2044 – 30 years from now. We will look back at the idea of people customarily directing 1 tonne cars at speed as madness. Millions

…

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Caron Lindsay

Nigel, Newark and Nostalgia

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 30th April 2014 - 2:50 pm

Newark CastleOne of my earliest political memories is the moment when Shirley Williams got up at Bradford in 1981 and announced that she would be a candidate in the Crosby by-election. Her talk of how sometimes in politics it was necessary to take risks, to “scale unscalable heights” gave the 14 year old me goosebumps. It was all very much “stand up for what you believe in, take risks, go and change the world” motivation.

Decades later, Shirley wrote about her decision to stand for Crosby in her excellent autobiography, Climbing the …

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Ed Davey

Edward Davey MP writes… A better deal for people on ‘pre-payment’ energy meters

By Ed Davey | Wed 30th April 2014 - 1:15 pm

Electric Meter on the Back of the HouseLiberal Democrats in Government are doing everything possible to help consumers with their energy bills.  Just last week I announced that by the end of the year energy suppliers will halve the time it takes to switch energy supplier from the current five to two and a half weeks.  This is just the first step to achieving my ambition of achieving 24 hour switching.

But there is more that can be done, and I have written to energy suppliers asking them to now focus on …

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Nick Tyrone

The Independent View: New report from the Electoral Reform Society: Close the Gap – Tackling Europe’s democratic deficit

By Nick Tyrone | Wed 30th April 2014 - 10:53 am

EU flagThe new report out by the ERS, written by Chris Terry, is one in which the problem of “democratic deficit” in the European Union is explored. This is an issue that pro-Europeans have traditionally shied away from. However, it is the pro-Europeans who must actually take the arguments forward if Britain is to remain in the EU. The Eurosceptics, meanwhile, simply need to hammer home the fact that, from their point of view, there are no answers other than exit.

In the report, twelve recommendations on how to …

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Giles Goodall

Opinion: Why I joined the Lib Dems 20 years ago – and am still proud to be one

By Giles Goodall | Wed 30th April 2014 - 9:19 am

Liberal Democrat badge - Some rights reserved by Paul Walter, Newbury, UKNext month marks my 20th anniversary as a Liberal Democrat. Could it really be that I’ve spent two decades – and my entire adult life – as a member of Britain’s (still) third party? And more to the point (as some friends would no doubt ask me), why?

I signed up in the dying days of John Major’s government, shortly before we won our first ever MEPs at the 1994 European elections – as well as the first …

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Rebecca Taylor

Rebecca Taylor writes … the benefits of the Erasmus+ programme for young Brits

By Rebecca Taylor | Tue 29th April 2014 - 5:24 pm

erasmusYesterday the European Union increased its commitment to providing learning and development opportunities for young people right here in Britain, through the launch of the revamped Erasmus+ programme.

The new revamped Erasmus+ programme has a total budget of £12 billion, with £100 million already earmarked for the UK in 2014 alone.  Along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues in Brussels we pushed for a bigger Erasmus budget than the previous scheme and were successful in obtaining a 40% increase at a time when the overall EU budget was cut. Grants will now be made available for education, training, youth and sport. In total it’s estimated that nearly a quarter of a million students, apprentices, teachers and youth workers will benefit from the EU grants.

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