Category Archives: Op-eds

Richard Davis

Opinion: Innovation, Employment and the EU

By Richard Davis | Wed 4th September 2013 - 12:30 pm

Research, development and innovation are intrinsically linked to economic growth. In the UK we have a shocking history of underinvestment in science and research funding however this has been mitigated by the investment the EU has made into UK sciences, research institutions and innovative start ups. With the new EU funding programme Horizon 2020 coming into effect from next year there are high hopes for a new burst of innovation and the economic activity that brings with it.

The more innovation we have in the UK, the more people make things, the more our manufacturing sector increases and the more jobs …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink…Tim Farron: From Whitehall to the Town Hall, why we must say Yes to Homes

By NewsHound | Wed 4th September 2013 - 10:52 am

This week the National Housing Federation is running a Yes to Homes week to encourage councillors to allow more homes to be built within their areas. From their website:

Just a small handful of people can block the new homes that are a lifeline for many. When they are the only people putting pressure on local politicians their views are heard loud and clear.

All too often the people who actually need homes are missing from local debates. That’s why we have launched the Yes to Homes campaign. We want to make sure people who do support more housing are included

…

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Also posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , and | 25 Comments
Daniel Furr

Opinion: War is hell, but sometimes dictators leave us with no choice

By Daniel Furr | Tue 3rd September 2013 - 3:34 pm

The Mother of All Parliaments, one of the oldest democracies in the world, decided against condemning, and possible military action against, a brutal dictator, who used chemical weapons on his own population. I shall not critique the political fallout and alleged skulduggery or whether or not certain individuals played politics with the issue; my opinion is to express why intervention is required and why Britain needs to lead on Syria.

Assad has terrorised his own population with conventional and chemical weapons. Innocent people have been indiscriminately targeted; entire neighbourhoods destroyed, towns and villages laid waste and countless communities have been massacred. …

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David Gray

Opinion: Even if this is the end of our ‘Special Relationship’, there is no need to mourn its passing

By David Gray | Tue 3rd September 2013 - 2:10 pm

cameron-obama-hot-dogIt’s that old classic love story. Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl become infatuated with one another. Boy leads Girl into a series of illegal wars in the Middle East. You know the rest. (In the interests of gender equality, I should point out that you are more than welcome to switch around the genders in this analogy.)

But now, this one sided relationship has a new twist. Girl has said no to the Boy’s latest attempts to lead her into another bombing campaign, and Boy is angry. Boy storms out, and …

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Robin Lynn

Opinion: Public Sector Equality Duty review…the countdown has started

By Robin Lynn | Tue 3rd September 2013 - 9:16 am

Those of us concerned about the fate of the Public Sector Equality Duty are starting to notice increased activity by interested parties. The Government has announced that the review will be published immediately after the summer recess. The review was carried out under the auspices of the Red Tape Challenge.

Announcing the Review last year Theresa May said:

Bureaucracy and prescription are not routes to equality. Over-burdening businesses benefits no one, and real change doesn’t come from telling people what to do. Today’s announcement strikes the right balance between protecting people from discrimination and letting businesses get on with the job.

Ms …

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John Whitehouse

Opinion: The whole country is talking about HS2, so why aren’t we?

By John Whitehouse | Mon 2nd September 2013 - 1:44 pm

In recent weeks the national media has been full of HS2. A number of prominent politicians have expressed opposition to the scheme, others like George Osborne have rushed to support it, the Institute of Directors members said it should be scrapped, etc etc.

For those of us who have been “in the firing line” of this massive project for over three years already, this national media attention is overdue but very welcome. For far too long, any opposition to HS2 has been brushed off as “nimbyism”, with media images of posh people in grand houses being inconvenienced by a project that would upset their idyllic and privileged existences!

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Tagged | 55 Comments
David Laws

David Laws writes… Tackling disadvantage must start before school

By David Laws | Mon 2nd September 2013 - 12:05 pm

When money is tight, where a party chooses to spend says something important about that party’s values.

So today is an important day for Liberal Democrats – as Nick Clegg launches our £760m investment to provide a free early years education for every disadvantaged two year old.

From today, for the first time ever, 130,000 two year olds from the poorest homes become eligible for a free place with a nursery or childminder. And we have announced that, from next year, this same offer will be extended to families earning less than £16,000, adopted children and those with special …

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Simon McGrath

Opinion: Let’s have some facts on the ‘bedroom tax’

By Simon McGrath | Mon 2nd September 2013 - 8:47 am

One of the ‘facts’ about the ‘bedroom tax’ which is becoming increasing accepted is that 9 out of 10 disabled people affected by the ‘bedroom tax’ and refused a discretionary payment are going without food.

There is a rather good graphic, much shared, on Facebook illustrating this and it has been added to the Labour rhetoric of the all round wickedness of the Coalition.

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Westminster Insider

Opinion: The Syria Milishambles

By Westminster Insider | Sat 31st August 2013 - 10:01 am

See Saw Cameron MilibandEd Miliband has once again done his best impression of a statesman. On Thursday morning, with bags under his eyes, he declared that he was tabling an amendment to the government’s motion on Syria. His amendment would require a ‘clear legal basis’ for military action, and a second vote in the House of Commons following the forthcoming UN weapons inspectors’ report.

The government’s motion, on the other hand, requires a ‘sound legal basis’ for action, and a second vote in the House of Commons following the forthcoming UN weapons inspectors’ report. Snap!

Miliband stumbled and stammered in the Chamber Thursday afternoon as he tried to draw a line in the sand between his amendment that wasn’t an amendment and the government’s identical policy.

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Jonathan Fryer

Opinion: Syria – We still have a responsibility to protect

By Jonathan Fryer | Sat 31st August 2013 - 9:07 am

Several speakers inThursday’s House of Commons debate on possible intervention in Syria referred to the developing concept within International Law of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Basically that means that when a government is unable or unwilling to protect its own people from humanitarian disaster then the international community has an obligation to intervene. Since R2P’s endorsement at the UN in 2005, it has generally been assumed that any such international intervention should have the backing of a UN Security Council resolution, which in Syria’s case would have been impossible, given that Russia and maybe also China would have vetoed …

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert writes: A local approach to sustainable transport

By Julian Huppert | Fri 30th August 2013 - 3:30 pm

This is the first of three extracts from the forthcoming collection of essays Green liberalism: a local approach to the low carbon economy. Similar collections will be published under Green Alliance’s ‘Green social democracy’ and ‘Green conservatism’ projects as part of the Green Roots programme, which aims to stimulate green thinking within the three dominant political traditions in the UK. 

A sustainable and low carbon transport system is something which UK governments have historically struggled to achieve, thanks to years of poor forward planning and systems which revolve heavily around cars, a highly inefficient mode of transport. But mobility patterns are …

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Mathew Lawrence

Independent View: Cable should revisit Mill’s Principles of Political Economy

By Mathew Lawrence | Fri 30th August 2013 - 2:03 pm

John Stuart MillCable should revisit Mill’s Principles of Political Economy

With new analysis this week showing as many as 50,000 women lose their jobs each year while taking time off to have a baby, insecurity appears to be the new normal for British workers.

From mothers losing out whilst on maternity leave, to the rocketing growth of zero hour contracts on which as many as 1m people are now employed, millions of people face instability at work. These bad employment practices combined with the on-going squeeze on wages means that over half of people say they struggle to keep up with bills. As conference approaches, Vince Cable would do well to consider these issues as matters of pressing importance.

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged and | 11 Comments
Kishwer Falkner

Baroness Falkner on Syria and intervening abroad

By Kishwer Falkner | Fri 30th August 2013 - 1:03 pm

I join Paddy Ashdown in feeling depressed about my country today.

In my near thirty years as a Liberal Democrat I have heard two tropes consistently from campaigners: that policy is irrelevant and that foreign policy is particularly irrelevant.  Yet it is foreign policy above all that shapes our party’s fortunes.

Take the SDP split over Europe – that got me into the party in ’85. Then came our opposition to the UK’s ban in letting in Hong Kong residents before the handover to China  – several of my friends joined too, and it put Paddy Ashdown on the map.  In the 90’s it was Bosnia and subsequently Kosovo that made us carry a uniquely and sometimes lonely flag for freedom and humanitarian intervention – last night the same isolationist Foreign Secretary of that period was arguing against doing anything in Syria – some things don’t change!  We subsequently made the right call on Iraq, and will shortly see the trial of Seif Gaddafy in Libya – who threatened to stamp out Libyan dissenters as cockroaches. Despite current troubles, on balance I am proud that we averted that.

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged and | 41 Comments
Bill le Breton

Syria: A Reply to Stephen Tall

By Bill le Breton | Fri 30th August 2013 - 11:49 am

Stephen, as an internationalist you should applaud and accept the outcome of the democratic House of Commons last night. Do not be ashamed. Be proud. Do not be dismayed. Be hopeful.

The biggest destroyer of lives and life chances is anarchy. Anarchists work to bringing the whole house down. That is their objective. The rule of law is anathema to them.

I quoted earlier in the week, Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austrian precipitated the loss of 21 million lives and, if you see the Second World War, the Cold War and the dominance of Stalin as a …

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Also posted in Parliament | Tagged | 28 Comments
Iain Donaldson

Letter to Nick Clegg – Secret courts and bedroom tax

By Iain Donaldson | Fri 30th August 2013 - 9:57 am
Dear Nick,
Following the vote in Parliament last night the Prime Minister demonstrated how to graciously step back from a position and accept the will of our democratically elected representatives that Britain should not engage in the folly of military intervention in Syria.To step back, accept that you have lost the vote, and so quickly return to the task that parliament has set is not in my view a sign of weakness, it is a clear sign of strength and dignity that will serve the Prime Minister well.

At our Spring conference this year you faced two major votes where you disagreed

…

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Tagged and | 6 Comments

Opinion: Syria vote – A step change in Britain’s relationship with the world

By Andy Boddington | Fri 30th August 2013 - 7:33 am

the_master_of_the_ordnance_500Yesterday’s Commons vote on intervention in Syria is a landmark. And a surprise.

All day I had been reading the pundits in the national press and listening to the BBC. No one expected the government to lose the vote. Least of all the government.

My view is that is one of the most significant votes in our recent history.

This perhaps – hopefully – is the moment when we stop believing we are a world power. At long last we, or at least our parliament, believe that we cannot bomb our way to peace. This could be the point where we believe our best interests, and those of the world, lie in using our financial and political resources to promote a world that works without war.

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Tagged | 19 Comments
Ros Baston

The Independent View: Concerns about lobbying bill are not alarmist

By Ros Baston | Thu 29th August 2013 - 7:00 pm

So the pot has addressed the kettle again. Tom Brake and Chloe Smith have accused 38 Degrees of being either alarmist or scaremongering about the effects of Part 2 of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Perhaps they would like to add the  famously hysterical Electoral Commission to their list of doom-mongers, as they have also expressed serious concerns.

Mr Brake and Ms Smith claim that Part 2 will save the UK from unaccountable big-spending American-style Super-PACs. No alarmism there, then – especially when the only thing preventing this horror is that non-party spending …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Iain Donaldson

Opinion: An open letter to Nick Clegg on Syria

By Iain Donaldson | Thu 29th August 2013 - 5:20 pm

Dear Nick,

Today Parliament is considering international action in Syria and you will take the most important decision of your leadership of the Liberal Democrats.

It would seem to me that there are four clear questions that must be answered before any military intervention is launched in Syria.

Is there compelling evidence of Assad’s guilt?

If compelling evidence of Assad’s guilt emerges, has an international arrest warrant been issued under international war-crimes law?

Have all non-military avenues for extradition to The Hague failed?

Has the Security Council sanctioned the necessary action to execute the arrest warrant?

Right now there appears to be no compelling evidence of Assad’s …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 39 Comments
Toby Fenwick

Opinion: A no-fly zone offers the best chance of success in Syria

By Toby Fenwick | Thu 29th August 2013 - 4:04 pm

The conflict in Syria has continued with greater or lesser public notice for more than two years now. In this time thousands have died, millions have been displaced within Syria and into neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. And the international community has done little or nothing, hamstrung by Russian support for Assad, Chinese support for non-intervention, and ultimately, lack of western interest.

The large-scale chemical attack in a Damascus suburb claiming at least 300 lives at once changed everything and nothing. Everything, in that such an egregious violation of the laws of armed conflict, along with President Obama’s previous warnings of …

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Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Opinion: Syria – I know what’s wrong; working out what’s right is rather harder

By Mark Pack | Thu 29th August 2013 - 11:54 am

It is easy to work out what I disagree with on Syria.

The absurd politics of those on the left who have never lifted the smallest placard in protest again Assad’s wide scale murders but break out a garage-full the moment there is a whiff of US involvement in something.

Or those who talk about Syria with reference to Iraq but without references too to countries such as the Ivory Coast or Sierra Leone, where military intervention worked. Or without reference to countries such as the former Yugoslavia where the problem was not that military intervention took place but that it took …

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Jonathan Brown

Opinion… Syria: what do we do now? And, as importantly, why? (Part 3)

By Jonathan Brown | Thu 29th August 2013 - 8:42 am

The experience of the war in Iraq rightly made us all more sceptical about involvement in the Middle East. But the underlying principle of ‘responsibility to protect’, that as human beings we have a duty to one another, remains as true as it has ever been. It is too late for there to be a good outcome in Syria, but there are ‘less bad’ alternatives we should aim for.

No one is considering sending in the army. There’s no support for it, scant evidence we could do it legally and little reason to think it would make things better rather than …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 5 Comments
Jonathan Brown

Opinion… Syria: what do we do now? And as importantly, why? (Part 2)

By Jonathan Brown | Wed 28th August 2013 - 6:59 pm

In part 1, I looked at where the Syrian uprising came from and argued that we should not be afraid to ‘pick a side’. This time I want to review the failures of the UK’s current policy (or lack of one).

It’s probably uncontroversial to say that most of us would have wished for the Assad regime to hold elections, release its grip on power and transition peacefully to democracy. And that as a fallback option, many of us would have been happy with a negotiated pact between the regime and the opposition, along the lines of what was more …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 2 Comments
Tahir Maher

Opinion: Experience tells us that attacking Syria would harm rather than help

By Tahir Maher | Wed 28th August 2013 - 3:53 pm

I live near Forbury Gardens in Reading where the Maiwand Lion statue was erected in 1886 to commemorate the loss of 280 soldiers from the 66th Royal Berkshire Regiment at the Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan on 27th July 1880. There is talk of a memorial for our brave soldiers who fought and have lost their lives in the current campaign in Helmand. In my opinion, when the Americans and the British leave, Karzai won’t be too far behind and Mullah Omar will be reinstated as leader. In recent years we also have the experience of the war in Iraq …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 20 Comments
Jonathan Brown

Opinion… Syria: what do we do now? And as importantly, why? (Part 1)

By Jonathan Brown | Wed 28th August 2013 - 12:18 pm

There are no good options open to us. Our choices as a country are to jump from the top floor of the burning building where we currently stand or to turn and face the flames we’ve been fanning. I want us to take that leap – to make the effort to understand what outcome might be desirable and possible, and to work towards achieving it. While we’ve dithered, others have been working towards goals that should concern us: we have a stake in the outcome of this war.

This is the first of three articles, inspired not just by the chemical weapon …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged | 12 Comments
Ted Burke

The Independent View: Lost hours playing Snake – and reining in the banks on food pricing

By Ted Burke | Wed 28th August 2013 - 11:18 am

About a decade ago I was addicted to the classic Nokia game, Snake. If I had a spare few minutes I’d be guiding my pixelated reptile around the black and white screen of my mobile phone, trying to beat my high score. It was simple, hopelessly addictive and I couldn’t put it down.

As I happily helped the Snake on my screen eat itself full, like most people I was blissfully unaware that something was seriously unfair with global food pricing. The rules governing how much food costs – and banks taking advantage of them – was, and still is, locking …

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Also posted in Europe / International and The Independent View | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Syria: what do Liberal Democrats want?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 28th August 2013 - 9:57 am

Last night we brought you Nick Clegg’s view on Syria, which can be summarised as follows:

  • if we stand idly by we set a very dangerous precedent
  • the use of chemical weapons is a repugnant crime
  • we will not stand idly by when chemical weapons are used in complete breach of international law
  •  Government “is not going to act outside the remit of international law”
  • we want to stand up for the standards and norms in the civilised world

In the last couple of days Paddy Ashdown and Sir Menzies Campbell, two of the most respected voices this country has on foreign affairs, have been …

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The Independent View: Time to bring industry into the classroom

By James Kempton and Sam Tomlin | Wed 28th August 2013 - 9:00 am
 Too many young people leave education without the skills and understanding of industry that businesses need. The big increase in apprenticeships in recent years means that a lot more people are now experiencing vocational learning on the job.
But there is still a problem in further education colleges, where most vocational learners still get all or the majority their training. Currently only around 11% of teaching staff at these colleges also work in their chosen profession. In certain sectors such as STEM, where industry standards and practice move fast, knowledge can quickly become out of date. This leads to a gap

…

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
George Cunningham

Opinion: A more realistic approach to Defence policy

By George Cunningham | Tue 27th August 2013 - 3:33 pm

defenceThe Liberal Democrat Working Group on Defence came out last month with its policy paper “Defending the Future: UK Defence in the 21st Century”. Brussels and Europe Liberal Democrats made a detailed submission – praised by members of the working group – which also shows some alternative paths for the party’s defence policy. We suggest it is well worth a read before the party’s new defence policy motion comes up for debate at this Autumn’s party conference.

The Brussels and Europe Liberal Democrats’ paper calls for a more thought-through, long-term and realistic strategic approach by the Government, including defining more precisely Britain’s role in the world, a reform of security and defence-related institutions, the constant update of the threat assessment, the creation of out-of-area alliances to share military burden, ways for less expensive procurement, the capacity to regenerate of military forces quickly in time of war – and much more.

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George Potter

Opinion: Why aren’t we borrowing more?

By George Potter | Tue 27th August 2013 - 1:39 pm

At the moment the yield on the UK’s five year government gilts is 1.65%. What this means in plain English is that if our government wanted to borrow £1,000 it would have to pay back £1,083 in five years.

In contrast, if you or I or a business went to the bank and ask to borrow the same amount for five years we’d be looking at paying back well over £1,500 by the end of the loan.

What this tells us is that our government can borrow money very, very cheaply. It can borrow it at less than the rate of …

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David Gray

Opinion: We need urgent debate about Syria, not just rhetoric

By David Gray | Tue 27th August 2013 - 8:55 am

If recent news reports are to be believed, we are now edging closer and closer some form of military conflict with Syria. It is a fast moving situation; indeed, one that could escalate drastically within a matter of days. But with MPs on their summer holidays, there has been a worrying lack of proper debate about the issue.

A few months ago, an 87-year-old woman died and Parliament was recalled so that people could talk about it, at no small expense to the taxpayer. I have no wish to go through that particular debate again, but it is difficult to …

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