Category Archives: Op-eds

Kirsten de Keyser

Opinion: Straphanging now takes a quarter of your wages – what do the continentals do?

By Kirsten de Keyser | Mon 14th January 2013 - 9:54 am

Virgin trainHappy New Year Britain! Stand by for more cuts! cuts! cuts! Except in rail fares. There it’s a case of “let the train drain you dry”. As part of the festive fireworks, rail fares exploded by 4.3% so, if you are privileged enough to have a job at all, you can kiss good-bye to up to a quarter of your pay packet just to get you to work.

A season ticket will cost as much as 23% of gross salary or, put another way, you’ll effectively have to work till …

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Lee Dargue

Opinion: Liberal Youth has changed for the better and I see promise of more

By Lee Dargue | Sun 13th January 2013 - 4:45 pm

Following Sean Davey’s thought-provoking post on the upcoming elections of new Liberal Youth officers, I wanted to offer support and some further thoughts. In agreement, Sean is right to point out that LY cannot allow its incoming officers, along with the existing ones, to indulge in coasting or long-winded bickering and risk over-shadowing the hugely important work of LY in campaigning.

Sean also raises the issue of LY’s lack of diversity as a problem. I totally agree that we can’t allow things to stay as they are, and after some initial concerns I back the Candidate Leadership Program. However, …

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Lynne Featherstone

Lynne Featherstone writes… Education, education, education

By Lynne Featherstone | Sun 13th January 2013 - 9:50 am

International Development minister Lynne Featherstone writes a monthly column for one of her local newspapers. Here is the latest one…..

Lynne Feahterstone visiting a Haringey primary school. Some rights reserved. http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynnefeatherstone/3010645357/My mother and father were not that enthused about education. Going out to work as soon as possible and earning a living came higher up on their agenda. When you had known poverty as they had – earning took precedence over learning. I went to my local school – Highgate Primary. (We are talking over fifty years ago). Luckily for me …

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Has Nick Boles given the kiss of life to localism?

By Andy Boddington | Fri 11th January 2013 - 3:51 pm

Announcements come out of the communities department at all times of the day and night these days it seems. Rather before most of us were awake on Thursday morning, the department slipped out a statement that may just breathe life into the flagging localism project.

Coming hours after the appearance of planning minister Nick Boles on Newsnight on Wednesday, the statement gave a firm commitment that communities will soon benefit from development on their patch.

The plan is that parish and town councils will get a sizeable share of the community infrastructure levy imposed on most new developments. At …

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David Thorpe

Opinion: Liberals must learn the lessons of Thatcher

By David Thorpe | Fri 11th January 2013 - 2:49 pm

It is a truth often acknowledged that Tony Blair and David Cameron, in moving their respective parties to the centre ground, left a gruelling obstacle on the road to a truly Liberal Britain.
But it’s not from those leaders that the next generation of Liberal Democrat’s must learn, rather it is from a leader who would regard liberalism as a dirty word, and many Liberal outcomes as inimical to her view of society, Margaret Thatcher.

The lesson for Lib Dems is that Thatcher understood that the less well off are just as aspirational as those born to wealth. The Tory method …

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Mark Blackburn

Jessops – is administration a euphemism for obliteration?

By Mark Blackburn | Fri 11th January 2013 - 1:12 pm

Sadly, yesterday another retailer went into administration, this time Jessops, the high street camera chain. For the time being it continues to trade but the jobs of its 2000 employees in 200 stores are under threat. Surprisingly, Christmas can be a bad time for retailers – rents are due on Christmas Day and if the expected bumper sales don’t materialise, the money may not be there to pay them.

Obviously it’s not going to get any easier for ‘bricks and mortar’ store chains with the continuing increase in online sales, but there’s a more fundamental problem – apart from the massive …

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Giles Goodall

The Eurosceptic tide is turning. Lib Dems must be in the vanguard

By Giles Goodall | Fri 11th January 2013 - 10:21 am

We have become used in recent months to unrelentingly bad news about our relationship with Europe. ‘UKIP now the third party’, ‘Majority would say no to EU’ and ‘UK heads for the Brexit’ have become commonplace headlines. But while the current polls and general debate are still far from positive, several recent developments suggest the tide is starting to turn on the antis – and are enough to give cheer to pro-Europeans from all sides.

First – in case you missed it – the Obama administration has made clear in no uncertain terms to its concern about the UK’s Eurosceptic …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged , and | 40 Comments
Bill le Breton

Opinion: Bullseye banzai

By Bill le Breton | Fri 11th January 2013 - 8:51 am

In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d do my own Mid-Term Review and not keep it secret.

Back on the 14th November 2012, I wrote a piece for LDV on how Shinzo Abe, the clear favourite to become Japan’s next PM, was telling the Bank of Japan to deliver 3% growth in the money measure of GDP (NGDP) on pain of having its independence withdrawn. NGDP in Japan had been virtually static for twenty years – a sort of Great Stagnoflation.

How’s Mr Abe doing just eight weeks on? Well, he’s Prime Minister, he’s told the …

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George Kendall

Helping you keep your New Year’s resolution

By George Kendall | Thu 10th January 2013 - 6:07 pm

Made a New Year’s resolution? No? No matter. Why not make one now? To campaign early and often in the run-up to May’s elections.

And to help you keep it, we’ve three more Regional Action Days, with more to come.

These events are designed to give you the best possible experience, well-organised, with free food and the chance to campaign with leading campaigners from across the region.

Don’t worry if you don’t have campaigning experience. These days are especially for you, to give you an enjoyable way to pick up new skills.

Can’t make the whole day? Then come for as much of it …

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Opinion: The Justice Secretary has got it wrong on privatisation of probation services

By Sandra James | Thu 10th January 2013 - 2:45 pm

Why do governments always assume that they will save money by privatising the public sector?  The Probation Service is now in Chris Grayling’s sights with his plan to hive off low risk offenders to charities and private enterprise leaving the rump Probation Service to concentrate on high risk offenders.

High risk offenders are the sex offenders, domestic violence perpetrators and offenders on indeterminate sentences whose risk prior to release from custody is subject to constant review. As a former probation officer this was my bread and butter work – and incredibly stressful it was too.

I understand that under the Coalition …

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Prateek Buch

Opinion: AllTrials.net – a crucial campaign on data transparency that will save lives

By Prateek Buch | Thu 10th January 2013 - 1:26 pm

Medicines save and improve lives, can also cause great harm if inappropriately deployed. To decide which drugs are safe, and which might work in which circumstances, regulators, doctors and scientists need access to all the results from all trials conducted on all drugs that are in use – but this data is all-too-often missing as a result of commercial practices that put millions of lives at risk. A new campaign seeks to bring this largely hidden scandal in medical science, revealed in Dr. Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma, to an end – and with it the needless harm …

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Hannah Bettsworth

Opinion: SNP’s ill thought out proposals discriminate against young people

By Hannah Bettsworth | Thu 10th January 2013 - 9:00 am

Drew's first driving lesson - Some rights reserved by akarmyMark McDonald, SNP MSP for North East Scotland, has recently proposed unjust new restrictions on young drivers. His proposals would mean that 17-25 year olds, regardless of driving experience, would be banned from driving between 11pm and 4am every day, as well as preventing them from carrying passengers in their vehicles.

This is based on a discriminatory assumption that young people are generally bad drivers. Even although there is a higher risk as

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Caron Lindsay

AD LIB issue 2 – Swinson and the F word, Hussein-Ece on diversity, inside the spin room – and cake

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th January 2013 - 1:24 pm

Ad Lib 2nd issueSo, the second issue of AD LIB, the monthly magazine which has replaced Lib Dem News, hit subscribers’ doorsteps over the weekend. I reviewed the first edition which went to all  members in December. I felt that it was a good effort, but there were some mistakes. The last Lib Dem Voice survey showed a mainly favourable response to it.

This month’s edition is jam-packed full of things which interested me. There’s something for even the most connected-to-the-hive-mind Liberal Democrat as well as the mildly …

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James Harper

Opinion: We must prevent another immigration “legacy”

By James Harper | Wed 9th January 2013 - 11:53 am

Is there an amnesty for illegal immigrants? Keith Vaz seems determined to prove that there is, although so far without success. But the reality behind the bluster is rather more serious.

In 2007 the Home Office ‘found’ (or so the apocryphal tale goes) 500,000 asylum cases which had not been dealt with, ‘lying around’ in a room in the depths of Lunar House, Croydon.  This backlog was termed the ‘legacy’ of unresolved asylum cases.

A new department was set up and given the grisly task of looking at and resolving these cases, some of which had been untouched for over 10 years. …

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Stephen Tall

So, about that Lib Dem wipeout in 2015 then…

By Stephen Tall | Wed 9th January 2013 - 7:45 am

GB-election-map2Ask most commentators about Lib Dem prospects at the next general election and a couple of words are sure to crop up sooner or later: either ‘wipeout’ or ‘annihilation’.

I understand why. Look at the opinion polls and the party is bobbing around the 10% mark. Compare that to the 23% we won in 2010, get your uniform national swing slide-rule out, and you can see why many folk, even quite sensible ones like Peter Kellner, will say something like this…

The Liberal Democrats are facing political extinction with

…

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Tim Purkiss

Opinion: Where do we now stand regarding mental health provision in the NHS?

By Tim Purkiss | Tue 8th January 2013 - 11:42 am

nhs sign lrgMany people are clearly still very angry at, what they perceive to be, Liberal Democrats waving through Conservative plans to fragment and privatise the NHS – despite it not being in the Coalition Agreement – and believe that, within that, mental health treatment in the NHS will inevitably suffer.

I do not think that anybody who reads these pages will believe that the party can regain every vote which we have lost because of the NHS Bill.

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Chris White

Opinion: Pickles pensions off councillors

By Chris White | Tue 8th January 2013 - 9:21 am

The winning Kendal Town CouncillorsSome of you may have heard this brief anecdote before.

Some years ago a civil servant appeared in St Albans attempting to sell some ‘new’ ideas from the Government of the day about local government. He stood up before various district and county councillors in Hertfordshire and announced that ‘in future the Government wanted councillors to represent the people to the town hall rather than the other way round.’

He said it without malice or irony and as a result was not lynched – turning up some years later to dismantle the Audit Commission.

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Stephen Tall

Reviewing the Mid-Term Review. It’s hit and miss. But the biggest miss are the wasted opportunities

By Stephen Tall | Mon 7th January 2013 - 8:50 pm

coalition mid term review 2013I’ve had chance only to scan-read today’s Coalition Mid-Term Review (with its rather grudging, adjective-free title, Stuck Together in the national interest), but here are some initial impressions…

The economy takes centre-stage…

This may seem a statement of the obvious. And yet it’s worth comparing with the May 2010 document, Our programme for government (ahh, that Rose Garden-inspired ‘our’) in which subjects were sorted alphabetically so that you had to wait until chapter 9 to read about ‘deficit reduction’. Back in those days the …

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Also posted in News | Tagged , and | 34 Comments
Paul Walter

Opinion: Child benefit changes – get over it

By Paul Walter | Mon 7th January 2013 - 9:54 am

The participants of talk radio were seething this morning, as people complained that they will lose child benefit if they are earning over £50,000. There was one particular man on Radio Berkshire shouting at his phone about it.

I think we need to step back here. Child Benefit’s predecessor, Family Allowance was introduced in 1946. Part of the reason for this was to encourage or, at least, facilitate the repopulation of the country following the killing of the war. The government was particularly keen on people producing boys. My own family duly did their patriotic duty splendidly by producing seven …

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David Hall-Matthews

Opinion: 2013 – Time to think afresh about International Development?

By David Hall-Matthews | Sun 6th January 2013 - 10:15 am

Lynne Featherstone in Zambia. Photo: some rights reserved by DFID http://www.flickr.com/photos/dfid/8220719712/Another year, another set of attacks on development aid in the right-wing press. Prompted by a spectacularly ill-informed paper from Civitas, the Telegraph, Mail and Spectator tried once again to argue, without evidence, that high proportions of British aid are wasted.

The truth is that, under the Coalition, far more attention has been paid to value for money in aid spending than ever before. What is more, there’s little need to speculate about where

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Mark Pack

Tim Gordon scorecard, 1 year on

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd January 2013 - 9:50 am

Tim GordonLast January I wrote an open letter to the party’s then new Chief Executive Tim Gordon, setting out four priorities. One year on, how are things looking?

Here’s what I wrote (with introductory pleasantries skipped), with each of the four points followed by an update and a score. Read on to see how Tim has been doing…

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , , and | 12 Comments
Jonathan Fryer

Opinion: Changing Gear in London

By Jonathan Fryer | Wed 2nd January 2013 - 3:55 pm

fireworksThe fireworks over the Thames that signalled the New Year in London symbolically coincided with a handover of the chairmanship of London Liberal Democrats, as I ended my three years at the helm and Mike Tuffrey – until last May a leading Member of the London Assembly – took over.

My time in office was quite a roller-coaster, from the inflated national euphoria of Cleggmania just before the 2010 general election – when in the event we managed to hold on to seven parliamentary seats, but alas lost Richmond Park – to the frankly dire city-wide vote we received in the London Mayoral and GLA elections last May. At least we managed to return Caroline Pidgeon (rightly recognised in the New Year honours) and Stephen Knight to the Assembly.

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Nick T

2013 can be the year Lib Dems prove the cynics wrong, but we have to get smart

By Nick T | Wed 2nd January 2013 - 12:43 pm

Nick Clegg after his conference speechOne of the most interesting results in Lib Dem Voice’s most recent poll of party members was the answer to the following question: Do you support or oppose the Lib Dems being in the Coalition Government with the Conservatives?

After two-and-a-half years of difficult negotiations with our Conservative partners, deep spending cuts, unpopular tax rises, hundreds of council seats lost and a national poll rating now consistently in the single figures, still only 19% of Lib Dem

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Rob Parsons

Opinion: 2013’s banana skin?

By Rob Parsons | Wed 2nd January 2013 - 10:47 am

Banana skin - Some rights reserved by purplemattfishThe LibDem Voice end of year survey gives us, as usual, much food for thought.

Net approval of the coalition’s record is down to 14% from 41% a year before. “Three big hits seem to have been responsible: first, the row over the NHS Bill; secondly, the omnishambolic March budget; and thirdly, the collapse of Lords reform”.

What issues might derail us this year? One is slowly poisoning our society, and with it the claims of the Liberal Democrats to be a party of fairness.

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Eric Avebury

Opinion: Apostasy and Saudi Arabia

By Eric Avebury | Tue 1st January 2013 - 9:15 am

Jeddah Corniche - Some rights reserved by CharlesFredRaif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian liberal writer, was arrested on June 17 in Jeddah and charged with ‘insulting Islam through electronic channels’ and ‘going beyond the realm of obedience’. His ‘crime’ at that point appeared to be setting up an online forum, Free Saudi Liberals, and attending a meeting in Cairo on May 7 of the Arab Alliance for Freedom and Democracy, but the words that constitute the offence were not specified.

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David Allen

Opinion: Against liberalism

By David Allen | Mon 31st December 2012 - 2:23 pm

Statue of David Lloyd George - Some rights reserved by GabludlowI am a liberal. I believe in standing up for people and communities against over-powerful vested interests – in business, the State, the media, or the unions. However, I also believe that liberalism alone is an inadequate political philosophy, and an insufficient foundation for this Party.

The problem centres on our determination to play down the significance of Left and Right. We sneer that the concepts are simplistic. We seek to defuse or ignore left-right conflict. The inconvenient truth we deny is that Left and Right do matter, often enough to split our party.

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George Potter

Opinion: We’ve got our strategy the wrong way round

By George Potter | Mon 31st December 2012 - 12:53 pm

Liberal Democrat badge - Some rights reserved by Paul Walter, Newbury, UKLast Friday Lib Dem HQ sent out an email to parliamentarians, PPCs, council group leaders and other office holders about our party’s new message script. The full email, if anyone is interested, can be found herehere, courtesy of the Liberator.

Aside from the immensely catchy wordy message of “the Lib Dems are working to build a stronger economy in a fairer society, enabling every person to get on in life” (complete with an incredible 16 sub messages), a key point was this:

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Richard Clare

Opinion: Proposed conference motion on extradition to the US

By Richard Clare | Mon 31st December 2012 - 11:23 am

USA Flag - Some rights reserved by freefotoukIt’s that time of year when Federal Conference Reps are pestered for signatures to help get motions selected for Spring Conference and this is no exception.

Our motion concerns US-UK extradition terms and follows the conclusions of Sir Menzies Campbell’s report on the treaty recommending the introduction of the ‘forum bar’ to allow judges a greater role in deciding on extradition, and a minor amendment in the actual treaty to afford those arrested in the UK the same legal

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Geoff Crocker

Opinion: Should the Queen speak out on the Belfast flag issue?

By Geoff Crocker | Mon 31st December 2012 - 9:54 am

Queen Elizabeth IIThe pictures of the Queen joining the Cabinet meeting were charming. They conveyed a reassuring image of a stable democracy with a historic back-stop. Almost always we want the democratic element to prevail, but there are perhaps very limited issues and occasions when the monarchy can make a difference. The Queen inviting Harold Macmillan to form a government rather than Rab Butler in 1957 is the occasion often quoted. It did actually make a political difference, since Harold Wilson was later reported as having feared that Rab Butler may well have won the 1964 election.

Northern Ireland may be another occasion when the monarchy could make a

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Sean Davey

Opinion: A New Year, a new direction for Liberal Youth?

By Sean Davey | Fri 28th December 2012 - 12:45 pm

Liberal Youth action dayWith nominations closing on January 4th, Liberal Youth will be electing a new Chair, and several new members of the Exec team leading it forward in 2013. Thanks to the hard work and diligence of Acting Chair Harry Matthews these elections (and positions) will be online and open to all Lib Dem members who are aged 16-25, or registered students.

The New Year offers an opportunity for renewal and a new direction for our youth wing, but equally there is a risk of simply “rearranging the deckchairs …

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