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Category Archives: Op-eds

The pupil premium isn’t a quick-fix solution, it’s a long-haul policy

By Stephen Tall | Thu 20th September 2012 - 9:00 am

The pupil premium — additional cash targeted at the most disadvantaged children — is the policy of which Nick Clegg is proudest and with which he is most closely associated. The policy itself dates back to Julian le Grand in the 1980s (when it was touted as a progressive version of school vouchers) but it was Nick who put it firmly in the political mainstream as long ago as 2002 in a pamphlet he co-wrote based on experiences of it working within continental Europe.

Though the Tories nominally signed-up to the concept of a pupil premium in their 2010 …

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Tagged featured, julian le grand, nick clegg, ofsted, pupil mpremium, schools and sutton trust | 7 Comments

Featherstone and Crockart slam Page 3

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 19th September 2012 - 3:25 pm

A petition calling on the editor of the Sun to withdraw the Page 3 feature has gained more than 13,000 signatures in the last 2 days. I’m supporting this campaign because I strongly believe that a national newspaper showing half clothed women is a significant background note in the cultural melody which stops women from being treated as equal citizens. How am I supposed to convince my daughter that she’s an equal member of society when she sees women portrayed as little more than window dressing for the express entertainment of men?

Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West Mike Crockart …

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Tagged equality, lynne featherstone, mike crockart, page 3 and the sun | 43 Comments

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 19th September 2012 - 2:55 pm

Local catch ups

In my work as Borders MP I have regular catch ups with local public services such as NHS Borders, Lothian and Borders police and Scottish Borders Council. These are valuable meetings during which I am updated on key local issues and I am able bring my constituents’ concerns to their attention. Last week, as part of these regular catch ups, I met with Chief Superintendent John Hawkins in Hawick to discuss the work of local police and the crime and policing issues.

Referendum

Ever since the Scottish Government announced their plan to hold a referendum on Scottish Independence, I have …

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Tagged defence, Michael Moore, nicola sturgeon, olympics, post offices, Scottish independence referendum and Westminster Notes | Leave a comment

Interview: What future for youth services in an age of austerity

By Linda Jack | Wed 19th September 2012 - 9:28 am

As a youth worker one of the organisations I have had a long term relationship with is the National Youth Agency, always an important resource and advocate for youth work and young people. They will be hosting two challenging youth work focused fringes at conference, so I took the opportunity to interview Fiona Blacke, their dynamic and outspoken CEO.

Q: How have the cuts impacted on youth work across the country?

A: Young people need access to youth workers and high quality youth work, and that offer continues to be …

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Tagged fiona blackie, linda jack, local authorities, national youth agency and youth services | 2 Comments

Dan Rogerson MP writes…How we reformed GCSEs

By Dan Rogerson MP | Wed 19th September 2012 - 8:55 am

I suspect there are precious few people out there who are not aware that Michael Gove wasn’t entirely happy with the current state of the GCSE system.

You’re probably also aware that when he first suggested he wasn’t happy with the current system, Nick Clegg, Joan Walmsley and I wasted no time in telling him that Liberal Democrats, a party who believe in social mobility, would not tolerate a return to a two tier education system.

What you may not be aware of is just how the two parties have been working since then to find a compromise that combines the shared …

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Tagged EBacc, education, gcses, Joan Walmsley, nick clegg and schools | 11 Comments

Opinion: How do Gove’s plans match up to Lib Dem policy?

By Alisdair Calder McGregor | Tue 18th September 2012 - 5:36 pm

Three months ago I penned my debut submission to LibDemVoice – There is much for the Lib Dems to support in Gove’s embryonic exam proposals – in the wake of the early leaks of Gove’s plans for the replacement of GCSEs. In that, I set out how Michael Gove’s policies matched up with Liberal Democrat Party Policy, and came to some conclusions on how Gove’s proposals would need to be altered to be in line with our policies;

The four criteria were:

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Tagged EBacc, education, gcses and schools | 62 Comments

Opinion: How GCSEs made me envy my son

By Helen Flynn | Tue 18th September 2012 - 4:03 pm

The heady waft of future and assured pupil disengagement is already pungent only one day after the announcement of the new exam system. The wrong-headedness of the “reform” is enough to actually make you gasp.

Don’t get me wrong, I really do hate the personal anecdote–beloved of many politicians and responsible in my view for so much political damage (and used to the usual effect yesterday in that disturbing article in the Evening Standard).

But here’s one. My elder son recently gained 11 A stars in his GSCEs. He is a very academic child, as I was. But as he did …

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Tagged EBacc, education, gcses and schools | 48 Comments

Polls and predictions: The Chris Rennard Interview

By The Voice | Tue 18th September 2012 - 2:25 pm

Liberal Democrat News has just published extracts from an interview with Lord (Chris) Rennard, former Lib Dem Chief Executive, and Director of Campaigns and Elections. The interview appears in full below.
Journalist York Membery is a regular contributor to the nationals. He is also a contributing editor to the Journal of Liberal History.

Chris is credited with masterminding a string of past by-election victories as well as the target seat strategy that increased our number of MPs from 19 to 63. He tells York Membery that we should look to the future with hope not fear…

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Tagged andrew stunell, chris rennard, tony greaves and york membery | 4 Comments

Opinion: Beyond the Ebacc

By Jon Hunt | Tue 18th September 2012 - 1:12 pm

Two years ago theWest Midlands Region embarked on a project which we called “Beyond the Ebacc.” We chose the title because we recognised then that the Coalition government was intent on embedding the Ebacc as the gold standard qualification at 16 and wanted our party, the Liberal Democrats, to emerge from coalition with our own radical policies in this critical area.

We were able to draw on a wide range of experience, including that of overseeing education in large municipal authorities.

Our concern was the stark evidence that our school system is failing many young people. Every government that has sought to …

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Tagged EBacc, education, gcses and schools | 13 Comments

Opinion: GCSEs? O-levels? Open your minds!

By Ed Wilson | Mon 17th September 2012 - 4:24 pm

Consider a vocational subject – dentistry. It leads to a job and requires hand-eye coordination and knowledge of tools and materials. To be good at it, you must prove your interpersonal skills. A major study is the physiology of certain human systems.

Now consider an academic subject – engineering. This needs an understanding of physics, chemistry, mechanics, maths, cutting edge optics, electronics, materials science… not every one in every case but your subset will require detailed reading, theoretical work and experimentation.

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Tagged EBacc, education, gcses and schools | 24 Comments

Opinion: It’s tricky isn’t it, this coalition business?

By Richard Morris | Mon 17th September 2012 - 2:54 pm

Try and be too Liberal and our coalition partners do all they can to put a spanner in the works. They surely feel much the same about us. Try and find a happy compromise and you end up with everyone hating you.

And the danger is you sink into a sea of obfuscation and intransigence and get absolutely nowhere. Or worse, you go native – or at least let the world think that you have. Then you end up hating yourself.

Is this ringing any bells?

Which is why we probably need more people inside the party who have experience of making coalition …

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Tagged ryan coetzee | 16 Comments

Calling them granny taxes doesn’t mean they’re unfair

By Adam Corlett | Mon 17th September 2012 - 11:52 am

The phasing out of the additional personal allowance was decried as a ‘granny tax’ but that move did not go far enough. A new CentreForum report looks at two unjustified and deeply regressive age-related tax breaks: the tax-free lump sum and the exemption from National Insurance.

There are many lonely, vulnerable and poor pensioners who need support. But it’s insulting to suggest that everyone over 60 or 65 can be lumped into the category of frail granny (to say nothing of grandpas!). There is a huge range of incomes amongst pensioners. At the very top, the average annual pension …

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Also posted in News | Tagged centre forum, granny tax and pensions | 20 Comments

Opinion: The Sun has clearly boobed on this issue of free speech

By Andreas Christodoulou | Sun 16th September 2012 - 1:55 pm

I’m frankly disgusted that The Sun has decreed that I have a right to see Prince Harry’s penis, but not Kate Middleton’s nipples. I fail to understand how my being unable to see Prince Harry naked is somehow a disgusting breach of the freedom of speech of the UK press but my being unable to see Kate Middleton naked is completely correct because this is a hideous invasion of her privacy.

Let us briefly review. Prince Harry was happily naked in a hotel room where he had a reasonable expectation of privacy, someone took photos of him from a short distance …

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Tagged journalism, kate middleton and the sun | 25 Comments

Opinion: New World Economics

By Bill le Breton | Sun 16th September 2012 - 9:25 am

Bloomberg flickered on the screen as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, set out his policy before the world’s press:

To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate the Committee agreed today to increase policy accommodation by purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month.

That’s open-ended Quantitative Easing (QE) to you and me; monetary stimulus a l’outrance designed to expand the money base until unemployment drops below 7% or PCE (personal consumption expenditure) core inflation increases above 3%.

In …

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Tagged ben bernanke and economy | 15 Comments

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Fri 14th September 2012 - 11:21 am

Cabinet reshuffle

Last week I was honoured to be re-appointed as Scottish Secretary by the Prime Minister as he conducted his first re-shuffle of the UK Government cabinet since the 2010 election. Combining this with my responsibilities as Borders MP has been a great privilege over the last two years and I am looking forward to continuing to serve Borderers and Scots in these two roles.

There is no doubt that Scotland currently faces many challenges in terms of the economy, growth and jobs and I am committed to getting the best deal for Borderers and all other Scots, as MP and …

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Tagged cabinet reshufle, fuel prices, Michael Moore, paralympics and Westminster Notes | Leave a comment

Opinion: Inflation the biggest threat to economic growth

By David Thorpe | Fri 14th September 2012 - 8:51 am

Economic commentators and politicians searching for that most elusive of phenomena – economic growth appear to be operating a back to basics approach. The Bank of England takes the traditional neo-classical approach to its role as arbiter of monetary policy – Quantitative Easing and liquidity schemes to expand the money supply and make borrowing cheaper to incentivise businesses to expand. The government are taking a much more Keynesian route to growth, announcing house building schemes and other infrastructure initiatives in order that the state injects the demand into the economy …

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Tagged economics, inflation and quantitative easing | 25 Comments

One of David Heath’s first decisions should be to ban live farm animal exports

By Nick T | Thu 13th September 2012 - 8:27 pm

Tens of thousands of live animals – mainly cows and sheep – are exported, alive, from the UK every year. Sometimes the animals have relatively short journeys – veal calves off to live in intolerable conditions in France or Italy, for example – and sometimes they are exported much further – to Russia, or beyond. Most of the animals are ready for slaughter, and will be killed as soon as they arrive in their destination countries.

This often involves unimaginably long journeys for hundreds of animals at a time, crammed into lorries. Animal welfare campaigners have long condemned the practice as …

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Tagged david heath | 5 Comments

Tom Brake MP writes… Romney’s bought the latest gadget, but he’s forgotten to read the manual

By Tom Brake | Thu 13th September 2012 - 3:29 pm

Romney’s bought the latest gadget, but he’s forgotten to read the manual.When Obama stormed to the Presidency he did so in glorious Technicolor while his opponent was still campaigning in black and white (or at least fifty shades of grey). In contrast, Obama campaigned with panache and proved what can be achieved by harnessing the power of social media.

His victory, for me, was a Kennedy/Nixon moment – one campaign looked modern and dynamic, the other looked tired, sweaty and frankly a bit outdated. The result was rather predictable in the end. Obama triumph. Slam dunk.

But if Obama’s victory four years …

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Also posted in Online politics | Tagged barack obama, Mitt Romney and twitter | 1 Comment

Opinion: Europe’s moving ahead. Are we part of it or not?

By Giles Goodall | Thu 13th September 2012 - 12:26 pm

In his annual State of the Union address on Wednesday, European Commission President Barroso issued a clarion call for a ‘federation of nation states’ to take on the challenges facing Europe. The only way forward is more unity and more European integration, said Barroso. But this must be accompanied by more democracy – placing the European Parliament in a central role – and subsidiarity – concentrating EU action on the real issues that need to be dealt with at European level.

There is much for Liberal Democrats to welcome in the speech. The emphasis on the European Parliament, national …

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Tagged europe and jose manuel barosso | 45 Comments

Eluned Parrott AM writes… Lib Dems should say no to regional pay

By Eluned Parrott | Thu 13th September 2012 - 9:16 am

At our Autumn Conference, members will be offered a chance to influence the party’s policy on regional and local pay. The Pay Review Body has been asked by George Osborne to look into the possibility of paying public sector workers differing amounts based on where they live. As Liberal Democrats, we must ensure that this policy does not go any further. This is why the Welsh Liberal Democrats, in partnership with the South East Cornwall Liberal Democrats, have tabled a motion designed to send the strongest possible signal that the party does not support any extension of regional or local …

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Tagged #ldconf, eluned parrott and regional pay | 40 Comments

George Lyon MEP writes: Scots need guarantees on EU membership before independence referendum

By George Lyon MEP | Wed 12th September 2012 - 6:55 pm

As a Vice President of the European Budget Committee I am busy debating how the EU budget, or what those who stalk the corridors of Brussels call the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF), will be distributed in coming years.

As an MEP for Scotland, I am also focussed on getting the best possible deal for my constituents.

With all the constraints that the current economic climate have placed on the budgets of Member States that task is hard enough.

But Scots must also consider that the next MFF, that runs from 2014-2020, will be decided in the shadow of the independence referendum. The consequences …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged alex salmond, Scotland and scottish independence | 22 Comments

Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece writes: Towards racial equality

By Meral Ece | Wed 12th September 2012 - 1:49 pm

Nick Clegg said in his keynote speech to Autumn Conference last year that his objective is:

A fair start for every child… we allow prejudice, tradition and class to crush a million hopes and dreams….that’s why I have been leading the charge for social mobility – for fairer chances, for real freedom.

Liberal Democrats want to see opportunity unconstrained by discrimination, and with equal life chances with respect to ethnicity.

The world has become a smaller place. Improving transport links and technological breakthroughs are drawing the people of the world closer together. In socially and racially diverse 21^st Century Britain we need to …

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Tagged equality, liberal democrat race equality task force and nick clegg | 34 Comments

Norman Lamb MP writes: One suicide is one too many

By Norman Lamb MP | Wed 12th September 2012 - 12:47 pm

On average, someone commits suicide in England every two hours. That’s over 4,200 suicides a year. That figure may shock you. But what is just as shocking is that a lesbian, gay or bisexual person is twice as likely as a heterosexual person to self harm

I was drawing this awful statistic to people’s attention because Monday was World Suicide Prevention Day. It was also the occasion for me to the launch the Government’s new Suicide Prevention Strategy – the first for ten years. It is based on evidence of what works. Credit is due to Paul Burstow who …

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Tagged mental health, samaritans, suicide and world suicide prevention day | 26 Comments

Gordon Birtwistle MP writes: Liberal Democrat Campaign for Manufacturing launches

By Gordon Birtwistle MP | Wed 12th September 2012 - 8:56 am

As someone with a long-standing interest in manufacturing, based on having over 50 years’ experience as an engineer and employer in industry, I am very excited to be a member of the newly formed Liberal Democrat Campaign for Manufacturing Group.

This much-needed group aims to promote and develop manufacturing in the UK in both existing and new areas. Whilst we have a manufacturing sector to be proud of, it does require investment. Energising this sector is key to getting the economy back on track in the current difficult economic climate.

The Liberal Democrats have already delivered a number of key policies to support …

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Tagged Danny Alexander, liberal democrat campaign for manufacturing and manufacturing | 8 Comments

Opinion: Why austerity is the wrong answer to debt

By Geoff Crocker | Tue 11th September 2012 - 4:28 pm

Austerity policy continues to be embraced by the UK coalition government as well as by governments across the world. This is causing predictable political unrest with large demonstrations and riots in Spain and Greece. The pain to UK households is substantial and set to increase. This is clearly socially undesirable, but more importantly is based on a technically incorrect analysis of the current economic crisis.

It is fashionable and great sport to blame bankers for the crisis, to say that the developed world has ‘lived beyond its means’ and that we ‘cannot afford’ economic growth and therefore must cut our economic output …

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Tagged austerity and economy | 32 Comments

Aled Roberts AM writes … Assessing the outcomes of a pupil premium in Wales

By Aled Roberts | Tue 11th September 2012 - 2:39 pm

Education is a cornerstone of Liberal Democrat policy and principle. As Lib Dems we subscribe to the view that education is a crucial means by which individuals can realise their full potential. It was only fitting, therefore, that one of our key 2010 election pledges was the implementation of a policy which could address the inequalities in our education system – the Pupil Premium. It was a clear and straightforward manifesto pledge, easy to campaign on and one of the major Lib Dem policy accomplishments for England when Lib Dems went into Coalition Government. Accompanied by the Sutton Trust Toolkit …

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Tagged education, pupil premium, Wales and welsh assembly | 3 Comments

How to manage volunteers? Look at the Games Makers

By Mary Reid | Tue 11th September 2012 - 12:41 pm

I have just returned to my duties at Lib Dem Voice after spending an extraordinary two weeks as a volunteer Games Maker at the Paralympics. My final event was the Athletes Parade today when we were thanked over and over again by Coe, Cameron, and Johnson, and by athletes and members of the public. I have never felt so appreciated in my life!

So how did LOCOG persuade me and 70,000 other people to travel to London from all over the country on six separate occasions for training and collecting uniforms, then to stay for anything between eight and thirty days with friends, in hotels or at campsites in London, all the time working exhaustingly long days (in my case starting work at 5.45am), and all at our own expense?

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Tagged olympics, paralympics and volunteering | 20 Comments

Lynne Featherstone MP writes… The Equality Games

By Lynne Featherstone | Tue 11th September 2012 - 9:10 am

International Development minister Lynne Featherstone writes a monthly column for one of her local newspapers. Here is the latest one, her last whilst at the Home Office…..

Wow! I have screamed, shouted, cheered, laughed and cried through the Olympics and Paralympics. And like everyone, I am just so proud of what we have achieved – and the friendly, cheerful way we have achieved it.

With my work on equalities issue, it is the increasing parity between male and female sports and sports stars and between the Olympics and Paralympics which has particular caught my eye. I would simply call the 2012 Games the …

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Tagged olympics and paralympics | 3 Comments

Opinion: Scottish reshuffle and the independence referendum

By Keith Legg | Mon 10th September 2012 - 4:24 pm

In amongst the fall-out from the reshuffle last week at Number 10, another reshuffle was somewhat lost in the news. In Scotland, Alex Salmond decided it was time to change things around a bit in Bute House – though unlike David Cameron, it was more a case of rearranging the deckchairs than bringing in new furniture.

The only departure of note was Bruce Cameron, along with two junior ministers, and in all those cases it was for genuine personal reasons. However, the big change was the move of Nicola

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Tagged alex salmond, nicola sturgeon, Scotland and scottish independence | 30 Comments

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