Category Archives: Op-eds

Opinion: A good/bad day for Parliament

By Paul Walter | Tue 19th July 2011 - 7:19 pm

Some initial reflections on the Culture select committee hearing today:

Is this the most humble day of Rupert Murdoch’s life, as he claimed? I very much doubt it. I suspect the most humble day of his life will come when he is finally removed from his News Corp’s Chairman’s office, no doubt kicking and screaming, with his finger nails screeching along the expensive wallpaper.

One of most significant moments, for me, came when Rupert Murdoch was asked if he felt personally responsible for what went on at his company and he answered “No”.

That seemed very strange, for me. The normal answer is …

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Tagged culture select committee, news corporation, news of the world, rebekah brooks, rupert murdoch and wendi deng | 16 Comments

Opinion: David Laws takes another step on the road to redemption

By Mark Valladares | Tue 19th July 2011 - 12:53 pm

Last night, despite the rather unpleasant efforts of a handful of Labour backbenchers to throw stones from an already rather damaged greenhouse, the House of Commons overwhelmingly passed a motion proposing six members to form the Joint Committee to scrutinise the draft Financial Services Bill.

Usually, such motions are passed without a murmur, especially as the nominees are proposed by the various political parties. However, on this occasion, the presence of David Laws, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, drew the ire of, amongst others, Thomas Docherty, the Labour MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, and John Mann, …

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Tagged david cameron, david laws, draft financial services bill, john bercow, john mann and thomas docherty | 27 Comments

Brian Paddick writes: What’s good for the Metropolitan Police is not good for politicians

By Brian Paddick | Tue 19th July 2011 - 11:50 am

The evening after the Metropolitan Police shot an innocent Brazilian at Stockwell I went and saw the then Deputy Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson. I asked whether it was true that the Commissioner had barred the Independent Police Complaints Commission from their legal duty to investigate the death. He said it was. I told him I thought it was the most stupid decision I had ever heard of (I knew by then that we had made a terrible mistake). He smiled and said “It’s my job to support the Commissioner.” I was concerned from then on that Stephenson might be giving …

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Tagged ken clarke, metropolitan police, paul stephenson, sir ian blair and sir john stephens | 5 Comments

Does a political party really need a manifesto or… what is policy for?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 18th July 2011 - 10:21 am

On Saturday, I found myself in an all day meeting of the strategic body of a campaigning organisation, and I found myself thinking something that hadn’t previously shown a fin in the ocean that is my political consciousness – is having policy spelled out to the nth degree really a good way to run a society? Indeed, how many people care about the details?

I am a member of a political party, and therefore have more of an interest in ideas of governance than most. But, like most members of political parties, I have an awareness of our policies, rather than …

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Tagged featured, manifesto and policy | 14 Comments

Opinion: Stephenson resignation – the bar just got lowered

By Richard Morris | Sun 17th July 2011 - 9:32 pm

The resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson as commissioner of The Met is significant in a way beyond the obvious.

As someone tweeted earlier, from their resignation statements, one might surmise that everyone who has resigned so far has done absolutely nothing wrong. However, the difference in the Paul Stephenson case is that everybody seems to be falling over themselves to agree.

In the hour after his resignation I saw or heard statements from Boris Johnson, Kit Malthouse and Jenny Jones all lauding the honourable decision Sir Paul had made and in many ways lamenting his loss.

So, let’s take it on face value that …

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Tagged sir paul stephenson | 22 Comments

Opinion: Traditional media is not all we should be looking at

By Martin Gill | Sun 17th July 2011 - 1:48 pm

It’s not often I agree with a Conservative MP, it’s even less often that I hear them say something that actually strikes me as truly insightful.

During the parliamentary debate on the BSkyB bid there was one such moment. At 6.25pm Dr Phillip Lee stood up and spoke to a now mostly empty chamber. This was a shame, because what he had to say was, in my view, extremely relevant and highly important. (Hansard)

He spoke on the fact that a lot, if not the vast majority, of the news people are getting today comes from not the mainstream media, the …

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Tagged bing, bskyb, facebook, google, microsoft, philip lee, twitter and yahoo | 5 Comments

Linda Jack writes: My solutions for improving public services

By Linda Jack | Sun 17th July 2011 - 12:20 pm

Yesterday I had my say about the concerns I have about the whole scale marketization of public services, so you are quite entitled to ask what would my solution be to the undoubted challenge to improve them?

Firstly – electoral reform coupled with a duty for local and public authorities to engage more meaningfully with the communities they represent. Involving service users as of right, in the design and delivery of services. I want to be able to elect both local and national politicians in a way that improves both their accountability to me but also their interest in doing …

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Tagged open public services | 20 Comments

Opinion: Cameron’s ten big mistakes – more please!

By Paul Walter | Sun 17th July 2011 - 9:25 am

In the Telegraph, Tim Montgomerie, editor of ConservativeHome, outlines the results of a recent survey of Tory party members.

1,500 of them were asked to name “what they saw as Cameron’s three biggest errors”. The resulting Top Ten makes an extraordinary epistle from Planet Tory. Several of the points on the list would be regarded by many as Cameron’s greatest non-mistakes:

“Supporting climate change policies” – mistake? Well, perhaps only when ConHome add the highly debatable non-sequitur of “…that will increase energy bills”.
“U-turn on NHS reforms” – mistake? Hell, no. “Hurrah!” – Say many of us.
“Agreement to Nick

…

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Tagged ConservativeHome, david cameron and tim montgomerie | 21 Comments

What made the Mail, the Express and the Telegraph keen to see Nick Clegg doing more of his job?

By The Voice | Sat 16th July 2011 - 2:47 pm

An odd set of messages this week from some of the right-wing press: the Mail, the Express and Telegraph all ran pieces criticising Nick Clegg for taking his children to school, while being essential to the smooth running of the country.

In a classic bit of pandering/flamebait (delete according to taste), they variously criticise Clegg for not working 24 hours a day before concluding that he is “powerful”, “Co-Prime Minister” and “the second most senior politician in the land”.

The Express’s Virginia Blackburn likes to think of Clegg as “a commanding figure, a statesman, a diplomat representing his …

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Tagged grazia, miriam gonzalez durantez and nick clegg | 8 Comments

Linda Jack writes: Public services – open for whom?

By Linda Jack | Sat 16th July 2011 - 12:20 pm

It seems extraordinary to me, that hot on the heels of conference having, so recently, resoundingly rejected the marketization of the NHS and the concept of outsourcing to “any willing provider” – Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander yet again embrace an approach to delivering public services in the Open Public Services White Paper that flies in the face of Lib Dem policy and values. What is deeply shocking to me and I am sure many of you, is the assertion in the introduction that:

We are not the first government to realise the power of open public services, others have

…

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Tagged open public services | 39 Comments

Chris White writes: Approving Police Commissioner candidates

By Chris White | Sat 16th July 2011 - 8:55 am

Readers of LDV will have noticed that there is an announcement about Police Commissioner candidates – presumably placed by the English Party.

Of course, none of us want these elections (and most councillors in other parties don’t either) but it’s in the Coalition agreement and so we are to an extent stuck with a particularly silly bit of the Tory manifesto. Such, I guess, is the nature of Coalitions.

What is troubling, however, is the fact that the English Party has decided to play the centralist card: candidates need in essence to be approved like parliamentary candidates.

One of the main …

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged elected police commissioners, english party, mark valladares and policing | 14 Comments

Brian Paddick writes: Housing is the most important issue facing London

By Brian Paddick | Thu 14th July 2011 - 11:52 am

When I told the BBC’s John Sopel, minutes after the result of the last London Mayoral election was announced, that my second preference vote had gone to the ‘Left List’ candidate Lindsey German, he would not believe me. There were many of her policies I did not agree with but her party was passionate about building more social housing in London. In every debate during the campaign I found myself in agreement with her and disagreeing with the other candidates on that issue.

I believe housing is the single most important issue facing London and this is why.

Quite rightly a priority …

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Tagged housing | 22 Comments

Mark Littlewood writes: Sharper axes, lower taxes

By Mark Littlewood | Wed 13th July 2011 - 4:02 pm

Today sees the Institute of Economic Affairs publish its own version of the Comprehensive Spending Review. The research report – Sharper Axes, Lower Taxes: Big Steps to a Smaller State – calls for a radical downsizing of the public sector and sketches out the colossal tax cuts which would become possible. Accompanying opinion poll research, conducted by ComRes, shows overwhelming public support for such a strategy.

For all the sound and fury surrounding the coalition’s fiscal retrenchment, its proposals are actually amazingly modest. In real terms, public spending will fall by a mere 3% or so between now and the …

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59 Comments

Mike Tuffrey writes… My kinda campaign … working towards success in 2014

By Mike Tuffrey | Wed 13th July 2011 - 11:53 am

Ol’ blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, used to sing about “My kinda town…” Rest assured, I won’t be singing. But let me tell you about London – my town – and the kind of campaign I intend to run as our candidate to be Mayor of London.

The test of success in the 2012 campaign isn’t just the number of votes we win in the Mayor contest – it is how many Assembly members we get elected and how many councillors, councils and MEPs we get elected in 2014.

Our very best London-wide campaigning in the past – such as that led …

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Also posted in London | Tagged Caroline Pidgeon, lynne featherstone and susan kramer | 4 Comments

Opinion: Schools should suit working parents

By Rachel Coleman Finch | Wed 13th July 2011 - 10:18 am

Like many parents of four-year-olds right now, I’m preparing for the big move to primary school this September. Our new school is doing a great job of easing the transition from nursery for our son; but as full-time working parents the difference between nursery and school is deeply stressful.

Nursery is run for working parents: open 8-6, three meals a day provided, flexible arrival and departure time, and one itemised monthly bill. School is very different: closed 14 weeks of the year, and finishing around 3pm the other 38. A whole mini-industry of breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, holiday clubs and summer schools has grown up to fill the gap for families who can’t have an adult at home so much of the time. Each one has its own waiting list, hours, costs, payment methods and reputation for quality … or not. Even school dinners are paid for separately. With less than 2 months to go, we’ve a lot of arrangements still to sort out.

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Tagged open public services and schools | 46 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Bureaucracy – Killing Your Party With Its Song?…

By Mark Valladares | Tue 12th July 2011 - 3:13 pm

This is quite a hard post to write. After all, I’ve been a party bureaucrat for more than a quarter of a century, from my embryonic days as Secretary General of the Young Liberals, via incarnations as a Returning Officer, a member of the English Candidates Committee and stints as Regional Secretary in both London and now the East of England.

Once upon a time, I took the view that, if I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, campaign, what I could do was do the boring, yet necessary stuff that enabled the Party to fulfil its organisational obligations, thus freeing up people …

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Also posted in Party policy and internal matters | 15 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Democrats didn’t just avoid Murdoch, we tried to cut him down to size

By James Percival | Tue 12th July 2011 - 1:53 pm

In my last post for Lib Dem Voice, I pointed out that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems had never courted Murdoch and his cronies.

Actually, that was just the half of it.

We didn’t just avoid him. We have tried, in different ways over a number of years, to cut the media mogul down to size and clamp down on the sort of abhorrent media practices that have been exposed of late.

As far back as 1994, the year before Tony Blair chose to fly to Oz to lick Rupert Murdoch’s boots, we were calling for the OFT …

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Tagged bskyb, communications bill, competition bill, ipcc, lord mcnally, press complaints commission, rupert murdoch, the times, tony blair and vince cable | 38 Comments

Opinion: Time to publish the magical ratio

By David Boyle | Tue 12th July 2011 - 10:21 am

A week is a long time in politics, but it also sometimes seems to move at a glacial pace.

It is now two decades since Bill Clinton won the presidency on the slogan that ‘trickle down economics’ doesn’t work. Yet even a couple of years ago, there was Labour’s Peter Mandelson being ‘relaxed’ about people getting ‘filthy rich’.

Well, finally things seem to be shifting. Even Max Hastings, of all people, writes in the Financial Times that “gross disparities seems likely sooner or later to promote an upheaval, perhaps graver now than most western societies can now envisage.”

It certainly seems to …

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Tagged andrew simms, bill clinton, fair pay, new economics foundation and peter mandelson | 18 Comments

Opinion: The struggle for democracy persists in Europe, not just the Middle East

By Harriet Ainscough and Sam Fisk | Mon 11th July 2011 - 1:18 pm

In December last year, Alyaksandr Lukashenka was re-elected president of Belarus, with 79.7% of the vote in elections deemed to fall massively short of OSCE standards. Under his leadership, the Belarusian regime systematically violates basic liberties. The past week has seen a worsening of the situation, with the oppressive regime using unjustifiable violence against protesters seeking democracy and freedom.

Despite a ban on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, in an attempt to try and stifle the protests, the capital Minsk has seen huge anti-Lukashenka demonstrations. The response of the Belarusian Government has been appalling. Hundreds of peaceful protesters have been …

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Tagged Alyaksandr Lukashenka, amnesty international, belarus, facebook and twitter | 2 Comments

Opinion: Private sector tenants are disenfranchised

By Duncan Stott | Sun 10th July 2011 - 2:15 pm

There has been a lively debate on Lib Dem Voice this week on housing policy. Well-argued articles from Alex Marsh, Mike Tuffrey and Stephen Gilbert have ignited equally interesting debates in the comments. All sorts of intriguing policy ideas have been proposed to address the growing crisis in housing supply.

However, a great idea is just the starting point on the long journey to create a successful policy. For a mainstream party with ambitions to form the next government, it is crucial that ideas enjoy popular support with voters. Housing development invokes strong feelings amongst the electorate, both …

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Tagged alex marsh, electoral reform, housing, mike tuffrey and stephen gilbert | 13 Comments

Opinion: Paper victory?

By Jonathan Hunt | Sun 10th July 2011 - 10:48 am

OK, so most of the country is totally repulsed by the Screws and News International. Rupert Murdoch is “the devil incarnate” and Rebecca Brooks the most reviled woman since Marie Antoinette.

Many of us have been convinced of this for years, if not decades. I once had the misfortune of working for a paper taken over by Murdoch. And seeing happy, friendly creative colleagues suddenly stop working for each another, poisoned by a culture of cynicism, suspicion and toadying to the bosses.

But as we devour the final copy of the News of the World, who will think ahead to what happens …

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18 Comments

The News of the World and giving readers what they want

By Helen Duffett | Sat 9th July 2011 - 5:54 pm

No, not a trailer for your super soaraway Lib Dem Voice on Sunday, but a quick quirk-alert on reader figures at our site this week.

It’s one of my jobs at Lib Dem Voice to keep an eye on the stats, including visitor numbers, popular posts, search terms and lots of other data.

These give us blogging ideas, help us to plan (and sometimes crow), and are another strand of audience feedback – alongside the comments threads, survey responses, emails and phonecalls, and of course the articles themselves that people submit.

So I thought I’d briefly share a surprising finding from …

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Tagged mark thompson, news of the world and statporn | 8 Comments

Opinion: Trade unions, pensions and Labour

By David Warren | Sat 9th July 2011 - 2:45 pm

I have been following very closely the pensions dispute as it unfolds and one of my concerns is public sector workers could lose a lot of pay through strike action in what I am starting to believe is a political strike which they cannot possibly win.

I am also a little surprised at the way the government have handled things so far and, as a former national union representative, I have been amazed at times by their ineptitude.

Further confirmation I am afraid that the Tories and sadly many in our party don’t understand the real world of industrial relations.

So why do …

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Tagged mark serwotka, pensions, strikes and unions | 56 Comments

In Praise of Nick Davies, the British Bernstein & Woodward to Murdoch’s Nixon

By Stephen Tall | Sat 9th July 2011 - 11:50 am

One man, above all, deserves to be singled-out for his single-minded pursuit of the lies, deceit and criminality that have stained British journalism: The Guardian’s special correspondent, Nick Davies.

His has been a lonely crusade. Despite the mounting evidence of corrupt practices, the tentacles of which have extended right into the very centre of the Establishment in this country — Parliament, media barons, senior police officers, Downing Street — Nick Davies has doggedly pursued a campaign which has resulted in the closure of this country’s most-read newspaper. That is some accolade.

But, as he would be the first to point out, it should never have got this far.

The closure of the News of the World would have been avoided if those who knew the truth, or at least had the power to uncover the truth, had done their jobs properly, had fulfilled their duty to the public. And that’s as true of Rebekah Brooks as it is of ‘Yates of the Yard’.

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Tagged featured, john yates, media, nick davies, rebekah brooks, rupert murdoch and the guardian | 10 Comments

Opinion: Driving better performance across public services

By Chris Nicholson | Sat 9th July 2011 - 10:20 am

25 years ago, when I was Leader of Kingston Council, Margaret Thatcher was planning to introduce Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) for services like bin collection and road sweeping. The Council Director responsible for these services started working out what measures he would take to improve efficiency and cut costs. But then the government announced a delay in CCT so he proposed shelving these plans. I said no.

I often recall this incident when the subject of competition in public services comes up. Liberals should never be afraid of competition where it is likely to lead to better public services. Nor …

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Tagged compulsory competitive tendering, huhne commission, margaret thatcher and open public services | 11 Comments

Opinion: Our party must keep its Equitable pledge

By Paul Braithwaite | Fri 8th July 2011 - 8:31 pm

For a decade now I have been the general secretary of EMAG, the Equitable Members’ Action Group, a campaigning group for those who lost out because of maladministration and regulatory failure at the once venerable insurance firm Equitable Life. Our pursuit of justice for Equitable Life policyholders started in the summer of 2000. Shortly after, Vince Cable took up the cause and together we walked to Downing Street to deliver a protest letter to Gordon Brown on 6th August, 2001. It was the start of my personal politicisation and I became a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Camden in 2006. …

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Tagged bob blackman, equitable life, fabian hamilton, stephen lloyd and vince cable | 4 Comments

Opinion: Claiming the centre ground

By Helen Flynn | Fri 8th July 2011 - 3:40 pm

As (at least) one Lib Dem member commented after the local council elections, “the only way is up” from now on. But to win back support and indeed increase our base we need to refocus. It is right that we should be emphasising our distinctiveness in the coalition, but we need to do a lot more. We need to clearly articulate what we stand for, and communicate it relentlessly to the electorate. In the same way that the more tribal parties will repeat over and over again the same phrase so that people end up parroting them (regardless of …

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