In shutting the News of the World, the Murdochs have shown themselves to be ruthless. Their ruthlessness changed the story, although it has not killed it.
David Cameron needs to be as ruthless. So long as the Murdochs have a powerful media presence, his hiring of Andy Coulson and his closeness to Rebekah Brooks are real issues. The retoxification of the Tory party is underway.
Cameron should announce that he was lied to by Coulson, and that the level of rot can only have happened if people at the top were not managing the paper properly. It was Brooks and …
Uniquely perhaps, I was a victim of the News of the World’s private investigator, Glen Mulcaire, when I was a senior police officer at New Scotland Yard, working along the corridor from the officers who conducted the first phone hacking inquiry in 2002. But they never told me I was victim.
It was only a couple of years ago when my solicitor received a call from a Guardian journalist, that I knew Mulcaire had my name and mobile phone number in his notebook.
Last year I was probably the only MP to be elected while still living with my parents. Of course, I’d moved out of home and, like many others, had to move back again. It’s a symptom of the fact that housing policy in the UK is in crisis. We have millions of people languishing on social housing waiting lists, first-time-buyers priced out of the market and in private rented sector tenants facing increased rents with decreased security of tenure and standards.
Let’s be clear: Governments of all hues have failed on housing and, frankly, the Coalition has barely begun to acknowledge …
There was a moment during the election campaign last year when many Liberal Democrats realised we had passed through the looking glass.
Nick Clegg’s performance in the first leaders’ debate broke the glass ceiling of British politics and, it seems, caused more than one Tory-supporting newspaper editor to wet themselves in fear.
Then, on the eve of the second debate, the right wing press let slip the dogs of war.
It wasn’t just the Murdoch papers that went for Nick, but they did and they did it viciously. The Sun ridiculed him, splashing outrageous and ridiculous headlines on their front page for days …
This weekend was Liberal Youth’s Activate event which, as the new chair of Liberal Youth, meant a weekend of hard work and no sleep; but one stuffed full of inspiration.
Although on paper Activate is our simply our annual training event for young Lib Dems in actuality it’s much more than that.
I see Activate as the annual renewal of our movement, firstly because it’s when our newly elected executive will meet face-to-face and begin setting priorities for the year ahead, and secondly (and most importantly) because this is when we welcome all our newly recruited members to the organisation and give them the skills to become real activists for the party.
The left of centre in Britain had better figure out what it stands for when it comes to free speech and the monopolisation of power in the media.
There is apparently a flash mob, due to take place in front of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, this afternoon. Well, at least if it isn’t still raining. Then the various protestors will probably head to the pub instead, if I know my protestors.
It’s been organised by several left leaning think tanks and pressure groups to try and achieve two things: 1. To put pressure on the government to delay …
It’s estimated that well over 30% of the Welsh population speak Welsh as their first language – that is growing year on year. Hundreds of thousands more across the world speak it – even in a distant corner of Argentina – the valleys of a Patagonia. My partner from Rhosllanerchrugog and her family speak Welsh. They are fiercely proud of their heritage and would be absolutely disgusted with the treatment of Aled Roberts AM. It appears that they don’t speak Welsh at the Electoral Commission!
Now let me declare an interest, I don’t know Aled Roberts, I know his mum …
Even a cursory look at the state of housing in London instantly shows that something is profoundly wrong. Rents outside the social sector are racing ahead, up 17% last year. House prices defy the laws of gravity, up 5% despite national economic trends.
And the really scandalous thing is that it has been this way under both Mayors of London, with no sign of any fundamental change. That’s why I’ve been arguing we must focus above all else on getting the supply increased. Without that, solving the affordability question gets harder and harder: ever-rising housing and land costs means ever …
Nick Clegg shocked me when he said that the UK fiscal deficit is increasing by £400m every day.
Since then we have had a broadly fiscally neutral budget from George Osborne, intended to stimulate the economy. True, VAT rose to 20% but in other ways, this was a give-away budget. VAT is a regressive tax, which we all have to pay, when we buy what we need, whether we can afford it or not. There should be lower rates for household essentials such as fuel. There should be no VAT on the first £1,000 of fuel bills.
The government has just launched a revamped version of the old failed and worn out counter-extremism strategy initiated by Labour whilst it was in power. Prevent was originally launched after the 7 July bombings in 2005 to stop the spread of home-grown terrorism. Labour’s approach failed, proved divisive and also led to inevitable alienation in Muslim communities. Can the new hardline approach succeed in preventing acts of Islamist violence on the streets of Britain?
The new framework runs counter to the liberal and sensible arguments proposed and hard fought for within Government by Nick Clegg and Andrew Stunell for …
Chances are, if you’ve been to a Liberal Democrat event, you’ve bought a raffle ticket or two. Now don’t get me wrong. I like raffles. Some of my best friends run raffles. I’ve even won two raffle prizes in the last year. But for such a popular Liberal Democrat activity, we are often surprisingly poor at running them.
In perhaps three raffles out of five, by the time you get to the final few prizes, just about everyone in the room (if they are still paying attention) is impatient for the raffle to end, with too many prizes then exacerbated by …
Yesterday, Nick Clegg called the phone hacking allegations “Grotesque” and “beneath contempt”. Today, he needs to tell the Prime Minister self-regulation by News International has failed and it is time for an independent judicial inquiry.
As Liberals, our first position has to be protection of the individual from an over-mighty vested interest. It is clear that individuals within News International in particular and the wider press in general have taken the power of the free media and abused it. That needs to be stopped.
If we cannot appeal to the Prime Minister’s moral values, we can at least appeal to his …
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, described Pope Gregory IX as ‘a Pharisee seated on the chair of pestilence, anointed with the oil of wickedness’. The Pope replied that the Emperor was the forerunner of the Antichrist and the monster of the Apocalypse. (‘The Popes’, by John Julius Norwich, 2011).
Such was political debate in the 13th century, topped up by episodes of unspeakable violence.
At this distance it seems rather laughable that an Emperor and a Prelate (especially one considering himself the Vicar of Christ) should behave like that.
But while burning at the stake is now thankfully behind us, vitriol is not. …
Liberal Democrats are passionate about localism. We want decisions on local issues to stay where they belong. Giving towns and villages the ability to establish 20mph speed zones empowers local communities and allows them to set speeds that are best for local people.
Unfortunately, the system in place until recently focused much less on local government than on micromanagement from Westminster. The story of the parish council of Whiteshill & Ruscombe illustrates this well. The council representing these two Gloucestershire villages paid £1000 out of its own budget to have several “20 is plenty” signs set up. But Whitehall, working from …
The smoking ban was a good example of how the UK tends to make bad law.
The debate at the time was whether or not to pass a smoking ban rather than how to handle the issue of smoking in public places – hence people were either for or against.
While Energy Secretary Chris Huhne is at the fore of efforts in the European Council to raise EU ambitions for reducing CO2 emissions, Conservative MEPs are refusing to back the Government’s position, and look set this week instead to demonstrate their real views about efforts to curb global warming.
At issue is a vote due to take place in Strasbourg on Tuesday that will determine the Parliament’s stance on the European Commission’s strategy to promote a low carbon economy. The result is on a knife edge.
There is no doubt some soul searching going on at the moment, in part as a consequence of the poor result at the Inverclyde by-election. I’m sure the leadership will seek to dismiss poor election results at this stage in the electoral cycle as to be expected when you’re “in government”. But that can hardly carry much weight, given the Tories aren’t doing anywhere near as badly. It seems to me that rather deeper reflection is needed. Is it clear any more what the Liberal Democrats stand for? Why would someone – beyond the most unwaveringly committed – vote for …
Nick Clegg had a visit to Birmingham on Wednesday, and members had the chance to question him in a private location. He invited the “vitriol” of people, as well as hopefully some positive questions, as he accepted, as leader, he has to take the flak.
He gave some interesting responses to questions ranging from the interventions in Libya, education policy and what people should do to help hold and increase support for the party.
It was this last point that struck a chord with me, because Nick espoused a view that I’ve held for months – we cannot allow …
None of us know if we will need care in the future, or how much it might cost. But we do know that 1 in 4 of us will face care costs of more than £50,000. What’s more, 1 in 10 will be unlucky enough to face care costs of more than £100,000 in our older age. This is social care’s nasty little secret.
Buried amongst the furore caused by #harigate this week was a pretty damning ruling by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) against the Sun and the Daily Mail. The complaint in question was made in relation to the AV referendum nearly two months ago by Electoral Reform Services – the business arm of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS).
The Sun and Mail were asked by the PCC to print letters apologising for some articles run during the AV referendum campaign. The article which ran on page 2 of the Sun and the front page of the Mail quoted George Osborne after he stood up in Parliament to claim that the ERS, one of the major funders of the Yes campaign would benefit financially from a ‘yes’ vote. This story was then re-run by Sky News and the BBC – subsequent rebuttals gave the story legs across a range of national media outlets.
You can be forgiven for not noticing since few journalists like to turn the spotlight on their own profession’s sometimes questionable practices.
Let’s just think about the context in which this fallacious claim was printed:
As Helen Duffett reported early this morning, the Inverclyde by-election saw Labour holding on to the seat, but with a dramatically reduced majority over the SNP. This was always going to be a tight fight between those two. You would think that Labour would be the likely victor, but the SNP came within 500 votes of unseating them in May’s elections. With the SNP in majority control at Holyrood, how would they fare in this first electoral test?
Scotland has felt very different since the Holyrood elections. The political environment feels a lot darker. In the run up to the …
I’ve been away from Parliament for the last three weeks. My wife Rosie had an operation (nothing horribly serious, but nevertheless debilitating) so that leaves me at home to take care of her and the children.
Being out of the Westminster bubble means I’m hearing the news the same way everyone else does – not from nuanced internal briefings, or from having been in the chamber during PMQs or a particular debate, but from the radio, the papers, the telly and the web. And I’ve not been discussing the issues of the day with other MPs but instead with mums …
On Monday, MPs will be asked to vote through £1 billion in windfall profits to existing nuclear operators for doing absolutely nothing new. We fought the last general election on the promise of opposing new nuclear power and certainly reject public subsidies for nuclear power.
Whatever your take on nuclear power though, surely it’s unjustifiable and politically untenable to hand out £1 billion to EDF and Centrica directly from consumer purses, when people are already feeling the squeeze.
The windfall will do nothing to ensure new electricity generation, nothing to help us meet our renewable energy targets and nothing to build popular …
Since the publication of the Government’s White Paper and Draft Bill on House of Lords reform, the old guard have lined up to cavil about its detail, to deride its democratic principles and to defend – in the last ditch – the status quo.
This has augmented the popular media’s predisposition towards arch cynicism and trenchant pessimism. Yet there is firm evidence to contradict their lazy assumptions. Just because Labour engaged in over a decade of dither and delay does not mean that a determined government, with the resolve of the House of Commons behind it, cannot succeed.
In my second article on the Libyan conflict (read the first one here) I want to look at possible solutions and answers and creative ways that the international coalition can ensure that the war is brought to a quick and decisive conclusion.
The central problem is that Resolution 1973 is not up to the task at hand and either needs to be circumvented or rewritten. Without the right mandate it will be very difficult to win this war. Creative thinking and diplomacy are urgently required.
Supporting the Rebels
One hundred days in it is shocking that this amateur and brave army has …
Inspired originally by Journalism Grads: 30 Things You Should Do This Summer and prompted by Stephen Tall, it’s become a summer tradition for me to run a list of 30 suggestions for would-be politicians, particularly those new to public office or seeking it in the next few years.
As ever, a new summer brings a new lick of paint for the list, with a few updates here and there and my thanks to those who commented on the previous lists:
Today in England and Wales, tens of thousands of public sector workers, many of them teachers, are expected to strike. Currently public sector workers largely enjoy more generous pensions than their equivalents in the private sector and the Coalition Government has acknowledged the growing difference in approach between the private and public sectors. The private sector long ago realised the rising cost and substantial risk involved in offering final salary schemes, based on years of service and end of career earnings, made them unsustainable.
The Coalition Government has a responsibility to ensure that pensions in the civil service are both fair …
Monday marked 100 days since the air campaign began in Libya. Resolution 1973 authorises ‘all necessary measures to protect civilians’. The resolution, however, specifically excludes a foreign occupation force of any form on Libyan territory.
The White House was always lukewarm, at best, to the prospect of international intervention in Libya and has taken a back seat in the operation. As yet the combination of rebel forces and NATO air strikes has failed to have much significant strategic impact. Indeed, the Gaddafi regime seems intent on playing the long game and out lasting the unlikely combination of NATO airpower and weak …
There is a real danger that many prospective students will be put off from going to university due to the confusion, half-truths and lies, often left unchallenged, relating to the new system of university funding and graduate contributions.
A bright light which breaks through the fog can be found over at MoneySavingExpert.com, where Martin Lewis pares things back to the bare facts. His Student Loans Guide 2012 makes the following key points:
Existing students stay on the old system of loans
Students don’t pay anything up front
Graduates will pay back £540 per year less than they do under the current system – graduates will have more money in their pocket each month
Graduates who earn less than £21,000 don’t pay back anything
Graduates will owe more and be in debt longer but this debt will not affect credit ratings
People shouldn’t think of the new system as a loan but as a graduate tax
The rules may be different for students in Scotland and Wales
Most people will never pay back all of this debt as the debt is wiped out after 30 years
A graduate tax: the very thing that the NUS has been calling for. It is a crying shame that the NUS has decided to be political over the new changes rather than do the right thing by the people it professes to represent.
I would be extremely disappointed if there is a single person put off going to university due to the spin put on the changes by the NUS. Let’s hope that as many prospective students as possible find their way to MoneySavingExpert.com where they can actually get some honest expert advice on what to expect when they take up their courses in 2012.
Editor’s note: You can also watch a video of Martin Lewis explaining student funding from 2012 on YouTube:
Labour’s approach to dealing with the threat of terrorism was illiberal and ineffective. The regime they built was topped off by control orders, which remain one of the most odious elements of their legacy. These orders totally bypassed due legal process, establishing a bewildering clandestine world of secret evidence, special advocates and draconian restrictions that would have made Kafka blush.
The irony was that all this authoritarian paraphernalia, which did great damage to civil liberties many of us had previously taken for granted, failed utterly to achieve its intended purpose. Not a single person subject to a control order has ever …
Simon Costain I'm guessing around a thousand high net worth individuals are resident on the Isle of Man for tax purposes, though others suggest up to 3,000
Low earners on ...
David Wright While Trump's "gift of the license to manufacture Patriot air defence missiles" is welcome, it won't stop a single Russian missile aimed at Ukraine this year or...
Matt Wardman Thanks for the piece, Tom.
I tend to disagree on the NATO summit. Listening to serious reports (my goto since February 2022 has been the Telegraph's Ukraine ...
theakes Considerable concern in Democratic circles that Trump will call the coming election rigged, cancel the States results won by the opposition and then impose mart...
Peter Martin @ Roland,
I'm not sure I understand your comment. Every company which is registered for VAT can reclaim VAT on purchased items. The question is whether VAT s...
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