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 …
Johann Hari is used to provoking controversy – as the Independent’s most outspoken left/liberal columnist its his stock-in-trade – but yesterday found himself on the receiving end of criticism of his integrity.
The reason? His repeated borrowing of quotes from interviews published by other journalists which he then drops into his own interviews as if they had been made directly in conversation.
The accusation first surfaced last week on the DSG blog concerning an interview Mr Hari undertook with ‘Italian communist and every ultra-leftist’s favourite “psychopath”’, Toni Negri. And the accusation went mainstream after Yahoo editor Brian Whelan’s demolition …
Get your hands on a copy of the Higher Education White Paper and take a look at what the university sector might look like in the future. The government is promising a shiny-bright student-focused experience for all as you make your well-informed choice from a multitude of quality providers jockeying to meet your every higher education need. Welcome to Uni-Mart, where the student -consumer is king.
Except… their consumer experience won’t feel very regal under these proposals, because this White Paper contains a major flaw: it wants to encourage competition between HE institutions in the belief that a …
I attended my first English Council at the weekend, the little-known body nominally supervising the party’s administration in England. Amid the constitutional amendments and letting off steam about the evil Federal party, it was possible to reflect on the huge challenges the party now faces. Inevitably most of the attention is on policies and messaging. This is vital but not sufficient. But we also need to catch up with the way politics is now done. I don’t think enough people appreciate the implications of this.
We can overdo the analogies between politics and warfare, but some …
The debates about schools and education so far in this parliament have largely focused around free schools and academies, with occasional diversion into the content of the curriculum and the E-Baccalaureate. I’ve touched on some of these issues before, but just whilst there’s still time (just!) for a change in the Education Bill as it passes through the committee stage in the House of Lords, I wanted to highlight the threat posed in the Bill to school governors appointed by Local Education Authorities. I should say at this point that I have been an LEA appointed governor …
The Guardian reports that the Party has decided to hold an inquiry, headed by James Gurling, into the Yes to AV campaign.
I wrote a piece for Lib Dem Voice back in May calling for an inquiry and since then more and more information has come to light about the shambolic and incompetent way the Yes campaign was run.
What does seem rather odd is that there has been no announcement to Party members and activists that this inquiry was taking place and asking for their input. I asked a couple of Lib Dems who had been highly active in …
Premier Wen Jiabao of China arrived in Britain over the weekend for a series of events culminating in bilateral talks with the Prime Ministers today at Number Ten.
While the discussions will undoubtedly turn to the economy, trade agreements and further cooperation between our two countries, I hope the Prime Minister will also promote our greatest exports: our long held values of democracy, human rights and free speech.
These bilateral meetings offer the British government a chance to place human rights unambiguously on the agenda in our discussions with the Chinese. As William Hague wrote last year, “promoting human rights is …
So it’s truly gratifying to see that Stephen Williams, MP for Bristol West, is taking a stand to protect owners of property from being dispossessed. Stephen has given his support to legislation, to be brought before parliament by the government, to criminalise squatting.
This is highly welcome and long overdue. Squatting has for too long been portrayed as a victimless crime, a Robin Hood grab …
It’s been a tough few weeks for Labour leader Ed Miliband, with increasing mutterings internally and in the media with his performance, culminating in this week’s ICM poll showing him to be less popular than Nick Clegg.
On the upside, he’s starting to score points off David Cameron at PMQs, a crucible of irrelevance to actual politics but crucial in shaping personality-obsessed journos’ perceptions. And, with today’s interview in the Guardian, he’s proposed a ‘reform agenda’ to open up the Labour party — in his words, “in order to have a good conversation at party conference, you’ve …
David Evans Mick,
While acknowledging that you successfully retrained as a primary school teacher and that on another occasion you taught, probably very successfully in...
Mick Taylor I requalified as a primary school teacher from being a secondary teacher. There were, and may still be, one year courses for this purpose and I imagine that cou...
Jana “ One practical solution would be to make it much easier for primary school teachers to requalify and go to work in our secondary schools”
Really? Most p...
Michael BG Peter Davies,
In the report the IPPR suggest that the 2% could start being paid by pensioners from the personal allowance (£12,570) level. From this income ...
Michal Simon @Sarah Dyke
You have highlighted an important problem. Climate change is already hitting farmers in practical ways: wetter winters, flooded fields, longer drou...
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The AI world and some fallacies about it
Yet another government makes a mess of local government reform
The Joy of Six 1574
Front Street looking great
Should the Reform UK leadership take responsibility for violence at their conference?
David Evans 
Mick Taylor 
Jana 
Michael BG 
Michal Simon 