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Category Archives: Op-eds

Opinion: it’s about more than A-levels

By Alan Belmore | Thu 19th August 2010 - 9:24 am

I write as a former chair of Liberal Youth, currently studying at York University who was educated at an independent school. Yet with A-Level results out today, I am backing calls for universities to consider students from state schools who have achieved lower grades than their counterparts from private institutions.

‘This is discrimination’ the wealthy middle classes cry. ‘They both sat the same exams’, it is pointed out to me. Yet this faux fairness is exaggerated, a continued belief that seems to run through education that wishes children and young adults to develop in a different system to that which us …

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18 Comments

If you don’t like a system that can produce coalitions, how would you change it?

By Iain Roberts | Wed 18th August 2010 - 5:28 pm

We have a well understood way of electing MPs and forming governments for UK-wide elections. Not that you’d know it from the comments of some, particularly those opposed to the coalition.

Here’s how it works. We elect MPs by first past the post. Those MPs then decide who forms a government. If a Prime Minister can get the support of a majority of MPs, he or she can form a government. If the PM loses that support, the government will normally fall.

That system has produced some odd results over the years (as do all systems, depending …

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Tagged coalition and electoral reform | 18 Comments

100 Days: the Coalition is still enjoying a honeymoon

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 2:15 pm

Last month, YouGov’s Peter Kellner penned a rather premature post, which stated categorically: The honeymoon is over. I took him to task at the time, and stand by my view that the Coalition is still regarded generally favourably by a plurality of the public.

It’s been interesting, then, to read some of the barrage of opinion polling which has greeted the Coalition’s first 100 days. Perhaps most significant is this article in The Guardian – Coalition winning argument on economy – detailing ICM polling which shows 44% believe the coalition is doing a good job in securing economic …

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Also posted in Polls | Tagged economy, john prescott and Polls | 13 Comments

Opinon: fighting for funding – Wales and coalitions (part 2)

By Peter Black | Wed 18th August 2010 - 11:20 am

Previously, I referred to the fact that the Coalition Agreement contained three specific provisions relating to Wales. One of these concerned the drawing down of legislative powers over housing.The second provision relates to the way that Wales (and Scotland for that matter) is funded. This is a matter of some controversy here and the coalition agreement offers little clarity on how it is to be resolved. It is safe to say that the rather esoteric phrase referring to it needs to be subject to negotiation with UK Treasury Ministers so as to establish the best way forward.

Funding has been …

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Tagged coalition and Wales | 2 Comments

100 days of the Coalition: how the news media has turned out to be the biggest, sorest loser of them all

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 10:10 am

One hundred days. How the media loves a yardstick.

We have US President FD Roosevelt to thank for the obsession with the first 15 weeks of a new government’s activity: in a race against time to save the US economy from its Depression slump, he signed into law over a dozen recovery programmes. Some worked, some didn’t… You can draw your own analogy.

It is of course far too early to know if the Coalition will succeed. It is also far too early to know whether the Lib Dems will be boosted by our involvement in government, or if we’ll be …

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Tagged journalism, media and nicholas jones | 19 Comments

In praise of… Tony Blair

By Stephen Tall | Wed 18th August 2010 - 7:43 am

I voted for Tony Blair as Labour leader in 1994; I voted for him again to become Labour prime minister in 1997. I soon learned my lesson.

As Prime Minister, he failed. Not so much domestically: sure, he disappointed but show me a political leader who doesn’t.

But in foreign policy, Mr Blair was an unmitigated disaster, the most incompetent post-war Prime Minister bar none (yes, even worse than Anthony Eden).

His intentions are irrelevant: the results of his – and it was his – decision to wage war against Iraq have made Britain and the world less safe at huge …

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Tagged philanthropy, royal british legion and tony blair | 14 Comments

The Independent View: PCC responds to party motion on its future

By Jonathan Collett | Tue 17th August 2010 - 2:20 pm

The motion on the Press Complaints Commission which has been selected for debate at the Liberal Democrat conference is concerning. It contains a number of inaccuracies and appears to be based on several false premises. It is especially disappointing because the philosophy behind the PCC and its independent self-regulation of the newspaper and magazine industry is entirely in tune with the Liberal tradition.

The PCC exists to protect freedom of expression, while upholding standards by ruling on strict criteria of inaccuracy, intrusion, harassment (and so on), and by establishing case law and the acceptable boundaries of practice. It provides a public service which is easily accessible, free to use and which speedily …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged press complaints commission | 10 Comments

Opinion: four party government – Wales and coalitions (part 1)

By Peter Black | Tue 17th August 2010 - 11:20 am

The Welsh Assembly is in a unique situation. Each of the four parties represented there are in government at some level. Whilst the Liberal Democrats have entered government in Westminster for the first time, Labour and Plaid Cymru are in their final year of coalition government in Cardiff Bay.

This has made for interesting Plenary sessions with both the Welsh governing parties intent on blaming the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives for long-standing problems, whilst we are intent on continuing our scrutiny of their record.

The Coalition Agreement contained three specific provisions relating to Wales. One of these concerned the drawing down …

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Tagged coalition and Wales | Leave a comment

Why hearing the shipping forecast makes me optimistic

By Mark Pack | Tue 17th August 2010 - 10:20 am

When the dulcet tones of the BBC’s Shipping Forecast turn to the weather in German Bight, two thoughts often flit through my mind – both related to the history of Heligoland, an island (or strictly speaking, an inhabited island and a small uninhabited neighbour) that previously gave its name to that shipping forecast area until a name change in 1956.

The first thought is a reminder of how unbalanced the information provided online can be. Google “Heligoland” and you will usually find results dominated by music (Heligoland was an album title for Massive Attack) and military history (Heligoland was the site …

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Tagged "fair at first becoming cloudy later", charlie connelly, featured, george dower, heinrich hoffmann, heligoland, lord salisbury and zanzibar | 5 Comments

Opinion: why we should wish Labour well

By George Kendall | Mon 16th August 2010 - 4:20 pm

Many Lib Dems are angry: at Labour popularism on immigration and law and order to wrong-foot their opponents . That they’ve left the country in such a terrible financial mess. And that as we engage in the awful process of cuts, they jeer from the sidelines, making political capital out of their own mistakes.

But we need to temper our anger. Labour lost their way, but they may find their way back.

And for all their faults, they have qualities we share. A desire to help the unfortunate. A commitment to the welfare state. A belief in internationalism.

At the last election, Nick …

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Tagged labour party | 102 Comments

Is the problem that people don’t want to pay for news or don’t want to pay for newspapers?

By Mark Pack | Sun 15th August 2010 - 5:50 pm

Each round of newspaper circulation figures makes grim reading for anyone trying to balance the books at a newspaper. Month after month circulation is dropping away across the board. The usual explanation is that newspapers are suffering because so much free news is now available online, and there is certainly a large degree of truth in that.

However, there are two important caveats to that. First, the massive lack of trust in journalists, who are regularly rated one of the least trusted professions in the UK. As I wrote last year on this topic,

Isn’t a major reason that people increasingly turn

…

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Tagged daily telegraph, journalism and the times | 14 Comments

Opinion: unnatural constituency boundaries – the hidden menace

By David Allen | Sun 15th August 2010 - 4:20 pm

The big electoral reform next year – or so everyone thinks – will be the referendum on AV. Alongside it, there will be a boring technical change to equalise constituency sizes and get rid of the present bias towards Labour. Most people assume that we won’t need to worry much about the constituency size changes.

Massive mistake! The change from natural to unnatural constituency boundaries, and rigidly fixed constituency sizes, will have profound and far-reaching ill effects. It will largely destroy the effective link between a local constituency and its individual MP. It could also threaten …

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Tagged electoral reform and local government boundary commission | 50 Comments

The Independent View: Arms deals with India – why Lib Dems should say no

By Kaye Stearman | Sat 14th August 2010 - 10:50 am

PM Cameron’s heavyweight government plus business trip to India went swimmingly, so we are to believe, despite that diplomatic faux pas about Pakistani support for terrorism and Indian discontent about proposed immigration quotas. One fortunate outcome for Mr Cameron was that both issues diverted attention from a highly contentious arms deal involving arms giant BAE.

Under the deal, 57 Hawk jets will be manufactured under licence in India with BAE’s Indian partner, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), with technical support from BAE. Roll-Royce also gets a slice of the deal as its jet engines will be used in production. The deal is …

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged arms trade, david cameron, india and vince cable | 8 Comments

Lessons from Australia: poster design

By Mark Pack | Fri 13th August 2010 - 12:20 pm

A quick counterpart to my previous Lessons from Canada: poster design, this time looking at Australian election posters such as this one:

Australian Liberal Party election poster

As you can see from this example from North Sydney, the usual Australian style (as is the case in European countries such as Germany) is to feature candidate or party leader photo very large, with the name of the candidate or party more like a caption to the poster than its main content.

By contrast, in the UK, the name …

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Tagged australian politics | 16 Comments

Opinion: there’s no pleasure in saying ‘I told you so’ – but does it need saying?

By Alex Marsh | Thu 12th August 2010 - 1:22 pm

Clarity of purpose is a virtue. But stubbornness doesn’t necessarily win any plaudits when more flexibility is appropriate. The shock tactics of Osbornomics have now been fully embraced. The message is clear: this Coalition is not for turning.

In the run up to the Election the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats adopted distinctive positions on the best approach to cutting the fiscal deficit. Despite Nick Clegg’s apparent secret conversion to the Conservative position of early and deep cuts, the LibDem manifesto commitments were directed at cutting in 2011/12 and after, and the rhetoric around budget reductions was to proceed at a …

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Tagged economy, george osborne and vince cable | 58 Comments

Opinion: 4.5 million people are waiting for homes – let’s not leave them behind

By Patrick Murray | Wed 11th August 2010 - 5:40 pm

David Cameron’s recent comments on council housing tenancies have sparked some controversy in the media and here on Lib Dem Voice.

First, I am delighted that at least there is a debate around housing policy. Many people are simply unable to afford to buy, leaving people in cramped overcrowded accommodation that is harmful to their and their family’s health. There are still many people sleeping on our streets and many more in homeless shelters and temporary accommodation.

I’ve seen both ends of the crisis. Ten years ago I was homeless myself and went through the shelters to temporary accommodation …

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Tagged housing | 17 Comments

Is the Coalition failing the radical test?

By Stuart Bonar | Wed 11th August 2010 - 4:10 pm

One of the many great things about our party is its steadfast refusal to bow to media pressure. Take, as Exhibit A, the sweet joy of being a conference rep and voting down the leadership’s preferred policy option. We don’t care that it will be portrayed by the next day’s newspapers, as erroneous as it is inevitable, as a party split.

We are also a truly radical party. Most policies taken for granted today entered the pages of our policy documents long before Labour or the Conservatives sheepishly followed. Come next month I hope that gay marriage will be the latest …

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Tagged coalition | 27 Comments

Should religious worship be part of school assembly?

By Paul Pettinger | Wed 11th August 2010 - 2:20 pm

Last week LDV ran an article from Sara Bedford asking whether prayers should be a part of council meetings. The issue of compelling people to engage in religious worship is not just confined to Parliament or some of our more old fashioned council chambers, but affects a significant proportion of our population.

Unbeknown to many, all state maintained schools in England and Wales are legally required to provide their pupils with daily Collective Worship. In faith schools the worship is supposed to be provided in accordance with the school’s designated religion or religious denomination, while in all other schools …

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Tagged collective worship, julian huppert, nick clegg and your freedom | 33 Comments

Twitter’s fun, but let’s not pretend it’s revolutionising democracy

By Iain Roberts | Wed 11th August 2010 - 10:20 am

As a local councillor, I want to reach my constituents and make sure they can reach me.

If I put out a leaflet it costs a bit and takes a while to deliver, and I can reach thousands of constituents.

I write a blog post and then let people know about it by email – that reaches a few hundred (and it’s much quicker and cheaper).

Or I can tweet and reach about ten.

Because, despite the promise of Twitter as providing a great two way link between politicians and those they represent, it’s a long way from achieving that.

The reason? Twitter for …

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Also posted in News | Tagged tom harris and twitter | 5 Comments

Opinion: The automaton body-politic

By Kerry Hutchinson | Tue 10th August 2010 - 11:20 am

Not for nothing was England once known as ‘Perfidious Albion’ – it would change policy stances more often than a modern quick-change model on a catwalk. Ah yes, those days when foreign policy was as reliably firm as blancmange in a microwave set on high. But not nowadays, of course.

No, Foreign Secretaries and their FCO policy officials who devise and draft policy these post-Great Game days can be relied upon to issue policy that is robustly embedded in the nine points of policy-making as set down by the Cabinet Office and the Better Regulation Executive (BRE). To which all Government …

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Tagged israel and william hague | 25 Comments

Whither the professional journalist when we all write for free?

By Iain Roberts | Mon 9th August 2010 - 1:20 pm

The Guardian reports on the 19-strong “Facebook Users’ Union” which wants Facebook’s users to have more control over where the company’s money goes.

…people are effectively working for free to create wealth for Facebook’s shareholders. “Online tools really aren’t free. We pay for them with micropayments of personal information.”

Buchanan wants someone to calculate the value of each Facebook user, based on how much money Facebook (or Google, or MySpace) makes from advertising next to their information. “It may be a small amount but it adds up when scaled into the half billion. Thus I feel we, the users, should have

…

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Tagged facebook and media | 3 Comments

Opinion: Getting rid of ContactPoint – a great day for liberalism

By Sarah Harding | Sun 8th August 2010 - 2:25 pm

I would imagine Liberals throughout the country breathed a collective sigh of relief this past week when they opened their newspapers or turned on their computers to find the intrusive ContactPoint database was to be switched off at noon on 6th August.

28th February 2010 was the beginning of the end for ContactPoint.

On this day, an emergency motion submitted to Liberal Youth Spring Conference found its way through the ballot and ended up for debate on the final day of our conference. During the debate, we acknowledged the good points of ContactPoint and, whilst we understood its flaws and …

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Tagged contact point and liberal youth | 16 Comments

Does Tony Blair support the Coalition (and would it matter to Lib Dems if he does)?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th August 2010 - 6:05 pm

This was a story which entirely passed me by, but throws up a couple of intriguing questions. I tip my hat to the Independent’s John Rentoul for highlighting Tony Blair’s address to the Institute for Government entitled, How to Be Prime Minister, held at the end of June. In it Mr Blair commented,

The British people have again elected a centrist government, and that’s what they decided to do in that extraordinary way they do, they decide they will put in the Conservatives and put the Lib Dems alongside them.

As Mr Rentoul notes,

… this rather goes against the attempt

…

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Tagged john rentoul and tony blair | 14 Comments

The Saturday Debate: Should Turkey be admitted to the EU?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th August 2010 - 8:45 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our Saturday slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate:

In all the recent controversy surrounding David Cameron’s recent foreign policy pronouncements some of the substance has perhaps been lost: here was the leader of a major European country unequivocally urging that Turkey be admitted as a member of the European Union.

This has tended to be an uncontroversial view among the British political classes, who regard Turkey as a vital fulcrum in reconciling the West and the Islamic world. It is far less popular among the voters of Europe, as a …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged david cameron, european union, satuday debate and turkey | 33 Comments

The predictable ranting over welfare reforms may be misplaced

By Iain Roberts | Fri 6th August 2010 - 10:30 am

Some of the most vociferous critics of current welfare policies, in my experience, live in social housing, or have bought their former council house.

They often don’t want more welfare – quite the opposite. They work hard, keep their properties in good order and generally behave as good citizens and they’re fed up with neighbours they see as sponging off the State and causing problems in the area.

The issue of welfare is a genuinely tough one. Clever people from across the political spectrum (and across the world) have wrestled with it for decades.

At heart, the problem is simple to …

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Tagged welfare reform | 28 Comments

Opinion: The Labour Party hold the key to electoral reform

By Nick Lane | Thu 5th August 2010 - 1:20 pm

At the 1997 General Election, Labour swept to power with a mandate to reform British politics. Tony Blair’s cooperation with Paddy Ashdown’s Liberal Democrats from 1995 to 1997 centred around a progressive agreement to introduce a proportional voting system for election to the House of Commons. Unfortunately for advocates of electoral reform and for progressives more widely, the resulting Labour landslide appeared to remove any thoughts this once great reforming party had to lay claim to the 21st Century progressive mantle. Labour could have held (and won easily) a referendum to introduce PR, but they didn’t.

Over a …

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Tagged electoral reform | 46 Comments

Opinion: Time for the Liberal Democrats to stand up and be counted on foreign aid

By Timothy Cox | Thu 5th August 2010 - 9:20 am

The Liberal Democrats have a proud tradition of prioritising international development, but it is time to re-think our foreign aid strategy. All three parties’ manifestoes pledged to increase aid spending to 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI). This sounds very “nice” and positive, but the commitment bears no relation to the actual needs of developing countries and ignores the mounting evidence showing that the current system of aid is perpetuating the poverty it seeks to alleviate. If we are to be serious about helping the world’s poorest, we need to stop focusing upon what we want to give, …

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Tagged foreign aid | 22 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

Observations of an Expat: Post Election Worries (Tom Arms)
How Liberal Democrats can ride Britain’s youth wave on the pro-EU shift (Rupinder Singh)
Just growth by lowering deadweight losses through tax (Tony Vickers)
Local democracy should not be an excuse to stop building homes (Massimo Ricciuti)
The need for a nationally relevant message (Mark Corner)

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