Category Archives: Op-eds

The Voice

Inequality: the enemy between us?

By The Voice | Mon 21st December 2009 - 11:21 am

Richard Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology, University of Nottingham and Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology, University of York are co-directors of The Equality Trust and authors of The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better.

There is a long list of health and social problems which tend to be more common in the most deprived areas of Britain. The further down the social ladder you look, the more common they are. The pattern is the same whether you look at heart disease, homicides, teenage birth rates, mental illness, imprisonment, drug abuse, obesity, poor maths and literacy scores, low levels of child wellbeing, life expectancy or infant mortality.

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Also posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | 12 Comments
Fiona Hall MEP

D-Day -1: Confusion in Copenhagen

By Fiona Hall MEP | Sat 19th December 2009 - 12:30 pm

This is the third article for LDV by Fiona Hall, Lib Dem leader of the European Liberal Democrats, giving her account of the Copenhagen climate change summit. You can read Part I here, and Part II here.

What a mess.

After yesterday afternoon’s impasse on an international agreement, President Obama took matters into his own hands, struck a deal with China, India, Brazil and South Africa – and promptly left the country. It’s leadership of a sort – but, sadly, in the wrong direction.

The rest of the world has been offered a watered-down Accord which – as it …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Fiona Hall MEP

D-Day in Copenhagen … Part II: More news – and it’s not good

By Fiona Hall MEP | Fri 18th December 2009 - 7:20 pm

To read Part I, please click here.

Spirits are rather low here this evening.

America and China produce over 50% of the world’s carbon emissions: any deal here tonight will require them to play ball. Unfortunately, there appears to be stalemate.

Fiona Hall MEP and George Lyon MEP at the Copenhagen Climate ConferencePrior to today the Americans had shown us a bit of ankle, suggesting that they might come forward with an offer of more money and concrete commitments. Unfortunately that looks like it was all a bit of a tease. President Obama instead used his speech simply to assert that the US is ready to do a deal if China and others are prepared to be transparent.

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Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Iain Roberts

Opinion on Nick’s second anniversary: Iain Roberts – Nick finds his voice

By Iain Roberts | Fri 18th December 2009 - 2:18 pm

Writing this piece, I started by looking back at what was written on Nick’s first anniversary a year ago.

Over 2008 the party was averaging around 16% in the polls and whilst showing a great deal of promise, the consensus was that Clegg still had some way to go to fulfil his potential, with the Lisbon Treaty confusion and that Piers Morgan interview being two of the more memorable moments.

2009 has been a very different story. It’s still been a struggle to get our voice heard in the national media – that’s not going to change anytime soon outside …

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Tagged and | 2 Comments
Neil Stockley

Opinion on Nick’s second anniversary: Neil Stockley – People are listening, now’s the time for Nick to tell our story

By Neil Stockley | Fri 18th December 2009 - 12:15 pm

I came across an old Liberal Democrat Voice post the other day. In May 2007, Nick Clegg called for the party to develop a “narrative” to accompany its policies. Just over six months later, Nick was elected Lib Dem leader and was thus in the best possible position to make such a narrative happen.

During the leadership campaign, his abilities as a communicator were the most frequently heard point of “the case for Nick”. So, after two years as leader, how is he doing?

Well . . . there were more misses than hits in …

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Tagged and | 7 Comments

The Lib Dem HQ take on Nick’s poll ratings

By Tom Smithard | Fri 18th December 2009 - 10:15 am

Tom Smithard, the Lib Dems’ Parliamentary Campaigns & Intelligence Analyst, has been compiling an occasional polling report – collating interesting material from published polls and providing a bit of commentary – for internal use within Cowley Street since he started working for the party this summer. We’re publishing his latest assessment in two parts: yesterday focused on the Lib Dems’ poll ratings; today, the second anniversary of Nick Clegg’s election as Lib Dem leader, Tom looks at Nick’s personal ratings as leader.

Firstly, some very good news: for the first time Nick Clegg has scored higher than David Cameron on …

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Also posted in Polls | 3 Comments

The Lib Dem HQ take on the party’s poll ratings

By Tom Smithard | Thu 17th December 2009 - 4:45 pm

Tom Smithard, the Lib Dems’ Parliamentary Campaigns & Intelligence Analyst, has been compiling an occasional polling report – collating interesting material from published polls and providing a bit of commentary – for internal use within Cowley Street since he started working for the party this summer. We’re publishing his latest assessment in two parts: today focuses on the Lib Dems’ poll ratings; tomorrow, the second anniversary of Nick Clegg’s election as Lib Dem leader, Tom looks at Nick’s personal ratings as leader.

December has seen a pleasing turnaround in our share of the vote with ComRes. On November 11 we …

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Also posted in Polls | 16 Comments

Steve Goddard on what Peter Tatchell’s resignation means for Oxford East

By Steve Goddard | Thu 17th December 2009 - 10:50 am

Dr Steve Goddard was the Parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats in Oxford East at the 2001 and 2005 general elections, slashing Labour’s majority from over 10,000 to just 963. He will be fighting the seat for a third time in 2010.

As Liberal Democrat Voice readers will be aware, Peter Tatchell, after two and a half years as Green Party candidate for Oxford East, yesterday announced his resignation due to injuries sustained during some of his campaigning activities.

Although I haven’t had the chance to get to know Peter well – I only met him twice or thrice during his time as candidate – he is someone whose energy and dedication I admire, and with whom I agree on many issues. I’d have enjoyed debating with him on issues that matter to residents in Oxford East during the General Election campaign. Even on those issues where I think Peter – and the Green Party – are wrong, I respect his integrity and commitment to human rights.

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Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Baroness Ros Scott

Ros Scott writes… Party President’s report to members, November ‘09

By Baroness Ros Scott | Tue 15th December 2009 - 10:30 am

The two months since the party’s last Federal Executive have, as usual, been pretty busy. In that period I have visited local parties in Aldershot, Altrincham & Sale, Winchester, Islington, Sutton, Wycombe, Amersham & Chesham, Swindon, Gloucester, Stroud, Cheltenham, East Dunbartonshire, Glasgow North, Edinburgh Pentlands, North & Leith, West, Ochil, and Consett. I have also attended the North West and West Midlands Regional Conferences.

The two meetings of the party’s Chief Officers Group which I have attended are reported separately to FE, but I wish to highlight the work done to develop the business plan and budget which were …

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Chris White

Hypocrite Humphrys’ bonus bunk

By Chris White | Mon 14th December 2009 - 3:52 pm

John Humphrys was sounding pleased with himself on the Today Programme the other day. Nothing unusual there, you might say. He was attempting to skewer a minister because civil service managers at the UK Border Agency were being paid a bonus.

At first hearing it seemed as though they were each getting in excess of £300,000 for doing their own job. It was only on careful hearing that it became apparent that the figure was the total bonus pool and that the bonuses amounted to little more than £10,000 a piece.

The justification for the payments was that they were clearing …

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8 Comments
Iain Roberts

Government backs down on vetting rules

By Iain Roberts | Sun 13th December 2009 - 9:45 am

The Government has backed down over its controversial Vetting and Barring scheme.

Designed to protect children, many were concerned it would have the opposite effect. It widened the net on which adults needed to be vetted, extending in some cases to authors visiting schools and adults giving kids a lift to clubs and activities.

Might this have resulted in more harm to children through lost opportunities as perfectly safe adults became unable or unwilling to help children?

I think it may have. A friend of mine was asked to help at our local Scouts. She …

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9 Comments

Macbrown – a Synopsis

By Rachel Smith | Sat 12th December 2009 - 3:45 pm

Hat-tip and sincere apologies to Master Shakespeare.

In a thunderstorm, three witches decide to meet again on the heath “after the deed is done.”

Next, a captain reports to King Dunblair that Macbrown beat MacMajorwald in battle. Darling adds that the Thane of Cawdor was traitorous to them during the battle.

The three witches confront Macbrown and Banqleson (the Dark Lord) on their way home from the battle. They predict that Macbrown will be King of Scotland, and Banqleson, though never King himself, will beget rulers.

The witches leave and Darling informs Macbrown that he has inherited the title Thane …

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Also posted in Humour | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Peter Welch

Derby North: hung parliament territory?

By Peter Welch | Sat 12th December 2009 - 11:20 am

Let’s start with a health warning. My first-hand knowledge of Derby amounts to changing trains there once a decade ago. But the press are keen to help us find out more. Derby North qualifies as a three-way marginal (Lab 39.5%, Lib Dem 30.6% and Tories 25.9% according to Antony Wells). And not one but two national papers descended on the seat to find out how the public saw the PBR.

Slightly bizarrely, they both report on the seat as a Conservative prospect. (It is number 130 on the Tory hit list, number 30 on the Liberal Democrat list of targets.) …

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Also posted in General Election | Tagged , , , , and | 16 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem Bloggers Christmas stocking fillers … Part II

By Stephen Tall | Thu 10th December 2009 - 8:10 pm

If you could choose up to three items for your Christmas stocking, what would they be? That was the question LDV posed to a group of Lib Dem bloggers. All this week we’re revealing what they told us, with all their choices added to the Amazon carousel widget featured on our home-page, referral fees from which will help support Lib Dem Voice: so get clicking and ordering. You can read Part I here. In part two, four more bloggers – Jonathan Calder, James Graham, Alix Mortimer and Paul Walter – give us the low-down on their Xmas faves.

Jonathan

…

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Tagged , , and | 1 Comment
Bill le Breton

Opinion: But is it really time for a change?

By Bill le Breton | Thu 10th December 2009 - 3:53 pm

Party strategists have bet heavily on their assessment that voters think it is time for a change.

Perhaps simplistically, they hold to the notion that British political fortunes are governed by a pendulum. You often hear them criticise what they term the blue/red red/blue swings, but privately they accept it as a fundamental ‘law’ of political physics and have allowed themselves to be governed by this supposed law these last two years.

2010 will be one of those ‘Time for a Change’ elections, they have deduced.

From that deduction they moved on to suggest that the Conservatives (to whom in their estimate the pendulum has swung) have won the argument among the British public that they, the Conservatives, are the party of change.

The next step in the analysis was to presume that attacks on Conservatives or Conservative policies would thus position the Liberal Democrats as against change and therefore implicitly pro the status quo and, deep down in voter consciousness, pro-Labour.

Among leading Liberal Democrat MPs this conclusion may have been conveniently close to their political preferences, for others – and I think we may include Cable in this – it makes for an agonising and uncomfortable position.

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Tagged , , , , , , , , , , and | 21 Comments
Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP

Lord Pearson as a Tory party whip and Griffin v. Maloney

By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP | Wed 9th December 2009 - 4:13 pm

UKIP have got themselves into a right pickle recently, poor things! It emerged last week that their new leader Lord Pearson a number of months ago made a somewhat controversial offer to the Conservative party. Pearson allegedly (The Times, 30 November, UKIP’s planned deal with Tories causes outrage in anti-Europe party) approached Lord Strathclyde, the leader of the Tories in the House of Lords, with an offer to disband the party and withdraw all UKIP candidates if the Tories agreed to hold a referendum on EU membership. Lord Strathclyde himself has confirmed that the meeting with Pearson, who is in fact a former Tory, took place.

Although Nigel Farage has since changed the story slightly saying that the offer only included withdrawing all candidates, this is still a pretty hefty political gamble.

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Tagged , , , , , , , , , and | 15 Comments
Millennium Elephant

Millennium’s Credit Crunch Diary: October and November… Worst! Recession! Ever!

By Millennium Elephant | Mon 7th December 2009 - 4:40 pm

This week sees the Government reveal its Pre-Budget Report, usually a review of spending in advance of the budget where the Chancellor says how he’ll be paying for it all though, traditionally, the run-up to a general election is the time for the Chancellor to play Santa, showering presents on favoured voters in key marginals, and with all the indications now pointing to a March General election, chances are we’ll never quite get to Hard Labour facing the BILL.

This year, of course, there is considerably less room for LARGESS. So let’s start with a look at where we’re …

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Chris White

Quangos Quake but Tories Trim

By Chris White | Mon 7th December 2009 - 1:54 pm

One of the least surprising pieces of news last week was that Caroline Spelman had abandoned the Tory Party’s pledge to abolish Regional Development Agencies: these will now ‘evolve’ into Local Enterprise Partnerships.

Yet only a few short weeks ago, Lord Hanningfield was telling people that the Tories would ditch RDAs by Order in Council (legally impossible but heh – we’ll be a new government, so why worry?).

To be fair, Spelman does little to conceal the u-turn: no pretence here that RDAs will be abolished to be replaced by Something Totally Different but Much Better. No: it’s straightforward evolution.

This is what

…

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Also posted in Local government | 2 Comments
Iain Roberts

NHS IT – has Labour wasted £12 billion?

By Iain Roberts | Mon 7th December 2009 - 11:45 am

The NHS is part way through one of the world’s biggest IT projects, a colossal £6.2bn programme which won’t be completed until the end of the decade.

So said Business IT website Silicon.com back in January 2006 – nearly four years ago when it reviewed the nine projects making up the Government’s NHS IT revolution, from Choose and Book to the NHS Spine.

As the end of the decade approaches, not only are the NHS IT projects far from completion, but the cost has more than doubled to over £12 billion.

We now hear that the project is to be scaled back, …

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Tagged and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dem Bloggers Christmas stocking fillers … Part I

By Stephen Tall | Sun 6th December 2009 - 2:00 pm

If you could choose up to three items for your Christmas stocking, what would they be? That was the question LDV posed to a group of Lib Dem bloggers. And over the next two days we’ll reveal what they told us, with all their choices added to the Amazon carousel widget featured on our home-page, referral fees from which will help support Lib Dem Voice: so get clicking and ordering. In part one, four bloggers – Jennie Rigg, Millennium Elephant, Mark Pack and Alex Foster – give us the low-down on their Xmas faves.

Jennie Rigg

1) The Very Sexy …

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Tagged , , , , , and | 5 Comments
Ed Randall

BBC economics: a little simplistic when it mixes the economic and political

By Ed Randall | Sun 6th December 2009 - 11:20 am

Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s economics editor, can be listed amongst those who have some influence on the public discussion of economic policy making in the UK. So her ‘Stephanomics‘ – which is part of the BBC News website – merits a read from time to time.

In a recent piece she suggests that there is a certain amount of solace for the Conservatives in what Ben Bernanke, head of the US Fed, has been saying about financial regulation in the UK. However, Stephanie gives what I think they call ‘a bum steer’ on the other side of ‘the pond’.

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Tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Iain Roberts

Time running out to save the cheque

By Iain Roberts | Sat 5th December 2009 - 11:17 am

I’ve had  internet banking for the majority of my adult life, but I still write and receive a surprising number of cheques.  I may not be able to use them to buy petrol, but they pay for the kids’ school dinners and activities, cover the milk bill, pay tradesmen and allow relatives to safely send financial gifts in a way that “I’ve transferred £30 to your bank account” just doesn’t match.

As a nation, we write nearly four million cheques every day.  They might be expensive and annoying for the banks to deal with, but they’re still useful for us, and …

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Also posted in News | Tagged | 15 Comments
David Allen

Opinion: A Local Philosophy for the Lib Dems

By David Allen | Sat 5th December 2009 - 10:45 am

The message from Paul Holmes MP at Regional Conference was clear. If, perchance, some of us felt that the national Lib Dems were not presenting a very strong narrative these days, then it would be up to us locals to make up for them. We needed to demonstrate a distinctive appeal at local level.

Well, in the course of gaining a 19% swing* from the Tories at a Rushcliffe by-election last month, I think we did just that.

We had all piled in to a small rural ward and put out five leaflets. So we did expect to make progress. However, if our Focuses had simply reported local news, I suspect it wouldn’t have been a 19% swing. Our crucial extra, I believe, was to explain a clear local philosophy and put it into practice. This helped people understand what we are about and why it was worth voting for us.

First, let me say what we didn’t do. We didn’t argue that devolving every decision down to parish level was the answer to life, the universe and everything. We didn’t go in for overblown sixties rhetoric about community politics and how “Focus” was more revolutionary than the Kalashnikov. But equally, we didn’t just limit our vision to street-level drudgery and getting pavements fixed.

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Also posted in Local government | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Paul Walter

Why David Cameron is wrong on health and safety

By Paul Walter | Sat 5th December 2009 - 9:40 am

A few years ago, David Cameron was saying things like “Let sunshine win the day” (Winner of the RoundSpericalsRUs prize for the most fatuous statement by a politician in the history of mankind), that he is a “liberal Conservative” and going on about the quality of life.

Well, have a read of his speech on health and safety this week, if you haven’t already done so. It marks a complete full circle which has been navigated by Cameron over the last four years. Welcome back the David Cameron – in my view as near to the real David Cameron as we’ll …

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Tagged | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

A look back at the polls: November ’09

By Stephen Tall | Fri 4th December 2009 - 1:20 pm

After two months of poll fluctuations triggered by the ups-and-downs of party conference-dominated media coverage, November gives us an opportunity to look at the parties’ popularity, as measured by the polls, for the first time since early September.

Here, in chronological order, are the results of the 10 polls published in November:

Tories 41.0, Labour 27.0, Lib Dems 17.0 (6 Nov, YouGov)
Tories 38.0, Labour 24.0, Lib Dems 20.0 (6 Nov, Angus RS)

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Also posted in Polls | 3 Comments

Opinion: The Best Policy in the World … Probably

By David Lawson | Fri 4th December 2009 - 10:05 am

There is a set of well known slights aimed at the Liberal Democrats. First, no one knows what they stand for. Or maybe they stand for lots of things but too complex and subtle for anyone to bother with. Secondly, they are just somewhere in between Tories and Labour. And that means you don’t need to listen to what they say because you can just take a bit off the edges of Tory and Labour.

Sell it right and this week’s tax policy is the sort of thing that will at least chip away at those preconceptions. Conveniently it may also be right.

The key part is – or should be – the abolition of income tax on the first £10k of earnings. That is a policy which can be sold from the left or the right. And we should do it openly and hard from both angles.

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Tagged , and | 9 Comments
David Pollard

Tory split on climate change

By David Pollard | Wed 2nd December 2009 - 9:02 pm

A pretty comprehensive story in today’s Independent shows how split the Tories are on Copenhagen and climate change policies. The article is refreshing in that it names names, most of whom are the usual right wing suspects. For quite some time Nigel Lawson has been touring the Country pushing his Climate Change denial message and he seems to have drawn some heavyweight Tories with him (if you can call John Redwood, Peter Lilley and Ann Widdicome heavyweight).

David Davis on the other hand in a two column article produces a much more balance view. When you have waded through all …

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Robson Brown

Opinion: One day to save the world

By Robson Brown | Wed 2nd December 2009 - 2:17 pm

December 5th will see the Copenhagen climate change summit get underway, for two weeks of talks that must lead to a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and perhaps something as binding and successful as the 1987 Montreal Protocol that led to the phasing out of harmful CFC and HCFC propellants.

The talks are a long time coming; 2009 is the tail-end of the deadline for agreement already set by world leaders in Bali in 2007.

But we’re already seeing problems with what is being proposed. China and the USA, between them responsible for 42% of the world’s CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, have proposed uninspiring emissions targets based on high 2005 figures, and Barack Obama has raised the possibility that no agreement will be reached.

Frankly, this is unacceptable, and we think it’s time for a bit of old-fashioned co-ordinated civil action to remind world leaders that actually, the people of this planet want to see radical action on a bold, even savage, scale. The time for talking is over – we need firm commitments on what will happen and how, before it’s too late. So why not join us and thousands of others this Saturday to help save the world?

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Also posted in Events | Tagged and | 6 Comments
The Voice

Is the Lib Dem Euro-referendum pledge being dropped?

By The Voice | Tue 1st December 2009 - 4:00 pm

Cast your mind back a few months.  Speaking on Radio 4’s You and Yours on 16th June 2009, Nick Clegg said the only way to sort out the debate about EU membership was to

have a referendum in this country as to whether we stay in or stay out. What we can’t do is to be a member of a club and complain about it from the sidelines.

That Lib Dem policy may have started out as a quick fix to get the party out of a tight spot, but as it’s been stuck to, it’s become seen by many as …

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Also posted in Europe / International | Tagged and | 25 Comments
Chris White

Whitehall whips Wirral in off-the-shelf smackdown

By Chris White | Mon 30th November 2009 - 4:15 pm

There is no local controversy which cannot be worsened by central government intervention.

Not many political parties say much about libraries in their manifestos. And they don’t tend to get raised as an issue on the doorstep – potholes, litter, crime and the level of council tax are much more popular topics.

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Also posted in Local government | 8 Comments
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