Category Archives: Op-eds

Michal Siewniak

An encounter with a refugee from Afghanistan

By Michal Siewniak | Mon 11th October 2021 - 9:02 am

The refugee crisis, ways in which people in often desperate need of help, should be supported, still hugely divides politicians, decision makers, families and our communities.

  • “Welcome or not welcome”?
  • If welcome, how many?
  • Support legitimate governments in war torn countries?
  • Send aid? Where to?
  • Support directly organisations such as British Red Cross?

Endless questions…There is not one easy answer. There is not one solution to solve this complex and global issue. People have always migrated. People will continue to “move around” for a wide range of reasons. Some of us have a choice of going back to our native countries, however many individuals have absolutely no choice. That choice was often taken away from them without their will. The decision to flee was “imposed” on them. Many refugees that I met since I arrived in the UK, often, didn’t want to leave their homes.

In the last week or so, I had another opportunity to meet a refugee, this time from Afghanistan. It is one thing to read a story in the paper or watch a bit of “refugee news” on TV; it really is very different when we encounter someone who had to, often overnight, leave absolutely everything.

Imagine this: it is hard, however you have a job, you work and you are able to support your family. Then, due to “external factors”; sudden change of circumstances, in order to remain safe and alive, you have to flee. You are then “parachuted” into another country, UK in this case. You are moved around; from Birmingham, Croydon, to Hertfordshire. You are given very little support. You have to find your way around a very inhumane and complex system. You might be moved again as your accommodation was given to you on a temporary basis. You have nothing; not even a buggy to move your child around while you are trying to find the best way to stay “sane”. You are tired, confused, bewildered. Endless emails, confused messages; an absolute nightmare. But, you still smile…How? I have no idea. A simple, often emotional conversation, with a real person can hugely change our perceptions on how to support refugees.

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Caron Lindsay

New Fawcett Society report on tackling sexual harassment in the workplace

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 10th October 2021 - 1:30 pm

The Fawcett Society in collaboration with Chwarae Teg, Women’s Resource & Development Agency and Close the Gap has produced a very comprehensive report aimed at giving employers advice about how to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. They will be producing a toolkit for employers in the Spring.

The 113 page report covers how to change the culture of an organisation to show that sexual harassment will not be tolerated, set up reporting mechanisms, how to treat those making reports and how to respond to reports.

Key findings of the report include:

  • At least 40% of women have experienced workplace harassment, and women who are marginalised for other reasons, such as race or disability, face an increased risk and different forms of sexual harassment
  • 45% of women in a recent survey reported experiencing harassment online through sexual messages, cyber harassment and sexual calls
  • Almost a quarter of women who had been sexually harassed said the harassment had increased or escalated since the start of the pandemic while they were working from home
  • Almost seven in ten (68%) disabled women reported being sexually harassed at work, compared to 52% of women in general
  • Ethnic minority workers (women and men) reported higher rates (32%) of sexual harassment than white workers (28%) over the last 12 months
  • A poll of LGBT workers found that 68% had experienced some form of harassment in the workplace

These figures are truly disturbing and show the extent of the problem.

One bisexual woman describes her experience:

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems mark World Mental Health Day

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 10th October 2021 - 12:30 pm

10th October every year is World Mental Health Day.

This is a cause that is very close to Lib Dem hearts. We were talking about it long before it became mainstream. We understand the impact of poor mental health and when Norman Lamb was health minister in England during the coalition years, he did so much to improve access to mental health care, particularly for young people.

In Scotland we have never been lucky enough to have a Health Minister who actually gets it. And things are getting worse.

A GP gave evidence to a Holyrood Committee this week saying that referrals to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service were being rejected.

The feedback is actually very very consistent, that there is a big yawning gap. Obviously GPs offer universal services and holistic care and I think one of the advantages that we have is that we work very closely with our health visitors and our family and it’s often the whole family that are involved when a child or adolescent has a mental health problem.

But the feeling is still that the bar for referrals is very very high. GPs and I include myself in this, say that they will “think three or four times”, and I’m quoting there, before even considering a referral, and we have high levels of referral rejections.

And I think the other thing about referrals is that we know how damaging it can sometimes be to the person referred and their family if they get a rejection because they’ve often tried lots of other things before they get to us.

In a panel on mental health at the joint Scottish and Welsh Conference yesterday, GP and 2022 Council Candidate Drummond Begg talked about the need to prioritise mental health because the brain was the most important organ in the body.

Alex Cole-Hamilton highlighted that over 40,000 calls to a mental health helpline in Scotland were abandoned.

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Tom Arms

World Review: Tensions east, in NATO, in Facebook and in Boris’s Britain

By Tom Arms | Sun 10th October 2021 - 8:30 am

In this weekend’s World Review, Tom Arms comments on the implications of a mutual defence pact between Greece and France for Turkey’s role in NATO. Heading for cooler climes, Covid-19 has reached Antarctica but for those who as destined to suffer or die from malaria in sub-Sharan Africa, a vaccine has been approved for to tackle the disease. Tension are building in the east and Taiwan, China, the US and other countries are in danger of falling into the trap of unintended consequences. Can Facebook be held to account? And how can Boris boast about Britain being one of the world’s wealthiest countries while branding it “broken”?

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Charles Quinn

ALDC by-election report: 7 September 2021

By Charles Quinn | Sat 9th October 2021 - 3:41 pm

The Lib Dems had a fantastic night in Thursday’s by-elections – defending four seats and winning all of them!

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Too Big to Fail

By Tom Arms | Sat 9th October 2021 - 8:30 am

The US Treasury is too big to fail. Failure, however, is a real possibility. In fact, Federal Reserve Bank Chairperson Janet Yellen warned earlier this week that the government would be forced to default on its loans on 18 October unless the self-imposed cap of $28 trillion was raised.

Reluctantly, the Senate voted 48-51 to push up the ceiling by $458 million and postponed decision day to 3 December when battle will be recommenced.

There is a string of dire warnings if the cap is not raised by trillions in the run-up to Christmas. Forty percent of financial aid would be affected which would possibly mean no housing benefits, child benefits, social security, Medicare or Medicaid payments. Federal employees pay would be jeopardised. America’s credit rating would be downgraded. Interest rates would rise affecting mortgages, business loans and credit card payments. Inflation would go up with the obvious impact on prices and pensioners on fixed incomes.

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Caron Lindsay

Scottish Lib Dems call for measures to end the drug deaths emergency

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 8th October 2021 - 8:10 pm

In an emotional debate this afternoon, the Scottish Liberal Democrats passed a motion on ending Scotland’s drugs deaths emergency:

Speaker after speaker talked about the need to see the people not the numbers.

New leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, whose professional life before politics was helping disadvantaged young people, showed how important this issue was to him by proposing the motion. His speech was so effective, compassionate and caring.

Culture spokesperson Joe McCauley talked about the deaths of two of his family members.

https://twitter.com/JoeLibDem/status/1446507206728429573?s=20

It was a such a powerful and emotional speech.

I spoke about my friend Tracy, and her son, Nathan, who died in March at the age of 20 from an overdose of street valium.

It is so important that we reaffirm our commitment to treat drug use as a public health issue, and ensure that people caught in possession of drugs are referred for treatment and help, not put through a justice system that isn’t working.

If the justice system worked to deal with these issues, Nathan would have emerged from court and prison in better shape than he went in.

Just two days before he died, he was arrested. The day before he died, he appeared in court. He wasn’t offered any help with his issues.

Tracy told the Daily Record last month:

I begged police to make interventions with him when he was a teenager, to get him out of the way of drug dealers.
“But the bottom line with them was always the same.
“They never discussed diverting him to treatment or doing anything other than arrest people.”

“I just feel that if we had arrived at where we are today and there were proper professionals who understand trauma able to speak to him, he could have had a fighting chance.”

She feels that if the changes that Dorothy Bain announced last month had been in place a year ago, Nathan would be alive today.

After the motion passed, Alex said:

Scotland has the worst drug mortality in Europe. Nearly four times the rate of our neighbours in England and Wales. We cannot continue to witness this epidemic destroying lives.

“Despite the focus of an entire ministerial portfolio, additional investment and interventions like the rollout of naloxone, people are still dying at the same terrifying rate. That is the legacy of years of prior government inaction.

“Government must be open to learning from international best practice. It is why I have written to the Director General of the WHO to ask for a specialised taskforce, made up of leading experts in drug mortality, to analyse and mobilise against this particularly Scottish epidemic.”

And our spokesperson for the drugs death emergency Ben Lawrie said:

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Mary Reid

A new narrative for community democracy?

By Mary Reid | Thu 7th October 2021 - 11:44 am

Have you noticed the hierarchical language that is often used by public service providers?

Local authorities, and others, are required to ‘engage’ with residents. ‘Citizen empowerment’ is offered as a gift by government.

Even those of us involved in politics fall into the trap and sometimes talk as though it is government that drives society; we talk as though it is government that is the main source of welfare for citizens; and we talk as though it is government that creates successful communities.

We need to turn this on its head. We need to talk instead of government dependent on, and subservient to, the dynamic communities they represent and serve.

As Liberal Democrats we are proud of our practice of community politics. We now need a new narrative of community democracy.

In our personal lives we all know that the things that have the greatest impact on us happen quite independently of local or national government. What matters to us most are our relationships with others, and our interactions with the localities where we live and work.

We must return to a concept of community that has, at its heart, individuals who are free to make and break relationships with each other, individuals who are free to develop roots, as deep or as shallow as they wish, in their local area, and individuals who are free to form local networks based on common interest and common interests. Community democracy grows organically from the natural relationships and networks that already exist in localities.

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In defence of Liberal principles

By John Lawrie | Wed 6th October 2021 - 6:14 pm

At the (virtual) Party Conference at the weekend, a large number of amendments will be proposed to the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ Constitution. Many of these are recommended by a Working Group (of which I was a member) appointed by the Executive. Others are proposed by the Executive themselves, mostly intended to improve or clarify the wording, and largely uncontentious. There is one, however, which was not recommended by the Working Group and which I believe should be strongly opposed.

Since the formation of the Party in 1988, the Constitution has set out the grounds on which a Party Member can be expelled from membership and the procedure by which this can be done. Until 2009, there was no provision for suspending a person’s membership while the grounds for expulsion were investigated or considered. A power to suspend was then inserted into the Constitution, largely because there could be occasions when the Party’s reputation might be at risk if it did not seem to be taking action about something unacceptable. The length of time for which a member can be suspended was limited to three months, after which it must lapse. The concept of “innocent until proved guilty” is an important one to anyone of liberal mind. Suspension, even for a short time, does deprive somebody of their rights and needs to be justified.

The Executive is proposing to Conference to increase the length of time for which a Party Member may be suspended to six months. I understand that the reason arises from our adoption of the Federal Party’s disciplinary process a few years ago. This process was a response to concern about the Party’s handling of complaints of inappropriate behaviour by Party Members, and it can be quite protracted, though cases now average about six weeks.

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The Voice

How do you solve a problem like Dominic Raab?

By The Voice | Wed 6th October 2021 - 1:55 pm

This morning Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary, exposed his own ignorance on live television:

Lib Dem Women and Equalities spokesperson Wera Hobhouse said:

“It’s little wonder the Conservatives are failing to tackle misogyny when their Justice Secretary doesn’t even seem to know what it is.”

“These comments are an insult to the millions of women and girls impacted by misogyny and show just how out of touch the Conservatives are on this issue.

“Women and girls deserve better than these callous remarks. The Government must make misogyny a hate crime so that police forces take these crimes more seriously and support women and girls who are being so desperately let down.”

This is, of course, the very same Dominic Raab who, when Brexit Secretary, said the following:

“We are, and I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and if you look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing.

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Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes…Promises of tax cuts deny reality

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 6th October 2021 - 11:55 am

Rishi Sunak reassured the Conservative Party conference on Monday: ‘Yes, I want tax cuts,’ though not until public finances have been ‘put back on a sustainable footing.’ That’s code for cutting public expenditure and public investment. The substantial proportion of Conservative MPs who believe in a small state repeatedly call for tax cuts without saying where they would cut spending. IN committing to balancing the budget Sunak is committing himself to cutting spending as well – or breaking the manifesto pledge not to raise taxes again. He will be well aware that Republican Administrations in the USA have repeatedly run rising deficits as they cut taxes but failed to cut spending.

Liberal Democrats should resist any temptation to criticise the Conservatives for raising taxes. We should condemn them vigorously for raising taxes unfairly – for hitting lower-paid workers through raising National Insurance while sparing higher earners. Fair taxation has to be progressive taxation, oriented to take more from those who have more. The UK is more sharply unequal in terms of both income and wealth than almost all other developed democracies except the USA. Repeating ‘give us tax cuts and a smaller state’ sweeps aside the social and economic challenges that the UK faces.

Like other developed democracies, we have a rising number of elderly people drawing pensions and using health and other public services. We have cut public spending on education and training well below comparable countries, with results that are apparent in our shortage of skills. We have invested too little in housing and public infrastructure for decades. Transition to a more sustainable economy, including moving toward net zero carbon emissions, will require major public as well as private investment. The UK has also invested much less in scientific research and development than other leading states. Boris Johnson has promised to make us ‘a scientific superpower’, but has not yet explained how that will be funded.

And then there is ‘Levelling Up’, which is becoming the defining measure of Johnsonian government – and the likeliest source of public disillusion at the gap between easy promises and poor delivery. Long-term reduction of regional inequalities cannot be achieved without higher investment in education, local as well as long-distance transport, the revival of local government and public services, housing and local enterprise. That’s a huge agenda, reversing decades of neglect by successive government, and requires a sustained increase in public spending.

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Caron Lindsay

Sexism in the Police force goes way beyond the Met

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 6th October 2021 - 9:02 am

The failings of the Metropolitan Police with regard to the murder of Sarah Everard have been well documented over the past few days. Our Wendy Chamberlain, the only woman in the Commons to have been a serving Police officer, has been absolutely brilliant in highlighting the need for change in the force.

But the institutional sexism goes way beyond the Police. Former Nottinghamshire Chief Constable Sue Fish described yesterday how she didn’t dare report sexual assault by a colleague for fear of the consequences for them and, even more disturbingly she recounted:

that she had a senior colleague that was arrested and jailed for having sex with a “vulnerable” woman during his shift.

She said she would be left, as a young probationary officer, driving a marked car around in circles while her older colleague – nicknamed ‘Pervert’ – would visit the house of a woman he met on the job.

And an employment tribunal has found “horrific” examples of a sexist culture in a Police Scotland armed policing unit. The BBC reports some of the indignities that women officers in that unit had to put up with.

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Six hours without Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – is social media now vital infrastructure?

By Andy Boddington | Tue 5th October 2021 - 10:10 am

Social media is central to our lives. It is arguably essential to our lives. Many of us believe it is helpful to our lives, though some blame it for the evils of the world.

When Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went offline for six hours yesterday, there was immediate outrage about the outage on Twitter but of course the other main social networks had been silenced.

The outage interrupted important council business for me. On the other hand, there were no distractions as I tucked into dinner and prepared for sleep. And I slept well.

Perhaps, we should shut down social media for a whole day a week to give us all a break from the continual stream of contacts. That’s a nice idea. But are we reaching the point that provision of social media has become such a part of our lives that it should be regarded as vital infrastructure? Perhaps it needs a regulator, Offsocial.

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Lin Macmillan

Your bacon sarnie is at risk…

By Lin Macmillan | Mon 4th October 2021 - 2:12 pm

An item on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House yesterday morning put into sharp focus the labour crisis that the UK is currently experiencing. Thousands of piglets may have to be culled because there are not enough workers to process them; vegetables are going to rot in the fields because there insufficient pickers to harvest them (one Gloucestershire farmer has been working with his local Job Centre since July but has not managed to recruit a single person); and, horrors of horrors, a toy company says it may not be able to get its Harry Potter range into Aldi in time for Christmas because of labour shortages at ports and in the haulage industry.

Thinking about this, I came up with a few radical solutions. I don’t expect them to be popular, but then I will use one of the phrases that has been so overused in the last 18 months – extraordinary times call for extraordinary solutions.

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David Boyle

Brain pollution? Are you kidding me?

By David Boyle | Mon 4th October 2021 - 11:35 am

When you use the word ‘independence’ to a UK Liberal, you are liable to get a half-hearted reply.

This is a pity because we don’t usually mean the kind of rugged individualism they assume in the USA – the ‘I did it My Way’ approach to life.

Normally we mean something a little calmer: independence from threats – criminal, medical, governmental or economic – that can undermine so many of our lives, and our ability to live it to the fullest.

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Michal Siewniak

The impact of staff shortages on the UK economy

By Michal Siewniak | Mon 4th October 2021 - 8:57 am

I like my Sunday routine. I am not a coffee drinker, however I enjoy my morning walk to Welwyn Garden City Town Centre and getting my favourite vanilla latte.

In the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that one of my local coffee shops is opening later than usual. I thought that it might be a good idea to ask what causes this late opening. I was told that unfortunately; they are short staffed. This particular outlet recruited two new individuals, however one of them, I was told, resigned very quickly.

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Tom Arms

World Review: Brexit, China, Korean famine and the French at large

By Tom Arms | Sun 3rd October 2021 - 8:28 am

In most China shops I have visited there has been a prominently displayed sign that reads: “If you broke it you own it.” The same sign needs to hang over the door of 10 Downing Street. Boris Johnson led the Brexit campaign. He was elected on a “Get Brexit done” platform. He and his Brexiteering cabinet have broken the British economy with shortages of food, gas, petrol, turkeys and even children’s toys; and yet they refuse to own responsibility for their actions. They blame it on the pandemic and international circumstances. To be fair, the pandemic and world conditions are major contributing factors, but Britain is suffering more than any other Western country and the reasons—as trade association after professional body keeps telling us—is Brexit. The fact is that Johnson and Co had no plan A, B or C beyond the exit door.

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Charles Quinn

ALDC by-election report: 30 September 2021

By Charles Quinn | Sat 2nd October 2021 - 12:10 pm

A very exciting set of by-elections this week with the Lib Dems making some spectacular gains, and coming within a whisker of even more, and sadly also suffering some very narrow losses.

We begin with an agonising near miss in Sunderland where Lib Dem candidate John Lennox was just 27 votes off a stunning win in Hetton ward. The Lib Dems finished 6th in the ward in May’s local elections with 63 votes. This time the Lib Dem team increased their vote to 634 with a 28% swing.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: European Complacency

By Tom Arms | Sat 2nd October 2021 - 8:30 am

Political Complacency is dangerous. It stifles innovation and sweeps problems under the carpet because they involve difficult decisions that might rock the boat but end up sinking it if they are ignored too long.

Angela Merkel was in many ways a good German Chancellor. She was a good European leader. She was a consensus builder inside coalition structures. But her constant search for consensus led her to compromises on important issues which needed to be resolved. This was the downside of an otherwise upbeat chancellorship.

Political agreement resulted in economic prosperity for the Germans—and complacency about the unresolved issues, both in Germany and EU-wide. Her likely successor, Social Democrat Party (SPD) leader Olaf Scholz, appears to be heading the same way with a slight leftward bent.

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Richard Wood

The government is levelling down democracy: we must redouble our electoral reform efforts

By Richard Wood | Fri 1st October 2021 - 7:25 pm
The UK government’s Elections Bill and the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act are part of a clear strategy to entrench Conservative dominance and weaken our democratic foundations.

Rather than merely oppose calls for positive change – such as perpetual Conservative opposition to Proportional Representation and begrudgingly working within the framework of fixed-term parliaments – this government is on the offensive. We must push back against these regressive changes with our positive vision of a fairer, more inclusive and truly representative democracy.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act isn’t perfect but fixing parliamentary term-lengths and election dates created an even playing field for elections. With fixed terms, all parties know when the next election will take place and can plan accordingly, while also allowing flexibility for early elections. The pre-coalition system gave an unfair advantage to the prime minister of the day. If presented with the opportunity, we must reverse this government’s decision to recreate that uneven playing field.

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Miranda Roberts

Sarah Everard: How do we know if police are legit?

By Miranda Roberts | Fri 1st October 2021 - 5:09 pm

Labour MP Jess Phillips said today that she would have got into Police Officer Couzens’ car, just as Sarah Everard did. Phillips said “almost anybody would” and she is right. Most police officers are honest, dedicated public servants who deserve our trust. But the statements by the Met saying that if we feel scared we should ask “very searching questions” and then if we aren’t satisfied scream, run away, flag down vehicles are all missing the point. How should we know when to feel that something isn’t right with an arrest?

Warrant cards differ across the country, so there is no standard design to check for. Police officers can perform arrests when off duty if they feel it’s merited (they are just then classed as going on duty).The lack of uniform, or even what they were doing moments before they stopped you isn’t definitive.

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Caron Lindsay

Dismissing Dysmenorrhea

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 30th September 2021 - 9:01 pm

So, if you have never had bad period pain, how can I convince you that it really is horrible?

You know what bad toothache can be like?

That sort of immersive pain experience that completely consumes you.

There is very little you can do to get relief.  Painkillers barely take the edge off.

Concentrating on anything is virtually impossible.

Thankfully, bad toothache doesn’t come along too often.

But period pain, which is kind of like toothache in the abdomen comes along roughly once a month. I know people who are in absolute agony for a couple of days.

On the Hysteria podcast last week, former White House aide Alyssa Mastramonaco described her lifelong search for the optimum combination of methods of relief for her horrible monthly pain.

When I was a teenager, I used to get such bad pain that I would be sick and sometimes I was at the point of passing out.

This is seriously nasty. And research into alleviating Dysmenorrhea, to give it its medical name, has been relatively sparse and not very well funded.

I was once sent home from school because it was so bad, but I never did that again after getting warned within an inch of my life by my mother.

I was lucky that it got a bit better when I got into my twenties, but some people suffer all the way through their menstruating years.

If you are one of the unlucky ones, you can have 40 years of monthly hell. You have to go through that pain almost 500 times.

It is definitely frowned upon to take time off work for it, although 73% of people surveyed by Bloody Good Period, reported in Glamour Magazine said they had struggled at work because of their periods.

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Michael Meadowcroft

The Party’s crisis

By Michael Meadowcroft | Thu 30th September 2021 - 1:59 pm

The global political situation, with the rise of populism and nationalism, and the domestic political scene, with a Conservative government trampling on democratic values with impunity, is crying out for the powerful advocacy of Liberalism. The huge problem is that in Britain there is currently no relevant political organisation that encompasses and promotes Liberalism. The Liberal Democrats have sunk to such a level that the party is incapable of recovering to become the political force that the vacuum in our politics demands without first developing a topical and substantial statement of Liberal philosophy to unite around and to promote, and then adopting a dedicated and well-funded strategy to revive the hordes of derelict constituency associations.

The recent document “What Liberal Democrats believe” is a start but it fails to link the philosophy with relevant recent history and lacks the vital context of the current political situation. Its narrative is inconsistent and needs developing to provide a real Liberal vision that will inspire. Alas it merited a mere fifty minute debate at the recent conference (the previous equivalent debate aeons ago was allocated a complete half day!) and significantly the three working parties for which the Federal Policy Committee recently invited participation did not include one for the development of the philosophy statement.

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Lord William Wallace

Lord William Wallace writes….News from the front of the Culture War

By Lord William Wallace | Thu 30th September 2021 - 11:55 am

It’s worth reading the right-wing media to try to understand where the policies our opponents are advancing come from. In the Sunday Telegraph some weekends ago Simon Heffer was encouraging Michael Gove to continue to fight ‘the Blob’, which for Heffer includes the staff of the NHS as well as school and university teachers, most civil servants and others in the public sector, theatres, museums and charities, the BBC (of course), and the clergy of the Church of England – a large chunk of our population, possibly even a majority of its university graduates. On September 26th Eric Kaufmann warned the Telegraph’s elderly readers that ‘Britain’s education system and cultural institutions have succeeded in shaping the worldview of millenials, which will make conservatism unelectable.’ The task for Conservatives is therefore ‘to change the direction of the culture’ before too many young people have been indoctrinated by ‘woke’ radicals.

Robert Shrimsley’s Op-Ed in the Financial Times in July was headlined ‘Tory culture war is fight for a new establishment.’ He notes that ideological Tories realise that ‘the Conservatives have lost the establishment and with it many of the shapers of society’s values’. He adds the judiciary and big business to their perceived progressive ‘blob’. He discerns ‘an attempt to create an alternative establishment, … that much of what happens in society happens outside of government and in places where conservatives feel outnumbered.’

The struggle to regain ground stretches from reorienting the BBC, through reshaping cultural institutions through public appointments, to bringing Britain’s universities under tighter control. The appointment of Nadine Dorries as Culture Secretary demonstrates that public appointments will be a central focus for coming battles. The next chairs of OFCOM, of the Charity Commission, of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and others will be chosen with careful regard to their ‘anti-woke’ stance. The Equalities Commission and the Office for Students have already been reoriented; British Museum trusteeships have been fought over, and other similar bodies closely examined.

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Steve Trevethan

Whither the Weather? Whither our World?

By Steve Trevethan | Thu 30th September 2021 - 10:25 am

Awareness and lack of effective action concerning global warming are not new. In 1896 Savante Arrenhuis suggested that fossil fuels would raise the World’s temperature. In the 50s and 60s Messrs. Callendar, Plass and Keeling proved this.

We need to grasp and manage the actual and possible causes of this concern and the lack of effective responses. They include:

• Effects of fossil fuels
• Lack of neutral and benign alternatives to fossil fuels
• International conflicts
• Economic and accountancy theory and practices
• Preoccupations with dominance

Fossil fuels pollute the air with the harmful chemicals which their combustion produces. They pollute water in their production and use. Methane and carbon dioxide emissions trap heat in the atmosphere.

Fossil fuels have been the main energy source due to their relatively low price, the existence of an infrastructure based upon them and habit. Replacing this infrastructure is money, effort, attitude and time expensive but reduces pollution. It may increase local employment, greater locality independence and initiatives. Whisky is one of them!

In the shorter term, fossil fuels are cheaper in money and easier to use, but in the longer term they are fatally expensive in resources.

All costings are flawed without considerations of opportunity costs. Opportunity cost is the lost benefit derived from an option not chosen. In which avoidable ways have we spent money which could have been better spent correcting global warming?

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The Voice

Willie Rennie highlights impact of Universal Credit cut

By The Voice | Thu 30th September 2021 - 8:55 am

This week, the Scottish Parliament debated the £20 per week cut to Universal Credit that will be hitting already struggling families from tomorrow.

Willie Rennie highlighted the number of families on Universal Credit in the constituencies of Scotland’s Conservative MPs in his speech.

He also set out how some families, affecting up to 8000 children, would lose much more. If their entitlement to Universal Credit is £20 or less, then they lose entitlement to so many other benefits, including the Scottish Child Payment. A briefing from the Child Poverty Action Group explains:

Mhari is 23. She and her partner have a two year old son. Mhari works part-time and her partner works full time at the National Minimum Wage, earning just over £1900 between them. They get £19.45 per week from universal credit (UC) and are entitled to £10 per week Scottish Child Payment. If UC is cut by £20 per week they will lose entitlement to both their UC support and Scottish Child Payment. This means their household income will drop by £1531 per year. They will lose an £18 every four weeks Best Start Foods payment card and they will not be entitled to the Best Start Grant early learning payment, worth £250, when their two year old turns three.

This highlights that for some families the £20 cut to UC will result in a much larger loss in overall household income.

Here is Willie’s speech in full:

Andrew Bowie has 3,620, David Mundell has 6,050, David Duguid has 6,280, John Lamont has 7,150, Alister Jack has 8,190 and Douglas Ross has 6,110. Those are the numbers of families in those politicians’ constituencies who will be directly impacted by the cuts to universal credit. The politicians can stand by and watch that happen to their constituents or they can stand up for them now, make their voices heard and, more important, make their votes count against the cut.

The measure could mean a £1,040 cut to people’s income or 22,000 people being plunged into poverty across the UK, according to the Child Poverty Action Group. The £20 is not a treat; it is a necessity for families, whose costs continue to rise. Their costs have not gone down just because the impact of the virus is potentially waning. Their costs are going up and at such a time they need more support, not less.

The Trussell Trust is right to point out that the move could force 82,000 people in Scotland alone to use food banks, one in four people to skip a meal, one in five to be unable to heat their home and one in five to be unable to get to work. That is especially ironic because, apparently, the cut is designed to get people into work. If they cannot get to work, they will not earn any more money than they are earning now.

The Conservatives seem to be concerned about the cost of the £20 rise to the overall Exchequer, but they have also said that work is the best route out of poverty. If they had any confidence in their multibillion-pound so-called work plan, they would not be cutting universal credit, because if all those people went into better-paid work there would not be a demand on universal credit. Therefore, their plan does not work.

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Caron Lindsay

How on earth were the red flags around Sarah Everard’s murderer missed?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 29th September 2021 - 9:03 pm

When I first read the horrific account of Sarah Everard’s murder as it was revealed in court this morning, I felt sick, and, several hours later, that queasiness remains.

My heart breaks for her family who have to live with that awful reality every single day. I have nothing but admiration for them that they were able to put together such articulate, raw victim impact statements which show the strength of their love for Sarah and the daily hell they endure at the thought of the torture she went through as her life was taken from her.

It takes incredible self control to be able to stand in a court room, facing your daughter’s or sister’s murderer and not fall to bits.

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Hina Bokhari

London Liberal Democrats call for action on cladding

By Hina Bokhari | Tue 28th September 2021 - 12:42 pm

Rightly, we expect Government to step in when the market has gone wrong. Through regulation or remediation, the state is there to protect its citizens.

And yet millions of leaseholders are being horribly let down by the Government. A government which is letting developers off the hook.

The Government and developers have now known for over four years that homes are unsafe – not just with dangerous cladding, but with all sorts of other fire risks which have been identified – and not just on high rise blocks, as I know too well from the local Worcester Park fire in my local area back in 2019 in which 23 low rise flats were destroyed by fire within minutes.

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Mark Valladares

Today, lorry drivers, tomorrow?…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 27th September 2021 - 5:05 pm

And so the Government have announced a temporary visa scheme for lorry drivers, intended to avert an emerging crisis in the run-up to Christmas. It’s probably a bit late for Fireworks Night, but will it have any significant impact in the now less than three months until Christmas?

That’s going to depend on a number of factors;

  • Cost – are these visas going to be free? Because, if there is a shortage of drivers across Europe and beyond, the market will determine whether or not an individual driver will choose to work here rather than in, say, Germany. The cost of a visa is a factor in that calculation, especially for a short term opportunity – the visas will only cover the period until 24 December, according to reports.
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Michal Siewniak

What next for the UK HGV drivers’ industry?

By Michal Siewniak | Mon 27th September 2021 - 3:32 pm

The madness continues. Some politicians, including my own MP, Grant Shapps, said that Brexit is not to blame for the lorry driver crisis. Moreover, Mr Shapps said that Brexit helped to “provide a solution” to the crisis. Am I crazy or is he living on a different planet?

In the last couple of days, the Road Haulage Association said that what our Transport Minister perceives as a “success” is in actual fact quite the opposite, “illogical”. I would go further that that; it is incomprehensible. Is Mr Shapps living in some sort of denial?

The Office for National Statistics claims that …

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