Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #512

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 25th March 2018 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 512th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (18-24 March, 2018), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

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The Voice

WATCH: Brake: The British people are entitled to the truth

By The Voice | Sun 25th March 2018 - 10:25 am

In a video this morning, Lib Dem Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake revealed that he had reported the alleged collaboration between Vote Leave and BeLeave to the Police and that he would be raising this in Parliament tomorrow.

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Michael Berwick-Gooding

How can we make sure families have enough to live on?

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Sun 25th March 2018 - 8:55 am

On the Six O’clock News on BBC1 on Thursday there was a report on children living in poverty.

Mark who is a single dad is not working so I suppose we should expect him and his children to be living in poverty. He lost £340 a month because of the benefit cap. It is our policy to abolish the benefit cap but that is not enough to remove Mark and his family out of poverty.

The report correctly states that those who work more than 15 hours are not subject to the benefit cap. Therefore the problem must be the level of benefits.

Corey is working being paid the minimum wage but he and his partner Danielle and their children are living in poverty.

The report states that Corey some months receives no Universal Credit because he can receive two lots of wages in a month. I assume he must be being paid every 4 weeks. On the government web site it states, “If you’re paid weekly, every 2 weeks or every 4 weeks, you’ll receive more than one set of wages during some assessment periods. This means your earnings might be too high for Universal Credit. You’ll be told if they are and whether you’ll need to reapply to continue to get Universal Credit”.

This is a madness. Surely Universal Credit should be paid on the assumption you receive the same amount of wages each week and then if you earn more for a particular week then the amount is adjusted downwards for that week which is being paid on the day of the month allocated to that claimant, but that you don’t end up with no benefit just because there are two pay days in one calendar month.

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Caron Lindsay

“I know that Vote Leave cheated” – should be a game changer but will it make a difference?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 24th March 2018 - 10:12 pm

In case you missed it, here’s the shocking video on Channel 4 News tonight where a young man who campaigned to Leave alleges that the Leave campaign overspent.

This young man, Shahmir Sanni, has complained at being outed by a former Vote Leave campaigner who now works in Downing Street.

There’s more in the Guardian:. The controversy centres on a donation to BeLeave, an organisation targeting young people run by former Liberal Democrat Darren Grimes.

What he has spent months coming to terms with is that this donation may not have had anything to do with BeLeave’s creativity and flair. “Vote Leave didn’t really give us that money,” he says. “They just pretended to. We had no control over it. We were 22-year-old students. You’re not going to just give nearly a million pounds to a pair of students and let them do whatever.”

To Sanni’s mind, what this means is: “They cheated.”

With this on top of the Cambridge Analytica stuff, the legitimacy of the referendum result must be called into question.

Tom Brake said tonight:

These allegations are stunning and touch directly on one of Theresa May’s closest advisors.

The British people expect fair play and campaigns to abide by the rules – they must not be cheated. These allegations must be examined by the police. If they represent what happened it is outrageous and shameful.

The referendum had a very narrow outcome. One of the biggest exercises in democracy must not turn out to be one of Britain’s biggest electoral frauds.

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NewsHound

Jo Swinson on leadership, the importance of humility and meeting a hero

By NewsHound | Sat 24th March 2018 - 11:30 am

This afternoon, Jo Swinson will be speaking at the “Aye Write” book festival in Glasgow.

Ahead of that, she gave a long interview to the Sunday Herald. Here are some of the highlights:

She talked about how the author of the book she had requested as a prize at school had got in touch with her:

When Jo Swinson was a teenager, studying at Douglas Academy in Milngavie, she was awarded the Senior Dux prize for achievement, and was given a trophy plus a book of her choice. What she opted for, as she describes in her book Equal Power: And How You Can Make It Happen, was a popular title by Kate White, a journalist who would later go on to edit Cosmopolitan. It was called Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead But Gutsy Girls Do.

Swinson croons her enthusiasm when I mention the book. Recently, she tells me, she gave it a mention in a World Book Day article and as a result the author got in touch with her. “I’m just so over the moon about this,” says Swinson. “I got this email from her last week, out of the blue, saying I’m so touched that this book made such an impact. She said she’d like to meet up for a coffee. I’m so beside myself with excitement that I’ll have to try not to be a dreadful fan girl.”

She also explained why she had not gone for the Lib Dem leadership last year.

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Helen Flynn

What Liberals need to do for the ‘left behind’

By Helen Flynn | Sat 24th March 2018 - 8:58 am

‘Left behind’ is a relatively new term to describe communities in the UK who have, economically speaking, fallen behind the more prosperous parts of the country.  The reasons for this socio-economic phenomenon are varied, but amongst them are: de-industrialisation; the effects of globalisation; and power that is over-centralised to Westminster.

As Liberals, why should we care about the left behind?  Some may argue it is because there were large numbers of voters in these communities, generally speaking, who voted to leave the EU (though whether it was anything to do with the EU is arguable).  Therefore, getting them ‘on side’ would increase our chances of an ‘exit from Brexit’.

However, as Liberals who fundamentally care about social justice, we should now be responding urgently to these communities, as these are the very people who stand to gain the most from Liberal policies.  Liberal values are at the heart of progressive policies that respect and value the individual, regardless of background and personal characteristics, and seek to maximise opportunities for all, so that it is not only the individual who gains, but whole communities and ultimately the country.  By targeting the ‘left behind’ we can move society on more significantly than by targeting any other group.

Paul Hindley, in his chapter in the SLF’s most recent publication Four Go In Search Of Big Ideas, makes an eloquent case for a new system of social rights, that at this moment in time, would give the ‘left behind’ a stake in our society, some dignity, and hope. As he says:

The intractable problem of our political age is: how do liberals and progressives reach out to left behind communities? How do we defuse populism, tackle economic inequality and revive a positive sense of community in the age of Brexit and identity politics? If liberals cannot reach out to the most deprived and alienated communities, to the places that most need social justice, then there will be no meaningful future for progressive politics.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: Brexiters wanted to take back control but we risk losing control of Ireland

By NewsHound | Fri 23rd March 2018 - 1:30 pm

Nick Clegg has been in Ireland this week talking about Brexit with fellow Remainers Michael Heseltine and Andrew Adonis.

In his iPaper column, he talks about the massive problems Brexit will cause.

We also share responsibility for a precious peace in Northern Ireland. But too many ministers, including the Prime Minister, have treated these obligations as inconvenient obstacles on the way to the hardest of Brexits. It was the same situation during the referendum, when leading Brexiteers were quick to dismiss any concerns about the Irish border. But there is no avoiding the obvious consequences of the British government’s determination to interpret the 2016 referendum result as a mandate to take the UK out of the Single Market and the Customs Union. Doing so will see a land border created between the EU and the UK for the first time, and if the tariffs, standards and regulations adopted by the UK diverge from that of the EU, then a working border, with customs checks, will be unavoidable.

So how do we get out of it? Parliament, Nick says, can vote it down, but some people just shouldn’t bother turning up because they just won’t help:

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Caron Lindsay

Review: Read Towards a Liberal Future by David Howarth and Bernard Greaves

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 23rd March 2018 - 11:55 am

In his conference speech, Vince Cable talked about having a party “fizzing with ideas.” But to be able to present a liberal vision with liberal ideas, you have to have a clear understanding of liberal values and of how they should be applied in every area of our lives. In Towards a Liberal Future, David Howarth and Bernard Greaves set out their view of what liberalism is all about. They look at how the party has failed to practice and communicate its core values and set out how we can fix this. I’m very excited to say that they have allowed us to share their book with you here.

The authors have a long history in the Party. It’s nearly 40 years since Bernard Greaves co-wrote “The Theory and Practice of Community Politics” and 10 years since he co-wrote “The Theory and Practice of Community Economics.” David Howarth is a former Liberal Democrat MP and Councillor who has returned to the academic life since he stepped down from Parliament. More recently, he’s developed the idea of Core Vote Strategy with Mark Pack and it’s no surprise that that plays a part in the book’s strategy for our recovery.

Vince seems to take the implied criticism in their analysis of how we got to where we are on the chin in his foreword to the book:

It starts from the proposition that the party has ‘lost its way’ producing an incoherent mixture of ‘local champions and national pragmatists’ (the latter, presumably including me, being the people who went into Coalition).

It seeks to revive the party’s long term vision and, in my view, does so brilliantly.

The authors don’t merely blame the coalition for our demise. That, they argued, started with the concentration purely on winning local elections without a national over-arching vision.

From where it all went wrong, Howarth and Greaves take us through a definition of liberal values and some examples of how we could translate them into various policy areas. 

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Claire Turner

Who knew knocking on strangers’ doors could be such fun?

By Claire Turner | Fri 23rd March 2018 - 10:25 am

“I don’t mind delivering leaflets, but I wouldn’t want to do canvassing.” My thoughts exactly, a few months ago. I joined the Lib Dems in the aftermath of the EU referendum, determined to do something to demonstrate my frustration at the direction the Tory Government was leading us. Delivering leaflets was a positive activity and in the excitement of the 2017 General Election, I felt I was doing my bit. But over time, it has become clear that the task to influence public opinion and make the Government take notice of the 48% is huge. The leaflets were great, but I couldn’t help wondering how many of them went straight in the recycling bin. What could I do that would make more impact with my time?

I began to wonder again about canvassing. Research shows that people are 20% more likely to vote if they have been visited by a canvasser: even a just a smile and a friendly greeting is enough to make a difference. But I was worried about what it would be like. Would I be on the receiving end of angry householders determined to give me chapter and verse of their views, or would there be endless doors slammed in my face? Eventually, I summoned up some courage and went along to an action day to find out.

I was surprised to find how pleasant the experience was. When I arrived, I was paired up with an experienced canvasser and we went to each house together. We only called at houses where previous canvassing had shown that the owners were open to voting Lib Dem, which meant that we had a friendly reception at nearly every house. There was a list of questions to ask, depending on how much the householder wanted to chat: a surprising number were happy to stand on the doorstep and tell us their concerns about the local area and Brexit. It was fascinating to find out what people thought and how they saw the local scene and the national picture. When we found someone who was willing to join the mailing list, have a stakeboard in their garden or even become a volunteer, it was a cause for celebration! At the end of the morning, we all gathered at a pub for lunch and to share our stories. After that, I was keen to have a list of my own to do.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Facebook faces the music

By Tom Arms | Fri 23rd March 2018 - 8:55 am

Facebook’s stated mission is “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

It also has an unstated mission: To make a shedload of money.

It is incredibly successful at both.

There are 2.2 billion active Facebook users.  Mark Zuckerberg is worth $67.7 billion.

But the rest of society is discovering that there is a price to be paid in invasion of privacy and erosion of political liberties.

The problem is that the posted holiday snaps, political opinions and declarations of love don’t belong to you.  They belong to Facebook who run the data through clever algorithms  to work out just what you are likely to want to buy. They sell that analysis to advertisers who use the information to micro-target consumers on Facebook.

No longer do advertisers have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a page in a glossy magazine to reach 200,000 users of which possibly only two percent will be interested in their product. They now pay a fraction of the old price to reach 200,000 Facebook users whose information  that they entered on their  Facebook page reveals them as a prime target.

What is wrong with that? Advertisers reach a highly targeted international market which opens the possibility of global trade  while consumers are offered the opportunity to buy the sort of goods and services they want at the best possible price.

That must be a good thing. Yes it is. Unfortunately it does not stop there.

Enter Cambridge academic Professor Aleksandr Koga and Cambridge-based digital analytical firm Cambridge Analytica. Dr Koga, a psychology professor who invented an app which extracted information on 250,000 Facebook users AND all of their connections—a total of 50,000,000 Facebook users. He said he wanted the information to produce psychological profiles.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems GAIN a Council seat in Aylesbury

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 23rd March 2018 - 7:32 am

Good news from Aylesbury where new Cllr Waheed Raja gained the Central and Walton ward from the Conservatives.

We actually lost this ward by a single vote back in 2011. It’s great to see Waheed and the team win it back with a really good swing.

During my long time in the East Midlands, I knew that Worksop was not exactly a Lib Dem hotspot, so it was good to see a respectable result from a standing start for Leon Duveen in the Worksop South East ward:

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Tahir Maher

Has social media compromised liberty?

By Tahir Maher | Thu 22nd March 2018 - 5:12 pm

Do we lose the right to privacy when we involve ourselves in social media? The obvious answer to this question is “of course not” and that should be the case, but is it?

Facebook, a business that started around 2004, has announced it has over half of all internet users in the world on it; in six years Twitter had over 100 million users. Recently, the US State Department asked Twitter not to carry out regular maintenance during the recent demonstrations in Iran as information was being disseminated through Twitter. A similar use was made of Facebook during the uprising in Egypt. Social media platforms on the face of it can be a profoundly pro-liberty force. John Stuart Mill wrote about liberty as freedom not only from coercion by the government but also from the constraints of social conventions, so is social media the answer?

Unfortunately, social media companies focus really on advertising. Google, for example, generates 23% of all US advertising revenue, more than twice that of all print media. The ever-increasing user base of social networking sites tends to require your name, date of birth, and in many cases education and employment details. Many identity thieves tend to hack their victim’s email accounts by simply using the personal information available from such sites and, for example, use the “Forget Password” facility or get access using spyware. Selling data to advertisers is lucrative and this is being done by social media companies and unscrupulous people.

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Kirsten Johnson

The dire state of mental health services

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 22nd March 2018 - 12:32 pm

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s recent report on mental health provision is damning.

Titled Maintaining momentum: driving improvements in mental health care, Rob Behrens’ analysis confirms what we already know: mental health services are in crisis and people are suffering and dying because of it.

The case studies are harrowing. Mr Behrens’ says:

The cases highlighted in this report starkly illustrate the human cost of service failures. These cases are not isolated examples. They are symptomatic of persistent problems we see time and again in our complaints casework and, moreover, they represent failings throughout the care pathway.

In the most severe cases,

…

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The Voice

Lib Dems: Universal Credit could lead to up to 1.3 million evictions

By The Voice | Thu 22nd March 2018 - 11:00 am

New data released yesterday by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) reveals that only 6% of Universal Credit claimants in the private rented sector have their rent paid directly to their landlords, compared to 35% in the socially rented sector .

This is despite calls by Liberal Democrat DWP spokesperson Stephen Lloyd to make payments to landlords default. Lloyd has argued that maintaining the status quo will lead to many of the 1.3 million benefit claimants in the private rented sector being evicted, and potentially made homeless.

According to the Residential Landlords Association, 73% of landlords still lack confidence in renting to tenants on Universal Credit due to uncertainty that they will be able to recover rent arrears, while 38% have already experienced UC tenants going into arrears.

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Kirsten Johnson

Bercow, Ten Years On – the #SLCN campaign

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 22nd March 2018 - 8:20 am

I CAN, the children’s communication charity, and The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists have launched Bercow: Ten Years On. This report delves into the support, or lack of support, children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) receive in England.

Over 2,500 people were consulted about speech and language therapy provision for children and young people. Only 15% thought that adequate speech and language therapy is provided.

Why is this a liberal issue? Well, we advocate free speech, in its many forms, one of which is oral. If we do not help children and young people with speech and language difficulties, they face a lifetime of communication hindrance.

We, as Lib Dems, also want to give children the best start in life. We are behind free school meals, the Pupil Premium and shared parental leave, so we should also get behind the call to improve speech and language services so that these children can better engage with education, more easily make friends and have communication skills for life.

Only 50% of children and young people with speech and language communication difficulties are identified. So one of the calls in this report is for early diagnosis and early intervention.

I was surprised to learn that 60% of young offenders in England have been found to have speech and language communication needs. With early intervention, many of these young people would not have communication difficulties.

Some of the recommendations of what must be done to improve the situation at a local and national level address social mobility:

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The Voice

Lloyd: Government must delay “horror” changes to mortgage support

By The Voice | Wed 21st March 2018 - 9:15 pm

Support for Mortgage Interest is a benefit given to people claiming Universal Credit or certain other income-related benefits who have a mortgage or who have taken out loans to make repairs to their home. It pays for the cost of interest on up to £200,000 of a person’s mortgage in order to prevent claimants from defaulting on their mortgage.

From next month, SMI will be replaced by a loan of the same value, which is repaid (with interest) when the property is sold.

It’s pretty cheap, as benefits go, costing the Government around £300 million a year. It is certainly about 3.5 times cheaper than letting someone’s home be repossessed and then having to pay housing benefit to put that household in the rented sector.

Apart from the whole principle being flawed, the implementation seems to have been botched as only around 10,000 of the eligible families have taken up the loan. Some people haven’t even been sent the information about it so that they can make an informed choice about whether to take the loan.

Our Work and Pensions spokesperson Stephen Lloyd said the whole thing was a horror and called for implementation to be delayed.

Every month we seem to be hearing yet more examples of this Conservative government being both mean-spirited and unintelligent; this mortgage interest benefit change is a classic example. It will force some homeowners into even more debt, and will force others to sell their homes putting themselves at the mercy (and cost) of their local council’s housing department. Which, naturally, will cost the taxpayer more in housing benefit than keeping them in their own house by paying mortgage interest payments. An absolutely ridiculous decision.

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Lib Dem Immigrants

The party’s immigration consultation: Liberalism deserves better

By Lib Dem Immigrants | Wed 21st March 2018 - 5:45 pm

Liberal Democrat Immigrants exists to represent those members of the Liberal Democrats who have chosen to come to live in the UK from elsewhere. It also seeks to represent the interests of immigrants to the UK in general and to highlight those issues that disproportionately affect immigrants.

The challenge for Liberal Democrats should not be “how do we make a broken and inhumane system work a little bit less badly?”, but how we discard the broken system and in its place build something better, so that Britain can reclaim the reputation of an island of hope and welcome.

As you may have seen, the party is asking for members’ opinions on immigration. As Lib Dem Immigrants, we are fully committed to a liberal immigration policy. This should have been great news.

Sadly, on reading the consultation document, all that excitement faded, to be replaced with frustration at the nitpicky, timid mess of leading questions.

  • Expecting current policy and structures to be made fit for purpose with the barest of tweaks.
  • Failing to distinguish between actual problems and perceived problems — and naively assuming that addressing perceived problems with more “robust” policy will somehow placate tabloid-fuelled xenophobia. (hint: it won’t).
  • Focusing almost entirely on the benefits of immigration to the host country and barely at all on the benefits to the immigrants and their families.
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Tahir Maher

Euratom was not on the ballot paper

By Tahir Maher | Wed 21st March 2018 - 4:00 pm

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The Treaties of Rome of 1957 founded the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) to create a European market for nuclear power. Its membership includes EU member states and has cooperation agreements with third-party countries like Canada, the US, South Africa.

In its Brexit White Paper that invokes Article 50, the UK will be leaving Euratom. Euratom is legally distinct from the EU but is governed by EU institutions and therefore this UK Government is …

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Mary Reid

Are you wearing odd socks today?

By Mary Reid | Wed 21st March 2018 - 12:52 pm

Today is World Down Syndrome Day and this year across the world people are wearing odd socks to celebrate difference. So if you got dressed this morning before you realised, then maybe you can change one of those socks when you get home? #lotsofsocks, #WDSD18.

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Tom Morrison

The Liberal Democrats must own the Northern Powerhouse 

By Tom Morrison | Wed 21st March 2018 - 11:16 am

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I was delighted to chair Liberal Reform’s panel discussion at Spring Conference with Wera Hobhouse MP, Laura Gordon (PPC for Sheffield Hallam) and Stephen Smith (Transport for the North). The debate explored the opportunities, threats and politics surrounding the Northern Powerhouse agenda and how the Liberal Democrats should take on the challenge of owning the agenda going forward.

The statistics speak for themselves: as a region, the North has an economic worth of around £304bn and would be the 10th largest economy in Europe if it were a single city. However, the region is grossly underperforming and whilst the initial objectives of the Northern Powerhouse agenda was to rebalance the UK economy, since Theresa May’s election as Prime Minister the Conservatives seemed to have cooled on this subject.

Elsewhere, Labour is nowhere. Calling the Northern Powerhouse a “toxic brand”, Labour’s devolution spokesperson Jim McMahon has offered very little on how the North can grow.

It was only last week that Ed Cox resigned as the Director of the IPPR North and stated that, “neither of the mainstream Westminster parties have properly grasped the critical importance of devolution in unlocking the nation’s potential and their own attempts to govern”.

It is clear that the Liberal Democrats are the only party with the know-how to deliver true economic growth and devolution to the North.

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Diane Reddell

How the Access Fund can help you to attend Conference

By Diane Reddell | Wed 21st March 2018 - 9:58 am

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The Liberal Democrats and its members are like the fans of North East football teams – passionate, hopeful, want their team to succeed and aspire to be number one.  In addition to this they have good networks, a sense of community (both have a social endeavour to collect for their local foodbank) and are willing to help each other out if a crisis occurs.  They are resilient, similar to the Liberal Democrat membership.

North East fans are welcoming (unless it’s a local derby!) like the Liberal Democrats when new members join the party and attend conference for the first time with their first timer events.

Both, North East football team fans and the Liberal Democrat membership have had a rollercoaster ride with the highs – promotion and increasing number of MPs to share a place in Government, and lows in recent years – relegation, losing MP seats and have had a few changes in Leadership.  Despite these lows both have been resilient and have had a fighting spirit.

The Liberal Democrats would love you to support them on campaigns, vote for them, join them and perhaps become a councillor or MP for them.  In particular, the Liberal Democrats would like people with disabilities, people from BAME, LGBT+, unemployed and low wage people backgrounds to come to conference and let their voices and votes be heard to create policies which will empower their lives.

The Liberal Democrats have set up the Access to Conference Fund to help with the costs of attending conference. I had help from the Access to Conference fund to allow me to pay for my support worker costs to attend conference to listen to the debates and take part in several fringe events.  Hopefully, at the next conference I will be able to get on stage to speak for a motion.  I need to get the mechanics planned properly.

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Lee Dargue

Mental Health is not a finished campaign – we need you more than ever.

By Lee Dargue | Tue 20th March 2018 - 11:55 am

I was excited to be speaking with many of our dedicated members, and many energised new members at the fantastic conference in Southport this past weekend. To my joy, I found that mental health is still very much a key focus for our Party.

In Coalition, thanks to Norman Lamb, Paul Burstow before him, and Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister, government finally had a focus on Mental Health – something shamefully ignored by previous governments. We introduced the first ever waiting times for some areas of mental health, and enshrined “parity of esteem” in law – the requirement for the NHS to give equal consideration to mental and physical health when offering treatment.

Despite some light words from the Prime Minister, since the Lib Dems left office, mental health – as with the NHS and social care in general – has not had the proper funding it requires. This means the waiting times aren’t being met and the 2020 target is likely impossible to meet.

Daisy Cooper put forward a great motion to celebrate the NHS at 70 at Conference. Speakers followed with passionate stories about their call for the NHS to be protected and given the funding to fulfil its obligations. Indeed, only the LibDems are being honest about adding 1p to income tax in order to plug this funding gap, before seeking to introduce a dedicated Health and Care tax in the future.

Norman Lamb spoke with passion on how it’s an outrage for mental health to still be the Cinderella of our health service. Mohsin Khan talked about the horrors of people being sent hundreds of miles away from their homes just to gain a bed for treatment. Daisy then reminded us how the Lib Dems are the Party of the NHS.

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The Voice

Wera Hobhouse’s bill could see 2 year prison sentence for upskirting

By The Voice | Tue 20th March 2018 - 10:25 am

Wera Hobhouse has revealed further details of her bill to outlaw upskirting. Offenders could end up with 2 years in prison.

From the Evening Standard:

Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, who tabled the Bill, said changing the current law to make it easier to prosecute would allow the law to “catch up with technology”.

It could also mean that members of the paparazzi would be prosecuted for taking shots of celebrities where their underwear is deliberately shown

The move comes after data published by the Press Association last month revealed girls as young as ten among the alleged victims who have been targeted in public locations such as restaurants and festivals….

 …Ms Hobhouse said: “It is, on the face of it, a vile, discriminating and outrageous practice. I personally have not – fortunately – had this unpleasant experience, but it is just outrageous, it is humiliating for anybody who has that happen to them and it has a deep impact on them.”It is so obviously in your face a wrong thing and yet our law has not kept up with this practice.”

Wera is asking supporters to contact their MP to ask them to support her Bill:

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Caron Lindsay

The Democratic primary for New York Governor just got interesting

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 20th March 2018 - 8:55 am

The collision of two of my favourite worlds will keep me well occupied until June 26th when the Democrats choose their candidate for New York Governor.  Yesterday, Cynthia Nixon, who played my favourite character in Sex and the City, Miranda Hobbes, announced her candidacy with a  very effective video.

The Democrats already hold the seat, of course. Andrew Cuomo seeks his third term and won in 2014 with 54% of the vote in the General Election. He is the obvious frontrunner to fight again for the Democrats with, at the moment, a fairly massive lead over all-comers. From the New York Times:

Ms. Nixon, 51, has never before run for elected office and has chosen a huge undertaking for her first bid: seeking to unseat a two-term incumbent (and son of a three-term governor) who is sitting atop more than $30 million in campaign cash. “Our leaders are letting us down,” she says in a video posted on Twitter, talking about the inequities in New York spliced between images of her walking on the streets of New York City and taking the subways. “Something has to change,” she says in the ad. “We want our government to work again, on health care, ending mass incarceration, fixing our broken subway. We are sick of politicians who care more about headlines and power than they do about us. It can’t just be business as usual anymore.”

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Mark Valladares

Brexit: concessions to the left of us, concessions to the right of us…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 19th March 2018 - 3:20 pm

So, a big announcement, with the outline of a transitional deal. The highlights;

  • The transition period will end on 31 December 2020, three months earlier than sought
  • EU citizens arriving during the transition period will have the same rights as those already in the U.K. at 29 March 2019
  • No veto on new EU legislation during the transition period – the “vassal state” clause
  • Gibraltar excluded unless Spain can be persuaded to reach an agreement
  • No repatriation of control over fishing quotas

So, what does this mean for the Conservatives or for the United Kingdom? Good deal, bad …

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Chris Bowers

Thinking the unthinkable is fun and might just lead us somewhere interesting

By Chris Bowers | Mon 19th March 2018 - 10:32 am

Have you ever wondered if there’s a policy the Lib Dems could be promoting that simply isn’t part of the political landscape? One that doesn’t fall under economics, health, education, environment or any of the traditional categories of modern-day politics?

This question was raised during the ‘Radical Liberalism’ fringe meeting held in Southport last weekend, which was part of the Social Liberal Forum’s fringe programme and which I chaired. The meeting itself was very unlike most fringe meetings which focus on a speaker or two from the top table – this was more of a brainstorming session, and I threw in a number of questions at various intervals to guide the debate. The result was that most of the 80 or so people who packed out the room contributed to the discussion.

About half-way through, I asked whether there were any policies that people might like to throw into the mix which weren’t currently on the political map, even if they may seem a bit off-the-wall. I said they might well not be viable, but sometimes thinking the unthinkable leads to ideas that might not otherwise emerge.

The first suggestion was that we might advocate moving the capital from London to somewhere more central. The person suggesting it wasn’t just arguing for geographical fairness, but saying it doesn’t help us to have the country’s administrative and democratic centre in the primary financial hub, and that London should be allowed to become like Frankfurt, Amsterdam or Zürich which are major cities but don’t host national parliaments and governments.

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Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 19 March 2018 – the chilly breeze of reality…

By Mark Valladares | Mon 19th March 2018 - 7:58 am

Another difficult weekend of cold weather over, it’s time for me to return to my editorial duties for another week, on the 739th anniversary of the Mongolian victory at the naval Battle of Yamen, which ended the Song Dynasty in China. Also, on this day in 1628, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was granted land for settlement.

Admittedly, this isn’t quite as much of a challenge as it might be, because the stocks of submitted articles are close to non-existent. However, we do have a report from Chris Bowers on the “Reclaiming Liberalism” fringe at last weekend’s Federal Conference, challenging you all …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #511

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 18th March 2018 - 9:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 511th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the five most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (11-17 March, 2018), together with a hand-picked seven you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Martin Horwood

Martin Horwood writes…The real issue about Trump, Facebook’s ‘data breach’, why The Observer missed the point and Liberals should care

By Martin Horwood | Sun 18th March 2018 - 2:00 pm

The Observer‘s front page today lays into Facebook for a massive ‘data breach’ in which 50 million Americans’ data were harvested by the infamous Cambridge Analytica and used with great effect to target Trump messaging at US voters. They “built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons” their whistleblower Christopher Wylie is quoted as saying.  It was a powerful tool for a campaign based on fear and paranoia.  Little surprise then that Cambridge Analaytica is also being investigated by the Office of the Information Commissioner and by the Electoral Commission in the UK in connection with their work on the Brexit referendum.

But the main Observer story oddly misses the point. It focuses on how long it took Facebook to own up to the ‘breach’ and suspend Cambridge Analytica’s access to the service.  It describes the accessing of the data itself as “one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches”.

But it wasn’t.  And that’s not the importance of this story.

Anyone can harvest data from the web.  I harvest it when I can’t remember someone’s birthday or their kids’ names.  The Lib Dems harvest it indirectly when they use targeted Facebook advertising.  My engagement team in a previous job harvested it using smart algorithms to find possible engagement targets, ironically, to promote better data, openness and transparency.  The point is that all this information is out there and – a point confusingly referred to in the Observer piece – platforms like Facebook don’t regard it as their data but their users’ (“it may be data about people who are on Facebook that they have gathered themselves, but it is not data that we have provided”).  Facebook’s suspension of CA appears to be because of technical breaches to their terms of use, particularly the sale of data to third parties.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 12 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Tim Farron: How would you want your family to be treated if they were fleeing war?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 18th March 2018 - 12:53 pm

On Friday, MPs kept alive a Bill proposed by the SNP’s Angus MacNeil aimed at reuniting refugee families. The debate was one of those which makes you proud of MPs from all parties. The Bill had support from Conservative, Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Ed Davey, Alistair Carmichael and Layla Moran all made interventions.

Tim Farron made a really powerful speech. His leadership was marked by his constant and passionate pressure on the Government to do more to help refugees and it’s something that he still continues to pursue. Here’s his speech in full.

I will try to be brief, Mr Deputy Speaker, because the most important thing today is that this Bill proceeds. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), and to all hon. Members who, unusually, are here on a Friday. This is my fourth debate on a Friday in 13 years, because this Bill matters. It is a chance and a test. It is a test of our support for the people who need it most; it is a test of our ability to act with compassion and common sense. It is not a hard test, because this is a modest and tightly defined common sense Bill.

Let us be clear what the changes in the Bill would mean for the refugee children who are already here in the United Kingdom. These are children who have experienced unimaginable things. Nevertheless, I want Members to try to imagine. What horrific set of circumstances might have to happen to a family that would mean that the danger and misery of fleeing across land and sea, as well as the risk of separation, is preferable to staying put? Imagine how you would want your children and your family to be treated at the end of your journey. Imagine that sanctuary, and the kindness that goes with it, and be very clear that that must be the model for how we treat families today.

Separated refugee children in the United Kingdom have already overcome threats and danger in their own communities. They have been split from their families in their rush to find somewhere—anywhere—safe and have then been forced through a terrifying journey by sea and land to Europe, journeys that we know have claimed hundreds of children’s lives. These refugee children are here right now living in our communities alongside us, asking us today to step up and reunite them with their families. The Bill will allow them a future with their families instead of being separated from them. It will mean children growing up with their parents where they should be, at their side, rather than living with the constant worry about the fate of their families, stranded and out of reach. The Bill simply makes that possible.

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