Caron Lindsay

Alex Cole-Hamilton calls for continence strategy

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th October 2017 - 10:49 am

When I was on holiday, I listened to an interesting article on Women’s Hour about a fringe show centred around pelvic floor exercises. It was both hilarious and mildly disturbing. And for a few days afterwards I was particularly diligent, as I expect many people were, before forgetting about it all again.

Elaine Miller, the person behind that show, wrote about it in the Guardian.

Anecdotally speaking, using humour as a health promotion tool works well. Proving that is tricky – the only established fact is that comedy is subjective, so, conducting a random controlled trial is fairly challenging. However, getting the public to comply with simple lifestyle changes and health behaviours has always been difficult, so, perhaps an irreverent approach is worth a shot?

Incontinence interferes with every single thing a person wants to do, and, helping someone to live a life unrestricted by their bodily functions is wonderfully satisfying, far more so than helping someone win a medal for being marginally faster than someone else. Being part of huge sports events was glamorous and fantastic, but, I am happiest on stage, at conference or in clinic proclaiming that that everyone deserves to have a decent pelvic floor.

Now it turns out that Elaine s a mate of Alex Cole-Hamilton’s and the two have teamed up to call for the Scottish Government to launch a National Continence Strategy. 

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Caron Lindsay

Liz Evans and Jane Dodds meet in Welsh Lib Dem leadership hustings

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 15th October 2017 - 8:55 am

Lib Dem Voice is always neutral in leadership elections of any sort and so we will be for the Welsh Liberal Democrat Leadership election which culminates in 2 weeks’ time. The two candidates are former Assembly candidate for Ceredigion and local Councillor Liz Evans and former candidate for Montgomery Jane Dodds.

The only thing I will say is that having met both Jane and Liz, I think that they are both absolutely amazing and either would be a worthy successor to Kirsty Williams who has resumed the leadership temporarily. This election is unusual in that it is being fought between two non parliamentarians. The Welsh Party’s constitution was changed earlier this year to allow this because of the unfortunate circumstances in which it found itself.

The Welsh Party has, despite some spirited campaigning and inspiring leadership from Kirsty for most of the last decade, suffered huge setbacks in the last couple of years. The coalition legacy and the rise of UKIP has cost the party dear. While they have the one Lib Dem Cabinet minister in the country at the moment, she is their only parliamentarian. Unfortunately Mark Williams lost his Ceredigion seat by a heartbreaking 150 votes in the General Election in June.

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Paul Walter

Kenyan opposition leader in London: ‘New election will be as corruptly conducted as last month’s & its outcome will in no way represent will of Kenyans’

By Paul Walter | Sat 14th October 2017 - 2:10 pm


Raila Odinga, Kenya’s opposition party leader, spoke yesterday at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. Mr Odinga was Prime Minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2013.

Reuters reports:

(Odinga) said on Friday his withdrawal from a presidential election rerun scheduled for Oct. 26 meant the poll had been “cancelled” and there should be fresh nominations for a new vote.

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Caron Lindsay

Cole-Hamilton: Defeating Brexit is our Everest

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 14th October 2017 - 12:00 pm

If you head to the Royal Mile at about two in the afternoon, you’ll be in for a big surprise. Our Alex Cole-Hamilton is one of the speakers at a Rally for Europe but he won’t be delivering the Europe stump speech many of us have heard many times. In fact, I’m probably more word perfect on it than I am the Sound of Music or the words of Abba Gold.

Today a new version of the Cole-Hamilton Euro speech takes centre stage and it’s just as good.

Here’s an extract.

Now I heard that Boris Johnson said that if we had to, in the event of no deal we could live without our EU workforce, that they only make up 3% of our health and social care workforce so we could probably tough it out. Boris, your spinal column makes up 3% of your body mass, try functioning without that.

“You all know my party’s policy. The Liberal Democrats believe that a process begun by the will of the British people must be concluded by the will of the British people.

“That we must put the final terms of the Brexit deal or the reality of no deal to them in a referendum, and on that ballot paper they should have an unambiguous choice to reject Brexit and remain in the EU.

“I believe that when credited with the facts, the people of this country will reject the lunacy of Brexit and return to the fold of what has become quite simply the most important project for peace and freedom in the whole of human history,

“So when the full hideous calamity of Brexit is laid bare, we should ask the people of this country, in the solemnity of the polling stations where this first started, is this really what you want? Is this what you imagined taking back control would look like? And if it isn’t then you should exercise your democratic right to stay.

“We meet in extraordinary times, historic times and you will each look back on this period and ask yourself, did I do my part? Don’t leave that question unanswered, it’s time to dig in and fight, it isn’t just a mountain we have to climb, this is our Everest.

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Katharine Pindar

Loss, connection and happiness. Is Liberal Democrat activism good for us?

By Katharine Pindar | Sat 14th October 2017 - 10:00 am

Happiness, social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt have suggested, may be found more in the single-minded pursuit of good aims than in achieving them. If this is true, Liberal Democrats should be some of the happiest people around – always striving, always hoping, yet too often actually failing to achieve our aims.

Ridiculous, retorts common sense. We fail, and that is depressing and debilitating. Yet there must be something in the theory to keep some of us for fifty years or more committed to the cause of Liberalism – not always activists, deflected by our personal human dramas and careers and families, yet always resuming.

You’re just fanatics to do that, say scornful pragmatists. And it’s true that this commitment depends on your being a certain type of character, raised in certain circumstances such as, maybe, growing up in a politically concerned family.  Perhaps also you have to start young, when you can’t anticipate the long unproductive years to come.

There has to be resilience in your character to keep going, and certain social conditions to help sustain you. Liberal Democrats become used to long disappointment brightened by moments of triumph and joy, but actual loss is hard to bear.

The loss of a political position, whether a council or a parliamentary one, may never be as devastating as the loss of someone you love, or getting a life-threatening illness, or seeing your child come to grief, but it’s still a terrible blow. All that effort to get there, all that hard work in office, all that useful accomplishment, suddenly finished, seemingly wasted. How did our Liberal Democrat champions feel, as one by one they fell, from 2011 to 2015? The pain of having failed their closest associates, family, employees and fellow campaigners would have been combined with deep frustration and probable impotent suppressed anger. How many vowed never to subject themselves again to that? It took a certain cast of character to resolve to carry on, probably resisting the plea of loved ones not to be masochistic. They had the imperative of finding other paying work speedily, as well.

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The Voice

Campbell: Every time Trump opens his mouth, the world becomes a less safe place

By The Voice | Fri 13th October 2017 - 6:58 pm

Back in the day when he was leader, he was referred to as Ming. Now he’s in the Lords and newly appointed Defence Spokesperson, he’s back to being Menzies.

Anyway, our new Defence spokesperson had this to say about Donald Trump’s latest destabilising shenanigans over Iran:

This is yet another example of Trump’s boneheaded belligerence.

Not content with senseless responses to every provocation of Kim Jong Un, he is determinedly undermining a treaty which has proved to be an important influence on nuclear non-proliferation.

Every time Trump opens his mouth, the world becomes a less safe place.

Surely, by implication, every time he reaches for …

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George Kendall

Should Liberal Democrats get more angry at Corbyn and the Tories?

By George Kendall | Fri 13th October 2017 - 2:55 pm

I’ve been getting more angry in my politics. In 2015, it was the post-coalition Tory savaging of the low paid, last year it was Vote Leave’s deceits, this year the hypocrisy of Corbyn in supporting welfare cuts.

But this week I was brought up short, when told I should stop looking for the speck in the eyes of my political opponents.

That stung. That section of the Bible has influenced me enormously. As a teenager, I memorised most of it. I constantly think of the impossible standards it sets, try to follow them, and of course dismally fail.

I think for Liberal Democrats, whatever our views, the influence of the teachings of Jesus runs deep. There are reasons for our reputation as the ‘nice’ party, perhaps through our nonconformist roots or our British culture.

But I have a love-hate relationship with that niceness. In the 2017 election, the Tories supported £9bn welfare cuts, Corbyn £7bn, we campaigned for no cuts. Yet, when Corbyn supporters claim the moral high ground on welfare, we let them.

Sometimes when faced with an obvious hypocrisy, it is best to ignore it. Matthew 5:22 says it can even be wrong just to get angry. It’s hard, but the teachings of Jesus were never meant to be easy.

Yet is this what the Bible as a whole always calls for, for Christians, or indeed for any who base their morality on the teachings of Jesus?

When Jesus saw traders ripping off the poor in the temple, he got angry. Was he right to? If so, maybe there are situations where anger is a good thing. After all, if neuroscience shows that anger is an intrinsic part of us, maybe it’s there for a reason.

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Paul Walter

The home where Martin Luther King’s family were bombed

By Paul Walter | Fri 13th October 2017 - 1:25 pm



This is the thirteenth of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them.

In Montgomery, Alabama I visited the Dexter Parsonage Museum (photo above) – which was the home of Dr Martin Luther King Jr during the Montgomery Bus Boycott (of which more in a latter post). Dr King lived here with his family from 1954 to 1960. It is preserved with the furnishings and household things as per that period.

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Post 2017 Northern Liberalism Part 2

By Ed Thornley | Fri 13th October 2017 - 11:55 am

A few days ago, I wrote Part 1 of this article, at the time intended to be the one and only part, but the response in comments and in person has, I feel, required a deeper look into the situation we face in the North of England post-GE2017, in particular the areas that I know well, and provide some of the more interesting case studies. Part 2 looks at the General Election of June, and Part 3 will look into how we move forward.

Southport has always been interesting, staying orange in 2015 when everyone thought it would go blue, a spot of council strength that defies logic in a town with similar demographics to Clacton. On 12th June this year, John Pugh wrote an article entitled “How we lost Southport” on this site, and I hope he will not mind me using that work as a reference point here. In it he clearly pins down the reason he believes we fell into third place – national messaging. I should at this point say that this is not a three-months-too-late national campaign bashing article, the 2017 General Election was a surprise one, fought furiously by all of us. Yet, we are now far enough away to look back with a level of objectivity. Our national messaging was quite simple – Tories want a hard Brexit, Labour can’t win anyway because of Corbyn. Simple, but not effective. It fell particularly flat in the least well-off regions of the country, the North of course.

Attacking Corbyn may well have gone down in attempts to steal votes from naturally conservative voters, but in the constituency in which I now live, Leeds North West, we found dozens of national leaflets attacking the blessed Jeremy landing on doormats in Labour-leaning areas, prompting a backlash against us. Whether the requests for this to stop were eventually listened to or not I don’t know, but they kept coming, and this has made two things clear to me. Firstly, that our national messaging wasn’t right in 2017 and secondly, and more importantly, that as a national party we do not listen enough to those who know best, in this case the campaigners and councillors on the ground, who unanimously saw these leaflets for the messaging disaster they were for the wards we were already struggling in most. 

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NewsHound

LibLink: Nick Clegg: Be warned, Brexiteers, I know better than most the consequences of breaking a promise

By NewsHound | Fri 13th October 2017 - 10:22 am

Writing for the Times Red Box, Nick Clegg has been warning Brexiteers about the dangers of not keeping promises you make to electorate. As he points out, he should know.

The Brexiteers are heading for the same stormy waters, he says:

When asked to reflect on the official Leave campaign’s shopping list of promises to the voters during the referendum campaign, Duncan Smith, one of the most vocal campaigners for Brexit, dismissively replied: “We just made a series of promises that were possibilities.”

We know that leading lights of the Leave campaign had had enough of experts; now they appear to have had enough of dictionaries.

It’s easy to see why. None of their impossible promises have been met and, as I suspect Mr Duncan Smith knows full well, never will be.

And, of course, when they can’t keep their promises, they blame others:

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: A Friendly Wall

By Tom Arms | Fri 13th October 2017 - 8:54 am

Walls are generally built to keep people out. Trump’s big beautiful wall, Hungary’s anti-refugee wall, the Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall and every castle wall built before, during and after the medieval period.

There are exceptions to this rule.  The Berlin Wall was built to keep people in, as is every prison wall ever constructed.

But in Africa a wall with a difference is literally sprouting. It has been dubbed “The Great Green Wall of Africa.” It is neither holding people in or keeping them out. It is holding at bay the sands of the Sahara desert and helping people to stay in Africa.

They started planting the Great Green Wall of Africa ten years ago. The wall is in fact a six mile wide strip of millions of Acacia trees which will eventually stretch 4,800 miles across the southern edge of the Sahara and through 11 countries from Senegal on the West coast to Djibouti on the Red Sea.  That is about half the length of Trump’s proposed wall along the US-Mexican border and about 600 miles short of the length of the Great Wall of China.

Its purpose is to battle the effects of climate Change in Africa. Over the last half century 60 acres a minute have been lost to desertification as the Sahara marches south.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems gain in Three Rivers and forge ahead in Sheffield

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 13th October 2017 - 7:59 am

Some very promising Council by-election results overnight.

First of all, there was a gain from the Conservatives in the Lib Dem stronghold of Three Rivers. Good to see the majority of one being boosted.

Congratulations to Keith Martin and the fabulous team in the area.

In Sheffield there was a solid 21% increase in the vote, even though Labour held the seat.

Another interesting result was this from Ashfield:

We did put up a candidate here, which is a really good thing. It is so important that we continue to fly our flag there and try to recoup the ground lost in that area. The winning Ashfield Independents, though, were formed by the previous Council-dominating Liberal Democrat group. Their literature looks strikingly familiar.

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The Love of Learning

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 12th October 2017 - 6:00 pm

What are we doing to our young people? Testing them until the joy is out of learning and school is just one tick box after another. The head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, said

The regular taking of test papers does little to increase a child’s ability to comprehend.

We have completely the wrong approach to learning. We need holistic education for our young people, encompassing the widest range of subjects, building character and instilling the love of learning.

This includes the arts. When I was 11, we moved to Missouri. I started at a new junior high school (years 6-7 in the English system) which had a school band. Up to that stage I had played a bit of piano and sung in the church choir. The music teacher asked if I’d like to learn the clarinet as he needed more players in his band. Within three months I was sitting 2nd chair in the clarinet section. I would never have learned an instrument if it hadn’t been for the opportunity at this state school. I remember my parents, who were on a tight budget, scraping money together for some private lessons later that year, costing $4 a lesson.

Years later, I’m a professional musician, wondering where the next generation of musicians is coming from. We need music, and all the arts, as an integral part of our schools. The economic argument is obvious – the creative industries contribute £87.4 billion per year to the economy. We would be denuded as a society without the undergirding of the arts which permeate and enrich our lives.

But I wish to make the moral argument, bringing me back to the opening point of school being too much about testing. Having an arts-inclusive curriculum builds a well-rounded intellect. The brain, when it has to marry the left and right halves in analysing and performing a piece of music, develops physiologically. Attention spans are lengthened when one learns to concentrate on playing your part in a band. Aesthetic awareness is broadened, that life is not about ticking boxes but about beauty, relationships and creativity. Learning to sing together builds community and teaches young people to work together. We learn that coming together produces something more wonderful than striving alone.

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Caron Lindsay

A couple of observations about Vince’s reshuffle

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 12th October 2017 - 5:27 pm

So Vince Cable reshuffled his top team today.

There’s a very interesting change of language. No longer are they called the Shadow Cabinet. That probably makes sense for a team of 12 MPs out of 650. They will henceforth be known as spokespeople.

So who has the top jobs? A full list is here.

The team is gender balanced. In fact there is a majority of women – 15 out of the 29. That includes long time Vince ally Dee Doocey who is coming in with a Spokesperson without Portfolio.  This would certainly enable her to obtain a profile over a wide range of subjects. I don’t even know if this has been thought of, but it crosses my mind that she could be a contender for party president when Sal Brinton comes to the end of her constitutionally allowed terms in 2019. If it happens, remember that you heard it here first.

As requested in the comments, for those of you who don’t know Dee, she’s had a very long history in the party and the Liberal Party before it. Back in the day she was the Finance Director of the Liberal Party. She has been a Richmond Councillor and Greater London Assembly Member who was appointed to the House of Lords back in 2010. She’s been running Vince Cable’s elections for 25 years. You can read more about her here. 

Vince has a job

The Leader doesn’t normally have a job in these circumstances but when you are the most credible voice on the economy in the House of Commons or not the country, it would be daft if he didn’t speak up on these issues. Susan Kramer will reprise her role on this in the Lords.

More experience than Corbyn’s front bench

While they may not be called the Shadow Cabinet any more, they are more entitled to call themselves that than the Labour front bench. There are no fewer than, by my reckoning, seven former ministers, including Vince, Alistair and Ed as former Cabinet ministers.

Where’s Norman?

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David Warren

Caring, Bereavement and the Liberal Family

By David Warren | Thu 12th October 2017 - 3:00 pm

I recently suffered a major bereavement, an event that triggered a decline in my health.

Ten years as a carer has taught me that there isn’t much help out there. That still appears to be the case as I try to cope in a very difficult situation.

Bereavement counselling is only available from charities and there is a three-month-long waiting list.

The alternative is the NHS run Talking Therapies which takes you through several hoops before you can even get to speak to a professional counsellor!

All this whilst dealing with the arrangements for the person who has passed away, which there is no …

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Flo Clucas

Visibility of Women (or lack thereof)

By Flo Clucas | Thu 12th October 2017 - 12:47 pm

‘Their heads are full of cotton hay and rags’, according to Prof Higgins.

Walk in any British city or town and see if, as you walk, there are any commemorative works of art. War memorials you will almost certainly see. Royalty you will almost certainly see. Famous men you will almost certainly see.

Then, look to see how many women are commemorated. Queen Victoria and the Virgin Mary apart, few places have statuary of real women.

The statue of Millicent Fawcett, which will shortly be sited in Parliament Square, is, therefore, highly unusual and hugely significant. Of some 925 commemorative pieces in Britain, …

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Paul Walter

In the heart of the American rebellion

By Paul Walter | Thu 12th October 2017 - 10:47 am


The main drawing room – what was effectively the “Oval Office” – of the First Confederacy White House in Montgomery, Alabama.

This is the twelfth of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them.

You’re in the heart of the Jefferson Davis rebellion empire!

I had just walked up to the door of “the first Confederacy White House”, across the road from the Alabaman State Capitol in Montgomery. I wasn’t sure that the museum was open – the door was closed and there was no sign of it being open. So it was a bit of a surprise to open the door and be immediately confronted by a very excited docent, who was like a character actor from a John Wayne film. After the declaration above, I half-expected him to shout “Yee-haa!” and plonk a globule of his oral juices into a nearby spittoon!

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Ruth Bright

Cyril Smith – an apology is the very least we owe the victims

By Ruth Bright | Thu 12th October 2017 - 8:56 am

The Chief Executive of Rochdale Council has apologised for letting down the victims of Cyril Smith. It is time that the Liberal Democrats, as successor party to the Liberal Party made an apology to the victims too – not for any direct responsibility but the fact that he was able to use our party as a front for the “big Cyril”, “national treasure” image which helped him cover up earlier crimes. Cyril Smith is not a figure from ancient Liberal Party history. He was a Liberal Democrat MP for his last three years in parliament, he died in 2010 and his accusers were being criticised on this site as late as 2015.

Victims deserve the following actions from the party:

  1. An apology from the Leader of the Liberal Democrats that the party was unknowingly used as a front for Smith’s respectability.
  2. An inquiry into any remaining evidence about him within the party.
  3. A direction to the pastoral care officer to support any party activists who wish to talk about their own experiences with Smith.
  4. A direction that all references to Smith be removed from the Rochdale Lib Dems website (which has an extraordinary archive with cheery references to his 80th birthday and other events).

Editor’s Note:

The party’s position on this was made clear in a statement issued some time ago. 

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Olly Grender

Olly Grender writes…Why Alison Suttie and I are sleeping out tonight

By Olly Grender | Wed 11th October 2017 - 6:54 pm

Don’t know about the rest of you but I love my bed.  Nothing makes me appreciate it more than the annual DePaul International sleepout.  

Tonight Alison Suttie and I will be bedding down in the Somerset House courtyard.  We are in a safe secure place in comparison with most people who are homeless and on the streets.

But a night sleeping out in central London is a stark reminder to us of what too many people endure – and in growing numbers.   You don’t feel safe.  You don’t really sleep.  You spend the day feeling pretty ropey.  That is just one night.

The next day I will speak in a debate in the Lords about availability of housing – what a sorry tale that has been over the decades and lies at the heart of a growing crisis of homelessness here in the UK.  Alison has seen DePaul’s work in Odessa in Ukraine and in Bratislava in Slovakia in her international work with Tuberculosis NGOs.

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Caron Lindsay

Tim Farron explains how the Government’s cuts to supported accommodation will harm most vulnerable

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 11th October 2017 - 1:55 pm

One of the (many) hugely worrying things about the Government’s plans for Housing Benefit is the cap being applied to supported accommodation.

Across the country, people are given the chance to live as independent lives as possible in accommodation which comes with its own support network. Government cuts threaten this – and the human cost is appalling.

This was discussed in a  Westminster Hall debate yesterday in which Tim Farron took part.

From my experience of the supported housing provided for constituents with autism and learning difficulties, I know that the LHA rent cap will mean that they simply will not be able to afford the support that they get in their current setting. They will end up in institutions or hospitals, which will actually cost the taxpayer far more money.

On Facebook, he went into a bit more detail:

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Post 2017 Northern Liberalism

By Ed Thornley | Wed 11th October 2017 - 12:15 pm

After 2015, half of our Parliamentary seats were in the North of England. Now it’s one of twelve, and only just. Across the North, especially in the cities, we fell back in 2017, losing Leeds North West, Sheffield Hallam and Southport. Why? Many reasons, but one stands out for me and that is a simple surge in Labour support. In both Leeds NW and Hallam, students registered and voted in greater numbers than ever before – in one Leeds NW ward, registration numbers increased by almost 20%. Even though Southport was lost to the Tories, we see that a surge in Labour support, and an unwillingness for Labour voters to vote for us tactically, pushed us into third place.

Does that mean that we are defeated in the North? Not at all. We still run South Lakeland Council, have sizeable groups in Sheffield, York and Newcastle, we hold fifteen of Southport’s twenty-one seats on Sefton Council, and we have nine councillors holding the line in Leeds, six of them in Leeds NW. It is also becoming increasingly clear, on the doorstep and anecdotally, that this Labour surge was national, not resulting from local issues. In Leeds NW, we have been cursed (or blessed) with a Labour MP who is rapidly making a bad reputation for himself in the constituency. There is a surprisingly high level of buyer’s remorse, especially for so early in the Parliament. People are saying on the doorstep “Oh I wish Greg had got in”, even from those who tell us they voted Labour in June. Facing all-out elections in May, we have begun our campaign early, fearing we would be heavily up against the wall, but so far our canvassing returns are good. Our new MP appears to have done little to steal our local government base it seems, even in polling districts that went Labour in June.

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Paul Walter

Just as US President Jimmy Carter was the antidote to “Tricky Dicky”, could Oprah Winfrey save the world from Trump?

By Paul Walter | Wed 11th October 2017 - 10:47 am



This is the eleventh of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them.

I had the great pleasure of visiting the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. It is set just outside the city centre, in very leafy and peaceful surroundings. The exhibition gave me a sense of a great man, shaped by his upbringing in Georgia, his experience as a farmer and businessman, and his service in the US Navy in nuclear submarines.

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Mark Goodrich

Brexit: Desperately seeking a BATNA

By Mark Goodrich | Wed 11th October 2017 - 8:42 am

Opinion polls still show the country divided down the middle on whether Brexit is a good thing or not.

There has been a bit of movement in favour of the referendum on the deal (it is worth noting that it always does better when accurately described in that way rather than as a second referendum).  However, the really dramatic poll shift has been in the confidence of the government getting a good deal with two thirds now not confident.  The dichotomy between those figures and the 50/50 split is striking.

To some extent, this may be wishful thinking on behalf of those who think that there is still a good deal out there somewhere and the Tories just can’t find it.  However, it also likely reflects the dawning realisation that we have a desperately weak negotiating position.  The main reason for this is that the UK has a terrible BATNA.  In the jargon of negotiating theorists, a BATNA is your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.  It is crucial because if your alternative isn’t too bad, you don’t have to give up too much and walk away easily if the price gets too high.  On the other hand, if your BATNA is awful, you just have to make concession after concession, especially if you are negotiating with somebody who knows it.  This is currently the position of the UK government.

The UK government’s stated BATNA is “no deal”.  As a BATNA, this is terrible because everyone knows (a) that it would inflict terrible damage on the economy and require lots of new bureaucracy where we have borrowed our regime from the EU (e.g. on nuclear regulation) and (b) we haven’t done anything like the necessary preparation for it.  So, to deal with point (b), the government is now being lobbied by Redwood et al to start spending vast sums of money on something which may well never happen.  Leaving aside the politics of spending such sums at a time of austerity, it does nothing to deal with (a).

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Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Liberal Democrat MPs slam Government’s contemptuous approach to Parliament

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 10th October 2017 - 8:34 pm

This afternoon, Alistair Carmichael led an emergency debate, which he had secured, to raise the many ways in which the Government is marginalising Parliament. From ignoring Opposition Day debates to curtailing debate on legislation to the Henry VIII powers.

His speech introducing the debate was excellent. Watch it here.

My favourite bits are this:

The best Governments—and if ever there was a time in our country’s history when we needed the best possible Government, this is surely it—are those that are tested by Parliament, by the Opposition parties and by their own Back Benchers. Time and again, our system fails when the Government and the Opposition agree and arguments remain untested. How different might the debates on the case for going to war in Iraq in 2002 and 2003 have been if the then Opposition had been prepared to take a more questioning approach to Tony Blair’s case? I am sad to say that this Government, however, do not welcome scrutiny by Parliament, but rather seek to avoid it.

and the bit where he challenged MPs to get assertive:

In one sense, the Government have done us a favour by bringing this issue to a head, because it forces us as a House to decide what our role in the future of this country is going to be. Is it to be an active participant, with a strong voice and a decisive say, or is it to be a supine bystander as the Government continue to do as they wish, regardless of their lack of a mandate and, as is increasingly obvious, their lack of authority.

I have been a member of many debating societies over the years. They have all been fine organisations that provided entertainment and mental stimulation in equal measure. I mean them therefore no disrespect when I say that I stood for Parliament believing I was doing something more significant than signing up for a debating society. The difference is that in Parliament—in this House—we can actually effect change. Whether we choose to do so is in our own hands.

I loved the fact that the Tories responded by slagging off the Liberal Democrats in the most immature way as they clearly had no defence.

Christine Jardine said that MPs were there to serve the electorate, not to play games. She talked about seeing Parliament as others see it and the impression it gives to people outside who were not involved in politics.

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Posted in Op-eds and Parliament | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Liberal Democrats mark World Mental Health Day

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 10th October 2017 - 7:26 pm

Today is World Mental Health Day.

For me it’s a day to reflect on how far we have come since I started to suffer from mental ill health as a child. Forty years ago, nobody understood the desperate, isolating, all-engulfing Depression that I couldn’t shake off, that took every ounce of my energy just to get through the day. I remember trying to talk about it to a friend once, and she scared the living daylights out of me, telling me I’d be locked up in a hospital if anyone found out.

There was the exhausting anxiety which punctuated every day – not helped by the fact that round every corner there might be another bully lurking to shout “Yak” at me. That’s what they called me at school. I just wish I’d had Google then to reassure me that, whatever my tormentors meant, these beasts were actually kind of cute.

My teens were a struggle and because I didn’t get the help I needed, I either didn’t cope very well or developed some fairly unhelpful strategies to deal with it. Comfort eating for one.

We can perhaps be a little bit proud of ourselves as a society that four decades on, we are at least attempting to tackle the stigma around mental health, so that no young person need fear that they are going to be locked up.

However, we should also be ashamed that this new openness has not been accompanied by the provision of sufficient support services for people with mental ill health.

There is one area I want to focus on – the transition from child to adult mental health services. Once you get into the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, you can actually get some pretty reasonable support. It’s arranged in a fairly logical way with consultants, psychologists and nurses working together to support young people. Unfortunately not every young person who needs help can get it at all, and most have to wait far too long.  It is not uncommon to wait for more than a year to even see a specialist.

Mental health issues generally aren’t resolved overnight, so you have a year of turmoil while you are waiting to be seen and, maybe another couple of years of reasonably intensive support – and then you turn 18. All the effort put into helping you is now at risk as you are put into the virtually non-existent twilight world of adult mental health services which are disparate, insufficient and as suitable for the scale of the problem as  trying to surf the Atlantic on a My Little Pony lilo.

This country is being robbed of the talents of some wonderful individuals simply because it does not invest in the services they need to stay well.

Even the most cruel and heartless government should surely recognise that the cost of not supporting these people is enormous to both our economy and our society.

I’m incredibly proud that Nick Clegg and Norman Lamb have done so much to improve mental health services and tackle the stigma around mental health. One of the most horrible things about the run-up to the 2015 election was the almost certain knowledge that Norman wouldn’t be mental health minister any more.

Today, Liberal Democrats have been marking Mental Health Day in a variety of ways:

Kirsty Williams made this video highlighting mental ill health in the workplace:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 1 Comment
Joe Otten

Leave HQ editor welcomes the sweet release of a dismal fate

By Joe Otten | Tue 10th October 2017 - 12:05 pm

Blogging is so naughties isn’t it? Has anything happened on a blog since 2010? Well maybe.

Leave HQ Editor Peter North has produced quite the most extraordinary piece of blogging I have seen for some time.

Wow. I want to quote the “wow” bits, but I risk quoting it all.

In the first year or so we are going to lose a lot of manufacturing. Virtually all JIT export manufacturing will fold inside a year. Initially we will see food prices plummet but this won’t last. Domestic agriculture won’t be able to compete and we’ll see a gradual decline of UK production.

…

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Posted in Op-eds | 37 Comments
Paul Walter

Splendid memorial to Dr Martin Luther King Junior in Washington DC

By Paul Walter | Tue 10th October 2017 - 10:47 am

This is the tenth of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them.

In Washington DC, I was lucky enough to stay in a neighbourhood where the people were extremely friendly and welcoming. But it is true that the centre of “DC”, as it is almost universally called in the States, is odd. It consists of virtually all federal buildings of some sort or another, plus a lot of monuments. In fact there are so many monuments that, after a couple of days, I had definitely reached “peak monument”.

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Posted in LDVUSA | Tagged , , , and | 2 Comments
Iain Roberts

Vince’s next speech

By Iain Roberts | Mon 9th October 2017 - 2:55 pm

Vince’s conference speech had a lot of good policies and ideas, but the party is still failing to  communicate a compelling vision. We are not giving enough people a good reason to vote  Lib Dem at the national level, despite the gaping hole in the middle of British politics. Here is a speech Vince could give to start communicating that vision.

Building a Future for Britain*

Britain is getting poorer and weaker. This is not what we were promised. Low wage growth has seen real incomes fall and, thanks to Brexit, our economy has gone from the strongest in the G7 to the weakest in just a year. An astonishing and disturbing collapse in our fortunes.

Our country is being failed by both the Conservatives and Labour. Theresa May offers no answers. Everything she does is aimed at saving just one job – her own. Jeremy Corbyn offers no end of answers – if only we had the money to pay for them all. We don’t.

Only the Liberal Democrats are committed to Building a Future for Britain.

A Britain confident enough to play its part in the world, working in partnership with others. A Britain that’s open for business, not putting up walls to keep everyone else out. A Britain where those who put in the work reap the rewards, and those who need help receive it.

If you want a job, or a better job than you have now, the Liberal Democrats will ensure you have the access to gain the skills you need – regardless of your age or situation. We will help you to improve your life to Build a Future for Britain.

If you have a job, the Liberal Democrats will ensure it is well paid. We will tackle the scourge of the gig economy to Build a Future for Britain.

If you are in business, the Liberal Democrats will support you, help you and ensure that you can trade across the EU and more widely throughout the world to Build a Future for Britain.

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Posted in Op-eds | 27 Comments
Paul Walter

The black slave whose failed bid for freedom led to the American Civil War

By Paul Walter | Mon 9th October 2017 - 1:25 pm

This is the ninth of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them.

I enjoyed a visit to the wonderful US Capitol “Visitor Center”. At presumably astronomical expense, a fantastic underground visitors’ entrance has been built on the east side of the Capitol. You enter it and are taken on a tour of the US Capitol where you go up inside the centre of the building.

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Posted in LDVUSA | Tagged , , , , , and | 5 Comments
Joan Walmsley

Baroness Joan Walmsley writes…Wasting a rare resource – and children’s lives

By Joan Walmsley | Mon 9th October 2017 - 11:55 am

One of the worst scandals in the NHS is the provision, or lack of it, for children with mental health problems.

“Stick with us” is a major report by the Children’s Society about more than 150,000 missed CAMHS appointments in 2016. It is estimated that, at £290 per appointment, they cost £45m last year – much less than it would cost to collect proper data about child mental health. The last proper data was collected in 2004, so it’s not just the present government who are to blame.

These figures, obtained by FOI requests to providers of specialist CAMHS services, are obviously available to government. However, one can only assume that the government did not know, or chose not to find out, how bad the situation is.

As the report points out, there are many reasons why children and young people miss appointments: failure of parents to get them there; lack of transport; lack of appointments at an appropriate time; length of waiting time (average 58 days) between referral and initial assessment so people forget about them; length of time between assessment and first treatment (average 41 days but up to 208 days); stigma; etc etc.

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