ALDC

Kickstart: ALDC’s campaign training weekend – 24-26 November 2017

By ALDC | Fri 11th August 2017 - 1:48 pm

If you want to take advantage of the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and Campaigners’ (ALDC) early-bird ticket rates for their Autumn Kickstart 2017 campaign training weekend (24-26 November), then you need to act fast as they’re currently available on a first come first served basis.

If you’ve been before you’ll know all about the weekend’s benefits. And if you’ve not, you should go along to get tailored, professional advice; training and bespoke mentoring for your campaign team from experienced Liberal Democrat campaigners and councillors.

There’s something on offer for everyone; whatever your role in a campaign and regardless of your experience. You’ll go away having improved your campaigning skills and with a well-developed campaign plan ready for your next set of elections. If you want to win, Kickstart is the boot camp you need to win.

If you’re an ALDC member, you’re currently able to book to attend for £150 for a single room (usual price is £270) and £120 for a double room per person (usual price is £240).

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Kirsten Johnson

Notes from a new Councillor: The beginning

By Kirsten Johnson | Fri 11th August 2017 - 11:55 am

I was elected as Oxfordshire County Councillor in the May elections, my first time ever being elected to public office. What a whirlwind the first two months have been! Complicated by the small matter of being a parliamentary candidate in the GE for the first month of being County Councillor.

Would I recommend being a councillor? Yes!

For any of you out there thinking about putting yourself forward for next May’s local elections, do have a go. I have always felt passionately that politics is about a range of people getting involved, with various backgrounds and expertise to bring to the role. I’m a musician – and yes, we need more politicians from the arts. We need people of all ages and interests to take part in order to have true representation in democratic decision making.

What’s great about the job is the difference you can make in people’s lives. One of my first successes was supporting a family who had made an application for their child’s Special Educational Needs placement back in November. They still hadn’t heard back by June where their child would be starting school in September 2017. I got onto the case, made a phone call, sent some emails, and found out what was holding up the situation. It was sorted, and the family was given their answer, within a week of my asking. That has made a huge difference to this family. They can now enjoy the summer holidays with the assurance of knowing where their child is going to school in September.

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Bernard Aris

Cable, not Corbyn, is right on Venezuela

By Bernard Aris | Fri 11th August 2017 - 10:25 am

The most famous example is in the 1960’s: the Cuba of Fidel Castro turned dictatorial after he let the Soviet Union take over training domestic policing and his secret service (in exchange for buying up his sugar an most of Cuban cigars; see Tad Szulcs biography of Fidel).

But also in the 1980’s the regime of Robert Mugabe over Zimbabwe appeared to start out in 1980 as a better alternative to South African Apartheid, but there the instant imposition and eternal prolongation of the State of Emergency, the role of the North Korean (guaranteed Stalinist) military training mission, their Zimbabwean Fifth Brigade pupils and their Gukurahundi 1983-7 offensive  suppressing Nkomo’s democratic opposition, disillusioned many supporters very fast. When in 1987 the presidency got real executive powers and Nkomo’s party was absorbed in Mugabe’s regime, things turned sour “for keeps”, resulting in misrule, murderous peasant evictions, clobbering opposition leaders to a pulp, and hyperinflation.

The 1979 Sandinista revolt in Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega kept on the democratic, progressive path during the 1980’s, but after losing the 1990’s election Ortega forced social democratic party veterans like Ernesto Cardenal and novelist Sergio Ramírez out, becoming  more autocratic. Ortega and his clique in 1990 kept the nationalized enterprises as their property, and after returning to government in 2006, Ortega was illegally re-elected president in 2011. Ortega, having fought the Roman Catholic hierarchy up to 1990, co-operated with the orthodox wing of that church (archbishop Obando) after returning to government in 2006, banning abortion in all circumstances (his main campaign issue and that of the “liberals”. Human Rights Watch since reported that bleeding pregnant women don’t get treated for fear of breaking that ban, and the Health Ministry ignores complaints about pre- and postnatal care.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Trouble at NWS 101

By Tom Arms | Fri 11th August 2017 - 8:55 am

There are serious problems in the playground at Nuclear Weapons School 101. There is a new boy—Kim. Nobody likes him. He is loud, obnoxious and into domestic abuse in a big way.

Kim is especially disliked by Donald who is president of the student council, captain of the football, basketball and baseball teams, number one in his class and popular with all the girls. And he has been at the school less than a year.  Donald also controls a big chunk of what Kim regards as his home turf.  In fact, Donald and his family have been calling the shots at NWS 101 since they threw the first and—so far—the  only knock-out punch against Tojo and Hirohito.

Donald is strong. Very strong, and he backs it up with a frightening array of brass knuckles, baseball bats, knives, axes, swords, clubs, machetes and the biggest,  bestest and most frightening array of guns ever developed by mankind.

Some of the other kids in the playground are a bit envious of Donald. They think he has been throwing his weight around too much. This is especially true of Vladimir and Xi. That is why when Kim started building up his rival arsenal they turned a blind eye. They even smuggled some sweets to him. Perhaps, they thought,  it was time that Donald was taken down a peg or two. Perhaps introducing Kim to the playground could persuade Donald to share the captaincy of one of the sports teams or a girlfriend or two.

They don’t want Donald hurt. They need him and—even though he has occasional problems recognizing it—he needs them too.

Kim doesn’t have such qualms. He is anxious to prove his tough guy credentials and is not in the least concerned about who is hurt in the process. He has built up his own arsenal and even though it is nowhere near the size of Donald’s weapons stock, Kim is threatening to attack Donald on his home turf.

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NewsHound

Trees unite Nick Clegg and Michael Gove

By NewsHound | Thu 10th August 2017 - 9:45 pm

Nick Clegg really didn’t get on that well with Michael Gove when they served in the Cabinet together and Gove’s position as a key Brexiteer merely exacerbated the antipathy between them. There was even less love lost between Nick and Gove’s former special adviser Dominic Cumming who went on to run the leave campaign.

So it is quite amusing to see the two men on the same side of an argument – over those trees in Sheffield that the Council insists on chopping down, against the wishes of local residents. Last year Nick compared the Police reaction to protests to Putin’s Russia.

In scenes you’d expect to see in Putin’s Russia, rather than a Sheffield suburb, council contractors and police descended on Rustlings Road under the cover of darkness, dragged people out of bed to move their cars and detained peaceful protesters – all to chop down eight trees. The battle to save the Rustlings Road trees has been long and hard-fought and I am impressed with the tenacity of local people and their peaceful, well-articulated, reasoned opposition.

Now Environment Secretary Gove has come out against the tree-felling as reported in the Guardian:

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The Voice

WATCH: Vince talking about the financial crash

By The Voice | Thu 10th August 2017 - 8:58 pm

Here’s Vince on Good Morning Britain talking about the 10th anniversary of the financial crash. Could it all happen again? What does he think about the current state of our economy?

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The Voice

Sal Brinton’s email to party members on Tim Gordon – and what happens next

By The Voice | Thu 10th August 2017 - 8:06 pm

Party President Sal Brinton has tonight written to party members about the resignation of Tim Gordon. She reported that the Federal Board is making arrangements to appoint his successor.

Sal said:

Yesterday Tim Gordon announced that he was resigning as Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats, after five years service. On behalf of the party I want to place on record a huge thank you to Tim for his all his amazing hard work over what have been some often very gruelling years.

He has run the party machine during extremely demanding times with the Liberal Democrats in coalition government, then two general elections and the EU Referendum.

After the setback of the 2015 General Election, Tim immediately set out to make sure that the party’s finances were secured, and provided the structures that have allowed the party to recover.

In the last two years our membership has doubled, we have won many council by elections and the Richmond Park by-election and in June this year increased our MPs. He leaves at a time when the Liberal Democrat fightback is well-underway and we wish him the very best. You can find Tim’s statement on the party website here.

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John King

Creative campaigning as the mood on Brexit evolves

By John King | Thu 10th August 2017 - 6:14 pm

This image was among those rejected by the Government committee that oversaw the “stronger in” campaign. Saatchi and Saatchi complained that all their best work was vetoed by someone or other.

Well that is history, and we can learn from it. I count myself lucky to be a member of a small group of pro-European campaigners who are free to develop their own creative ideas, untrammelled by the need to answer to any committee.

Last week we were out on the streets in Stratford-upon-Avon, talking to people about Brexit. Any changes in …

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Posted in Europe Referendum and Op-eds | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Chris Key

Why has nobody been held accountable for the Garden Bridge scandal?

By Chris Key | Thu 10th August 2017 - 4:02 pm

Yesterday on LBC, Sadiq Khan acknowledged that the taxpayer is unlikely to see anything for the £50 million which has been spent on the Garden Bridge.

The Daily Express did its best to portray Khan, rather than Boris Johnson, as the guilty party here. Following James O’Brien’s show, they wrote a piece which totally failed to recognize the fact that it was Khan who had been the one who had instigated the enquiry which Margaret Hodge produced. A report which made it clear that no more public money should be invested in this project.

It is clear that there were …

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Posted in London and Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 13 Comments
NewsHound

Want to meet European liberals? Applications open for the ALDE Party Congress delegation

By NewsHound | Thu 10th August 2017 - 11:19 am

The 38th ALDE Party Congress will take place from 1 to 3 December 2017 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Preliminary information about the programme, political deadlines, venues and logistics will soon be available on the ALDE Party website, here.

The UK Liberal Democrats are currently one of the largest voting blocs in the ALDE Party, with strong representation on the Bureau, in the Council and at the Congress. The Congress is the largest event of the year for ALDE and it is a policy-making event, with policy motions submitted by member parties for debate and voted on during the Congress.

The ALDE Party …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged | 7 Comments
Helen Flynn

Latest Social Liberal Forum publication: Universal Basic Income as a tool for tax and benefit reform

By Helen Flynn | Thu 10th August 2017 - 8:52 am

At the recent SLF Annual Conference in July, a well-attended fringe session discussed the benefits and drawbacks of Basic Income.

My contention, as Chair of this session, was that we now need to be looking more closely at Basic Income, given increasing robotisation and technological change that will massively shake up conventional work, and given that our welfare system is creaking and needs modernisation. Basic Income is a policy that seems fundamentally socially liberal, and so it seems to naturally deserve attention from the SLF and all who are socially liberal.

Therefore the SLF is very pleased …

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dem Chief Executive Tim Gordon steps down

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 9th August 2017 - 8:22 pm

Tim Gordon has stepped down as the Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats.

In a statement today, he said:

It has been an honour to work for the Party for the past half decade. These have not been easy years but I am proud to have worked with both Nick Clegg and Tim Farron who so clearly and eloquently articulated the Liberal voice that Britain needs.

We now have a great new leader and deputy in place and after the challenges of the past few years this feels like an appropriate moment for a change. There are other opportunities that I have delayed pursuing for long enough and I want to give my successor as much time as possible to prepare before what could be yet another snap General Election.

I am extremely proud of what my team has delivered. After decades of decline we are now well in to our fifth consecutive year of membership growth and are on track for our fifth consecutive year of fundraising growth, beating Labour’s non-union donations in most sets of quarterly returns. Both have benefited from our investment in new systems and digital communications; online fundraising has increased over 40-fold. HQ’s diversity has improved: both the director team and salary levels are now gender-balanced. Critically, we are again winning electoral battles – even if there remains much to do. I am incredibly grateful and frequently humbled by all those across the Party who have worked so hard for the fightback that is now underway.

The Party under Vince Cable is now well positioned to move forward. We have the right approach to Brexit for both party and country. And I intend to keep on helping the Party in the ways that I have always done: knocking on doors and delivering the odd leaflet.

Senior figures thanked him for his five years at the helm of the party:

Sal Brinton, our Party President said:

On behalf of the party I want to place on record a huge thank you to Tim for his all his amazing hard work over nearly five often gruelling years.

He has run the party machine during extremely demanding times, with the Liberal Democrats in coalition government, then two general elections and the EU Referendum.

After the setback of the 2015 general election, Tim immediately set out to make sure that the party’s finances were secured, and provided the structures that have allowed the party to recover. In the last two years our membership has doubled, we have won many council by elections and the Richmond Park parliamentary by-election and in June this year increased our MPs. He leaves at a time when the Liberal Democrat fightback is well-underway and we wish him the very best.

Vince Cable added:

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Mark Valladares

Venezuela – a failure wrought by paranoia and a cause without much principle

By Mark Valladares | Wed 9th August 2017 - 1:58 pm

It is noticeable that Venezuela is prominent in the British media at the moment. To be honest, the chaos of a typical Latin American banana republic seldom causes such interest, but given the links between the Venezuelan Government and Jeremy Corbyn, its failure is a convenient stick to beat him with.

And let’s be honest, things are bad there. I had the opportunity to go to Caracas in December 2015, when things were already falling apart, inflation was spiralling and the bolivar was on its way to toilet paper status. At that point, the government had stopped publishing most economic data – it was pretty meaningless anyway – and had acknowledged its exchange rate difficulties by offering an alternative exchange rate for tourists.

The official rate was six bolivars to the dollar. As a tourist, you could legally get two hundred bolivars to the dollar. The black market, usually a fair judge of reality, was offering eight hundred bolivars to the dollar. And, as the largest bank note in circulation was a one hundred bolivar note, you can easily imagine what that meant in terms of carrying money.

So, why are things so bad in Venezuela? Firstly, the economy is almost entirely underpinned by oil exports (which represented 96% of total exports) and when the price of crude fell, GDP fell catastrophically. A market economy can adjust to that, albeit painfully. Sadly for the Venezuelan people, they have a government which not only doesn’t believe in markets, it doesn’t appear to understand them either.

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Posted in Europe / International, News and Op-eds | Tagged and | 31 Comments
Chris Davies

Chris Davies writes…Brexit: .not a roar but a quack

By Chris Davies | Wed 9th August 2017 - 12:30 pm

VInce Cable set the ball rolling a month ago with a simple remark: “I’m beginning to think that Brexit may never happen.” It brought into focus the reality that our deeply divided government is failing to progress the Brexit negotiations and doesn’t even know what it wants to achieve as an outcome.  (Nor, for that matter, does the Labour opposition).

Within a fortnight the talk was all of the need for a ‘transitional arrangement’.  Even Brexiteers who once told us that Britain’s separation from the EU could be achieved within six months now appear happy to endorse Philip Hammond’s suggestion that it will take till 2022.

It almost seems indelicate to point out that no-one has yet explained what might be the terms of this ‘transitional arrangement’.  The government has not yet mentioned it to the EU negotiators, and indeed they cannot because the EU has made clear that it won’t talk about any such matters until sufficient progress has been made in determining the future rights of EU and British citizens, the financial arrangements for the divorce, and the future of the Eire-Northern Ireland oirder.

Maybe even the more extreme Brexiteers have been cowed by the words of former Tory leader William Hague, a man not afraid in the past to play to Europhobic sentiments, who has warned that “there is the clear potential for Brexit to become the occasion of the greatest economic, diplomatic and constitutional muddle in the modern history of the UK, with unknowable consequences for the country, the Government and the Brexit project itself”.

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Rory Domm

To be the anti-Brexit party, being anti-Brexit isn’t enough

By Rory Domm | Wed 9th August 2017 - 10:47 am

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The Liberal Democrats have a unique opportunity to occupy the centre ground in UK politics. At least, this is the assertive and ambitious pitch set out by new party leader Vince Cable MP.

On the face of it, this is a compelling argument, coming just as the Labour and Conservative parties seem to be in thrall to their fringes and flirting with a hard Brexit.

Moreover, it is now evident that many remainers voted Labour to deny the Conservatives a clear majority for a hard Brexit, and are likely to be less than enamoured by Corbyn’s fairly open support for the same goal.

At the same time, we have to be brutally honest. If this is such a great plan, how come we still seem so far away from a Macron-like rejuvenation of the centre? Even if the strategy is the right one, are the Libdems best placed to deliver it? (To be clear, a weak centre party is a blessing for the two main parties.)

For sure, FPTP is a structural issue that seems here to stay. And with the benefit of hindsight, the enablers of the ‘austerity’ coalition government calling for a second referendum during the election campaign is likely to have been perceived as special pleading amongst some parts of the electorate and will have done little to change our image.

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Stephen Tall

How to enter the LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League 2017/18

By Stephen Tall | Tue 8th August 2017 - 5:00 pm

LDV FANTASY FOOTBALLThe English Premier League kicks off this Friday and LibDemVoice has revived its Fantasy Football League to mark the occasion. So if you fancy pitting your soccer selection skills against fellow party supporters, here’s your chance.

To enter all you have to do is click on this link. Simply register your details, pick your team, and away you go. If you need the joining code at any point, it’s 926270-223363.

And for those who don’t feel they have the insider knowledge to compete, you can always choose the ‘auto-complete’ option so …

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Posted in Fantasy Football | 10 Comments
Keith Aspden

Cllr Keith Aspden writes…Tackling homelessness in York

By Keith Aspden | Tue 8th August 2017 - 2:45 pm

Last week the York Liberal Democrats were delighted to welcome Sir Vince Cable for a flying visit to his home city.

Vince was born and brought up in York and many local members have fond memories of the two energetic general election campaigns we fought when Vince was Parliamentary Candidate for the old York constituency in 1983 and 1987.

York is an interesting city politically in that the three main parties each have roughly the same number of councillors. Since 2015 the Liberal Democrat Group has formed part of the joint administration running the Council.

One area in which we can take pride in the Council’s record is homelessness. York’s services for preventing and managing homelessness have been awarded the National Practitioner Support Service’s Gold Standard award. At the time of the award we were only the third local authority to have achieved this. Gold Standard requires the service to have a focus on early intervention and prevention of homelessness at its core.

On Sunday 30 July Vince joined our Executive Member for Adult Social Care, Councillor Carol Runciman, and myself for a tour of the Peasholme Centre on Fishergate. Many members will be familiar with this part of the city since it is very close to the Novotel and the Barbican Centre where the party has held three successful Spring Conferences.

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Martin Thomas

Another glimpse of Liberal history

By Martin Thomas | Tue 8th August 2017 - 12:34 pm

Martin Thomas and Jo Grimond, 1964

Once upon a time, just about when Vince was leaving school, the then Liberal prospective candidate for West Flint, Maldwyn Thomas, (later Sir Maldwyn), resigned to go into business only six weeks before the 1964 general election. So much had been spent in promoting “M Thomas”, that it seemed a good idea to the local executive to ask me to step into his shoes.

Last week, Rhys Lewis who had pushed out leaflets for me as a boy, contacted me out of the blue after 53 years, and caused me to turn up my mum’s scrapbook where she had pasted the cuttings of my adoption speech from the Rhyl Journal. It was the 4th September 1964. I was 27, married with a six week old daughter.

We had a hereditary peer as Prime Minister. My Tory opponent, Nigel Birch, told me how much he detested visiting old people’s homes: “I have a sensitive nose, you see”, he said. The telly was black and white and a third channel, BBC 2, had started up only months before. Homosexual conduct was a crime – all our hearts were young and gay. England had yet to win the World Cup.

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Posted in Liberal History | 34 Comments
Sal Brinton

Sal Brinton’s reminder about Party Awards nominations – deadline Friday 11th August

By Sal Brinton | Tue 8th August 2017 - 10:30 am

The deadline for this year’s Party Awards has been extended until Friday – don’t forget to nominate! I know there are people all over the country who deserve to be rewarded for all the hard work they put in during the election period, not to mention the invaluable ongoing work which so many party officers and others have been carrying out.

As a reminder, please see below the various categories, and how to apply.

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Antony Hook

“Complaining is not a strategy”: Lib Dem European Group’s new invitation to join us

By Antony Hook | Tue 8th August 2017 - 8:30 am

LDEG (the Lib Dem European Group) is an associated organisation of the party campaigning for Britain’s role in Europe and for peace and prosperity across Europe.

The last few years have been harrowing for Liberal Democrats and pro-Europeans.  Our representation in the European Parliament reduced in 2014, a reckless Europhobic government elected in 2015 and the narrow loss of the 2016 referendum.

Things will not change if we do and say the same things we have done and said for years. Nor can we just complain or retreat into self-satisfied disdain of those whose support we failed to win or our …

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Posted in News | 32 Comments
Bernard Aris

Trump Inc. fleeces US Government to keep nuclear button in-house

By Bernard Aris | Mon 7th August 2017 - 6:18 pm

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In a move unheard of in any democratic country regarding its head of state (both personal and as an institution) and his/her official trappings, the Trump government has:

1. moved the presidential bodyguard local co-ordination centre out of Trump tower to a trailer on the New York sidewalk, 50 floors below, and
2. made the presidential military staff, keepers of the famous “football” containing the infamous nuclear button, accept an extortionate lease price to keep it located inside Trump Tower.

At least, that is what the Washington Post has discovered.

In US politics, it is quite usual that the essential entourage of a president, as president and commander-in-chief, has premises on all locations and in all buildings a president resides in or which he (when will it be a she?) owns. With the Kennedy’s and George Bush senior these included their family summer residences in Massachusetts and Maine.

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Joe Bourke

Basic Rental Income

By Joe Bourke | Mon 7th August 2017 - 3:51 pm

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The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) published its detailed proposals for a basic income in 2015.

The proposals are based on the Citizen’s Income Trust ‘pure Basic-Income’ model. Disability support and housing costs are not included in the scheme as they are not in the Citizen’s Income Trust’s scheme.

Housing and council tax benefits (and, for the record, disability payments) are an important source of support to those at the bottom of the income distribution.

An option which the RSA proposes for further exploration is the introduction of a ‘Basic Rental Income’. The Basic Rental Income would not be income-contingent and therefore does not have the same disincentive or perverse incentive (eg family break-up) effects as housing benefit and council tax credit. A Basic Rental Income based upon local market conditions would be granted to every individual who rented rather than owned a property. Local authorities would retain their statutory duty to house the homeless and should be given freedom to borrow and invest in new low-cost housing.

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Stephen Kelly

Science and Brexit – now what?

By Stephen Kelly | Mon 7th August 2017 - 12:41 pm

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Not a lot of positives came from last year’s divisive EU referendum. However, one silver lining seems to be that science is being talked about by all parties, in no small part due to the efforts of fantastic groups like Scientists For EU. As a British PhD student starting to think about post-doctoral opportunities, I have a somewhat vested interest in ensuring that our national science capability is as strong as it possibly can be.

Brexit remains a serious threat to UK science, both directly due to the loss of EU funding (something that the UK had always been a big winner on) and indirectly through anti-immigration attitudes and policies that make attracting the best people more difficult. The best way to prevent this damage is to stay in the EU, but if Brexit does happen, we need to keep freedom of movement and membership of agencies like Euratom as a minimum. As a cautionary note, it’s worth pointing out that Switzerland lost full access to Horizon 2020 until they extended freedom of movement to Croatia. And Switzerland have the Large Hadron Collider.

However, Brexit isn’t the only issue facing British science right now, and it’s these lesser discussed issues that I’d like to focus on. The first is science funding. As a wealthy nation, our current R&D spending is embarrassingly low – 1.7% of GDP. That’s a long way behind the USA, EU, and OECD average, and it needs to be addressed (More in depth analysis here). There is some good news though: all 3 main parties have pledged to increase science funding: the Conservatives want 2.4% within 10 years, Labour want 3% by 2030, and we’ve pledged to double it (so 3.4%) in the ‘long term.’

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Allan Tweddle

Solving the school places crisis without building a single classroom

By Allan Tweddle | Mon 7th August 2017 - 10:27 am

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In the London Borough of Bromley, as in many places across the country, we are facing a massive projected shortfall in school places over the next few years. Councillors and activists from all parties are busy scrutinising planning applications for new schools of all shapes and sizes. But is it really necessary?

Imagine a school, let’s call it the Tweddle Academy (though pupils and staff just call it Tweds). Tweds was once a medium sized comprehensive with 1200 children on roll. Now it is an establishment providing all-through education for 2400 kids aged 6 to 18.

The school day at Tweds begins at 7.30am when children aged 6 to 12 arrive. They attend lessons until 10.20am, have a 20 minute break, then it’s back to the classroom. At 1.30pm they head to the school canteen for lunch before being dismissed for the day an hour later.

At 1.15pm while the younger pupils come to the end of lessons, teachers wait by the school gate to register the senior cohort. At 1.30pm, after the younger children have moved to the canteen, the 13 to 18 year olds begin their lessons. Their school day runs from 1.30pm to 7.30pm, with a 20 minute break.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 39 Comments
Paul Walter

LibLink: Vince – “The old have comprehensively shafted the young”

By Paul Walter | Sun 6th August 2017 - 10:30 am

Vince has high prominence in the media this morning for his Mail on Sunday column about the Brexit age divide. Talking about Brexit “martyrs” who are prepared to risk economic hardship to “take back control”, he writes:

(A) concern is that the self-declared martyrs may be planning to sacrifice other people rather than themselves. It is striking that the martyrs appear predominantly elderly (indeed the YouGov poll confirmed that fact). This is unsurprising since 64 per cent of over-65s voted Brexit in the referendum and 71 per cent of under-25s voted Remain.

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Mathew Hulbert

Mathew’s Musings – commentary on this week’s news

By Mathew Hulbert | Fri 4th August 2017 - 9:23 pm

No s***, Brexit

This week, two significant individuals have told various truths about the impending catastrophe that is Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union and have both faced ridicule and scorn for daring to do so.
Firstly Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, expressed the statement of the obvious that uncertainty due to Brexit is already having a negative effect on the UK’s economy.

Well, no s*** Sherlock.

The growth forecast has been revised down and the pound has fallen.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 13 Comments
Paul Walter

LDV goes truly up north!

By Paul Walter | Fri 4th August 2017 - 11:05 am

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We’d like to quash the rumour that we got fed up with Mark Valladares here at LDV Towers and therefore banished him to the most northerly inhabited archipelago in the world.

There is simply no truth whatsoever in these whisperings.

Seriously, Mark Valladares is a long-standing Liberal Democrat Voice editorial team member. On the team, we really do value his calm, wise and supportive counsel. He is also known as @honladymark on Twitter, and as a Liberal Bureaucrat, Creeting St Peter parish councillor and Liberal globe trotter.

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Posted in Humour | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Paul Walter

Two sides of Irish history reflected in celebrity family tree

By Paul Walter | Fri 4th August 2017 - 9:52 am


This is about some holiday season viewing which may be of interest to readers – rather than an article trying to make a political point.

“Who do you think you are” covers television presenter Emma Willis’ family history in an episode available on BBC iPlayer for the next 29 days. It is worth a watch.

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Posted in The Arts | Tagged | 7 Comments
Mary Reid

Meet Vince Cable

By Mary Reid | Thu 3rd August 2017 - 2:17 pm

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The lovely digital team at HQ have interviewed Vince Cable.

He spent his childhood immersed in chocolate, it seems.

I grew up in York, which was then very much an industrial city. Its factories supplied the country’s railway carriages and fed its appetite for sweets. I grew up breathing the all-pervasive smell of sugar, cocoa and vanilla.

My first home was a small terraced house close to the Terry’s chocolate factory. My father Len was a craftsman at Rowntree’s chocolate factory whilst my mother Edith packed chocolates for rival firm Terry’s.

I arrived at the University in York at about the same time as Vince left for university and career, and I have fond memories of Tuesdays, which was chocolate making day at Rowntrees. Walking through the town was like being bathed in chocolate.

After Cambridge he ended up in Glasgow where he became a Labour councillor. He was one of the first Labour members to join the SDP.

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Azi Ahmed

An independent commission is the only cure for the NHS funding crisis

By Azi Ahmed | Thu 3rd August 2017 - 11:20 am

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When I stood as a Conservative parliamentary candidate in 2015, I remember preparing notes on every conceivable subject for my first hustings. But when it came to the NHS, I couldn’t bring myself to follow the party political line and just bash my opponents; no one has fixed it and no single party is to blame.

What I said, instead, was that we should have an independent commission to decide the future of the NHS and put it above party politics. It was a line that went down very well with the audience; when politicians throw numbers at each other we all get lost and a mature debate proves impossible.

So I strongly support the position Norman Lamb has developed as the party’s health spokesman, calling for an NHS and Health Convention to instigate a national conversation involving charities, professional groups and patients’ groups as well as politicians. In January, he was backed by 75 organizations and it’s a shame this policy attracted so little interest from journalists despite getting such widespread support from those closest to the health service.

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