Ashley Cartman

Strategy Consultation paper – there’s something important missing

By Ashley Cartman | Mon 10th April 2017 - 9:17 am

 

One thing I absolutely love about being a Liberal Democrat is the involvement we members have in formulating, developing and approving policy. This open and transparent process not only chimes with our values but also is a marvel to behold. At York last month, my first ever time at a conference, I voted in important policy proposals ranging from faith schools to nuclear weapons and partook in a consultative session on economic policy.  Nonetheless I feel this whole process is in danger of failing us.

A fast changing political environment needs a fast policy making process

In times past there was a reliable 4/5-year cycle all culminating in a general election. In the intervening period the party could spend time ruminating and developing policy. Unfortunately we no longer live in normal times. The tectonic plates of politics are shifting not only in the UK but also around the world. If we really want to redefine British politics and replace the old left/right dichotomy with a choice between open and closed then we need to be much more nimble.  The political environment no longer gives us the luxury of an extended period of reflection and policy consultation.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 7 Comments
Advert
NewsHound

LibLink: Tim Farron: Why I support Trump’s Syria strike

By NewsHound | Sun 9th April 2017 - 2:27 pm

Tim Farron has written for the Guardian about why he has decided to support the US action in Syria on Friday morning. There are caveats, though:

However, we disagree with the way in which he conducted it – unilaterally, without allies, outside of a wider strategy. Trump saw a wrong and wanted to react, no doubt in large part to differentiate himself from Barack Obama. But taking matters into his own hands without thinking of the consequences, without a wider plan, without considering what next, exposes both his naivety about how the world works and his potential to create instability on an international scale.

So, how should the UK respond now? Trump has made it clear that this was a one-off, which Michael Fallon has echoed, and we should welcome that. This wasn’t about intervention in Syria. The purpose was twofold: to send the strongest possible signal of condemnation of Assad’s actions, and to ensure he is much less likely to be able to act in that way again. The Syrian regime and their Russian allies may be acting outraged on their respective state television channels, but they have been sent a message they will surely not now ignore.

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 51 Comments
Caron Lindsay

The most disgraceful Government form ever #rapeclause

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 9th April 2017 - 12:35 pm

There are many occasions at the moment when the UK Government makes me ashamed to be British. Two examples this week show what Tim Farron described on Question Time the other night as “Cruel Britannia.”

The first is the removal of Personal Independence Payments from people suffering serious psychological distress. Matt described powerfully here what that would mean for him.

When outdoors I can become so distressed by events and this can trigger an episode of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms. Symptoms include flash backs to an event that has caused much psychological harm and distress, visual hallucinations of the event that makes me feel that I am in another time and place, reliving the event as though it is really happening at that moment, becoming completely unaware of immediate surroundings. Coming out of one of these episodes is extremely distressing, confusing and disorientating and leaves me full of fear. My entire thought process is filled only with getting home and getting safe. I am no longer capable of following the route because my brain and thought process will not quieten down enough to think. I can only liken it to a petrified dog that will run off at full speed ahead, unaware of dangers / hazards / roads, petrified of people. All you can think of is getting home to the safety of your bed and cowering. The situation has caused me to put myself and others in danger whilst in this panicked state of mind. There are many things that can act as a trigger for me, It might be the way someone looks reminds me of person from my past, It can be a certain smell that acts as a trigger, it might be something I hear. I spend most of my life avoiding triggers. These are obviously easier to control within the safety of my own home, but impossible when I am outdoors.

The second example is the removal of benefits to cover third or subsequent children. In itself this is utterly wrong in principle. Benefit should be payable according to need. Children are suffering now because their families are now significantly worse off. The idea that large families should be penalised is so wrong. Are we really saying that if someone finds themselves as a single parent and they have four children, that the state should only provide help with two of them? What are the others supposed to do? It brings back the sort of attitude from Victorian times when the state would provide a parent with help with child support for a couple of weeks before taking the children off the parent and putting them in the workhouse. The idea that the poor are in some way culpable and should be punished is not something any liberal should accept. 

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 19 Comments
Caron Lindsay

UK Government launches consultation on axing lettings fees – another Lib Dem win

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 9th April 2017 - 10:48 am

Back in the day, Liberal Democrat peer Olly Grender worked for Shelter. Her passion to help people with housing matters has never left her and she continues to campaign on a range of housing issues. The pressure that she put on the Government resulted in their decision to end lettings fees for tenants. We reported that this was going to happen last November but the Government launched its consultation on Friday.

Olly introduced a Private Members’s Bill in the Lords last year which would have outlawed these fees. Five days after the debate, the Government announced the measure. Olly explained why it was so important to protect tenants from these charges in her speech proposing her bill:

Shelter’s research shows that average letting fees are £355 per move, with one in seven people paying £500. On rare occasions, renters have been forced to pay fees of £900 or more to a letting agent, simply for the privilege of moving into a home. Reference checks, credit checks, administration fees, inventory fees—the list goes on. Invariably, the fees charged are extortionate compared to the cost actually incurred by the agent and they are not necessary. Furthermore, any cost actually incurred should be covered by the lettings agent’s client—the landlord—not by the tenant. Far too often these high up-front costs are proving a barrier to tenants, who simply cannot afford to move.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Douglas Oliver

Carswell, Brexit and Gladstone

By Douglas Oliver | Sun 9th April 2017 - 9:05 am

As we know, there were several fairly eccentric and spurious reasons given by the Leave side for supporting Brexit last summer. One of the most bizarre reasons, however, is that made by erstwhile UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, that it represented the fulfilment of the legacy of Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone, perhaps our greatest political forerunner as Liberal Democrats. It needs challenging.

According to Roy Jenkins’ 1995 biography, Gladstone did as much to define Britain’s Victorian golden era as the Queen herself. Nonetheless, his name is only vaguely recognised today-– he died in 1898, on the cusp of recorded sound and in 2002 he was not even included in the BBC list of 100 greatest Britons. Despite this contemporary obscurity, and total lack of importance in the referendum (compared to promises of a reinvigorated NHS), the Gladstone-Brexit argument is no less peculiar – and perhaps all the more revealing.

Carswell, and certain Brexit allies across the Tory Party, have frequently cited Gladstone as an inspiration. On April 19th last year:

It’s because UKIP is the closest party to Gladstonian liberalism today that this picture of the Grand Old Man appears in our Welsh manifesto. UKIP – like Gladstone – stands for freedom. Like him, we’re against a big, intrusive state.

Carswell keeps Gladstone’s painting in his office.

Gladstone’s career is too epic to effectively summarise– he spent 63 years as MP and 19 as Chancellor, and is the only person to have served as PM four separate times. Nonetheless, there are six clear ideas in his long life, which suggest somewhere behind a famously stern poise, he would be wincing with us in fear, bemusement and embarrassment at Britain’s upcoming Brexit disaster.

First, and most important, Gladstone was British history’s greatest advocate for free trade. He broke with the Tory party in 1846, because it would not support his mentor Robert Peel’s efforts to reduce tariffs on corn. Their triumph helped the emerging working and middle classes-build railways and initiate a second industrial revolution- whilst it hit the sclerotic land owning gentry.

1846 and 2016 have often been compared, lately by The Economist (set up in 1843 as an anti-Corn Law pamphlet) and many others, as triumphs and disasters over the same issues of British free trade. Whilst Carswell sometimes vaguely spoke of “soft Brexit” as a path to Free trade – this now looks forlorn, just as was obvious before last June for those of us in the Remain campaign. As George Osborne recently observed, leaving the Single Market would appear “the biggest act of protectionism in history”.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 18 Comments
Advert
The Voice

Lib Dem MBE Jen Yockney talks about discrimination faced by bisexual people

By The Voice | Sat 8th April 2017 - 1:10 pm

Last year Manchester Lib Dem Jen Yockney won the first MBE for services to the bisexual community. In the current issue of Big Issue North, she features in an article about bisexual people, highlighting the discrimination that they face, even within the LGBT community itself.

For example bi people earn less than their lesbian and gay peers. We are more likely to experience domestic violence and stalking than our gay friends. And we are less likely to feel we can be out at work – bi men are about four times less likely to be out at work, and given the impact on your income you might argue they are sensible to be cautious.

Despite the myth of bisexuality as a stepping stone towards coming out as gay or lesbian, Yockney says that at the Biphoria group as many attendees previously thought of themselves as gay as those who had considered themselves straight.

When I was first coming out 25 years ago the received wisdom was that bisexuality was kind of half gay, with an implication of having half the struggle, half the problems. That never made sense to me. After all, you never got half queerbashed! If you’ve a strong, secure sense of yourself as bi you can get through that but it’s silencing for a lot of people. And because you can’t tell by looking, that silencing makes bi people much more isolated.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 7 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Jo Swinson: Five things you need to know about gender pay gap reporting

By NewsHound | Sat 8th April 2017 - 11:14 am

When Jo Swinson was Minister for Equalities, she introduced the requirement for companies with more than 250 employees to report on their gender pay gap. That requirement came into force this week. Jo wrote on the Huffington Post about why this is important and how the information will help organisations understand what they need to do to improve their gender equality.

The numbers are really a springboard for further questions, and companies can delve into the data at much more granular levels than what will be published to understand what’s driving the pay gap. If it seems high in some divisions, you might do a deeper pay review to check pay levels and pay rises are being fairly decided. Staff who identify as neither male nor female can be omitted from the calculation, but given the discrimination non-binary people face at work you may wish to look more closely at the data for these individuals to reassure yourself pay and reward systems are working as they should. Similarly if your monitoring data is good enough, look at the data by race, disability, sexual orientation and other equality strands (and if it is not good enough, then now is a good time to improve your monitoring practices). This is an interesting exercise to identify potential problems – and it may give you a head start in the event that pay gap reporting is extended in future.

And what happens once they know the size of the pay gap?

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Scottish Liberal Democrats demand answers from Ruth Davidson over mental health cuts to PIP

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 8th April 2017 - 10:05 am

The Conservatives have not covered themselves in glory on social security issues recently. The removal of Housing Benefit from young people, the totally immoral restriction of benefits to two children and the deeply objectionable 8 page form that women have to complete if they want to claim for a third child conceived by rape, the cuts to disability benefits and cutting back eligibility to Personal Independence Payments for those suffering psychological distress have all shown a cruel lack of understanding of real life.

Let’s not forget the five year benefit freeze imposed by George Osborne in 2015. With Brexit bound to increase prices, that is simply unsustainable.

The cuts are significant, but even more reprehensible is the inhumane stripping of dignity from those who need our help. A civilised society supports those in need. If that makes me a bleeding heart Liberal, as Tim Farron declared he was on Question Time the other night, then I’m proud to be so.

Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives may pretend that they are nicer than their Westminster counterparts, making the right noises on mental health recently, but we can’t forget that they are the same party. Every awful thing that Theresa May’s Brexit government does reflects on them.

As health and social security spokespeople for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Alex Cole-Hamilton and I have written to Ruth Davidson asking her to state her position on the cuts to PIP. Our letter says:

Dear Ruth,

We were pleased to see your party last week join the Liberal Democrats and campaigners in declaring that the SNP Government’s new mental health strategy lacked ambition. It was the right thing to do because the new strategy will not deliver the transformation we desperately need to see.

However, we were deeply concerned to see that, in the very same week, your colleagues at Westminster were voting to restrict personal independence payments to people with mental health and anxiety conditions, affecting tens of thousands of people both in and out of work.

This shows little understanding of the complex needs of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, for example those trapped in their homes because they are too anxious to leave without someone. These people can need help to leave their home every bit as much as someone suffering from a physical condition.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Steve Walpole

Successfully defending a Syrian safe area

By Steve Walpole | Sat 8th April 2017 - 8:59 am

On Thursday on Question Time Tim Farron spoke in favour of protecting Syrian people from the murder visited on them by Assad’s military.  I applaud Tim’s decision to do so, especially in the light of earlier Lib Dem votes against military action. However, in doing so I have to insert the caveat that a solution based on air power alone is in fact no solution at all.

To illustrate my argument I must take you all back before the Iraq war and to the North and South Iraq No Fly Zones. In the north the NFZ was a success, with very few civilian casualties caused by the Iraqi military. In the south however, it could not have been more different, with villages being decimated and the genocide of an entire people very nearly enabled.

So what was the difference between the Northern and Southern No Fly Zones? Quite simply, it was the Kurdish ground troops protecting their people from murder by Saddam’s security forces. There was no equivalent in the south and so the armed forces were able to act with impunity (albeit without the comfort of air cover), murdering their people and even re-routing the Euphrates in order to starve the Marsh Arabs.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged | 20 Comments
The Voice

Anthony Lester on how Lib Dems and liberal politics have influenced progress of gay rights in UK

By The Voice | Fri 7th April 2017 - 3:30 pm

Yesterday in the House of Lords, Lib Dem peer Anthony Lester spoke about the Liberal Democrat involvement in changing the law, and, more importantly, public opinion on LGBT rights.

Here is his speech in full:

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Leo Abse’s Private Member’s Bill that became the Sexual Offences Act 1967. It came ten years after the Wolfenden report recommended reform. The Act abolished the crime of sexual love between two men over the age of 21 in private.  It had crucial support from the then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins.  But the path of reform has been long and tortuous and has required intervention from the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union.

The 1967 Act did not apply to Northern Ireland, and it required a judgment by the Strasbourg Court in Jeffrey Dudgeon’s case to persuade Parliament to abolish the offence in Northern Ireland.

The 1994 Act repealed the clauses in the 1967 Act that made homosexual activity in the armed forces and on merchant navy vessels a criminal offence. But clauses were introduced in this House that provided that nothing in the 1994 Act would prevent homosexual activity from constituting grounds for dismissal. The clauses were approved in Committee by a division on 20th June 1994.

The Strasbourg Court ruled in 2000 in Smith and Grady’s case that the provisions in the 1994 Act violated the right to respect for private life under a policy that involved investigating whether personnel were homosexual or had engaged in homosexual activity. If so, they were discharged.

EU employment equality directives and the Equality Act 2010 dealt with the problem. But the offending provisions remain disfiguring the statute book. As the Minister, Andrew Jones MP, said the Bill “addresses a historical wrong and the inadequacy of legislation to keep pace with out culture”.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 11 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Party members: Your chance to help shape the party’s strategy

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 7th April 2017 - 2:14 pm

Over the last couple of months, every Wednesday lunchtime and in another few meetings too, a group of us have been getting together to start the process of building the party’s future strategy which will be voted on at Autumn Conference in Bournemouth.

I don’t say very much in these groups because there are people much cleverer than me with much more useful things to say, but one of the things I wanted to make sure of from the start is that we involved members in the quest to shape our future direction. This is something that we must build together. It can’t be imposed. The group agreed that we would consult our members fully and we are doing just that.

The culmination of a lot of hard work popped into party members’ email inboxes late on Wednesday night. In the email, Party President Sal Brinton said:

At Spring Conference in York, our Leader Tim Farron outlined his vision for our Party:

“To replace the Labour Party as the main opposition to the Conservatives… so that we can replace the Conservatives as the Government of our country.”

This is a bold vision, which needs a bold strategy to deliver it.

We want to hear your views on how our Party can work to achieve Tim’s vision, and have set out some ideas of our own:

We want to hear your views on how our Party can work to achieve Tim’s vision, and have set out some ideas of our own:

We have also compiled an online survey for you to complete. It will only take a few minutes of your time.

Part of ensuring we deliver Tim’s vision is the need for every member to play their part to build a liberal society. Our country needs us now more than ever, and I know so many of you are taking part in some fantastic campaigns across the country, and I’m looking forward to seeing more gains on May 4th. So, don’t worry if you don’t have enough time to do it right now, because the closing date for the consultation is Monday 15th May at 12 noon.

We want to see an Open, Tolerant and United country, and we need you to help us build it.

In that email there is a unique link to the survey and a link to the consultation document. You’ll need to be logged in as a member on the party website to access it.

What we need you to do is basically mark our homework for us. We are bound to have missed something. What is it? Give us your feedback.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 12 Comments
Joan Walmsley

Baroness Joan Walmsley writes…150% rise in patients forced to move GP surgery as practice closures hit record levels

By Joan Walmsley | Fri 7th April 2017 - 11:55 am

One of the jewels in the NHS, for as long as I can remember, has been the family GP. My GP looked after my mother before I was born and looked after me until I moved away from home. In those days the GP’s long acquaintance with my whole family was important to us. Everyone had a “family doctor”. They even did home visits!

Things are very different now. We still have primary care and acute care, but many more community nurses, health visitors, therapists and care workers, not forgetting the wide range of services offered by community pharmacists and local authorities, where they can still afford it.

Demographic change and rising demand have put enormous pressure on GPs and, in some areas, people turn up at A&E rather than wait for an appointment. However, the role of the GP is still critical to the NHS and it is important that the system enables them to play their part in preventative medicine as well as diagnosis and signposting to other services.

Unfortunately, the demand for a seven-day service, without enough extra money to pay for it, and the enormous pressures on GPs time has made it a less attractive option for newly-qualified doctors. This has led to problems recruiting enough doctors to keep practices going and an increasing retention problem. Many GPs, especially partners who have extra duties and responsibilities compared to salaried GPs, are retiring early. In the last quarter of 2016, there was a net loss of 390 GPs in the NHS. This gives us no confidence in the government commitment to recruit 5000 more GP’s by 2020. According to the BMA, even the 5000 extra training places will only allow us to break even in GP numbers.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Martin Horwood

Martin Horwood writes…Trump’s step into very dangerous waters

By Martin Horwood | Fri 7th April 2017 - 10:52 am

American bombing in Syria may make Donald Trump a hero on the streets of Idlib. Those fighting for simple democratic rights in Syria felt bitterly let down by the west in 2013 when we failed to take action the first time there was good evidence that the monstrous Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons on his own people.

We still live with the consequences of that inaction. We were warned our intervention against Assad might make the situation worse. The situation got worse anyway as Assad continued to kill his own people in their thousands with impunity. Millions fled their homes. The sudden rise of Isis/Daesh added a twisted new complication and cover for much larger-scale foreign intervention but by Russia instead of the west. But devastating Russian firepower was aimed much more frequently at the democratic rebels who were pounded into the ground at Aleppo. Increasingly it looked as though Assad’s relentless brutality had paid off and he could even get away with more chemical attacks in clear breach of international law.

So does this make Trump right to strike?

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 22 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems respond to US air strikes on Syria

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 7th April 2017 - 10:07 am

It was quite disconcerting to wake up this morning to see that Donald Trump had launched air strikes. There is no question that Syria needs to be dealt with. You just can’t have any government getting away with gassing its own people. I just feel uneasy about Donald Trump being in charge of this. Does he even have a proper strategy? I also feel uneasy about our Government just slipping into line behind him.

On Question Time last night, Tim Farron was talking about the importance of establishing no fly zones and of humanitarian aid, but made clear that doing nothing was not an option in the face of an attack as horrific as the one we saw earlier this week.

He has since described Trump’s action as “proportionate” but went on to say that our Government’s response was not sufficient:

The attack by American forces was a proportionate response to the barbarous attack by the Syrian government on its own people.

The British government rather than just putting out a bland statement welcoming this should now follow it up and call an emergency meeting of the Nato alliance to see what else can be done, be that more surgical strikes or no fly zones.

Evil happens when good people do nothing, we cannot sit by while a dictator gasses his own people. We cannot stand by, we must act.

I don’t always agree with what they say, but in situations like this, I always look for the views of three people: Paddy, Ming and Julie Smith

On Twitter, Paddy said:

I also had a conversation with Julie on Twitter:

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 71 Comments
Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Hungary vs Soros

By Tom Arms | Fri 7th April 2017 - 8:55 am

As far as the proverbial man in the street is concerned, there is very little that separates the extreme right from the extreme left.

The results are the same: Power concentrated in the hands of a small circle of political leaders, suppression of human rights and academic freedom, political prisoners, torture, absence of a free press, no free speech, no freedom of assembly, rule by decree, corruption and politically-appointed judges presiding over show trials.

That is not say that there are no differences. There clearly are. The left tends to find its suppressive roots in an all-embracing ideology or – in some cases—a religion which claims to offer solutions to all of mankind’s problems. You need only embrace it.

The far right, on the other hand, is generally based on a belief that one nation or group of people are superior to all the others, and the inferior people should be treated accordingly. These are the ultra-nationalists.

Both groups are adept at conjuring up external threats to justify repression which is really aimed at controlling internal dissent. In modern history we can point to Hitler and the Jews, Stalin and capitalist West, McCarthy and the “Reds under the beds.”

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 13 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Lib Dem GAIN from UKIP in Aylesbury, hold in Bath and leapfrog Labour into second in safest Tory ward in Calderdale

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 6th April 2017 - 11:54 pm

Yes, you read that headline right. This is not a drill. We actually took a seat off UKIP in Aylesbur. Congratulations to Cllr Susan Morgan and her team for a cracking result.

It was one of these eye-watering vote share increases.

Fantastic.

In Walcot ward of Bath and North East Somerset Council, Richard Samuel handsomely increased the Lib Dem vote share to hold the seat.

Also up for a very large gin and tonic the next time we meet up is erstwhile Conference trouble maker Alisdair Calder McGregor who leapt into second place in the safest Tory ward in Calderdale. He was the only candidate whose party’s vote share actually went up.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged | 16 Comments
Bernard Aris

D66 leader makes waves taking a stand against anti-gay violence

By Bernard Aris | Thu 6th April 2017 - 1:28 pm

D66, the party that initiated a global wave of legalizing gay marriage, made itself the emblem of a day-long Dutch media craze that even extended to Dutch diplomats in London and at the UN in New York, as the Huffington Post reported.

It all started when two Dutch gay men, walking home hand in hand from their pub over the (in)famous bridge at Arnhem, were accosted by a group of youths (some of them around 14 years old), with one having four front teeth knocked out.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments
Ryan Lailvaux

West of England: Five reasons to win with Williams

By Ryan Lailvaux | Thu 6th April 2017 - 11:24 am

The West of England Mayoral election is now only a month away. Here are five reasons to volunteer in the campaign.

1) It is a two-horse race
At the start of the campaign, the bookmakers Ladbrokes made Stephen the favourite to win with the Conservative candidate right on our heels. Notably, Labour and the Greens are completely out of the contest so we need to pick up all the progressive second preferences.

There is a real chance that the Liberal Democrats can win this newly created role. It is going to take a lot of enthusiasm to outcampaign the spending of the Conservatives but let us prove that the experts are worth listening to.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 2 Comments
George Kendall

Why aren’t our poll ratings higher?

By George Kendall | Thu 6th April 2017 - 9:16 am

On the train to Spring conference, as I was chatting with a student, I mentioned I was a Lib Dem. He said: “Aren’t they the party that saved the country, and then got destroyed because of it?”

My first thought was: “Wow! Student opinion has shifted since 2010.” But I also noted that he didn’t realise how much we’ve recovered since the last General Election.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | 56 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Jackie Pearcey: Only the Lib Dems can stop a hard Brexit

By NewsHound | Wed 5th April 2017 - 6:17 pm

Writing on the Times Red Box site (£), Manchester Gorton’s brilliant Lib Dem candidate Jackie Pearcey has said that only the Lib Dems can offer national opposition to a hard brexit and take on a Labour Party which takes people for granted.

She outlines some of the ways that they have done so in Gorton – in a city where they have all but one councillor:

Residents here are also tired of being ignored by the Labour-run council, which has become a de facto one-party state. This constituency is full of proud communities, passionate about improving their area. I was proud to serve as a councillor here for 21 years, fighting hard with local people to protect green spaces and improve services.

Years of neglect by the council have taken their toll. Many of the roads now have more craters than a lunar landscape. A deeply unpopular decision to reduce bin sizes has led to an epidemic of fly-tipping. Small business owners are struggling with soaring rents. These are the symptoms of a Labour party that takes voters for granted and is more interested in spending cash on glitzy developments in the city centre than investing in the neglected suburbs.

A Labour win would let them off the hook, she says:

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
The Voice

Yeovil UKIP candidates blame NHS crisis on women doctors

By The Voice | Wed 5th April 2017 - 4:45 pm

If you listen to most experts, the reason for the crisis in the NHS comes from under-resourcing and an aging population. But, no, UKIP council candidates in Chard in Yeovil have come up with another explanation. It’s all the fault of women doctors and their career breaks and part-time doctors.  Buzzfeed has the story:

The leaflet was produced by local UKIP councillors in Somerset who suggest alleged positive discrimination in the GP hiring process could ultimately lead to local surgeries closing altogether.

“How many female Doctors are there in your surgery working 2 or 3 days a week?” it asks, warning the issue could result in thousands of patients being left without access to medical care when GPs retire.

They have a quote from Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Yeovil, Daisy Benson:

UKIP might wish we were living in the 1950s, but it’s 2017!

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 4 Comments
David Hopps

Brexit related divisiveness mars school exchange visit

By David Hopps | Wed 5th April 2017 - 3:15 pm

Three Spanish Exchange students have descended on our home this week. Full of fun, responsive and impeccably mannered, it has been a pleasure to have them around. About parts of their experience in England, though, it is impossible to be so complimentary.

Their looks of bemusement have grown ever stronger during the week as the farcical events surrounding Gibraltar have unfolded.

Firstly, they watched in amazement as a former Tory leader – not a rogue backbencher, a former leader – envisaged a situation in which Britain would sent a Task Force, Union Jacks waving and bugles blowing, to defend the future of the island.

Walking round the supermarket, they stumbled across the front page of The Sun with its headline “Up Yours Senors”, although I suppose we should be mildly relieved that the paper fell short of calling for all-out war.

If they go back to the supermarket today, they can check out the Daily Mail with its tale of how a “Tiny Royal Navy patrol vessel chases giant Spanish gunboat out of British waters.”

Two newspapers which have done so much damage to the culture of the nation.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 11 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable to liberals: Don’t despair, go local, celebrate identities and embrace social democratic policies

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th April 2017 - 1:45 pm

Last night, Vince Cable gave the annual John G Gray Lecture to the Scottish Liberal Club in Edinburgh. John G Gray was a leading Scottish figure in the fightback from near extinction in the middle of the last century. He was at one point the only Liberal councillor in Scotland. Vince observed that at the same time as he was successfully fighting a ridiculous proposal for a ring road in Glasgow, Gray was doing the same in Edinburgh, making sure that a proposal that would have damaged much of the city’s heritage never came to fruition.

The subject of his talk was Brexit, Trump and the Crisis of Liberalism. He set out four things that we should do to stop the “insidious” politics of populism and nationalism taking root.

Firstly, he looked at some of the reasons for populism taking hold. History has many examples, from the South Sea Bubble, to the Depression to the 2008 crash, of economic heart attacks being followed after some years by populism. When people lose out, they turn to the extremes and we have over the past decade seen the fall in post war living standards. Significantly, the measures used to keep the economy afloat, low interest rates and quantitative easing, ensured that pensioners’ savings didn’t grow. That resulted in discontent and nostalgia became a powerful emotional driver.

He warned that as the populists fail, the search for a scapegoat would turn on the judiciary and the other elements which underpin our democracy. He highlighted the Daily Fail’s talk of the enemy within – where the Lib Dems were top of the list. Populists do what they can to delegitimise anything that gets in their way. 

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 15 Comments
John Leech

John Leech writes: Come and help deliver a knockout blow to Labour and hard Brexit in Gorton

By John Leech | Wed 5th April 2017 - 12:05 pm

Having spent the last few weeks delivering leaflets and talking to residents in Manchester Gorton I wanted to share my thoughts on the by-election.

Manchester Gorton presents a huge opportunity for us as a party. The response that we are getting for our candidate, Jackie Pearcey, is really very impressive. I have been struck by the number of people who have told me on the doorstep how much better their local area was when they were represented by local Lib Dem Councillors like Jackie. This is a constituency that voted 65% remain, had 19 out of 21 Lib Dem Councillors just a few years ago and where we used to get a very substantial vote at the general election. This is a real chance to show that we can do to Labour in Manchester what we did to the Tories in Witney. We are the only party that is openly campaigning against Theresa May’s Hard Brexit agenda in this election. The Labour candidate even said he agreed with Corbyn to 3 line whip the vote to trigger article 50!

Quite simply the only barrier to us winning this seat right now is people not thinking we can win and not coming to help. When we won Manchester Withington in 2005 our biggest challenge was persuading people that the effort there was worthwhile. In Manchester Gorton it really is. This is our opportunity to deliver a knockout blow to Labour and show up their hypocrisy on Brexit. Getting a good result in Manchester Gorton improves the chances for all of us facing Labour in elections in the future.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 11 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Tom Brake: The Westminster Attack was an assault on democracy, let it not be an assault on freedom too

By NewsHound | Wed 5th April 2017 - 11:26 am

Tom Brake wrote for The House magazine about the threats to civil liberties in the wake of the Westminster attacks. He said that the appropriate response to the horror was:

What the attacker sought to do in his rampage was to instil fear and division, erode our democracy, shake confidence in our institutions and rupture our way of life. Our response must be more unity, more democracy, and steadfast humanity in the face of evil. We must always counter hate with love. We will remain open, tolerant and united.

The article was written before Amber Rudd effectively conceded that she had been talking rubbish about encryption, but he highlighted why that was a bad idea and went on to talk about how the sweeping powers the Government had given itself could be absued in the wrong hands:

The bigger issue, of course, is this will not be effective. The 2015 Paris attacks were planned on non-encrypted burner phones, and the attackers were known to the authorities. The issue was the lack of police resources to track potential criminals, not the lack of access to encrypted messages. And drowning our intelligence services in a mountain of irrelevant data is unlikely to help, as the Danes recently discovered.

The Snooper’s Charter was a startling overreach when it was voted through last year, and this would be a horrifying extension of it. Few of us would give the government a key to our house to look through our drawers without a court warrant, and we must be careful to treat our online belongings with the same respect.

Continue reading »
Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Paul Walter

Easter egg hunt furore – something of the ridiculous?

By Paul Walter | Wed 5th April 2017 - 9:56 am

Can you see the word “Easter” in the image above? The image is a screenshot of the National Trust website for its Easter activity.

Yet, Theresa May saw fit to interrupt her visit to Saudi Arabia to criticise Cadbury’s and the National Trust for calling the activity an “Egg Hunt” rather than a “Easter Egg Hunt” – even though Easter is emblazoned above the title.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 15 Comments
Caron Lindsay

The shameless Lib Dem Press Office Easter Egg grab

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 5th April 2017 - 9:14 am

As Theresa May went all Donald Trump on us by playing up to traditional Tory supporters  and focusing on an irrelevant and inaccurate news report about Easter eggs to distract us from the general chaos of her Government, The Liberal Democrat Press Office quietly went about providing commentary on the actual big issues of the day.

Our press team highlighted contradictory remarks by Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson. Boris was doing his best “It’ll be fine if we don’t get a brexit deal” in Germany, while Hammond said that we needed one to protect our economy in India. Tim Farron commented:

This Government is in utter chaos over Brexit. Philip Hammond says one thing in India, then is immediately contradicted by Boris Johnson in Germany.

It seems it’s not just some in the Chancellor’s own party who don’t want a deal on Brexit – it’s some in his own cabinet.

Theresa May should clarify whether she still believes that no deal is better than a bad deal, and if she agrees with her Chancellor of her Foreign Secretary.

The Brexiteers need to drop the bluster and bravado and admit that crashing out of the EU without a deal would be a disaster for our economy.

Tom Brake reminded us of the failings of the Philippines leader as Liam Fox was about to pay a visit:

Duterte is one of the 21st century’s most sinister leaders and Liam Fox has flown halfway around the world to grovel to him.  The fact that the first visit made by Fox since triggering Article 50 is to the Philippines shows just how low this government is willing to stoop in order to secure even a minimal trade deal in the future.

According to UK trade statistics, the value of our exports to the Philippines are just £500 million a year- to put this into context our total international trade is currently over £28 billion a month.

So not only is Fox blind to the horrific human rights abuses and endemic corruption in the Philippines, he’s also clearly oblivious to the actual realities of doing trade with them.

No amount of pandering to corrupt regimes can replace our membership of the Single Market, which is why the Liberal Democrats will continue to fight against the hard, divisive Brexit this government is pursuing.

If, like me, you’ve noticed that things seem to cost more when you do your food shopping, you’d be right. Prices in supermarkets have gone up by 2.3% in the last three months according to research. Susan Kramer said:

Shoppers are feeling the Brexit squeeze, with prices rising while real wages continue to fall.

This is only set to get worse as the Government continues with its reckless plans to damage our economy by pulling Britain out of the Single Market.

It’s not too late to stop a hard Brexit and prevent a long-term squeeze to people’s living standards.

The British people must be given the final say over what comes next. They can choose to keep Britain in the Single Market, and if they want, to remain in the European Union.

This was just a fraction of their output on the serious stuff yesterday.

However, they couldn’t resist a wee foray into Egg-gate. They are human, after all. How many egg analogies can you get into one press release? I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t get hard-boiled in there, given that that’s what we traditionally do with them at Easter, but I did smile.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Peter Scott Brooks

Brexit De-metrification: Inching our way to the periphery

By Peter Scott Brooks | Tue 4th April 2017 - 9:11 am

As predictably as UKIP politicians dressing in tweed, calls to return to Imperial measurements have being doing the rounds in the media within days of Theresa May triggering Article 50. Whilst this may sound trivial, the passion and practicality runs very deep.

The Active Resistance to Metrification has removed or vandalised thousands of metric road signs. The “metric martyrs” championed in sections of the press, sold goods illegally using only Imperial measurements. At the same time we currently use the same metric units as the counties we have over 90% of our overseas trade with, a boon to the ‘frictionless trade’ that our Prime Minister wants. And they won’t be changing units just because of our Brexit!

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | 58 Comments
The Voice

Tom Brake on human rights in Saudi Arabia

By The Voice | Mon 3rd April 2017 - 7:39 pm

Tom Brake has written a letter to the Prime Minister urging her to raise human rights issues in her meeting with Saudi Arabia.

Here is the letter:

Dear Theresa,

I am writing in advance of your visit to Saudi Arabia tomorrow, to ask you to raise urgently with the regime a number of serious human rights concerns.

1. The targeting of civilians in Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition
According to the United Nations, over 7,600 people have been killed and 42,000 injured since fighting began in March 2015, the majority in airstrikes led by the Saudi coalition. The conflict and a blockade imposed by the coalition have also triggered a humanitarian disaster, leaving 70% of the population in need of aid, including millions on the verge of famine.

The Saudi coalition, in contravention of humanitarian law, has repeatedly targeted civilians, including at funerals, weddings and in market places.

Continue reading »
Posted in News | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Chris Key

War with Spain over Gibraltar?

By Chris Key | Mon 3rd April 2017 - 5:28 pm

 

Normally I try to switch off on holiday. I am in the Canary Islands with my family. When I switched on my Twitter feed I nearly choked on my cafe con leche after reading Lord Howard’s comments about Gibraltar.

Today was the 35th Anniversary of the start of the Falklands war and should have been a day to remember the dead and learn from the past. Yet instead Lord Howard used an interview on a Sunday politics program to remind people of what Thatcher did in 1982 and support a similar reaction in relation to Gibraltar.

This was wrong at so many levels. As my wife who is from Argentina said, how can someone of his experience make a comparison between the military junta of Argentina in 1982 and the democratically elected government of Mariano Rajoy.

Secondly, we want to set up trade deals with the EU and other Latin American countries. Does Lord Howard think that being the class room bully  will help us to enter this wonderful global world we are told by Brexiteers was created on June 24, 2016 ?

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 35 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Simon Robinson
    @Peter Davies: Thanks and well spotted. I'd calculated the increase as a % of gross salary. More realistically we'd consider the % increase of take home pay. As...
  • Tristan Ward
    I don’t see [the Tories/Reform] forming a coalition as two distinct parties" I think this is clearly wrong I'm afraid. Consider: Much of the right wing...
  • Keith Creswell
    A well argued suggestion and consistent with LD values. Although I would add that Territories that remain linked with UK should have representation in the UK P...
  • Jason Connor
    Partly but Brexit also came about as many towns and areas were left behind and lacked inward investment or regeneration. Or there was a perception despite the E...
  • Slamdac
    If we are going to link citizenship to taxes, I would also link benefit entitlement to citizenship. If you are not a British Citizen then you don't get benefits...