Caron Lindsay

Could Rebecca Hanson be fighting a long game in Copeland?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 12th January 2017 - 9:57 pm

It was great to see Cumbrian Councillor, health and education campaigner and erstwhile Liberal Democrat Voice contributor Rebecca Hanson selected as our candidate for the Copeland by-election.

Rebecca  has built a career as a teacher, lecturer and education advisor. She grew up in a deprived area of Newcastle and went on to study at Cambridge University. She is passionate about educational policy and ensuring no child is left behind.

Labour, for some reason, seems to be putting the word out that the by-election won’t take place until May 4th, the same day as the county elections.

I guess they think that Jeremy Corbyn has had such a fantastic week, they just want to let him bask in the admiration of the public for a while.

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Paul Walter

Book review – Jeremy Paxman: A Life in Questions

By Paul Walter | Thu 12th January 2017 - 2:33 pm

Santa kindly got me this book. I have just finished it – which for me counts as “speed reading”. (I once spent an entire year reading “To kill a mocking bird“).

Jeremy Paxman’s memoirs, “A Life in Questions” is an excellent read – it presents a journalist of great integrity, an interesting life story which is, in turns, fascinating, gripping and, sometimes, hilarious.

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Chris Bowers

A slogan you might not expect from the Lib Dems

By Chris Bowers | Thu 12th January 2017 - 12:30 pm

 

When a political party is struggling for attention, or even to establish in the public’s mind what it’s actually for, it needs to do something that catches the imagination. Something that fits with the party’s ethos but still manages to take the country by surprise. I may have just the thing for us Liberal Democrats.

When I look at the reasons for the Leave vote in last summer’s referendum, I see a lack of identity as a central factor, certainly in England. However irrational it may seem (on a pragmatic level the whole vote was irrational), people feel the EU has eroded their sense of who they are. Globalisation has robbed them of a sense of national belonging, so slogans such as ‘Take back control’ and ‘I want my country back’ appeal to a sense of who we once were, regardless whether the golden olden days really existed.

That analysis goes for England, but less for Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Scots seem very happy to know that they’re Scottish, and as the likes of Andy Murray and Chris Hoy have shown, they’re sufficiently proud of their Scottishness that they’re happy to be British as well. Even the Welsh seem happy with their Welsh identity, despite voting a different way to the Scots and Northern Irish in the referendum.

But as by far the biggest nation in the UK, many English people have the sense that they’ve lost their sense of being English.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 72 Comments

Government’s inadequate response to the Syrian refugee crisis

By Office of Lord Roberts | Thu 12th January 2017 - 8:56 am

In September 2015, amid widespread public outcry over the UK’s lack of a response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis, David Cameron’s Government agreed to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK by 2020 under the Syrian Vulnerable Person’s Relocation Scheme.

Yet, the latest Home Office figures obtained by a Freedom of Information request show that, in the two years to June 2016, just under 3,000 refugees have actually arrived in the UK. In other words, an average of less than 1,500 refugees are being resettled each year. This is far below the 4,000 per year necessary to reach the Government’s 20,000 goal. In other words, unless the number of refugees being resettled increases drastically, the Government’s pledge will be broken. Yet, seemingly in denial about the very real possibility of not fulfilling this promise, the Government remains adamant that it is on track to resettle 20,000 refugees by 2020.

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Caron Lindsay

Tributes paid to Willie Goodhart

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 11th January 2017 - 8:47 pm

It’s sad to hear that Willie Goodhart, founder member of the SDP, retired peer and co-author of the Liberal Democrat constitution, has passed away.

Tim Farron paid tribute to Willie:

Willie Goodhart was a founding member of the SDP and stalwart of the Liberal Democrats. He believed passionately in social democracy, human rights and the rule of law. In writing our party’s constitution, he has left a lasting legacy that will be cherished by party members for decades to come.

I send my heartfelt sympathy to his wife Celia and his children Frances, Laura and Benjamin.

Lords Leader Dick Newby said:

Willie will be very sadly missed by friends and colleagues in the Lords. He was a doughty campaigner for human rights, for Europe, and for a fairer society, issues which he promoted tirelessly in the Lords.

He played a vital role in establishing the SDP and in its subsequent merger with the Liberal Party. He won the respect of all those with whom he worked and he will be remembered with great fondness.

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Kirsten Johnson

One mental health first aider per school is not enough

By Kirsten Johnson | Wed 11th January 2017 - 3:30 pm

I welcomed Theresa May’s announcement on Monday in which she said “every secondary school in the country to be offered mental health first aid training”. MHFA England has campaigned for many years to get school staff trained in Mental Health First Aid and are thrilled that there will be at least one Mental Health First Aider in each secondary school.

But it doesn’t go far enough. Every single teacher, as part of their teacher training course, should be trained in Mental Health First Aid.

Poppy Jaman, CEO of MHFA England, said:

Mental ill health in young people is a growing health concern, with half of all lifetime cases of mental health issues starting by the age of 14.

There is a bespoke MHFA England course called Youth Mental Health First Aid which could be modified for teacher training. A short course could change a young person’s life.

A teacher overseeing a class of 30+ pupils needs to have the skills to recognise early warning signs of mental ill-health. One first aider per school can help in moments of crisis, but cannot possibly pick up all the mental health warning signs within the school population. A large part of the MHFA course is in learning about various mental health problems (such as stress, anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide ideation, psychosis) and how to intervene early on.

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Bernard Aris

Trying (too hard) to curb EU free movement: A symptom of the EU-wide social democracy meltdown

By Bernard Aris | Wed 11th January 2017 - 1:55 pm

Just as I was reading Nick Tyrone’s blog about Corbyn betraying the EU freedom of movement but wanting to have the EU cake nonetheless, another recently-elected Labour leader came on Dutch public radio. Note the date: Tuesday, January 10th, 2017.

I’m talking about former Amsterdam alderman and present Dutch minister of Social Affairs, the ambitious lawyer Lodewijk Asscher of the “Partij van de Arbeid”/PvdA, literally: “Labour Party”.

In the 1980s, when Labour under Michael Foot was going through its “Militant Tendency” phase, the then PvdA leaders, ex-prime minister (1973-’77) Den Uyl and coming prime minister (1994-2002) Wim Kok deplored that leftist populism and leftist political correctness gone wild. So both criticised it: British Labour, come to your senses.

Not today.

In the Dutch campaign that just got started for the General Election on 15th March, Mr. Asscher, who just two weeks ago won a party leadership contest, just said that he counted on “European Leftist support” (PvdA jargon: from fellow Labour and social democratic parties) to pursue his top-profile policy: curbing free movement of labour through the EU. When the radio presenter quoted a phrase Gordon Brown grew to regret: “Jobs for our labourers first”, Mr. Asscher readily agreed. And who does he expect to get support from?

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Chris Key

Our nation’s mental health is a clear and present danger

By Chris Key | Wed 11th January 2017 - 12:30 pm

On Monday, Theresa May’s announcement about mental health came to precious little in money terms – a mere £15m of additional investment to be precise. This despite the fact that Norman Lamb and others have made it clear that extra money that was earmarked for mental health last year has in fact been used to prop up NHS trusts who are suffering from financial difficulties. Mental health is crying out for more money as Isabel Hardman eloquently writes about in the Telegraph today based on her own experience.

The statistics are clear. Research in 2014 found that one in ten people wait over a year just to get an assessment for a talking therapy, while four in ten wait more than three months. Two thirds told the We Need To Talk coalition that they had become more unwell while waiting, with one in six attempting suicide. In 2014, over 6,000 people died from suicide which is 16 per day. Nobody would be happy to wait three months for a broken leg to be treated or to have to travel 300 miles to see their children for a broken arm. Yet this is precisely the state of mental health in the UK today.

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David Thorpe

Corbyn’s pay cap plan boosts the rich, not the poor

By David Thorpe | Wed 11th January 2017 - 10:55 am

As usually happens when hard line Socialist utopias are created, Jeremy Corbyn’s maximum pay plan would help the rich not the poor.

That is because when employees reach the maximum, other ways would be found to reward them which would increase inequality and reduce the tax take from the rich.

In Soviet Russia access to the splendour of the Bolshoi Ballet was a perk for the wealthy. The poor weren’t helped, and no tax was collected on the perk.

So it would be if Corbyn got his way.  Employers would pay bonuses, perhaps in shares or profit share, when they can’t pay extra cash. The thing is, shares or profit shares, when sold, are liable to Capital Gains Tax, not Income Tax as wages are, and the capital gains tax rate is lower than the income tax rate above £140,000. 

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Andrew Brown

Brexit means…Keeping mum

By Andrew Brown | Wed 11th January 2017 - 9:50 am

Brexit means Brexit… The oft repeated mantra has become as synonymous with Theresa May as Major’s “Back to Basics”, Blair’s “Education, Education, Education” and Cameron’s “Compassionate Conservatism”. Like those, the phrase has become something of a joke – not helped by the assonance of the words “Brexit” and “Breakfast”, and the trap this has provided to ministers and commentators alike. So far, so funny, so harmless. Well, not harmless, but there is a world of difference between soundbites and actual policy. Originally “Brexit means Brexit” seemed designed to simultaneously pander to those who want a hard Brexit, whilst leaving the government leeway to work out what to do.

Of course, the official explanation of a lack of policy is that we cannot “reveal our hand” in advance of negotiations. There can be no escaping the whiff of sophistry about this answer – particularly when you consider the conflicting signals from the various departments charged with coming up with some form of coherent plan for those negotiations, preferably before Article 50 itself is triggered. It is patently obvious that no such plan yet exists, and all the while the clock is ticking towards the government’s self-imposed deadline.

If taken at face value, then May’s approach shows a shocking disregard for parliament, and the people. Her original desire to exercise Royal Prerogative to trigger Article 50 was but a symptom of a wish to retain control over every aspect of Brexit. I doubt those who voted to “Take Back Control” meant “take back control and hand it to the whoever is selected to lead the Tory party to do with as they wish”. Nonetheless in a few short months we have gone from having a government elected on a manifesto in which they said “yes to the Single Market” to a situation where the new Prime Minister will not now categorically repeat that affirmation.

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Caron Lindsay

Norman Lamb leads calls for National Convention to resolve NHS funding crisis

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 11th January 2017 - 8:46 am

Norman Lamb has co-ordinateda cross-party group of MPs to call for a national convention on health and care to resolve the crisis in NHS funding.

Norman said:

The health and social care system in England is facing unprecedented challenges. Failing to find a solution to this crisis puts some of the most vulnerable people at risk – frail and elderly people in need of care services, disabled people who need support and people with long-term illnesses, particularly those suffering from mental ill health.

Building a sustainable health and care system that can provide high-quality care can’t be realised without putting aside party political point-scoring.

The public is sick and tired of the NHS and care system being treated like a political football.  People have had enough, and are crying out for an honest discussion and bold solutions to these challenges.

It speaks volumes that so many Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum are backing this initiative.  At Prime Minister’s Questions, I will urge Theresa May to recognise the gravity of the situation we are facing, and to agree to meet with us to listen to our proposal.

Norman has persuaded an illustrious group of MPs and former health secretaries to back his call. They include the  Conservative former health minister Dan Poulter MP and Labour former shadow care minister Liz Kendall MP. It is also supported by four Select Committee Chairs – Sarah Wollaston MP (Health Committee), Meg Hillier MP (Public Accounts Committee), Clive Betts MP (Communities and Local Government Committee) and Frank Field (Work and Pensions Committee) – along with former Health Secretaries Stephen Dorrell and Alan Milburn.

The full statement says:

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Joe Otten

Iconic coalition era building demolished

By Joe Otten | Tue 10th January 2017 - 8:45 pm

Do you remember the days when many an urgent TV news interview on the state of the nation was conducted in a plumbers’ yard? The yard contained the constituency office of Nick Clegg MP, and before him Richard Allan MP. Nick moved out around a year ago to a nearby alternative, and this morning on the school run I saw …

To be honest, even when standing it wasn’t much prettier than this. But the office was unpretentiously a place of ordinary decent hard work, at the heart of the community, next door to a church and a primary school. And it has years of memories for Sheffield Liberal Democrats.

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Jeremy Hazlehurst

The problem with a wage cap

By Jeremy Hazlehurst | Tue 10th January 2017 - 7:30 pm

Jeremy Cobyn’s proposal to bring in a maximum wage (or, if you like, a 100% tax rate) would not work, for two reasons. The first, is that the swing voters he needs to attract would never vote for a party with this potty policy. If you are flirting with voting for the Conservatives, you are not going to like the idea of a wage cap.

If any further discussion is needed, then the second reason is that it would not have the intended effect. Presumably the reason to bring down wages would be to reduce inequality. But most rich people do not get their income from salaries, but from dividends, capital gains, rental income etc.

I don’t know if the Duke of Westminster takes a salary, but capping it would not change one iota the fact that he owns a huge swathe of London’s most valuable real estate. If your only source of income is your salary, then capping it only stops you being able to catch up with the already-rich. Or encourages you to take income in other forms. 

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Caron Lindsay

Farron: Corbyn’s relaunch shows that Lib Dems are the real voice of opposition

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 10th January 2017 - 6:09 pm

I have to say I do feel for my friends in the Labour Party – those people whose views on many of the issues of the day are not wildly dissimilar to mine. They stuck with Labour through Iraq and the erosion of civil liberties despite feeling uncomfortable with both of these things. And now they are faced with a leadership delivering them at the feet of Theresa May and her Brexiteers.

When you have devoted a huge amount of your life to working for a political party, you have a huge amount of your social and emotional ties wrapped up in it too. It’s not easy to walk away from.

I understand those ties because I feel them for this party, an organisation to which I have devoted more than two thirds of my life.

I wouldn’t ask or expect my friends to leave Labour – although I think most of them could be quite happy in the Liberal Democrats – because that has to be a personal decision for them. I’d welcome them if they did decide to join us and I will certainly find ways to work with them on the issues where we agree, most notably in opposing the Tory/Labour hegemony on Brexit.

This is the biggest thing that this country has done in my lifetime. The shock waves will be felt for generations. The vote was knife-edge close, so the government should have to prove itself at every step of the way by being scrutinised within an inch of its life – ultimately by the people of this country being asked to ratify the Brexit deal or not. Yet the Labour Party under Corbyn has capitulated and given the Tories free rein.

So I won’t be asking my friends in Labour directly to join us. They can make their own minds up about where their future lies. But I do extend an invitation to all those people out there who vote Labour, or who maybe have never been involved in party politics before but who are deeply uneasy about what they see unfolding before them.

Tim Farron this afternoon recorded a short video in which he outlined the two reasons why Corbyn’s relaunch is bad news. Firstly, the obvious Brexit one, but secondly and as importantly, having a Trump on the left is not a good thing. Populism is bad news wherever it comes from.

He also sent an email to Lib Dem members entitled “We’ve got to talk about Jeremy” saying:

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dem council candidate Ben talks about his Depression

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 10th January 2017 - 1:40 pm

Yesterday my attention was taken by this excellent video of a young man talking about his experiences with Depression posted on the BBC’s The Social Facebook page.

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The Voice

Tim Farron doing LBC phone in at 6pm tonight

By The Voice | Tue 10th January 2017 - 11:10 am

Tim Farron will be taking calls from listeners on Iain Dale’s LBC show this evening. As the Tories and Labour seem to linking arms and heading off to Hard Brexit land together, Tim will know doubt be showing off what a proper opposition leader does.

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David Boyle

Why we need a little civil disobedience and please help me provide it!

By David Boyle | Tue 10th January 2017 - 8:39 am

The rail crisis is reaching its reluctant and rather tawdry head. Even passengers campaigners are being singled out for flaming criticism by the government’s supporters in the press, as the leaders of the Association of British Commuters were so unfairly over the weekend.

We are in short being forced to take sides in the traditional management versus labour battle – when people like me believe that the slow collapse of Southern Rail is mainly to do with incompetent franchising from the Department of Transport and absentee landlord behaviour from the Treasury and owners Go Ahead (as well, of course, on the usual useless industrial relations).

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Stephen Tall

LibDemVoice Fantasy Football League: manager of the month for December

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th January 2017 - 5:45 pm

Our fifth update from this season’s LDV Fantasy Football League. Congratulations to Andrew Hydon and Judith Dickinson, our joint Managers of the Month for December.

Respectively, their The Treble C’s and Willy Fogg’s X1 each scored an impressive 387 points, just edging out last month’s winner, Ashley Day’s The Zaha Men (383).

Here’s the overall league table:

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Tim Farron – “As Millwall’s crisis shows, football is about far more than just sport”

By Mary Reid | Mon 9th January 2017 - 2:54 pm

 

It’s not often that a senior Lib Dem is quoted in the Sports pages (Ming Campbell excepted). But today Tim Farron has been explaining his concern about the decision of Lewisham Council to compulsory purchase Millwall’s land.

He is quoted:

Football clubs are a crucial part of British society and are at the heart of our communities. I know how heartbreaking it would be for Millwall’s fans and the local community if their club was forced to move against their wishes. The details of this case seem quite extraordinary and I hope that the council don’t take actions that could risk the club’s future in the area.

Since that was published Tim has written a longer comment piece.

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Jamie Dalzell

A fairer formula for schools: it’s not just about funding

By Jamie Dalzell | Mon 9th January 2017 - 12:24 pm

In the face of Brexit and a Trump Presidency, our communities face a period of crisis and uncertainty. We therefore must continue to focus attention on supporting and improving school’s here in the UK so that our young people are as well-equipped as possible to adapt to this rapidly changing world.

Aside from the distracting nonsense of Grammar Schools, the Government is pursuing ambitious reforms to the national schools’ funding formula. The second stage of their consultation was published on 14th December and, having campaigned for such reforms for several years, there are many aspects that I welcome. However there are also concerns surrounding the potential 8% real-term cuts that are being imposed nationally by 2019-20.

With all this in mind, school funding is likely to become the focus of debate in education, but, I believe, that we may end up further overlooking a far more important issue that is currently driving our education system into crisis: the understaffing of UK schools.

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Paul Walter

The physical network behind surveillance – an extraordinary video about Cornish internet apparatus

By Paul Walter | Mon 9th January 2017 - 9:53 am


The path to the beach at Porthcurno - geograph.org.uk - 1298346
The path to the beach at Porthcurno, Cornwall. The diamond-shaped sign indicates the presence of underground cables, of which there are many buried under the beach, this place being the landfall of many cables under the Atlantic Ocean. The small building houses the terminals of these cables.

Here on Liberal Democrat Voice, we often debate the subject of government surveillance. But do we ever consider the actual physical network of cables and buildings which underpin that surveillance?

Videographer Mark Thomas has published an extraordinary video on You Tube which shows cables, manhole covers, buildings and the like, to give a detailed picture of how the network, which presumably facilitates surveillance of data, works on the ground.

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Mary Reid

Keep Britain in the Single Market

By Mary Reid | Mon 9th January 2017 - 8:57 am

As Caron mentioned yesterday a petition been posted on the Liberal Democrat website ahead of a possible statement from the Prime Minister today. It says:

Leaked documents suggest that the Conservatives are getting ready to take Britain out of the Single Market.

Leaving the Single Market would be deeply damaging for jobs, businesses and the economy.

Don’t let the Tories push our economy’s self-destruct button – add your name today and support our campaign to keep Britain in the Single Market.

You can sign it here.

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Caron Lindsay

Now, Theresa, you weren’t really the driving force behind mental health crisis care improvements, now, were you?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 8th January 2017 - 8:28 pm

So, Theresa May gave an interview to Sky’s Sophy Ridge today in which she gave the biggest signal yet that leaving the single market is very much on the agenda.

In time honoured tradition, there’s a nice petition you can sign if you agree with Tim Farron that “reckless plans to leave the Single Market would make us all poorer.”

But it’s something else she said in her interview that grabbed my attention. She had moved from saying not much actually on Brexit to a very small amount on the NHS to talking about her speech tomorrow. Apparently mental health is a priority of hers. Who knew? The Prime Minister said:

If I can give you an example of something I have already done, when I was in the Home Office one of the issues that concerned me was people in mental health crisis being taken to a police cell as a place of last resort.  It wasn’t good for them, it wasn’t good for the police.  Actually we’ve changed that and we’ve seen the number for whom that happens coming down by 80% and that was a small sum of money that the NHS has been able to put in in order to ensure that there are more, for example more and different places of safety for people …

“I have already done.” Really?

Well, let’s look at an unbiased source, shall we? The Government website which announced this initiative back in 2014 didn’t mention Theresa May anywhere. The main names were Liberal Democrat ministers Nick Clegg and Norman Lamb. Yes, there was Home Office involvement, but it was Lamb who had done all the work bringing it together across government. He was the driving force behind all the mental health measures introduced by the Coalition Government.

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Caron Lindsay

Redcar Liberal Democrat Councillor Chris Abbott has died

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 8th January 2017 - 5:55 pm

Really sad news from the North East today. Chris Abbott, long-term Liberal Democrat Councillor from Redcar, has died suddenly.

The photo of him here is taken from his Twitter profile. 

From Gazette Live:

A prominent figure in local Liberal Democrat politics for more than 40 years, he represented Newcomen ward, in Redcar , where he lived.

The 66-year-old lifelong Leeds fan and electrician was also chairman of Yorkshire Ridings Society.

Paying tribute, Josh Mason, leader of Redcar and Cleveland Liberal Democrat group, said: “Chris was a bastion of local democracy and a lifelong liberal, whose knowledge, passion and dedicated community work, have been an inspiration to us all.

“Redcar and Cleveland Council will be a lesser place without his principled values, commitment and tireless efforts for local people.

On behalf of Redcar Liberal Democrats, I offer sincere condolences to Chris’ family and to all who knew him, as we mourn together, the loss of a dear friend

Chris was one of the stalwarts of the early online Lib Dem Conferencing system, Cix and his blog was a brilliant mix of local news and commentary.

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The Voice

LDV’s Sunday Best: our 7 most-read articles this week

By The Voice | Sun 8th January 2017 - 1:11 pm

7 bestMany thanks to the 16,400  visitors who dropped by Lib Dem Voice this week. Here’s our 7 most-read posts…

This is how to respect the referendum result (89 comments) by Rob Parsons

Vince Cable calls for an end to EU free movement (145 comments) by Caron Lindsay

Farage’s legacy and continental populist laws put EU expats in UK in impossible quandary (28 comments) by Bernard Aris

Why we need UKIP in the fight for electoral reform (44 comments) by Ben Andrew

Tim Farron’s New Year Message – Don’t shrug your shoulders, get involved (21 comments) by Tim Farron

Willie Rennie’s New Year Message – Lib Dems THE pro UK, pro EU progressive party (20 comments) by Willie Rennie

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Caron Lindsay

Caron’s Sunday Selection: My favourite videos and articles from this week’s news

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 8th January 2017 - 11:16 am

It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these and I’ve decided to change it slightly so that I put in some of my favourite articles, videos and interviews from various media outlets, not just the Sunday papers.

First up this week exactly the sort of confident, bold setting out of the liberal values our society so desperately needs. Dutch liberal Marietje Schaake talks to CNN’s Christine Amanpour about the benefits of liberalism:

Dutch liberals face a challenging election later this year with right wing populists headed by Geert Wilders in a strong position.

In the pages of the Express, you tend to find Liberal Democrats being lampooned. However, this is a quite charming article where Paddy Ashdown describes his favourite photograph – his wedding photograph from 54 years ago. He talks about their first meeting at a Christmas ball:

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Bradley Hillier-Smith

Why Vince Cable is wrong to call for an end to free movement

By Bradley Hillier-Smith | Sun 8th January 2017 - 8:55 am

Vince Cable is fundamentally wrong to suggest that there is no great argument of liberal principle for free movement and his case for ending free movement is weak. He ought to revise his views to be in more in keeping with liberal values which, in the face of rising and fierce anti-migrant rhetoric, are sorely needed.

His assertion that ‘British opposition to immigration is mainly colour-blind’ is simply not true.

Fears and prejudices were purposefully stoked during the referendum with explicit scapegoating, disingenuous scaremongering about Turkish migrants and in particular Farage’s appalling blatantly non-colour-blind Breaking Point’ poster campaign.

Hate crime has soared since the referendum.  The vast majority of the targets of xenophobic incidents and abuse have been EU migrants in particular citizens from Eastern European countries.

Islamophobia and associated crimes have also risen exponentially. Note the 25 serious incidents of anti-muslim hate crimes recorded in the three days after the Brexit vote. People are explicitly abusing muslims in the streets ‘because we voted out’, shouting ‘shouldn’t you be on a plane back to Pakistan? We voted you out!’

The EU referendum vote has unleashed an ugly force of racism where those who hold prejudiced views feel emboldened to shout, abuse and attack people in the street, post excrement through people’s letter boxes and rip off people’s hijabs in public. 

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Caron Lindsay

And your problem with an innovative way to tell girls they don’t have to put up with violence is…..?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 7th January 2017 - 2:25 pm

There are few things in life more irritating than the Daily Fail crowing. It is doing just that this morning after International Development Minister Priti Patel announced that funding for what the Fail called the “Ethiopian equivalent of the Spice Girls” was being cut from our international aid budget. In the same way as they pepper words like “bogus” around when talking about asylum seekers, or make it sound like every second person claiming benefits is doing so fraudulently (when the figure is less than 1%), they are trying to make it sound like all the money that we send overseas is being frittered away on frivolity.

What they don’t tell you is that the group Yegna is a brilliant, innovative and creative way of getting an important message about women’s and girls’ rights through to both men and women. It tells girls that they don’t have to put up with being beaten by their parents. It changes minds. Just look at this poster from the Girl Effect, who manage this project.

 

I’d particularly want to draw your attention to the changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviours section. Almost all boys who were exposed to Yegna’s work would be moved to report it if they were aware of a girl being forced into marriage compared with just over half who were not. 59% of girls beaten by their parents who had listened to Yegna would agree that it should be reported to the authorities compared with less than a third who had not. 25% more girls who had listened to Yegna realised that it was wrong for men to hit their wives.

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Rob Parsons

This is how to respect the referendum result

By Rob Parsons | Sat 7th January 2017 - 11:15 am

I am frequently told that, as a “Remoaner” I must “respect” the result of the referendum. It seems to me that I am not being asked to respect it so much as to fetishise it.

Actually, I do respect it. I respect it for what it was – an advisory vote won by a wafer thin majority based on a mountain of lies.

Then, because I say that, I am criticised (virulently quite often) for being undemocratic and for not respecting the will of the people. And many people who did not vote Leave, and do not want to leave, seem to have accepted the line that the vote has happened and they must “respect” it.

But democracy is so much more than a single vote.

Generally speaking electoral votes stand, even if the majority is unsatisfactory. But that is premised on two conditions.  The first is that the voters get a chance regularly to change their minds. The second is that the voters were – at least relatively – well informed about the subject of their vote. All sides make their offers clear, and the media do a proper job of examining their claims.

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Caron Lindsay

Happy Golden Jubilee to the Cleggster

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 7th January 2017 - 9:03 am

It feels like 5 minutes since Nick Clegg and I were relative political youngsters in the East Midlands so it seems very strange indeed that all of a sudden he is celebrating his 50th birthday today.

When I was growing up, 50 seemed totally ancient. A hundred years ago, 50 was getting to the top range of life expectancy. But now it seems like it’s only barely into middle age. People start new careers in their 50s. Sadly, Barack Obama is going to be doing just that in a fortnight at the age of 55.

In the time I’ve known him, Nick has gone from being enthusiastic candidate seeking selection to MEP to party leader to Deputy Prime Minister. It has been quite the roller-coaster ride.

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