The Liberal Democrats have produced a series of 20 videos giving snippets of our manifesto in BSL. We are the first major party to do so. The full list is here.
We’ll also put them up on here in batches over the next wee while. If you want to see all our posts, just click on the bsl tag at the bottom of this post.
In this post, you will find pensions, climate change and environment and nature
The Liberal Democrats have produced a series of 20 videos giving snippets of our manifesto in BSL. We are the first major party to do so. The full list is here.
We’ll also put them up on here in batches over the next wee while. If you want to see all our posts, just click on the bsl tag at the bottom of this post.
In this post, you will find the economy, disability and deafness and work and welfare.
In my first piece about what happens after May 7th I worked on the basis that the result would be around Con 275, Lab 275, LD 35, SNP 40, UKIP 5, Green 2, Speaker 1, all the Northern Irish 17 (of which the present numbers are DUP 8, SF 5, SDLP 3, All 1). Since then the numbers predicted by the polls have wobbled a bit around these numbers but the only consistent change has been to push up the SNP to perhaps 50 seats. And given the lack of a “late swing” of any size the LD number may be a bit high.
Given the provisions of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act it all still adds up to the likelihood – or the opportunity? – of a minority government (or democratic parliament?) that lasts several years, perhaps for the full five. Yet our official line is still that we want to join another Coalition. Officially we will negotiate with Tories or Labour, starting with the party with most seats (though in practice we will be talking to both simultaneously if that is what the numbers decree). Unofficially our leadership are reported to prefer another coalition with the Tories.
It’s no secret that this idea causes a severe onset of jitters in many parts of the party. With a week to go, the Times’ lead story reports “Lib Dems to revolt over fresh pact with Tories” (£). The story is pretty anecdotal, full of unattributed comments by “senior figures in the party” and the like (only Andrew George breaking cover), in general a typically flimsy piece of tabloid style journalism of the kind we see nowadays in the Times.
The Liberal Democrats have produced a series of 20 videos giving snippets of our manifesto in BSL. We are the first major party to do so. The full list is here.
We’ll also put them up on here in batches over the next wee while. If you want to see all our posts, just click on the bsl tag at the bottom of this post.
In this post, you will find health, tax and a very special message.
Pity, poor Tristram Hunt. On the campaign trail the other day he made the classic mistake of asking a young child how he was going to vote.
Child: “UKIP”
Hunt: “Oh why is that then?
Child: “Because they’ll get all the foreigners out of the country”
To adapt the old adage: Never do politics with children and animals!
For a candidate kids are a minefield but as a parent I’ve been struck by how interested my kids (one pre- teen and one mid primary) have been in this their “first” General Election. They even staged their own election debate with toys which of course I enjoyed as much as they did!
There isn’t much help for parents attempting to introduce their kids to politics and political history.
Even really young American children have reading books about the Founding Fathers, Lincoln and the Roosevelts. Imagine the laughing stock a British parent would be if she went into a bookshop and asked for: “Gladstone and Disraeli for toddlers” or “Learn to read with the Tolpuddle Martyrs”
While the airport expansion debate has rolled on for decades, what everyone can unite around is the fact that something needs to happen. Expanding Gatwick will provide the connectivity and capacity the UK needs, help the industry respond to change, and encourage competition, innovation, and growth.
Gatwick’s plan is flexible to serve all airline business models and will reflect changing business trends meaning it can deliver more passengers and more destinations, earlier. It can provide the economic boost the UK needs and will boost choice, and enhance competition at a fraction of the cost of expansion at Heathrow.
Danny Alexander has claimed that the Tories would meet their target of cutting £12 billion to the welfare budget by making massive cuts to Child Benefit, means testing, limiting it to two children, abolishing the increased payment for the first child and removing it for 16-19 year olds. He told the Guardian that they had suggested these things back in 2012 and the Liberal Democrats had put a stop to them:
The Conservatives have been under sustained pressure to detail how they will cut £12bn from the welfare budget by 2017-2018, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank confirmed this week the Tories have so far disclosed only 10% of these cut in the form of a two-year freeze in working age benefits.
A separate internal government paper, Alexander reveals, was drawn up by the Treasury commissioned by the Tories for an additional £6bn cuts in welfare to be announced in the 2012 Autumn Statement.
The £8bn worth of welfare cuts were drawn up by Duncan Smith at a time when the cabinet was considering whether to stick to its timetable to reduce Britain’s national debt as a proportion of GDP. The plan was dropped.
The Tories have come out with a mockraged “But how could he suggest such a thing?” denial. This is barely credible. We know that Iain Duncan Smith was talking openly about limiting Child Benefit to two children back in 2013 as was Grant Shapps who added an even nastier element to this policy – that it should only apply to unemployed parents. According to the Telegraph, then:
But instead of denying the payments to all large families, some Tories have suggested that restrictions should be applied only to parents who do not work.
Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, earlier this year suggested that unemployed parents should not receive child benefit for additional children.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, last year questioned whether it was acceptable that families on benefits should continue to receive endless amounts of money for every child they have, when parents who are working often cannot afford to have more children.
The Lib Dems have insisted that there should be no more welfare cuts imposed during this Parliament.
As recently as last month, Newsnight reported that the Tories were wanting to restrict payment to three children, with Dominic Raab muttering darkly about “personal responsibility.”
Thing started well when we got the 300th stakeboard up:
Photo 1 (Nathan Khan)
Then, there’s the posters. Activist Jan Morter decided that her stakeboard couldn’t be seen at night. So she decided to brighten up her street, which shone some light on the campaign:
Next there’s the ducks. Duck L’Orange, the duck of Liberal Tolerance and Justice, apart from having her own twitter account (follow @duckalorangeld) has apparently produced some offspring. A naming competition followed. After 2 ballots and 1 recount, Crispin Daisy Duck was declared the winner:
In a move which will surprise nobody, another of those items from the front page of the manifesto has been announced as a red line in coalition negotiations with strings attached.
So the Tories can forget any notion of cutting taxes for the rich until this has been fulfilled. What does this mean for Labour’s Mansion Tax, though? Surely you would want to bring that in at the same time? Actually, Danny Alexander clarified that. There’s not much love for Labour’s 10p tax band. You do wonder why they even thought about revisiting that one. Danny said:
Just two days ago the IFS described Labour’s proposed 10p tax rate as having a ‘miniscule effect’. Compare that to the millions of workers who will be getting their pay cheques today and will be £70 better off a month, thanks to the Liberal Democrats in government.
Nick Clegg said:
Miriam Gonzalez Durantez joined Jo Swinson to visit female apprentices at a motorbike manufacturer in Jo’s constituency:
.@joswinson & Miriam Gonzalez Durantez visiting Scottoiler in East Dunbartonshire #GE2015 pic.twitter.com/XAGQ58znFD
— Shabnum Mustapha (@ShabnumMustapha) April 28, 2015
She also helped Jo launch an action plan for gender equality which includes action to tackle domestic violence, more childcare provision, more opportunities for women in science and engineering and work on body image.
Miriam went for a chat with Bryony Gordon from the Telegraph who was daft enough to ask her if Nick had sent her to help female candidates. That was never going to end well.
Miriam has been writing about her Inspiring Women campaign for the Huffington Post.
Lord Ashcroft has released a last minute poll on Nick Clegg’s seat of Sheffield Hallam. It’s the third he has conducted in the last 5 months. It comes with all the usual caveats on Ashcroft polls – he doesn’t mention the candidates’ names, and he has some weird methodology that he doesn’t explain to us about how he gets his final figures.
The results last month showed Labour two points ahead on 36% with Nick on 34%. The new poll shows Labour just one point ahead on 37% and Nick on 36%. The Tories are on 15%, UKIP on 7% …
Just over a year ago, party President Sal Brinton wrote on here about her woeful experience of rail travel, saying she felt that disabled people were treated like packages. She outlined what had happened to her over a six month period:
Last Sunday, returning from the Scottish Lib Dem Conference in Aberdeen, I was left on an empty train on an empty platform at midnight at King’s Cross for over 15 minutes before I spotted someone on the first floor, and waved furiously to get her attention;
Refused permission on to a pre-booked train, because rush hour commuters rushed on the train ahead of me, and the train conductor didn’t want to move the commuters and risk being late – even though she watched them barge past the National Rail guy with the ramp and me;
Often been taken off the train by the conductor because the station staff weren’t notified I was on the train;
Having to be transported off the end of a rail platform, across the rail lines and up the other side, because many of our stations, even on main lines like Brockenhurst on the London to Bournemouth line, don’t have lifts;
And been told by Complaints Dept at First Capital Connect that lifts at Luton aren’t on the capital works schedule for some years and it is also acceptable not to have lifts there because they are available at Luton Airport station;
Yesterday, she had an equally unpleasant experience while trying to board a number 24 bus in London. She told the Evening Standard what had happened to her:
Every time you think it’s safe to like Stonewall again, they do something tribally partisan for the Labour Party. As I reported yesterday, they produced a graphic that gave Labour full marks to their questions, but only 2/5 for Liberal Democrats. A cursory glance at the manifesto would have given us full marks, as LGBT + Lib Dems Chair Dave Page and Communities Minister Stephen Williams told Pink News.
I’m astounded by this grossly misleading graphic, suggesting the Liberal Democrats have little to say about LGB&T rights in our manifesto. The opposite is true.
We have seven specific policies including making anti gay chanting an offence, promoting international recognition of same sex marriages and more action on homophobic bullying. As a Stonewall member I am deeply disappointed that they have chosen to spell out Labour Party policies and ignore Lib Dem proposals, which build on our long standing commitment to gay rights.
Liz Barker’s tweets in response were also very informative.
We will never miss an opportunity to show off this amazing photograph from the Sun showing Greg Mulholland as the Casked Crusader, the guy who did more than anyone else in the last Parliament to help publicans by campaigning for them to have more power against exploitative measures by large pubcos.
There is an argument that anyone who likes going to the pub in Leeds North West needs to vote for Greg. In fact, there’s an argument that anyone who likes going to the pub should vote Liberal Democrat given the valiant work by Jo Swinson and Vince Cable in the face of strong Tory opposition.
Greg has written for the Publicans’ Morning Advertiser about the things he and the Liberal Democrats have been able to achieve and the mountains they had to climb to do it.
The Parliament started well, but then reform plans hit troubled Tory waters with a u-turn on plans to regulate the industry.
Diligent research by Greg and his colleagues got the issue back on the political agenda and a long campaign finally led to that amazing victory last November. Greg says:
Don’t think I’ve actually forced anyone into a same-sex marriage but proud to have given people the choice though. pic.twitter.com/L5vIlZp0Mi
— Nick Clegg (@nick_clegg) April 28, 2015
And here’s a reminder of two very happy young men who were definitely not forced to get married…
It’s hard to imagine that anyone in Westmorland and Lonsdale has not met their local MP Tim Farron. He must have knocked on their doors on numerous occasions over his decade in Westminster.
However, the local paper has asked all candidates to do a video about why you would work for them.
What does Tim say about why he’s the best person for the constituency?
Have a look.
Nick Clegg made a fine speech in Eastleigh on Monday morning recalling the fighting spirit that saw us win a famous victory. He made a good case for why voters should vote for the Liberal Democrats with references to our Labour and Conservative opponents. He gave our activists and volunteers much needed encouragement to make a final push before polling day. But one thing he did not mention was our excellent candidates.
One of the best reasons for voting Lib Dem in one of our 60 target seats is the outstanding calibre and proven track record of many of our candidates. It is not just the party that has proved itself over the past five years, it is our MPs themselves.
Over the past five years our MPs have built an outstanding record of individual achievements. The roll of honour is long and it is always possible to find someone that any voter will admire, whether it be Steve Webb on pensions, Danny Alexander in the Treasury or Ed Davey on Green Energy or Lynn Featherstone on FGM and Jo Swinson on Gender Equality or Vince at the Department of Business or Norman Lamb on Mental Health – it is not just the issues we have tackled but the people who have done the hard work who are recognised.
Stonewall dropped a huge clanger yesterday by issuing a graphic on its Facebook page that gave Labour a tick for all the policies it had featured and gave only two to the Liberal Democrats. Thing is, anyone who had read the Liberal Democrat manifesto would know that all these things were in fact there.
Pink News has a wonderfully sarcastic quote from LGBT+ Chair Dave Page:
It is surprising that an organisation with Stonewall’s resources, if it seeks to appear nonpartisan, did not seem to have taken the time to quickly search through the Liberal Democrats’ main party manifesto (rather than the separate documents published by some other parties).
If they had, they would have found the commitment to tackle hate crime in section 9.3: ‘Change sentencing guidelines to increase sentences available for hate crimes.’
They would have also found the following on overseas aid in section 11.6: ‘Liberal Democrats believe British foreign policy and international aid should seek to advance human rights and democracy throughout the world. We believe all people – regardless of ethnicity, disability, age, belief, gender or sexual orientation – deserve a freer, fairer and more prosperous world.’
Under Ruth Hunt’s excellent leadership, Stonewall have done a lot of work to build bridges and listen to a wider array of voices.
We hope that the days of Lib Dem MPs having to lobby Stonewall to support equality rather than the opposite are behind us all. Unfortunately their rush to issue this ill-researched graphic undermines their reputation for being even-handed advocates of equality.
Lib Dem Peer Liz Barker also took Stonewall to task on Twitter. In a series of tweets parodying Stonewall’s “Some people are gay/trans, get over it” phrase, she outlined the Liberal Democrat record on LGBT rights:
In an election Campaign in which none of the Parties has wanted to talk very much about foreign policy, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been asking candidates their views on a variety of questions related to Palestine and then urging the c.200,000 people on their mailing list to consider these responses before deciding how to vote. On average that represents 300 supporters per constituency – more than the margin that decided the election in a handful of seats in 2010, including some of ours.
Over 800 candidates have responded. I did a check a few days ago and found that only half of the Lib Dem candidates in constituencies that we held last time have responded. Some of the responses, for instance from Martin Horwood, Layla Moran, Andrew George and John Hemming were particularly strong. Others responded rather weakly and seem to have been following a rather weak brief supplied by Party HQ.
Liberal Democrat candidates who haven’t yet responded should be aware that Greens have been particularly punctilious about responding and doing so positively to PSC questions, which were:
Do you agree with the following statements:
Canvassing over the weekend for Simon Hughes in Canada Water, (Labour-facing) and for Ed Davey in Surbiton (Tory facing), I was again struck by how much the remaining staunch Labour voters still see their party as on the left of the political spectrum.
Sure they are planning to borrow much more than the Liberal Democrats, and make the UK vulnerable to another crisis. However that seems a direct result of most of their big money contributions coming courtesy of dual-hatted public sector union reps.
On everything else they are looking increasingly authoritarian, and pro-war. A kind of ‘Blairism without the fake financial prudence’. Whilst the combination of top-down control-freakery and sponsored superficial PR-type MPs lost them Scotland, no lessons seemed to have been learned. The likely new Labour intake looks frighteningly lightweight and malleable.
At recent hustings (I’m a candidate in West Ham and doing some Newham-wide events) Labour incumbents robotically read through lists of extra spending promises, but dodge much else with bland statements of the blindingly obvious. They peddle the myth of the 2007 ‘global crisis’.
I have been blundering around trying to nail down the likely choreographic arrangements after the election result. You know, who leaves Number 10, who drives down or up the Mall at which particular time etc..
Here’s Nick Clegg speaking to BBC Breakfast about the party’s red lines announced over the last day on education and the economy. He called for a “stability budget” to ensure that the recovery, which, as George Crozier pointed out the other day, is a Liberal Democrat economic recovery, continues. The growth figures announced this morning show that we are not fully out of the woods yet, although we are certainly seeing some sunshine. The message from the party is clear: we wouldn’t want to jeopardise what the Liberal Democrats have achieved in the last five years.
And explaining the idea of the “stability budget”
Lib Dem peer Zahida Manzoor has written for Muslim News setting out the reasons that Muslims should find it easy to vote Liberal Democrat. First the basics:
The Lib Dems are the party of opportunity. We believe everybody, no matter who they are, should be given the same chances in life. We want to do all we can to make sure everyone has the opportunities to get on in life.
Conservatives are seeking to remove some of the basic freedoms in the European Convention of Human Rights, which sit strongly alongside the principles of Islam. We are the only party in
…
Nick Clegg appeared on Tom Bradby’s The Agenda on ITV last night. He was on a panel made up of satirist Rory Bremner, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup and Times journalist Rachel Sylvester from the Times.
After her recent slow car crash with John Humphrys on Today, one would have thought that Theresa May would have spent the rest of the election campaign getting quietly lost in darkest Maidenhead.
But, oh no, at the weekend she came back with a bang in an interview with the Mail on Sunday:
A series of videos has been launched which give little snippets of our manifesto. This at least partly came about as a result of a conversation on Facebook that I was involved in on the periphery. It was former Presidential Candidate Daisy Cooper who took it forward with HQ who then made it happen. Here are the first three videos:
Nick Clegg has announced tonight that protecting the education budget is going to be a deal breaker in any coalition negotiations and that we would not enter any coalition without ensuring that funding would be raised by £6.3 billion over the next Parliament. He told the BBC he would:
not accept under any circumstances the cuts to nurseries, to schools and to colleges that both Conservatives and now Labour have announced”.
And if we don’t get that we wouldn’t enter into a coalition in the first place,” he continued.
We are the only party to protect from cradle to college, from nursery to 19-year-olds.
In pounds and pence – per year – we will be spending £2.5bn more than Labour, £5bn more than the Tories. That is a significant difference.
Party President Sal Brinton emailed party members tonight to elaborate on Nick’s announcement:
We were a bit remiss and didn’t publish last week’s Party Political Broadcast when it first came out.
Continuing the theme from previous broadcasts, this time we have a young woman walking around in the dark listening to Nick on the radio talking about what the Liberal Democrats can offer as coalition partners. Enjoy.
The Scottish version is voiced, very well, actually, probably with even more clarity and feeling than Nick, by Willie Rennie:
A while ago we told you about the Youth Leaders’ debate on Channel 4 organised by Shout Out UK, which is an independent news network for young people.
The debate is happening at 8pm tomorrow evening and you can watch it here. Alex Harding, the Chair of Liberal Youth, will be our representative.
Shout Out asks:
We are hoping to get as much exposure as possible for this historic event.
As such, would you mind helping us promote it by joining our thunderclap?
To join simply CLICK HERE.
Thank you so much for your support and please do watch the debate on All4 at 8pm on Tuesday!
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