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Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

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LibLink: Stephen Tall – At least five spectres haunt the Lib Dems.

By NewsHound | Fri 5th December 2014 - 11:55 am

In his fortnightly ConservativeHome column, LDV co-editor Stephen Tall has taken a look at the five fears (the “queasy quintet”, as he terms them) be thinks haunting the Lib Dems. The first two questions – ‘A May massacre?’, ‘Are we becoming irrelevant?’ – are self-explanatory. Here’s what he has to say about the third and fourth fears:

3) Have the Lib Dems done enough in government?

Oh, we have lists of achievements. There isn’t a senior Lib Dem alive who’s won’t rehearse, when challenged “But what have you done?”, the line that the our top 2010 priorities – tax-cuts for low-earners,

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged ConservativeHome and stephen tall | 22 Comments

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How to help Lib Dems like Vince Cable in the run-up to the election

By George Kendall | Fri 5th December 2014 - 10:36 am

Perhaps you’re a Lib Dem Voice reader, who would love to help get Lib Dems elected next May in the General Election, but you’re not sure how to go about it. Whether you are a member or not, if you’d like to help, this article is for you.

In the coming weeks and months, there will be many action events in key seats throughout the country. For example tomorrow, Saturday 6th December, there will be a big Regional Action day in Vince Cable’s seat of Twickenham.

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Posted in Campaign Corner | 34 Comments

LDVideo: Crosstalk with Jeremy Thorpe (BBC1, 24 March 1974)

By Stephen Tall | Fri 5th December 2014 - 8:55 am

With thanks to Ed Stradling, here’s a 40 minute interview between Jeremy Thorpe and Richard Crossman, originally broadcast on BBC1 on 24th March 1974.

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged jeremy thorpe and richard crossman | 12 Comments

And it’s good-bye from me as LibDemVoice Co-Editor…

By Stephen Tall | Fri 5th December 2014 - 7:55 am

Today marks the countdown to my final day as Co-Editor of LibDemVoice. I guess I could say the past seven years and seven months have flown by, but actually it seems like a long, long time since I started here. Tony Blair was prime minister, Ming Campbell was Lib Dem leader, and I was still a councillor.

I think I officially took over as Editor (from the site’s co-founder Rob Fenwick) on 31st May, 2007, though I’d started the Golden Dozen round-up of the best of the Lib Dem blogs a few months earlier.

A couple of years later, …

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Posted in News and Site news | Tagged caron lindsay, featured, Mark Pack and rob fenwick | 42 Comments

Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe dies

By Stephen Tall | Thu 4th December 2014 - 11:00 pm

The party website records the passing of former Liberal Party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, who died today aged 85:

Mr Thorpe died today (4 December) at his home in London. He had battled with Parkinson’s Disease for more than 35 years. He was elected as Liberal MP for North Devon in the 1959 General Election and held the seat for 20 years. Following the retirement of Jo Grimond, he was elected as leader of the Liberal Party in 1967. He was a fervent supporter of Britain’s membership of the the EU

…

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Posted in Obituaries | Tagged david steel, featured, jeremy thorpe and nick harvey | 32 Comments

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Ed Davey MP writes…An Autumn Statement for more green energy and more help to keep energy bills down.

By Ed Davey | Thu 4th December 2014 - 7:00 pm

Liberal Democrats in Government already have a record of green energy delivery to be proud of. Renewable electricity generation and investment have both more than doubled since 2010 and our reforms will create 250,000 low carbon jobs by the end of the decade. Britain is ranked No.1 in the world for offshore wind investment, onshore wind now produces around 5% of the UK’s electricity and solar generating capacity increased by 60% last year.

But is that where the story ends? No, and our ambition outlined in the Autumn Statement proves it. The Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project is something I asked my Department to look into some time ago. We’ve now announced the initial talks we’ve had with the Swansea team will be stepped up a gear and it’s possible formal negotiations could start as early as next month.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged autumn statement 2015 and climate change | 8 Comments

Opinion: The firm hand of the state where you least want it

By Laura Willoughby | Thu 4th December 2014 - 6:00 pm

A government with Liberals in it has banned spanking on film. Who would have thought it? I was hoping for a society where the state at least kept pace with social attitudes. Instead we find that through obscure bits of legislation we are continuing a move towards controlling people more and more that was started by the Labour party.

Porn made in the UK can no longer include sexual acts such as facesitting, spanking, caning, fisting and female ejaculation thanks to the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 . There are many reasons why these changes are bad, 10 of them are here in an article by Emily Dubberly. It includes the fact that they are arbitrary, sexist and infringe civil liberties.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged civil liberties and pornography | 18 Comments

Willie Rennie excluded on profanity grounds

By The Voice | Thu 4th December 2014 - 4:28 pm

Well, sort of.

He tried to sign up to a news website the other night and this is what happened:

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Posted in News | Tagged humour and willie rennie | 5 Comments

Baroness Floella Benjamin writes…Tax break for children’s programmes is great news

By Floella Benjamin | Thu 4th December 2014 - 3:05 pm

I am overjoyed with the wonderful news that the Chancellor has extended tax breaks to children’s television productions. This is something I have campaigned on for years as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children’s Media and the Arts. I have asked questions and spoken on this issue in the House of Lords, supported by Pact (Producers Alliance for Cinema & Television) and the Children’s Media Foundation.

I always say, ‘Childhood lasts a lifetime’ and we can all remember our favourite children’s television programme, they hold fond memories, which are part of our formative years.

But even though children’s programmes are much loved, they are often undervalued and those who contribute to this sector of the creative industries are rarely credited.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Autumn Statement 2012, children's programmes, featured, media and television | 3 Comments

Jo Swinson on one of the great double standards of our time

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 4th December 2014 - 2:36 pm

Breastfeeding is in the news again after Claridges thought that it was ok .to tell a mother to cover up as her baby nursed.

Nick Clegg was asked a rather strange question, which he eventually answered pretty well, about whether the importance of breastfeeding should be covered in Personal Health and Social Education classes and whether mothers should be told that it should be done in private. The right answer is, of course, yes to the first and no to the second.

It’s really quite ridiculous to think that it took until 2010 for the rights of mothers to breastfeed their babies in public was protected in law. This means that nobody can ask a mother to stop doing so in any place where she and the baby are allowed to be. Scotland was way ahead of the game, protecting women some five years before. Remembering the struggle it was to get that bill through, I wouldn’t give too much credit to the Labour/Liberal Democrat government of the day. It took a cross party alliance of women to keep Elaine Smith’s private member’s bill alive.

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Posted in News | Tagged breastfeeding and Jo Swinson | 34 Comments

The Independent View: A reformed Prevent could tackle extremism more effectively

By Jonathan Russell | Thu 4th December 2014 - 1:22 pm

The government’s counter-extremism strategy, Prevent, is often criticised. Some say it acts like a thought-police, criminalises Islam and over-securitises places like schools. Others claim there is not enough buy in from Muslim communities, that it funds non-violent Islamists to tackle jihadists, or that it is not the government’s job to challenge ideology. Neither criticism is absolutely fair, but as criticised as Prevent is, it undoubtedly serves an important function and is here to stay.

While all terrorists are extremists, the vast majority of extremists do not use terrorism as a viable strategy, and a liberal and democratic nation cannot and should not deal with all extremists in the same way as it deals with terrorists. But catching terrorists who “love death as you love life” is a difficult proposition for the police or the security services when they’re keen to go down fighting and cause as much destruction as possible while they do it. Only dealing with extremism once it becomes violent and illegal is a high stakes game where the penalty for losing is the death of large numbers of innocent civilians. Tackling extremism of all kinds before it becomes violent can reduce the civilian casualties, reduce the number of violent extremists that have to be dealt with, and has the secondary benefit of challenging non-violent behaviour that nonetheless has a negative impact on British society.

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged counter-terrorism, prevent and quilliam foundation | 10 Comments

Opinion: Getting ambitious on renewable energy

By William Hobhouse | Thu 4th December 2014 - 11:59 am

The debate on fracking and renewables is warming up. Ed Davey’s LDV article on renewables set the scene, Norman Baker contrasts renewables and fracking, and my article from August – Renewables not Fracking — remains relevant.

There are some Lib Dems who support fracking. In response to that, I set out here a vision for sustainable energy in the UK, a vision that, in the long term, does not include any fossil fuels.

Renewables currently supply about 15% of UK electricity supply. By 2020, Ed Davey’s aspiration is 30%. With a clear political vision, electricity from renewables can grow by 3 – 4% a year and there is no obvious plateau point.

This means 30% electricity from renewables in 2020, 60% electricity from renewables in 2030, 90% in 2040, 120% in 2050, and 150% in 2060.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged renewable energy | 37 Comments

Lord Ken MacDonald writes… For Liberal Democrats, civil liberties belong to every age

By Lord Ken Macdonald | Thu 4th December 2014 - 10:10 am

The closer we get to the election, the louder the question resonates: what have Liberal Democrats brought to government? In all the compromises and stresses of coalition, has our difference made it all worthwhile?

In the area of civil liberties, so important to us as a party, the answer must be a resounding ‘yes’. Of course not all the coalition battles around freedom have taken place in public, but they have been fiercely fought nonetheless- sustained, difficult struggles against the Tories and parts of the Whitehall machine, to keep our country loyal to its most enduring values in the face of terrorism and risk.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged civil liberties, counter terrorism bill and ken macdonald | 6 Comments

“This is not a snub. I thought it would be a nice change to get out of the Westminster bubble”: Clegg on his Autumn Statement absence

By Stephen Tall | Thu 4th December 2014 - 8:57 am

Nick Clegg has taken my advice.*

Back in July, I offered the Lib Dem leader five unsolicited pieces of advice. Most he’s ridden roughshod over: Vince Cable wasn’t appointed the party’s shadow chancellor for the next election, Jo Swinson wasn’t promoted to the cabinet, and (as far as I know) Nick continues to rule out options other than a full coalition in the event of a hung parliament.

But item number 4 was this:

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Posted in News, Parliament and PMQs | Tagged autumn statement 2014, nick clegg and PMQs | 46 Comments

In full: Baroness Northover’s speech to launch the DFID disability framework

By The Voice | Wed 3rd December 2014 - 6:55 pm

Baroness Northover is parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for International Development. Here is the speech she made today, in the Houses of Parliament, to launch the DFID disabilty framework:

I’m delighted to be here with you today, to celebrate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

Although the UK Department for International Development and many of you in this room have been increasingly focused on disability inclusion in recent years, it is now that we are really beginning to see this issue get the attention it deserves.

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Posted in News | Tagged dfid and disability | Leave a comment

Lord (Archy) Kirkwood writes… the challenge of financial inclusion

By Lord (Archie) Kirkwood | Wed 3rd December 2014 - 4:34 pm

It is a stark fact that while we are a global leader in financial services, financial exclusion is still rife: some two million adults in the UK don’t have a bank account and an estimated two million people took out a high-cost loan in 2012 as they were unable to access any other form of credit. Nine million have no access to mainstream credit, either because they are unbanked or are not able to access credit facilities through their bank. Meanwhile, the level of unsecured consumer credit has tripled in the past 20 years, reaching a staggering £160.4 billion in 2014 while only 41% of households have savings that could tide them over a period of crisis in their finances.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged personal debt and universal credit | 7 Comments

Opinion: Council tax reform is better than the Mansion Tax

By Stephen Phillips | Wed 3rd December 2014 - 1:54 pm

The November 2014 AdLib makes interesting reading. Amongst other issues, it set me thinking about the Mansion Tax. It is axiomatic of any decent society that those most able to pay should contribute the greatest amount towards the cost of maintaining it; especially in respect of social costs.

This seems to be an unpopular concept with many on the right of politics, who would presumably see themselves as paying more; while those on the left may be tempted to adopt it as an unthinking mantra, without considering the practical implications. Nevertheless, we must find fair ways of making the better off pay their fair share.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged council tax and mansion tax | 17 Comments

Opinion: Stop state sponsorship of sweat shops

By David Allen | Wed 3rd December 2014 - 11:54 am

BBC News reports:

Outlining proposed restrictions on tax credits and child benefits, Mr Cameron said a migrant in work with two children was getting £700 a month on average in support from the state, twice the amount paid in Germany and three times as much as in France.

Let’s forget about migrants for a moment. Britain’s “generous” in-work benefits are payable to all. Should we be proud of our “generosity”?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged david cameron and employment | 28 Comments

Lib Dems Telegraph splash: EU bashing “weak, opportunistic and fundamentally un-British” say Ashdown, Ludford, Brinton, Farron and 90 Lib Dems

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 3rd December 2014 - 11:09 am

Even Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have taken the isolationist path that David Cameron’s Conservative party is romping its way down, according to 90 Liberal Democrats in a letter to the Telegraph today. The letter states:

David Cameron’s recent speech on European immigration is the latest in a series of desperate moves from a Conservative Party in full-scale panic.

We’ve had: “Go home or face arrest” vans. We’ve had: if you are from the EU and want to move to Britain, go and register at a police station. We’ve had: if you’re out of work, even for a few months, go back to where you came from.

In her Bruges speech in 1988, Margaret Thatcher said: “Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.”

What happened to that Conservative destiny? The dual menace of the Tory headbangers and the rise of Ukip.

There is nothing patriotic about bashing immigration from Europe. It is opportunistic, weak and fundamentally un-British. Migrants from the EU claim less in benefits than people born in this country. They are a massive net positive to the British economy. The Tories are scared to admit this. They have lost all sense of political courage – and that is why people have lost confidence in them.

We, the undersigned Liberal Democrats, konw that the real patriotic case is for Britain to remain in Europe; our jobs and our economic future depend on it.

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Posted in News | Tagged conservatives, eu, featured, immigration, margaret thatcher, robin meltzer and telegraph | 26 Comments

ALDC by-election report: 27th November 2014

By ALDC | Wed 3rd December 2014 - 9:54 am

There were twelve principal council by-elections contested last Thursday. In the Melton DC ward of Asfordby, the Conservatives polled 53.4% in gaining a seat from Labour with a majority of 136 votes.

There was also a gain for UKIP from the SDP after winning in Bridlington Central and Old Town on East Yorkshire UA with a narrow majority of 49 ahead of the Conservatives.

In addition, the SNP made a gain in the Aberdeenshire ward of Troup from the Conservatives after winning 1158 first preference votes.

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Posted in News | Tagged aldc and by-election results | 11 Comments

SPONSORED: Momentum is building behind Gatwick as the only deliverable choice for expansion

By Gatwick Obviously | Wed 3rd December 2014 - 8:00 am

Momentum is gathering behind Gatwick’s case for airport expansion in the South East as the debate over where the UK’s next runway should be built reaches a crucial point.

The Commission will have to consider a range of factors in making its final decision but the consultation document indicates why expansion at Gatwick best answers all the questions. It can give the country two world class airports.

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Posted in Sponsored Post | Tagged gatwick airport | 45 Comments

Nick Clegg announces £150 million to help young people with eating disorders

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 9:32 pm

Yesterday, Nick Clegg and Norman Lamb visited a youth centre in Brent where they announced £150 million was being invested in services to help young people with eating disorders. From the BBC:

Mr Clegg will say he wants to see services transformed, with the focus shifted from expensive institutional care to targeted community-based provision.

Eating disorders cost the NHS around £200m a year, and the bill for in-patient care averages out at £98,750 per admission.

From 2012 to 2013, there were 2,560 hospital admissions for eating disorders in England – a rise of 8% on the previous year.

One in five of those taken into hospital with an eating disorder was admitted and discharged on the same day.

But one in 17 stayed in hospital for longer than six months.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged eating disorders, mental health, nick clegg, norman lamb and young people | 4 Comments

Nick Clegg puts £10 million into encouraging students and young people to register to vote

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 8:54 pm

So, when there’s a certain amount of money around to encourage voters to register, what does Nick Clegg do with it?

Does he put it into a voter registration drive in the affluent ex-pat communities of Spain or does he put it into that group of people it can be difficult to find, young people and students? The latter, of course. From The Guardian:

Lib Dem sources said Clegg, whose Sheffield Hallam constituency contains a high number of students, was “determined to ensure that the government does everything it can to help students register to vote”.

One said: “Nick Clegg has now

…

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Posted in News | Tagged nick clegg, students and voter registration | 14 Comments

Opinion: Liberal Democrats must prioritise skills development

By Cara Jenkinson | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 3:38 pm

One of the depressing facts that came out from last week’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on poverty is that only 1 in 5 of low paid employees have left low paid work completely ten years later. Also in the news recently were reports of severe staffing shortages of skilled staff in several sectors including construction and health/social care, leading to major recruitment drives overseas. There is a real problem with skills development in the UK.

There are several reasons for this. Since the recession companies have cut back on investment, and that includes training. The increase in outsourcing in our public services has had an impact; some private providers have good long term training programmes, whereas others take a much more short term approach, particularly if they are fighting to win government contracts on cost. Another cause is the rise in self-employment – 15% of the UK working population is now self-employed compared to 13% in 2008. Many of these self-employed are rehired to their original organisations but without many of the benefits including a training budget.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged employment, low pay, skills development and trade unions | 19 Comments

Opinion: Should we take the ‘Mental’ out of Mental Health?

By Judy Abel | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 1:57 pm

Thanks to the work of Norman Lamb and other Liberal Democrat MPs, mental health has risen up the political agenda. For many years, NHS spending on mental health has lagged far behind that of other conditions and research into treatments for mental illness has also been disproportionately low. MIND recently estimated that local authorities in England spend, on average, only 1.36 per cent of their total public health budgets on mental health – even though such problems cost the country an estimated £100 billion a year.

The aspiration of policymakers now is to achieve ‘parity of esteem’ between mental and physical health, the subject of much debate in the health policy world.

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Posted in News | Tagged mental health | 27 Comments

Abusive site Wings over Scotland is embedded into the Scottish Government and Yes movement – Willie Rennie proves what we knew already

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 12:25 pm

I’ve written before about the appallingly abusive Wings over Scotland site. It’s a pro-independnece blog written, ironically, by the self-styled “Rev” Stu Campbell who lives in Bath.

His shameful content and comments he allows on his site and on social media have included:

Using a picture of hearses going through Royal Wootton Bassett in a mocked up “Better Together poster;
Showering abuse on Clare Lally after she spoke at the Better Together “100 days to go” event. Funnily enough, he then said he couldn’t find any abuse of her on his site. I helped him out.
Doing me over when I said that being part in the UK meant we could do more in terms of international development
Disgusting transphobia towards Chelsea Manning
Referring to a Conservative MSP as an a******* and “sewer dwelling vermin”

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Posted in News | Tagged gordon brown, nicola sturgeon, willie rennie and wings over scotland | 64 Comments

Stephen Knight AM writes…Putting the car first in urban areas comes with a huge cost to human life and health

By Stephen Knight | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 10:59 am

Lying on a cold and damp pavement in central London as part of a ‘“die in”protest to highlight the level of deaths facing pedestrians and cyclists might not be everyone’s idea of a fun Saturday afternoon, but a couple of weekends ago that is exactly what I was doing.

The reason why?

Because the current level of road deaths – let alone serious injuries – is something we can’t continue to accept as being “inevitable”.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged cycling, featured and london | 14 Comments

Nick Clegg on the “utter nonsense” of Tory spending plans

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 9:29 am

In another strong demonstration of the differences between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, Nick Clegg went on the Today programme yesterday to talk about deficit reduction and fiscal policy in the next parliament. While the Tories want to reduce the deficit by cutting spending alone, Liberal Democrats want to raise taxes on the wealthy.

From the Guardian:

Nick Clegg insisted taxes would have to rise in the next parliament. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “What the Conservatives are saying is a complete and utter nonsense. There is not a single developed economy anywhere in the world that has balanced the books and only done so on the backs of the working-age poor, which Osborne has now confirmed several times he wants to do.”

As he set out his party’s plans to remove tax breaks for wealthy pensioners, Clegg also accepted that the public finances were not improving as fast as planned due to tax receipts failing to match forecasts, but he refused to say if this would require the coalition to put back its deficit plans.

He said: “If tax receipts are not as buoyant as predicted then of course that has an effect. Time will tell if that is a semi-permanent effect or a temporary blip, but it means it comes down a little less than predicted.”

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged deficit reduction, economy, nick clegg and taxation | 39 Comments

The graph which shows why the Lib Dem policy of raising the personal allowance is the wrong priority

By Stephen Tall | Tue 2nd December 2014 - 7:55 am

Here’s a graph which should make Lib Dems who continue to advocate increasing the personal allowance as an effective way to help low- and middle-income earners sit up and pay attention.

It’s from the Resolution Foundation’s report, Missing the target: tax cuts and low to middle income Britain, published yesterday.

What it shows is which households gain from the party’s policy to increase the threshold at which income tax is payable to £12,500 over the course of the next parliament. As you can see, those households which benefit most are at the wealthier end of the spectrum; the poorest 20% benefit least.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged Danny Alexander, income tax, national insurance, resolution foundation and tax cuts (Lib Dem) | 46 Comments