Nick T

Clegg: Yes to intensive support for unemployed young people; no to automatic benefit withdrawal

By Nick T | Thu 3rd October 2013 - 5:36 pm

On his weekly LBC phone-in earlier today, Nick Clegg took a call (from Lib Dem activist Linda Jack; see comments) on the proposals mooted at the Conservative Party Conference to remove the automatic entitlement to Housing Benefit from those aged under 25 and require them to be in either work, education or training.

The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour has written up Clegg’s response (which has been slightly unfairly characterised, or at least oversimplified, in the headline):

Clegg said he supported the idea that some claimants who had been on the work programme for two years should work for their dole, the proposal

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Nick T

Carmichael goes sober in October

By Nick T | Thu 3rd October 2013 - 2:54 pm

Everyone’s favourite chief whip, our very own Alistair Carmichael, has taken the somewhat drastic step (at least to those of us positioned nearest the LDV towers booze cupboard) of making October a Scotch-free zone. As MP for a constituency boasting such fine exports, one suspects that’s not a decision that will have been taken lightly, but it has been taken in aide of the best of causes, namely Macmillan Cancer Support.

Alistair’s only been on the wagon for two-and-a-half days, but has already raised nearly £200. We’re sure …

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Nick T

Jo Swinson answers your questions, 2-3pm today

By Nick T | Thu 3rd October 2013 - 12:09 pm

Jo Swinson, MP for East Dunbartonshire and a minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, is taking part in a live Q&A this afternoon from 2-3pm over at the Guardian.

Here’s how the site introduces Jo:

When she took her seat in parliament in 2005, Jo Swinson was the first MP to have been born in the 1980s. In 2012 she became a government minister after the Lib Dems formed a coalition with the Conservative party.

As minister for women and equalities, Swinson has made it her mission to bring about a change in culture around women in the workplace.

…

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Caron Lindsay

Dunfermline by-election: why are you in?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 3rd October 2013 - 11:29 am

Tim Brett why are you inThe Scottish Parliament by-election for the Dunfermline seat is well under way now. Our candidate Susan Leslie and leader Willie Rennie have had a great reception on the doorsteps. The other night there was a reminder of why we do this. It’s all about making people’s lives better. A woman ran up to Willie and Susan in the street and thanked him profusely. I can’t say what he’d done for her while he was MP for Dunfermline but this had been her first chance to say …

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Laura Willoughby

Opinion: The marriage tax allowance is no free lunch

By Laura Willoughby | Thu 3rd October 2013 - 10:24 am

We could give kids free lunch up to the age of 11 if we did not have this silly marriage tax allowance …..

In my last blog on the marriage tax allowance I wondered what we would gain for Lib Dem acquiescence over the illiberal and expensive marriage tax allowance. It is not what I expected but I quite like it.

In the most obvious bit of horse-trading in this coalition yet we won free school meals for five to seven year olds. (I hope that is as far as the involvement of horses goes – sorry!)

I don’t want to

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Stephen Tall

Clegg on the Daily Mail: “Overflowing with bile about modern Britain”

By Stephen Tall | Thu 3rd October 2013 - 10:05 am

call cleggI noted earlier this week that the Daily Mail’s attacks on Ed Miliband’s father have echoes of the smears the paper has peddled about Nick Clegg and his family over the years.

And on his ‘Call Clegg’ radio phone-in today the Lib Dem leader didn’t shy away from mounting a full-frontal assault on the Mail pointing out that what it represents is utterly opposed to the British values of decency, tolerance and fair play. Here’s how the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow reports it:

Wow. That was striking. Nick Clegg has got

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The cost of a Lotto gamble doubles. Is this a tax hike on the poor?

By Andy Boddington | Thu 3rd October 2013 - 9:30 am

Lottery ApologiesThe price of the National Lottery doubles today. The odds of winning the top prize remain the same: 14 million to one.

The price hike is being launched by floating giant balls under the world renowned historic Ironbridge. That’s as tacky as it comes. But the Lotto was always a tacky business that supported good charitable causes.

The BBC is finding itself in an awkward position this morning. On the one hand, it has been dragged into Camelot’s campaign to keep ticket sales up. But on local radio at least, there is coverage of why people gamble and gambling’s negative effects. Yet what I hearing and seeing across the news channels is mostly an unadulterated promotion for the lottery.

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Why every minister should know the price of bread

By Andy Boddington | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 6:53 pm

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt is a classic journalist’s trap. David Cameron was challenged on LBC Radio. “How much does a value loaf cost?” His guess was “way north of a pound.” “Caught you”, the presenter almost said. A value loaf, in London at least, costs 47p.

Now, I simply did not believe this. To my certain knowledge – until this afternoon – an 800g white loaf costs a full £1. Of course, I was wrong.

I live in a classic rural market town of around 10,000 people, three supermarkets, four convenience stores, a great market, local butchers and bakers, and much more. Ludlow has streets that are amongst the 10% richest in the country. But walk just half a mile from the historic centre and you will find housing areas that are amongst the 10% most socially deprived areas in Britain.

We are a town famous for its food and we have some of the best bakers in Britain. But for so many of our residents, the price of bread really matters.

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Stephen Tall

David Cameron’s speech: meh, bah and hmm.

By Stephen Tall | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 6:40 pm

David Cameron - head in handsI missed David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative party conference today. Or, rather, I didn’t see or hear it, which isn’t quite the same thing as missing it.

Meh

But it sounds like, by missing it, I didn’t miss much. There were no dramatic announcements, no new initiatives. Yes, there was talk of the need to “nag and push and guide” young people to either “earn or learn” – the Department of Work and Pensions reports over a million people between the ages of 16 and 24 are …

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Helen Duffett

Tom McNally to stand down as Leader of the Lib Dem Lords

By Helen Duffett | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 6:36 pm

Tom McNally has today written to Dick Newby (Lib Dem Deputy Chief Whip) to say that he intends to stand down as Leader of the Lib Dem group in the House of Lords.

Lord McNally’s letter is as follows:

1 October 2013
Dear Dick,

I will shortly be coming to the end of my ninth year as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. Before that I served as deputy to Shirley Williams for three years. It seems to me that now would be an ideal time for the Group to select a new leader to serve out

…

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Caron Lindsay

Crockart and McInnes criticise Scottish Police station closure plan

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 4:48 pm

policeIn 2011, the SNP decided to merge Scotland’s 8 police forces into a single organisation. Truth be told, that’s not quite what they’d put in their manifesto, but with an overall majority they were in a position to do what they wanted.

Liberal Democrats were vociferous in warning about the dangers of how the merger would affect rural policing. We were told we were scare-mongering and it would all be fine.

Barely six months on from the merger, it’s been announced that 65 rural police stations might close or have their opening …

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Opinion: I need the Liberal Democrats to stand up for me when Conservative ministers denigrate me

By Matt | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 1:28 pm

I want to share with you how I feel when Conservative government ministers talk about welfare claimants in disparaging terms. I hope that I can bring a bit of understanding about the problems people like me face.

Before I begin, I should give a trigger warning for rape, self harm and sexual abuse. The details are upsetting but I feel you need to know the whole story.

I was raped and abused as a child every single week for 12 years. On numerous occasions I would wake to find myself being raped and suffocated by my abuser, who was later imprisoned for …

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Newsmoggie

Nick Clegg attacks Labour council over Don Valley stadium closure

By Newsmoggie | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 12:00 pm

Sheffield’s Labour council have been criticised by Nick Clegg over their decision to close the Don Valley Stadium where Olympic heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill trained.

From the Sheffield Star:

I’m hugely disappointed that Labour councillors have decided Don Valley Stadium is not an asset of community value.

This short-sighted decision has denied the Save Don Valley Stadium group access to central Government grants, which would have helped them develop a business plan and move closer to their vision of running the venue at no cost to the public.

Instead of working with the community to protect facilities, we have a council determined to

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Caron Lindsay

Liberal Youth seeks new non portfolio officer and vice chair

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 10:26 am

Liberal Youth are seeking to c0-0pt two new members of their Executive, a non-portfolio officer and a vice chair. Any member of the party under 26 or any member of Liberal Youth is eligible to stand.

The non-portfolio officers of Liberal Youth assist the other executive members on any matter needed, and are not confined to any one area.They pick up tasks, or whole projects where necessary, and contribute on a variety of levels to ensure the smooth running of the organisation.

The Vice Chair’s role is to act as temporary Chair …

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Caron Lindsay

Liz Barker is up for a Pink News award for Parliamentary speech of the year – vote today!

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 8:51 am

In June, we brought you Liz Barker’s moving speech on the Same Sex Marriage Bill. Liz started by talking about her own relationship which is as long as mine, yet she hasn’t been able to get married to her partner in the same way as I did to mine 25 years ago. Her speech very carefully and without rancour demolished the usual arguments against. She said:

Some noble Lords say that allowing gay people to get married is unfair as it leaves other sorts of relationships, such as those of siblings, without the same legal rights as those who choose a marital

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Stephen Tall

On the Lib Dem conference polling bump (lack thereof) and what it means for the party

By Stephen Tall | Wed 2nd October 2013 - 8:14 am

The Labour party’s been enjoying a post-conference bump in the polls on the back of Ed Miliband’s bit of unexpected populism of promising a 20-month energy price freeze. At the weekend, Labour opened up an 11-point lead over the Tories, hitting 42%, its highest level since June.

Of course party conferences frequently distort the polls. We’ll see if the Tories also get a boost from their week’s exposure (or whether the row between the Daily Mail and Ed Miliband has overshadowed it). And then we’ll see if any of these spikes have any kind of long-lasting effect, or — as usual …

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Stephen Tall

Of course, the Daily Mail has form when it comes to smearing party leaders’ families

By Stephen Tall | Tue 1st October 2013 - 8:45 pm

My colleague Andy Boddington has already (rightly) laid into the Daily Mail for its gratuitous insults against Ed Miliband’s father, Marxist historian Ralph.

The paper has form when it comes to smearing the families of party leaders. Let’s turn back the pages of history to… well, 10 days ago when the Mail tried to link Nick Clegg to fascism through his father-in-law:

clegg father in law daily mail - sept 2013

Or we could roll back to December 2012 when the Mail splash on a desperately thin story implying some …

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Nick Clegg supports Ed Miliband over his dad – that’s just right

By Andy Boddington | Tue 1st October 2013 - 6:49 pm

Geoffrey Levy on Milibands DadOnce again the Daily Mail has disgraced itself and the journalistic profession.

In an article headlined “The man who hated Britain”, the newspaper attacked Miliband father, a man who fled the Nazis to arrive here as refugee. Ralph Miliband quickly came to love this country and he fought for it in the Second World War. But in common with many of his era, he was attracted to Marxism.

His left leaning and his youthful comments were enough for Geoffrey Levy of the Daily Mail to launch one of the most unpleasant character assassinations in recent history.

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The Voice

Former Council Leader pleads guilty to serious charges

By The Voice | Tue 1st October 2013 - 5:34 pm

The former Leader of Lib Dem held Kingston Council, Derek Osbourne, appeared today at Southwark Crown Court, charged with 17 counts of possessing and distributing indecent images of children. He pleaded guilty to them all.

Cllr Liz Green, the current Council Leader, made this statement:

Colleagues and acquaintances have expressed shock and sadness to me about Derek, who was held in high esteem by many of us across the political divide. The news of his arrest for serious sex charges back in June came as a bolt out of the blue to all of us.

The police have said that his offences

…

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Lester Holloway

Opinion: What Black History Month means to me

By Lester Holloway | Tue 1st October 2013 - 4:51 pm

black history monthI was delighted by Nick Clegg’s excellent statement welcoming the start of Black History Month. As he says, this is an important aspect of British history whatever our background.

Black History Month exists because black history has long been overlooked. Large swathes of social history, the story of the working class and women battling for rights, have also been relatively absent from standard history taught in schools.

The two strands are often intertwined. The great abolitionist Thomas Clarkson led a grassroots movement against slavery in tandem with the likes of …

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Mary Reid

A novel solution for rural broadband

By Mary Reid | Tue 1st October 2013 - 3:39 pm

There was a delightful story in the Guardian yesterday about how a church bell tower was used by a village to set up their own broadband network.

It was 4am on Thursday when Paull Taylor turned on BBC News to be greeted with a BT spokesman making grand promises about superfastbroadband in rural areas. The telecoms man was insisting his firm had not “exploited” £1.2bn of public funds – an accusation made by the Public Accounts Committee this week – and promising that most country-dwelling Britons would receive 2MB broadband by 2015. Despite the early hour, the 20-year-old electrician was lucid enough to provide a pithy response:

“Bollocks.

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Take a good coalition environmental move and Owen Paterson will undermine it

By Andy Boddington | Tue 1st October 2013 - 2:02 pm

Paterson in Carrier BagPutting an acknowledged environmental sceptic in charge of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was always going to be bad news. Shropshire MP Owen Paterson’s sympathies lie with industrial scale farming and fracked landscapes. He hates windfarms and is a global warming sceptic. Now he’s trying to restrict the scope of the carrier bag charge.

It’s no surprise then that he is reluctant to introduce a charge on supermarket carrier bags. Previously, Defra sat on its heels. Its ministers claimed it needed better evidence about the impact of a charge. That’s an ironic position to take given that Defra has launched a badger cull against the scientific evidence of the Krebs trails.

It is true that under the former Labour government, Defra became obsessed with carbon emissions at the expense of the contribution of the environment to wellbeing and biodiversity – as did much of the environmental movement. It fretted that a one use paper bag used more carbon than a well-used plastic bag. Everyone but CPRE and few other charities ignored the impact of plastic bags on landfill, the landscape, our streets and the seas.

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Iain Coleman

Opinion: Damian McBride and the next coalition

By Iain Coleman | Tue 1st October 2013 - 12:28 pm

power tripThe effects of Damian McBride’s book on the next election will be negligible. The vast majority of voters simply don’t care.

And to those who do, the vicious way members of the Labour government conducted themselves, and the reckless aggression of their spin doctors and advisers, are hardly news. The general picture was well known before 2010: indeed, Armando Iannucci and Peter Capaldi had been portraying it on screen for five years by then. McBride has added details, but any vote that might have been influenced by it, already has been.

So it won’t change anything on polling day. But what about the day after?

It’s no surprise that pundits like to speculate on the choices the Liberal Democrats would make, in the event that a majority coalition is feasible with either of the larger parties. It may not be the most likely outcome, but it’s the most interesting.

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Nick Clegg MP

Nick Clegg writes: Black History Month

By Nick Clegg MP | Tue 1st October 2013 - 10:23 am

black history monthBlack History Month reminds us that remembering the past is about more than just memorising important dates and facts. It’s about recognising and understanding the kaleidoscopic mix of people, events and influences that have shaped the country we live in and make us who we are.

Over the last 26 years, Black History Month has helped to inform and educate men, women and children across Britain, highlighting and celebrating the powerful contribution of African and Caribbean people in every area of British society, across centuries of our history.

Black History Month …

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The Voice

Andrew Stunell to stand down in 2015; Lisa Smart selected

By The Voice | Tue 1st October 2013 - 8:41 am

stunnell and smartAndrew Stunell has announced that in 2015 he will be retiring as the MP for Hazel Grove, where he was first elected in 1997.

Andrew, who was knighted in this summer’s Birthday Honours, has held several roles within the Parliamentary party, including Chief Whip, Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and more recently as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in the Coalition.

Before entering Parliament he had a wealth of experience in local government, serving as a councillor for many years, as an …

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Caron Lindsay

Might some of the welfare changes be a little more helpful to people than Osborne made out?

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 30th September 2013 - 9:43 pm

Conservative Conference week is never an easy time to be a Liberal Democrat. The Conservative in its natural habitat is not a pretty sight to those of us who cherish the principles at the heart of the preamble to our constitution, of liberty, equality and community, of freeing people from poverty, ignorance or conformity. The words Tory leaders use to rally their troops give us that joyless feeling that is known in Scotland as the dry boak.

But, you know, the Tory conference is what the Cabinet table would be like if it weren’t for the Liberal Democrats in Government. …

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Stephen Tall

Nice try, George. But the Pupil Premium is happening only because the Lib Dems are in government

By Stephen Tall | Mon 30th September 2013 - 8:15 pm

Osborne - Some rights reserved by altogetherfoolWho has made sure the Pupil Premium is being delivered in Government? Pretty straightforward question, you might think: the Liberal Democrats. Not if you’re George Osborne, though…

“I sit at that Cabinet table and I know who has really put forward the policies that are delivering a fairer society. The pupil premium to support the most disadvantaged children: that was Michael Gove’s idea, front and centre of the last Conservative manifesto.” (30 Sept 2013)

Erm… okay, George. Let’s take those two claims in order.

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NewsHound

Liblink: The party unites against ‘Help to Buy’

By NewsHound | Mon 30th September 2013 - 1:10 pm

The Guardian is reporting the following joint letter by Liberal Democrat grassroots groups including the Social Liberal Forum and Liberal Reform representing different perspectives within the party, protesting against ‘Help to Buy’.

Sir – We write as Liberal Democrats who share deep concerns over the second element of the government’s Help to Buy scheme, the implementation of which has just been accelerated as a Conservative demand within the coalition.

The UK housing market is to all intents broken, with chronic shortages of supply having combined with an out-of-control financial system to create a house price bubble

…

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Joe Otten

Energy price cap round up

By Joe Otten | Mon 30th September 2013 - 11:07 am

It is now 6 days since Ed Miliband’s announcement that if elected, he would cap energy prices for 20 months, while undertaking a restructure of the energy market intended to bring lower prices in the long run. Some details have followed, for example that the cap would not necessarily be set at the May 2015 price, but may be set at an earlier price if energy companies appear to be hiking prices to beat the cap. This wouldn’t stop them hiking prices to build up a war chest.

George Eaton in the New Statesman called this a “brilliant trap …

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Joe Otten

LibLink… Chris Davies: It’s time to kick-start carbon capture

By Joe Otten | Mon 30th September 2013 - 9:02 am

In the Huffington Post, Chris Davies MEP highlights the lack of progress on carbon capture, despite early enthusiasm and promises of funding for trial projects.

Yet now, there is little to show for the initial enthusiasm. Thirteen significant projects applied for the first phase of funding, but most could not meet the strict and inflexible requirements. In the second phase only one project, the ‘White Rose’ in the UK, is in the running for €300m support, Even so the odds are against it securing the necessary government commitment within the given deadline. Of a further €1 billion of EU

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged | 19 Comments
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