Mary Reid

Norman Lamb: an extraordinary encounter with Fred Michel

By Mary Reid | Tue 26th June 2012 - 5:31 pm

It was Norman Lamb’s turn to appear before the Leveson Inquiry this afternoon. He dropped a bombshell in the form of handwritten notes (which you can see here) that he made of a meeting with Fred Michel of News International in 2010. The transcript is:

Wed 27/10
0900 meeting Fred Michel News International. An extraordinary encounter. FM is very
charming. He tells me News Int. papers will land on VC’s desk in next 2 weeks. They are
certain there are no grounds for referral. They realise the political pressures. He wants things
to run smoothly. They have been supportive of

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 1 Comment
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Tom Brake

Tom Brake MP writes… Labour has a lot to apologise for on immigration – it should start with child detention

By Tom Brake | Tue 26th June 2012 - 4:53 pm

On the subject of immigration, Ed Miliband was in apologetic mood this week. And not before time.

Labour has a lot to apologise for on immigration – not just the dog whistle ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ rhetoric and an attitude to the views of ordinary people that resulted in Gordon Brown’s ‘bigoted woman’ slur.

Miliband could apologise for not reintroducing the exit checks abolished by the Tories and allowing our border controls to descend into farce.

He could apologise for wildly underestimating the number of migrants from Eastern Europe when new countries joined the EU.

But if there is one thing Labour really …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

Jo Grimond: Towards the sound of gunfire

By Mark Pack | Tue 26th June 2012 - 3:50 pm

A better understanding of Jo Grimond’s life is always a healthy corrective to some of the cartoon caricatures about right-wing lurches and Thatcherite policies that sometimes get thrown around over the views of contemporary Liberal Democrats.

Grimond was, after all, a man who talked of himself as being on the centre-left and who pushed for a progressive realignment of politics that would see a new centre-left party supplant Labour. Off and on feelers went out to those in Labour ranks during his career. And yet, he was …

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Posted in Books | Tagged , , and | 8 Comments
Mike German

Lord German writes… Welfare – don’t panic! – it’s Cameron being a Tory!

By Mike German | Tue 26th June 2012 - 12:53 pm

So David Cameron has made a speech laying out some welfare ideas for his party’s manifesto in 2015. Some parts of the media portray the ideas as government policy – they aren’t! I was very surprised to see Shelter’s press release saying this was Government policy as well. It isn’t!

Party leaders in a coalition will always want to outline their plans for the next general election. It’s part of being an independent and separate party, and as believers in an electoral system which produces coalitions we should not get anxious about it either. I want Nick Clegg to …

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Posted in Op-eds | 16 Comments
Merlene Emerson

An historic address

By Merlene Emerson | Tue 26th June 2012 - 11:10 am

“Aung San Suu Kyi – the only woman to have addressed both houses of Parliament apart from the Queen #Burma #WestminsterHall #bbcnews” I had tweeted at 3.44pm on June 21st.

“@merleneemerson The only woman to do so internationally, the only person from Asia and the only non head of state. She’s a record breaker!!” came a reply within seconds from one @gregjudge.

We weren’t the only ones excited by the recent visit by Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Opposition in Burma to London. Celebrated in Norway where she finally accepted her Nobel Peace prize 21 years after the event, entertained by …

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Nick Clegg MP

Nick Clegg MP writes… Rio+20: We made progress

By Nick Clegg MP | Tue 26th June 2012 - 9:53 am

The dust has now settled on last week’s Rio+20 summit and I’m keen to look back at my initial goals and to let you know what we achieved in terms of meeting them. Of course the final text was not all we would have wanted had we been able to write it ourselves; however I am pleased to be able to report that all three of my priorities have been included in the final text of the document that was agreed last week.

  1. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We agreed to launch a process to develop these, to ensure that countries

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

The Liberal Democrats need a core votes strategy

By Mark Pack | Tue 26th June 2012 - 8:50 am

Nick Clegg’s summer tour has one major aim: to reassure, to charm and to motivate Liberal Democrat members and supporters. The risk is that it is done on the basis that all he needs do is meet people, face their questions head on and question by question provide good answers.

The ability to win over people one question at a time has served Nick Clegg well in his ascent up the political ladder, as the key election contests for him have not been winning a council seat from nowhere or a close-fought marginal seat contest at a general election. Rather for …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 32 Comments
Steve Bolter

Opinion: The need for positive engagement on the school exam system

By Steve Bolter | Mon 25th June 2012 - 4:53 pm

The media are premature in supposing that the Liberal Democrats will divide the Coalition by blocking changes to the school exam system. I hope that Conference will provide the opportunity for discussion of the exam system and that positive engagement will produce something far better than Gove’s initial outline proposals suggest.

Liberal Democrats should welcome the proposal for a reduction in the number of exam boards and call for them to be independent of commercial organisations such as text book publishers. We should call for a better balance of experienced teachers, educationalists and subject specialists, from universities or industry, on subject boards.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 13 Comments
William Hobhouse

Opinion: The Lib Dems should be the party of manufacturing

By William Hobhouse | Mon 25th June 2012 - 3:23 pm

There are some good economic reasons for the decline of British manufacturing. But decades of government policy are also to blame.

All manufacturers in rich countries face challenges and threats from cheaper labour costs overseas. We can compete successfully with a combination of high levels of productivity and investment, as well as getting the best out of our people.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 9 Comments

Opinion: Dear Progress, come in and have a nose around

By James Percival | Mon 25th June 2012 - 2:43 pm

In the run up to the 1997 election, Tony Blair led Paddy Ashdown up the garden path with a promise of a progressive alliance between a modern reforming Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats.

Well, ‘fool us once’ and all that.

15 years later the Liberal Democrats remain a broad church. Orange Bookers, social democrats, Coalition supporters, Coalition sceptics, whatever Evan Harris is – there’s room for all of us.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 14 Comments
Nick Harvey

Nick Harvey MP: Vital need to keep open the seas of the Middle East

By Nick Harvey | Mon 25th June 2012 - 1:53 pm

This is a truncated version of a speech delivered at RAND last Thursday. The full speech can be read here.

The UK has maintained at least two Frigates or Destroyers in the Gulf and Indian Ocean region since 1980. They now contribute to the Coalition Maritime Force based in Bahrain and comprised of sailors and ships from 25 nations.

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Posted in Speeches | Tagged | 1 Comment
David Thorpe

Opinion: More QE is not the solution to Britain’s economic challenges

By David Thorpe | Mon 25th June 2012 - 12:23 pm

With the predictability of a partner changing ‘our’ plans at the last minute, the announcement that UK inflation has fallen to its lowest level for two and a half years has been greeted with calls for more Quantitative Easing (QE) to stimulate growth.

Much of the media presentation of the facts of this latest inflation data has focused on the fall being a ‘surprise’. In reality most of the drop was predictable enough, as the article I link to above states, the VAT increase in 2011 fell off the index for the first time in May, while the situation in Iran has stabilised, causing oil prices to fall.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 15 Comments
Alisdair Calder McGregor

Opinion: There is much for the Lib Dems to support in Gove’s embryonic exam proposals

By Alisdair Calder McGregor | Mon 25th June 2012 - 10:53 am

The leak to the Daily Mail of the education secretary’s proposals for replacing the current GCSE system has set off a predictable storm of fury from many quarters.

These proposals are – as Nick Clegg has laid out in forthright terms – not coalition policy, haven’t been discussed in cabinet, and haven’t been seen by the Lib Dem in the Department of Education, Sarah Teather.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 14 Comments
Mark Pack

David Boyle’s appointment is excellent news

By Mark Pack | Mon 25th June 2012 - 9:53 am

Under Charles Kennedy’s leadership, the party had a simple and generally popular approach to public services: Kennedy consistently supported higher spending on favourite public services and appointed as party spokespeople those with experience of that service. So in education, for example, it was ex-headteacher Phil Willis leading for the party, promoting costed policies to put more cash into the party’s priorities.

Overall, the party’s plans involved raising at least as much in extra taxes or savings as it wanted to spend, so the net effect was fiscally respectable but for each individual public service the party’s answer was pretty much, “we’ll …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , and | 6 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg needs to condemn Cameron’s welfare plans in the strongest language imaginable

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 25th June 2012 - 8:53 am

Many Liberal Democrats will have been choking on their Sunday Corn Flakes yesterday as they read, with horror, David Cameron’s plans to slash benefits even further than this year’s Welfare Reform Bill. If he had his way, there would be no Housing Benefit payable to anyone under 25. The critical part of the reports is, however, this sentence:

Downing Street said they were Conservative plans for after the next general election.

That’s all right then. This rubbish isn’t going to happen on our watch.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 47 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #279

By The Voice | Sun 24th June 2012 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 279th weekly round-up from the Lib Dem blogosphere … Featuring the seven most popular stories beyond Lib Dem Voice according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (17-23 June, 2012), together with a hand-picked quintet, normally courtesy of LibDig, you might otherwise have missed.

Don’t forget: you can sign up to receive the Golden Dozen direct to your email inbox — just click here — ensuring you never miss out on the best of Lib Dem blogging.

As ever, let’s start with the most popular post, and work our way down:

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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Kate Hudson

The Independent View: The Trident review risks being a damp squib

By Kate Hudson | Sun 24th June 2012 - 4:55 pm

This week the Ministry of Defence (MOD) announced a £1.1 billion contract with Rolls Royce for building nuclear submarine reactors. This has caused quite some controversy and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was immediately called to answer an Urgent Question in the Commons on the implications of this spending and whether it preempts a future decision on whether or not to replaceBritain’s Trident nuclear weapons system.

The contract itself will see £500m spent on the refurbishment of Rolls Royce’s Raynesway plant in Derby, while £600m will go on building new nuclear reactor cores to powerBritain’s submarines. Most of these will be …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

David Laws: let’s cut taxes and spending. For once, I’m unconvinced. Here’s why…

By Stephen Tall | Sun 24th June 2012 - 2:45 pm

David Laws has earned himself a generous write-up in today’s Telegraph, with the paper which triggered his resignation from the cabinet two years ago hailing his ‘radical vision of a liberal state’, and lamenting with crocodile tears that his downfall was ‘a great loss to the Cabinet’.

The cause is an interview David has given to the paper in which he makes the case for further public spending cuts and lower taxes — a case he has outlined in greater depth in an article in the current Institute of Economic Affairs journal, highlighted last week on LibDemVoice. Here’s …

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Posted in News and Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 46 Comments
Paul Haydon

Opinion: European countries need to work together on asylum

By Paul Haydon | Sun 24th June 2012 - 1:25 pm

The EU plans to reach an agreement over a Common European Asylum System by the end of this year, aiming to strengthen common standards on asylum, establish greater solidarity between member-states, and ensure fair and decent treatment of refugees. Currently countries on the EU’s periphery continue to shoulder the brunt of refugee flows relative to their capacity, burdening the already strained living conditions in immigration reception and detention centres.

Malta provides a case in point. During 2011 Malta received more asylum requests per-capita than any other EU country, with

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg to embark on summer ‘bring on the hatred’ tour

By Stephen Tall | Sun 24th June 2012 - 11:55 am

Nick Clegg certainly isn’t one to shy away from voters, even at a time when the Lib Dems, he personally, and the government he’s part of are all suffering from unpopularity. Ever since Nick became leader he’s placed a premium on direct voter contact through his ‘town hall’ meetings. It was a smart strategy which not only earned valuable exposure through the local media, but also ensured he was much more prepared and ready for the televised election debates in 2010.

And this summer he’s setting off on a tour of 13 meetings at which he’s under no illusions he’ll be …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

Revealed: The document that explains how Unite intends to take over the Labour party

By Mark Pack | Sun 24th June 2012 - 10:50 am

That’s the headline on a post over on Labour Uncut, and they have the full internal Unite strategy document to corroborate those claims:

The strategy is a powerful statement of intent. It’s clear that Unite intend to fundamentally change Labour…

In one passage, plans are set out to recruit 5000 new members from Unite into the Labour party. But this is no altruistic membership drive; the purpose of this influx of activists is to control local constituency parties…

The document goes on to outline how these new activists will be marshalled by Unite’s political structures to act as a bloc within CLPs. There

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 10 Comments
Nick T

A longer read for the weekend: Baroness Kramer on how to kick-start economic growth

By Nick T | Sun 24th June 2012 - 9:45 am

Earlier this week, Baroness (Susan) Kramer moved a debate in the House of Lords on UK economic growth. Her speech covered the  background to the UK’s current economic position as well as a number of suggestions of what the government can do to encourage growth. Below is a slightly edited version of the speech.

In 2010 the coalition inherited a badly damaged economy. The previous Government had built their boom on the back of tax revenues pumped up by false profits from the banks – …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

David Walter memorial service: Wednesday 27 June

By Mark Pack | Sun 24th June 2012 - 9:00 am

In March the exceptionally popular David Walter lost his battle with cancer, and a memorial service is being held for him this week:

Wednesday June 27th at 2pm at St Brides Church, Fleet Street EC4Y 8AU

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Ryan Cullen

Welcome to the new bloggers…

By Ryan Cullen | Sat 23rd June 2012 - 8:01 pm

Seventeen blogs have recently joined my Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Good luck to all the new bloggers, and why not take a moment to pop over to their blogs, take a read and post a comment?

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition: Nick Harvey “Pleased to see me?” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 23rd June 2012 - 3:50 pm

There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…

Here’s Lib Dem defence minister Nick Harvey ensuring British troops are tooled-up. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about him?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Clegg at Leveson “Through the glasses darkly” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | Tagged | 22 Comments
Stephen Tall

Danny Alexander: pay tax as I say not as I do?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 23rd June 2012 - 1:45 pm

Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander wrote a powerful article — Rich tax dodgers are as bad as dole cheats — for this week’s Sun newspaper. His condemnation of those, such as Jimmy Carr, who legally avoid paying their taxes couldn’t have been stronger:

… to most people it’s outrageous that a few of the very richest and their expensive financial advisers are devising ever more obscure and underhand ways of not paying their tax. When it comes to paying their fair share, some of the people

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 32 Comments
Mark Pack

This doesn’t look like a rebalancing housing market to me

By Mark Pack | Sat 23rd June 2012 - 10:50 am

Continuing this week’s mini-housing theme, here are the latest changes in house prices published this week by the Office of National Statistics:

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Posted in News | Tagged | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

The weekend debate: Is mandatory arbitration the answer to public transport strikes?

By Mark Pack | Sat 23rd June 2012 - 9:25 am

Here’s your starter for ten in our weekend slot where we throw up an idea or thought for debate…

With the Olympics approaching and not all the details of staff conditions on London’s public transport settled, talk of how easy or not it should be to call a strike is often popping up in political debates. The answer from many Conservatives is to make strikes harder by demanding a minimum turnout threshold for strikes. That idea often runs into criticism and the one time I’ve sent a tweet which trended on the front page of Twitter’s website in its old guise …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 9 Comments
The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 22 June 2012

By The Voice | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 5:00 pm

It’s Friday. It’s five o’clock. Here’s a fistful of lists that sum up the LDV week:

5 most-read stories on LDV this week

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Mark Valladares

Stuff that you might find useful…

By Mark Valladares | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 3:51 pm

Here at Liberal Democrat Voice, we are always thinking of new things to bring to our readers. Opinion, news, ideas, our editorial team and volunteer authors bring all this to you and more. However, there is plenty of information out there that campaigners, and anyone who takes an interest, might find useful. So, here’s a miscellany of announcements you might have missed;

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) have recently announced a new telephone helpline for the recently bereaved, 0845 300 0627, open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Friday, and 8 …

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