David Freeborn

Three more myths about the UK economy

By David Freeborn | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 2:21 pm

A few days ago, Stephen Tall posted his Five Myths About the UK Economy. But in fact understanding what is really going on in the economy is much harder than it first looks. One thing he was definitely right about was that the economy is the big issue and trying to get behind the political rhetoric to discover the economic reality is surprisingly tricky. I decided to post my own three myths about the UK economy.

Myth 1: Cuts aren’t really taking place

The latest fashion for conservative commentators is to deny that real cuts are even taking place. This government, …

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The Voice

From today’s Lib Dem News

By The Voice | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 12:44 pm

By Howard from Lib Dem News

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Julian Huppert

Julian Huppert MP writes… Libel reform is an admirable prize for Liberal Democrats

By Julian Huppert | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 11:53 am

In my experience, Second Reading debates are often lengthy affairs. Everyone wants to say their piece; few have something new to contribute.

The second reading of the Defamation Bill last week was no exception. We even heard the odd diatribe against threatening behaviour and internet trolls; some of which belied a complete misunderstanding of what we were actually debating.

But, for once, there was some clear consensus. In the words of John Kampfner, the chief executive of Index on Censorship:

When we launched the Libel Reform Campaign in 2009, only the Liberal Democrats backed change. Now the cause has cross party support.

Campaigned …

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Mark Pack

The rise of the private renters

By Mark Pack | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 9:25 am

On Wednesday I returned to the theme of how private renters get short shrift in British politics. You can fight through a bulging email folder of press releases from politicians wanting to make mortgages easier, cheaper, safer and more numerous before you find one that talks about tackling any of the issues private renters face.

This continuing neglect of them is despite the continuing increase in their numbers, as new figures for the UK published this week show:

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Jeremy Browne “reserves his position” on the Government’s Euro 2012 boycott

By Stephen Tall | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 8:55 am

When is a boycott not a boycott? When England confounds expectations by playing well.

That appears to be the more-than-a-little confusing Government message during the Euro 2012 football championships being held in Ukraine, where there are continuing concerns about its ‘selective justice’ system. No government minister has attended a match yet, and that boycott will extend to this Sunday’s quarter-final against Italy.

But the Government has refused to be drawn on whether its boycott would continue if England reach the semi-finals. You can watch Lib Dem foreign office minister Jeremy Browne attempt to justify this inconsistency to Andrew Neil on the BBC’s Daily Politics here:

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Mark Valladares

Coming up in the Lords: 25-29 June

By Mark Valladares | Fri 22nd June 2012 - 7:53 am

It’s all gone a bit quiet at the more civilised end of the Palace of Westminster, after the mayhem that came at the end of the last Parliamentary session. That isn’t to say that it’s dull, but there is rather more debate and scrutiny than voting.

The Crime and Courts Bill has reached its Committee stage, and Days 3 and 4 take place on Monday and Wednesday next week. I have to admit that I understand precious little of this, even after reading the various (astonishingly lengthy) amendments, …

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Nick T

LibLink: Paddy Ashdown – Rio+20 is a chance to secure our children’s future

By Nick T | Thu 21st June 2012 - 6:54 pm

Paddy Ashdown – former Lib Dem leader and president of Unicef UK – has an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph setting out his hopes for the Rio+20 summit currently taking. Here’s a sample:

Right now an estimated 18 million people in the Sahel region of west Africa are being affected by drought, disease and conflict. In 2011 alone UNICEF, the world’s leading children’s organisation, responded to 292 humanitarian emergencies in 80 countries. Children are always the most vulnerable in such situations, typically representing over 50 per cent of those affected by disasters, equating to between 100 and 175 million children each

…

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Helen Flynn

Opinion: Finally lost it….

By Helen Flynn | Thu 21st June 2012 - 5:00 pm

If there was ever any doubt as to the credibility and effectiveness of Michael Gove as Education Secretary, that has now been dispelled by the recent announcement via the Daily Mail about bringing back ‘O’ Levels.

Some I know have discarded this as not being serious, more an opportunity for Gove to act the Tory whilst his colleague flails around, making his opportunity for anything other than a one-term stint as Prime Minister highly unlikely.

Maybe it is a political move to manoeuvre himself into a prime position as custodian of the right wing, but the idea that he would use …

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Nick T

Shareholders to get binding votes on executive pay under Cable reforms

By Nick T | Thu 21st June 2012 - 3:24 pm

First up, here’s what Vince had to say in the House of Commons yesterday:

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Paul Reynolds

Opinion: Should we be selling state assets to reduce debt and create jobs?

By Paul Reynolds | Thu 21st June 2012 - 2:28 pm

One of the unexpected by-products of the controversial privatisations of the 1980s was the discovery of shockingly poor real estate management by state bodies – a rare glimpse of a problem only brought to the surface when the need for proper balance sheets arose.

UK government departments and agencies have since been shown to exhibit appalling asset management, as any sweep through Public Accounts Committee (PAC) or National Audit Office (NAO) reports will demonstrate – stories of unused land & buildings, ‘forgotten’ landholdings, leases on punitive terms, opaque sale of land at below market prices. Government departments also own very large …

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Ben Wood

Opinion: 3 reasons why the Earth Summit matters for Liberal Democrats

By Ben Wood | Thu 21st June 2012 - 12:26 pm

In mid-June 1992, over one hundred heads of state came together in Rio de Janeiro to establish groundbreaking and legally binding agreements which put sustainable development on the global agenda and urged the world to start living within its means.

Twenty years on, sustainable development appears to have lost its way. The global financial crisis and ongoing problems in the Eurozone have led some (including many in the Conservative Party) to turn a blind eye to environmental issues.

Such has been the lack of media coverage, in fact, that you could be forgiven for failing to realise that this week’s Earth Summit, …

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Mark Pack

Can you tell the heroes from the villains in the sub-prime mortgage disaster?

By Mark Pack | Thu 21st June 2012 - 10:25 am

Michael Lewis’s highly readable account of the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market and the worldwide financial crisis it triggered focuses on a small number of characters. People with iconoclastic views determined not to be constrained by the old conventional rules. People who created new financial investments. People who put money into places their investors did not really understand on a good day and did not even know what had been done with their money on a bad day. People who made huge profits …

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Mark Pack

What sort of mid-term review should the government hold?

By Mark Pack | Thu 21st June 2012 - 7:55 am

Two new publications look in some detail at how coalition government is working and should work. The sources of the authors – the University College London Constitution Unit and the Institute for Government – gives a clue about their perspectives, and it is a rather different one from that of the usual political commentary.

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Caron Lindsay

The tale of Julian Huppert and the BBC doughnuts

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th June 2012 - 8:55 pm

Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge Julian Huppert was tempted by a team from the Daily Politics proffering doughnuts the other day.

You can see what happened by watching here at around 1 hour 25 minutes in.

I just wonder what would have happened if he had been offered some chips or some pizza as he confessed to being more partial to savoury items.

The only member to take a doughnut was the SNP’s Angus MacNeill. Maybe it was the sugar rush that caused him to tweet today during Prime Minister’s Questions:

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Caron Lindsay

Willie Rennie says Salmond should meet Dalai Lama

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th June 2012 - 6:55 pm

First Minister Alex Salmond loves to meet international dignitaries and world leaders. Every chance he gets, he’s off playing a larger than life role on the international stage. Just last weekend, he was in Los Angeles promoting Scottish business and schmoozing with celebrities at  a film premiere.  It’s all the more surprising, then, that he can’t find a space in his diary to meet the Dalai Lama when he visits Scotland this week. This is in stark contrast to the reception the exiled Tibetan Spiritual Leader received in 2004 when he addressed the Parliament and met the then First …

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NewsHound

Liblink: Danny Alexander to tax dodgers – we are coming to get you!

By NewsHound | Wed 20th June 2012 - 4:27 pm

Following all the publicity about Jimmy Carr’s tax arrangements for his multi million pound fortune which means that he pays just a fraction of the amount the rest of us have to shell out, Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has written for the Sun newspaper about Government measures to clamp down on those who avoid tax.

Frankly, I think people who dodge the tax system are the moral equivalent of benefit cheats.

Both sets of people think they can bend the rules everyone else lives by for their own benefit.

The Coalition are already cutting income tax for

…

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The Voice

Nick Clegg explains why he’s Out4Marriage

By The Voice | Wed 20th June 2012 - 3:40 pm

Way back in February 2010, Nick Clegg used the phrase “Love is same, straight or gay” in an interview with Pink News in which he expressed his support for equal marriage. That phrase has become a slogan of the Out4Marriage campaign.

He has reiterated that full support on many occasions since.

Today, Out4Marriage released a video he made for them explaining why he supports the right of all couples who love each other to marry as “a fundamental right in an equal society”.

Enjoy!

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Mark Pack

Is a high home ownership rate a sign of a successful country?

By Mark Pack | Wed 20th June 2012 - 2:50 pm

People who rent in the private sector get short shrift in British politics. Renting is rarely talked about and when it is, it is almost always in the context of it being seen as inferior to owner-occupation. It is as if a private renter is simply someone who has not been successful or lucky enough to become an owner-occupier.

As I wrote last year:

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Caron Lindsay

Liblink: Nick Clegg – Rio’s reprise must set hard deadlines for development

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 20th June 2012 - 12:58 pm

Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has written for the Guardian about the Rio+20 summit he’s attending. He says that it’s vital that we “revive the spirit of our predecessors to get the world on a much more sustainable path”.

He spelled out the consequences if we don’t act:

Too many people still lack food: tonight, one billion will go hungry. There isn’t enough clean energy: right now women in some of the poorest communities are fuelling their homes with tyres and plastics. Despite the noxious fumes produced, they rely on anything that will burn. Dirty water and poor

…

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Ewan Hoyle

Opinion: Changing demand without changing supply puts prostitutes at risk

By Ewan Hoyle | Wed 20th June 2012 - 11:57 am

It is with some concern that I read of proposals to criminalise paying for sex in Scotland.

Prostitution is a catch-all term that describes arrangements that should make the state very concerned indeed – trafficking of children for brutal sexual exploitation for example. There are also arrangements that the state has no business interfering in – the work of a self-employed, financially comfortable escort making very good money to supplement another income in an environment over which he or she has control.

Changing demand by criminalising the purchase of sex will have a number of unintended and undesirable consequences.

Firstly, we should consider …

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Mike Tuffrey

Opinion: Nothing to fear but fear itself

By Mike Tuffrey | Wed 20th June 2012 - 10:55 am

Mike Tuffrey seeks inspiration from Roosevelt in advocating a four point plan for a sustainable economic recovery.

With all the depressing news about the economy, I can recommend a re-reading of the inaugural address of newly-elected President Franklin D Roosevelt, given in the depths of the Depression on March 4, 1933. Aside from his well-known call to arms against fear itself, he did a nice (and topical) line in banker-bashing too: “Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men”.

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Michael Moore

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 20th June 2012 - 9:46 am

Every week Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore writes a column for newspapers in his Borders constituency. Here is this week’s edition.

Olympic Torch in the Borders

 With the London Olympics just around the corner, it was great to be part of the crowd welcoming the Torch to the Borders last week. It received a very warm reception and it was fantastic to see so many people getting behind the event. The Torch’s eight day journey through Scotland has given us an opportunity to showcase everything Scotland has to offer and I would like to thank everyone in …

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Mark Pack

English Party warms to Lib Dem candidates in Police & Crime Commissioner elections

By Mark Pack | Wed 20th June 2012 - 8:25 am

The original moves in the party to pass up (mostly) on fighting Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections generated heated debate and many local parties have made use of their say in the process to push for the party to fight the election in their area. As a result, a steady trickle of adverts have been appearing as selection processes start for many of the Commissioner posts.

In his report to the forthcoming English Council, English Party chair Peter Ellis has confirmed the party’s official warming to the idea of fighting the elections:

With the introduction of the mayoral and PCC elections

…

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Stephen Tall

Peter Kellner’s advice to the Lib Dems: ditch boundary changes, and get a new leader before 2015

By Stephen Tall | Tue 19th June 2012 - 5:15 pm

Chairman of polling firm YouGov, Peter Kellner, has a must-read article over at his firm’s site analysing the big challenges facing the Lib Dems at the next election. I know some Lib Dems might baulk at reading it: Mr Kellner, husband of Labour peer Baroness Ashton, is a self-declared non-Lib Dem, and YouGov’s daily polling consistently shows the party’s ratings to be significantly lower than other polling firms do. But get beyond those facts, and it’s clear we need to take on board the stark questions he has for the Lib Dems — even if we disagree with his …

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NewsHound

A wet flannel, a flip-flop and a rump of a party

By NewsHound | Tue 19th June 2012 - 3:53 pm

People do change their minds on political issues, and so we should not be too surprised when occasionally someone resigns from one party and joins another party or becomes an Independent. But we would hope that such a decision would be made after much thought, especially if the person had been elected on a party platform.

Three curious stories have reached us today.

In Thetford,  Labour councillor Carl Clark resigned, apparently because he opposed Labour’s policies on membership of Europe and on abortion, amongst others. He described Ed Miliband as a ‘wet flannel’.

He said “I have never really been Labour. They asked me …

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Mark Pack

The seven EU members who are less creditworthy than myself

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th June 2012 - 2:25 pm

Following Robert Peston’s comparison of what interest rate the Italian government is charged for borrowing money compared to what his own household would be charged (Italy turns out to be more creditworthy than the Pestons, but only just), I thought I would take a look to see how I compare.

Take that, then, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Romania and Spain. You are the seven EU members who are being charged a higher interest rate to borrow money long-term than I would be.

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Jim Wallace

Lord Jim Wallace writes… We want to enhance scrutiny of the security services, not evade it

By Jim Wallace | Tue 19th June 2012 - 12:53 pm

Let’s be clear: the original proposals in the Justice and Security Green Paper were too broad. The Government has listened and, as Tom Brake wrote last month, has ensured that the Bill before the House of Lords now is much narrower and more focussed on the problem at hand.

However, in the recent media furore about Nick Clegg’s red lines and changes to the Bill, I feel that a proper discussion about what this problem actually is has been lost.

So let me set out clearly the problem that we need to solve. At the moment, judges cannot hear evidence gathered …

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Mark Pack

Vince Cable on “one of the great acts of economic vandalism in modern times”

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th June 2012 - 10:25 am

Yesterday Vince Cable gave a sweeping speech about the current state of the economy, lessons from the 1930s and the way forward.

The parallels with the 1930s are in some ways obvious, but as Cable pointed out there are important differences. In particular, in the 1930s there was no similar financial crash in Britain to mirror what happened this time. However, in another major respect this time round looks somewhat better than the 1930s as unemployment has not soared in a similar way, helped by the double-edged flexibility of wages. This time round, real wages have suffered, spreading the pain more widely but keeping more people in work. 

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Joel Kenrick

Opinion: We can kick start the economy… and might just save the planet too

By Joel Kenrick | Tue 19th June 2012 - 8:45 am

With all eyes on the elections in Greece and the future of the Eurozone, the Earth Summit in Rio is unlikely to be headline news. But it should be. As Nick Clegg wrote on LDV last week 'sustainability and growth go hand in hand, and it's for us as Liberal Democrats to make that case loud and clear.'

As Liberal Democrats we have been making the case for decades, and over the last two years Liberal Democrat Cabinet Ministers have been forceful advocates around the Cabinet table and around the world. We may know that tackling climate change is essential ...

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The Voice

Labour councillor apologises for using hose pipe during ban

By The Voice | Mon 18th June 2012 - 4:24 pm

GetReading reports:

One of Reading’s newest councillors has been spotted using a hosepipe to clean his car – despite the ban.

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    Nigel Jones, “When we debated FPC’s planned program last year, some said we should have included tax issues in that program” Indeed. I didn’t s...
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    Far too late for me to comment, but just skimmed through the replies and I agree with most. Most important is that as Caron says, it was announced where hundre...
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    A key difference between the Liberal Democrats and other parties is that members go in their own right, not as representatives of their local party; we have att...