Much has been made of the “chilling effect” of British defamation laws on public debate in recent years. Given that backdrop, the lack of furore over our criminal, as opposed to civil, regulations of speech is rather difficult to understand.
Quite arguably, the chilling effect of these so-called ‘speech offences’ has been even more pervasive, akin to a Siberian winter at times, due to the woefully inadequate safeguards and catch-all wording that characterises almost each and every one of …
A slight change from the usual in my day job at MHP Communications has come courtesy of our client Richard Duncan and his new book, The New Depression, which is primarily about the US but with lessons that are very applicable to the UK.
In a nutshell, his case is half-Austrian. Or indeed half-Keynesian. That is because whilst Duncan’s diagnosis of the current economic ills is very much in the Austrian school of economics, with its emphasis on the role of credit, his prescription for fixing the economy is large-scale borrowing to fund infrastructure work, all of which sounds rather Keynesian.
There is a strand in the Party which says that it’s all Clegg’s fault: ‘I don’t agree with Nick’. If only he would move on, all would become well electorally.
This misses many points: first, the Party is not a one man band; nor is the Government.
Hardly had the first exit polls in Greece’s latest general election appeared last night than the euro rose on currency markets and shares in Asia rallied. As far as financiers around the world were concerned, Greek voters had got it right. The conservative New Democracy party had come out in front, albeit by a narrow margin. And the threat of a Greek exit from the eurozone, with possibly dire consequences for the world economy, had been averted, at least for the time being.
The Government announces investment in Rolls-Royce to safeguard technology for nuclear propulsion, and the BBC’s angle, is “Is this another Coalition split?”
Let’s get this right.
Take aircraft engines. Rolls-Royce made its name back in World War Two by developing the gas turbine to power military aircraft. It was earth-shattering stuff, but had nothing to do with the development of munitions.
The economy is the big issue: it was at the last general election, it has dominated and will dominate this parliament, and it will be the big issue at the 2015 general election. Yet trying to get behind the political rhetoric to discover the economic reality is surprisingly tricky. The purpose of this post is to look at what I see as the top five myths currently being perpetuated about the economy, and to explain why I think our current debate is misleading the public and diverting us from finding proper answers.
So keen has been the Coalition and Labour (for their own different reasons) to talk up the extent of the Government’s spending cuts that the reality has been forgotten. Public spending is going up year-on-year under the Coalition, rising from £690bn in 2010-11 to £744bn (+8%) by 2014-15. If we allow for inflation, there will be a modest reduction: from £690bn to £668bn (-3%) by 2014-15.
Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 278th 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 (10-16 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:
Ordnance Survey and GeoPlace have welcomed the Cabinet Office’s call for greater use of Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) across the public sector, to support the move towards individual electoral registration (IER).
UPRNs are assigned to address records by local authorities at the planning stage and persist for the lifetime of each and every property across Great Britain. This means that every property is uniquely recorded and can be unequivocally identified by any organisation that holds the UPRN in its own records. Ordnance Survey publishes the UPRNs in its AddressBase range of products.
They say history never repeats itself, but when the Labour party is involved, you can be at least sure that it’ll rhyme. And once again, the far left of the party is indulging itself in an ideological battle. The target this time is the Blairite thinktank Progress, the GMB union having submitted a rule amendment to outlaw it as a part of the Labour party.
This represents a real chance for Lib Dems to realign the centre, a process which has already began with the Coalition, and liberal-leaning Cameronite Conservatives becoming closer to we Liberal Democrats than the right-wing fringes …
This week the New York Times ran a fascinating, detailed study of the drone war being fought by Barack Obama as he decides which alleged terrorists will be targeted by the American military:
With every turn of the wheel which drives the Eurozone deeper into crisis, the uncertainty which clouds the UK’s economic prospects grows more pronounced. As events in Spain and Greece, in particular, consign the Eurozone to a state of paralysis, UK consumers, banks and businesses can but bide their time and await the final fallout.
In those circumstances, measures which help to create certainty and boost economic confidence should be welcomed.
But the measures announced by the Bank of England on Thursday, will not achieve their purpose to any significant extent, and should not be treated as a substitute for real policy …
Four months ago, when the political row over ‘workfare’ was at its peak, I wrote here on LibDemVoice that liberals needed to progress the debate beyond ‘the simple and simplistic ‘left/right’ attitudes currently on display, and start grappling with how best we can empower the individual to make the best of their own lives — including, and especially, those who appear to have settled for a life on benefits, and reject all other offers of help.’
Key to this, I suggested, would be avoiding the dogmatic approaches of the Tories — who appear to believe that every …
There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader…
Here’s Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg appearing at the Leveson Inquiry this week. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about him?
Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Cameron & Miliband “Cooee!” Edition.
Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 560 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.
It’s just 41 days until the London 2012 Olympics starts, so we tested the view of our sample of party members…
LDV asked: All things considered and with the benefit of hindsight, do you think London should or should not have bid to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games?
A clear …
I’ve previously blogged about the catastrophic failure of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, giving seven different failures, any one of which would be damning but cumulatively make the post a good entrant for ‘most failed regulator’.
They included such failures as ignoring warning signs of widespread law breaking:
Over at CentreForum’s blog, LibDemVoice Co-Editor Stephen Tall has named columnist Matthew Parris the inaugural winner of the think-tank’s ‘Liberal of the Week’ for ‘his attack on the charitable status of private schools that are bastions of privilege.’ Here’s an excerpt from Stephen’s reasons:
The fact that private schools are directly equated with charities such as Cancer Research UK and Oxfam – and can therefore benefit from rates relief and exemption from tax on investment income – is breathtaking. It means that the low-paid in society – including those earning less than the minimum wage – are helping to subsidise through
…
Every week, Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore writes a column for newspapers in his Borders constituency. Here’s this week’s edition.
Despite the wet, windy weather, I am glad to say that the Diamond Jubilee celebrations last week were a great success here in the Borders and across the UK. It was great to see so many local communities getting together to congratulate the Queen on 60 years serving the country, making it an extremely memorable and enjoyable occasion. From one historic event to another, last week’s celebrations follow swiftly onto the …
The leader of Argyll and Bute Council has reversed the decision to ban a 9 year old schoolgirl from taking photographs of her school dinners and blogging about them. Roddy McCuish did so live on Radio 4’s The World at One, bringing to an end a morning of social media frenzy which had seen the subject have 3 of highest trending topics on Twitter in the UK.
In my earlier post, I covered the background and Argyll and Bute’s initial statement on the matter. It seemed strange for the Council to say it was taking action against “unwarranted attacks” on …
Next week, representatives from 190 countries will meet to discuss how we build a green economy that reduces poverty without destroying the environment. These issues have been close to my heart since I wrote a postgraduate thesis on the “Deep Green” movement and humans’ effect on the environment over twenty years ago. But their importance for future generations has been brought home tenfold to me since becoming a father, and I am proud that I will be leading the UK delegation at the Rio Summit.
At the original Earth Summit in 1992, against the backdrop of Brazil’s disappearing Amazon …
Way back in April, 9 year old Martha Payne started reviewing her school dinners. Every day she wrote on her Never Seconds blog, under the pseudonym Veg, short for Veritas Ex Gustu which means Truth from Tasting in Latin. The blog quickly became an internet sensation and she and her Dad were interviewed on the BBC’s You and Yours in May.
Each day, Martha would rate dinner at her Lochgilphead primary school on criteria such as Food-o-Meter, health rating, how many mouthfuls and how many pieces of hair were in it. What made the blog were the photos she posted to illustrate …
Pre-heat the debate to 1000°C (for fan-assisted debates consult your hyperbole and scaremongering manual at www.c4m.org.uk). Then, to an unsuspecting social network add an average gay couple from Newcastle, experience in web development, some amazing volunteers and zero funding. Leave for 114 days (either side of day jobs) and you end up with:
The closing of the consultation gives an opportunity to pause and consider how we got here. The Liberal Democrats became the first major political party to officially support same-sex marriage in September 2010. In September 2011 the Coalition Government announced it would consult on legalising same-sex marriage by 2015, which was generally greeted with a warm welcome and a mixture of “It’s about time” and “Why not?” by most.
Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone writes a monthly column for one of her local newspapers. Here is the latest one, on that very British subject of the weather.
In the summertime, when the weather is hot… is how the song goes – but as I put on heavy stockings and boots to go to a community picnic on the day I am writing this column, with the wind howling and rain predicted for the next several days yet again, summer and hot do not seem to go together!
Understandably the Leveson Inquiry has concentrated on the misdeeds of journalists and the behaviour of newspaper owners. However, the appearance of a series of figures this week at Leveson could – indeed should – have highlighted how often the power lies with politicians, not the media. We had three figures appear who all, in their own very different ways, showed that despite all the talk of politicians been cowed by the media, it is far from uncommon for politicians to have far too much power over the media.
…
Andrew George, Lib Dem MP for St Ives, joined forces with Stephen Fry earlier this week to debate the return of the Parthenon Marbles. The Marbles – which were stolen acquired from Athens by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century – comprise a large portion of the Parthenon Frieze, the metopes and some of the statues that formed the east and west pediments of the building and are currently displayed in the British Museum. Most of the remaining marbles are displayed in the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.
Here’s how …
The latest issue of the Economic Affairs journal contains a number of articles discussing the effect The Orange Book has had on the Liberal Democrats since its publication eight years ago. There are articles by CentreForum’s Tim Leunig and by one of the editors of the book, Paul Marshall, among others. Perhaps most noteworthy, though, is a piece by David Laws – the other of the book’s editors – which “examines the origins and impact of the book, and sketches out future directions for policy development”.
Here are some …
Many years ago my father gave me some advice: ‘don’t get it right, get it written’. If you want to do something properly you need to have a draft. That way you can go back and improve it.
Today sees the publication of the Draft Communications Data Bill. It is a first version, not a final text, and one which will be given the time and proper processes to change. It’s hard to overemphasise how different that is to the usual Parliamentary process.
A special Select Committee will go through the issues raised in the Bill, and make suggestions on how to improve it. I’ll be on that Committee, and between now and November we will be asking experts and members of the public to comment on it, and suggest where it needs to be changed.
It’s thanks to Lib Dem pressure that we now have a vital opportunity to get this right. If left to itself, the Home Office would simply have announced this Bill – or something worse – as a fait accompli, and whipped people to support it. Nick Clegg intervened to stop that from happening.
And already the Draft Bill is better than the one the Home Office proposed, as revealed a few months ago. Already there are more safeguards than there were going to be – but we are not there yet.
David Cameron rather wiped the floor with Ed Miliband yesterday. He did so with the very simple device of producing a letter from Sir Alex Allan, regarding the Hunt BSkyB imbroglio, which stated:
The fact that there is an on-going judicial inquiry probing and taking evidence under oath means that I do not believe I could usefully add to the facts in this case.
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