Prateek Buch

Clegg’s economic gear shift must be driven by Plan C

By Prateek Buch | Sun 27th May 2012 - 8:45 am

With the UK’s double-dip recession biting harder than previously thought, growing unease at the economy’s failure to recover appears to have elicited something of a change of emphasis at the heart of government. If Nick Clegg’s Financial Times interview (£) signifies a genuine change of direction in economic policy, and it would be welcome if so, we should ask in which direction we’re now facing. The Social Liberal Forum recently published Plan C, our approach to achieving a fair, sustainable economy, so it pays to benchmark Clegg’s call to “shift up a gear” against the values

…

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Tim Farron MP

Tim Farron MP writes… Exemptions to accreditation for Transgender colleagues

By Tim Farron MP | Sat 26th May 2012 - 3:27 pm

Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron MP writes to update members on the accreditation process for Autumn Conference:

Dear friends,

I am instinctively against accreditation. As a liberal, the whole notion unsettles me, although FCC and the FE have accepted FFAC’s advice that there is a serious financial threat to the Party if we were to disregard police advice.

I want to thank everyone for getting in touch in the last week to share their views on the accreditation issue. Whether it was via email or twitter, or even those who have commented on the Lib Dem Voice article (I did read all

…

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 63 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition: Vince & Dave “Watch your step” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sat 26th May 2012 - 3:10 pm

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

Here’s Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable, the man who declared war on Murdoch, side-by-side with the man who LOL-ed with News International. What do you think might be being said or thought by or about them?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, Nick & Dave “Can you feel the love?” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | Tagged , , and | 15 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Labour’s legacy: £1 million every month on unused fire stations

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 26th May 2012 - 12:55 pm

We are used to stories of how Labour in Government wasted stacks of cash during their 13 years in office. From aircraft carriers to PFI projects to centralised ID databases and other IT projects, billions were needlessly thrown away. Those billions burnt the gaping hole in our public finances that the Coalition is trying, in difficult circumstances, to fix.

Another example of Labour profligacy came to light this week in the Times (£). Apparently, £1 million a month of our hard earned taxes is going to pay costs on unoccupied state of the art fire service control rooms built by …

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Mark Pack

Beware putting your family in election leaflets

By Mark Pack | Sat 26th May 2012 - 11:10 am

One detail from Carina Trimingham’s unsuccessful legal action this week (possibly subject to appeal) is about using families in election leaflets:

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Posted in Campaign Corner and News | Tagged | 16 Comments
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Stephen Tall

The Weekend Debate: What’s wrong with making membership of the second chamber a lottery?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 26th May 2012 - 8:55 am

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

The debate about what a reformed House of Lords should look like has been defeating legislators for well over a century — and here’s a novel proposal from Sandy Walkington, who stood for the Lib Dems in St Albans at the last election:

Greece is not exactly in fashion at the moment. But we could learn a thing or two from ancient Athens. They chose their office holders by lot from amongst the citizens, who then had to serve for a

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The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 25 May 2012

By The Voice | Fri 25th May 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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Mary Reid

From today’s Lib Dem News

By Mary Reid | Fri 25th May 2012 - 3:29 pm

Cartoon

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The Voice

Do you think News International could be done for stalking?

By The Voice | Fri 25th May 2012 - 12:25 pm

From our Facebook page:

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Mark Pack

Local liberal heroes: Peter Truesdale

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th May 2012 - 11:50 am

A while back, I penned a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.

There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often unacknowledged in the wider party.

Today it is the turn of Lambeth Liberal Democrat Peter Truesdale.

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Paul Walter

PMQs: Wouldn’t you also crack under this sort of pressure?

By Paul Walter | Fri 25th May 2012 - 10:57 am

Here are some quotes from Ed Balls MP from past Prime Minister’s Questions:

No No No No No No No No No No

and

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

and

Down Down Down Down Down Down Down Down Down

and

Up Up Up Up Up Up Up Up Up Up

All this mono-syllabic heckling has gone on amidst a variety of facial squirms and gurns and even the exhibition of a wide portfolio of hand signals which have had puzzled observers searching umpiring manuals. This …

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Posted in PMQs | Tagged and | 22 Comments
Norman Baker MP

Norman Baker MP writes… Helping people make smarter transport choices

By Norman Baker MP | Fri 25th May 2012 - 10:20 am

Transport accounts for around a quarter of the UK’s emissions, but people want to travel and they want to travel further and more often. Good transport infrastructure is also essential to a well-functioning economy, so how do we square the circle?

The Lib Dem approach is to say that it isn’t about choosing between growth and carbon reduction: it’s about reducing carbon emissions from transport. That’s why the Lib Dems in Government are overseeing the of spending £2.4bn on transport improvements; the biggest rail expansion programme since Victorian times; electrification of over 800 miles of railway compared to the 9 miles …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

LibLink: Sarah Teather – Special needs children deserve more

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th May 2012 - 9:55 am

Writing over in The Guardian, Liberal Democrat minister Sarah Teather says:

John Harris writes of the fight he had to simply get the basic support for his autistic child (Special needs kids deserve better than a rush to reform, 21 May). His experience is a story I have heard over and over again. It is precisely this problem that the coalition government is trying to fix…

I also know the system doesn’t work well enough for children with less severe needs either, such as those with unrecognised language difficulties whose frustration in trying to communicate shows up as angry, even criminal, behaviour.

…

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George Potter

Opinion: The need for the CAP

By George Potter | Fri 25th May 2012 - 8:55 am

This is the last article in a three part series of articles based on interviews with Lib Dem MEPs George Lyon and Phil Bennion about reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The other two articles can be found here and here.

One of the subjects which came up in the interviews was whether or not to have a CAP at all. Both of them made some interesting points about the subject.

Phil Bennion made the argument that it was necessary for the sake of global food security.

“We have to approach food security, not just from Europe’s point of view ...

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Stephen Tall

Clegg calls for Coalition to “shift up a gear” on the economy

By Stephen Tall | Fri 25th May 2012 - 7:45 am

Nick Clegg has said the Coalition Government’s economic policy needs to “shift up a gear”, following news yesterday that the UK economy shrank by 0.3% in the first three months of the year, down on the initial estimate from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing a contraction of 0.2%. Here’s Nick speaking on BBC2’s Newsnight last night:

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Caron Lindsay

Nick Clegg: Europe’s future is our future

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 24th May 2012 - 7:28 pm

Nick Clegg has been in Berlin today, along with Vince Cable. to meet with German ministers and launch the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, a £1 million reward for an invention that’s changed the world and benefitted humanity.

He took the opportunity to talk about the economic crisis engulfing Europe, making the point that Europe has to work together to sort it. There were no diplomatic niceties in his language as he criticised the failure to find a solution so far:

…our response to this brewing crisis has been woefully fragmented. We have failed on a number of fronts. We have

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , , , and | 5 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Vince Cable described as “moral centre of the Coalition”

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 24th May 2012 - 4:51 pm

Praise for the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable comes today from a very surprising source, Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph.

Rebuking Adrian Beecroft for calling Vince a socialist, Oborne heaps praise on him:

I believe that any serious and objective consideration of Mr Cable’s record in office shows that he has been a formidable Cabinet minister, an important ally of enterprise, and, above all, one of the most loyal and supportive members of this Government.

And praises his record on employees’ rights:

Mr Cable is right and Mr Beecroft, along with his Conservative admirers, has taken a very dangerous wrong turning. The

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Malcolm Wood

Opinion: Releasing Megrahi was the right thing to do

By Malcolm Wood | Thu 24th May 2012 - 3:56 pm

The release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted of the Lockerbie Bombing in which 270 people died,  on compassionate grounds is almost always described in the media as a controversial decision but I think it was the right one.

I accept the cynical case that his release was convenient to the Scottish government in many ways: it prevented his “martyrdom” in a Scottish prison; it may have helped the lucrative business of trading with Libya; it was helpful to the SNP government’s wider aims to
remind everyone about ways in which Scottish and English law (and, by extension, Scotland and England) …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Kathryn Parminter

Baroness Parminter writes… Protecting buzzards

By Kathryn Parminter | Thu 24th May 2012 - 2:53 pm

Many of you will have seen the news yesterday that common buzzards may be at risk following anecdotal evidence from the shooting industry that buzzards, which usually scavenge dead animals, may be eating some of the 40 million young pheasants that are released each year for shooting.

My colleagues on the Lib Dem Defra backbench Committee and I have been very clear that we oppose measures that would harm a protected bird of prey that’s only now recovering after decades of decline, and we’ve been making this case to Defra ministers. We believe the focus should be on tackling …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 12 Comments
Stephen Tall

How referendums are the most effective way to maintain the status quo & what it means for Lords reform

By Stephen Tall | Thu 24th May 2012 - 1:55 pm

Warning: this post contains paradoxes and thinking in progress…

Paradox 1: When asked, most people in this country say the current system of British politics needs to change. Yet the public consistently votes for small-c conservative parties and causes.

Paradox 2: As both a liberal and a democrat, I want a more participative democracy. Yet I’m sceptical referendums are the best way to achieve this.

A brief history of referendums in this country

Let’s take a look at our three most recent experiences in this country of referendums:

  • Just three weeks ago, 11 cities in England voted on whether or not they

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 22 Comments

Opinion: How a stranger carrying a rucksack came within 10 feet of Nick Clegg

By Hywel Morgan | Thu 24th May 2012 - 12:57 pm

It was November 5th 2011, the date for that hotbed of radical fervour that is Yorkshire and Humber regional conference.

Those who know me will not be surprised that I was running late so things were already underway when I arrive. Those people will be further un-surprised that I hadn’t registered in advance either, confident that people would be willing to take my money on the day!

The session was already underway so I quietly slipped in through the door and sat at the back.

That’s right – at an openly advertised meeting, where Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 21 Comments
Suzanne Fletcher

New Liberal Democrat group to help seekers of sanctuary

By Suzanne Fletcher | Thu 24th May 2012 - 11:27 am

Liberal Democrats, as a party, have a proud record of standing up for the way our country views and treats with compassion and humanity those who seek sanctuary in our country. This culminated in the ending of the detention of children in the notorious Yarlswood, and the opening of the new pre departure accommodation at Cedars, for those families with children who were sadly being returned to their country of origin.

As well as actions as a party though, there are very many individuals who are both concerned about, and working with and for, asylum seekers in their locality.  This ranges …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

How well do you know the party’s MPs?

By Mark Pack | Thu 24th May 2012 - 9:55 am

One (and as far as I know, only one) current or former Lib Dem/SDP/Liberal MP has presented a 45 minute ITV programme about venereal disease.

Can you guess who it is?

(Answer after the jump.)

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged and | 3 Comments
Caron Lindsay

We’ve heard about Marr on Pack, but what has Pack said about Marr?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 24th May 2012 - 8:55 am

You will forgive, I hope, a bit of collective pride from the Liberal Democrat Voice team. It’s not every day one of our co-editors is mentioned, in glowing terms, at a judicial enquiry, as Stephen has already written.

To recap, Andrew Marr was talking about the authority and credibility of the political blogosphere. Top left on page 83 if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

“You look around and a lot of the most influential highly respected political commentators aren’t newspaper journalists, actually, they are bloggers. I’m thinking of people like Tim Montgomery on Conservativehome or Mr Pack

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Stephen Tall

A warm welcome for Andrew Marr’s change of heart on blogging

By Stephen Tall | Thu 24th May 2012 - 7:40 am

Here’s the BBC’s Andrew Marr speaking in October 2010:

“Most citizen journalism strikes me as nothing to do with journalism at all. A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting. They are very angry people. … Most of the blogging is too angry and too abusive. It is vituperative. Terrible things are said on line because they are anonymous. People say things on line that they wouldn’t dream of saying in person.”

And here’s Andrew Marr speaking to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday:

“You look around and a

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 4 Comments
Caron Lindsay

What’s on Willie Rennie’s Kindle?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 4:14 pm

There aren’t very many people I know who don’t have a Kindle or some other e-Reader. I have the Kindle App on my iPad but don’t tend to use it very often because it’s not really that comfortable. My main reason for avoiding getting my books in electronic form is because I worry about the effects on bookshops. I could spend a whole day quite happily browsing, picking up various books, admiring the covers, having a sneaky read. There is no greater therapy. What happens to them if we all download our books in the same format? It’s not great …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 12 Comments
The Voice

Tim Farron talks to the Huffington Post about getting out of the Coalition

By The Voice | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 2:27 pm

Party President Tim Farron has been talking to the Huffington Post about everything from the local election results, the presentation errors in the Budget, his leadership ambitions, potential coalition deal breakers and exit strategies.

He is adamant that Lords Reform will be delivered within this Parliament:

“The coalition agreement is not something that you can pick and choose from,” he says. “If people believe that Lords reform is something that can be dispensed with, for instance, or that it’s tolerable for the Tory whips to not deliver a majority or a diluted Bill, it does bring into a question of trust, and

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 10 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Glasgow Subway Snap-In – a fun bit of activism to stop proposed photography ban

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 1:21 pm

Remember the olden days under new Labour when many amateur photographers found themselves being stopped and searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act just for, well, taking photographs. Liberal Democrats stood up against that then and in Government these searches were stopped.

Chris Huhne, then Home Affairs Spokesman, was robust at the time in saying that photographers and trainspotters should be left alone to pursue their perfectly legitimate hobbies without interference.

We thought we’d seen the last of these authoritarian attacks on innocent pastimes until the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport announced plans to ban photography completely on the subway, giving …

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Paul Walter

DPMQs: De facto but not de jure Fruit Ninja

By Paul Walter | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 11:53 am

MPs are always queuing up in droves to ask a question of the Deputy Prime Minister. He is what the Speaker describes as “box office”.

The subjects at this monthly session can, however, be a bit repetitive. House of Lords reform, electoral registration and lobbying all tend to pop up every time.

Helen Grant (Con) was anxious to get the Royal Sucession changes on the statute books pdq. But Nick Clegg reassured her that, should the Duchess of Cambridge undergo successful confinement resulting in a female happy event, …

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Michael Moore

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes

By Michael Moore | Wed 23rd May 2012 - 10:56 am

Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore MP writes a weekly column for his local newspapers. Here is this week’s edition.

Independence Referendum

As discussions continue surrounding the process and timing of the Scottish Government’s independence referendum, the UK Government published the results of their consultation on the referendum last week. With nearly 3000 responses, the results demonstrated strong support from all quarters in Scotland for a referendum which is legal, fair and decisive.

Since our consultation was launched in January we have already made a good deal of progress with the Scottish Government – both agreeing that a Section …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , and | 1 Comment
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