The Voice

People wearing crosses at work: what is the government doing?

By The Voice | Sat 7th April 2012 - 9:26 am

Here’s the answer, courtesy of the official reply being sent to people who write to ministers on this topic:

Unfortunately, some recent media coverage has misrepresented the position with regard to the ability of employees to wear crosses, or other religious symbols, while at work.  The Government believes that people should be able to wear crosses openly at work. The law allows for this, and employers are generally very good at being reasonable in accommodating people’s religious beliefs.

There is no law stating what people can or cannot wear as this is considered a matter of personal choice.  The Equality Act 2010 maintains this …

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Posted in News | 18 Comments
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Stephen Tall

The Weekend Debate: Should election candidates have to declare their tax records?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th April 2012 - 8:45 am

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

The race to be London mayor took a fresh twist this week when the leading candidates pledged on BBC Newsnight to release their tax records. Lib Dem mayoral candidate Brian Paddick declared himself very happy to publish full details, which appear here on his website:

Brian Paddick has nothing to hide and is very happy to be open and transparent about his income and tax returns as a registered sole trader. His figures show he has never attempted to use any complex

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 17 Comments
NewsHound

Clegg faces revolt over ‘putting identity of party at risk’

By NewsHound | Sat 7th April 2012 - 7:24 am

So reads the headline on the front page of today’s Independent, reporting a letter to Tim Farron, Lib Dem party President, revealed here yesterday:

More than 150 Liberal Democrat activists have warned Nick Clegg he could destroy the party’s liberal identity if he backs government plans to allow the authorities to monitor online activity.

The unprecedented grassroots protest, in which some members have threatened to tear up their party cards, will put the Deputy Prime Minister under pressure to extract more concessions from David Cameron over the controversial “Big Brother” proposals.

You can read Tim Farron’s reply to the letter …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 8 Comments
The Voice

Tim Farron replies to Lib Dem members’ letter: “Britain must be more liberal and free as a result of Liberal Democrats in power, not less”

By The Voice | Fri 6th April 2012 - 6:00 pm

Earlier this afternoon, Lib Dem Voice published An open letter to Lib Dem party president, Tim Farron: Concerns over our liberal identity and mission in government following recent suggestions the government would seek to increase the authorities’ web surveillance powers. Signed by more than 150 Lib Dem members (with many more adding their names in the comments thread) it urged the party’s ministers “to heed our call – block these illiberal proposals and lead the charge for reform of RIPA to ensure our citizens enjoy the fair, free and open society we seek to build and safeguard.”

Tim Farron has sent us this response:

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 32 Comments
The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 6 April 2012

By The Voice | Fri 6th April 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 Pack

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw: gay people aren’t bothered about marriage

By Mark Pack | Fri 6th April 2012 - 4:50 pm

Bizarre comments from Labour MP Ben Bradshaw on the government’s plans for marriage equality:

This isn’t a priority for the gay community, which already won equal rights with civil partnerships. We’ve never needed the word ‘marriage’, and all it’s done now is get a bunch of bishops hot under the collar. We’ve been pragmatic, not making the mistake they have in the US, where the gay lobby has banged on about marriage.

As Pink News goes on to report:

In 2010, 98 per cent of PinkNews.co.uk readers that identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans said they wanted full marriage equality*. Mr Bradshaw’s

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 17 Comments
Natasha Adams

The Independent View: Should G8 leaders be making a new commitment to reduce hunger?

By Natasha Adams | Fri 6th April 2012 - 3:30 pm

There are close to a billion people going hungry every day. I find the scale of this hard to imagine, but if I’m honest even the personal experience of going hungry for a day is something I can’t easily relate to. I’m lucky enough to have never really experienced hunger, living as I do in a relatively wealthy country, where even if I were unwell or unemployed the state would support me with basic social protection.

The worst thing about global hunger is that it is an unnecessary injustice. We actually produce enough globally to feed everyone, but people don’t have …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Helen Duffett

Listen: Baroness Williams on her moral and religious beliefs

By Helen Duffett | Fri 6th April 2012 - 2:53 pm

There’s still time to listen to Shirley Williams on this week’s edition of Belief on BBC Radio 3:

The new Easter series of Belief opens with a conversation between two baronesses: Joan Bakewell and Shirley Williams.

Shirley Williams was born in 1930. Her father, the philosopher and political scientist George Catlin, was a great influence. He bought young Shirley a copy of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets when she was two years old. He also introduced her to the Roman Catholic Church. She has also been greatly influenced by the moral and political convictions of her mother the feminist and pacifist writer,

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 1 Comment
The Voice

An open letter to Lib Dem party president, Tim Farron: Concerns over our liberal identity and mission in government

By The Voice | Fri 6th April 2012 - 1:55 pm

The following letter, written by Martin Eakins a Lib Dem councillor in Manchester and co-signed by more than 150 fellow party members, has been sent to party president Tim Farron:

Dear Tim,

We understand that the leaked policy on RIPA internet surveillance is now being reviewed more thoroughly, rather than rushed into the Queen’s speech. As such we would like you, as our president, to convey the following thoughts to appropriate Liberal Democrat ministers.

The Home Secretary wrote in the Sun on Tuesday that “Only suspected terrorists, paedophiles or serious criminals will be investigated.” This is akin to saying “if you’ve

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 48 Comments
Mark Pack

How to get Lib Dem Voice by email

By Mark Pack | Fri 6th April 2012 - 12:45 pm

Why not join hundreds of other Lib Dem Voice readers in getting our latest headlines by email?

Some people like regularly visiting a site to see if there’s new stories of interest. Some people like subscribing to its news feed (RSS) and checking that way. But if you prefer email, you can instead sign up to get a daily early morning email with a summary of the previous day’s posts from Lib Dem Voice, complete with a note of how many comments each post has got and convenient links to click on if any take your fancy and you want to take a read.

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Sam Barnett

Opinion: Time to take back the initiative

By Sam Barnett | Fri 6th April 2012 - 10:55 am

The hard part of coalition is over. As the result in Bradford shows, three things are now true. Our Conservative colleagues have finally overreached themselves. Labour is now known to be as ineffective as it really is. And there is a howling void of dissatisfaction where our support used to be. The country has changed since 2010, and we must move to capture the mood, or we are done. Key to this is winning the votes of students, the young, and the disenfranchised.

We have, however we colour it, had a hard time. Most of our policy ‘wins’, like the …

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Posted in Op-eds | 17 Comments
Issan Ghazni

Opinion: Support for emerging democracies – we’ll do it our way

By Issan Ghazni | Fri 6th April 2012 - 8:57 am

Speaking at the recent Munich Security Conference, US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said “Americans and Europeans must send a clear and common message to despots that they must respect the rights of their people….America and Europe stand shoulder to shoulder.”

However, the UK role in encouraging emerging democracies must be determined through a process of working closer with the EU and by identifying limited areas in which tangible gains can be made through shared resources. That is to say that we do what we can with our European partners to achieve the best results within our areas of influence. Continually …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Another day, another good Daily Mail front page

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th April 2012 - 11:25 pm

Trust you’re sitting down, but it’s another day and another Daily Mail front page pushing a positive civil liberties story, reporting on good news from government as another idea from the Conservative part of the Coalition is failing to win favour. It’s becoming rather a habit.

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

Posted in News | Tagged and | 18 Comments
Mark Pack

How to show you’re a party member when you post a comment

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th April 2012 - 4:50 pm

The option to put a photo next to your comment is open to everyone. In addition, if you’re a party member you can also have this indicated when you post a comment.

It’s very simple. You just need to register for our online forum and get a username and password. Then in future before commenting, login with your username. (On most devices for accessing the internet, you can turn on the setting for your login to be remembered so you do not have to do this each time.) You will then see the party logo appearing next to your …

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Posted in Site news | 11 Comments
Antony Hook

Opinion: Does control of search warrants matter to you? Then become a magistrate

By Antony Hook | Thu 5th April 2012 - 11:25 am

In recent days Liberal Democrats have united against reported Home Office plans for the state to acquire unprecedented power to search private online communications. As Mark Pack noted, resistance to this has even won Nick Clegg rare praise from the Daily Mail.

Many Liberal Democrats have the necessary habit of not just debating how society ought to be, but carrying liberal values into effect in daily life. Many Lib Dems who are passionate about education, including myself, serve as school governors. Likewise, party members volunteer as neighbourhood watch coordinators, Citizens Advice …

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Posted in Op-eds | 2 Comments
Helen Duffett

Autumn Conference 2013 to be held in Glasgow

By Helen Duffett | Thu 5th April 2012 - 10:22 am

The Scotsman proudly announces that the Liberal Democrats are taking their Federal Conference to Glasgow in autumn 2013.

Glasgow is in line for a £12 million boost as the Liberal Democrats announced they will hold next year’s autumn party conference in the city.

It will be the first time Scotland has hosted a national Lib Dem conference for over a decade and the event will also be the largest conference to be held in the city since 2004, with around 7,000 delegates expected to attend from across the UK.

The event is in September 2013 at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre

…

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Posted in Conference and News | Tagged , and | 20 Comments
Stuart Bonar

Opinion: Time for a deal on surveillance

By Stuart Bonar | Thu 5th April 2012 - 8:50 am

Like many of my fellow Lib Dems I have had steam coming out my ears these last few days after reading over the weekend that the Coalition was considering the mass, unchecked surveillance of the entire population’s emails, telephone calls, texts and tweets, as well as messages sent through Facebook and through games consoles like the Xbox.

Initial attempts at comforting growing rage amongst Lib Dems – the fact that there was to be no central database and that the contents of communications would still only be viewable with a …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 18 Comments
The Voice

How you can help Liberal Democrat Voice

By The Voice | Wed 4th April 2012 - 4:53 pm

The Voice is only a success because of the interest and support from our readers. For many people just lurking and reading the site is all they want to do – and that’s fine, we’re grateful for people taking the time to read the site.

You can though help us continue to produce interesting content for a growing audience. Here are four simple ways:

1. Let us have your tips for stories. Perhaps there’s something outrageous going on in your local council? Or you’re an expert in a particular area and have spotted a story other people have missed? Or you’ve seen …

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Mary Reid

Party groups unite against increased surveillance

By Mary Reid | Wed 4th April 2012 - 3:55 pm

Yesterday Mark Pack summarised the current state of play on the snooping row (“The wheels are coming off the online monitoring wagon”).

This topic has generated more emails, blogs and tweets from angry Lib Dems than anything I can remember. Party members seem to be united in their opposition to increased monitoring, so much so that statements from the so-called right and left of the party are virtually interchangeable.

From the Social Liberal Forum:

Any furthering of the already-extensive powers to interrogate peoples’ communication, especially in the absence of proper oversight, would constitute an ineffective and illiberal intrusion of our civil

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Nicola Prigg

Opinion: Ed Miliband is out of touch

By Nicola Prigg | Wed 4th April 2012 - 2:05 pm

On Monday, Ed Miliband, Leader of the Opposition, launched the Labour Party’s local election campaign.

Ed proclaimed that the government is “out of touch”, and challenged us on growth, fairer taxes and a stronger society.

On growth, he claimed that we need to deal with the deficit otherwise we won’t have growth in the future.

On fairer taxes, Ed said we “are raising taxes for pensioners but cutting them for millionaires”.

Actually, this month has seen the personal tax allowance for pensioners increase, and from next year they are frozen until the personal tax allowance catches up. Or does Ed believe that pensioners …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 11 Comments
The Voice

The Independent View: A note to the Liberal Democrats on university access and information

By The Voice | Wed 4th April 2012 - 12:50 pm

A child’s fate is often decided very early on in its development. That is why government intervention must happen early. Liberal coalition policies such as parenting classes and the pupil premium will help us move away from what Nick Clegg calls a “closed society” where people’s circumstances at birth haunt them for the rest of their life.

The most effective intervention happens before the age of 11, but this mustn’t be where it ends. A lack of decent careers advice and university guidance at some secondary state schools means that many talented pupils are failing to meet their potential.

Just as worrying …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged | 11 Comments
Geoffrey Payne

SLF conference on intergenerational justice

By Geoffrey Payne | Wed 4th April 2012 - 11:21 am

Nick Clegg, Ed Davey and Naomi Colvin of Occupy will be among the speakers at the Social Liberal Forum (SLF) conference on Saturday 14th July.

You can now register through the Social Liberal Forum website. Last year’s conference sold out so do book your place soon.

The theme for our conference is “Intergenerational Justice”. Since the economic crisis that began in 2007, we now have a young generation that will be poorer than its parents; this is unprecedented in British history since the last world war. At the same time the older generation will have to retire at  a later …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

Time for Nick Clegg and the Coalition to see sense and stop the ‘Charity Tax’

By Stephen Tall | Wed 4th April 2012 - 9:15 am

This year’s budget was, in general, a good one for Lib Dems. Most notably, the party’s number one priority of taking more low-paid workers out of tax was fast-tracked, while the controversies, and specifically the cut in the 50p top-rate at a time when pensioners’ tax allowances are being frozen, have hit their Tory backers’ support in the polls.

However, there is one lesser noticed and malign Budget change, the ‘Charity Tax’ — a cap on tax relief which threatens to cost the charitable sector hundreds of millions of pounds — which has not attracted mainstream media attention. That needs to change if the Coalition is to be talked down from a policy with Lib Dem fingerprints on it, and which will undermine philanthropic giving at a time when it is needed more than ever during the public funding squeeze.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , , , , and | 11 Comments
Mark Pack

Good news on civil liberties from the Daily Mail

By Mark Pack | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 10:59 pm

Wednesday’s front page:

Posted in News | Tagged | 18 Comments
Mark Pack

The wheels are coming off the online monitoring bandwagon (UPDATED)

By Mark Pack | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 8:58 pm

Item one: A letter tomorrow in The Guardian from 15 Liberal Democrat MPs setting out their opposition to illiberal monitoring plans.

Item two: More Conservative MPs joining with David Davis in speaking out against widespread online monitoring, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Item three: The Times reporting, Cameron forced to retreat on snooping powers .

Item four: a subtle, but significant, choice of words by Nick Clegg in a media interview this lunchtime presaging a major change of course from the story given to the Sunday Times at the weekend. Clegg signalled (as does The Times report) that the Queen’s Speech will not include a Bill …

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , and | 19 Comments
Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell MP writes… Launching the Liberal Democrats’ local election campaign

By Andrew Stunell MP | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 4:18 pm

Local Election Day is now exactly a month away for most of Metropolitan England as well as across the whole of Scotland and Wales. Nick Clegg was in my own area of Stockport earlier today to officially launch the Liberal Democrat local election campaign, visiting a local business and speaking with councillors, business owners and local people.

I’ve no doubt that many of you have been out on the doorstep over the last few months, talking to people and showing them what we are achieving both nationally and locally.

You will already have your big messages in place. Number one has got …

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Posted in Local government | Tagged , , , , , and | 8 Comments
Margaret Joachim and Jonathan Davies

Choosing the best team for Europe

By Margaret Joachim and Jonathan Davies | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 3:15 pm

The Party in England will select our candidates for the next European Parliamentary elections later this year. Although the elections are not until 2014, having candidates in place eighteen months before the elections will allow them to play a leading role in the formulation of the campaign strategy, as well as starting to campaign across the Euro Regions.

As with all selections, our candidates are chosen in a ballot of all Party members. This ballot also determines the order in which candidates appear on the list. For the Euro elections, there will be a postal ballot which is likely to take place in November. Before the ballot, all members will have the opportunity to meet the candidates at a series of hustings, most of which will probably take place at the autumn regional conferences. The candidates will also be using their best campaigning endeavours to contact members.

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Posted in Europe / International, News and Selection news | Tagged | 1 Comment
Joe Bourke

Opinion: Getting radical with the money supply

By Joe Bourke | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 1:34 pm

Last week the OECD forecast that Britain was about to experience a double-dip recession, for the first time since 1975. Vince Cable in his Centreforum paper Moving from the financial crisis to sustainable growth asks “How far should monetary policy now be expanded further in the UK to boost demand and head off a period of poor growth?

He goes on to say “There is no possibility for further meaningful interest rate cuts – real short term rates are now minus 4 percent. That means further recourse to quantitative easing.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , , , and | 16 Comments
Dan Rogerson MP

Dan Rogerson MP writes… The crusade to protect the Cornish Pasty

By Dan Rogerson MP | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 12:11 pm

As the national political debate around the Budget moves on, one specific proposal is continuing to dominate both the headlines and my inbox – the so called ‘Pasty Tax’. The Chancellor’s proposals to change the VAT arrangements on hot food could see the tax being levied on pasties for the first time. The Treasury are currently consulting on the idea, and there remain some uncertainties that will need to be clarified.

I certainly understand the logic behind making sure that VAT is charged on hot food in places like large supermarkets to stop them undercutting local cafés and takeaways. But aside from the inevitable pasty puns in the press, there is serious concern across Cornwall.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 14 Comments
Donnachadh McCarthy

The Independent View: Why the Lib Dems should put cycling at the heart of their transport policy

By Donnachadh McCarthy | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 11:06 am

More motorways, airports and cities, cried the leader of the “greenest” government ever. The Prime Minister is absolutely right that we need new infrastructure but what we need is not ever wider motorways but a modern cycling infrastructure, to get the ridiculous 50% of journeys under 5km that are currently taken by car, out of the way of essential business traffic.

Millions of UK citizens are too old, young, poor or eco-conscious to own a car. In countries from Denmark to Japan, their governments provide safe cycle-paths. Our roads however are not fit for purpose, as …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged and | 21 Comments
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