Issan Ghazni

Opinion: EU needs to resolve the crisis over Hungary’s slide to autocracy and human rights violations

By Issan Ghazni | Mon 19th March 2012 - 12:54 pm

The right-wing populist policies of the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, have created real concern over a growing constitutional crisis within the European Union (EU). His Fidesz party secured a two-thirds majority in the 2010 elections giving Viktor Orban, total authority to pass legislation.

Since then, he has been much criticised across the EU, in particular, for his new law setting unacceptable limits on media freedoms. He has also declared the country’s previous constitution invalid and passed legislation with no consultation, declaring a new constitution requiring that all judges older than 62 retire – a cynical ploy thought to favour …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 11 Comments
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Jonathan Hunt

Opinion: Lib Dems must replace Labour as the party of the Left

By Jonathan Hunt | Mon 19th March 2012 - 11:24 am

Gateshead is hardly likely to go down in Liberal Democrat history as a mould-breaking or even memorable conference. On the key issue of the NHS, the spoils are divided. But our image among non-committed voters is bound to rise as a result of the look-again victory on Sunday morning.

Back in the real world, polls show us still struggling to reach double figures, the party’s tally of councillors is at its lowest level this century, and continual calls of betrayal from some former voters leave us in urgent need of good cheer.

To obtain it, it would help to ignore …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 106 Comments
Robin McGhee

Opinion: LibDem campaigning must be kept local

By Robin McGhee | Mon 19th March 2012 - 9:54 am

In a recent article on Lib Dem Voice, Scott Hill talked of the need for ‘modernisation’ of the party’s campaigning mechanisms. Some of his ideas are excellent: for example, who could argue with putting more emphasis on internet campaigning? However, I think he has gone somewhat off the rails in his adulation of what can only be described as aggressively centralising tendencies. ‘Message and projection is everything’, he writes. ‘As a party, it is vital that we sing from the same hymn sheet. Undoubtedly, debate and deliberation is necessary, but unity must be maintained right the way through the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 14 Comments
NewsHound

‘Osborne to reduce Top rate of tax to 45p’

By NewsHound | Mon 19th March 2012 - 8:23 am

From the Telegraph:

The 50p top rate of income tax will be scrapped next year under plans to be unveiled in this week’s Budget…George Osborne, the Chancellor, will say that the tax is undermining the British economy by deterring investors and entrepreneurs.

It will be replaced with a 45p rate from April 2013, which Treasury officials believe will raise more money because fewer people will avoid it.

By the time of the election Mr Osborne hopes to scrap the higher rate entirely, with Britain’s highest earners paying 40p in the pound.

The decision is likely to prove highly controversial and will be attacked

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 19 Comments
Stephen Tall

Boost for Brian as Lib Dem London fundraising hits £400k

By Stephen Tall | Mon 19th March 2012 - 7:55 am

The media may be focusing on the Boris v Ken show for London mayor, but Brian Paddick’s Lib Dem campaign is making some noise. His hard-hitting campaign posters focusing on crime — an issue the former police commander in the Metropolitan police knows first-hand how to tackle — abound in London.

And one of the reasons Brian is able to achieve this exposure is the success of the London Lib Dem fundraising effort. I understand that the total raised has, or is about to, pass the £400,000 …

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Posted in London and News | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
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Paul Walter

Road sell-off plan unveiled

By Paul Walter | Mon 19th March 2012 - 7:25 am

From today’s Guardian front page:

David Cameron will clear the way for a multibillion-pound semi-privatisation of trunk roads and motorways as he announces plans to allow sovereign wealth funds from countries such as China to lease roads in England.

Just 48 hours before the budget, the prime minister will give a speech calling for radical action to improve Britain’s infrastructure, which is falling behind those of key competitors in Europe.

In his most eye-catching proposal, Cameron will announce that the Treasury and Department for Transport are to carry out a feasibility study looking at using private-sector funds to improve and maintain trunk

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Labour picks an unusual poster location in Bradford

By Mark Pack | Sun 18th March 2012 - 9:11 pm

It’s not unusual for parties to put up posters in by-elections, far from it. But Labour don’t seem to have fully thought through their choice of one poster location in the Bradford West by-election.

One of the issues coming up in the campaign is Labour’s neglect of the town centre. So where has Labour put up one of its posters? On a run-down building just outside the town centre, neatly not only drawing more attention to the building but also associating Labour with it. Why, thank you Labour poster team.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 7 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #265

By The Voice | Sun 18th March 2012 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 265th 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 (11-17 March, 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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Stephen Tall

LDV Caption Competition: The Obama & Cameron ‘Special Relationship’ Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sun 18th March 2012 - 5:15 pm

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

Here’s the popular leader of a leading nation whose economy is on the road to recovery on a Boy’s Night Out with David Cameron. 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, David Cameron & Alex Salmond “Who’ll take the Highland?” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | Tagged and | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

Time for the Lib Dems to blow the final whistle on national wage settlements

By Stephen Tall | Sun 18th March 2012 - 2:25 pm

It’s over 50 years since the campaign by Jimmy Hill, then chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association, successfully scrapped the maximum wage which operated throughout the football league until 1961. Some probably lament the commercialisation of the game which it set in motion. But the idea that individuals should have a ceiling placed on their wage-earning potential by the authorities seems quaintly absurd today.

Except in the public sector. If you’re paid by the government — if, for example, you work in schools, colleges and universities, or the civil service and local government — then your wages are defined by national pay rates determined by Whitehall and trade union negotiations. It doesn’t matter which part of the country you work, you operate within that centrally-set national pay framework. It is as quaint and as absurd as the wage rules of football were half a century ago.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 97 Comments
Stephen Tall

LibLink: Ed Davey – Out of the Shadows

By Stephen Tall | Sun 18th March 2012 - 12:20 pm

The Lib Dems’ newest cabinet minister Edward Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, is the subject of an extensive profile in the latest issue of The House magazine, re-printed on PoliticsHome.

And it sounds like he couldn’t be much happier: “This is the thing I wanted to do – it’s my dream job. Environment, and the whole climate-change agenda, is one of the reasons I joined the Liberal Democrats. It’s something that really motivates me in politics and it’s a great privilege to be here. … I’m not going to be giving in on Liberal Democrat …

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Stephen Tall

‘How can Lib Dems avoid oblivion?’ asks PoliticsHome

By Stephen Tall | Sun 18th March 2012 - 10:38 am

Over at PoliticsHome, Mark Gettleson puts Lib Dem campaigning under the microscope to ask what the 2015 general election might hold for the party. He makes four points:

1. In 2010, the Lib Dems won the air war and lost the ground war

There had been an uncoordinated increase in votes – around a million – largely in seats they were not going to win. But what was clear was that the party lacked the kind of national organisation into which to feed the volunteers of Cleggmania, the ability to measure success in given seats (few saw the loss of Harrogate

…

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Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: Should we support dropping the 50p tax rate?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 17th March 2012 - 4:15 pm

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

With leaks pouring out of the Treasury pointing towards the dropping of the 50p tax rate for high-earners above £150k in this week’s budget it seems a good time to have a robust debate about its merits.

The 50p rate was one of the party’s most high profile policies under Charles Kennedy, but was dropped in 2006 with greater emphasis instead placed on taxing wealth not income, as well as pollution taxes. However, in government, we have broadly supported the 50p rate’s retention …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 38 Comments
Alex Foster

Thatcher papers show 25 Tory MPs considered joining early SDP

By Alex Foster | Sat 17th March 2012 - 4:11 pm

A number of things hit the headlines this morning as the Margaret Thatcher Foundation reveals papers from 1981.

The early morning BBC radio headlines focussed on a meeting between Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch around the time News International acquired:

Margaret Thatcher had a secret meeting with Rupert Murdoch at Chequers weeks before his 1981 purchase of the Times newspapers, newly released files show.

A note by her press secretary Bernard Ingham says the prime minister thanked Mr Murdoch for “keeping her posted”.

But the contentious issue of whether to refer the bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission was not raised.

But as …

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Posted in LibLink and News | Tagged , , , , and | 10 Comments
Stephen Tall

The LibDemVoice comments policy: why we moderate & how to avoid us moderating you

By Stephen Tall | Sat 17th March 2012 - 2:35 pm

There are many aspects of running this site that the LibDemVoice editorial collective actively discuss: which articles to publish and when, which adverts to accept and which to reject — and, most spiritedly, how to define our comments moderation policy.

Until two years ago, we didn’t really have a policy: basically it was a free-for-all until somebody complained, or a lawyer got in touch. Partly in response to the latter — but more especially in response to reader feedback that the comments threads were too often a no-go zone for all but the most thick-skinned — we started to …

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Posted in Site news | 36 Comments
Stephen Tall

LibLink: David Laws and Tim Farron – Budget 2012: Osborne must help the squeezed middle and tax the top

By Stephen Tall | Sat 17th March 2012 - 12:25 pm

Rumour a-plenty ahead of George Osborne’s third budget. Adding to theose rumours — or, more likely, giving us the inside gen on what’s likely to transpire — are the former Lib Dem chief secretary to the treasury David Laws and Lib Dem party president Tim Farron in The Guardian. Here’s an excerpt:

Nick Clegg has made the Liberal Democrat priority very clear – a significant acceleration of planned increases in the starting point for paying income tax. This should be Osborne’s centrepiece – easing the pressure on household budgets, after the unprecedented recent squeeze. …

… whatever decisions Osborne makes on individual

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Conservatives drop controversial Halifax candidate

By Mark Pack | Sat 17th March 2012 - 10:50 am

No real surprises that the Conservatives have decided to drop David Ginley as a local election candidate in Halifax, though it is rather a puzzle as to how he got through to being a candidate again.

As the Halifax Courier reports:

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo | Poor old Ed, it’s the Miliband ‘Gaffes Tape’ Special

By Stephen Tall | Sat 17th March 2012 - 9:00 am

Poor Ed Miliband — an attempt to make a serious speech on youth unemployment was overshadowed yesterday by his failure to be able to distinguish men from women when he took questions. As ITN labelled it in true tabloid fashion, Ed Miliband’s triple-fail: ‘Is that a man or a woman?’ Here’s the video:


(Available on YouTube here.)

Actually the real shame of Ed’s fluffed lines distracting from his speech is that it distracts from Labour’s latest fluffed policies. Not only is the party re-spending — for the umpteenth time — their bankers’ bonus tax, but their so-called ‘Real Jobs Guarantee’ is a pale imitation of Nick Clegg’s Youth Contract. As Jo Swinson noted:

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged | 6 Comments
Joe Jordan

Opinion: What message would scrapping the 50p rate send?

By Joe Jordan | Fri 16th March 2012 - 5:50 pm

The rumour mill is turning at an alarming rate about next week’s budget- the grapevine is whispering that the 50p rate is about to be scrapped, and less than a week after Liberal Democrat spring Conference voted for this:

“Conference resolves that the wealthy and those with the very highest incomes should make the greatest proportionate contribution to the tax measures necessary for the reduction of the structural budget deficit and that the Additional Income Tax Rate of 50% on the top 1% of earners is needed to achieve this.”

Fairer taxes, one of our four key manifesto pledges supposedly delivered in the CSR, will mean …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 45 Comments
The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 16 March 2012

By The Voice | Fri 16th March 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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Caron Lindsay

Liblink: Michael Moore MP – “Rich must pay more to help poorest in budget

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 16th March 2012 - 3:56 pm

Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore has been talking to the London Evening Standard about such subjects as varied as beach volleyball, the independence referendum and taxes.

On the latter, he was clear where Liberal Democrat priorities for the Budget lie:

“The simple equation is that we think the priority is to help those on the lowest incomes to get as much support as they can,” he said. “Clearly that is going to have to be paid for and we think it is fair that those who have the broadest shoulders should be the ones who contribute to that. That is

…

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Posted in LibLink and News | Tagged and | 3 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Cllr Alex Folkes takes on the tobacco industry

By NewsHound | Fri 16th March 2012 - 2:56 pm

Alex FolkesOn the Local Government Association blog, Cllr Alex Folkes writes:

At a time when all councils are trying to save money, why should an authority be funding both sides of an expensive battle? That’s the case in Cornwall, and many other councils, in terms of the tobacco industry.

On the one hand, in our public health role, we have a duty to work to cut smoking rates. On the other we have pension funds, which are invested for the benefit of our former and current staff and for which members are trustees

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 1 Comment
NewsHound

LibLink: Mark Pack – Public Budget disagreements are far better than the secretive norm

By NewsHound | Fri 16th March 2012 - 2:33 pm

Writing for Total Politics, The Voice’s Mark Pack welcomes public arguments over the Budget:

What would you do if you have a really important set of decisions to make? Decisions that will have a direct impact on the lives of millions of people, on the future of the country and – although of course you are too saintly to think of this – on your own future career prospects.

Locking yourself away in secret and deciding all the key decisions on your own before presenting them to the rest of the world as a fait accompli is not the route you will

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Scott Hill

Musings on campaign direction

By Scott Hill | Fri 16th March 2012 - 12:38 pm

Since Chris Rennard coined the groundbreaking concept of ‘pavement politics’ the party has struggled to move forward and evolve with regards to innovative and modern strategic frameworks. Whilst no one individual holds the monopoly on this, I would like to share a few thoughts on the matter.

First, it is important to acknowledge that things have changed considerably since May 2010. We can no longer package ourselves as the anti-establishment party and must accept that our voter demographic has altered significantly. The days of lentil-eating, sandal-wearing members are over. We are now a fully-fledged, professional, suited-and-booted organisation that has demonstrated its …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 38 Comments
Mary Reid

How many Liberal MPs can you get in a taxi? *

By Mary Reid | Fri 16th March 2012 - 10:55 am

I guess I am the only Lib Dem Voice editor who actually remembers the Orpington by-election of 1962.  I was not old enough to vote (in case you were wondering) and I did not actually get involved in campaigning, but the excitement of the event certainly made an impression on me as a young supporter of the Liberals.

Eric Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, gained a huge swing in Orpington, taken mainly from from the Conservatives. That victory was widely perceived as a turning point for the party. For many years before, Liberal support had been declining; the standing joke was …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Pauline Pearce – the ‘Hackney Heroine’ – standing as Lib Dem candidate in May’s elections

By Stephen Tall | Fri 16th March 2012 - 9:55 am

Pauline Pearce’s outspoken and down-to-earth condemnation of the London rioters at the height of the violence last summer gained the attention of the nation, and she was dubbed the ‘Heroine of Hackney’. Now she is standing for the Liberal Democrats in this May’s local elections.

For those who don’t remember or have never seen Pauline’s most famous moment, here’s the video footage. (Please note there is strong language throughout.)

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , and | 8 Comments
Tess Lanning

The Independent View: Why the women-in-the-boardroom brand of feminism is limited

By Tess Lanning | Fri 16th March 2012 - 8:42 am

The government has reaffirmed its commitment to encourage firms to put more women on their boards in the wake of the launch of the first annual progress report on Lord Davies of Abersoch review of Women on Boards. In the run up to International Women’s Day last week various high profile women, from Cherie Blair to Jeanette Winterson, also argued that gender parity on company boards is the defining issue for women’s equality.

Much of the debate has centred on how to get there. The government favours a light touch approach, hoping businesses will see sense in response …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

Who’s up, who’s down? How party members rate the performances of leading Lib Dems

By Stephen Tall | Fri 16th March 2012 - 7:45 am

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. Over 500 party members responded, and we’ve been publishing the full results.

Today we focus on the performances of the leading lights of the Liberal Democrats — those of our MPs in the cabinet, those occupying ministerial positions, and other leading Lib Dems.

LDV asked: How would you rate the performances of the following leading Liberal Democrats and government ministers?

Full results are published below, but here’s three key lists for those who want to cut to the chase… (with comparison to February 2012 ratings in brackets)

Top 5 Lib Dem performers in the Government:

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Tagged | 5 Comments
Chris Rennard

Chris Rennard writes… 50 years after the Orpington by-election

By Chris Rennard | Thu 15th March 2012 - 8:50 pm

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

Edward McMillan-Scott  MEP “I’ve been helping Syrian rebels”

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 15th March 2012 - 7:28 pm

Edward McMillan-Scott, is one of our Liberal Democrat MEPs for Yorkshire and the Humber and a Vice President of the European Parliament with special responsibility for Human Rights and Democracy. I caught up with him for a quick chat at Conference in Gateshead.

Elected in 1984 to the European Parliament, he recently celebrated his second anniversary of joining the Liberal Democrats at the weekend. He came to us because of the way the Conservative Party had “abandoned its relationships with mainstream parties in the European Parliament. Rather than follow …

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Posted in Europe / International, News and Parliament | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
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