Mark Valladares

Emlyn Hooson (1925-2012)

By Mark Valladares | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 3:21 pm

It is with much regret that Liberal Democrat Voice has received word that Lord Hooson, former Liberal MP for Montgomeryshire, passed away peacefully yesterday.

Emlyn Hooson was educated at Denbigh Grammar School and University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, before serving in the Royal Navy in World War II. By 1960, he had become the youngest ever Queen’s Counsel, whilst rising swiftly through the ranks of the Liberal Party, chairing the Welsh Liberal Party from 1955.

When Clement Davies died in 1962, Emlyn was selected to fight the resultant by-election for a Parliamentary seat which had been continuously Liberal since 1880, and he …

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Posted in News, Obituaries, Parliament and Wales | Tagged | 1 Comment
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Joss Garman

The Independent View: The major environmental tests facing the Liberal Democrats in 2012 (Part 1)

By Joss Garman | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 1:50 pm

The Liberal Democrats have long been seen as the greenest of the biggest three political parties. Now in government, the party is facing tough decisions with huge implications both for our country’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and for wider protection of the natural world.

During his time in office Lib Dem Climate Secretary Chris Huhne won a couple of significant battles with Cabinet colleagues. Most notably, despite opposition from the Chancellor, he won the backing of David Cameron to put into law tough new carbon targets for the 2020s that were recommended by their independent advisers the Committee on …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Tagged , , , , , , and | 6 Comments
Caron Lindsay

LibLink: David Laws MP writes about the Lib Dem ambition for fairer tax

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 12:53 pm

David Laws has argued at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site that the Coalition should accelerate Liberal Democrat tax cutting plans.

The government’s previous plan was for the allowance to rise in steps of £630 over the next few years, to reach £10,000 by April 2015. Clegg and chief treasury secretary Danny Alexander are rightly insisting that we look to bring forward those tax cuts. This week they seemed to attract the unlikely support of Labour’s Ed Balls. But his plan for a totally unfunded tax cut is as unlikely to convince the deputy prime minister as it is the chancellor.

The

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , and | 28 Comments
Mark Pack

A Twitter gem for seeing what Liberal Democrats are saying

By Mark Pack | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 11:50 am

Liberal Tweets is an aggregator (run by the king of Lib Dem aggregrators, LDV’s very own Ryan Cullen) which displays in one convenient place all the latest tweets from Liberal Democrat members who are using Twitter.

If you are one of those but aren’t yet being included, you can email [email protected].

Posted in News and Online politics | Tagged | 1 Comment
Tom Smith

Opinion: Liberal Democrat, not Yes Minister, values must prevail on Risk Register

By Tom Smith | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 10:25 am

Back in 2010 we campaigned on a vision of open government and “new politics”. The debacle over the NHS Strategic Risk Register shows how far we have strayed from this policy objective and also how hit and miss the Coalition’s political management has become.

The Risk Register issue is just one in a very long line of political blunders in the life of the Health and Social Care Bill. This time the Government is still trying to oppose public opinion, the Information Commissioner and now a Labour motion in the Commons, causing far more political upheaval than necessary. Whatever the actual …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 6 Comments
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Michael Moore

Michael Moore MP’s Westminster Notes – Meeting the First Minister

By Michael Moore | Wed 22nd February 2012 - 8:55 am

Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore MP writes a regular column for local newspapers in his constituency. Here’s the most recent edition.

Meeting with First Minister

After a short illness-related delay I met the First Minister this week to discuss the Scottish Government’s independence referendum. I am absolutely committed to working with Mr Salmond to agree on the terms of the referendum and this meeting was the first part of this process.

On this most important of questions where all of us living in Scotland will decide the future of our country, it is vitally important that the referendum is …

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Posted in News | 2 Comments
Mary Reid

LibLink: Are the Lib Dems Giving Up More Than the Tories in Government?

By Mary Reid | Tue 21st February 2012 - 8:03 pm

Louise Phillips, a former Lib Dem staffer, asks this question in the UK version of The Huffington Post.

There have been a lot of sacrifices from the Liberal Democrats in the past two years. Tuition fees (obviously); mansion tax; free schools. But, and this is the argument I make in the pub whenever someone finds out I used to work for the party, the Tories are giving up more. They have sacrificed long held beliefs on taxation to allow the Lib Dems to raise the tax threshold to £10,000, putting money back into the pocket of most working people in the

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 51 Comments
Mary Reid

Nick Clegg launches Youth Contract for unemployed young people

By Mary Reid | Tue 21st February 2012 - 6:07 pm

More than a million young people, aged 16 to 24, are unemployed. That does not include students. Every single person included in that number is not in employment, not in education, and not in training either – the so-called NEETs.

That is a shocking figure, and as well as having a profound impact on the lives of each of those young people, it also affects the rest of us.

As Nick Clegg says, “Sitting at home with nothing to do when you’re so young can knock the stuffing out of you for years. It is a tragedy for the young people involved …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 3 Comments
The Voice

How to get your picture to appear next to your comments

By The Voice | Tue 21st February 2012 - 4:25 pm

You may have noticed that next to some people’s comments is a small picture of themselves, such as:

If you want a picture to appear next to your comments you need to do two things.

  1. Visit Gravatar.com, create an account and upload a picture.
  2. Post a comment, ensuring the email address that you’ve used on Gravatar is the same

…

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Posted in Site news | 20 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Harris & Pugh on Murdoch’s new Sun on Sunday paper

By Stephen Tall | Tue 21st February 2012 - 3:05 pm

The News of the World is dead, long live the Sun on Sunday… starting from this Sunday. Here’s how two Lib Dems have responded to the announcement by News International…

Evan Harris: I’ll buy SoS ‘to see what it’s like’

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Helen Duffett

Tim Farron gives party members a sneak preview of tomorrow’s Party Political Broadcast

By Helen Duffett | Tue 21st February 2012 - 2:50 pm

Party President Tim Farron has emailed Lib Dem members with an exclusive preview of tomorrow night’s Party Political Broadcast, with a reminder to sign the petition to fast track the Lib Dem £10,000 income tax threshold policy:

The Liberal Democrats want to give tax cuts to millions not millionaires – to put more money back in your pockets and take the poorest workers out of tax completely.

Tomorrow night you’ll have the chance to see a party political broadcast about our plans to do this.

In the meantime you can do two things:

Watch an exclusive preview of the broadcast:

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell MP writes… “Creating the Conditions” – the Coalition’s Approach to Integration

By Andrew Stunell MP | Tue 21st February 2012 - 1:12 pm

Today I was delighted to launch the long awaited Integration Strategy “Creating the Conditions” – the Coalition’s blueprint for improving community cohesion and developing neighbourhoods and communities across the country. Last summer’s riots gave a severe jolt to any thought that social alienation was a thing of the past. Couple that with the tide of marches and demonstrations by the far-right English Defence League and it is clear there are still enduring problems of cohesion and integration in communities up and down the land. If we fail to tackle those problems we not only face more flash points, we will …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 5 Comments
Michael Hall

Opinion: Civil Liberties or taking liberties?

By Michael Hall | Tue 21st February 2012 - 11:29 am

On 11 March we will debate at our Spring Conference in Gateshead an innocuous- sounding motion about Civil Liberties, but it needs to be looked at carefully to see if it is not more about letting people take liberties, than protecting our right to protest.

I know the Liberal Democrats do not support anarchy and mob rule, but you could be forgiven for thinking they do if you just read the motion, to be moved by Dr Julian Huppert, the MP for Cambridge and summed up by Tom Brake MP for Carshalton and Wallington.

I cannot see why the offence of aggravated …

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 30 Comments
Andreas Christodoulou

Opinion: Secularism is a friend to Religion, not its enemy

By Andreas Christodoulou | Tue 21st February 2012 - 9:36 am

Baroness Warsi’s recent comments about secularism showed her ignorance about how it can be religion’s greatest friend, and should always be. Secularism, at its heart, represents a separation between religion and the state, which benefits both the atheist and the believer.

For atheists, secularism gives us assurance that religion will not be an officially supported part of our government system. That we will have no direct religious influence over our Government, no bishops in the House of Lords, and no official religion. Of course, we can’t stop people being elected who have religious beliefs, and their beliefs will affect their …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 36 Comments
Stephen Tall

How you can take part in LibDemVoice’s exclusive party member surveys

By Stephen Tall | Tue 21st February 2012 - 7:45 am

LibDemVoice’s surveys of party members signed-up to our discussion forum have been running for over three years now. (I posted yesterday the final set of figures from February’s poll.)

Our surveys are a way of testing members’ views on a variety of hot topics. And as they’ve been running throughout the first 20 months of the Coalition they’re also an interesting record of changing views on how the Coalition is regarded within the party.

If you would like to take part in the LibDemVoice surveys, there are simply two steps you need to follow:
1) Be a current Lib Dem member, …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Leave a comment
Paul Walter

Opinion: Whoa! Romney isn’t meant to do this badly

By Paul Walter | Mon 20th February 2012 - 7:36 pm

I am getting worried.

A few weeks ago I was sure that Mitt Romney would win the US Republican Presidential nomination. He’d be nicely battered and bruised and the Democrats would have a fat file of YouTube and news clips to use against him (“I like firing people“/”I am not concerned about the very poor“/”Let Detroit go bankrupt” etc). But he would win.

However, it is now becoming possible that he might not win the nomination. Oh dear. Rick Santorum has been ahead in a string of national polls and is fourish points ahead in Michigan. Yes, Michigan, where …

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Posted in LDVUSA | Tagged and | 9 Comments
Nick T

Laws and Hughes up pressure on Osborne to cut taxes for the lowest paid

By Nick T | Mon 20th February 2012 - 4:58 pm

Yesterday’s Independent on Sunday carried the news that Lib Dem MPs will this week step up the pressure on the chancellor, George Osborne, to move more quickly to raise the income tax personal allowance to £10,000. This follows Nick Clegg’s speech last month in which he called publicly for the upcoming budget to go faster than previously anticipated in implementing the policy.

As the Indy reports:

This week the Lib Dems will mount a major campaign to persuade Mr Osborne to agree to a sharp increase in the allowance. Simon Hughes, the party’s deputy leader, has urged all members and

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

Campaign Corner: What should I measure?

By Mark Pack | Mon 20th February 2012 - 3:50 pm

The Campaign Corner series looks to give three tips about commonly asked campaign issues. Do get in touch if you have any questions you would like to suggest.

Today’s Campaign Corner question: I work in marketing for the day job, where measuring impact and altering our plans as a result is the norm. In the evenings when I become a Lib Dem campaigner however, measuring seems to go out the window and we just do what we always did. Surely we can do better than that?

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Posted in Campaign Corner | Tagged | 3 Comments
NewsHound

Vince Cable defies Tories to to appoint Professor Les Ebdon as university access tsar

By NewsHound | Mon 20th February 2012 - 3:31 pm

From the Telegraph:

Prof Les Ebdon will take up the key role as director of the Office for Fair Access later this year, charged with ensuring that working-class students are not deterred by tuition fees of up to £9,000, the Business Secretary announced.

Leading Tories, including Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, were said to be unhappy at Prof Ebdon’s appointment after he threatened universities with “nuclear” penalties if they missed targets for widening their student intake.

He has also criticised the “patchy” record of leading Russell Group institutions at increasing the number of students they take from state schools and

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 8 Comments
Richard Clare

Opinion: The Liberal Democrats must welcome disaffected Blairites and One-Nation Tories

By Richard Clare | Mon 20th February 2012 - 2:54 pm

Campaigning alongside a Lib Dem councillor recently, I mentioned the several recent high profile defections of Blairites to the Conservatives. I was a little disappointed they’d felt that the obvious choice was to go to the Blues.

People that liked Tony Blair more than they liked the Labour brand in general are precisely the kind of people that handed the party thirteen years of office. Their exodus from Labour, a backlash fuelled by the anti-New Labour revolution that put Ed Miliband in power, was a sign that the party was letting an election victory slip out of its sights.

To my surprise, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 23 Comments
NewsHound

Duncan Hames “breaks ranks” to call for publication of risks of health bill

By NewsHound | Mon 20th February 2012 - 1:54 pm

PoliticsHome reports:

An elderly protester clashed angrily with Andrew Lansley today as he attended a Number 10 summit on his NHS reforms.

Mr Lansley was also confronted with fresh signs of dissent over the controversial reforms from within the Coalition as a Liberal Democrat ministerial aide broke ranks to call for ministers to reveal the true risks of the new legislation.

Duncan Hames, who is Parliamentary Private Secretary to Energy Secretary Ed Davey, signed an early day motion calling for the publication of a “risk register”, which outlines the costs and risks of the Health and Social Care Bill. He signed

…

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Posted in News | Tagged | 9 Comments
Paul Walter

LibLink: Nick Clegg – Our example as well as diplomacy will make the world safer

By Paul Walter | Mon 20th February 2012 - 1:26 pm

Nick Clegg writes in the Independent today on international standards in the arms trade:

As always with international norms, the first, crucial step is laying global ground rules that can be built on over time. What is needed is leadership. The UK has spearheaded this agenda within the UN, for which former Foreign Secretary David Miliband deserves considerable credit. The baton has now passed to the coalition and we understand that credibility abroad rests on leading by example at home. Ours is one of the most rigorous regulatory regimes in the world, but there’s always room to do better. We

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged | 2 Comments
Issan Ghazni

Opinion: Size does matter – UK under-investment in research and development

By Issan Ghazni | Mon 20th February 2012 - 11:54 am

I welcome Julian Huppert’s important contribution towards updating our party’s science policy and, along with others, efforts in making the case for science in politics.

In his 30th January article on LDV, Julian, quite rightly, made the point that UK science and research is definitely world class, and it’s in all our interests not to be complacent about that.

As a Party, we can come up with lots of ideas and innovative policies to boost UK science, and to campaign tirelessly to get them implemented. However, the key barrier to better utilising science to drive forward the economy is our …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 3 Comments
Tom Brake

Tom Brake writes… Free food and invigorating campaigning in Carshalton and Wallington

By Tom Brake | Mon 20th February 2012 - 10:23 am

Following the boundary review, the current seat of Carshalton and Wallington will cease to exist, and will be replaced by two separate constituencies, Croydon Central & St Helier and Purley & Carshalton.

Last year we celebrated 25 years of political control of Sutton Council and these changes provide us with an opportunity to work with Croydon Lib Dems to spread the Lib Dem message into their borough. It is vital that we start to build up our presence and activity early in these new areas if we’re to win these seats in 2015. The run up to this year’s London elections …

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 1 Comment
Neil Foster

80% of Lib Dem voters want Lansley’s risk register published

By Neil Foster | Mon 20th February 2012 - 8:54 am

Liberal Democrat voters are most keen to want the Government to publish the Department of Health Risk Register. A new YouGov poll commissioned by Progressive Polling and Unite shows that two thirds of voters (68%) believe the Government should honour the ruling of the Information Commissioner.

Liberal Democrat voters are the most keen to see this act of transparency, with 80% backing such a move. 73% of Labour supporters want to see its publication as do 62% of Conservative voters. All ages, social grades and regions support its release.

The Information Commissioner’s ruling in November for publication was followed by remarks …

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged and | 12 Comments
Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem members think of the Coalition, its record, & the party’s electoral prospects

By Stephen Tall | Mon 20th February 2012 - 7:50 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. Some 570 party members responded, and we’ve been publishing the full results.

84% of Lib Dem members support the Coalition

Do you support or oppose the Lib Dems being in the Coalition Government with the Conservatives? (Comparison with December 2011’s figures)

    84% (81%) – Support
    13% (13%) – Oppose
    3% (5%) – Don’t know / No opinion

Support for the Coalition remains as high as it has ever been, with 84% of party members continuing to …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | 11 Comments
Ryan Cullen

New Theme

By Ryan Cullen | Sun 19th February 2012 - 8:56 pm

Over the last few months in-between a full time job and looking after my 2 year old daughter I’ve been working on updating the look to LibDemVoice.

Whilst the layout change isn’t massive, we’ve worked on highlighting the authors more, bringing back the recent comments to the right hand-side and introducing the most requested feature:

Verified Comments
If you are a paid up party member and have signed up to our Forums, you can now use this username and password to sign in to leave a comment on the main site, you just need to sign in here.

Whilst we have carried …

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Posted in News | 23 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #261

By The Voice | Sun 19th February 2012 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 261st 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 (12-18 February, 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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Posted in Best of the blogs | 1 Comment
Mark Valladares

Health and Social Care Bill: a letter from Ed Milliband

By Mark Valladares | Sun 19th February 2012 - 3:50 pm

A copy of Ed Miliband’s letter to members of the House of Lords has fallen into the hands of Liberal Democrat Voice. This is what he has to say…

Dear Member of the House of Lords

I am taking the unusual step of writing to you and all your fellow peers to share my very great fear for the future of the NHS. I know you are aware that the decisions you have to make over the next few weeks on the Health and Social Care Bill are of huge significance to the NHS and to the country. I can think of …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 42 Comments
Stephen Tall

Where I stand on the new Lib Dem groupings

By Stephen Tall | Sun 19th February 2012 - 2:10 pm

Time to out myself.

In the last year, three new Lib Dem groups have been launched to an unsuspecting world and to an often-suspicious Lib Dem blogosphere. In chronological order, they are: Social Liberal Forum (SLF), Liberal Left, and Liberal Reform.

They will add to the already thriving discussion base within the party which exists online (here on LibDemVoice and at Liberal Vision), in print (at Liberator), and in any of the party’s internal organisations.

To take the new kids on the block in turn…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 43 Comments
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