Stephen Tall

Southwark Lib Dems, Ministry of Sound, Oakmayne, and the BBC: the story continues…

By Stephen Tall | Mon 21st November 2011 - 12:55 pm

A couple of weeks ago I reported here on the controversy surrounding a planning application in Southwark, objected to by the Ministry of Sound, a donor to the local Lib Dems.

The BBC’s coverage of the story felt partial, fixated on alleging ‘no smoke without fire’ political sleaze, failing to question whether they were being played by property developers looking to overturn a decision they didn’t like.

The Corporation has now returned to the story: Lib Dems warned over Ministry of Sound donations. (Ironically the article’s by Ed Davey. I assume not that one.)

This is the over-hyped headline …

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Paul Walter

Three hours on Sunday morning – and three examples of LibDems thwarting Tory extremism

By Paul Walter | Mon 21st November 2011 - 11:23 am

Paul Waugh on PoliticsHome gives three examples where the LibDems “put the brakes on” Conservative policy aspirations in just three hours yesterday morning:

First, Danny Alexander chucked a large bucket of cold water over Tory hopes of abolishing the 50p tax rate, saying:

It’s very very important indeed that we continue to ensure that the wealthiest in society pay a fair contribution. That’s what the 50p rate is doing. We’ll see what the numbers show; I expect it is making money for the Government.

…Well, he’s in a good position to know.

Second, on Sunday AM, Francis Maude raised the spectre of increasing …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 11 Comments
George Kendall

Opinion: Why Conservatives should consider defecting to the Liberal Democrats

By George Kendall | Mon 21st November 2011 - 9:50 am

Perhaps you want the UK to pull out of the European Union, and maybe you’d like the UK to switch to the old American healthcare system, where the uninsured poor would have minimal treatment. Perhaps you think the solution to youth crime is, not rehabilitation, but locking them away for as long as possible.

If so, you probably wouldn’t be very happy in the Liberal Democrats.

But maybe you are a Conservative supporter who wants Britain to make a contribution to the EU, not by pulling out, but with reforms that make it more accountable and …

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Posted in Op-eds | 30 Comments
Stephen Tall

Spain turns to the right – but are the voters rejecting ‘the left’ or incumbents?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 21st November 2011 - 8:00 am

As the polls had predicted, Spain has a new government: Rajoy’s right-wing Partido Popular (PP) defeated Zapatero’s left-of-centre Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE). The only surprise was the large margin of victory, 16%, the worst defeat for Spain’s socialists in their electoral history.

So yet another right-wing government takes power in a European nation. On the face of it, it seems almost perverse that at a time when confidence in the deregulated capitalist system associated with the right is at its lowest ebb that those parties which champion it are winning elections. As I noted here on LibDemVoice back in …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged , , , , , and | 9 Comments
The Voice

Top of the Blogs: The Lib Dem Golden Dozen #248

By The Voice | Sun 20th November 2011 - 7:00 pm

Welcome to the Golden Dozen, and our 248th 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 (13-19 November, 2011), 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 | Jeremy Browne “it’s not always this black-and-white” Edition

By Stephen Tall | Sun 20th November 2011 - 5:45 pm

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


(Hat-tip to ChinaDaily.com.)

Here’s Lib Dem foreign minister Jeremy Browne enjoying a bite to eat with one of two pandas on their way from Bifengxia Yaan Panda Base in China to Edinburgh Zoo. What do you think might be being said or thought by those pictured?

And the winner of our last caption comp is…

Some fantastic entries for our most recent caption competition, John Hemming “you’ll have had your tea” Edition.

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Posted in Caption Comp | Tagged and | 30 Comments
Mark Pack

How well do you know the British Prime Ministers?

By Mark Pack | Sun 20th November 2011 - 4:10 pm

A quick history quiz for the weekend: only five recent Prime Ministers have not subsequently taken a seat in the House of Lords. Who are the five?

Three you should find quite easy, a fourth not too hard if you are an older reader, but the fifth may surprise – or make you think “oh, of course!”…

(Answer after the jump)

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged and | 15 Comments
Mark Hofman

Opinion: Do Banks Rule the World?

By Mark Hofman | Sun 20th November 2011 - 2:05 pm

Last week many of us may have witnessed the sickening spectacle of watching a city trader declaring that Goldman Sachs rules the world… among other insights, such as how he lays awake at night fantasising about another economic depression.

If money rules the world, then surely whoever rules the world controls the money supply?

Many of us would, therefore, assume that the Bank of England creates money and regulates its supply to the economy, thereby controlling inflation and interest rates. However, whenever we look to finance a house, car, business project, etc, we invariably turn to the banks (in the …

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NewsHound

LibLink | Steve Webb fears poor rap for pensions

By NewsHound | Sun 20th November 2011 - 11:28 am

FTAdvisor.com reports:

Steve Webb MP has raised fears about pensions’ poor image and how low interest rates and quantitative easing have damaged annuities. The Pensions Minister, who said the government is going to use employers to promote pensions and auto-enrolment, described auto-enrolment as being like a Ming vase – “very precious, but very fragile”.

He added he wants to change perceptions and instil confidence in retirement planning to ensure that charges are not too high and that pensions offer value for money. He said: “We need to move from a system that’s fiendishly complicated, that still leaves millions of pensioners living in poverty, to one, ideally, where we have a single, simple, decent state pension on which people can build.” …

He also said quantitative easing has damaged pensions. When asked about concerns over annuity risk given low interest rates and quantitative easing, the Minister admitted to “an issue about volatility, not knowing what you are going to get and an issue about poor returns.”

You can see Steve’s interview with Saga’s Director-General Ros Altmann below:

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NewsHound

LibLink | In praise of… Shirley Williams

By NewsHound | Sun 20th November 2011 - 10:08 am

One of this week’s Guardian leader columns, ‘In praise of…’, was deservedly dedicated to Shirley Williams, a Lib Dem peer, founding member of the SDP, and former Labour education secretary. Here’s a snippet:

Forever running late, but with a warmth that ensures she’s forgiven, Williams has great faith in reasonable compromise. She has pursued a more softly-softly approach towards the dreadful health bill than we have advocated. But survivors of the SDP’s internecine wars recall a wily chair perfectly capable of calling a crunch vote when an awkward customer had gone to the loo, and it is too early to judge

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

And in other Lib Dem news…

By Stephen Tall | Sat 19th November 2011 - 6:35 pm

A quick round-up of four Lib Dem stories not otherwise covered here on Lib Dem Voice this week…

Lib Dem revolt on solar subsidies crackdown…

The Guardian splashes on how ‘Liberal Democrat councillors and MPs are preparing to revolt over the coalition government’s crackdown on solar subsidies, as a growing number have been greeted with stiff opposition from outraged householders and companies fearing swingeing job cuts.’ Lucy Care wrote about this topic here on LDV earlier this month.

Rochdale Lib Dem defects to Tories…

The Manchester Evening News reports: ‘Coun Jean Ashworth, who represents Smallbridge and Firgrove, resigned as a Lib …

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Stephen Tall

Clegg orders fresh review of extradition laws headed by Ming

By Stephen Tall | Sat 19th November 2011 - 4:15 pm

It’s two-and-a-half years since Nick Clegg as Lib Dem leader publicly stood up on behalf of Gary McKinnon, a computer hacker wanted to by the US authorities under controversial extradition laws:

The Americans are hell-bent on extradition and making an example of him. He was told if he sat back, pleaded guilty and said nothing about his extradition, he could end up doing a shorter sentence in a British prison. But because he exercised his basic right to challenge his extradition, he’s now classed as a terrorist. … No fewer than three Labour home secretaries have played their part in

…

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Stephen Tall

LDVideo: Nick Clegg – “It is time we knew whether the Labour party can think for itself.”

By Stephen Tall | Sat 19th November 2011 - 2:25 pm

Lib Dem Voice contributor Paul Walter noted here Nick Clegg’s strong response in this week’s Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions to the Labour party’s aim of protecting its cosy financial relationship with the trade unions — but for those who missed it here’s that exchange in full:

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Posted in Parliament and YouTube | Tagged , , and | 10 Comments
Don Foster MP

Don Foster MP writes… It’s time we talked about toilets!

By Don Foster MP | Sat 19th November 2011 - 11:45 am

Here in the UK, a toilet is a necessity that we are lucky enough to take for granted – a subject for humour, or something we’d prefer not to talk about.

Yet for billions of people around the world, sanitation is a serious issue. With a staggering 2.6 billion – nearly 40% of the world’s population – living without basic, safe sanitation, it’s time we talked about toilets. It’s a shocking fact that diarrhoea, caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation, is the biggest killer of children under five in Africa. In fact, globally it kills more children every year …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Paul Walter

Farron: There’s a steady awareness we’re an incredibly effective bar to “swivel-eyed” Tories

By Paul Walter | Sat 19th November 2011 - 10:25 am

There’s an in-depth interview with LibDem party President Tim Farron on the Guardian website. Conducted by Andrew Sparrow, much of the dialogue is published verbatim.

As we have come to expect, Tim is up-beat and, at times, outspoken.

Some highlights from the interview are:

-Tim Farron says Miliband is “ineffective” and that the Labour five-point plan is “absolute rubbish”.

-He says we are picking up votes from the other parties, even from students, who have nowhere else to go in search of a progressive party.

-“Swivel-eyed” right-wing Tories have been prevented from running the country by the LibDems.

-The plan for elected police commissioners is …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 49 Comments
Carl Quilliam

The weekend debate: What if Gordon Brown Were Still Prime Minister?

By Carl Quilliam | Sat 19th November 2011 - 7:55 am

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

Over at the New Statesman Guy Lodge has posed the question, ‘What if … Gordon Brown was leading the Eurozone crisis?’, and come up with quite a flattering answer for our former Prime Minister.

He believes that Gordon Brown would have shown more leadership than David Cameron and George Osborne in the Eurozone crisis, and crucially would have more credibility to deal with Nicolas Sarkosy and Angela Merkel.

Is he right?

What if the Lib Dems had propped up Gordon Brown in …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 29 Comments
Alex Marsh

Opinion: Will fixing the planning system improve the housing supply?

By Alex Marsh | Fri 18th November 2011 - 10:25 am

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Britain has a housing problem. There are problems of shortage and, consequently, access and affordability.

There are three principal mechanisms for dealing with significant housing shortage and indirectly reducing the affordability problems that go with it: (1) You can reduce the number of households needing to be housed; (2) You can increase the number of properties available; and (3) You can improve the utilization of the existing stock of properties.

You can try to do something on all three fronts. A couple of weeks ago LibDemVoice co-editor Mark Pack identified six …

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Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart

The Independent View: And then there was one… (Unmasked! The only backbench Lib Dem MP 100% loyal to the Coalition)

By Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart | Fri 18th November 2011 - 9:45 am

When a quarter of the parliamentary Conservative party rebels, everyone sits up and takes notice. On 24 October, 2011, 81 Conservative MPs defied a three-line whip to vote in favour of an EU referendum: cue a blaze of negative publicity for David Cameron and the Tory party whips.

But a week or so later one-quarter of Lib Dem MPs rebelled, and (almost) no one noticed. In nine separate votes on 1 and 2 November, a total of 14 Lib Dem MPs voted against various aspects of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. The largest …

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Posted in News, Parliament and The Independent View | Tagged , , , , , , and | 13 Comments
Stephen Tall

In praise of Duwayne Brooks

By Stephen Tall | Fri 18th November 2011 - 7:05 am

Many Lib Dems will know Duwayne Brooks as a dedicated Lib Dem, a councillor in Lewisham and the party’s lead member on the Safer Communities Board at the Local Government Group. To most of the public, though, he is better known as the best friend of Stephen Lawrence, whose murder was the subject of the Macpherson report into London’s Metropolitan Police.

And it is that night on 22 April 1993 which Duwayne has once again been forced to re-live this week, as was widely reported in the media yesterday. …

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Posted in News | Tagged | 3 Comments
Norman Lamb MP

Norman Lamb MP writes: Why we need to keep an open mind on Hinchingbrooke

By Norman Lamb MP | Thu 17th November 2011 - 11:53 am

Last week’s announcement that the management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital would be transferred to Circle Healthcare was always going to be controversial – a hospital with debts approaching £40million, whose situation had become so perilous that it had to be rescued by an external provider. Both Labour and Unison quickly exclaimed against this as ‘privatisation,’ despite the fact that the Labour Government had initiated the tendering process.

Circle is a 49% employee-owned organisation, different from the traditional private company. It makes them a part-mutual organisation run in the same manner as John Lewis. Put simply, they are part-owned and part-run …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 13 Comments
Paul Walter

DPMQs: Clegg shows his passion on a range of issues

By Paul Walter | Thu 17th November 2011 - 10:10 am

As usual, questions to the Deputy Prime Minister this week covered a large variety of subjects. Nick Clegg was on passionate form on several issues.

Harriet Harman asked if he would “admit that he urgently needs to take further action to help the young unemployed?”. Refreshingly, Nick Clegg did admit this, adding:

…it would be a real dereliction of duty if we did not do more to try to make sure that young people are given a real pathway into training, further and higher education or the labour market. As the right hon. and learned Lady will know, youth unemployment has increased

…

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged , , and | 26 Comments
Mark Valladares

Graham Watson runs for the Presidency of the European Liberal Democrats

By Mark Valladares | Thu 17th November 2011 - 9:15 am

Next week sees the annual Congress of ELDR, the European Liberal Democrats, which takes place in the Sicilian city of Palermo from 23-25 November.

Apart from the debates on the current economic crisis and the 2014-20 EU budget, there will be elections for the President and four Vice-Presidents. At the time of writing, there is only one declared candidate to succeed Annemie Neyts, whose three terms as President have seen ELDR grow and flourish — Sir Graham Watson, MEP for South West England and Gibraltar. You can read his manifesto here.

Graham has been a Member of the European Parliament …

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg: the Coalition’s priorities must be “jobs and growth, jobs and growth”

By Stephen Tall | Thu 17th November 2011 - 8:10 am

The intertwined topics of the economy and Europe has continued to dominate the political scene this week. But as Europhobic Tories continue to froth at the thought of England’s the UK’s retreat from its neighbours, Nick Clegg has maintained a decidedly mainstream approach, and attempted to shift the focus back from constitutional niceties to economic reality. Here’s how The Guardian reports Nick’s words:

Nick Clegg has clashed with David Cameron over Europe as he warned that only “populists, chauvinists and demagogues” would gain from protracted negotiations on treaty change. The Liberal Democrat deputy hit out the day after Cameron used

…

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Posted in Europe / International and News | Tagged and | 18 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDVideo: King trumped by Baroness

By Stephen Tall | Thu 17th November 2011 - 7:20 am

For those who’ve not yet seen it, here for your enjoyment is Baroness Trumpington’s candidly digital response to her Tory colleague Lord King’s accidentally ungallant reference to “the survivors of World War II started to look pretty old”:


(Also available to watch on the BBC site here.)

‘Who is Baroness Trumpington?’, you ask. The Telegraph fills us in:

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Posted in YouTube | Tagged and | 2 Comments
Paul Walter

Opinion: Nick Clegg lays into Labour links to unions

By Paul Walter | Wed 16th November 2011 - 6:24 pm

Here’s a superb clip of Nick Clegg in full, passionate flight as he attacks Sadiq Khan regarding links with the GMB union. There is some background to this story on order-order.com here.

Here’s the exchange in full from Hansard:

Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab): The Deputy Prime Minister has previously endorsed the long-held convention that issues of party funding should—as he has just said—be resolved by cross-party agreement when that is possible. He has told us that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will report shortly: in fact, it will report next week. Is he concerned about the objections from

…

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Posted in Parliament | Tagged , and | 20 Comments

Jake Holland writes: Connect is here to help you win

By Jake Holland | Wed 16th November 2011 - 3:25 pm

All Liberal Democrat campaigners will agree that there’s no worse feeling at the end of a hard-fought election campaign than losing by a handful of votes.

In the 2010 General Election, we were less than 1000 votes away from winning in 10 constituencies. Analysing these results, it was clear that our campaign technology had fallen behind the other two main parties. Tasks that our opponents took for granted, such as linking a campaign system directly to a website, or organising a nationwide volunteer phone bank, were beyond our capabilities.

Connect is the cutting edge in campaign technology that will put us …

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Posted in Online politics and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Malcolm Bruce

Malcolm Bruce MP writes: How UK Aid is being spent in the developing world

By Malcolm Bruce | Wed 16th November 2011 - 1:54 pm

Malcolm Bruce MP in Bangladesh
Photo courtesy of The Gavi Alliance.

I have just returned from Dhaka, Bangladesh, where I was part of a parliamentary delegation looking at Bangladesh’s rapidly improving healthcare system and in particular their immunisation programmes, which the UK Government through bilateral aid and the GAVI Alliance is helping to support.

Pneumonia and diarrhoea together account for about 40% of all under 5 mortality in the world and yet most of these cases could be prevented through the use of vaccines.

The GAVI Alliance was established …

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Iain Sharpe

Book review: Peace, Reform and Liberation – “the first port of call for anyone wishing to learn more about Liberal and Liberal Democrat history”

By Iain Sharpe | Wed 16th November 2011 - 10:25 am

There has long been a need for a single volume history of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties covering the entire period from its roots in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century to the present day.

While Liberal history has received plenty of attention from historians, previous studies of the party have been limited to a specific eras or themes. In many ways of course the party has several histories. This includes the origins of the Liberal tradition in the Whigs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the heyday of Liberal government in the middle of the nineteenth century, the party’s decline and near extinction between the 1920s and 1950s, its recovery in the second half of the twentieth century, and now the challenges of governing in coalition with the party’s historic enemies, the Conservatives.

So it is welcome that the Liberal Democrat History Group has sought to fill a gap with Peace, Reform and Liberation.

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Stephen Williams

Stephen Williams MP writes: How to damage tobacco brands

By Stephen Williams | Tue 15th November 2011 - 4:23 pm

The Australian Senate has just passed landmark legislation in the long fight to prevent young people from starting smoking. From next July, all cigarette packs sold in Australia will look the same: a murky green box with big health warnings and the brand name in a standard font. The tobacco industry desperately fought the plans with millions spent on adverts, dubious research, front groups and legal action. But despite their unprecedented campaign, the idea is widely supported by the public and was passed unanimously in the Australian House of Representatives.

Now it’s our turn. The Coalition Government understands …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 54 Comments
David Hennigan

Opinion: The Lib Dem leadership’s attitude to the Police Commissioner elections is baffling!

By David Hennigan | Tue 15th November 2011 - 2:15 pm

“Liberal Democrats – soft on crime” was the headline that has often screamed off Labour leaflets over the last decade. Indeed, in the latter stages of the 2010 General Election, Labour strategists used that message to squeeze the Liberal Democrat vote when we were on 29%.

Looking at the partial, last-minute collapse in our vote, it’s difficult to argue that this line of attack didn’t work. The ‘soft on crime’ attack was used against us in the Oldham East and Saddleworth By-election. Labour’s Christmas Card to constituents in Oldham even featured a snowman with a police …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 30 Comments
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