Stephen Tall

Tim Farron tells it straight: a disappointing, distressing, devastating first year… but Lib Dems remain determined

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th September 2011 - 3:55 pm

It’s not often that forewords to the Lib Dem conference directory by the party president make media headlines. But Tim Farron’s honest appriasal of the past 500 days of the Lib Dems in Coalition has done just that — ‘Naive’ Liberal Democrats have suffered a loss of identity, says Tim Farron in The Guardian.

The article is very Tim: blunt, honest… but also optimistic. Here’s his unspun assessment:

The last 12 months has been a bit of a roller coaster for the party, with some fantastic highs reached as we entered into government, followed by some extreme lows in the wake of the disappointments in May. … But let’s be realistic. The consequences of being in power and of not getting our messages across to the public at large have been particularly distressing.

… it’s how you pick yourself up and move forward in the wake of great disappointment that defines you, and I fully believe that the best way to answer these losses is to use this conference as an opportunity to come back together, and address the issues and the problems we are facing together. …

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Posted in Conference | Tagged and | 5 Comments
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Simon McGrath

Opinion: Time to face reality on conference security

By Simon McGrath | Sat 10th September 2011 - 2:28 pm

Lib Dem Voice has carried a number of articles in recent weeks, reflecting wider discussions among Lib Dems, about the security arrangement for the Birmingham Conference. The tone of many of these discussions has reached a quite extraordinary pitch of self-righteousness and vituperation, in many cases based on hearsay and rumour.

Perhaps it would be worth looking at some of the facts about the security arrangements.

Firstly the idea that this is a decision which Lib Dems can take on our own is simply wrong. Many others attend our conference, the media, exhibitors and the workers in the venue, who in …

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Posted in Conference, Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged , and | 51 Comments
Stephen Tall

Update on Lib Dem conference accreditation: 5,617 approved, 138 in progress, 150 pending. One person refused.

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th September 2011 - 12:31 pm

Jon Ball has just updated live from the Lib Dems’ Federal Conference Committee with the latest on the party’s conference accreditation which has provoked such internal controversy in recent weeks:

Lib Dem conference accreditation update from FCC. 5,617 people have been approved. 138 applications are in progress. There are issues with 150 applications in various categories including photos missing or unsuitable and some people (almost all non-members) being asked to provide passports at conference. These are technical issues that are very unlikely to lead to refusal. However, one person has been refused accreditation by the Chair of FCC, the President

…

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Posted in Conference and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged | 14 Comments

Opinion: New MSM blood donation criteria do not go far enough

By Chris Ward | Sat 10th September 2011 - 12:28 pm

Paul Burstow MP recently wrote in these pages explaining the government’s decision to lift the lifetime ban on MSM blood donations. I have tabled an amendment to my motion at Conference next week, Science Not Stigma: Ending the Blood Ban, to oppose the deferral on the MSM group.

First and foremost, I’d like to emphasise that throughout this campaign, I have avoided use of the words “discrimination”, “homophobic” and “bigoted”. I am aware that this separates me from some others who have campaigned on the matter, but I think it’s really important. I have great respect for the NHS and the fantastic people who work within it and I personally believe that the methodology and the conclusions of the review were all the product of good intentions. Attempts by others who stand on my side of the campaign to malign doctors and nurses as “homophobic” or “bigoted” detracts the argument from the priority subject – the safety of the patient – and suggests that the lifting of the ban is all about us, the gay and bisexual men. It’s not.

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

LDVideo | George Osborne’s GQ award embarrassment: when political jokes go bad (and when they go right)

By Stephen Tall | Sat 10th September 2011 - 8:45 am

The Chancellor George Osborne has been left red-faced by his controversially potty-mouthed acceptance speech at the GQ awards when picking up a gong.

His references to the magazine’s adult content, and use of the word ‘wankers’, has attracted widespread criticism for crudeness, and conduct unbecoming the dignity of his office — even his usual supporters in the Tory party, such as ConservativeHome’s Tim Montgomerie, have turned on Mr O. See what you think here:

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The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 9 September 2011

By The Voice | Fri 9th September 2011 - 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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The Liberator Collective

New Edition of Liberator (September 2011)

By The Liberator Collective | Fri 9th September 2011 - 3:53 pm

Liberator subscribers have just received the latest edition of Liberator magazine (issue no.348 – September 2011). For those of you who are not yet subscribers, here’s a summary of the contents:

  • The editorial column Commentary contrasts Nick Clegg’s pre-election prediction of riots with the situation now. There is also criticism of the declining proportion of time allocated to policy motions at party conference.
  • The insider gossip column Radical Bulletin begins with an exposé of a ‘policy and strategy’ document prepared by Nick Clegg’s adviser Richard Reeves.
  • ‘Cut the cringe’ – Matthew Oakeshott (former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman in the

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 3 Comments
Paul Burstow

Paul Burstow MP writes: Lifting of lifetime gay blood donation ban – progress, but not the final word

By Paul Burstow | Fri 9th September 2011 - 2:16 pm

The lifetime ban on men who have had sex with men (MSM) is an issue that our party has always felt uncomfortable with. Superficially it looks little more than a discriminatory throwback to the 1980s stereotypes associated with gay men and increased risk of sexual disease.

Yesterday the Government took a significant step in changing their position by announcing the lifting of the lifetime ban on MSM from giving blood. So let me give you the detail about how that decision was reached, and what it means for men wanting to donate blood.

The previous Government had also questioned the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Liam Fox and Jorge Mendonca, then and now

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th September 2011 - 12:07 pm

Liam Fox, February 2007 on the allegations against British solider Jorge Medonca over the death of Baha Mousa:

A whiff of political correctness hangs heavy over the case against Col Mendonca.

Liam Fox, September 2011, on reading the report that condemned British solider Jorge Medonca over the death of Baha Mousa:

As I read the report, my predominant feeling was disgust that individuals could have acted in this brutal way and that their appalling behaviour has tarnished the reputation of the British army.

Liam Fox’s change of stance should be welcomed. He’s had new evidence presented to him, he’s changed his mind and that is how things …

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

Cornwall Council tightens up second home electoral registration

By Mark Pack | Fri 9th September 2011 - 10:25 am

Cornwall Council members such as Alex Folkes have been pushing for some time for the council to tighten up its implementation of electoral registration rules in the face of the county’s large number of second homes.

Where people genuinely split their time between living elsewhere and living in a second home in Cornwall, they can register at both addresses (though vote in a Parliamentary election at only one of them). However, there are widespread concerns that many people who register to vote at a Cornish second home are not qualified to do so as they only use it as an …

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Posted in Election law and News | Tagged and | 5 Comments
The Voice

Lib Dems get police commissioner elections delayed

By The Voice | Thu 8th September 2011 - 9:47 pm

Via the BBC:

The Lib Dems urged elections for police commissioners to be delayed partly to help the electoral prospects of their local councillors, the BBC understands.

The elections were due to take place on 3 May 2012, the same day as council polls across England and Wales, but are set to be put back until November.

A senior Lib Dem spokesman told BBC News their councillors wanted to “depoliticise” the vote.

Labour, which is against elected police chiefs, claims the move will cost £25m.

The issue was the subject of a spat at Prime Minister’s Questions, with opposition leader Ed Miliband saying

…

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 12 Comments
Richard Carr

The Independent View: The General Power of Competence – Is the sky the limit?

By Richard Carr | Thu 8th September 2011 - 3:51 pm

As the Localism Bill moves into Report stage in the Lords, local authorities are getting ever closer to gaining their much discussed General Power of Competence (GPoC).

For Lib Dems the passage of the Localism Bill is an interesting moment. Many, one suspects, might echo the views of former Lib Dem LGA leader Cllr Richard Kemp who in January blogged his ‘support about 80% of the Bill, like the direction but have concerns about the deliverability of 15% of the Bill, and actively detest 5% of it.’

Though Kemp’s reservations were reserved for the provisions concerning elected mayors, Lib Dems …

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Richard Davis

Opinion: Now is NOT the time to abolish 50p tax rate

By Richard Davis | Thu 8th September 2011 - 1:48 pm

A letter appeared in the FT today from a deficit* of economists which suggested that the 50p tax rate be dropped. Their reasoning, as was stated on yesterday morning’s Radio4 Today programme is that hedge funds are relocating to Switzerland in favour of the cheaper tax. While I assume if the tax was dropped the 0.5% of the population in the UK who actually pay that level wouldn’t contemplate leaving?

Having worked with hedge funds I recognised a few of the names, such as Sushil Wadhwani, listed in the BBC article as former Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member. In other …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 34 Comments
NewsHound

Danny Alexander suggests £12,500 income tax threshold

By NewsHound | Thu 8th September 2011 - 12:13 pm

Danny Alexander MP has argued in an interview in this week’s New Statesman magazine that he would like to “push further” eventually on raising the income tax threshold higher than the planned £10,000.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview, published in the Staggers:

From the Treasury perspective, the main Lib Dem contribution to government has been the plan to raise the income-tax threshold to £10,000 by the end of the parliament. Alexander is very attached to this policy as a way of compensating people on low incomes for the cuts. “I think it’s a direction that we will want to

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 26 Comments
Mark Pack

Hooray for Conservative MP Andrew Selous

By Mark Pack | Thu 8th September 2011 - 10:25 am

Long-time readers will know that I’ve often criticised the widespread practice of local authority Chief Executives pocketing extra payments for running elections, even though most of the work is done by others, they are already well paid and everyone knows that the work they do is part of the job.

It’s even worse that such payments were increased ahead of the 2010 general election despite no-one first checking how much the pay increase would end up costing, that the payments are not just a one-off but also bump up people’s pension entitlements and – with the exception of the …

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Posted in Election law | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Mark Pack

More power to Parliament over the appointments to key posts?

By Mark Pack | Thu 8th September 2011 - 7:54 am

More Parliamentary hearings before people are appointed to key posts could be on the way as the BBC’s Mark D’Arcy reports:

One of the areas where the Commons committee system has been quietly accumulating extra clout is over the appointments of key quangocrats, industry regulators and similar posts.

These are figures with enormous powers – and the pressure to legitimise them through some kind of parliamentary approval system has been building for quite a while.

Now MPs are trying to formalise their gains and set out an explicit system for approving them – both to probe their attitudes and priorities and to

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , and | 2 Comments
Mark Pack

Four Lib Dem MPs vote against NHS Bill; three vote for Dorries on abortion

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th September 2011 - 9:21 pm

On the NHS Bill four Liberal Democrat MPs rebelled: Andrew George, Julian Huppert, Greg Mulholland and Adrian Sanders.

On the Nadine Dorries abortion vote, three backed her proposals: Alan Beith, Gordon Birtwistle and Greg Mulholland.

Posted in News | 63 Comments
Tom Smith

Opinion: Seize the opportunities in the NHS reforms

By Tom Smith | Wed 7th September 2011 - 4:10 pm

The Health and Social Care Bill looks like it will have a bumpy ride through the Commons when Parliament returns this week. There are furious complaints from 38 degrees and others that the reforms will introduce privatisation by the back door, open up the NHS to being subject to competition law and allow the Secretary of State to wash his hands of the NHS altogether. Whatever the merits of these arguments, they somewhat miss the point.

The argument over the inclusion or otherwise of the Secretary of State’s responsibility to provide a comprehensive service in the Bill is …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 29 Comments
Paul Tyler

Paul Tyler writes… A manual for Coalition?

By Paul Tyler | Wed 7th September 2011 - 2:25 pm

Dr Andrew Blick, a Senior Research Fellow at Democratic Audit, and Lord (Peter) Hennessy have co-authored a new report called The Hidden Wiring Emerges. (It provides the best and most comprehensive analysis yet of the Coalition’s draft Cabinet Manual, published in December 2010.

The whole document – and the whole report on it – should attract anyone concerned with the health of our democracy. However, one point of dispute may interest Liberal Democrats in particular.

The authors highlight an idea described in the Manual that, following the resignation of a Prime Minister after a General Election, the person ‘seemingly most likely …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Paul Walter

PMQs: Nadine Dorries leaves the PM speechless

By Paul Walter | Wed 7th September 2011 - 1:23 pm

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Posted in News and PMQs | Tagged , , , , , , , and | 8 Comments
Mark Pack

The message that won the Mayor selection for Brian Paddick

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th September 2011 - 12:55 pm

Neil Stockley, one of the best Liberal Deomcrat commentators when it comes to messaging and presenting a coherent narrative, has taken a look at the message which propelled Brian Paddick to victory in the London Mayor selection contest:

Liberal Democrat selection campaigns for London mayor are strange beasts, as the party seeks out a mega-campaigner who can rally the troops and pull in more assembly members by his/her coat-tails.   This time, the dynamics were mixed up even more by the entry into the race of the former Montgomeryshire MP, Lembit Opik.  (Lembit had a defeat narrative in which he compared

…

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Posted in London | Tagged , and | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Redrawing the Parliamentary boundaries: busting some myths

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th September 2011 - 8:45 am

With the Boundary Commission for England set to publish its provisional proposals for England’s Parliamentary constituencies next week, expect plenty of talk about how the process will then work with the initial consultation period, the public hearings and then the post-Christmas period for further written submissions. However, on past form there is likely to be quite a lot of mistakes or misinformation about how the review process works. The Guardian, for example, has been particularly poor when it has not been Julian Glover writing pieces.

So in an attempt to guide you through the information, here are some of the myths …

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Posted in Election law | Tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Mark Pack

A tale of two holes – and a £39m price tag

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th September 2011 - 7:54 am

In principle, I have no objection to people digging holes in the ground. Even very expensive holes. Potholes? Bad. But lift shafts, underground tunnels and other such excavations? Good. A big hole that loops back on itself and could* end the universe? That’ll do nicely. The combination of a hole, Bernard Cribbins and Lego? Excellent.

If I had to postulate a general theory of holes, I’d say that a hole that is not used is a bad hole. And two holes that are not used are doubly bad.

Which brings me to the question of the £39 million spent …

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Posted in London | Tagged , , , , , and | 13 Comments
Mark Pack

“Nick Clegg to vote against abortion counselling law”

By Mark Pack | Tue 6th September 2011 - 11:03 pm

So reports The Guardian:

Nick Clegg is on Wednesday planning to vote against a cross-party amendment, tabled by socially conservative MPs, that would strip abortion providers of their counselling role.

In the most high-profile parliamentary debate on abortion since the general election, the deputy prime minister will lead a series of Liberal Democrat and Tory ministers into the no lobby. They will be joined by most Labour MPs in voting against the amendment tabled by Nadine Dorries, a Tory backbencher, and Frank Field, Labour’s former welfare reform minister…

A rival amendment, tabled by the Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert, has also been accepted

…

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Posted in News | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
The Voice

Forget airports, sort the road works – message from London business leaders

By The Voice | Tue 6th September 2011 - 6:55 pm

An opinion poll of 760 London business leaders carried out by ComRes for the new LondonLovesBusiness website found an overwhelming preference for the next Mayor of London to concentrate on sorting out roadworks rather than trying to get a new airport runway built.

Only 14% support a new Heathrow runway or a new Thames Estuary airport, but 57% want the next Mayor of London to focus on tackling roadworks disruption. Public transport is central to the business leaders’ concerns with improving public transport and transport links the most popular selection as the “single most important thing the mayor could do …

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Gareth Epps

Gareth Epps writes: Don’t fix the conference accreditation process – break it!

By Gareth Epps | Tue 6th September 2011 - 4:17 pm

I am writing this from the position of having – after two false starts – finally been ‘processed’
or ‘accredited’ by the police in order to exercise my right as a member of this proud and democratic party. This has come after delay, rejection of my form, and increasingly agitated discussion with various people wasting vast amounts of time. Suffice to say that in my 11 years on Conference Committee, I would never have accepted the imposition of such a system. I am possibly luckier, too, than some Conference-goers in knowing how Conference is organised, and who has the ultimate responsibility …

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Posted in Conference | Tagged , and | 25 Comments
George Potter

Conference motion: The way sick and disabled people are treated by the benefit system

By George Potter | Tue 6th September 2011 - 3:24 pm

At 4.15pm on Saturday 17 September, Lib Dem autumn conference will debate the Liberal Youth sponsored motion on the Employment Support Allowance and the Work Capability Assessment. This motion deals with the way sick and disabled people are treated by the benefit system and the way in which they are assessed to determine whether they are eligible for benefits or not.

The motion specifically targets the time limiting of support to a maximum one year for any sick or disabled people who have made national insurance contributions in the three years prior to claiming, the appeal system which sees anywhere between …

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Posted in Conference | Tagged , and | 16 Comments
Alex Foster

Liberal Drinks / #tweetup at #ldconf

By Alex Foster | Tue 6th September 2011 - 2:32 pm

LibDemVoice have for the last few years nominated a time and a place for an informal drink and meet-up for internetty Lib Dems to let their hair down and have a chat.

This time around, we weren’t quite fleet enough of foot to get any such event in the conference directory, so we will have to rely on word of mouth helping to spread the details.

After a quick chat on the topic in Lib Dem Voice’s private members’ forum, we settled on meeting at the Wellington pub, a short distance from the conference centre itself, on the Monday night of the conference week. Kickoff will be around 7.30pm.

If you’d like to come along, why not click here to let your twitter friends know.

In addition, Lib Dem Voice have our usual strong presence at the conference, with the following events planned:

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Posted in Conference and Events | Tagged and | 8 Comments
Chris White

Opinion: Give Gove the shove

By Chris White | Tue 6th September 2011 - 12:21 pm

I was asked yesterday what I thought would be the key issues for the Coalition over the next 12 months. Political predictions are always dangerous (what did you predict would be the main stories in August?) but I plunged in and said that education was emerging as a clear division between the Coalition partners.

There has been a great deal over the past few days over the creation of the first free schools. The BBC tells us hourly that they are free from local government control: quite where they (and some politicians in our own Party who should know better) get …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 18 Comments
Mark Pack

Two Conservative MPs call for mandatory gender quotas for company boards

By Mark Pack | Tue 6th September 2011 - 10:25 am

As the Daily Telegraph reports of the much touted book by Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi:

Sanctions are also suggested against non-executive directors of failed companies. The authors also oppose non-executives at systemically-important banks having other board roles and also want the law changed so directors of financial institutions that require recourse to public funds to prevent bankruptcy are legally barred from joining the board at other companies. They also want to tackle the cult of the CEO by encouraging the City to appoint co-chief executives.

“There’s this idea that the CEO is so revered that it’s very difficult ever for

…

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