Faiza Chaudary

The Independent View: Not in my Name

By Faiza Chaudary | Sun 14th August 2011 - 11:07 am

The events of the last few days have been alarming and have raised many questions about our society. If you’re like me, you’re still trying make sense of the violence that we’ve seen in communities across England. As the leading independent voice for voluntary and community groups working with young people, my organisation has been inundated with calls and messages from our members expressing concern about the impact of the riots on young people, their image in the media and the programmes that are needed to support them.

There’s no escaping the fact that young people have been involved in …

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged , , and | 3 Comments
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Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg’s speech to Liberal Democrat members on the riots

By Helen Duffett | Sun 14th August 2011 - 9:53 am

Nick Clegg spoke to party members yesterday (Saturday) in Liverpool and Manchester, discussing last week’s riots and their aftermath.

His speech featured the announcement that the Government is commissioning independent research into the riots, (including research into gang culture) and cautions against “overnight policy” and “instant announcements”.

Nick’s speech in full:

This has been a traumatic week.

Traumatic for the nation; for police forces around the country; and above all for the innocent victims who have lost their homes, their livelihoods and even, in the most tragic cases, their lives.

The images of burning buses, looted shops and wrecked homes will not fade quickly. But

…

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Posted in News and Speeches | Tagged , and | 18 Comments
Mark Pack

Book review: Andrew Murrison on the military covenant

By Mark Pack | Sun 14th August 2011 - 9:09 am

Taking its title from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, this book by Conservative MP Andrew Murrison is rather a mixed bag. There is much that is interesting and thoughtful in his study of how wider society views and treats the military in Britain, but that is rather let down by a meandering structure which results in some topics being returned to frequently, the flow within many chapters being unclear and indeed the actual origins of the military covenant being largely unmentioned. We get a little detail of who first wrote the words and when, but almost nothing about what triggered the …

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Posted in Books and Op-eds | Tagged , and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

The rightward shift of British and European politics

By Stephen Tall | Sat 13th August 2011 - 5:55 pm

The two biggest issues politicians have to grapple with — the economy and law and order — have dominated the headlines in the past fortnight. First, we saw the collapse of market confidence, triggered by recognition that the US and Eurozone debt crises could cripple economic growth for years to come. Then we saw the collapse of social confidence, as rioters took to the streets for days on end with seeming impunity.

This should be fertile territory for the Labour party. The Coalition Government has looked if not weak, then certainly not in full control. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Boris …

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Posted in Op-eds | 28 Comments
Stuart Bonar

Opinion: A brave tax proposal

By Stuart Bonar | Sat 13th August 2011 - 4:15 pm

Back in June Mark Pack suggested that now is a good time to start debating tax ideas for the next manifesto. So, let me throw in two ideas: one brave, one not so brave.

Ready reckoners published online by HM Revenue & Customs make it easier to play the role of armchair Chancellor, so that is exactly what I am going to do.

My first idea is to increase inheritance tax by 5% to 45%, raking in an extra £350m, and then spend £300m of that to cut the reduced rate of VAT to 4%.
…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 16 Comments
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Ben Hammersley

The Independent View: Ben Hammersley writes… Let the Internet be so that good can flourish

By Ben Hammersley | Sat 13th August 2011 - 2:25 pm

It was only going to be a matter of time before the technology was blamed. The rioters, along with the rest of the western world, were found to have been using the dominant communication platform of the 21st century as, well, their dominant communication platform. The government’s response: give us powers to turn it off. As the Prime Minister said this morning,

So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and

…

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged | 8 Comments
Nick T

LibLink: Mark Pack – Is it simply a question of politicians and pundits always trying to ban technologies they don’t use?

By Nick T | Sat 13th August 2011 - 12:51 pm

Over on the MHP blog, Mark Pack makes a good point about the calls from some politicians to ban or restrict the use of social networking in response to the riots.

Here’s some of what Mark has to say:

Yet from some commentators and MPs there were immediate demands to suspend, curtail or otherwise regulate social networks. This was echoed today by David Cameron who promised that the government will look into this very question.

However, the number of communication technologies in the firing line is far short of the number involved in the events. Rolling TV coverage gave the events wall-to-wall coverage.

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged , and | 6 Comments
Tim Leunig

Tim Leunig writes: Why are utility companies hitting the poorest hardest?

By Tim Leunig | Sat 13th August 2011 - 11:23 am

Global gas prices are going up, and prices for UK consumers are going up too. Gas suppliers are raising prices by around 18-20%.

Consumer price rises are inevitable when the wholesale price goes up. But my supplier, E.ON, has structured its price rises to hit the poor more than the rich. They are doing this by raising the cost of gas much more for small users than large users.

They have raised the price of the first 2680 kWh by 46%, but the price of additional units by only 15%. This means that the poor – and the green – will see …

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Posted in Op-eds | 27 Comments
Jo Swinson MP

Jo Swinson MP writes: Determination, courage and kindness in response to riots shows true British society

By Jo Swinson MP | Sat 13th August 2011 - 10:04 am

Everyone across our country has been horrified at the scenes unfolding on our TV screens, and, for some, outside their homes and workplaces.

Watching from Glasgow, I was certainly relieved that the riots did not spread to Scotland, but I think it is unhelpful for anyone, especially the First Minister, to express any feeling of superiority about that. My constituents are feeling solidarity with the victims of the violence, and with everyone who is afraid in their own community as a result of the riots, not gloating that this hasn’t been happening in Scotland.

The question that everyone is …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dems win council seat from the Tories in… Eton

By Stephen Tall | Fri 12th August 2011 - 7:35 pm

As Helen Duffett’s Lib Dem Voice council election results round-up highlighted, the Lib Dems last night gained a seat from the Conservatives — in a seat that might have been thought to be True Blue territory, Eton and Castle ward in the Berkshire borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

Congratulations to George Fussey! Here’s how the BBC reported it:

Mr Fussey won on Thursday night with 208 votes, beating Tory candidate Adam Demeter who had 182 votes. … Mr Fussey has lived in Eton for 25 years and is also a governor at Windsor Girls’ School. He is the second

…

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Posted in Council by-elections | 8 Comments
The Voice

The LDV Friday Five: 12 August 2011

By The Voice | Fri 12th August 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

  1. Opinion: Leading Labour figures guilty of the worst kind of opportunism (63 comments) by David Parkes
  2. Opinion: Don’t make Guido’s day (30 comments) by Simon McGrath
  3. What caused the riots? It’s more than just the economy, stupid. (41 comments) by Stephen Tall
  4. David Laws set for ministerial return in autumn? (31 comments) by Stephen Tall
  5. Brian Paddick writes: Lessons from the Tottenham riots (10 comments) by Brian Paddick

5 sample LDV Members’ Forum threads

  1. Social media block for rioters?
  2. Is Dan Snow a Lib-Dem?
  3. Rubber bullet anecdote
  4. US debt settlement a catastrophe
  5. What counts as BAME?

5 from the LDV archive

(12 August, 2006-09)

  1. LibLink: THE shock of election night (29 comments) by NewsHound, from 2010
  2. Opinion: there’s no pleasure in saying ‘I told you so’ – but does it need saying? (58 comments) by Alex Marsh, from 2010
  3. Smaller Commons ‘would hit Lib Dems’ (33 comments) by Sara Bedford, from 2010
  4. Clegg impresses MoneySavingExpert.com (4 comments) by Alex Foster, from 2009
  5. Activate – reviewed by a participant (5 comments) by Mark Whiley, from 2009

5 top reader search returns to get to LDV

(excluding Liberal Democrat Voice or its variants)

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Helen Duffett

Council by-election results: 11 August 2011

By Helen Duffett | Fri 12th August 2011 - 3:53 pm

Islington LBC, St Peter’s
Lab 1167 (52.5; +17.5)
LD David Sant 440 (19.8; -9.6)
Con 381 (17.1; -9.1)
Green 176 (7.9; -1.4)
Ind 59 (2.7; +2.7)
Majority 727
Turnout 24.78%
Lab hold
Percentage change is since May 2010.

Windsor and Maidenhead UA, Eton and Castle
LD George Fussey 208 (47.4; +19.6)
Con 182 (41.5; -23.7)
Lab 32 (7.3; +0.3)
UKIP 17 (3.9; +3.9)
Majority 26
Turnout 24%
LD gain from Con
Percentage change is since May 2011

North Devon DC, Fremington
Ind 501 (46.9; +5.2)
Con 308 (28.8; +16.2)
Ind 196 (18.3; -13.6)
Green 64 (6.0; +6.0)

Majority 193
Turnout 29.99%
Ind hold
Percentage change is since May 201

Dawlish TC, Central and North East
Ind (Voice for Dawlish) 323 (45.6)
LD Judith Robins 311 (43.9)
Green 75 (10.6)
Majority 12
Turnout 16%
Ind …

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Posted in Council by-elections | Tagged , , and | 7 Comments
David Thorpe

Opinion: abolishing the 50p tax rate makes no economic sense

By David Thorpe | Fri 12th August 2011 - 2:25 pm

Slower than anticipated growth has seen a rush of commentary proposing changes the government need to make to ‘deliver growth’.

If there is one macroeconomic lesson which should be learnt from the 2008 crisis it is that not all growth is good. It is relative easy to manufacture a bubble, call it growth, and claim to have “abolished boom and bust”.

Sustainable growth is much harder to achieve, but one idea unlikely to achieve it is the proposal by some Tory commentators to abolish the 50% tax rate.

There are probably strong moral and political arguments for and against …

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Posted in Op-eds | 32 Comments
Paul Walter

Opinion: What just happened?

By Paul Walter | Fri 12th August 2011 - 1:16 pm

On LDV yesterday, Stephen Tall wrote on the causes of the “riots”, concluding:

This was purposeless lawlessness. And there’s little point in blaming today’s current crop of politicians, of whichever hue, for that state. This is a deep-seated problem in our society, a failure of families and community and the economy and politics.

While I would normally agree, I hesitate to do so. There is a great danger in coming to generalised conclusions so early on.

My head is still reeling a bit from the past few days. As John Humphrys said this week, August is normally a very quiet month. This …

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Posted in Op-eds | 36 Comments
The Voice

Media reform: the debates elsewhere

By The Voice | Fri 12th August 2011 - 11:54 am

As we said on Monday, Lib Dem Voice over the next few weeks is taking part in a cross-blog debate on some of the most pressing issues regarding the UK media.

Earlier this week here on The Voice Mark took a look at what the Liberal Democrats have historically said on the topic and why the flaws in Ed Miliband’s policy are no cause for rejoicing.

Elsewhere on the blogosphere, David Elstein looked at those Ed Miliband policies in detail and Dan Hind put the case for ensuring greater plurality of ownership.

Next week we will be looking …

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Simon Oliver

Opinion: How the market will decide our energy future

By Simon Oliver | Fri 12th August 2011 - 9:49 am

Recently articles from both the TUC and CBI have bemoaned the burden of increasing energy costs on energy intensive businesses. Both organisations make the rather obvious error in thinking that a carbon price will inevitably drive the cost of energy upwards. In fact, the opposite is true. The stronger the price signal, the faster the market works to balance supply with demand.

The supply of fossil fuels is finite. Conventional oil has already peaked its supply (as admitted by the chief economist of the IEA) and tar sands and fracking are far too damaging to the environment to continue as …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 25 Comments
Matt Gallagher

Opinion: The dangers of acting without knowing the facts

By Matt Gallagher | Thu 11th August 2011 - 7:00 pm

By now, there cannot be many people in this country who have not heard about the disturbances across England this week. The scenes of wanton criminal damage and violence, the deaths and injuries, the families made homeless and businesses destroyed, have re-opened a debate that clearly was not resolved last time we witnessed such levels of disorder.

Questions are already being asked about the underlying causes of the trouble, and how it was dealt with. No doubt those arguments will continue for some time to come. Everyone has a theory and everyone thinks they have a solution. What is clear is …

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Posted in Op-eds | 13 Comments
The Voice

Clegg: “You simply cannot go around breaking the law”

By The Voice | Thu 11th August 2011 - 3:15 pm

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has again emphasised the critical importance of retsoring law and order to the streets of Britain after the widespread rioting of the past few days. However, he also noted that — once calm is fully restored — there will be a need for a proper debate about ensuring young people in deprived areas feel they have a much greater stake in their own communities. Here’s what Nick said on the BBC this morning:

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Posted in News | Tagged and | 25 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink | Tom Brake MP: Yes, we are bringing an end to the detention of child refugees

By NewsHound | Thu 11th August 2011 - 1:30 pm

One of the Lib Dems’ key 2010 election manifesto pledges was that child detention in immigration centres would be ended. A year after Tom Brake MP welcomed this Lib Dem policy being adopted by the Coalition government, he has written for The Guardian to highlight how the policy is improving the lives of those young and innocent victims who were treated so disgracefully by the Labour government:

The current practices with regard to children awaiting deportation cannot be – and should not be – in any way compared to the shameful past. Children are no longer held for weeks,

…

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 1 Comment
Mark Pack

Local liberal heroes: Daniel Brown

By Mark Pack | Thu 11th August 2011 - 10:25 am

Earlier in the year, I did a series of posts profiling forgotten liberal heroes (to which a couple of other people also kindly contributed), looking at some of those who achieved great things for liberalism in their time but have been unjustly forgotten – such as Margaret Wintringham, the very first female Liberal MP.

There is also another group of people who I think are often unjustly obscure – those local campaigners who are often at the heart of their local community and local party, delivering liberalism and helping others, but as their stage is a local one they are often unacknowledged in the wider party.

So welcome to a new series, profiling some of those local liberal heroes from around London. The first is Brent councillor, Daniel Brown.

For Daniel, liberalism was a family affair as his mother was already a party member when he joined (and she too was a Lead Member when the Liberal Democrats led Brent Council). Becoming a councillor seemed the natural progression for someone who wanted to do more than talk about liberalism.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

What caused the riots? It’s more than just the economy, stupid.

By Stephen Tall | Thu 11th August 2011 - 8:57 am

Aditya Chakrabortty has a pretty compelling article in today’s Guardian scrutinising the political responses to the past few days’ rioting under the concise headline, UK riots: political classes see what they want to see. He summarises the binary analysis that has dominated:

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , and | 55 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink | Brian Paddick: Police must show there is no bias against black people

By NewsHound | Wed 10th August 2011 - 2:55 pm

Former deputy assistant commissioner of the Metroplolitan police, and current contender to become the Lib Dem candidate for Mayor of London, Brian Paddick has written for The Independent on the need for our law-enforcers to re-earn the trust of the capital’s balck community. Recounting his own experiences of policing London on the front-line over the decades, Brian writes:

I was a sergeant on the streets during the 1981 Brixton riots. Together with 10 officers hiding behind our plastic shields, we became the focus for community hatred, pelted with bricks and broken paving slabs. The police and the community tried to rebuild some kind of relationship – it took a long time. Twenty years later I became the police commander there. After 15 months, when I was moved out of Brixton, there were protests – it had been quite a turnaround from 1981. Do the people of Tottenham have to wait 20 years for the weekend’s scars to heal?

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Posted in LibLink | Tagged and | 12 Comments
David Parkes

Opinion: Leading Labour figures guilty of the worst kind of opportunism

By David Parkes | Wed 10th August 2011 - 11:57 am

London burns and communities reel from successive nights of violence and looting, rumour is rife, facts are scare. All we know that peaceful vigil held for Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police on Thursday night, somehow was hijacked by an angry mob and his death became the catalyst of nights of violence, which have now spread to other parts of the capital and country.

What do we hear from Labour politicians? Calls for calm? Space for the IPCC to carry out their investigation into the shooting? No, instead we have them lining up to link the violence to the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , and | 84 Comments
Ron Aitken

Opinion: Lessons learned the hard way will have to be re-learned following the riots in Tottenham

By Ron Aitken | Wed 10th August 2011 - 10:36 am

As a young research assistant I was in Northern Ireland on the day of the June 1987 General Election, campaigning for the re-election of my boss the Rev Martin Smyth, Ulster Unionist MP for South Belfast and head of the Orange Order.

Elections in Northern Ireland were always conducted in a way mindful of possible violence or terrorist attack, and an RUC patrol intercepted a car in the vicinity of a school being used as a polling station. The IRA occupants of the car were found to be armed and an explosive device was also found. Mr Smyth was in the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

The flaws in Ed Miliband’s media policy are no cause for rejoicing

By Mark Pack | Wed 10th August 2011 - 8:49 am

It isn’t often that the members of one party should be worried about a proposed policy from a rival party’s leader collapsing under examination. However, David Elstein’s demolition of Ed Miliband’s proposal to limit ownership of newspapers by circulation should not provide more than a passing smile to Liberal Democrats, for it highlights the difficult of coming up with any meaningful change in the rules over newspaper ownership.

As David Elstein puts it:

Ed Miliband has proposed a 20% limit on ownership of national newspapers, measured by circulation. As the Sun’s circulation is more than 20% of all national newspaper sales, that would require News International to close The Times and either sell the Sunday Times or reposition it as a non-national newspaper (by ceasing to publish in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, where would-be readers would have to subscribe digitally). Even then the Sun’s circulation would need to be forced down, perhaps by restricting access to newsprint. In all likelihood any such measure would result in the combined circulation of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday rising above 20%, so requiring similar measures to be targeted at them.

Banning a newspaper from appearing in parts of the UK? Making it illegal for a newspaper group to buy ‘too much’ paper? There are just too few newspaper titles with a mass audience for restriction on ownership by circulation to be practical.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , and | 2 Comments
The Voice

Nick Clegg on the UK riots: “We’ve all got to work together to make sure this doesn’t happen again”

By The Voice | Wed 10th August 2011 - 8:00 am

The Deputy Prime Minister, speaking on a visit to Birmingham, pledged tough action to bring an end to the riots which have spread from London to other cities. Nick Clegg warned those who had taken part that, when caught, they would face serious consequences for their actions:

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Posted in News | Tagged | 17 Comments
Richard Flowers

Opinion: Mike Hancock has grave concerns for a gay constituent facing deportation to Uganda

By Richard Flowers | Tue 9th August 2011 - 6:55 pm

Robert Segwanyi is a gay man from Uganda. Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda, and Robert was imprisoned and, he says, tortured because he is gay.

In June last year, he escaped and fled to Britain.

Now the UK Border Agency want to send him back.

UKBA does not accept he is gay and a judge rejected his appeal claiming that there is no risk to gay people in Uganda.

This is what Amnesty International said about Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Laws:

Both the current law and the proposed new law violate a number of human rights including the rights to equality and non-discrimination, privacy, liberty and

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , , , and | 6 Comments
The Voice

Total Politics Blog Awards: voting is now open

By The Voice | Tue 9th August 2011 - 3:48 pm

It’s that time of the year again, the Total Politics blog awards, in which people very kindly voted The Voice number one Liberal Democrat blog last year.

This year the voting rules are slightly different both to remove the old system of sending in emails and also to reflect that some people blog in several different places, so you can now vote for bloggers as well as blogs:

  1. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. The higher you rank a blog

…

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Posted in Online politics | Tagged and | Leave a comment
Laura Cronshaw

Independent View: Catch21 is helping demystify Parliament

By Laura Cronshaw | Tue 9th August 2011 - 12:48 pm

Here at Catch21, our sole aim is to engage and inform our vibrant and vocal electorate, in the ever changing world of politics. To provide discussion, discourse and good old debate in on-trend topics, and to enable the freedom of opinion and understanding to reach out from the House of Commons into our own comfortable common rooms.

In 2009, Catch21 set up the Uni-Q project, a political discussion show that gave students a chance to air their own political opinions whilst grilling willing MP’s. Mirroring the format of BBC Question Time, Uni-Q set off touring colleges and universities across the …

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Posted in The Independent View | Tagged , and | Leave a comment
David Allen

Opinion: Frankensteinomics

By David Allen | Tue 9th August 2011 - 9:58 am

Why are Western politicians failing to tackle the debt crisis? Partly, because they do not know why things got this way. So they do not really know what to do. We need better understanding.

At the risk of sounding like an airport paperback I offer – Frankensteinomics! The global economy, I contend, is like Frankenstein’s monster – bloated, dysfunctional, and kept alive only by repeated jolts of artificial stimulation.

The mad scientist who first showed how to apply the electrodes was Maynard Keynes. Using State spending to jolt the economy out of depression …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 22 Comments
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